Understanding Matrix cryptography requires understanding some basic cryptography primitives. This article intends to explain those prerequisites in simple terms. This article is not a rigorous, mathematical description of the cryptosystems in use. Rather, it is a practical guide to what functionality each of the cryptography primitives provides. I’ve tried to include links to external resources if you are interested in learning more about a specific topic.

Background

When we at Beeper started working on the new Android app, based on mautrix-go, we initially tried using goolm as the crypto implementation instead of libolm. We almost immediately ran into issues for unknown reasons, and rather than fighting with cryptography, we decided to just put in the work to get libolm working in the Android app.

I’m running for the Matrix Governing Board as an Individual Member (see my Platform) and I am only eligible to vote as an individual member, but I would like to endorse a few Ecosystem Member candidates who are well qualified to represent the ecosystem.

Kim Brose

I endorse Kim Brose (HarHarLinks) representing Matrix Community Events as an Ecosystem Member candidate.

On the Saturday after the retreat I did my own sightseeing and adventuring around Porto. However, as I mentioned in my post about the retreat, a bunch of us went on a walking tour of the city on Wednesday, but since it wasn’t really meetup-related, I decided to combine the info that I got on the tour with this post, as I think it fits better.

The past few weeks have been exciting for Beeper. We made Beeper available to everyone without a waitlist, launched a new Android app based on our own internally-built Matrix SDK written in Go, and were acquired by Automattic for $125M. As part of the acquisition, the Beeper team is merging with the Texts.com team that was acquired by Automattic last year. We are going to unify the products under the Beeper brand. All of this is only a few months on the heels of our Beeper Mini launch which brought fully end-to-end encrypted iMessage to Android devices.

I’m running for the Matrix Governing Board as an Individual Member. I work on bridges¹ and backend infrastructure² as a software engineer at Beeper. You may have met me at one of the Matrix meetups³ and possibly even seen me giving a presentation at one of them. I have been a user of Matrix since around 2018⁴ and I have been heavily involved in the community since around 2020⁵. I’ve contributed multiple spec clarifications⁶ and been involved in many MSCs both personally and through my position at Beeper⁷. I also have contributed to Synapse⁸ and the Matrix React SDK⁹.

I’m making my way across the pond once again, this time for a work retreat. I’m attending a team meetup in Porto, Portugal.

I ran the 2024 Mines High School Programming Competition on Saturday, and I had to be in Porto by Monday morning. Thus, I had to leave on an evening flight on Saturday in order to arrive in time. Unfortunately, the best flight I was able to get that left late enough on Saturday went through Munich with a 7 hour layover before the flight to Porto. My return flight goes through Frankfurt (it’s kinda annoying having to go out of the way to Germany to get to and from Portugal, but it is what it is).

For the last seven years, Mines ACM has hosted a High School Programming Competition (HSPC) modelled after the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). I wrote about the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 competitions on this blog. The problems from every year are new and written by Mines students and some Mines alum specifically for the competition. This year, I wrote two of the problems and helped Ethan Richards with organizing the competition.

I attended NixCon and SCaLE in Pasadena, California for the first time this year. I went with my friend Addison, and while I was there I also met up with some other friends, and made some new friends as well!

I flew out very early on Thursday morning from Denver to LAX. It was raining on the way out of Denver, and the approach into LAX was quite windy. It was the most turbulent flight I’ve been on in a very long time. Getting from LAX to Pasadena was quite a journey. I had to take the Metro Connector from LAX over to the Metro and then I took two metro lines up to Pasadena. It probably took an hour and a half just on the metro to get there.

“Master of Science in Computer Science”, it sounds so grand, doesn’t it? But is it worth it? I’m writing this post to give my perspective on whether getting a master’s degree is worth the effort and money. I’m assuming that you are currently in a computer science undergraduate program and are considering whether to continue on to get a computer science master’s degree. I want to be very clear, this post is my opinion only.