All day, every day, for both work and social purposes.
Could you please share some social channels you find interesting for the uninitiated?
Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
61–70 of 254 posts
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#62FreeNode seems to have some really active channels... outside of that, all I see on the servers I connect to now and then are a lot of lurkers. The cool thing is, in general when I've exhausted my options, a lot of people deeply involved in various projects do tend to hang out in freenode's channels. I don't keep hexchat open all the time, just fallen out of habit, but I'll be in ##javascript and #csharp mostly, late…
Slightly off topic, but did you know you can use SASL to auto identify with NickServ on Freenode? Edit: typo
Did not know that, thanks... will have to update my setup... just used to NickServ for it all.
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#63I still use IRC, or sometimes even a handful of XMPP (Jabber, for grep-ability) rooms (although for the most part it's better for 1:1 chat with friends, and text messages through a bridge) partially for ideological reasons but also partially because I can't use the more "modern" alternatives. My particular reasons don't matter, but a few I've seen in the past include (focusing on Slack as an example, but most of these apply more broadly):
- My laptop doesn't have a GUI (networks using open protocols like XMPP and IRC don't lock you into a single client, so someone will have developed a good CLI one)
- My laptop runs NetBSD, Illumos, etc. and Slack et all don't provide clients for it and the web clients aren't very good, break on whatever browser I use, etc.
- Work only allows certain software on the laptops, IRSSI is approved because it's been on the list the enterprise folks haven't updated since the 80s, but Slack isn't
- For legal reasons I can't sign Slack's EULA (eg. I am in arbitration or part of a lawsuit, or work for a company that's part of a lawsuit with them, etc., disclaimer: I don't actually know how this works, not a lawyer, etc.)
- My laptop is old and Slack's client doesn't run well on older hardware (again, using a network that uses IRC or XMPP lets you use any client you want)
- Work uses IRC (yes, it's still pretty common) and I don't want 10 different chat systems on my machine so I just use IRC at home too
- Work has certain security, privacy, or procedural requirements that Slack et al don't meet, but an enterprise chat based on IRC or XMPP etc. does (eg. using end to end encryption might be easier, a private network using IRC or XMPP can be configured to only use connections that are perfect forward secret, or do external certificate based auth, use end to end encryption, etc.)
- etc.
If you want to join us for some Go (golang, for grep-ability) related chat, there's a room on my XMPP server at "golang@conference.samwhited.com" (one day I'll move that to a nicer looking domain, I think I still own gopher.chat) that gets a bit of traffic, or there's #golang on Freenode. Please avoid their community Slack and ask others to do so as well because I and a number of other contributors can't or won't use it and miss out on a lot of good discussion :(
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#64I'm in a couple of tiny communities on IRC. There seems to be no growth potential, and when I've suggested switching to IRC in a work setting people look at me as if I'm mad, and starts hugging their webbased monstrocities filled with emojis and memory leaks, but I think I will always prefer IRC.
Even terminal based weechat is perfectly capable of rendering emojis.
For some reason, maybe cultural, maybe because many clients don't have a nice emoji picker, they seem to be used less though in my experience (which is fine by me).
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#65IRC is still a very useful tool for tech support, since you can potentially reach someone who will actively respond, rather than posting a message on a forum or a mailing list and waiting endlessly for a response. It was a bit of a bummer when some channels started disabling unregistered users due to spam. It used to be a great "emergency support" option that someone with a failing computer could load up a LiveUSB of some Linux distro, open Hexchat, and immediately pop into a chatroom for help.
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#66Every 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…
That looks quite nice! If you're using irssi would you be willing to share your colors / setup?
Seconded!
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#67It's been mostly reduced to free software projects channels/networks and just semi-private channels for groups of friends who've been on IRC for years now. So #archlinux, #dolphin-emu, #python, ##machinelearning, etc. all on Freenode are pretty active. There's some hobby and subreddit related channels too. Like ##chess, and #rubik. Other than that, the language learning community was surprisingly very active years ag…
I use #xendevel to collaborate with other Xen developers basically every day. Also use #centos-devel, #centos-virt, and #centos-meeting for various CentOS-related things. Also lurk on #golang-nuts and occasionally either ask or answer a question on there.
But it's all more or less work-related now.
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#68Absolutely. My team uses it to collaborate on a closed (no internet access) network, and it works great.
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#69#haskell is incredibly friendly - if you ask questions, people will go above and beyond to explain things to you.
Re: Ask HN: Curious to know if people still use IRC?
#70IRC is still the best place to get help quickly (if you know the right place to ask), especially for some more esoteric tech niches...
And if you know how to ask the right question.