This Week in Matrix

🔗Matrix Live S3E11

This week I chatted with Jason Robinson about all things decentralisation, especially his projects socialhome, the-federation.info, and feneas.org. Jason has been interested in decentralisation for many years, and had a lot to say about how we can look forward to a more decentralised Internet.

🔗Latest MSC updates (from anoa's MSC bot)

Approved MSCs

[MSC 1229]: Mitigating abuse of the event depth parameter over federation [MSC 1497]: MSC1497: Advertising support of experimental features in the CS API [MSC 1501]: Room version upgrades [MSC 1354]: Widget API extension: Always-on-screen [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data

Final Comment Period

MSC 1794: Federation v2 Invite API

In Progress MSCs

[MSC 1796]: improved e2e notifications [MSC 1797]: Proposal for more granular profile error codes [MSC 1607]: Proposal for room alias grammar [MSC 1544]: Key verification using QR codes [MSC 1802]: Standardised federation response formats [MSC 1804]: Advertising capable room versions to clients [MSC 1538]: storing megolm keys serverside [MSC 1681]: cross-signing [MSC 1659]: Proposal: Change Event IDs to Hashes [MSC 1767]: Extensible event types & fallback in Matrix (v2) [MSC 1768]: Proposal to authenticate with public keys [MSC 1769]: Extensible profiles as rooms [MSC 1772]: Groups as rooms (v2) [MSC 1776]: Implementing peeking via /sync [MSC 1640]: MSC: Replace event IDs with hashes [MSC 1777]: peeking over federation

🔗matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Slavi reports that:

It's a New Year and there have been a lot of improvements to the matrix-docker-ansible-deploy playbook:

• there's now support for importing an existing Postgres database, which should make it easier for people with another setup to migrate over.
• there's now support for manually-managed and self-signed certificates, in addition to the Let's Encrypt support we've always had
• the playbook now uses a much better (20x smaller, faster) riot-web Docker image (avhost/docker-matrix-riot -> bubuntux/riot-web). At least until vector-im/riot-web#7771 gets merged and official images become available.
• completely redone way of generating mxisd configuration, letting people unleash the full power of mxisd without us having to explicitly add support for new features
• mxisd 1.3.0-ready. We default to a stable mxisd release still (1.2.2), but people can try the much-improved 1.3.0 alpha releases even now (e.g. matrix_mxisd_docker_image: "kamax/mxisd:1.3.0-alpha.2").
• we now utilize mxisd's User Directory Search feature to augment the results coming from Synapse
• the playbook has been split into multiple roles (one role per component) and the roles have been made independent of one another. People who want to re-use our roles in their own playbooks can now more-easily do so.
• even more components have become optional and can now be turned off completely (coturn, mailer)

Lots of thanks go to Maximus, jcgruenhage and Cadair for helping out!

🔗libQMatrixClient and Quaternion

kitsune reports that:

libQMatrixClient 0.4.2 has been released, fixing a security issue (the library could be tricked into altering the local room state by fake state events - those without state_key). The master branch of the library is updated as well - it is strongly recommended to update to either 0.4.2 or master, depending on which branch you live on.

For those who want to help testing Quaternion or just can't wait to the next release, we now have CI builds collected at bintray: https://bintray.com/qmatrixclient/ci/Quaternion. Linux and macOS are already there, and Windows binaries will also be available any day soon.

🔗matrix-client.el

alphapapa reports that:

matrix-client.el can now send typing notifications.

🔗matrix-puppet-slack

tom reports that:

matrix-puppet-slack v1.10.0 has been released, thanks to Cadair and (once again!) d3m3vilurr!

v1.10.0 fixes Matrix-to-Slack image upload, and no longer sends markdown-formatted @-mention links in the plaintext body of Matrix events; instead, it uses plaintext username the way text-only clients traditionally have it.

The version bump is also the project's 100th commit, and I've updated the supported feature checklist in the README to paint a more comprehensive picture of what is and isn't supported, and link out to the GitHub Issues for some of the unsupported features, in hopes of making life easier for users and encouraging contributions.

🔗opsdroid

SolarDrew reports that:

opsdroid's Matrix connector is now a core part of the library rather than an external addition. This should open up a lot of cool possibilities for doing fancy stuff with bots on matrix. Many thanks to Cadair for helping with this.

🔗mxisd

Maximus reports that:

mxisd has a new alpha release: v1.3.0-alpha.2 - Fixes a set of issues from alpha.1 and is now close to v1.2.2 stability. If you are already on alpha.1, update is highly recommended.

🔗continuum (previously, "koma")

uforia reports that:

made some minor changes to continuum to make the GUI more intuitive. Now when there are no joined rooms, buttons for joining or creating rooms are shown instead of an empty list. And when there are issues with syncing or syncing takes longer than usual, a status bar with options is shown.

🔗mauview

tulir reports that:

I've been working on a new Go TUI library for gomuks: https://github.com/tulir/mauview

Still not quite sure if it's a good idea, but at least the input area component is very nice. It should also make it easier to add more fancy stuff like html tables and selecting messages (for replying/redacting)

🔗Riot iOS

We are still working on the key backup screens. The last bit on the SDK side, the passphrase support, has been implemented this week.

Reskin is almost done. It just needs some small adjustments. We will release a beta soon so that we can gather users feedback.

This week, we have also fixed small but boring UX issues in Riot and we will continue to do so up to the end of the month and FOSDEM!

🔗Riot Android

Reskin is almost done too and available on develop builds.

Benoit has started to implement the key backup passphrase management in the SDK. Valere is still improving push notifications at the code level but also at the display level.

We are working hard to polish the app for FOSDEM.

🔗Modular

Rick reports:

We now have a HipChat migration tool - https://www.modular.im/tools/hipchat-migration. This tool helps migrate a HipChat workspace to your very own Modular Hosted Homeserver. Migration is performed by uploading an exported copy of an existing HipChat workspace so that the tool can automatically re-create all of the users and rooms (including messages and attachments) on your new Matrix homeserver. Once the migration is complete all of the migrated users will be emailed with login instructions, so that they can seamlessly continue chatting where they left off in HipChat. If your organisation (or if you know of an organisation that) has not yet decided what to do when Stride & HipChat is discontinued next month, come and try Modular!

🔗Synapse

The Synapse gang are working flat out towards r0 and a v1.0 release - you can track our progress here (https://github.com/orgs/matrix-org/projects/8). Aside from that if you haven't already done please please upgrade to v0.34.1.1 (https://matrix.org/blog/2019/01/15/further-details-on-critical-security-update-in-synapse-affecting-all-versions-prior-to-0-34-1-cve-2019-5885/)

🔗Dendrite

Brendan reports:

People have been generally happy about the flood of new issues following the completion of the internal audit last week, and a few folks have been opening PRs addressing some of the “good-first-issues” labeled ones, which has been amazing to see, including fixing room joins and a couple of default variables. Thanks a lot to Cnly and Behouba for these!

On my end, this week mainly consisted in reviewing most of these PRs (and merging them when that was possible), while anoa worked on making Dendrite's CI more complete and reliable, especially by configuring it to run sytest against Dendrite which will allow us to better track its compliance to the Matrix specification.

If you're interested in contributing on Dendrite, there's still some “good first issues” open, and we'll be happy to chat and help in #dendrite-dev:matrix.org ?

🔗Synapse in Debian

andrewsh reports that:

the most recent synapse, using Python 3, is available in both stretch-backports and Debian testing

🔗Discord Bridge

Half-Shot reports that:

Discord bridge v0.4.0 is out now, nothing new since rc1 because it was that good. There have been no changes since rc1 because either Sorunome did a stellar job of keeping things stable, or nobody spoke up out of fear :p. Thanks one and all for continuing to run the bridge.

🔗New Dart/Flutter Matrix SDK

Black Hat reports that:

I am prototyping a Matrix client SDK in Dart. It will target Flutter (Android, Fuchsia and iOS), web (AngularDart or other) and Dart VM.

🔗f0x returns to Neo

f0x reports that:

Neo v4: Iris is coming up, focusing on design first. It will be based on React, and the matrix js sdk
I didn't plan ahead enough with old Neo (v3), so it became a bit of a clobbered togeather mess, which I'm trying to prevent this time around
https://git.lain.haus/f0x/iris

🔗That's all for now

Come chat in #twim:matrix.org to discuss what's happening, and especially come and share what YOU'VE been working on!

🔗Welcome!

Do not panic, Benpa is away, I repeat, Benpa is away. Nonetheless TWIM lives on!

🔗Spec

Lots of spec work this week, and a shout out to anoa for his magical mscbot that provides pokes, nudges and updates on all things spec. Here's what mscbot had to say about the past week.

Approved MSCs

[MSC 1497]: Advertising support of experimental features in the CS API [MSC 1339]: Proposal to add a GET method to read account data [MSC 1501]: Room version upgrades

Final Comment Period

MSC 1708: .well-known support for server name resolution MSC 1711: X.509 certificate verification for federation connections

New and In Progress MSCs

[MSC 1794]: Federation v2 Invite API [MSC 1796]: Improved e2e notifications [MSC 1797]: Proposal for more granular profile error codes [MSC 1640]: Replace event IDs with hashes [MSC 1776]: Implementing peeking via /sync [MSC 1777]: peeking over federation [MSC 1779]: Proposal for Open Governance for Matrix.org (v2)

(A few may be missing as we're still tweaking mscbot :)

🔗Dendrite

Brendan had this to say:-

The Dendrite audit is over! A bunch of issues have been created on the Dendrite GitHub repository, as well as a project board in order to keep track of everything: https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite/projects/2 There's a fair amount of issues that have been labeled as “good first issue”, so feel free to pick them up and open pull requests if you're looking into hacking on Dendrite! :)

And whilst we have your attention - here's Brendan & Matthew talking through the audit in this week's Matrix Live!

🔗Synapse

Neil says:-

both contain critical security updates so please update asap for more details, we'll be able to share a bit more about the vuln once admins have had a chance to upgrade.

Meanwhile Hawkowl has been cranking out bug fixes and perf improvements and in particular taking a look at taming the user_ips table.

While Debian packager Andrewsh adds:-

latest synapse (0.34.1.1, Python 3) in Debian, fixing CVE-2019-5885; an update to a previous release fixing this CVE uploaded to stretch-backports, using Python 2. Dependencies for a Python 3 upload approved in stretch-backports, a Python 3 upload of 0.34.1.1 will be following later this week

🔗Riot/iOS

Riot-iOS 0.7.11 has been released, with lots of bug fixes.

We have been working on e2e new screens (like key backup setup) and the re-skinning of the app.

🔗Riot/Android

Working to improve notifications style.

Split screen mode will be supported on next release!

Continuous autofocus on the Camera has been enabled.

Also fighting bugs on registration.

🔗Bridges

Halfshot has this to say:

Matrix-appservice-purple is being renamed to matrix-bifröst, on the basis that we now bridge to things and "burning rainbow bridge" seemed like a good description.

Other things that have happened: Performance improvements, as always. XMPP -> Matrix typing notifications XMPP -> Matrix avatars XMPP -> Matrix uploads * Matrix -> XMPP uploads (via oob)

and then follows up with this:-

As promised, we've got a discord bridge release out today. v0.4.0-rc1 has landed! See the change notes https://github.com/Half-Shot/matrix-appservice-discord/releases/tag/v0.4.0-rc1 . Thank you to Sorunome for doing a huge amount of work on this!
@swedneck reports that:

linuxgaming.life is now running matrix-appservice-discord v0.4.0-rc1.

🔗Matrix.org Foundation

Matthew has a final draft of the Matrix.org Foundation governance document ready: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/msc1779/proposals/1779-open-governance.md. Comments on https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1779 would be much appreciated!  We expect to propose merging it next week, and then incorporating it into the final Articles of the foundation.

🔗Riot Web

Loads and loads of work happening on https://riot.im/experimental which is now where all new development is happening as we race towards launching the new design.  Highlights include:

• All new key verification is implemented! (in olm & matrix-js-sdk).  We're currently hooking up the UX.
• Online key backup is pretty much finished.
• Cross-signing is up next.
• Redesign backlog is progressing (slightly stuck on making the RoomList resizing work nicely, but almost there)
• Finalising the all new registration/login screens
• ...and loads of other stuff too.

🔗Meanwhile...

kitsune reports that:

Sending files landed in master branches of libQMatrixClient and Quaternion. Finally you can send your Quaternion screenshots (as any other images, jingles, cat videos etc.) to Matrix using Quaternion ;)

Also, libQMatrixClient is available as a Conan repository, for developers who'd like to use Conan to track dependencies.

progserega reports that:

Hello to all! I am write matrix bot for bridge messages between matrix and social network vk.com (russian analog of facebook). https://github.com/progserega/MatrixVkBot

alphapapa reports that:

matrix-client.el gained a room-list buffer, which can be sorted by unread status, name, number of members, etc, and has a right-click context menu like the room-list sidebar.

matrix-client.el gained right-click context menus in the room sidebar, allowing to set room priority, notifications, etc.

The matrix-client.el git repository has moved to: https://github.com/alphapapa/matrix-client.el

Stanislav N. aka pztrn reports that:

Hey guys, joined here to post another thing that works in Matrix https://gitlab.com/pztrn/check_mk_matrix_notifications it is a script that sends check_mk notifications to Matrix. Check_mk is a "plugin" for Nagios NMS.

Cadair reports that:

It's not my update but I saw this HomeAssistant addon for matrix (https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-matrix) and wanted to make sure it got a shoutout on TWIM. [Seeing how nobody else has posted it in here, just on twitter etc.]

Morgan McMillian (thrrgilag) reports that:

I published v1.0.1 of the pnut-matrix bridge this week which brings public pnut.io chat rooms to the matrix network. Features include syncing of pnut.io names and avatars, matrix users ability to authorize their pnut.io accounts, and administrative controls for managing linked rooms. Project can be found at https://gitlab.dreamfall.space/thrrgilag/pnut-matrix and discussion is at #pnut-matrix:monkeystew.net

MMJD reports that:

ma1uta's MXToot deserves mention in the blog, and in https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html . People should not be wanting of Twitter over Decentralized-Federated F(L)OSS feeds in their Matrix room.

uforia reports that:

in the koma project, the desktop client continuum now does a full sync when the user account doesn't seem to have joined any chat rooms, this way, it can recover from some disk IO errors, or more commonly, unclean shutdowns. A ca-certificates issue with Java 11 on Debian stable was found while running a bot on a headless server, more details and the solution is in the README

vabd reports that:

Our first specs proposal of 2019 just landed in the form of SCS #16, which specifies the data/event structure for trust authorities. This is a big step as TAs play a key role in Informo's trust/reputation system!

In the meantime, we've also opened SCS #19, which proposes a rework of the specs' introduction with the idea to give newcomers a more accessible and immediate way to figure out what Informo is about, and give them some starting points so they can dive deeper into it if interested. It's a rather small one and we'd love people to give it a look so we can aim for the most newcomer-friendly version possible

We've also just opened SCS #21 which specifies a way for a source to change the Matrix user it uses to publish articles (e.g. if it was previously using a server managed by non trustworthy people). As with all of our proposals introducing changes in behaviour, it's open for people to share their comments on it for the next 7 days.

Maximus reports that:

The first alpha release for mxisd v1.3.0 has been released with already major performance improvements. Early testing and reporting about success/failure would be very much appreciated as v1.3.0 will break backward compatibility. We have been running it on our own servers for about a week now and feels really good and stable.

Friedger Müffke reports that:

I just launched OI Chat, a matrix service dedicated to Blockstack users (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/oi-chat).

It is a home server that does not rely on any passwords but on cryptography and user-owned storage.

OI Chat uses one-time logins to verify the ownership of a username that can only be created by the user if they control the blockstack account.

...and that's all this week, folks!  Your normal hand-crafted artisanal benpa confectionery will be back next week.

🔗Welcome to 2019

It's been 2019 for several days now, plenty of time to get used to it! Let's get started with the first TWIM of the year!

🔗Matrix Live S3E09 from 35C3

Several Matrix-ers attended 35C3 in Leipzig last month, you can check out Matrix Live recorded from the conference below (also includes some screenshots and other clips of the event), and also watch a talk given by this author titled Matrix, the current status and year to date.

🔗Welcoming Jason Robinson to New Vector

Decentralisation lover and Python fan Jason Robinson joins New Vector!

one of my dreams of working for a company that is a driver and leader in open source and open standards is coming true

🔗matrix-appservice-purple

Hey Half-Shot, what bridges have you worked on this week?

matrix-appservice-purple got soft launched on matrix.org and is happily bridging XMPP and matrix communities together. I am on full bug and feature fixing duty for it and the consensus from both sides is that it's looking pretty awesome.
The matrix-appservice-purple bridge is coming along leaps and bounds, with formatting fixes, presence handling and speedier message delivery both ways. Also a shoutout to the XMPP community for guidling me through the XEP landscape and giving the bridge a thorough testing. :)

🔗Riot Web Experimental

Riot Web Experimental was announced in a blog post last month, and is ready to get some more testing! Note that the name is still "experimental", but to get an image of where things are going, please give it a try!

http://riot.im/experimental

🔗Riot iOS

Photo sharing via the app share extension has been fixed this week.
At the time of writing, a new Riot iOS is baking with all bug fixes made the last month.

🔗Riot Android

Riot 0.8.21 has been released on 01/02 on the PlayStore and on F-Droid.

This version contains:

• A new notification troubleshoot screen with the possibility to run a diagnostic and to submit bug report. Feedbacks are already coming and we improve this screen incrementally to help users.
• A new invitations counter on the group icon in the home screen
• Other bug fixes

We are still working on push/notification reliability. Riot Play Store resources have been translated into 8 languages so far: Basque, Bulgarian, Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Portuguese (Brazil).

🔗matrix-client.el's many updates

alphapapa provided many updates for matrix-client.el this week, I recommend chatting in #matrix-client.el:matrix.org where the cultists Emacs users and client devs hang out.

matrix-client.el gained more room sorting options and a /priority command to set room priority. It also includes a workaround for a Google Chrome drag-and-drop bug on Linux, so now Chrome users can drag-and-drop URLs, files, and images directly into room buffers to upload them.

matrix-client.el gained a new notifications-buffer feature that shows notifications from multiple rooms in a single list, allowing you to easily monitor multiple rooms at once and jump to events in them.
e.g. I can see messages from #matrix and #twim in the same window, and reply to messages in both rooms from the same prompt

🔗koma project: now continuum-desktop (client) and koma library

uforia from koma announced that the client formerly known as koma is now continuum-desktop:

in the koma project, the desktop client now has continuous integration and prebuilt packages for Mac and Linux; and you can click on image messages to zoom in. A simple weather bot is created reusing the same implementation of matrix client api. Send it the name of a city, and it will fetch the current weather using openweathermap

🔗mxisd

Max, creator of mxisd, announced:

All versions of mxisd dropped support for Riot v0.17.8, introducing a bug affecting many of its features. Any new release integrating this PR will also be dropped of support. mxisd users are strongly encouraged to roll back to v0.17.7

This design concern is noted by the riot-web team and is under investigation.

🔗Dendrite audit progress

Brendan on the progress of the Dendrite audit:

Dendrite's audit is finally coming to an end! I'm happy to say I just finished the “data collection” phase, in which I looked at everything that needs to be either fixed or implemented in Dendrite. This represents 90% of the work and around 3 weeks of full-time work. All that's left to do now is some triaging in the data (which is available here, by the way), into order to have a clear view on what's left to do in the audit. Expect a lot of new issues and a shiny project board appearing on the Dendrite repository next week ?

🔗Informo news

Informo is a project intended to enable information sharing, especially for vulnerable activists. It is enabled by Matrix. vabd, the mystery individual behind the project announced:

Our specs bot, which shouts in Matrix rooms when the state of a proposal to a specs project changes, got an upgrade: it now handles concurrency better, and can now send multiple messages if multiple matching labels are added to the proposal in the same action (before, it just wouldn't know what to do in such an event and would fail silently).

🔗msc-chatbot

The MSC process is the formal process by which changes are submitted to become part of the Matrix specification. anoa has been working on a bot to help with the process:

msc-chatbot now exists. It has commands that let you view the status of current MSCs, as well as a daily summary of MSCs to keep people up to date.

🔗Matrix-Minecraft bridge

TravisR, as if he has time to be working on such things, has announced the revival of his Matrix-Minecraft bridge:

I've brought my Matrix<-->Minecraft bridge back to life in the form of a Bukkit plugin. It's still in the very early stages of development and requires you to compile it yourself to get it, but it is a thing. Check it out on GitHub: https://github.com/turt2live/matrix-minecraft
It'll be designed to work as a public hosted bridge, so someone could use t2bot.io to bridge their minecraft server (for example)

🔗stickerpack dimension migration tool

Dandellion has created a tool for stickerpack creators:

I've finished https://dali99.github.io/stickerpack-dimension-migration-tool/ for a niceish way to make migrations files for custom stickerpacks in dimension

🔗XMPP (as Jabber) turns 20

As noted in The XMPP Newsletter:

Today is Jabber's 20th anniversary! Jabber would later be standardized and renamed to XMPP.

On this subject, it's always worth thinking about the importance of openness and interoperability in messaging. This recent article in Linux Journal is a reminder of the need to avoid proprietary vendor lock in, and mentions both XMPP and Matrix.

🔗We'll meet again…

Come chat in #twim:matrix.org with your Matrix news to be featured in this post. Next Friday there will be another weekly edition, but before then expect to see an edition to the effect "benpa's best-of-the-community 2018".

🔗Welcome to the last TWIM of the year

It's the 28th of December as I write this, and I hope you had a good year. Long as it is, I recommend reading Matthew's write-up of the year, as it covers a lot of ground!

Many of the core team have been out of the office this week, but there are still plenty of updates to share from the Matrix ecosystem!

🔗mxisd v1.2.2

Max released mxisd v1.2.2:

mxisd had a Holiday-special release: v1.2.2 before v1.3.0.

This release introduces two new big features:

• Username login rewriting via 3PID to allow advanced flows, like bypassing the synapse restriction of having numerical usernames for non-guest users
• Support for multiple Base DNs for LDAP backends

Work has started on v1.3.0 so this is definitely the last release before a non-backward compatible release.

🔗Scylla

VaNilLa has started a new client, a web app build in Elm:

Hi all! I am working on a Matrix client in Elm, and I was recommended to share it here: Scylla

🔗koma-desktop

druig:

koma-desktop is updated to JavaFx 11 and installation is simplified. Dependencies, including native modules can be packaged into one single file, which only needs to be downloaded and run. Java Runtime 11 is the only runtime dependency. Now it's just cross-compilation that needs to be set up before packaged releases can be provided for Mac, Windows, and Linux users.

🔗Prometheus Alertmanager bot for Matrix

Jason Robinson:

I started work on a Prometheus Alertmanager bot for Matrix. The basic idea is that Alertmanager can send webhook alert events to the bot which will then send the formatted events to configured rooms based on the alert receiver. It works, but is still early work in progress. See code and info here: https://git.feneas.org/jaywink/matrix-alertmanager.

Also mirrored on GitHub: https://github.com/jaywink/matrix-alertmanager

🔗Fractal 4.0

Alexandre Franke:

As expected the Fractal team released 4.0 and is already hard at work on the next micro version. We recommend getting it from Flathub like we usually do.

From the release notes:

New features:

• Enhanced history view with adaptive layout, day divider
• Reorganised headerbar, app menu merged with user menu
• Larger display of emoji-only messages
• Some performance improvements
• Opening a room jumps to first unread message

Bugfixes:

• More reliable notifications
• Fixed display bug for avatars

Under the hood:

• Large code refactor
• Logging infrastructure
• Continuous integration
• More informative build output

🔗maubot

tulir working on maubot:

The new command handling system in maubot is ready. The new system should be much nicer to use when developing plugins.

Previously maubot had a system that was designed after the improved bot support spec proposal, but it wasn't very nice or pythonic. If/when the proposal or something similar goes through, I'll probably add support for it in the new command handling system.

Next I'll make some developer docs so that other people could actually make their own plugins.

The code is at https://github.com/maubot/maubot and you can ask about maubot in #maubot:maunium.net.

🔗matrix-client.el new features

alphapapa:

Emacs makes it so easy to integrate things. Now you can send org-mode syntax messages with the /org command in matrix-client.el.

Tab-completion of usernames and IDs was added to matrix-client.el.

🔗matrix-to GitHub app

t3chguy has come out of hiding to announce:

https://github.com/apps/matrix-to is a Github App which makes use of their shiny and new Content Attachments API/Webhook. When a matrix.to or view.matrix.org URL is used this app is activated. It adds a little snippet with the Room Title and Topic (if the room is peekable from matrix.org). In future it'll work for event permalinks, but currently there is no support for peeking context/event in Matrix API.

Example can be seen at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix.to/issues/52#issuecomment-449878490. Idea courtesy of TravisR.

🔗See you next year

So there you have it.

I'm at 35c3 with some known characters from the Matrix world (as well as 15,000 others.) If you're here too, come visit us in our assembly, and also make sure to come to Dijkstra tomorrow to watch me present a look back at on the last year: https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2018/Fahrplan/events/9400.html. We have recorded a message for Matrix Live from 35c3, but will post tomorrow with some more footage from the event.

Otherwise, see you next year Matrix fan!

🔗Matrix Live: Half-Shot talks bridges, and working on libpurple bridging to Matrix

You may have seen that Half-Shot been working fearlessly and tirelessly on bridges for many, many months. In this episode of Matrix Live Half-Shot chats with Matthew about his work, progress and achievements, with a focus on recent matrix-appservice-purple and XMPP work. Audio is not amazing, but worth listening to get acquainted with recent work.

As a note from Half-Shot:

The matrix-appservice-purple bridge gained a XMPP specific backend for better performance when you want to do just xmpp bridging. It's rather quick right now, and needs dogfooding.

Chat in #purple-bridge:half-shot.uk!

🔗Matrix badges on shields.io

Brendan:

A couple of weeks ago, fr1kin PR'd a nice Matrix badge to the Shields project that tells you how many users are in a public room. There were a few issues with it so I PR'd some changes to make the badge more usable, and it's now merged and live (as of yesterday evening), with examples available here! ?
For instance, here's a badge for TWIM: https://img.shields.io/matrix/twim:matrix.org.svg ?

🔗Spec update

New MSC for cross-signing, which has different (hopefully better) semantics from the previous cross-signing MSC.

🔗matrix-bot-sdk support for application services

TravisR, author of matrix-bot-sdk:

matrix-bot-sdk has received early support for application services. Similar to the official matrix-js-sdk, the bot-sdk uses an Intent-based model for making bridges easier to write. Check out the simple example here for more information on how it works.

🔗koma-library

druig continues work on their JavaFX/kotlin client project:

The matrix client API implementation in koma is being extracted into a new repo, which is going to be a lightweight library for Kotlin.

🔗Seaglass now available on homebrew

Aaron Raimist reports that Seaglass is available on homebrew for macOS:

Installing Seaglass is now easier than ever. If you already use Homebrew to manage other packages, you can now install Seaglass with a simple brew cask install seaglass.

If you don't use Homebrew, you can still download Seaglass from GitHub.

🔗matrix-client.el is reborn!

alphapapa reports from a team who have forked and are maintaining a Matrix client for Emacs:

Many additions and improvements to matrix-client.el (https://github.com/jgkamat/matrix-client-el) recently, including a "standalone client" mode that launches Emacs to look like this.

Chat in #matrix-client-el:matrix.org.

🔗matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Slavi:

the matrix-docker-ansible-deploy playbook has received some bugfixes and improvements lately. Most importantly, it's now running the freshly-released Synapse 0.34.0 under Python 3, so memory usage should be much better.

🔗libQMatrixClient/Quaternion

kitsune:

I started work on matrix: scheme support in libQMatrixClient/Quaternion. Expect more news on this around New Year.

🔗Fractal road to 4.0

Fresh from their hackfest in Seville last week, Alexandre Franke reports:

The Fractal crew spent the week chasing last minutes bugs and made two beta releases (3.99.0 and 3.99.1) in preparation for the big new stable release, 4.0, which is right around the corner.

🔗New Rooms for Space Launches and Aviation

Aaron Raimist has been creating some new rooms:

#space:im.kabi.tk for anyone interested in space, rocket launches, satellites, etc.
Are you wondering what NASA's new Mars Rover is doing? Maybe you live on the west coast of the United States, and you saw that meteor on Wednesday night that came within minutes of a scheduled rocket launch and just after three astronauts left the space station. If any of that sounds interesting to you, feel free to join the room.
A Matrix bot is being tested to send updates about upcoming rocket launches to the room.

#aviation:matrix.org for anyone interested in aviation. Whether you are a pilot, someone who visits an airshow once in a while, or if https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXv1j3GbgLk piqued your interest, come join.

🔗t2bot.io upgrade

TravisR:

Just a head's up that I've increased the storage capacity of the database. With current projections, the server should be good for another year or two.

The database is also 1ms closer to Synapse and has a faster CPU in it. It probably won't make a dent in speed on federation, but it is a step forward.

I'll be rolling out python 3 to the homeserver this week too, which should help a little bit.

https://riot.im/experimental/#/room/#help:t2bot.io/$154511414912clELm:t2l.io

🔗FluffyChat 8.0 RC announced

Krille and his Ubuntu Touch fans are looking forward to FluffyChat 8.0:

Hey guys, in order to release the FluffyChat 8.0 Christmas Edition, the FluffyChat 8.0 release candidate is ready for you! :-)
Also the weblate translations are ready: https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/fluffychat/

🔗Riot iOS

From the Riot iOS team:

• We have fixed and improved some e2e stuff.
• Back to reskin. We start to implement e2e backup screens.

🔗Riot Android

From the Riot Android team:

• New screen to troubleshoot notification issue has been merged on /develop.
• Splitting current Android SDK to separate crypto part is on it's way. We're doing this in order to be able to integrate crypto faster in the Riot reboot.

🔗Synapse

Neil from Synapse reports:

We released 0.34.0! This release recommends Python 3 for production and brings with it huge performance improvements. If you've been putting upgrading off upgrading your Synapse, now is the time to do so. For more details here is a post that explains what you should expect and a recent Matrix Live interviews Amber (hawkowl) on the subject.

Aside from that we are working furiously towards federation R0 and have a bunch of MSCs to get us ever closer. You can track our progress here.

andrewsh notes that 0.34.0 is also available in the Debian repos:

Synapse 0.34.0~rc2 in Debian since Tuesday, 0.34.0 uploaded today; both use Python 3 only

🔗Dendrite

Brendan reports:

Dendrite's internal audit is progressing very well and is getting very close to its end.
What's left to do for me is check the implementation status of a few Matrix features, and translate those into tagged GitHub issues so that everyone can have as clear of a view as possible on what's left to work on.
I'm on holiday all of next week, but hopefully will have some good news about that the following week.

🔗That really is it for now

Did you get to the end? What was your favourite section? Come tell us in #twim:matrix.org! Do you have your own update you'd like to add? Same place, come chat in #twim:matrix.org.

Next week is various things. It's Christmas, which means there will be more hacking and coding happening than usual I expect! It's also 35c3, which I will be attending, and might affect scheduling next week. Stay tuned in #twim:matrix.org for news, and come join us in #matrix-35c3:matrix.org if you'll be there and want to meet up!

Merry Christmas!

🔗Fractal Hackfest

Developers and creators of Fractal, the GNOME Matrix client, have been holding a Hackfest this week in Seville. Matthew and I caught up with them on video for Matrix Live this week, and discussed the product improvements they've been making and their plans for the next release (due next week!)

🔗Matrix Spec

• MSC1466 merged. MSC1466 from Erik describes "Soft Remote Logout", which avoids loss of encryption keys in circumstances of remote logout.
• MSC1730 entered FCP (final comment period, the last step before being merged.) read the proposal

🔗This Week in Ruma

We don't often get to feature news from Ruma, but this week there is an updated This Week in Ruma.

Ruma is not dead, however, and small improvements have continued over the last year. The Matrix spec has advanced quite a bit and many of the blocking issues for Ruma have been resolved. Rust's maturity is another story. async/await is still under development and this is the most significant blocking issue to progress on Ruma.

🔗maubot new tooling

tulir has been working on tooling for maubot:

maubot got a command-line tool for building plugins and managing maubot instances. I also added some server-side stuff for easy registration of accounts in the management interface using synapse shared secrets, but the UI for that isn't ready. Also, I'm planning on adding some kind of small Matrix client in the management interface for manually managing the added bot clients. That might lead to a separate library that could be used in other projects or embedded in websites.

🔗mxisd v1.2.1 released, updating recommended

Max with a new release of mxisd:

mxisd hits v1.2.1 with a new maintenance release, fixing bugs and regressions from v1.2.0. Updating to v1.2.1 is strongly encouraged as v1.3.x will contain breaking changes and will not be a straight-forward update like v1.x has been until now.

🔗Clients

🔗Lazy-loading lands in QMatrixClient

kitsune has reported that lazy-loading, a Matrix feature that entails only loading room member details as needed, is now in libQMatrixClient master.

reference implementation in Quaternion will follow up

Black Hat has been testing the feature in Spectral, which uses the library, and says there is a 30%-50% reduction in RAM usage at startup.

🔗Riot Web progress on /experimental and v0.17.8 released

Bruno has been working on /experimental, and I recommend taking a look at the progress there! The next version of Riot Web is closer than ever.

Improved read markers now available on /experimental, needs further tweaking though. Brought back community UX on redesign, other small improvements.

v0.17.8 was released with several bugfixes and improvements.

🔗Riot iOS

Release made with these notes:

This new version supports the consent of matrix servers terms of service (including GDPR) in the registration flow. It also contains fixes for the "Empty room" bug, the registration issue on iOS 10, etc.

Get more information:

• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-ios/releases/tag/v0.7.8
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-sdk/releases/tag/v0.12.0
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-ios-kit/releases/tag/v0.9.1

🔗Riot Android

Release made:

This new version supports the consent of matrix servers terms of service (including GDPR) in the registration flow. Many bugfixes SDK contains KeyBackup

Get more information:

• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-android/releases/tag/v0.8.20
• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-android-sdk/releases/tag/v0.9.14

🔗Servers

🔗Synapse

A lot of focus on getting debian packages ready for python 3 - this is a blocker for our official python 3 release 0.34.0. Aside from that, finalising some outstanding state resolution behaviour (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1693) and dusting off event ids as hashes (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1127.)

🔗Dendrite

Brendan:

My internal audit of Dendrite is continuing, drawing a more and more precise picture of what's left to fix and implement. I aim to have it over by the end of the year, or the very early days of 2019 at the latest. Folks can track its progress through https://cloud.abolivier.bzh/index.php/s/qXi2KFjCQk2c6eG

🔗modular.im now has Extra-Large instances available

Due to demand, modular.im Hosted Homeservers now has Extra-Large instances available. If you need to service 1,000+ users on a Matrix homeserver, this is the product for you!

🔗linuxgaming.life homeserver is the number one Matrix homeserver focused on Linux gaming

swedneck has continues his work on linuxgaming.life:

I've added some bots, health monitoring, and dimension integration manager to linuxgaming.life, and made the website dark.

The homeserver is open for new registrations.

🔗That's all I know!

If you'd like see your Matrix-related project featured in this blog post, come chat to us in #twim:matrix.org, and we'll see you next week!

🔗Matrix Live S03E06

In which Matthew & Amandine discuss The Matrix.org Foundation, go-live for the French Government deployment for Matrix, and some exciting random diversions into post-1.0 Matrix features which should land once once 1.0 is out the door!

🔗Purism sponsoring Fractal development

We are proudly sponsoring the work of Julian Sparber on Fractal, the @matrixdotorg client for GNOME. Read his latest update - https://t.co/q4ubjzETxC #LibreDesktop #DemandFreedom #gnome

— Purism (@Puri_sm) December 5, 2018

Purism announced they are sponsoring Fractal development, starting with Julian Sparber working last month to improve the message view. You can read about his progress here. Highlights:

Before, there was a jarring cut when new messages were loaded, but now you can just scroll upward and older messages are loaded continuously.
The part I'm most excited about is the new "new message divider". When the user opens a room they can directly start reading the conversation from the last seen message and they don't need to search for the new message divider. Not only has the UX gotten a lot better, but also the underlying code is much cleaner now.
I also spent some time on making message rendering faster. I replaced the RegExp with more efficient code, this made the rendering much faster (from ~10ms to ~ 1ms) for every single message.
In summary, all of these things improve Fractal's UX a lot and make it feel more like a modern messaging app.

🔗Synapse 0.34.0rc1

0.34.0rc1 is out - please test it! 0.34.0 will be the first to officially support python 3. We're still working on the debian packaging but 0.34.0 proper should be out next week.

🔗Dendrite

Brendan has been getting on with Dendrite development:

Started auditing Dendrite's codebase to identify what is left to implement, along with what hasn't been implemented correctly. Still a lot of work left to do on this, but it's looking promising so far.

🔗Modular

Modular is a Hosted Homeservers product, check out modular.im. This week:

Matrix -> Matrix account migration tool available at https://www.modular.im/tools/matrix-migration. It's still beta, so please test it and let us know if you experience issues.

🔗New Homeserver: linuxgaming.life

swedneck has set up a new public homeserver at linuxgaming.life! There is also a Riot installation at https://riot.linuxgaming.life, served via IPFS.

Currently working on the website (based on t2bot.io, thank you travis for making that available on github!) and making things nicer in general.
I will be adding more bots shortly. Please let me know of any issues with the HS or anything surrounding it.

🔗Informo

Informo is a project to create a specification and implementation for distributing information and news. This week they have been working on merging changes to the specification:

Work on the Informo specifications has slowed down a bit in the last couple of weeks, though since the last update we did manage to get some relatively big SCSs merged into the specs, including SCS #9 (rendered here) which specifies how information sources must publish their information through the federation, and SCS #11 (rendered here) which describes how sources must register themselves in order to be picked up by clients, and handle localisation. ?
There's still a couple of big items to take care of before we can cut a 1.0 release of the Informo specs but this is definitely a huge step towards this goal.

🔗Minecraft Bridge

Dandellion:

I started working on a Minecraft bridge pretty heavily based on Travis's old project, but using Minecraft-protocol instead of mineflayer.
You need a bot Minecraft account that can join and idle in the server, it then uses /tellraw to post messages.

🔗libQMatrixClient 0.4.1 released

libQMatrixClient, which powers Spectral and Quaternion was released by kitsune, Lazy Loading coming soon:

libQMatrixClient 0.4.1 has been released today, with small fixes in the stable branch. Meanwhile, active work is ongoing on lazy-loading support in the library, with ETA for the feature landing in master being in about a week or so.

🔗Riot Web

• Redesign progress: all resizeable sections are now persisted, (slow) progress on improving read markers
• Communities and community invitations should be more resilient to errors (on /develop only so far)

🔗Riot iOS

• Reskin still ongoing
• A new release is coming
• Less activity because of POSS

🔗Riot Android

• A new developer joined us to help maintaining Riot: Valere Fedronic
• Keys backup PR in review
• Privacy Terms acceptance in login flow in review
• FCM issue investigation/troubleshooting by Valere
• François Off (sick :()
• New theme is coming soon

🔗Koma

druig has been working on Koma, a JavaFX Matrix client:

This week in koma: implementation of json library switched from runtime reflection to compile-time code generation
The matrix api is implemented manually in the project, retrofit and moshi are used to interact with the rest api.

🔗SimpleMatrix

As we mentioned in TWIM last week, MTRNord has been working on designs for SimpleMatrix, a Matrix client for Android in development. This week he has made a video showcasing the new design.

🔗Redecentralize meetup in London

Last night Half-Shot & Neil & Brendan went to see the Redecentralize folk at their meetup:

Beer! And pizza! And also Redecentralize
We chatted to a nice bunch of folks both demoing their decentralized projects and talked to the likes of scuttlebutt, BBC, IPFS and more. Was a interesting experience having around 8 minutes to quickly explain to newcomers what Matrix is and why they should use it in a speed dating format. We chatted (and demoed) bridges, new-riot and generally how it all fits together. There were a lot of very interesting people with different profiles and backgrounds, and diversified questions which lead to a lot of interesting discussions.

Note for the confused: the format of the meetup was comparable to speed dating. There is no suggestion that Matrix should be used at regular speed dating. If you do find such a use for Matrix, come tell us in #twim:matrix.org.

🔗matrix-wug, X-SAMPA to IPA bot

Last month Dandellion introduced a bot designed to convert between formats for pronunciation notation, this week he released the source code: https://github.com/dali99/matrix-wug

🔗The end of the post, and nearly the end of 2018

This week it has been winter-in-Europe kind of weather, but that's ok, it happens every year. TWIM on the other hand happens every week, so if you have something to share, and would like to share what you've been working on, come chat to us in #twim:matrix.org.

🔗Porting to Python 3 - Matrix Live S3E5

Longer than usual episode of Matrix Live this week. Amber talks to Neil about the works she's been doing over the last few months to port Synapse from Python 2 to Python 3. Recommended for anyone who's been following along the progress of Synapse, or who wants a good intro on the benefits of Python 3 over Python 2.

🔗ZeroPhone

This week we learned about ZeroPhone, a fairly mature project aiming to build a working cellphone on top of a Raspberry Pi Zero.

an open-source smartphone that can be assembled for 50$ in parts. It is Linux-powered, with UI software written in Python. Currently, ZeroPhone is based on Raspberry Pi Zero, SIM800L GSM modem and 1.3" OLED screen and button interface.

&Adam was the first to bring it to our attention:

I stumbled across this blog post which mentions a matrix app in a project to create an open, hackable phone out of a raspberry pi. It's old news at this point I guess, but I don't think I've seen it mentioned here, so I thought it might be a neat thing worth featuring: https://zerophone.github.io/newsletter/ZeroPhone-Weekly-No.-16/

The creator of the Matrix app, derivmug also arrived to tell us about his work:

Hey everyone, I have been suggested to post about the Zerophone project here. I have written a basic matrix client for it. It's basically a simple phone based on a raspberry pi zero, focused on privacy, security and hackability.

The client app is built using the matrix-python-sdk, I'm also hoping to chat to derivmug as part of a future Matrix Live. Take a look at the code here.

Just to prove it's running on real hardware!

🔗Spec / Foundation

• Work continues on MSC1730 - Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during login https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1730
• Foundation: Working with the Foundation lawyers on the CIC37 to register the Foundation as a Community Interest Company proper

🔗The Federation (the-federation.info)

Jason Robinson is passionate about Federated technology, and has been working on his site at https://the-federation.info/ for some time. He recently added Matrix to the list of protocols he scrapes and lists:

Matrix (or more specifically, Synapse) servers are now visible on the The Federation info website at https://the-federation.info/matrix%7Csynapse. The website collects lists of servers for various federation protocols (like Matrix, ActivityPub, Diaspora, etc). If a server outputs usage information, it also shows some historical information for servers and projects. Currently the information available from Synapse on the site is just version, availability of registrations and (obviously) domain name. If you want to register your server, check https://the-federation.info/info for more details. Tips also welcome on how to register other Matrix server projects and how to get more data out of servers.

🔗maubot

tulir has continued work on maubot:

• I made a rss plugin for maubot and added a fancy log viewer in the maubot management UI.
• mautrix-telegram 0.4.0 was released, though it has no changes since the release candidate. I also copied mautrix-telegram's HTML parser into mautrix-python. Hopefully it's now generic enough so that when mautrix-telegram switches to mautrix-python, it can drop most of the built-in HTML parser.

🔗matrix-appservice-discord

Bridge-of-the-week this week is matrix-appservice-discord. Anyone in the dev room (#discord:half-shot.uk) will be very aware of this as Half-Shot and Sorunome have spent the day testing @room notifications.

Sorunome:

matrix-appservice-discord received a lot of work these past days. Not only the usual small bugfixes, but also some rather big changes: The parsers for both Discord->Matrix sending and Matrix->Discord sending were re-written completely to properly handle things (and thus, at the same time, crunch a bunch of edge-case bugs!). In addition, the long-awaited highlighting issues with @ everyone and @ here (on discord) and @ room (on matrix) were addressed. Some of these things are still in PR stage, but expected to be merged soon!

Half-Shot also provided a great screenshot of everything working well:

is just showing off having IRC+Matrix+Discord+XMPP plugged together. XMPP being the one purple is bridging

🔗matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Slavi reports that:

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy now supports configuring the matrix-synapse-ldap3 LDAP auth password provider. Thanks to @tvo6 for contributing this!

🔗Riot iOS

• User Agreement (GDPR) in now part of the registration flow
• Reskin has started
• New fixes for unexpected “Empty room”
• We have PR templates

🔗Riot Android

• Realm store for e2e keys has landed
• Riot reboot: support timelines merge in DB to avoid to trash data as less as possible when navigating through permalinks
• New settings to choose ringtone for incoming call
• We have PR templates also

🔗SimpleMatrix

MTRNord, is working on the design for SimpleMatrix:

As I currently have less time for actual coding I am planning out the SimpleMatrix Design. You can find the Images of the Design (and a PDF file) at https://gitlab.com/Nordgedanken/simplematrixredesignimages Feel free to also join #SimpleMatrix:matrix.ffslfl.net to give feedback.

🔗Synapse

• This week our focus has been to work through some final bugs blocking 0.34.0 which will be our first official python 3 release. Expect a RC rsn. For a sneak peak see this week's Matrix Live video at the top!

🔗Auf Wiedersehen…

That's it for this week. If you have anything to share with us, and you'd like to be included on the blog, please come talk in #twim:matrix.org!

In one month from now, many Matrix-acolytes, including myself, will be at 35c3. If you'll be there, come chat to us in #matrix-35c3:matrix.org!

A little delay to the release of this week's TWIM, expect us to resume normal schedule on Friday.

🔗Spec & Foundation

• Two workshops happened with the Foundation lawyers to work on MSC1318 - basically fleshing out a proposal for the details of the foundation governance in terms of how the Guardians (i.e. directors of the foundation board) should interact with the Core Spec Team to act as a back-stop - and working out how to port the MSC (once finished) into formal Articles of Association & adjunct documents. We'll get the workshop notes written up as a rewrite of MSC1318 very shortly.
• New MSCs from vdH on:
  • MSC1721 Rename m.login.cas to m.login.sso
  • MSC1730 Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during login
• …and an alternate to MSC1730: MSC1731 Mechanism for redirecting to an alternative server during SSO login.
• These three SSO-related MSCs are derived from work being done for a large-scale Matrix deployment for a New Vector customer which we should be able to talk about in future. Improving SSO and other auth/identity work in Matrix is vital, and needless to say we're trying to ensure all the resulting work ends up in the spec to the benefit of the whole ecosystem :)

🔗matrix-media-repo

TravisR reports that:

matrix-media-repo has received a lot of updates in the last few weeks. Although mostly bug fixes and improvements, there's added support for streaming downloads from remote servers. This is mostly useful when someone posts a 100mb video in a room: previously the media repo would download the entire thing then send it over to you. Now it'll send you the video while it also caches it.

🔗matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

Big update from Slavi this week:

matrix-docker-ansible-deploy has received some updates in the past few weeks - fixing minor bugs, improving documentation, adding support for additional Synapse/Riot features, etc.

Most notably (in oldest to most-recent order):

• Cadair heard you like playbooks, so he made it possible to run the playbook from another playbook. Thanks Cadair!
• some configuration renaming to make things more consistent. Most people would likely be unaffected.
• support has been added for Postgres 11. Upgrading is possible and easy (as a related success story, Aaron Raimist shared that he recently upgraded his ~40GB database)
• more flexible and more secure-by-default TLS configuration. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• the ability to customize more parts of riot-web. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• better control over Synapse logging. Thanks Aaron Raimist!
• the ability to set up a public server and the ability to make use of Synapse's \\"auto-join\\" feature. Until now, the playbook was only suited for setting up a private server, but with this, setting up public servers is now a possibility. Thanks @anadahz

I'm quite happy that the playbook is getting more contributions from others now and is improving in such diverse ways!

Additionally, the #matrix-docker-ansible-deploy:devture.com support room in Matrix is now bridged to the #matrix-docker-ansible-deploy IRC Freenode channel, making it easier for people to get support when they don't have a working homeserver.

🔗libQMatrixClient

kitsune has been working on libQMatrixClient:

the work on lazy-loading in libQMatrixClient has advanced to the point when client authors may start trying to integrate it in their applications (welcome to #qmatrixclient:matrix.org for details - it's a bit rough around the edges yet).

🔗Spectral

This week Black Hat has been working to give Spectral a more Material design oriented UI.

🔗SMSMatrix

swedneck reports that:

SMSMatrix now has a room (#smsmatrix:matrix.org). SMSMatrix is a simple bridge between Matrix and SMS, developed by tijder. You install an android app and register a bot account which will invite you to direct chats under the name of anyone who sends you an SMS, which will then act as a normal SMS conversation.

I had a very quick play with this tool and it works great - a good way to quickly bridge SMS to Matrix.

🔗Riot

News from the Riot teams:

• Android rewrite is continuing in Kotlin - lots of infrastructure work over the last few weeks
• E2E key backups landed in Riot/iOS develop (but no UI yet, as we finalise the implementation first on Riot/Web)
• E2E key backups also landed in Riot/Web develop (but with placeholder UI)
• E2E key backups in dev on Riot/Android too (using Realm for storage!)
• Lots of work from uhoreg on E2E cross-signing
• Work on the Riot/Web redesign paused for a week due to other commitments but as of Nov 26th we're back on the case again, making up for lost time.

🔗Synapse

Most of the focus from the Synapse team this week has been on the new version using Python 3:

• Py3 is finished, other than Debian packages - ongoing debate on whether they should use a virtualenv or depend on debian dependencies, and who should maintain them in a Py3 world…
• Lots of running around on final Py3 bugs

🔗matrix-appservice-purple

Half-Shot has continued work on matrix-appservice-purple.

🔗Modular

Modular.im provides Hosted Homeservers for Matrix.

• Modular now has full support for Custom DNS (letting you point your own SRV records at it)
• Lots of work on a migration tool to allow folks to easily shift Matrix accounts between servers, as well as (in future) migrations from HipChat, Slack & others.

🔗That's it!

Apologies for the delayed release this week - please expect an episode of Matrix Live in the week, and back to a normal schedule for TWIM as of Friday. As always, come talk to us in #thisweekinmatrix:matrix.org and tell us what you've been doing.

🔗Matrix Live S3E04

This week we continue Matrix Live Season 3 by talking to community member axx, Axel Simon from La Quadrature du Net, a French advocacy group that promotes digital rights and freedoms of citizens. We talk about the work La Quadrature du Net do, with a focus on the importance of decentralisation and how Matrix helps support this.

🔗mxisd v1.2.0 released

Max has been giving updates on the road to mxisd v1.2.0, which was released this week:

A new stable version of mxisd is out: v1.2.0. It comes with:

• The ultimate identity store that lets you run any command on the system to fetch info, making it the most generic yet. The sky is now your limit!
• The ability to send email notifications about room invites when done using a Matrix ID regardless if their users is already provisioned on synapse, using emails found in an Identity store. Targeted at onboarding/migration to Matrix for any org/corp.

🔗Spec

uhoreg:

TWIM: five(!) new MSCs so far this week, including a long-awaited MSC for displaying math(s) in messages: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1722

🔗matrix-appservice-purple

Half-Shot has been working on important work for his final undergrad year. Just kidding! He's been working on bridges as you'd expect:

I've been working on matrix-appservice-purple, and the community immediately rallied around and helped me get it into shape. We've got automated builds for both the bridge and the libpurple binding modules. In features land, group chats are now working at a basic level and I will be working on supporting profiles next.
#purple-bridge:half-shot.uk is now a room where you can tell me why your favorite protocol doesn't work with the bridge. (It's also used for updates.)

🔗Informo

vabd:

A couple of SCS (Specs Changes Submissions) have been merged into the Informo specs, notably SCS #2 which introduces a complete technical description of the network's nodes and their expected behaviour, and SCS #4 which changes the duration of the call for public review period, shrinking it from 14 days to 7 days, in order to speed specs work up while letting a decent amount of time for people to give a look at new SCSs and voice their concerns.

🔗Synapse 0.33.9rc1

Synapse has a new release candidate - 0.33.9rc1 - If you'd like to help us test it, you can get it here.

🔗Koma

druig:

This week in Koma, I have been working on a correct implementation of the user registration process. Currently waiting for a small issue with synapse to get fixed
For kotlin programmer who might be interested https://github.com/koma-im/koma/pull/6

🔗f-droid.org has set up a new matrix (synapse) server

Mathijs:

f-droid.org has set up a new matrix (synapse) server for internal conversation and to chat in #fdroid:matrix.org , which will obviously also get a :f-droid.org alias.

For now the server is private, only allowing core team members to get an account in order to keep the performance manageable.

🔗mautrix-telegram v0.4.0

tulir released an RC for mautrix-telegram:

mautrix-telegram 0.4.0 release candidate was released. It's mostly a lot of bugfixes.

…and TravisR hosted it on t2bot.io:

as of a few minutes ago, the t2bot.io Telegram bridge is updated to 0.4.0rc2

🔗Push-to-Talk for Jitsi calls in Riot

anoa:

An implementation for Push-to-Talk for Jitsi calls in Riot has now been completed and is in the review phase. This was a result of multiple weeks of work, with code changes across many different repositories. Will hopefully make a difference with background noise or many participants. Look forward to seeing it land in /develop sometime shortly! Works with both Scalar and Dimension setups.

• https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/2280
• https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/pull/7709

🔗gomuks progress

tulir:

gomuks development is slowly continuing. It now uses mautrix-go and I also added proper reply rendering.

🔗More Things

Last week we mentioned that Julian Sparber has been working on Fractal UI. He has since published a blog post about the work, and also notes that Purism are beginning to sponsor Fractal development: https://blogs.gnome.org/jsparber/2018/11/10/purism-fractal-sponsorship/

Half-Shot: "The events API update for Slack was released on riot.im/develop a little while ago, which let you do more than webhooks could let you do. The UI scalar/integration manager bits were left on /develop for testing but got rolled out to /app this week."

If you have feedback about the matrix.org website (which you may be on right now!), we have a new room to collect and organise it: #matrix.org-website:matrix.org. Thank you to Aaron Raimist for much-needed chasing (of me) on this work…

This week I attended TADSummit in Lisbon to tell them about the excellent progress Matrix has been making this year. You can see more details of the conference (plus video) here: http://blog.tadsummit.com/2018/11/16/tadsummit-2018-web3/

🔗That's all I got!

If you need more, come back here next week, for all the latest from This Week in Matrix! Also, join us in #twim:matrix.org to tell us what you've been doing.