Progress on authenticated media continues! As of today, beta.matrix.org has now frozen its media to allow client and server developers, as well as homeserver owners, to test how their stuff responds when a media freeze is in place. This milestone brings us one step closer to matrix.org itself freezing unauthenticated media, described in more detail on the blog: https://matrix.org/blog/2024/06/26/sunsetting-unauthenticated-media/
The happy path for interacting with beta.matrix.org should be:
Log in or register a new account
Note that media from before today (August 7th) loaded fine
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
If you are a client or homeserver developer, make sure you read up on the upcoming authenticated media!
Apart from that the spec team has been busy combing through the general spec backlog. Identifying MSCs which appear stuck waiting for SCT input is particularly helpful - drop some links in Office of the Matrix Spec Core Team with a description of how it appears stuck.
I made a helper app for logging into bridges: https://mau.fi/blog/introducing-mautrix-manager/ / https://github.com/mautrix/manager. Thanks to the new generic bridge login APIs, it can be used to log into any megabridge without having to build support into the app for each bridge. It should be particularly useful for networks where logging in requires extracting cookies, as it can simply open a webview and automatically extract cookies rather than requiring the user to mess with browser devtools.
kazv v0.5.0 relies on libkazv v0.7.0, which has an important security fix for encrypted attachments. It also adds a lot of features like hard logout, viewing event edit history, an emoji picker in the reaction dialog, setting your own display name in a room (/myroomnick, but using just a text box instead of slash commands), and a lot of style fixes for Qt6/KF6. Video playing is also enhanced. Note that this version only supports Qt6/KF6.
This week has been focused mainly on progressing on message pinning and improving the way we load data so it's faster and more efficient:
With the right feature flag enabled you can start testing the message pinning feature, pin and unpin events and see which events are pinned in a room.
Sync on push has been enabled by default. This will start a quick sync after a push notification is received and have the item cached so you can see the events in the timeline as you open the room.
Room subscriptions are now batched, which should make the room list load faster since it avoids canceling several outgoing requests as each new room was subscribed to.
Identity reset is also being worked on so you can reset your keys if you get stuck after logging into your account and don't have another device to verify your device against and no access to the recovery key either.
I wrote an article about Message Security in Matrix on my blog. The article describes Megolm, and explains what security guarantees it provides and how it provides them. It is written for an audience of people who are not cryptography experts but would like to understand the cryptographic guarantees Megolm provides.
Here's a diagram of Megolm from the article. I break down everything in the diagram in the article! Read it now!
libkazv v0.7.0 most importantly fixes a security bug in the attachment encryption that could potentially lead to a known-plaintext attack. See https://iron.lily-is.land/D153 for more details.
It also implements calculating local notifications and adds helper functions to pin and unpin events in a room. Documentation is also updated to reflect the current status of libkazv, and to add a introduction of the architecture of libkazv.
YARB is a bot you can use to create reminders for specific times at the current day.
It has been build using Trixnity and my abstraction layer on top of it.
Features
Create reminders for a specific time at the current day.
Configure an offset for the reminder time (-> the bot could remind you 3 minutes in advance)
Change display name per room
Change bot command name (you don't need to use yarb as command 😉)
Simple rights management (same as for my other bots)
A demo of using YARB to create a reminder at 15:40 using !yarb 15:40 I'll remind you later🙂
How to use the bot
After the bot has joined, use !yarb help to get an overview about the features of the bot (remember: the bot only respond to users)
In order to create a new reminder use !yarb <time> <message>. The time has to be in the format HH:mm (e.g., !yarb 12:00 Lunch time!).
Development
I'm typically online in the #trixnity:imbitbu.de channel. So feel free to tag me there if you have any questions. Also, feel free to test the bot and raise any issue using GitHub :)
Guess what? We're having a big Matrix party from September 19 to 22! It’s like a fun show in a big room called Mitosis LAB in Berlin. If you can’t come to the big room, you can still watch it on the computer! You can even ask the people on stage questions.
Get Your Ticket: Tell your grown-up to get a ticket so you can watch the party. Click Here
Help Out: If you want, you can help us make the party super fun! Volunteer Here
See What’s Happening: You can see all the fun things we’ll do at the party. Check Here
Sponsor the event: Don’t miss your chance to give your company the visibility it deserves in the Matrix ecosystem. Reach out to us at conference@foundation.matrix.org soon to secure a booth or an exclusive perk!
Thursday the 19th and Sunday the 22nd of the Matrix Conference are the Matrix Community Days!
There is a very exclusive offer of Community Days T-Shirts 👕 available now through the Conference ticket store to buy alongside your ticket. If you already have a ticket - go back into your ticket order and add a T-shirt to your order. 🎟️
Hurry, because you need to place your order until the 20th of August and as they are screen printed on premium fair trade heavy cotton shirts we need to place a minimum order of 25 T-shirts. So tell your friends, tell your family, buy for your loved ones... Any sales that go beyond covering manufacturing costs will benefit future Matrix Community Events (join our room!).
2 T-Shirts with the Matrix Community Days logo which is the Matrix logo with a red Community text and a sun
On August 18-18 the annual Free and Open Source Conference (short FrOSCon) will take place at the German University of applied Sciences Bonn Rhine Sieg.
As German Matrix community grown rapidly in the last years, this is a great opportunity to meet each other and hack together.
Matrix Dev Room
We will be organizing a Devroom this year. The idea is to exchange on the latest Matrix development and projects, get to know each other and drink <your_favorite_beverage> together on the Saturday evening. 😉
The schedule is live (Saturday & Sunday) and there are intereseting talks and workshops to check out.
To make it happen we need your help
Devroom is living from talks and workshops - this is your chance to present your Matrix project or to do a workshop on Matrix
Language: German or English
Due date: please give us feedback ASAP so we can include your talk into the schedule now
Matrix Open Source booth
We will have a Matrix booth at the FrOSCon this year, where you can get your questions regarding Matrix answered, get some stickers or buy 👕 T-Shirts.
Dieses Jahr finder die FrOSCon (Free and Open Source Conference) wieder statt in der Hochschule Sankt Augustin (nähe Bonn).
Das ist eine gute Möglichkeit die Deutsche Matrix-Community zusammen zu bringen.
Deshalb organisieren wir eine Devroom und ein Matrix-Stand.
Ein Devroom lebt von Vorträgen und Workshops.
Wir brauchen eure Hilfe
Wollt ihr euer Matrix-Projekt vorstellen oder ein Workshop machen - das ist die Möglichkeit!
Wenn ihr interessiert seid kontaktiert mich (@oleg:fiksel.info oder oleg@fiksel.info) bitte umgehend, damit wir noch kurzfristig den Plan ändern können.
Es sind schon interessante Vortäge und Workshops dabei! Schaut auf den Plan (Samstag & Sonntag). Es werden noch welche sicherlich dazu kommen.
As of today, 9768 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 2978 (30.5%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation.
The published directories contain 21810 rooms.
See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!
The Foundation needs you
The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit and only relies
on donations to operate. Its core mission is to maintain
the Matrix Specification, but it does much more than that.
It maintains the matrix.org homeserver and hosts several
bridges for free. It fights for our collective rights to
digital privacy and dignity.
