Internet Relay Chat turns 30–and we remember how it changed our lives | Hacker News Reader

Internet Relay Chat turns 30–and we remember how it changed our lives

arstechnica.com

137 pointspseudolus31 comments

And I’ve been running an irc network myself for more than half that. It’s hard to beat the effective simplicity even if it’s janky to use and limited in functionality.

That said I wish IRCv3 was coming sooner. The ability to replay messages and handle TCP connection loss somewhat grafefully has an immesurable appeal; because despite how fast the internet gets; it never seems to get more reliable for individual long lived connections.

Edit: shameless self promotion if you want to use my network for your own needs or meet my 350+ friends then point your favourite irc client to irc.drk.sc/+6697 (ssl-only)

Still no end to end encryption.

Ircv3 would have been good 10years ago. IRC is great but everything has it's time. Even the web has it's time.

E2E is (and should be) client side dependent.

OTR exists for most (if not all) clients, also you can do DCC direct messages, which bypass the server completely, if you:

A) don't mind leaking your IP to your chat partner and

B) force your client to encrypt the traffic.

E2E should be for all client to client communication. OTR is opportunistic. Good many many years ago but not enough for this day and age. When you think of a protocol's viability,consider how we'll be stuck with it for decades (like irc and email). Non-e2e support is intolerable.

I hate to be "that guy" but why don't you build it? there's nothing about the protocol that prevents you. And if you want it baked in (cipher negotiation) why not talk to the IRCv3 people?

I'm nobody. The point of a protocol is for others to use it. Also,there are 'ok' alternatives for messaging like signal and wire. But yeah,i don't want to spend all my time working on something no one will use :-)

Mind if I ask what server you use? I currently use ngircd when I do use a server, just find it easier, I dont have any services for accounts setup is the only downside for me but usually they seem to be a pain (never is it just an apt install) and I did have a bouncer setup ages back, I wish more people were IRC friendly.

IRCv3 really needs to hurry up, we need at least simpler account registration and all that as part of the client if possible, it could go a long way.

Another thing I wish would happen is for a WebSockets compatible spec for IRC so you can just use it in-browser without a "bridge" and it could be easier for most newcomers to just spin that up and connect.

We're using inspircd, mostly because it's quite orthogonal and follows the RFC's the closest. Their project is actually part of the IRCv3 working group. So the alpha/main branch of their repo has many IRCv3 features.

But we're using atheme for the accounts backend- something I actually think could be improved upon tremendously actually

> Another thing I wish would happen is for a WebSockets compatible spec for IRC so you can just use it in-browser without a "bridge" and it could be easier for most newcomers to just spin that up and connect.

I know some people who could work on this as an IRC module you just load; if they had time. It's something I would also like as it would enable a new generation of electron/web applications for IRC. And, hey.. it works for slack :)

> I know some people who could work on this as an IRC module you just load; if they had time. It's something I would also like as it would enable a new generation of electron/web applications for IRC. And, hey.. it works for slack :)

Totally agree, but just as important it works REALLY well for Discord! They're unlike Slack in that you don't even need an account to start seeing a server (or used to be?) you just join and oh look, you can post, want an account? You can register! Oh look you're hooked, bam! Then the rest is things a clean UI could handle like displaying images in the client and videos (I know some IRC clients already display images).

I do yearn for the ultimate IRC UI driven client, it's almost Quassel for me.

> Totally agree, but just as important it works REALLY well for Discord! They're unlike Slack in that...

But they're just like slack in that they have a non free server code you can't run yourself, and a non free client binary you can't modify to work around the myriad UI frustrations, and use a non free protocol underneath that relies on free software people to write the integrations back into published, free, open specification protocols.

We're actually putting together a Websocket spec at the moment for IRCv3. There has been a few experiments and an implementation that has been getting used more frequently has proven to be helpful here.

https://github.com/kiwiirc/webircgateway

This is awesome, I'm really hoping this spec becomes adopted by all major IRCd's

Ahh... IRC... gateway into the world of Warez...

In mid 90s, I remember sending /ctcp xdcc list commands to bots and giggling in utter joy while browsing through pirated copies of absurdly priced software like Archicad, electric image animation system, Alias. Then hoarding them knowing full well I'd never use them.. filling them on 100MG iomega zip disks purchased from CompUSA or computer city.

Good old days.

Someone started at work recently. They were born in 2000. They were harping on about getting a film from BitTorrent

I told them I was using bitchx to dcc tv episodes down a 10m line before they were born.

They called me granddad :/

The joy of piracy really is the getting and the having.

haha very true... gotta have something in your stash in case you want something from a bot that enforced upload / download ratios!

Last year I logged into an IRC channel I frequented around 1997.

Damnit if many of the same people weren't there.

They recognised me too. Spent a beautiful couple of hours catching up.

Yep. I used to spend most of my time in IRC chatrooms as a kid. Went back to a few recently and a lot of my old buddies were still there.

I always have a Weechat session running on my machine these days. IRC may not be the best tech on the scene, but I love the communities that have sprung up in the IRC space.

One of the things i associate IRC with is all the dead husks of former communities. Once highly active places you would check into daily there are at best 10 idlers who never chat anymore, like statues in a mausoleum.

Depends heavily on your channels. I frequent a few that average a few dozen users and thousands of lines per day.

IRC was the sole pathway I used to go from writing AOL "proggies" to actual, real, meaningful code. Thankfully bash.org exists to document my transition: http://bash.org/?7717

I just followed the "Great Split" link in the article and it just goes to the EFNet wikipedia link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFnet

As a 1994-onwards IRCer, I actually had no understanding of where the term EFNet came from, and I don't really remember the US vs Europe/Japan/Australia "Great Split" of 96. I'm sure I was THERE, but I mostly frequented regional (okay #seattle and #pugetsound) channels so it wasn't particularly relevant to me.

A few things hit me like a ton of bricks. At the time, IRC seemed unimaginably vast; I remember netsplits were "unavoidable" once the active user count got above 10,000, and the Wikipedia article says there are ~35,000 active users now.

What didn't dawn on my until just now is that I must have known well over 100 IRCers even from just frequenting those regional forums, but because of how bad we are at conceptualizing large numbers, it never occurred to me that I must have known >1% of ALL OF THE IRC USERS ON THE PLANET at the time. Mind blowing.

Can't let a mention of IRC go by without mentioning the classic repository of IRC shenanigans, http://bash.org

I’m not really sure how I’ve managed to avoid IRC during my years online. I was frequenting BBSes back in 1978 or so and have been on the Web since the early 1990s (when you could still visit every known web site in a day).

Check out JS7 Call (formerly FT8 Call) on amateur radio for the next step in IRC.

http://js8call.com

Would pay good money for comic chat in Slack

Heh, Comic chat still works you just point it to an IRC server and it works!

As long as it's a small channel that knows what you're doing. Comic chat drops a lot of gibberish into your conversation for users on other clients.

On an unrelated anecdote, I used comic chat for years in the late 90s before I knew what IRC was. I just thought everyone else used the same client, like ICQ.

I loved comic chat! I was talking to coworkers about chat clients the other day and the usual list came up including ICQ, IRC, AIM, etc. But I was surprised to find no one had heard of comic chat. I mentioned a few others such as PowWow and The Palace and got the the same response.

It's amazing how just a few years of age difference shapes our past experiences of the internet so much. It's all moving so fast.

..and Jerkcity, which was originally produced using Comic Chat.

It's not even age difference though. I don't think powwow had that much penetration (after all it was 'just' ytalk for Windows, plus that weird shared browsing mode, and I think it had a shared whiteboard too?). There were so many things back then that 'everyone' used, except they had like 10% of the market, it was just your sphere of friends that used it. (After all, who would be friends with someone who used msn messenger instead of [your favorite])

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