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

The Matrix Space Beta

matrix.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 95 posts

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#71

Post by stavros »

capableweb wrote: post #8
viccuad wrote: post #4

Wohoo! Thanks to Spaces, I feel comfortable using Cactus comments for blog posts (e.g: https://viccuad.me/blog/enabling-cactus-comments ), as I could create a private space containing all the rooms for each blog post comment chain. To me it shows the snowballing effect of features. Also, Matrix's Spaces (even in Beta) seem more flexible and thought out than the second best implementation I know, in Slack.

Definitely check out Zulip for a pretty sweet threaded model also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149123

Obligatory comment here to say that Zulip is amazing.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#72

Post by archseer »

ldarby wrote: post #61
Arathorn wrote: post #10

For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation i…

I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: http…

The iOS client is miles behind their Android client too.

> On iOS, we're still busy implementing Spaces. However if you join rooms which belong to Spaces, you’ll still be able to talk in them.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#74

Post by vaylian »

Arathorn wrote: post #13
casual-dev wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the audio chat feature is seamlessly integrated, I even consider ditching my old mumble server for it. Or not. Probably not. Our group just needs audio, with the occasional picture flood, until they get it out of their system. Since some (me include) won't use Discord due to privacy concerns, I still hope for a good and reliable self hosted alternative. A more modern user interface sure would be nice.

voice/video rooms are planned for June.

Cool! Is there a way to try the feature already? Can I just install the development versions of synapse and element?

Many thanks for the work you do!

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#75

Post by Arathorn »

viccuad wrote: post #65
ldarby wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: http…

Enabling by default: - cross-signing (so users verify their own devices themselves, and you verify users only once by verifying their public key, regardless of how many times they add or update devices) - and key backup (so moving between devices doesn't need manual polling for other devices' keys the first time for decrypting messages) would be a great step forward. Those are there, but they are disabled by default…

cross-signing & key backup are enabled by default, and have been for a year or so? you have to explicitly opt out by repeatedly hitting the 'skip' button. however, the UX is certainly more complicated than it should be, and we're due to rework it in the coming months.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#76

Post by Arathorn »

ldarby wrote: post #61
Arathorn wrote: post #10

For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation i…

I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: http…

So there is a finite number of active contributors to Element, and we have to prioritise what to work on. While E2EE is not perfect (the UX needs another major iteration and we are still hunting rare edge cases where messages cannot be decrypted) in practice it's usable day to day.

We consciously chose to prioritise building out Spaces over the last few months over E2EE UX as otherwise there's a risk of Discord becoming the de-facto home for open source projects, much as Slack started to be a few years ago - which would be catastrophic for open standards-based communication like Matrix.

Meanwhile, the cryptography team chose to focus primarily on implementing next-generation encryption (IETF's MLS) on Matrix rather than polishing the current behaviour - given MLS should both radically improve scalability, but also fix the majority of the edge conditions which are problematic for today's E2EE, or at least entirely switch bugs in the existing implementation for entirely different failure modes in the new implementation. We showed off MLS over Matrix last week (https://youtu.be/xn0fzyimycs?t=248), and we're now finishing the decentralisation component of it (https://matrix.uhoreg.ca/mls/ordering.html).

Eitherway, now that the Spaces beta is out the door, we're catching up on other UX issues, including E2EE. We also have more folks being paid fulltime by Element to work on encryption (amongst other stuff) starting in July. Talking of which, if anyone wants to get paid to make this happen sooner, Element is hiring at https://apply.workable.com/elementio.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#77

Post by Arathorn »

anticensor wrote: post #69
Arathorn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should also add that there are at least two matrix spec change proposals flying around to add role based ACLs, and one of the main reasons for switching spaces to be built on rooms is that they will automatically inherit the ACL model when it lands :)

And neither of those two proposals have figured out how to solve the mess of the conflict resolution.

Solving conflict resolution should be doable - it's just that it's literally the most critical and important bit of the entire Matrix ecosystem, and any changes have to be done very deliberately and carefully, ideally with formal proofs that it's not going to break stuff. It's the equivalent of switching out Git's merge algorithm (https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/technic...) or switching out for a new kernel scheduler implementation. Any bugs or thinkos there mean that the whole fabric falls apart, hence wanting to consider it separately to Spaces.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#78

Post by ldarby »

Arathorn wrote: post #76
ldarby wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues?q=label%3AA-... I would love to migrate my family to Element (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they're ever choosing something other than Teams) but can't until it's reliable as webmail. I also wrote this comment: http…

So there is a finite number of active contributors to Element, and we have to prioritise what to work on. While E2EE is not perfect (the UX needs another major iteration and we are still hunting rare edge cases where messages cannot be decrypted) in practice it's usable day to day. We consciously chose to prioritise building out Spaces over the last few months over E2EE UX as otherwise there's a risk of Discord becom…

Thanks for the response, that sounds good and makes sense, I guess I'll continue waiting...

My family regularly does things like forget which browser they last used, or re-install windows, or otherwise mysteriously have all browser settings disappear, etc - all things that seem to be related to those key-backup issues.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#79

Post by hparadiz »

Arathorn wrote: post #59
hparadiz wrote: post #35

A good and robust bot api and useful smart widgets based on url are a must. I've had chats go from discord to matrix and then simply die after a few days.

Matrix's bot support should be excellent? It's arguably more robust than Discord's given it's an open API and there are tonnes of SDKs and bots building on it: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-bot-sdk , https://matrix.org/docs/guides/usage-of-matrix-bot-sdk , https://github.com/bnjbvr/botzilla , etc. What do you mean by 'smart widgets based on url'?

Things like Spotify links turning into an embed widget.

I've used the bots api for slack and discord in a corporate environment. Compared to that the matrix api is horribly behind and unreliable.

Re: The Matrix Space Beta

#80

Post by StavrosK »

Arathorn wrote: post #15
ripdog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great to hear! I'd love to be able to recommend Matrix/Element as a Discord alternative. However, actually competing with Discord will require a tonne of hard work in Element. The little things like automatic voice activation, echo cancellation and volume normalization are the reasons Discord are as fantastic as it is, so Element will need to be excellent with those to compete.

The first cut will be using Jitsi as the engine, albeit with more appropriate UI, which gives you AEC (echo cancellation) from WebRTC and some level of AGC (normalisation). But we have plans to go far beyond that, and are very aware it’s hard work. However, pre-Matrix, the core team professionally built VoIP stacks, so we have some experience here (and our own WebRTC implementation should we need it :)

If you do AGC, you'll already be more usable than Discord, who apparently refuse to implement this. Whenever we're voice chatting in my group, it's extremely annoying that one person is quiet as a whisper and the other is AT 200% VOLUME AND CLIPPING.
Post reply on HN