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I had a similar experience with Matrix/Element. I was using the desktop app to chat with a friend, and while we were able to get some end-to-end encryption wor

I had a similar experience with Matrix/Element. I was using the desktop app to chat with a friend, and while we were able to get some end-to-end encryption working, it was a huge pain the butt, and if two software engineers struggled this much to get the damn thing working, there's no way in hell that I'm convincing my parents to use it. To me, we have to accept the incremental wins where we can get them; getting my parents on Signal means that they're not on WhatsApp. I am a believer in federation, honestly, but the fact of the matter is that there's a reason that XMPP hasn't taken the world by storm, and people have gravitated towards centralized stuff: it's just easier, and not everyone is a software engineer. That said, I would love to be wrong about this....if we can make Matrix/Element approachable by anyone, I would support that.

Ericson2314 6y ago
I'm not worried about people that I moved to signal "grumbling" about being moved again to Matrix. If the Signal move was successful it should build confidence in future moves. The killer app for Matrix for most people won't be ability to run your own home server, but the easy generalization of Matrix to things like Reddit/HN with good integration with 1-1 chat someday will be. Also organizational usage. That of course is way cooler than Signal "not being facebook". So biding our time is fine. When the time does come, we should probably campaign for HN to be officially bridged with Matrix too :D.
- Evidlo 6y ago
  HN won't even get dark mode, so the only way we'd ever get Matrix on HN is through a random macroscopic quantum event.
walrus01 6y ago
My experience with Matrix/Element and the various standard-compliant Matrix chat clients, in an ISP environment, is that it's totally possible to set up a rock solid replacement for Slack within an organization that has a person on staff to spend some cycles setting it up, and periodically maintaining it. We don't have any major technical challenges or problems running our own Synapse daemon server. It's a debian stable xen PV VM stored on a LVM logical volume, so easily moved between hypervisors, or cloned, if ever necessary. It runs at a load average of 0.01. In my specific ISP environment it's the same person that admins the X.509 private root CA PKI so we're well equipped to deal with running it in a purely intranet environment with no access to the global routing table. For widespread non technical random end user use? Totally agreed it's not ready yet.
- tombert 6y ago
  An "internally-run-Slack" is definitely a great use case for Matrix in its current form. I don't own a business, but if I did, I would almost certainly consider running my own Synapse server, just to have a stronger guarantee that internal chats stay internal.
  - walrus01 6y ago
    It's an sqlite database on disk, so in our case fairly easy to know exactly where the data lives, and keep it secure.
  - touisteur 6y ago
    Yes at my bigco they've set up a whole matrix (rebranded) service. Great. Only thing I miss is some kind of 'ephemeral chatroom' option, where nothing is saved or expires after some time. Some conversations are not worth saving and wading through all the chat logs to find some stuff can be painful. Also I like the other tools' (cisco jabber and some others) option to save chat logs in exchange folders, so you have local search indexation/capabilities. On the other side, I'd also like a button to record a whole conf-call, so minutes of meetings can be backed up with the actual conversation. Yes, how 'trusting' of me...
Evidlo 6y ago
It doesn't seem like these problems are fundamental to Matrix, though. I agree that Element is not that good, but if you were to replace Signal's backend with Matrix, your experience would (could?) be nearly identical as Signal is now and we wouldn't have the issues of a closed ecosystem anymore.
- Spivak 6y ago
  Ehhh, Matrix is more than a transport protocol though, it lives a lot higher up the stack. It would be akin to trying to make Signal into a Slack client. So you’re basically saying “if you paper over all the weirdness of Matrix with a better UI” which is easier said than done.
Arathorn 6y ago
Speaking as project lead for Matrix (and Element), I'm trying to understand the mixed feedback we've had this week, and somehow channel all the negativity into improving things. While some folks are clearly using it successfully and seem to like it, another bunch of people say "it was a huge pain in the butt to get E2EE working, and if it two software engineers struggled this much..." etc. When did this E2EE failure happen (so I know if these are current bugs or ones fixed months/years ago)? What platforms was this (web, iOS & Android are entirely separate codebases)? What actually went wrong? The simple case of signing up and DMing someone should just work, and the E2EE should be transparent. The main possible failure modes I'm aware of right now are: * Risk of undecryptable messages during federation outages (due to messages being shared separately from their keys) * Risk of verifying another user getting stuck if there are weird failures/edge cases we haven't spotted yet * Verifying yourself when you log in on a new device has confusing UX, and there's a known bug that can stop keys being synced to the new login even once verified. If anyone in the "I tried Matrix and it was awful" camp could give detailed feedback (either here, or on github.com/vector-im/element-{web,ios,android}/issues) then it would be genuinely useful for prioritising our work. At the moment the vast majority of negative feedback on HN has been "it sucked" without giving a hint of what actually went wrong.
- walrus01 6y ago
  I don't actually think anything is awful, but my main complaint about Element as a GUI app, is that aside from opening the chromium developer console and watching what it does, it has very few options to diagnose client-server connectivity or TLS crypto key handshake issues. I wish it wasn't an Electron app built on Chromium which makes it a huge resource hog. There's lots of underlying dependency and reliance on whatever design decisions the Chromium developers might make now or in the future, which would not be best suited to the security and single-purpose-focus of a chat application.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    Isn't the beauty of Matrix that you or anyone else can build a client on top of the platform easily? I know on my Linux machine there are some non-electron options, like Qt [0]. [0] https://matrix.org/clients/ https://matrix.org/clients/

Ericson2314 6y ago

I'm not worried about people that I moved to signal "grumbling" about being moved again to Matrix. If the Signal move was successful it should build confidence in future moves. The killer app for Matrix for most people won't be ability to run your own home server, but the easy generalization of Matrix to things like Reddit/HN with good integration with 1-1 chat someday will be. Also organizational usage. That of course is way cooler than Signal "not being facebook". So biding our time is fine. When the time does come, we should probably campaign for HN to be officially bridged with Matrix too :D.

Evidlo 6y ago
HN won't even get dark mode, so the only way we'd ever get Matrix on HN is through a random macroscopic quantum event.

walrus01 6y ago

My experience with Matrix/Element and the various standard-compliant Matrix chat clients, in an ISP environment, is that it's totally possible to set up a rock solid replacement for Slack within an organization that has a person on staff to spend some cycles setting it up, and periodically maintaining it. We don't have any major technical challenges or problems running our own Synapse daemon server. It's a debian stable xen PV VM stored on a LVM logical volume, so easily moved between hypervisors, or cloned, if ever necessary. It runs at a load average of 0.01. In my specific ISP environment it's the same person that admins the X.509 private root CA PKI so we're well equipped to deal with running it in a purely intranet environment with no access to the global routing table. For widespread non technical random end user use? Totally agreed it's not ready yet.

tombert 6y ago
An "internally-run-Slack" is definitely a great use case for Matrix in its current form. I don't own a business, but if I did, I would almost certainly consider running my own Synapse server, just to have a stronger guarantee that internal chats stay internal.
- walrus01 6y ago
  It's an sqlite database on disk, so in our case fairly easy to know exactly where the data lives, and keep it secure.
- touisteur 6y ago
  Yes at my bigco they've set up a whole matrix (rebranded) service. Great. Only thing I miss is some kind of 'ephemeral chatroom' option, where nothing is saved or expires after some time. Some conversations are not worth saving and wading through all the chat logs to find some stuff can be painful. Also I like the other tools' (cisco jabber and some others) option to save chat logs in exchange folders, so you have local search indexation/capabilities. On the other side, I'd also like a button to record a whole conf-call, so minutes of meetings can be backed up with the actual conversation. Yes, how 'trusting' of me...

Evidlo 6y ago

It doesn't seem like these problems are fundamental to Matrix, though. I agree that Element is not that good, but if you were to replace Signal's backend with Matrix, your experience would (could?) be nearly identical as Signal is now and we wouldn't have the issues of a closed ecosystem anymore.

Spivak 6y ago
Ehhh, Matrix is more than a transport protocol though, it lives a lot higher up the stack. It would be akin to trying to make Signal into a Slack client. So you’re basically saying “if you paper over all the weirdness of Matrix with a better UI” which is easier said than done.

Arathorn 6y ago

Speaking as project lead for Matrix (and Element), I'm trying to understand the mixed feedback we've had this week, and somehow channel all the negativity into improving things. While some folks are clearly using it successfully and seem to like it, another bunch of people say "it was a huge pain in the butt to get E2EE working, and if it two software engineers struggled this much..." etc. When did this E2EE failure happen (so I know if these are current bugs or ones fixed months/years ago)? What platforms was this (web, iOS & Android are entirely separate codebases)? What actually went wrong? The simple case of signing up and DMing someone should just work, and the E2EE should be transparent. The main possible failure modes I'm aware of right now are: * Risk of undecryptable messages during federation outages (due to messages being shared separately from their keys) * Risk of verifying another user getting stuck if there are weird failures/edge cases we haven't spotted yet * Verifying yourself when you log in on a new device has confusing UX, and there's a known bug that can stop keys being synced to the new login even once verified. If anyone in the "I tried Matrix and it was awful" camp could give detailed feedback (either here, or on github.com/vector-im/element-{web,ios,android}/issues) then it would be genuinely useful for prioritising our work. At the moment the vast majority of negative feedback on HN has been "it sucked" without giving a hint of what actually went wrong.

walrus01 6y ago
I don't actually think anything is awful, but my main complaint about Element as a GUI app, is that aside from opening the chromium developer console and watching what it does, it has very few options to diagnose client-server connectivity or TLS crypto key handshake issues. I wish it wasn't an Electron app built on Chromium which makes it a huge resource hog. There's lots of underlying dependency and reliance on whatever design decisions the Chromium developers might make now or in the future, which would not be best suited to the security and single-purpose-focus of a chat application.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  Isn't the beauty of Matrix that you or anyone else can build a client on top of the platform easily? I know on my Linux machine there are some non-electron options, like Qt [0]. [0] https://matrix.org/clients/ https://matrix.org/clients/