This Week in Matrix 2024-08-23

Matrix Live

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Josh Simmons (he/they) says

The Foundation has updated its policy for accepting upstream contributions to our projects. We no longer require the use of "real" or "legal" names as part of the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). We thank the community members who reached out to let us know that our policy was a barrier for them, and we are excited to welcome contributions from people who were previously excluded.

Dept of Clients 📱

iamb (website)

ulyssa says

I've released v0.0.10 of iamb! :tada: Since its last version, the client has gained:

• Support for marking rooms as DMs, setting per-room notification levels, and message slash commands
• Support for using the Kitty enhanced keyboard protocol (see here for supported terminals)
• Support for managing room canonical and alternative aliases, member kick/ban/unban, configuring room history
• A command for viewing just unread rooms, and a subcommand to mark all rooms read at once.
• Temporary files create with :edit now have a .md suffix so that $EDITOR can apply syntax highlighting.
• Bug fixes for window resizes, <C-W>o, i686 builds, saving and restoring more layout information, and more!

The online documentation has been updated, and you can head to the GitHub Releases page for a full list of changes or to download binaries (including .deb and .rpm packages).

Many thanks to all of those who have contributed to this release! 🙏

Extera (website)

OfficialDakari says

During this week, we implemented some new features (and bugs too) into Extera.

Here are some of them:

• Sending captions in files
• Reply fallbacks as option (disabled by default)
• Improved bubble message layout

Also we've started working on Android version of Extera and it will be available to download soon!

Nheko (website)

Desktop client for Matrix using Qt and C++17.

Nico announces

Not too much exciting going on in the last few weeks, but I think there are 2 things worth sharing:

Nheko now warns you, if you edit the room topic or room name of an encrypted room. Matrix does not encrypt state events and entering confidential information into the unencrypted room state might not be what you want to do, when you edit the room topic.

Additionally we added a small feature to deal with spam of abusive images. You can now toggle in the Nheko settings, what media should be loaded by default. That way you can load all media by default (as before), never load media by default (and you have to click a button to load it on demand) or only load it by default in non-public rooms. Imo the latter provides a nice tradeoff, where your private rooms have all the media there by default, but in public rooms you get to decide, if you trust the sender. If someone sends a string of 5 images after joining, maybe don't load their media until someone tells you it is safe! ;-)

Stay safe!

Neochat (website)

A client for matrix, the decentralized communication protocol

Tobias Fella says

This week, we have released version 24.08 of NeoChat 🎉

Here are the highlights:

• Cross-Signing: You can now verify other users and have their messages show up as verified. Similarly, your messages will show up as verified for other users after you have verified your own device.
• Importing from Secret Backup: You can now importing the decryption keys for existing encrypted messages. The UI for this is still in a beta status, so it's a bit hidden. For now, you can enable the "Secret Backup" feature flag in NeoChat's developer tools and then opening the "Open Secret Backup" dialog from the menu that opens when right-clicking your user avatar in the lower-left corner of the window.
• Importing and exporting encryption keys from / to a file
• An option was added to automatically reject invitations from unknown accounts. You can enable this in the settings.
• Notifications where overhauled significantly - now, you will only be notified for the newest message in a room, preventing very active rooms from flooding your notification center.
• Many bugfixes and UI improvements

Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element-iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 16+.

Mauro Romito says

• Implemented a timeline that shows only the currently pinned messages in a room, (if any) so that the user can easily check all the pinned messages at once
• PiP support for Element Call has been implemented on El-X
• Push notifications for events that are redacted will be removed from the notification center.
• We now show message authenticity warnings in the timeline

Dept of Services 🚀

etke.cc (website)

Your matrix server on your conditions

Aine reports

At etke.cc we've previously been using GitLab because other platforms lacked features we needed.

It seems like GitHub has caught up and provides a better platform with a larger community of users.

As such, we've migrated all of our GitLab repositories to GitHub. Most of our repositories were migrated to the new etkecc organization, while non-Matrix-related Ansible roles (which were already used by the MASH playbook) now live under the MASH organization.

There is a lot of housekeeping to do (e.g., updating various website links), but the migration part of the process is now complete.

With this change, we hope to achieve improved collaboration on our FOSS projects!

Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Thib says

We invite the community to host booths at The Matrix Conference to talk about their projects and meet their users.

This call is for non commercial projects. Commercial projects can reach out to us at conference@foundation.matrix.org for a sponsorship package that includes a booth.

If you're interested in holding a booth, please fill this form!

Matrix Federation Stats

Aine reports

collected by MatrixRooms.info - an MRS instance by etke.cc

As of today, 9839 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3019 (30.7%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 21983 rooms.

Stats timeline is available on MatrixRooms.info/stats

How to add your server | How to remove your server

Dept of Ping

Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.

#ping:maunium.net

Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	envs.net	221
2	girlboss.ceo	246
3	awawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawaw.gay	251
4	synapse.rntpts.de	294
5	maunium.net	303
6	aguiarvieira.pt	315.5
7	nerdhouse.io	319
8	puppygock.gay	375
9	codestorm.net	382
10	constellatory.net	382.5

#ping-no-synapse:maunium.net

Join #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	conduwu.it	81
2	doctoruwu.uk	105
3	girlboss.ceo	113
4	puppygock.gay	122
5	synapse.rntpts.de	164.5
6	awawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawaw.gay	171
7	inu.is	213
8	sulian.eu	265
9	nexy7574.co.uk	278.5
10	matrix.its-tps.fr	288

That's all I know

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!