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Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

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Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#321

Post by anthony_barker »

bratch wrote: post #61
Rooster61 wrote: post #17

Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need permission to my blood type to function. Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too. EDIT: It just…

It still works great on the Nokia N900! https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/UsingPidgin/N900

you still use the n900?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#322

Post by wy35 »

hootbootscoot wrote: post #280
rewtraw wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come to HN for the incredibly out-of-touch takes like this.

like which "take"? you could literally be critiquing any of 10 onion-layers of dialog allegedly about an extinct PM client, but it turned into a "no one uses computers anymore, just phones" tale. I cannot tell if you are pro-AIM or a paid Slack user

> I cannot tell if you are pro-AIM or a paid Slack user

It's not that deep. Someone unironically saying "Does not everyone still use [Pidgin]" is legitimately out of touch with consumers today.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#323

Post by anthony_barker »

tootie wrote: post #213
flatiron wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.

Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communicati…

i like Matrix Element as they are trying to redo IRC with encryption.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#324

Post by symlinkk »

tootie wrote: post #213
flatiron wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM market recently.

Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My point is just that none of these do anything radically different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX, but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what kind of communicati…

Wow, you could send videos, pictures, and markdown on your Commodore?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#325

Post by TeMPOraL »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #299
octorian wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's leave the general computing devices for people who actually need that power, just like the early days. With that attitude, eventually the impact of economies of scale will end up denying us the ability to afford those devices or to use them how we see fit.

We as a family were able to afford an ARM computer (BBC micro) in the 80s.

That was on the rising edge of the wave of "computers are awesome and will change everyone's life". We're on the falling edge now.

The problem GP refers to is this: making computers is expensive, gets cheaper with economies of scale. But economies of scale are capital-intensive, so they exist only where there's a market for it. The market for people requiring general-purpose computation is small and getting smaller, while the market for constrained computing is only ever bigger. Which means at some point the capital-wielding companies will just leave the market, and the prices of new general-purpose computers will go way, way up.

On top of that, computers today gain most of their value interacting with other computers. Once the mainstream usage - like your e-mail or your bank - gets neatly packaged in sandboxed, trust-computing-enabled environments, the utility of your general-purpose platform will plummet. A dark but entirely possible scenario is that it eventually becomes illegal to use general-purpose computers to connect to such services, because "security".

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#326

Post by arprocter »

superkuh wrote: post #141
raarts wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter (who teaches math at HS) asked me to create educational videos for her kids who don't know how to work a computer. They only know phones.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

As someone who used to do support in UK education that hit very close to home

I set up a dedicated youtube-dl box in our office to get around the exact visitors-with-PowerPoint-and-YouTube-videos thing he mentions

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#327

Post by spiritplumber »

underlines wrote: post #278
superkuh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

a completely different story: when steam engines were replaced with the otto motor and cars became available to the general population, people were able to repair and understand the engines themselves. they had an understanding of mechanical principles. a few generations later, and only car nerds understand cars. everyone else has to go to a mechanic to understand why their car's engine won't start or why it sounds s…

No, it's terrifying.

A computer is something you can use to consume content or produce content.

A tablet is something you can only really use to consume content. (Regular tablet, not artist tablet obviously, and those generally have to talk to a computer)

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#328

Post by spiritplumber »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #317
teawrecks wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"She reevaluated her categorisation of me. Rather than being some faceless, keyboard tapping, socially inept, sexually inexperienced network monkey, she now saw me as a colleague. To people like her, technicians are a necessary annoyance. She'd be quite happy to ignore them all, joke about them behind their backs and snigger at them to their faces, but she knows that when she can't display her PowerPoint on the IWB s…

What's up with this modern trend of quoting stuff and adding an unrelated but currently in vogue ad-hominem?

/pol/ is leaking.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#329

Post by fartcannon »

michaelgrafl wrote: post #314
ForHackernews wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when a technology becomes convenient enough so we don't have to think about it while it fulfills it's purpose, Is a tragically limited view of what computers are. Programmable computers are fundamentally different from steam engines. A steam engine will never be anything except a steam engine. Most of the manufactured objects we encounter in everyday life are similar: single- (or occasionally multi-) purpose goods…

Nope. A computer can only do what the apps installed on it let you do, unless you're an IT person. The things is that you don't need to be an IT person to use applications, as it used to be. So fewer people learn IT skills just so they can play a game or layout a document. I know very little about cars but drive one daily. I can see how other people don't bother learning about computers just so they can write up a re…

In one sense, yeah, they're the same: they're both just tools.

In another sense, computers are closer to pencils and paper - they're the tools you use to design the rest of the tools. And that's something special.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#330

Post by jl6 »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #77
jdlyga wrote: post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890

Oh man, funroll-loops is down :(
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