Matirx, Outlook, Cloud, History of Espionage
Matrix P2P - https://p2p.riot.im/ - This is so awesome. Encrypted and decentralized or in this case more like distributed messaging. I've been wondering for quite a while, why such solutions do not seem to exist at all. Makes me wondering, if there will be standalone peer to peer client as well. Also see the blog post about the release of the P2P Matrix and related backgrounds (@ matrix.org). It remains to be seen, if WhatsApp makes any bad move, I'll be 100% on Matrix after that. There's no reason to go for Signal (which uses telephone numbers, which sucks) or something else, when Matrix exists. Unless you'll need something like Briar. It's highly beneficial that routing algorithms are being thought about. It's easy to make really bad flood cast mesh, but it's not a scalable solution (!). Already with the current E2EE scheme, posting to a large encrypted room is really CPU intensive task and takes a while even with powerful desktop workstation. - Anyway in general, this is great and Matrix does look better and better everyday. - Yet that's kind of expected, because I've been in the dev rooms and there's great crowd of true tech wizard nerds pushing the stuff forward. Yes, that's the way to get something properly done. I loved the positive mood and all the technical consideration going into the solution. It reminds me a lot about the OpenBazaar core team, which is also really awesome. Also checked out Yggdrasil, there are so many overlay network solutions out there, which can be used as distributed object storage or forming routed (more or less), anonymous streaming connections aka TCP sockets, or so. - Well, E2EE is still missing from the P2P version. But this was version 0.1.1, more updates will follow. Of course with P2P there's always question about efficient routing, bootstrapping and communicating between peers behind firewalls. All so classic. It became quickly clear, the non P2P Matrix network is currently completely separate from the P2P project. But they mentioned about interconnecting those later. Running server on phone, well well, yes, mobile devices are the demise of P2P as I've written so many times.
There's only one good thing that came up from the constant Outlook email issues. Whenever someone sends something ... by email ... If I want to ignore it (whatever request / demand), I can always say, I've never received it. So, if you want to send a message, send a registered snailmail letter mail. If you just send email, you're kind of stupid, because it gives instant impression that whatever you're doing, is totally meaningless. Also, with every email, you should say. Reply to this email with word bonanza, so I know, you've read and understood this. -> Otherwise you should consider the email lost or ignored. Also as we all know, email bounces are also notoriously unreliable. So unless you'll receive positive confirmation that the message were received, it's kind of stupid to expect that the recipient ever got the message. Are you sending invoices, payment notifications or something like that by email? Think about it.
Well, that's nothing new. I've also kept administrators that ask for user email and especially user email for password recovery or as "user identity" kind of seriously stupid. And on top of that, the facts I've mentioned that they don't even understand the email address format nor deliverability issues. Creating non-usable crap-o services. Once service also refuses to change the registered user email address. Email is utter bleep, from beginning to end.
From technical perspective, freaking cloud services suck so much, because there's no proper debug / configuration access to the systems. When I'm running my own systems, at least I can access all required log / configuration data as well as debug logs. But with cloud s*it, it's just a blackbox with zero visibility into what's actually happening. It just works, or maybe it doesn't and if it doesn't, nobody gives a bleep. Then you're pretty much out of luck. All hail cloud services.
Something different? Watched History of Espionage, 11 hours long (yeah, really) documentary about history of spy craft.
2021-07-18