<story><title>The Matrix Space Beta</title><url>https://matrix.org/blog/2021/05/17/the-matrix-space-beta</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ldarby</author><text>I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=label%3AA-E2EE-Key-Backup+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=label%3AA-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would love to migrate my family to Element  (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they&amp;#x27;re ever choosing something other than Teams) but can&amp;#x27;t until it&amp;#x27;s reliable as webmail.  I also wrote this comment:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25271512&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25271512&lt;/a&gt;
&amp;quot;Once Element is mature enough (and I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but looking at the incoming issues on &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=sort%3Aupd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=sort%3Aupd&lt;/a&gt;..., it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like it yet), then hopefully more companies will start considering it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I get that E2E means it cannot be as simple as email, and I can handle the extra training that&amp;#x27;s needed, but not for figuring out all these known issues and attempting to prevent people hitting them, or having to handle the situation if they do.</text></item><item><author>Arathorn</author><text>For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation ideals; perhaps we’ll even see a single global tree emerge (although the implementation may need some more optimisation first).&lt;p&gt;It’s like a multiplayer hybrid of DMOZ and USENET and the read&amp;#x2F;write Web all rolled together. Once we start storing more interesting data streams than instant messages in it (eg forums, email, bulletin boards, DOMs, scene graphs, ticker data, IOT sensor data...) it &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; gets interesting :)&lt;p&gt;Plus you can use it to organise your own rooms and have Discord style communities or Slack style workspaces, but that’s the boring obvious bit ;)&lt;p&gt;Edit: for a user-facing rather than developer-facing overview, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;element.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;spaces-the-next-frontier&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;element.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;spaces-the-next-frontier&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; has more details.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Arathorn</author><text>So there is a finite number of active contributors to Element, and we have to prioritise what to work on.  While E2EE is not perfect (the UX needs another major iteration and we are still hunting rare edge cases where messages cannot be decrypted) in practice it&amp;#x27;s usable day to day.&lt;p&gt;We consciously chose to prioritise building out Spaces over the last few months over E2EE UX as otherwise there&amp;#x27;s a risk of Discord becoming the de-facto home for open source projects, much as Slack started to be a few years ago - which would be catastrophic for open standards-based communication like Matrix.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the cryptography team chose to focus primarily on implementing next-generation encryption (IETF&amp;#x27;s MLS) on Matrix rather than polishing the current behaviour - given MLS should both radically improve scalability, but also fix the majority of the edge conditions which are problematic for today&amp;#x27;s E2EE, or at least entirely switch bugs in the existing implementation for entirely different failure modes in the new implementation.  We showed off MLS over Matrix last week (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;xn0fzyimycs?t=248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;xn0fzyimycs?t=248&lt;/a&gt;), and we&amp;#x27;re now finishing the decentralisation component of it (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;matrix.uhoreg.ca&amp;#x2F;mls&amp;#x2F;ordering.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;matrix.uhoreg.ca&amp;#x2F;mls&amp;#x2F;ordering.html&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Eitherway, now that the Spaces beta is out the door, we&amp;#x27;re catching up on other UX issues, including E2EE.  We also have more folks being paid fulltime by Element to work on encryption (amongst other stuff) starting in July.  Talking of which, if anyone wants to get paid to make this happen sooner, Element is hiring at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;apply.workable.com&amp;#x2F;elementio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;apply.workable.com&amp;#x2F;elementio&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Matrix Space Beta</title><url>https://matrix.org/blog/2021/05/17/the-matrix-space-beta</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ldarby</author><text>I wish Matrix would instead focus on fixing all the existing encryption usability issues instead of these new features:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=label%3AA-E2EE-Key-Backup+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=label%3AA-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I would love to migrate my family to Element  (and also friends, and eventually also recommend it to employers if they&amp;#x27;re ever choosing something other than Teams) but can&amp;#x27;t until it&amp;#x27;s reliable as webmail.  I also wrote this comment:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25271512&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=25271512&lt;/a&gt;
&amp;quot;Once Element is mature enough (and I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but looking at the incoming issues on &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=sort%3Aupd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;vector-im&amp;#x2F;element-web&amp;#x2F;issues?q=sort%3Aupd&lt;/a&gt;..., it doesn&amp;#x27;t look like it yet), then hopefully more companies will start considering it.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I get that E2E means it cannot be as simple as email, and I can handle the extra training that&amp;#x27;s needed, but not for figuring out all these known issues and attempting to prevent people hitting them, or having to handle the situation if they do.</text></item><item><author>Arathorn</author><text>For what it’s worth, the thing I find most exciting about Spaces is that they provide a decentralised hierarchical namespace with decentralised access controls for every room (ie pubsub topic) in Matrix. So it’s like we’ve sprouted an openly federated global hierarchical filing system for freeform realtime data streams of all flavours - where people can go crazy defining their own trees, applying their own curation ideals; perhaps we’ll even see a single global tree emerge (although the implementation may need some more optimisation first).&lt;p&gt;It’s like a multiplayer hybrid of DMOZ and USENET and the read&amp;#x2F;write Web all rolled together. Once we start storing more interesting data streams than instant messages in it (eg forums, email, bulletin boards, DOMs, scene graphs, ticker data, IOT sensor data...) it &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; gets interesting :)&lt;p&gt;Plus you can use it to organise your own rooms and have Discord style communities or Slack style workspaces, but that’s the boring obvious bit ;)&lt;p&gt;Edit: for a user-facing rather than developer-facing overview, &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;element.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;spaces-the-next-frontier&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;element.io&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;spaces-the-next-frontier&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; has more details.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>viccuad</author><text>Enabling by default:&lt;p&gt;- cross-signing (so users verify their own devices themselves, and you verify users only once by verifying their public key, regardless of how many times they add or update devices)&lt;p&gt;- and key backup (so moving between devices doesn&amp;#x27;t need manual polling for other devices&amp;#x27; keys the first time for decrypting messages)&lt;p&gt;would be a great step forward. Those are there, but they are disabled by default yet, which is a disservice.</text></comment>