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Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

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Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#101

Post by olah_1 »

dijit wrote: post #15

Every day, It's become a social network of sorts for geeks, despite the age of the protocol I still find it the least "invasive" and most friendly experience, but that's probably because I spent the time configuring a client that's nice for me. (preview: http://imgs.fyi/img/9ve2.png ) I run a network even, called darkscience and it's available at irc.darkscience.net (TLS only on port 6697) the lobby is #darkscience i…

> I still find it the least "invasive"

Doesn't it just broadcast your IP address pretty plainly?

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#102

Post by goosehonk »

kyrra wrote: post #18

Google uses it internally for incident management. https://landing.google.com/sre/sre-book/chapters/managing-in... It's a lightweight server and client that can stay up even when most of Googles core tech is down. You can easily log data from channels, and it just works.

Googlers also use it for the daily chat, not just incident response.

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#104

Post by coldpie »

lukego wrote: post #89

I have started using IRC again since I bought a subscription to irccloud.com. Before that I had stopped because I found the clients too annoying, especially lacking support for using multiple devices concurrently and buffering up messages while disconnected.

> especially lacking support for using multiple devices concurrently and buffering up messages while disconnected.

Yup, this is why IRC is dying. Unfortunately the vacuum has let proprietary services like Discord and Slack take over, just like GitHub now owns open source infrastructure. We'll come to rue the day we let this happen (see: SourceForge). Hopefully Matrix and GitLab will be ready and waiting when that happens.

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#105

Post by hombre_fatal »

tjpnz wrote: post #47

I used to use Freenode a lot but in recent years have gone elsewhere. The community just isn't what it was before and a lot of that comes down to numbers. It wasn't long ago that Freenode was the place to go for help with open source projects but I've noticed more and more an exodus to Slack, Discord et cetera. It's fairly common now to be greeted with a channel topic about this and by that point you're not going to…

To put some numbers on the board, you'd think #node.js and #javascript channels on Freenode would be massive given the ubiquity and low entry barrier of the technologies. But there are probably 10 regulars across both channels. I hang out in both daily and it's always the same people. Of course, they also suffer from the toxic personality of veterans that tend to scare away normal people.

Now compare that to Elm's Slack community. A much more niche technology yet an absolutely bustling chat community. And I can repeat this for all sorts of Slack/Discord communities I'm part of. Even my MUD Developer group on Discord is more active than any Freenode channel I'm part of.

Things like "always online" and offline messaging are essential for community building.

IRC never solved this because it requires everyone to have a sufficiently capable client (like paying for IRCCloud or using weechat in tmux on your VPS). Even if you solve it for yourself, you haven't solved it for anyone you talk to who will likely be logged out when they close their laptop.

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#106

Post by grumple »

haolez wrote: post #90
dijit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wee_slack.py (if you can create application tokens) works wonderfully for the same purpose. Since everyone is really pushing slack it makes my life easier to have it natively in my favourite IRC client.

How does it manage Slack threads?

Can't be worse than how Slack manages Slack threads.

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#107

Post by _-___________-_ »

olah_1 wrote: post #101
dijit wrote: post #15

Every day, It's become a social network of sorts for geeks, despite the age of the protocol I still find it the least "invasive" and most friendly experience, but that's probably because I spent the time configuring a client that's nice for me. (preview: http://imgs.fyi/img/9ve2.png ) I run a network even, called darkscience and it's available at irc.darkscience.net (TLS only on port 6697) the lobby is #darkscience i…

> I still find it the least "invasive" Doesn't it just broadcast your IP address pretty plainly?

Many of the IRC networks offer a "cloak" if you register your nickname, and of course it's trivial to connect via a VPN or via Tor (if your network allows it).

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#108

Post by pdpi »

olah_1 wrote: post #101
dijit wrote: post #15

Every day, It's become a social network of sorts for geeks, despite the age of the protocol I still find it the least "invasive" and most friendly experience, but that's probably because I spent the time configuring a client that's nice for me. (preview: http://imgs.fyi/img/9ve2.png ) I run a network even, called darkscience and it's available at irc.darkscience.net (TLS only on port 6697) the lobby is #darkscience i…

> I still find it the least "invasive" Doesn't it just broadcast your IP address pretty plainly?

Sadly, I'd argue that broadcasting your IP is the least invasive of the options available today.

Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?

#109

Post by GhettoMaestro »

olah_1 wrote: post #101
dijit wrote: post #15

Every day, It's become a social network of sorts for geeks, despite the age of the protocol I still find it the least "invasive" and most friendly experience, but that's probably because I spent the time configuring a client that's nice for me. (preview: http://imgs.fyi/img/9ve2.png ) I run a network even, called darkscience and it's available at irc.darkscience.net (TLS only on port 6697) the lobby is #darkscience i…

> I still find it the least "invasive" Doesn't it just broadcast your IP address pretty plainly?

Nah most irc networks masquerade the client ip in the whois to prevent ddos.
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