This Week in Matrix 2020-01-31

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡

This weekend Matrix will be well represented at FOSDEM! We'll have a stand (come visit!), but also note that we have THREE speaking slots (all on Sunday):

• Half-Shot will discuss Bridging All The Things with Matrix in UD2.208 (Decroly) at 11:15
• Matthew will present The Path to Peer-to-Peer Matrix in UA2.220 (Guillissen) at 14:30
• Matthew again will give a talk titled Making & Breaking Matrix's E2E encryption in K.1.105 (La Fontaine) at 16:00

No Matrix Live today - look out for a special edition this weekend!

Dept of Spec 📜

Spec

anoa told us:

Here's your weekly spec update!

MSC Status

Merged MSCs:

No MSCs were merged this week.

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

No MSCs entered FCP this week.

New MSCs:

• MSC2427: Proposal for JSON-based message formatting
• MSC2425: Remove Authentication on /submitToken Identity Service API

Random happenings

MSC2260: Update the auth rules for m.room.aliases events and MSC2261: Allow m.room.aliases events to be redacted by room admins are being progressed to help address ongoing alias spam, while [WIP] MSC1543: Key verification using QR codes has been updated as the feature is being implemented for cross-signing - to be demoed as FOSDEM this weekend! Sorunome's MSC2403: Add "knock" feature

Spec Core Team update

The Spec Core Team is still working on implementation. Expect things to ramp up again after FOSDEM! (Looking forward to seeing some of you there!)

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse

Neil offered:

This week we’ve been continuing our E2EE UX bug hunt, getting Sydent ready for python 3, working on alias rules (MSC2260, 2261) and fixing some bugs in our ACME support.

Next week, we’ll ship the new improved Sydent, keep going with alias rules and dust off our master process sharding plans.

Synapse Deployment

Many projects updated:

Ananace announced:

Just pushed updated 1.9.1 tags for the K8s-optimized Synapse images, including support - and example config - for running with securityContext features enabled. With a separate media repo, it's now fully possible to run these images without root, and in completely read-only environment.

Mathijs announced:

The synapse 1.9.1 release images are available on avhost/docker-matrix:v1.9.1 and mvgorcum/docker-matrix:v1.9.1 The latter image also contains simple-antispam

and then

A docker image for synapse 1.10.0rc1 is available on mvgorcum/docker-matrix:v1.10.0rc1

ma1sd 2.3.0 released

ma1uta announced:

ma1sd 2.3.0 https://github.com/ma1uta/ma1sd/releases/tag/2.3.0 Changes:

• Load DNS overwrite config on startup (from https://github.com/NullIsNot0)
• Remove duplicates from identity store before email notifications (from https://github.com/NullIsNot0)
• Fix room name retrieval after Synapse dropped table room_names (from https://github.com/NullIsNot0)
• Add logging configuration. Add --dump and --dump-and-exit options to just print the full configuration.
• Add the postgresql backend for internal storage.
• Improve logging configuration. Introduce the root and the app log levels.

Dept of Bridges 🌉

mx-puppet-bridge

sorunome offered:

mx-puppet-bridge got some updates!

• way more tests (still not good enough test coverage, though!)
• enhanced reaction support (reaction deletions/redactions are now properly bridged from and to matrix)
• presence status now sets im.vector.user_status event to be in line with riots status labs feature (why doesn't riot just use the spec on presence status here?!)
• add a message deduplicator class that protocol implementations with echo back can easily implement
• fix various small bugs

As always, if you have any questions check out the support channel and please consider to donate! (Thanks sooooo much to everyone who donated so far!) 🦊

matrix-slack-parser

matrix-slack-parser is, similar to matrix-discord-parser, a parser for slack->matrix and matrix->slack messages. It has been created over this week and does proper parsing (meaning HTML parsing and slack blocks, etc.). mx-puppet-slack already implements this, which leaves matrix-appservice-slack to follow suit! (cadair expressed interest, so looking forward to that!)

Dept of Clients 📱

Nheko

@deepbluev7:neko.dev offered:

Nheko has added support kicking, inviting and banning/unbanning via the commands /kick, /invite, /ban and /unban with an optional reason specified after the userid. Kick and Ban buttons were also enabled for the userprofile. Furthermore some shortcuts for switching rooms (Ctrl+Up/Down) and paginating the timeline (PgUp/PgDown) were added. The shortcuts may change in the future though, so if those don't work for you, please give us feedback in #nheko-reborn:matrix.org or via the issue!

RiotX cross-signing implementation

benoit said:

RiotX: the team is mainly working on cross-signing implementation and device verification with QR code. It's nearly there https://twitter.com/matrixdotorg/status/1223205391531683845 !

FluffyChat Flutter is getting a Dark Mode

MTRNord said:

Sneak Peak of the next FluffyChat Flutter Update :)

FluffyChat Flutter is getting a Dark Mode for both mobile and web. Including a AMOLED compatible color version.

Dept of Bots 🤖

New Project: Pluggable Chatbot (PCB) written in Go

@sava:chat.zorbiro.com announced:

I started a new Pluggable Chatbot (PCB) written in Go. Still early development, but working hard on it. Bot is pluggable, meaning more functionality can be easily added to it. Check it out at https://github.com/srados/pcb.
Currently there are two examples available: echo and uppercase.

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. 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	matrix.jhell.org	335
2	server.matrix4ulm.de	357.5
3	remi.im	383
4	gottliebtfreitag.de	386
5	dodsorf.as	443
6	maunium.net	453.5
7	rcel.li	470
8	miniwa.space	509.5
9	aegiszero.is	521
10	geekbundle.org	526

Final Thoughts 💭

Half-Shot offered:

I know it's a bit naughty to post rooms in here, but for developers looking to play around with Vue.js (with matrix), we've created a support room over at #vue:half-shot.uk

That's all I know 🏁

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