Tag: Matrix

"matrix" by "Jordi nll" on Flickr

I’m on a #Podcast: “It’s a Chat Episode 53 – More! – #TheMatrix: Reloaded”

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Yep, they let me back on! And so, following the last recording (probably around November-ish), we recorded the chat that became Episode 53 of the It’s a Chat podcast. Much like the last episode, we talk about things which are connected to The Matrix: Reloaded (and get about 1/3rd of the way through the film), and talk about other stuff as well. I talk a fair amount about the Animatrix and we briefly discuss the game (that I don’t think any of us played).

I reference a series of books which I read, that I referred to as “Sand” but instead actually meant the first book, called “Wool” of the series “Silo“, which I rated 3/5 on Goodreads.

I also draw a conclusion that Agent Smith is actually rickrolling us, four years before rickrolling was a thing.

Featured image is “Matrix” by “Jordi nll” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY-SA license.

"matrix" by "Dako Huang" on Flickr

I’m on a #Podcast: “It’s a Chat Episode 52 – Red Pill, Blue Pill – #TheMatrix”

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A few months ago, I recorded a podcast episode with the “It’s a Chat Podcast” team, talking about The Matrix. We’ve got some subsequent episodes recorded about the sequels, but they’ve not been released yet! The first episode was released today as “Red Pill, Blue Pill – The Matrix“.

“It’s a Chat” talk about films, tv series and even games that were large parts of our lives growing up, including Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and Star Trek.

Listening back to the episode today, it’s clear that I’ve not got any better at stopping the “Um”ing – so… I guess I need to do something about that :)

I’d love to hear your views on my views about the show, so please comment below, reply to the tweet or just message me using one of the links under “Where to find me” on my blog!

Featured image is “Matrix” by “Dako Huang” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY license.

"Centralized, Decentralized, Distributed" by "Amber Case" on Flickr

A brief summary of Terminology about non-centralised applications

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I hang out in the #redecentralize matrix group, and yesterday one of the group asked a question about getting clarification on the terminology. Here’s what I wrote:

Self Hosted: An application (usually running on a server) that you run in your own environment.

Examples include: Ethercalc, Sandstorm, WordPress.

[Note, Self Hosted services may still be classed as self-hosted, even if you don’t manage the environment yourself, for example, if you use a Virtual Machine, a Virtual Private Server, or pay someone like modular.im to build and run it for you – provided you can migrate your hosted application to your own environment if you want to]

P2P (Peer to Peer): A locally running application (or client) which predominantly talks to other clients (referred to as a peer), not to a server. There may be a central server which helps facilitate the initial connection between applications, but this is typically only used for that introduction. There may also be a semi-fixed list of “seed nodes” used to discover other nodes in the network.

Examples include: Bittorrent, Secure Scuttlebutt

[Many VoIP systems will have some sort of federated connection between “signalling” nodes, but have a P2P connection for the Audio/Visual streams.]

Federated: A server-based application that can talk to other server applications. (Federation can also refer to the method by which they find each other – either by responses to specific HTTP(s) requests or from particular DNS records).

Examples include: Matrix.org, Mastodon

Distributed: This is more how data is processed – if it’s centralised but distributed (e.g. Facebook, Netflix) then a central server instructs other servers how to act, and the nodes perform actions on behalf of the server. When talking about Decentralised, this means that you could have several nodes cooperating on an activity.

Examples include: BOINC, DNS

Blockchain: A distributed, secure, append-only database. May be P2P or Federated.

Examples include: Bitcoin

Decentralised: Any application which does not require a central service to function. Usually implies Self hosted.

Examples include: Collabora Online, “Internet Mail” (the original decentralised service!)

Enhanced from a message sent to the #redentralize:matrix.org chat, following advice from participants in the group

I hope you find this list of definitions useful!

(Edited 2019-02-21 to address comments from Ben in the Binary Times Telegram group, also others from mylo5ha5 in the Redecentralize group. Typo fixed, thanks to uhoreg)

Featured image is “Centralized, Decentralized, Distributed” by “Amber Case” on Flickr and is released under a CC-BY-NC license.

Using riot.im as a bridge to Freenode

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Over the last few months, I’ve been using Riot.im (the client for Matrix.org) as my primary IRC client, and access to other end-to-end-encrypted chats.

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted to use my “normal” IRC nickname on Freenode, so looked into how to do it. It’s surprisingly easy, but there are a few gotchas.

Making Matrix know your password

First of all you need to message the IRC bridge bot and tell it your nickserv password: !storepass chat.freenode.net MyComplexPassword

Next, you need to chat with NickServ directly and authenticate with it: identify MyNormalNick MyComplexPassword

Lastly, you go back to your chat with the bridge bot, and tell it your nickname: !nick chat.freenode.net MyNormalNick

If, in the process of doing this, you find you can’t log in as yourself, message NickServ and tell it to release your account from being protected: release MyNormalNick MyComplexPassword

Setting topics

While the bridge bot will let you set a topic (!cmd TOPIC #channel Something) this didn’t really work for me, so instead, I use ChanServ to do it for me: topic #channel My New Topic

Just remember that you must have ops granted to you for that channel through ChanServ to be able to make such changes.

You can also set modes for people, or the channel, ban people, voice or op them through ChanServ, just send the command help in the chat to ChanServ for more guidance!

And, if you’re stuck, feel free to come ask for help! I’m (predictably) JonTheNiceGuy!