Under 18 but used it for nearly 20 years? Were you born at a negative number?
I was an op when I was under 18, stopped using IRC 15+ years ago, and used it in total for probably 15-20 years. I'm 39 and started at .. Idk, probably 8-9. I think I was an op from 12-16 maybe 17. A lot of ops were people who synced (peered) their stable and moderated servers on good connections with efnet. Like, OC1-3 connections. My friends and I were pretty much apprentice network engineers to a family member who…
There really wasn't an OC1 in use anywhere, OC3s were for sure.
Back in the late 90s, my IRC server was rejected for linking on EFnet because my uplink was known to host rather shady suspects. Some IRC folks would go on to make the FBI's most wanted list for DDoSing satellites. My equipment was seized and never returned even though I was only being housed in the building, unrelated to the case itself. The data center owner and I are friends and he ran an amazing network, one of t…
I've tried to get into IRC but the public servers have so many dead channels. On the one channel I did find active someone called me a racial slur because I use Windows. I wish there were more people using these alternative, somewhat decentralized services that weren't just tech people. Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talkin…
> Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talking about the technology itself.
I don't think FreeBSD was _ever_ discussed on efnet's #freebsd lol
I've tried to get into IRC but the public servers have so many dead channels. On the one channel I did find active someone called me a racial slur because I use Windows. I wish there were more people using these alternative, somewhat decentralized services that weren't just tech people. Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talkin…
> Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talking about the technology itself. I don't think FreeBSD was _ever_ discussed on efnet's #freebsd lol
As one of the former opers in there, yeah, we talked about it a lot lol.
If you go real deep I went to the same highschool as JKH so sometimes we'd talk about that too...
> Whenever I see some cool new fediverse technology or alternative protocl (e.g gemini), 99% of the conversation is just people talking about the technology itself. I don't think FreeBSD was _ever_ discussed on efnet's #freebsd lol
As one of the former opers in there, yeah, we talked about it a lot lol. If you go real deep I went to the same highschool as JKH so sometimes we'd talk about that too...
Wow I think I remember your username
Were you on at the same time as Asym, Axthrower, Lefty, that black dude who was into photography (lol sorry), the girl who kept talking about her sbux investment performance... nitedog (?)
I had op there for a while, I can't remember my username tho
As one of the former opers in there, yeah, we talked about it a lot lol. If you go real deep I went to the same highschool as JKH so sometimes we'd talk about that too...
Wow I think I remember your username Were you on at the same time as Asym, Axthrower, Lefty, that black dude who was into photography (lol sorry), the girl who kept talking about her sbux investment performance... nitedog (?) I had op there for a while, I can't remember my username tho
I could've written this article at that time. I was all about Weechat and IRC in general. Unfortunately, the Freenode situation was what finally made me jump ship. I've been using Discord every since and while I'd still prefer to use IRC, I don't mind it nearly as much as I originally expected to.
It's surprising to me that IRC diehards jumped to Discord and not to hosting Matrix servers.
>Matrix is the modern IRC alternative, not discord. But simultaneously Matrix is not a good enough Discord alternative. Too much friction, too many issues, and still difficult for non-technical users. The reason Discord won out is you can just send a link to somebody and they're already on-boarded.
Even Discord is too hard for non-technical people. My attempt at a family server has dozens of stale accounts belonging to my parents. As much as it infuriates me, I now understand why WhatsApp is phone-only.
Discord is annoying AF for highly technical users like myself.
The company itself seems to be riddled with problems so honestly I wouldn't be surprised if it was dead in the next 48 months.
Wow I think I remember your username Were you on at the same time as Asym, Axthrower, Lefty, that black dude who was into photography (lol sorry), the girl who kept talking about her sbux investment performance... nitedog (?) I had op there for a while, I can't remember my username tho
Yep, that was me.
fun times
I had ops courtesy of that alternative bot Austin (?) ran - I remember there were like two competing bot systems and he liked me for some reason
Even Discord is too hard for non-technical people. My attempt at a family server has dozens of stale accounts belonging to my parents. As much as it infuriates me, I now understand why WhatsApp is phone-only.
I don't think being phone-only is the key there. Telegram is not phone-only and I'd say it's as easy to use as WhatsApp. In fact, for non-technical people it essentially behaves as a blue WhatsApp and I've heard it described exactly like that, but if you want to go beyond that, the functionality is there. This kind of software that can accommodate several "levels" of users is sadly becoming rarer and rarer. Discord i…
Not convinced - I certainly don't find Discord any more complex or harder to use than Telegram. The main problem my parents had was they kept losing their account details and creating new accounts, and I think any system that isn't phone-only will have that problem (yes you can make accounts unique by email address, but my parents have multiple email addresses that they mix up, so that doesn't solve the problem). Disabling web browser use and making it harder to sign up (or harder to use without signing up, or locking down server invites even more strictly) would "help" a bit, but I like having a chat system that people can try out in the browser before they commit to it.