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#matrix

55 posts50 participants1 post today

Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

I'm never going back to Matrix

shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-ne

I should love Matrix. It is a decentralised, privacy preserving, multi-platform chat tool. Goodbye Slack and your ridiculous free limits. Adiós Discord and your weird gamification. Suck it IRC with your obscure syntax and faint stench of BO. WhatsApp and Telegram can stick their heads in a bucket of lukewarm sick and sing sea shanties! Let's join the future!

The problem is - Matrix is shit. Not just on a protocol level, but on an organisational level as well.

I joined Matrix at FOSDEM - the largest gathering of open source nerds in Europe. We were all encouraged to use it - every talk had its own channel, all the official comms came from there, I was even invited to a top-secret private channel for speaker. This was going to be epic! Viva la rèvölūçïón, right? Wrong.

It was dead. Even among the most seasoned geeks on the planet, most people preferred to use other services like Signal, Telegram, and Slack. Why? Because those other tools actually work.

Matrix has two official Android apps - one of which is old and unsupported, the other is new and doesn't work with many of the basic chat features.

I want to be absolutely clear about this - the company behind Matrix have put out an app which doesn't work with their own product! Lest you think I'm exaggerating, here's a typical view of the official FOSDEM speaker room, using the official Matrix app:

It was embarrassing. People would pipe up in channels and say "this doesn't work" only to be told they were using the wrong app and should go back to the one marked unsupported. So they left, never to return. Even in the large talks, where people were encouraged to use the official Matrix chat, most of the conversation happened on other platforms. It was just too hard to use Matrix.

A few thousands geeks, all used to recompiling their own kernels and participating in the Fediverse, and most thought that Matrix was too much of a faff.

After FOSDEM, I kept the Matrix app on my phone. Occasionally receiving a ping from some long-forgotten channel.

And then, one day, I got hit with the most vile spam. A dozen notifications suddenly appeared on my phone with abuse, torture, and transphobic slurs in them.

You can view the screenshot - but, fair warning, it is grim.

This shouldn't be possible. It doesn't take an expensive team of moderators to add some keyword monitoring. It doesn't take a massive AI model to work out that a stranger shouldn't be able to bombard users with multiple notifications. You don't have to sacrifice your dream of a decentralised future - you just need to care about your users.

This stuff is basic.

I moaned about it on Mastdon and was surprised to receive a private reply from the official Matrix account.

Please do not encourage the spammer by giving them a platform and propagating their spam; you may want to consider deleting your post.

This is classic victim blaming. It is my fault for giving the spammer attention. I am the one who needs to take responsibility and delete the evidence. I shouldn't warn people that Matrix is actively dangerous to use.

Bullshit.

Here's what I expected them to say:

"We're sorry you had such a bad experience on Matrix. Rest assured we're working hard to block these spammers - here's a link to show what we're doing. You can protect your account further by doing x, y and z. Once again, sorry and we hope we can win back your trust."

I'm not saying scrappy open source projects have to hire anodyne corporate communications specialists; they just need to have a little empathy.

But, no, just constant whining about how it isn't their fault and how I am the one who needs to change my behaviour.

This is pretty typical behaviour from the team. Find any post complaining about some aspect of Matrix and you'll see their instant woe-is-me replies.

So I deleted the app. I would have liked to have nuked my account but apparently that's not possible.

I'm not the only one who feels like this. Here's an epic post by Marius, which concludes:

Between the slow performance, the increasing amount of spam, the miserable web client, and the unfinished state of Element X, the Matrix.org network is not something I am willing to continue to recommend, especially to non-technical users. Normal people are simply tolerating it to communicate with idealistic nerds like myself who insist(ed) on using it.

Matrix just isn't focussed on users. I'm not talking about user-experience tweaks like which shade of cornflower blue to use - I mean basic user needs like apps that work and a way to combat spam.

There's a long list of ways the protocol contributes to a poor user experience. It almost seems designed without regard for how it will actually be used.

While the protocol may be conceptually interesting and their intentions noble, I'm not prepared to suffer abuse in the name of technical purity.

Open Source and Open Standards nerds like me ought to know by now that the protocol is the least compelling thing about a service. Who cares if your home is built using only Stallman-blessed tools, when the walls are full of rats?

A list of errors saying "Unsupported Event".
Terence Eden’s Blog · I'm never going back to Matrix
More from Terence Eden

🆕 blog! “I'm never going back to Matrix”

I should love Matrix. It is a decentralised, privacy preserving, multi-platform chat tool. Goodbye Slack and your ridiculous free limits. Adiós Discord and your weird gamification. Suck it IRC with your obscure syntax and faint stench of BO. WhatsApp and Telegram can stick their heads in a bucket of lukewarm sick and sing sea …

👀 Read more: shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/07/im-ne

#foss #Matrix #OpenSource #rant

A list of errors saying "Unsupported Event".
Terence Eden’s Blog · I'm never going back to Matrix
More from Terence Eden

#Matrix #Messenger

Moin.
Habe gerade ne Meldung gelesen, die ich nicht so ganz einordnen kann. Evtl kann mir jemand das erklären?
Wird Matrix, wenn man sein Konto bei matrix.org hat, dann kostenpflichtig?
Hier: infosec.exchange/@Linux_in_a_B
Wenn ja, muss ich mir was anderes überlegen. Ich hab keine Kohle, nach Email, Übersetzungstool und mehr jetzt auch noch für meinen Messenger Geld zu zahlen. 🫤
Mit den anderen Servern kenne ich mich nicht aus, und wie man ein Konto zu einem neuen Server umzieht, ebenso wenig.

Nachtrag, gefunden auf dem Blog von Matrix.org:
matrix.org/blog/2025/06/fundin
Deshalb für alle, die darauf gerne antworten möchten, die Frage, was sich in der täglichen Kommunikation ändern würde, wenn man den Messenger als Haupt-Messenger nutzt mit allem was dazugehört (Texten, Bilder, Sprachnachrichten, Videos und lange Videocalls)? Und ob es einen empfehlenswerten Server gäbe, bei dem das nicht kostenpflichtig ist. 🤔

Weiterer Nachtrag:
Just in dem Moment, in dem ich das mit Sohnemann gerade per Voicechat erörtere, kommt die offizielle Benachrichtigung von Matrix.org rein. Das ging schnell.. 😒

Matrix.org's proposed homeserver pricing chart:

Pricing
Details of pricing have not yet been finalised, but will be published here once usage plans will be made available.

Pricing may change over time, as described in the Homeserver Terms.

Usage limits
Where a user account has been allocated to a plan the following usage limits apply:

Usage	Free plan	Premium plan
Size of attachment that can be sent	1MB maximum	100MB maximum
Speed at which you can invite others to a room	Standard	10 times faster
Ability to create public rooms	Not available	Available

Usage limits may change over time as we refine the offering.
Infosec ExchangeLinux in a Bit (@Linux_in_a_Bit@infosec.exchange)Attached: 1 image ...And so it begins. https://matrix.org/homeserver/pricing/ (They do need the funding tbf, but they also made themselves a famously 'overweight' protocol, soooooo... 🤷 ) #matrix #chat

📰 "Quantifying lower-limb muscle coordination during cycling using electromyography-informed muscle synergies"
arxiv.org/abs/2507.19637 #Physics.Med-Ph #Mechanical #Q-Bio.Qm #Matrix

arXiv logo
arXiv.orgQuantifying lower-limb muscle coordination during cycling using electromyography-informed muscle synergiesAssessment of muscle coordination during cycling may provide insight into motor control strategies and movement efficiency. This study evaluated muscle synergies and coactivation patterns as indicators of neuromuscular coordination in lower-limb across three power levels of cycling. Twenty recreational cyclists performed a graded cycling test on a stationary bicycle ergometer. Electromyography was recorded bilaterally from seven lower-limb muscles and muscle synergies were extracted using non-negative matrix factorization. The Coactivation Index (CI), Synergy Index (SI), and Synergy Coordination Index (SCI) were calculated to assess muscle coordination patterns. Four muscle synergies were identified consistently across power levels, with changes in synergy composition and activation timing correlated with increased muscular demands. As power level increased, the CI showed reduced muscle coactivation at the knee and greater muscle coactivation at the ankle. The SI revealed a greater contribution of the synergy weights of the extensor muscles than those of the flexor muscles at the knee. In contrast, the relative EMG contribution of hip extensor and flexor muscles remained consistent with increasing power levels. The SCI increased significantly with increasing power level, suggesting a reduction in the size of the synergy space and improved neuromuscular coordination. These findings provide insight into how the central nervous system modulates its response to increasing mechanical demands. Combining synergy and coactivation indices offers a promising approach to assess motor control, inform rehabilitation, and optimize performance in cycling tasks.