3 ms·

That's ridiculous. If Signal weren't centralized, it would long ago have split into four thousand mutually incompatible OpenSignal apps, all of which would be j

That's ridiculous. If Signal weren't centralized, it would long ago have split into four thousand mutually incompatible OpenSignal apps, all of which would be just as easy to ban in the UK app store.

sschueller 4y ago
Like IRC /s Only because something is decentralized doesn't mean it will scatter into an incompatible mess.
t09i209ba893 4y ago
Matrix hasn't split into thousands of mutually incompatible apps. I speculate that having a complete, "flagship" client helps prevent this.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The story of the Matrix project is about the closest thing you could find to a total vindication of Moxie's original take about federation. Federation delayed the convergence of Matrix to E2E-by-default by (as I recall?†) years, and will drastically complicate their response to the Nebuchadnezzar results, which were themselves in part a complication of decentralization and loose coupling. You can coherently argue that decentralization is an important, or even necessary, goal for private communications. I won't agree, but I can productively hear that argument out. But I don't think you can cite Matrix as the counter to Moxie's point; with respect to Matrix, the more appropriate assessment of Moxie's federation argument might be "prophetic". I will never sound like it, but I'm in Matrix's corner. I see clearly where they fit into the ecosystem. The world where Matrix replaces Discourse, Slack, IRC, and Telegram is a better world. I do not see Matrix replacing Signal, or whatever post-Signal project is carrying forward their ideals 20 years from now. † A Matrix project person will be sure to correct me on this, and I call it out in part to be candid that I'm not certain about the specific duration.
  - simfree 4y ago
    Signal without SMS support is a poorer performing version of Element to me. There is little practical difference between Signal and most other popular messaging apps that implements end to end encryption. Compare Element and Signal Desktop startup times, Element is nearly instantaneous, while Signal takes significant time to even open. Both are using the same software stack on desktop, Electron with SQLite.
    - 3np 4y ago
      When you get up to the thousands of rooms and tens of millions of messages (bridging and integrations will do that to you), Element Desktop Linux performance degrades severely and will regularly lose connection requiring restarts. And good luck getting out of that scenario or splitting up/archiving the account or groups of the rooms in a digestible format... We've had Matrix in an org I'm in for a few years now and this has become a meme now.
      - Arathorn 4y ago
        Fixing this has been the primary focus of the core Matrix team over the last year - we revealed the end result at FOSDEM a few weeks ago, and it literally improves performance to be better than Telegram/Discord/Slack or anything else we've benchmarked against: https://youtu.be/eUPJ9zFV5IE?t=566 https://youtu.be/eUPJ9zFV5IE?t=566 If you're feeling adventurous, try develop.element.io and enable Sliding Sync in Labs, and you should get instant login, sync, and orders of magnitude better performance (but it is definitely beta). You may need to run your own SS proxy, for which we published a guide yesterday: https://youtu.be/25wkV2ZCSsM https://youtu.be/25wkV2ZCSsM
        3np 4y ago
        Thanks for the follow-up. Unfortunately, those are all orthogonal: you are referring to server and client-server-sync performance. I'm referring to opening and navigating the client UI, and these issues are as present when offline and no homeserver communication and syncing is involved. The developments you mention are all important, great, and exciting but from what I've seen so far the UI performance issues are unaddressed. We had users try to report these issues on GH historically but they tended to get dismissed as "can't reproduce on my mac" or left unattended.
- lampshades 4y ago
  Maybe that’s because Matrix sucks for a usability perspective and nobody cares to split it.

That's ridiculous. If Signal weren't centralized, it would long ago have split into four thousand mutually incompatible OpenSignal apps, all of which would be just as easy to ban in the UK app store.

sschueller 4y ago

Like IRC /s Only because something is decentralized doesn't mean it will scatter into an incompatible mess.

t09i209ba893 4y ago

Matrix hasn't split into thousands of mutually incompatible apps. I speculate that having a complete, "flagship" client helps prevent this.

tptacek 4y ago
The story of the Matrix project is about the closest thing you could find to a total vindication of Moxie's original take about federation. Federation delayed the convergence of Matrix to E2E-by-default by (as I recall?†) years, and will drastically complicate their response to the Nebuchadnezzar results, which were themselves in part a complication of decentralization and loose coupling. You can coherently argue that decentralization is an important, or even necessary, goal for private communications. I won't agree, but I can productively hear that argument out. But I don't think you can cite Matrix as the counter to Moxie's point; with respect to Matrix, the more appropriate assessment of Moxie's federation argument might be "prophetic". I will never sound like it, but I'm in Matrix's corner. I see clearly where they fit into the ecosystem. The world where Matrix replaces Discourse, Slack, IRC, and Telegram is a better world. I do not see Matrix replacing Signal, or whatever post-Signal project is carrying forward their ideals 20 years from now. † A Matrix project person will be sure to correct me on this, and I call it out in part to be candid that I'm not certain about the specific duration.
- simfree 4y ago
  Signal without SMS support is a poorer performing version of Element to me. There is little practical difference between Signal and most other popular messaging apps that implements end to end encryption. Compare Element and Signal Desktop startup times, Element is nearly instantaneous, while Signal takes significant time to even open. Both are using the same software stack on desktop, Electron with SQLite.
  - 3np 4y ago
    When you get up to the thousands of rooms and tens of millions of messages (bridging and integrations will do that to you), Element Desktop Linux performance degrades severely and will regularly lose connection requiring restarts. And good luck getting out of that scenario or splitting up/archiving the account or groups of the rooms in a digestible format... We've had Matrix in an org I'm in for a few years now and this has become a meme now.
    - Arathorn 4y ago
      Fixing this has been the primary focus of the core Matrix team over the last year - we revealed the end result at FOSDEM a few weeks ago, and it literally improves performance to be better than Telegram/Discord/Slack or anything else we've benchmarked against: https://youtu.be/eUPJ9zFV5IE?t=566 https://youtu.be/eUPJ9zFV5IE?t=566 If you're feeling adventurous, try develop.element.io and enable Sliding Sync in Labs, and you should get instant login, sync, and orders of magnitude better performance (but it is definitely beta). You may need to run your own SS proxy, for which we published a guide yesterday: https://youtu.be/25wkV2ZCSsM https://youtu.be/25wkV2ZCSsM
      - 3np 4y ago
        Thanks for the follow-up. Unfortunately, those are all orthogonal: you are referring to server and client-server-sync performance. I'm referring to opening and navigating the client UI, and these issues are as present when offline and no homeserver communication and syncing is involved. The developments you mention are all important, great, and exciting but from what I've seen so far the UI performance issues are unaddressed. We had users try to report these issues on GH historically but they tended to get dismissed as "can't reproduce on my mac" or left unattended.
lampshades 4y ago
Maybe that’s because Matrix sucks for a usability perspective and nobody cares to split it.