The team behind the Matrix open standard and real-time communication protocol has announced the release of its second major version, bringing end-to-end encryption to group VoIP, faster loading times, and more.
Encryption key handling is horrible. It makes Matrix a terrible choice for non-technical users.
As a replacement for IRC, it’s fine. Bridging is limited to a small handful of platforms, or a limited set of fairly technical users with access to money to run cloud services and the willingness to take on maintenance of a hodgepodge of software services and the corresponding network security risks. I’d argue that this part was poorly thought out. It puts the core value features out of reach of the majority of the population.
It would have been better to focus on a client-side bridging design. Or, something more accessible. And the fucking horrible encryption design, oy.
What do you mean specifically by encryption key handling? You log in, confirm it with one other device, done. Don’t see where I ever used technical knowledge?
I agree there are weird glitches und sometimes bugs, but they mostly get fixed. Mostly :d
You log in, confirm it with another device (better hope it’s nearby! That first setup of a 2nd client is a doozy of a feel bad, if it isn’t), then a few days later it just stops letting you do anything, doesn’t really tell you what to do about it, and you have to reconfirm with a 2ne device all over again (which, again, had better be nearby).
You log in, confirm it with another device (better hope it’s nearby! That first setup of a 2nd client is a doozy of a feel bad, if it isn’t),
Your devices don’t have to be nearby to verify them. You can enter a key backup passphrase instead.
then a few days later it just stops letting you do anything,
That’s not normal. Looks like you ran into a bug. Did you report it, so it can be tracked and fixed?
I gather from their weekly reports that they’ve been fixing encryption bugs lately, and that the clients now in testing (the Element X code base) seem to have them solved. You might want to try those, or one of the third-party clients.
Yeah, I do wish they just let you disable encryption for all rooms at a server level. But years ago people gave the team so much shit for not supporting encryption that they added really good encryption, but it makes things harder. Nothing is free.
The main problem with Matrix is that the protocol is too big. There’s no server and client that’s feature complete, other than Synapse and Element.
Encryption key handling is horrible. It makes Matrix a terrible choice for non-technical users.
As a replacement for IRC, it’s fine. Bridging is limited to a small handful of platforms, or a limited set of fairly technical users with access to money to run cloud services and the willingness to take on maintenance of a hodgepodge of software services and the corresponding network security risks. I’d argue that this part was poorly thought out. It puts the core value features out of reach of the majority of the population.
It would have been better to focus on a client-side bridging design. Or, something more accessible. And the fucking horrible encryption design, oy.
What do you mean specifically by encryption key handling? You log in, confirm it with one other device, done. Don’t see where I ever used technical knowledge?
I agree there are weird glitches und sometimes bugs, but they mostly get fixed. Mostly :d
You log in, confirm it with another device (better hope it’s nearby! That first setup of a 2nd client is a doozy of a feel bad, if it isn’t), then a few days later it just stops letting you do anything, doesn’t really tell you what to do about it, and you have to reconfirm with a 2ne device all over again (which, again, had better be nearby).
Your devices don’t have to be nearby to verify them. You can enter a key backup passphrase instead.
That’s not normal. Looks like you ran into a bug. Did you report it, so it can be tracked and fixed?
I gather from their weekly reports that they’ve been fixing encryption bugs lately, and that the clients now in testing (the Element X code base) seem to have them solved. You might want to try those, or one of the third-party clients.
The new Rust library is really solid. Once things start moving to that instead of rolling their own, it will get a lot more smooth.
Can you tell me more about this? I’m running a synapse server at the moment, but if there’s about to be a smoother Rust option, I’m interested!
It’s a client library only. Keep running Synapse. :D
There technically is Conduit , but it’s still in beta.
Yeah, I do wish they just let you disable encryption for all rooms at a server level. But years ago people gave the team so much shit for not supporting encryption that they added really good encryption, but it makes things harder. Nothing is free.