You can self host the bridges, but a lot of the "magic" happens on their clients. But if you're okay with a bit of inconvenience in setting up and bridging services, self-hosting bridges is definitely possible using another matrix client.

To be honest, I'm not sure what they were thinking when they released their reverse-engineered iMessage app. But I'm hoping they're back on two solid feet and will get back to focusing on their original mission because it'll mean more open source contributions back to the matrix project.

I'm not super excited about them getting bought, but at the same time I think it's better than the alternative. Beeper's CEO (now former after being bought) is infamous for creating the startup, Pebble, then running it into the ground by not selling it. As unfortunate as it is, the reality is that companies, even ones based on open source projects, can't survive without funding.

Yes, Beeper's apps are all closed source. But they do contribute a lot of their improvements back to the matrix community. For example, they've contributed quite a few performance improvements to the Synapse homeserver. They're also involved in getting new features supported on matrix such as media captions.

Using an all-in-one messenger like Beeper will always be less secure than using standalone apps because it can introduce another vector for attack. That being said, I believe Beeper is trying their hardest to stop "middle manning" your messages. For example, in their newest Android client they have an on-device Signal bridge which means your messages never get sent to Beeper's servers.

Personally, I am happy with the convenience of Beeper. I use it every day with multiple IM services linked and it has saved me a lot of time. I also love that Beeper is built on matrix and that they're contributing back to the open source community.

It’s good to know that future release cycles will be shorter, but it still feels a little bad on Media Segments because it seemed so close to being done. Oh well, I’ve been waiting years for proper intro/outro on JF, I can wait 6 more months :)

Shoot, I guess this means Intro/Outro (Media Segments) won’t be here till 10.10? 😢

If you're looking to rent a matrix server, I highly recommend etke. Faily cheep for what they offer and great support. As far as your concerns for noise suppression, the best workaround atm is to use Nvidia RTX Voice and AMD's Noise Suppression features. At least until Element either builds in their AI noise suppression, or adds PTT.

I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. If companies could get away with making a car as unsafe as the model T, you’d probably see quite a few $10k cars on the road. But as it stands today, most cars are required by law to have all sorts of safety features built in.

As our standard of living and safety goes up, so does the price of goods because more is required to go into R&D and manufacturing.

As it currently stands, they can’t let the user decide under the DMA. To do that they’d need to build an entirely new PWA API and put time into making sure browser engines other than WebKit can’t escape their sandbox. After they do that, then they can let the user decide since all web browsers would then be equal. But as the poster above you said, PWA install rates are very low outside of the small tech enthusiast circle so I don’t blame Apple for axing this feature under the time crunch. I do hope they re-visit this issue and enable PWAs for all engines though because I love the idea of PWAs.

tbh, I don't like where this new product seems to be taking Beeper. I was a giant fan of Beeper because they were a huge contributor to the matrix project. But with them creating an entirely new app that doesn't rely on matrix at all, it looks like they may be looking to pivot away and create their own client-side implementations rather than use matrix bridges. It would be sad to lose a contributor to the matrix space.

Correct. Home server operators need to opt-in to reporting (it’s off by default). On top of that, users on home servers who have opted in to reporting also need to opt in to analytics. So there are potentially many more users than are being reported to the matrix foundation.