mox @ mox @lemmy.sdf.org

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1 yr. ago

It looks a lot like the "3rd-party EULA" label that appears in the sidebar for some games, below connectivity and controller support. Nice. This ought to make it easier to see if a game meets my basic requirements, and respond quickly when a friend suggests one.

Could someone smarter than me explain Matrix to me?

I wouldn't assume that I'm smarter, but I do have more than a little experience here, so I'll try to answer your questions. :)

It's a real-time messaging platform. The most common use for it is text chat, both in groups (like Discord or IRC) and person-to-person (like mobile phone text/SMS). It supports other uses as well, like voice chat, video conference, and screen sharing, although much of that is newer and gradually showing up in clients.

What would be the utility for someone, who cares about privacy and currently uses Signal and email for communication?

Compared to Signal:

• Matrix doesn't require a phone number, or even an email address (although some public homeservers want an email address these days, as a recovery method in case you forget your password).
• Matrix has a variety of clients, so it's more likely that an app fitting your needs exists.
• Matrix clients typically don't require Google services at all; neither to get the software nor to receive notifications.
• Matrix cannot be monitored at any single location, so it's more resistant to meta-data tracking at the network level.
• Matrix cannot be shut down by any single organization, so it's more resistant to censorship and denial-of-service attacks. If a homeserver is ever forced offline, only the accounts on that homeserver go away; all your other contacts remain intact. Same thing if a service operator changes its policies or goes out of business.
• Matrix (last time I checked) had better support for using multiple devices on the same account. Phone, laptop, and office computer, for example.
• Matrix homeservers can be self-hosted by anyone, and still participate in the global network.
• Signal's encryption covers more meta-data at the application level than Matrix currently does. This might be important if you're a whistleblower or journalist whose safety depends on hiding your contacts from well-positioned adversaries.

Compared to email:

• Matrix has end-to-end encryption, with forward secrecy, built in. It's generally better for privacy than bolting PGP onto email, and it's far easier.
• Matrix is well suited to instant messaging.
• Matrix supports features that people have come to expect from modern chat platforms, like reaction emoji and editing after sending.
• Email has a greater variety of servers and clients.
• Email apps often have more composition features to support long-form writing.

What advantage would it give me over other services?

We already covered Signal, and there are too many other services to compare every difference in all of them, but here are some more common advantages:

• Matrix is a completely open protocol, developed through a public and open process, with open-source servers and client apps. This is important to people who care about privacy because it can be scrutinized by anyone to verify that it operates as it claims to, and can be improved by anyone with a good idea and motivation to participate. It's important to people who care about longevity because nobody can take it away.
• Matrix has multiple clients for every major platform: desktop, mobile, and web.
• Matrix handles groups of practically any size (including just one or two people).
• Matrix messages are delivered even when you're offline.

Is Matrix anything good already, or is it something with potential that’s still fully in development?

Until recently: Ever since cross-signing and encryption-by-default arrived a couple years ago, it has been somewhere between "still rough" and "pretty good", depending on one's needs and habits. I have been using it with friends and small groups for about five years, and although encrypted chats have sometimes been temperamental, they have worked pretty well most of the time. When frustrating glitches have turned up, we sorted them out and continued to use it. This has been worthwhile because Matrix offers a combination of features that is important to us and doesn't exist anywhere else. I haven't recommended it to extended family members yet, because not everyone cares as much about privacy or has the patience for troubleshooting in order to get it. However...

Recently: The frequency of glitches has dropped dramatically. Most of the encryption errors have disappeared, and the remaining ones look likely to be solved by the "Invisible Encryption" measures in Matrix 2.0. Likewise with things like sign-in lag and client set-up.

If you're considering whether it's time to try it, I suggest waiting until Matrix 2.0 features are formally released in the clients and servers you want to use, which should be very soon for the official ones. I wouldn't be surprised if I could confidently recommend it to family members in the coming year.

How tech savvy does one need to be to use Matrix?

If you just want to chat, not very. Even one or two of my friends who can barely use email got up and running pretty quickly with a little guidance. Someone who can get started using Lemmy by themselves can probably handle it on their own.

If you want to host your own server, moderately tech savvy.

Matrix Spec Change. It's how the Matrix protocol evolves, similar to the RFCs (requests for comments) used by Internet Engineering Task Force protocols.

You shouldn’t crap on people being honest about the problems that have existed,

I haven't "crapped on" anyone. I just pointed out that a comment, which was an absolute declaration in present tense, is misleading, poorly informed, and needlessly quarrelsome. Because it is. And the author then tried to justify it by putting words ("has always been") in someone else's mouth. None of that is honest. It was arguing in bad faith, and it's important to call that sort of thing out, because letting it go is how misinformation spreads.

If they had instead just presented their view as historical experience to help inform about track record, I wouldn't have taken issue with it.

Too much in the open source community is people saying this is great!

Perhaps, although that's common around proprietary software as well.

Great is subjective. Matrix has struggled with some problems that rightly frustrated people, but it also has accomplished some things that no other messaging platform has. By that measure, it is a great project. And the announcement we're all discussing here demonstrates that it is getting better. Just as barkingspiders said.

rolling their own crypto

No, it uses well-known, well-proven, standard crypto.

It also uses double-ratchet key management, much like what Signal does.

The reference server is a bit heavy if you're federating with large public rooms, but lighter alternative servers are available.

I sometimes report such posts when I think of it.

I don't think corporate news satisfies Rule 2 just because the corporation happens to do something with technology. (Practically every corporation does things with technology, after all.) I expect posts here to be about the technology itself.

So you were aware that this announcement includes fixes for the encryption issues, yet you decided to post a comment complaining about them anyway, ignoring the point of this post and giving readers the false impression that the issues are unaddressed.

And you did it just to contradict someone who finds the project useful.

That's not helpful to anyone. Quite the opposite, I'd say.

This is /c/technology, not /c/stocks.

Looks like someone didn't read the article. See part 4: Invisible Encryption. (Also note the Conclusion paragraph that explains the new functionality is only just starting to appear in clients.)

Priceless:

A decade ago, Jill Bennett, a radio host in Vancouver, was relentlessly attacked by crows as she was walking her dog. She escaped by ducking into a parking garage.

“I had never done anything mean or violent toward the crows,” Ms. Bennett said.

When it happened again, Ms. Bennett began keeping kibble and peanuts in her purse, dispensing the snacks as she took her walks.

A pair of crows took to following her, a sort of protective entourage.

When a third crow with distinctive feathering divebombed Ms. Bennett this past summer, the entourage went on the offensive, chasing away the interloping crow.

Ms. Bennett compares her crow feeding to a mafia-style shakedown. It’s protection money, she says, the price of knowing you will not be attacked from the sky.

“I call it the crow tax,” she said.

https://xcancel.com/SchmidtOcean/status/1849520079588761708

https://xcancel.com/SchmidtOcean/status/1849209667202818489

https://xcancel.com/SchmidtOcean/status/1844445395461480540

https://xcancel.com/SchmidtOcean/status/1848470099142857014

https://xcancel.com/SchmidtOcean/status/1849920791871209489

The security provided by a browser is constantly changing, as the vulnerabilities, attacks, and countermeasures are constantly changing. It's a cat-and-mouse game that never ends.

The privacy provided by a browser would be difficult to measure, since it depends a lot on browsing habits, extensions, code changes between versions, etc.

There's no good way to calculate a metric for either type of protection, and even if there was, the metrics would be obsolete very quickly. For these reasons, I wouldn't have tried what you attempted here.

However, there is a very simple way to compare the major browsers on privacy and reach a pretty accurate conclusion: Compare the developers' incentives.

The argument against it is founded on copyright.

We fund copyright in order to enrich our culture, by incentivizing creative works.

Blocking creative works preservation strips away the cultural enrichment.

What's left? People being compelled through taxes to fund profit police for copyright holders who aren't holding up their end of the bargain.

It's worth noting that publishers, and especially the "rightsholder groups" that they hire, are not artists. They are parasites. They are paid more than fairly for their role in getting creative works out there in the first place. I can't think of any reason why they should have continued control after they've stopped publishing them.

That might be true if it were pure silver, but it isn't.

At best, it could be sterling silver. If it was made in the past century or so, it's likely just silver plated.

Your account info says you joined Lemmy a couple of years ago. Could that have something to do with it? Could be that there are simply fewer of us here than wherever you were before.

Also, if Reddit is one of your haunts, keep in mind that a lot of communities there partially dispersed a little over a year ago, and not everyone has reappeared in the same place (or at all).

Fixed link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFyk5UOyNqI

The argument against it is founded on copyright.

We fund copyright in order to enrich our culture, by incentivizing creative works.

Blocking creative works preservation strips away the cultural enrichment.

What's left? People being compelled through taxes to fund profit police for copyright holders who aren't holding up their end of the bargain.

Edit: Note also that publishers and their lobby groups are not artists. They are parasites. They are paid more than fairly for their role in getting creative works out there in the first place. I can't think of any reason why they should have continued control after they've stopped publishing them.

I edited my comment again around the same time you were replying. You might want to take a look to see if anything I added helps.

Diablo IV is a DirectX 12 game. Those don't use DXVK directly, though I think they might still use the DXGI component that comes with it, even though vkd3d-proton is providing the Direct3D 12 support.

DXVK_CONFIG_FILE is not a flag, but an environment variable. It is for overriding the location where dxvk.conf is expected to be. By default, that file is expected to be in the game's current working directory when it starts, so you don't need this environment variable at all if you figure out what directory that is. It's sometimes the directory where the game executable lives, but not always. (Hint: look for a dxvk or vkd3d log file.) Details here.

Note that one person in that reddit thread says dxvk.conf can be in "any folder of the wine prefix". As far as I know, that's just plain wrong. It has to be where DXVK is expecting to find it.

If you can't figure out where to put the config file, you might try applying those dxgi settings using an environment variable instead. In Steam, the game launch options would be: DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.maxDeviceMemory = 8192; dxgi.maxSharedMemory = 8192" %command%

Here's a different possible workaround, to be put in Steam's game launch options: PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=1 %command%
Or if using Lutris with a Proton Wine runner, you would add an environment variable to the game (or launcher) profile, with key: PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU and value: 1.

If none of those workarounds help, you'll want to get involved in these discussions:

https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/1588

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/7199

Edit: Several people have reported that this VRAM bug doesn't happen on AMD cards. If you happen to have one, you might give it a try.

I don’t want their money. Money means they’ll feel even more like they own it.

I wonder if this could be avoided by having companies pay into funding pools instead of paying specific developers. Something like the Sovereign Tech Fund, perhaps with different structures or selection processes, might mitigate any sense of corporate entitlement.