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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?

#201

Post by dancek »

marinintim wrote: post #81
bshipp wrote: post #75

I have a question regarding IRC. I haven't really used it much since 2001-2002 but is there a self-hosted option where i can leave a client running on my server and then access it with my phone and/or browser on a desktop pc when I want to check in? This would be especially helpful with less active channels where it's nice to have a client constantly online to catch chats.

You can run weechat on server and connect via ssh ( https://aaronparecki.com/2015/08/29/8/why-i-live-in-irc describes this setup)

Or you can set up a relay in weechat and connect with glowing-bear (html5) or android-weechat. Works great. The glowing-bear community have good tutorials iirc.

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

#202

Post by kitteh »

Several hundred network operators use a particular IRC network for back channel communications. Chatter on route hijacks, leaks, outages, etc. Great way to cut thru the bullshit support channels and NOC aliases to get to the folks who matter. Outages have been mitigated faster because of this.

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

#203

Post by lighthazard »

swalls wrote: post #194
swozey wrote: post #127

I started using IRC around age, I dunno, 10-12 (30s now), lots of efnet then freenode, at one point I was an ircop until our childish antics got our server desynced. I don't use it anymore. Between the insular cliques and the fact that I can look up archives of 20-25 year old messages I wrote on there because you never know who or where someone is writing logs really turned me off as I got older. I'm in a few communi…

This is what terrifies me about Discord, as well as the fact they store all their logs in plaintext. AFAIK it is impossible to delete logs in Discord and any new user joining a channel gets access to all the back history of chat, so it's even worse than IRC.

Almost every IRC channel I've ever joined had users who logged the chat 24/7. Sure, it wasn't centralized but at no point is there any tacit agreement that public chat channel isn't being logged. I don't really see a difference in this and Discord giving the entire history of the channel the user is joining.

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

#204

Post by Tsynk »

Yes, I still use it, mainly to speak to friends, I also IRCOp on irc.nfnet.org and I hang out mostly in #sonicstadium on irc.surrealchat.net. I also use my IRC Client to connect to Twitch's chat. IRC is also good on any Internet speed and it very low on data usage. I use HexChat and IRCCloud as my main two clients. You can also use any client out there (pretty much) to connect to any network.

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

#205

Post by jahrichie »

I use it all the time. I grew up on IRC (37 a few weeks ago). Personally, I learned a lot infastucture and engineering from this IRC. Recently my team hit a problem using an open source ruby gem from AWS, that took us 2 weeks to find. It wasn't us that found it, but a chatter in the #ruby channel that had originally written the code 5 years prior, and knew of a conflict between two specific AWS GEMS. This would of taken months and thousands of lines of code to find. IRC FTW

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

#206

Post by grep_name »

dijit wrote: post #197
grep_name wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in hearing more about how you've configured your client, do you have a repo or anything? Have you included plugins or add-ins from outside sources? Edit: Just saw your other comment, I'll check out your setup later this week! I find that what I want out of a chat client is something that can easily idle in the background and beep at me if someone @'s my username, with a way to handle missed messages, b…

I think this is a fair ask, unfortunately I made my setup for me and it's not exactly designed to be packaged/reused, but I linked my configs (in tarball format) here: https://0x0.st/zl_O.tbz2 What you're requesting is actually the normal way most of the people I talk to use IRC. I have a highlight buffer[0] script which keeps a history of all the times I get mentioned, and weechat supports libnotify so if your deskt…

Thanks for all the detailed info! I'll probably save it to look at in a couple of weeks when I'm going on a work trip and planning to redo a bunch of my configurations.

Where can I check for your blog post (assuming you decide to put one up)?

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

#207

Post by jamestomasino »

I'm on IRC constantly via Weechat on a VPS and Weechat-Android connecting my phone.

Servers I use: irc.tilde.chat irc.sdf.org irc.freenode.net and a few others here and there.

There's a huge amount of IRC usage in the wild still. Major projects use it, like the web-extensions project. Hobbiests have servers and channels gallore. Every programming language has a presence. There's so much to see and explore.

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

#208

Post by LinuxBender »

jotm wrote: post #196
LinuxBender wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never run across a VPS or dedicated server provider that blocked inbound IRC. What providers prevented you from running an ircd?

This was a long time ago (7-10 years), but 1and1, Hetzner, OVH, HostGator, LiquidWeb did not allow IRC hosting. They were the cheapest, tbf. I only use Linode now, haven't looked into it.

Ah. Of those, I've used Linode and OVH. Neither ever gave me grief for having IRC, but I also ensured that I never had botnets connecting to me, which is what most of them don't like dealing with. I've never tried 1and1, Hetzner (ive heard good things about them), HostGator or Liquidweb.

I am certain that Linode won't give you any grief as long as you make some effort to keep botnets from abusing your service.

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

#209

Post by benharri »

I oper networks for two pubnix communities: https://hashbang.sh and https://tildeverse.org (https://tilde.chat is the irc net).

I also hang out in lots of on-topic channels in freenode for various programming languages and software that I use. Once you find a nice community, it's hard to use anything else.

I use weechat in byobu on my vps and weechat-android on the go. It's a great setup and I've tweaked a lot of stuff to my liking.

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