 Remember kids: IRC is free. 191 comments
@ripienaar counter: libera.chat. Just because efnet turned into a shitshow, and freenode sold out doesn't mean you can't run your own server. You _DON'T_ have to chat on a "big" network. You can run your own for friends and family. "The stuff irc opers get up to" sure. Everything can be abused. Just throw your PC into the ocean already. @miah @ripienaar “Just throw your PC into the ocean already.” This sentiment I whole heartedly agree with. @miah Point is, you have valid points about IRC and I agree a lot - but the big missing “*" is if you are able to pick a good and well run and well intentioned server or network. Much the same concerns as here etc.  @miah @ripienaar That's probably better. IRCv3 is pretty good, but the "big" networks never update their software and no one says anything in the channels. Better to run a private server for a few friends who actually use it. @miah And largely also why many of the federated services fail or dont succeed in the wider sense - its impossible to know who to trust. Even a enormous comunity of some of the most paranoid crazies on the planet (us) didnt see the Freenode thing coming @ripienaar I wonder what would have happened had Lilo not passed away. Maybe Freenode would have been different? Maybe worse? Who knows. I don't know why the past leadership sold it off. I'm totally baffled by that whole situation. @miah And indeed, I can also run my own Mastadon server - but even I dont do that I pay someone to do it. It's just not a viable answer for someone who uses Slack day to day. Until we find ways to deal with these super hard to solve problems, these suggestions are largely not useful. Many of us have tried corporate IRC servers and lol, how bad does that go. @ripienaar We ran our own IRC & ZNC servers at Bank Simple for years. We of course switched to Slack after we got bought because... probably because management wanted to read the private messages of an employee. @miah Did all your business users in the company, CEO and all other executives and sales etc, use IRC? @ripienaar Yes, everybody was on irc. We all chatted regularly. The shift happened more than a year after we got bought out. Similarly everybody was on our github enterprise. I could tag _anybody_ in the company, and we all had access to repos. It wasn't uncommon for somebody from a different department to send in a PR to fix something that was bothering them. I patched some text on our web app while I worked in ops (weird gendering of things that didnt need it). @ripienaar For a time Bank Simple was amazing, one of the best jobs of my career... up until our buyout =) We tried to keep things great then, and in many ways we got better, but in so many others we got much much worse. @miah @ripienaar I *really* wanted to have our whole 50-60 head company on our Gitlab enterprice license since we were trying to get more people engaged in the PO meetings. Unfortunately pricing just wouldn't work out. Enterprise productivity tools like that need a "guest pass" seat tier or something so we can at least get our whole directory taggable from the discussion tools or something. @ripienaar I don’t see why they couldn’t? There are significantly more arcane systems (e.g. SAP) in common use. @ripienaar @Serenus I think most people in "tech" ran a simple command line irc client, while everybody else ran the Mac Colloquy. We had a standard of "no Windows" on the server network, and after buyout our new "compliance" broke that rule, ripped out our slapd and replaced it with Active Directory.  @miah @ripienaar mattermost you can also host as a slack alternative or matrix, if you want to do the activity pub thing.. and federate, and have e2e both have pretty slick free mobile clients  @ripienaar @miah ircd is just one apt install away. That is MUCH easier and lighter than mastodon. Zulip is so much better than Slack (topics not threads! so much better— and i am someone who cannot choose an e-mail subject to save my life), also better than IRC. Zulip is what we moved to. Free software that you *can* self-host but also available as a service. I think for many it will hit that sweet spot between convenience and freedom/control. Though i don't want to derail the main thread too much, which is that IRC is alive and well. `irc.indymedia.org` is where @mayfirst and some other groups we are part of are on, everything else is on `libera.chat` i think.  This is what happened with the London Hackspace IRC channels. One of the moderators set up another parallel service, and the transition took place easily. :D Open Protocols for the Win! :D  @miah IRC was a huge gateway into the hacking world for teenage me in the 90s. And I filled so many notebooks with things I learned through IRC back then! I wish I had those notebooks still... so much arcane knowledge got lost to time, elemental damage, and moves, and now I'm scrambling to recall it all!   @miah <3 IRC just wish the culture was less broish (but we can change that!)  @scatty_hannah @miah well, IRC has even worse metadata leak problem (or it doesn't even try to hide anything, even client IP's are visible for other clients). More privacy focused alternatives such as pure P2P messengers have their place but they sacrifice lot of features and are very niche. @SuperDicq message history isn't a requirement though. Do you get upset that you missed a discussion your friends had when you weren't present? Upset that some folks at your local hangout had a discussion about "whatever" while you weren't there? Maybe in some instances history is useful, but its certainly not a requirement and if it is there are multiple ways to solve it. Clients could be better sure, good thing we have 'open source' and 'patches accepted'.   @miah Also, remember to run your computer 24/7 to be able to read chat history. In seriousness, though, I support the sentiment, but can't shed the intense feeling that IRC's focus has always been on serving the people that can operate it rather than being an universal protocol for everyone. Therefore, I think that replacing IRC with e.g. matrix and 486 with Raspberry Pi is more useful for 99% of people here. (Disclaimer: I have used IRC as my primary chat for 6 years and matrix too.)  @efi IRC doesn't do that. If you want a video call there are other open source services you could run though, like Jitsi: https://jitsi.org/  If you want: To host video chats check out Jitsi: https://jitsi.org/  @ai6yr I think it's the old problem of not everyone knowing about things that existed before the thing that just happened to them. discord is more accessible to so-called "normies". same with linux. same with nextcloud. same with xmpp. same with everything that is not on the app store/google play. same with everything that is used mainly by the tech-savvy. capitalism knows how to sell convenience over agency. @miah @ai6yr (okay last thing I promise): I am absolutely in favour of using irc, xmpp, linux and all that, and I do. but I also use discord, because I know people that won't use IRC, ever. because it's weird and old and text-based and they'd have to learn new rules and how the whole decentralized thing works and why would they? noone they know (except me) would even be there. @miah @brayd No, most of the solutions for that are just SSL tunnels. SILC gets closer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILC_(protocol), Matrix might be the right option for that? I doubt it runs on a 486 though =) @brayd Check out SILC then, it _might_ meet your goals. I think development around it is pretty stagnant though. Its as easy to run as any IRCd and the clients are also very simple. I can't speak to "how good" the encryption bits are though. @camille If you make a post outlining the pros of XMPP I will gladly repost it. (rejoining XMPP is on my list for this year, after I get my email off Google) =)  @miah @camille In addition to this i heard of Snikket, a simple way to set up a fully functional XMPP server with all the niceties, but bridges to other networks are unsupported with it, so still thinking about it One thing I have to add is that you should assume what you say in IRC is recorded, and can be traced back to you by a person or organization determined enough to do so. Practice good internet hygiene even in the places you THINK are safe. @tilton I would love to see a modern version of IRC that supports modern expectations. Things like buffering storage on the server so multi-device works, UTF-8 clean, etc. @opsnlops Definitely. UTF-8 is no problem now at least, I use it all the time on IRC! @tilton Oh good! Last time I messed with it it would barf on anything that wasn't ASCII. The buffering thing is a real issue in the modern world, however. IRC's old model of "nail up one TCP connection all of the time" falls apart in a mobile-centric world. Slack figuring that out is one of the main things that pushed us off of IRC at $job-2.   @miah Don't suppose you happen to have an easy quick-start guide for using IRC, that could be given to people, do you?  @miah "but muh 'custom emoji' and persistence" They seriously don't need those. Or if they do what they want is a web forum. It's an older code but it checks out. I haven't been in a irc channel since... I was probably too young to be in irc channels. But my mental model is such that I see slack and discord as irc with extra steps. @miah  @miah IRC also IRC is not an island!   @miah Matrix is all that too - AND encrypted to the highest standard ;) (I bridge IRC-channels into my Matrix-server. One client for everything .. )    @miah I was formerly a freenode guy. I assume there's a better pick-of-the-litter choice today? @miah I miss IRC's heyday -- I'd stay up late into the night chatting with people in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa on Undernet. The last time I logged in, it was like an empty house. :-( @miah a modern IRC that improved on it while also not trying to be Slack or Discord would really be something.   @miah if you're setting your friends and family up with an IRC server, set them up with something like https://TheLounge.Chat , too.  @miah and my ISP decided connecting to IRC, amongst some other ports such as FTP and SMTP, is dangerous so they blocked it in a modem update. Changed to manually manage the firewall on that device but thought it was bonkers.  @miah you can write an IRC bot in PHP, as a middle schooler, with no websockets or anything, just bodge it, and it will work   @miah irc doesn’t suck cpu with a browser or electron client showing animated gifs and spamming notifications @miah@hachyderm.io I was a fan of IRC during it's heyday, but I can't go back to it. I actually love IRC. It's such a deprecated system when you consider it has everything other socials need and lack. It's simple, easy to use, ad-free and would run anywhere. Love it.   @miah I just set up my own local irc server for my apartment bc of this toot. I low-key feel pretty cool right now @miah IRC is not even remotely capable of competing with the likes of Discord. (And I say that as someone operating an IRC server for a minecraft server with a few friends) It covers maybe 25% of the use case, and adding a bunch of extra apps brings that up to maybe 60% See for the full explanation: https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/110199104168870444  @miah @schizanon The expression on some coworkers’ faces last year when I said we should just run IRC instead of paying exorbitant $ to Slack..  @miah You can run your own IRC server, but good luck securing it so that it doesn't become a bouncer/C&C server for some malware or a spam haven :-).
@miah The ability to run your own server is unimportant to 99% of users when IRC can't federate. No one would go to my IRC server to send me a message.  @miah Has anyone made an IRC web interface that allows a bit of rich-text (markdown, emojis ..) ? That would be neat IRC would be just the underlying comminucation protocol, which is standard, but this would not require user to select/download a specific software to use the service ... I tried to search for such implementation but found none so far :(  @miah I present to you, IRC Nitro. Coming soon, only at UmbrellixIRC.  @miah IRC doesn't define a encoding, thus anything beyond ASCII is a wild ride, there are no attachments, like images/video which are expected these days, there is no support for offline/mobile usage, no e2e encryption, DCC got trouble on NAT, no unique identity, ... Of course there are things built around to mitigate different problems or approaches like IRC2, but IRC itself didn't stand the test of time. XMPP fixes some of the issues, but didn't predict today's mobile world. @miah@hachyderm.io I still don't understand IRC to this very day. I should probably start using it. @miah i love irc but its a pain tryna get people onto it so i stopped trying ages ago, i might have to pick it up again at some point tho   @miah it's also so easy to set up a web portal to your server. I have a ngircd server running and The Lounge as a web client. Which allows image previews and chat history (it can work as a bouncer) or it can just be a simple web chat.  @miah and having a Mumble server on the side for voice chat is AWESOME if that's something you need I really love my friend's mumble server  @miah How do IRC bans actually work? Can't a banned user just enter the channel again immediately with a new nickname? @miah I, for one, would sooner turn to XMPP, because it's mobile friendly, while having a server lightweight enough to easily run on a $5US/month VPS. I run a prosody server myself. All the clients at least have decently-working push-to-talk voice memos, and end-to-end encryption. I've tried IRC, but it's too inconvenient compared to where the bar has raised to, what with the advent of mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal.  @miah I've been using IRC since the 90ies, and still do. The problem nowadays imo is that it's pretty much only populated by niche communities. Gone are the days of using it as a communication infrastructure among friends and family, largely because it doesn't support features that a modern user has come to expect, such as editing sent messages, file transfer, stickers, smileys, quotes, image sharing, code, offline chat history (especially important for mobile use), and encryption. @miah@hachyderm.io but irc doesn't have paid emoji reactions either :akkoconfused:  I would also add:
IRC does not trash its protocol with new shiny useless features every week. and you don't need to install new versions at light speed. it's consistent and it just works. |
Gregory's Server
@miah counter: Freenode.