Element (Matrix) adds video/voice rooms
element.io
element.io
I'm using an alternative client, but I see that that space is nowhere near keeping up with the features Element are pushing out. Mine doesn't even support spaces yet. I'd like to use a 'native' client (Linux/KDE person here), but there's not much choice (I never got the Neochat flatpak to work reliable for instance, on a variety of distros). So, one must basically go with the Element (web) client, which is not very light.
I have nothing but good words for the project btw, thanks and keep it up :)
Many of European states (including mine) are looking into ways of replacing Teams and Office 365. Video/voice rooms is a must have and this is a very important update for Matrix. Just updated Element and will be trying soon. :)
Can you explain why this is the case?
As a U.S. based user dealing with Government work o365 GCC High seems basically required. :/
I loathe Teams, but MSFT makes it hard to choose something else when it's included in all o365 tiers.
Microsoft is a US company subject to the CLOUD Act. The US Govt don't need to worry about this since the act was passed for their own benefit. Other countries do.
Because Schrems II[1].
As an example, the city of Stockholm will stop using 365[2] (for the time being).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_II
[2] https://www-nyteknik-se.translate.goog/digitalisering/besked...
Plus points for showing the world that you don't need a blockchain for this :-)
Who said you did need it for this feature in the first place? I don't think anyone did.
Since no one suggested to use a blockchain for this particular feature, it is more likely that crypto supporters want to add crypto wallets in messengers which is what most competitors have already done, unlike Element. Notably Signal which still has a crypto wallet where I see many Signal fans getting extremely upset about that.
You better pray and hope that Element does not introduce a crypto wallet, just like what Signal, Session, Keybase has done.
That is not going to happen.
The other systems you mentioned is either all proprietary or has limited source code availability where there's no practical way to fork it or develop it further.
The Blockchain comment is a jab at all the "crypto messengers" out there like obsidian, echo, status and the like.
Why? You can just not use it. I didn't even know Signal had those features, so I don't see how it can affect my life.
I have played with Matrix on several occasions. I think one of the big promises was E2E encryption and as those who have worked in the area know it's not an easiy problem to solve. I have accounts on more than 1 homeserver. I have various keys in my password manager which I don't necessarily understand how they are used. I have old messages that I cannot decrypt, despite being sure that I have never lost any keys.
In summary: In my experience Matrix has not been an easy experience even for a user of gpg.
Here I am not asking how is this made secure and usable. I am just asking is this usable for anybody who does not even know what a homeserver is, would never understand what a key or fingerprint is and has no account yet?
In the nearish future we'll swap it to use Element Call which now has native Matrix E2EE over native Matrix calling and works on all platforms: https://element.io/blog/element-call-beta-2-encryption-spati...
In terms of crypto UX being problematic in Element as a whole: yes, there is still work to be done to improve the UX, and we're very aware of it.
Have you cracked positional audio, ie letting people in the back sidebar convos (duck the main chat) or move around to have private convos?
Gaming has pulled this off, DayZ star citizen etc.
I've kicked around the idea of using some of these game worlds because they have positional audio and handle crowds way better.
It's the chat around the Watercooler that is the missing gap imo
And once it happens, will it be a standard feature of synapse to deploy your own voice/video server?
Obviously folks can also just click into a standalone Element Call to make it work (plus Hydrogen is also adding native Matrix calling).
Element Call doesn't currently need any custom server - it just uses your existing homeserver; Synapse, Dendrite, Conduit etc. However, it only scales up to 7-8 users - to go beyond that we'll need to add a SFU, which we're also working on.
And thanks for all the great work as well.
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk/pull/2524
Last i had checked a contributor had locked the issue discussion a year or more ago after losing an argument about an interim stopgap being useful to solve the immediate privacy issue. A story as old as the internet itself, that one. So at least that one contributor did not care about interim privacy which gives the obvious "we don't care" signal when not contradicted by anyone else.
Then you can communicate with all those self hosted repos without making accounts for every single one. And you could choose your software (gitea,gitlab,...)
But default group chat could well be Discord, not formerly Slack(?), any more.
[1] https://element.io/blog/introducing-native-matrix-voip-with-...
Is this a more polished experience now?
I host my own instance of Matrix / Element Web, so this would be great if it's not too difficult to set up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026459
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32020929
Summary: element-desktop sluggish and freezing with accounts with large amount of rooms and history on Linux (consistent across devices, dists, and DEs). This is separate from a recent freezing issue which was fixed in v1.11.0.
It still suffers from a terminal case of Electron, but atleast it's not worse than it's comptetitors in this regard. Both teams and discord have an absolutely laughable click to photon time on anything but high end machines.
Cinny, being very Discord inspired, also gets many of the Discord usability features right. With the way Cinny is developing I wouldn't be surprised if the two projects would eventually merge together. The lack of audio/video support is the most obvious flaw at the moment, but perhaps once proper Matrix voice is stable and implemented in Element we'll see some improvements in that area in Cinny as well.
I also have no interest in running thick clients. For all it’s warts, browser based clients leverage browser security which is something I value.
This is a feature of Whereby that in my personal experience is indispensable for pair-work. Besides Teams not being GDPR compliant, Teams imho is designed with the typical US hierarchical boss presents, workers listen-model and doesn’t cater for a cooperative model of sharing screens at the same time, like Norwegian Whereby does.
Or if you don’t have a homeserver, invite all your users to a space so you can see them there.
Identity servers are generally just for looking up user by email or phone number (although mxisd did intercept some endpoints to add a user directory before synapse exposed the option above).
https://telegram.org/blog/voice-chats https://telegram.org/blog/group-video-calls