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ICQ will stop working from June 26

icq.com

431–440 of 776 posts

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#431

489151 here. I even got a job offer from ICQ back in the day. One of the perks they offered was a small ICQ number ending in zeros. I didn't take the job offer because I was in high school, though, and wasn't even looking for a job. It's unclear whether they knew that. I'd written some companion program and put it on the internet and they'd found it and were impressed. :)

Mirabilis contacted you?

I worked on some ICQ software in high school, and was the maintainer of large user base ICQ clone. I still own the domain: licq.org

Never got a single job offer, guess they saw my code and went running away ;)

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#432
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

you reminded me that we used to pay for Internet access by the hour. You'd pay $X for one hour of Internet use, so you'd go online, do a thing and then disconnect to save money. local vs remote for email was such a different time. you'd have a fat client on your laptop, and you'd do a bunch of writing offline, before connecting, having the program sync, and then disconnect. how times have changed!

I still feel bad I left my parents' computer online all night to download a .wav (?) audio file of Mario jumping from Nintendo.com. Back then, the closest most kids got to Nintendo was via video game magazines. So going to Nintendo.com for the first time and downloading an audio file was a special moment. The download was taking hours and I have no idea how much it cost my parents. I just remember being so disappointed the next day when it turned out to only be a 1 second audio file. THAT WAS IT?!?! I WAITED ALL THAT TIME FOR THAT? :)

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#435
post #45

1303789 Serious question - why do so many people remember our ICQ numbers? I don’t remember what user-facing function it served. Was that actually the identifier we shared with people to connect? I suppose it also came at a time for a lot of us where things seemed to wedge into our brains more easily.

526450, I think

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#436
post #399
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

Get a dumb phone or a Linux phone. Stop complaining. Be an example.

Or just don't take your phone out? I always read these threads and think that the folks here probably have issues disconnecting and so they're longing for a world where social pressures forced disconnection. I still frequently don't check my socials until after work or after a long social activity. I'm upfront with my contacts about that too, and most of my friends are like me. I only monitor my phone constantly if I'm awaiting an important call or email, but then I usually have something big going on in my life at the time.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#437
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started writing an essay about this topic. I am one of those nostalgics by the old internet. I thought it was the aesthetic (geocities, etc), but after giving it a lot of thought, that wasn't. It was that your life (all of us) was "offline by default". We lived offline and then we connect to the internet for a few minutes, hours, whatever. But you lived your life offline. We attended concerts, took photos, recorded…

You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing. You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform. Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Tel…

I miss Adium. All my chats in one place. Beeper is trying to replicate that.

https://www.beeper.com

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#438
I seek you. This was the first internet messenger I ever used. I met some people playing quake on one of the few servers I could get below 200 ping on. Netman, and BayardBrightBlade, if you're still out there, thank you for an excellent 8th grade.

Re: ICQ will stop working from June 26

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I gotta say that experience was ruined by the 10 second ad I had to endure ahead of it. I really wish YouTube would just not try to monetize videos that are shorter than the ads.

NewPipe or uBlock Origin will prevent your experiences from being ruined in the future.

Oh I know I have them installed but my "HN browser" is Safari which doesn't have plugins.
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