Hacker News Reader

Comment by orblivion | Hacker News Reader

How many would move to Matrix?

This could be the event that sees an alternative to Synapse (Matrix server) pushed over the finish line by new contributors.

The matrix is evil. Matrix is not currently usable for full federated use https://wiki.404.city/en/XMPP_vs_Matrix The matrix protocol is not scalable, so it becomes hell for large non-profit servers and in the future the Matrix network may split into several incompatible protocols

Also non-human-readable data formats...

Why does it matter? Matrix is no IRC. Fewer clients, way more complex protocol, the identity server is centralized, only one complete server implementation exists (and it seems like that's the only one that will ever exist, other attempts appear dead, despite the list on matrix.org) and worse than Freenode being owned by private capital, all of Matrix is controlled by New Vector LLC -- the protocol, the clients, and the biggest servers, and they operate the main identity server so they can keep track of your phone number or email address and map it to your Matrix ID. (I wonder when they'll start selling that data?) If this situation with Freenode makes you move to Matrix you're choosing to move to a network with all the same problems you're fleeing, but magnified

Oh but there's one more thing about Matrix

If you don't like it, the CEO of the company will come argue with you about it here

I don't check for replies to my comments on HN because this community is too toxic but I'll bet Arathorn eventually comments to tell me I'm wrong. Maybe he'll promise that they don't sell the vector.im identity data. I don't trust him, anyway.

You're right. Matrix is no IRC. But it's an order of magnitude better than Facebook Messenger.

And it has encryption built-in, so even the server operator can't read messages.

> Fewer clients

It does work decently on my phone though.

> the identity server is centralized

Is that really a downside? I don't know a single newcomer who found authenticating with "Nickserv" was a natural thing to do.

At the same time, people used IRC because you could remain anonymous (with IP leakage being the only real issue). Matrix seems like a FBI honeypot asking you for email and phone number.

As stated above, these are completely optional and only used for contact discovery (and password resets in the case of e-mail).

Edit: Though I believe that matrix.org requires an e-mail address nowadays. But most homeservers don't.

matrix.org does not, though it does have a prompt for e-mail on registration page. There's a line of text under it explaining that this is for optional opt-in contact discovery and password resets.

Hmm, I've been hearing mentions of it being required since recently. But then I haven't tried it myself, so I may be wrong.

Matrix DOES NOT require an email or phone#.

irccloud works great on my phone. You can paste screenshots and do pretty much everything I want out of a chat client.

"they can keep track of your phone number or email address and map it to your Matrix ID"

Damn. Fuck that.

My phone number and email is none of their business.

It's so dispiriting to see every form of communication on the internet moving to ever more spying on their users.

The Matrix identity server system is entirely optional to use, and basically a separate system from the rest of Matrix. The reason for that is that there's not really any way to implement that specific feature in a decentralized way, so they did the next best thing by making it a centralized server that you can choose to use (opt-in) in case you want people to be able to find your Matrix ID based on your phone number or email address.

Don't want them to know your phone number or email address? Simply don't give it to them. It won't break your Matrix experience in any way. Using the centralized identity server is entirely opt-in for this specific reason.

"Using the centralized identity server is entirely opt-in"

So there are no channels on Matrix that require you to identify yourself before you can join?

Not OP but no channels require you identify yourself through email/phone/etc to join. As far as I know there's not even a mechanism to do that.

Third Party ID's (email etc) are only used for opt-in contact discovery.

They may also be used for password recovery.

> The Matrix identity server system is entirely optional to use,

I remember that I gave my email when I signed up for Matrix at element.io but haven't found a way how to find out if I'm using the identity server. If my email ended up there, how can I see if it is public? How do I actually query the identity system for information, especially which information it has about myself?

I have tried to find this out, but it is not obvious at all and I could not find much information except the repeated statement that the identity system is optional. Any hints about the identity system are appreciated.

On Element desktop Settings > General > Email Addresses / Phone Numbers

In your Settings > General you'll be able to see if you're using the Identity Server, and it let you disconnect your Matrix account from the Vector.IM Identity server if you wish

https://i.imgur.com/N09ZPFp.png

Thanks, that made it pretty clear. I somehow expected the identity server to have its own UI but having this integrated in the Matrix client actually makes more sense.

Decentralized/federated is a beautiful thing.

Phone number and email are not required.

These are optional recovery methods.

F.U.D.

As opposed to NickServ, which is the centralized point of failure for 90+% IRC users, and easily has top 10 worst UX I've come across in my career.

I happen to like nickserv's UX. There are far worse UIs on the web. Simple is good.

The fact that nickserv is just another user and you can't be sure the network had taken precaution to avoid another using swiping the name in the event of a services outage is a problem. Add to that the (now admittedly rare) networks that don't use any form of nickserv and the phishing potential for users that don't realise that

The hostname mask is used to authenticate users. If someone can impersonate a hostname mask there are bigger problems.

Nicknames are ephemeral. It is designed to be this way.

You can use SASL and connect with a certificate to give yourself a fingerprint to validate your identity.

It's fun and simple. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

However, people or their clients use /msg NickServ. The passwords are sent to something identified by a nick only. I don't believe you if you claim people are doing a /who NickServ and checking the hostname mask first.

SASL is definitely an improvement over NickServ.

I use SASL to authenticate with NickServ on Freenode. My IRC client automatically looks up the hostname of users I message.

You can, because a server can reserve nicknames via a configuration directive. Many ircds also allow the /NICKSERV command.

Also, I hope Arathorn (who is a pretty admirable & balanced community manager (unsure their title, no disrespect intended), does come and lay some well-reasoned facts out.

But...the community itself will likely beat them here.

Even if you don't check, other people should know that this is extremely misleading.

> Fewer clients, way more complex protocol

This is actually a valid complaint, though it's partly due to Matrix being pretty young. The other part is that Matrix does a lot more for you than IRC (eg e2ee and federation) and those extra features require complexity.

> The identity server is centralized

This is a completely optional part of Matrix. You don't need identity servers. You never have to provide your phone number. They don't even push you to when you sign up. It exists as a convenience feature for people who complain that they need to be able to discover their friends on Matrix by their friends‘ phone numbers. Also, you're free to run your own identity server for you and your friends or whomever.

> other attempts [at creating a homeserver] appear dead

This one is way off. Synapse, the "one complete server" you must be referring to, is going to be deprecated. The Matrix Foundation team is working on Dendrite to replace it. There are also several independent projects that are very active, notably Conduit, started by one guy unaffiliated with the Matrix Foundation team. Conduit is extremely far along and is under constant development.

> All of Matrix is controlled by New Vector LLC

The people who created Matrix were careful to separate their for-profit projects from FOSS community projects. Matthew Hodgson (Arathorn) explains it well here [0]. TLDR: The Matrix spec, the Element clients, and the Synapse/Dendrite homeservers are maintained by a nonprofit. Same team, different organization and funding. Everything is open source, so anyone is free to fork at any time.

> This one is way off. Synapse, the "one complete server" you must be referring to, is going to be deprecated. The Matrix Foundation team is working on Dendrite to replace it.

Interesting, I've always been reticent to host my own instance because of how complex Synapse is to setup for the uninitiated. Hopefully Dendrite makes it simpler.

Doing the steps required manually was a little of a pain. I've found using an ansible playbook like https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy to be the easiest way to setup a homeserver.

I bet Conduit is going to be the easiest to deploy once it's finished. It's a single binary (with the database included).

> This one is way off. Synapse, the "one complete server" you must be referring to, is going to be deprecated. The Matrix Foundation team is working on Dendrite to replace it.

I hugely disagree.

I have tried to setup a "homeserver". Synapse is huge beast, complex, CPU and memory-hungry, hard to setup (no, a Docker or VM instance does not mean easy to setup). Dendrite is not ready and has been "not ready" for years, not to mention it is also huge and hard to setup, and from the same vendor, so it allays none of the fears. Construct is the _only_ one of all the 3rd party servers which I have found to be actually in a fully usable and federable state (the rest being all in different states of abandonment and uselessness), created by an author who is _openly_ critical of Matrix-the-company and their policy regarding 3rd party servers (incl. how most of the protocol is just defined by bug-by-bug Synapse compatibility and how the Matrix webpage to this day has no 3rd party servers list -- but happy to feature 3rd party paid-hosting list)

Compare this with Jabber. I install in seconds any of the _multiple_ servers that come with Debian stable. They are by now years old, but they still can connect with _everyone_ on the Jabber network. In Matrix, if I run a 2 year old Synapse, it will be like death-by-ostracization; same if I run today's Conduit.

Similar story. A couple years ago I tried to set up Synapse. I've set up and administered IRC before. I've twice gone from nothing to having an XMPP server (different daemon each time) working and hooked into web services and custom auth serving production traffic. And that's just the chat-related work I've done. I kind of know what I'm doing, at least.

After a couple hours I gave up on Synapse, having accomplished nothing and only being more confused than when I started out, as far as any path to a deployed config I'd be comfortable with. That they sell hosting, and it was such an incredible pain in the ass to run sanely on one's own, sets off some alarm bells.

I don't think anything you wrote contradicts what I said in the parent comment. In the section you quoted, I only meant to say that other homeserver projects are definitely not dead. There are a bunch that are actively developed and improving.

It's also true that the new homeservers aren't yet ready for prime time. But they're coming along really fast.

It's true that homeservers by third parties had a bit of a rough time in the beginning due to finding "bugs" in the spec that no one noticed before because there had previously only been a single homeserver implementation. That situation has been improving though. I've seen Conduit development result in several different patches submitted to the upstream Matrix spec.

> It's also true that the new homeservers aren't yet ready for prime time. But they're coming along really fast.

I have seen way too many being abandoned to believe that. In fact last time I researched I put Conduit in the abandoned list, though apparently I was wrong. Matrix is just a too complex protocol, and way too focused on one and only one server implementation. Which is ironic considering probably every other competitor protocol (save for perhaps IRC itself) is even more complex, but at least they were not that complex when they initially showed up -- so other people could actually start implementations that survived and growed along.

I asked the primary author from conduit, as a third party implementating a server, if he thought the protocol was too complex. He said no, which actually surprised me.

I'm somewhat of an layperson on this topic in that I haven't actually ever tried to work with the protocol on a low level. But my take on it is that if they can slow down the pace of Matrix evolution in the next couple years, the protocol will be in a good state. It's complex, but it's providing extremely complex features.

But if they keep going at this pace for too long, third party implementations may become less feasible.

>Everything is open source, so anyone is free to fork at any time.

Matrix 1

Matrix 2

Matrix 3

Matrix 4

Matrix 5

Matrix 6

Matrix 7

Matrix 8

Matrix 9

Matrix 10

Matrix ....

Matrix 999

Which clone of the matrix do you mean to use and how many messengers to install? XMPP has similar Matrix capabilities and modular architecture.

XMPP protocol surpasses the Matrix, it is clearly seen on the client for Android Conversations https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.siacs.conversations/

Matrix is a federated protocol, so you could easily use your forked client or forked server with the existing servers and clients out there. Basically like you're free to fork any of the open source email servers or clients and operate your own version.

Not that I disagree with you, but it's pretty reasonable for someone to defend his product when it's criticized.

What about XMPP?

That would be XMPP MUC (Multi User Conference). It has TLS encryption to the single server used by default. End to end encryption works in the form of OMEMO at least but I don't think it scales very well to lots and lots of connected users. I think PGP would also have the same sort of scaling problem. It has IRC like moderation and channel control stuff.There are a lot of light weight clients for it in the form of generic XMPP clients.

There is a project currently active to make some sort of replacement.

Today XMPP it is the best choice for federated chats, as the protocol can handle any workload successfully.

I'm sure there's some truth to these criticisms, but it's hard to see this as anything other than immature trolling when you created an account called "newvectorllc" just to trash them.

This is straight FUD.

The identity server is completely optional (you can just login with username & password), and you can opt out or swap it in element -> settings -> general. Also, there's plans for getting it replaced.

There are quite a handful clients and servers. They are replacing their most featureful server (Synapse) with other implementations (Dendrite) to not have a monoculture. Heck, the German government is sponsoring development of yet another server (conduit.rs, in Rust).

Your approach sounds like wanting everything implemented right away, and giving no leeway. And I don't think your attack on their CEO is relevant even. Their whole approach is based on that you shouldn't need to trust them at all.

Given that your handle is "newvectorllc" (the previous company name of Element), it strikes me that you are so hellbent on trying to paint them in a bad light.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com