Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A week in Matrix

piegames.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–77 of 77 posts

Re: A week in Matrix

#71

Post by ezst »

fedpost wrote: post #5

Are there any real options in this space for something that is - E2EE - Large group capable (100+ users) - FOSS + self hostable - Not riddled with security issues - Relatively easy to use for iOS and Android users (safe for normies) I help run a Matrix server for people who are at risk from the current administration and I can attest to all of the issues mentioned plus a few more. I'd rather not move to something as…

Doesn't XMPP check all those, and more? I run my local _ejabberd_ for a decade and some, and I'm joined to a couple 100+-users rooms. On my phone, I have a whatsapp-like experience with _Conversations_, that even the least tech-savvy in my circles use happily. On the laptop, I have _Gajim_, which is more "banquet-style" and serves to follow along fast-paced large rooms, most of which happen to be on IRC, but I don't even mind that, thanks to the _biboumi_ bridge which unceremoniously connects me there as if I was a regular IRC client. I also keep an eye on _movim_ which promises a more discord-like experience: it has gamers-style voice/video/screen-sharing rooms, it has spaces (although the paint isn't completely dry on those), and it's working on scaling-up calls to very large rooms by having galene as a SFU.

What I find also amazing in all this is that all the client/server/bridge names I brought up are independent and healthy projects. XMPP is very mature and decentralized. Not just in theory by nature of its protocol, but practically/politically by its many implementations across many stacks and implementers across many countries.

Re: A week in Matrix

#72

Post by ezst »

pkulak wrote: post #9
fedpost wrote: post #5

Are there any real options in this space for something that is - E2EE - Large group capable (100+ users) - FOSS + self hostable - Not riddled with security issues - Relatively easy to use for iOS and Android users (safe for normies) I help run a Matrix server for people who are at risk from the current administration and I can attest to all of the issues mentioned plus a few more. I'd rather not move to something as…

That’s Matrix. Matrix has spent too much time chasing Discord, with spaces, and group video chat, and email with federation. And too much time chasing Slack with threads. But everything you mentioned is core Matrix chat and works great on every client.

Core matrix is still an insanely complex and clunky protocol that's still struggling to stabilize and scale after more than a decade. That's not on spaces , threads or video-chats (which are mostly client-side features).

Re: A week in Matrix

#73

Post by ezst »

zaik wrote: post #13
fedpost wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non-technical group so the main concern I have is the same with Element vs Element X vs Fluffy vs ...... It's definitely tempting though, it seems to be by far the most flexible solution.

It's an effect of walled gardens that the communication method is conflated with the app. But people understand well that Outlook and Thunderbird is both just email. I think this analogy helps when explaining XMPP.

and to add to that, XMPP has extremely simple and familiar "WhatsApp"-like clients, so there's really not much of a barrier to entry. Especially if you join by a user sending you an easy-invite link (XEP-0401). All you have to do is pick a username and you are good to go.

Re: A week in Matrix

#74

Post by ezst »

gertop wrote: post #6
fedpost wrote: post #5

Are there any real options in this space for something that is - E2EE - Large group capable (100+ users) - FOSS + self hostable - Not riddled with security issues - Relatively easy to use for iOS and Android users (safe for normies) I help run a Matrix server for people who are at risk from the current administration and I can attest to all of the issues mentioned plus a few more. I'd rather not move to something as…

I'm sure you've tried or at least considered it, but you didn't explicitly mention it so: XMPP? The MUC extension has no problem with large groups (after a certain point you have to disable presence advertisement and reflections and whatnot, but that's way north of 100) XMPP has several ways of doing e2ee, the most popular being OMEMO. The challenge will be finding clients that supports OMEMO for MUCs (multi user cha…

I would also challenge OP on the relevance of E2EE for very large MUCs: beyond a certain point, the room can't reasonably be considered private. With current (Signal-style, also found in XMPP, Matrix, …) crypto, you are encoding ever message for every user/client joined, which scales as poorly as one can guess, but is still adequate for small groupchats.

MLS stands to rise that threshold (and there's work in progress to include it in XMPP), but that certainly won't address the fact that this is just privacy theater.

Re: A week in Matrix

#75

Post by ezst »

tcfhgj wrote: post #50
pitchlatte wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as someone who wasn’t online in the IRC heydays i really wonder why we can’t just build on it, instead of inventing new protocols

Because people have different use cases and priorities about chat. Matrix.org and liberachat used to be connected using a bridge, even then the Matrix side didn't implement the requirements of liberal chat fast enough such that the bridge was abondened.

Matrix attitude towards IRC (and bridge implementation) always felt like a trojan horse. Yes, it brought undeniable quality of life improvements over IRC for those who took the bait, but that didn't have to mean making the native IRC experience more miserable for no good reason. Matrix burnt a bunch of bridges with that attitude.

Re: A week in Matrix

#76

Post by jeroenhd »

pitchlatte wrote: post #70
jeroenhd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still use IRC. You can't run your own server and talk to people on other servers without a load of work, you cannot do any kind of encryption, file transfers (images?) are a privacy nightmare if they work at all, web clients need a proxy. Authentication doesn't really exist. Messages disappear if you disconnect and reconnect unless you set up an additional server that will make it seem like you're always conne…

XMPP, then. it’s the continually inventing new protocols (insert XKCD comic) that i’m protesting against.

You can't build a modern messenger equivalent on IRC. You need a new protocol.

"New" is relative of course, XMPP is 27 years old. Still, XMPP lacks official support for something as basic as "I want to log in on a new device and see the old, encrypted messages that are on my other devices".

IRC itself is a reinvention of `talk` and BBSware. For as long as there will be new use cases, there will be new protocols.

Post reply on HN