Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#21

Post by eswat » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:11 PM UTC

non-entity wrote: post #9

neon_me wrote: post #3

mostly (and still) on the un-encrypted IRC :D

Ok, so hear me out: I'm a young dumb kid, and I just don't get irc. I'll join a supposedly active irc channel for something I'm working on, do whatever the channel wants as far as registering, etc. Once I'm in, nothing. No one seems to be chatting about anything, the only messages I see are logging people joining and leaving. One time I left an irc client open for hours and i finally saw some other human asked a ques…

Some people have amassed a collection of channels throughout the years that were probably pretty active in the past, but aren’t anymore. Some people like me might notice this and remove them from my autojoin list while others won’t care since idling in a channel is a pretty negligible performance hit.

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#22

Post by dlphn___xyz » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

group meetups

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#23

Post by ScottFree » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

Most likely in private, invite-only chat servers and email lists of various kinds. Anything that's publicly exposed to the internet has too much noise these days. I remember when it was difficult to moderate a chat channel or a web forum back in the 00's. It's much tougher today because of the volume of people you're exposed to.

"Only once you can successfully wrestle a herd of monkeys will you truly be ready to manage your forum."

https://megatokyo.com/strip/209

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#24

Post by pier25 » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

leetbulb wrote: post #11

non-entity wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so hear me out: I'm a young dumb kid, and I just don't get irc. I'll join a supposedly active irc channel for something I'm working on, do whatever the channel wants as far as registering, etc. Once I'm in, nothing. No one seems to be chatting about anything, the only messages I see are logging people joining and leaving. One time I left an irc client open for hours and i finally saw some other human asked a ques…

Some channels are just like that. If you have a question, usually you just ask and wait a while until someone gets around to answer it or have a conversation with you about it. Checking my IRC client since yesterday, there's at least 500 new messages in almost all channels I've joined. Some more popular channels like #linux have constant conversations going.

What server do you use?

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#25

Post by eswat » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:15 PM UTC

neon_me wrote: post #3

mostly (and still) on the un-encrypted IRC :D

I miss hanging out in #CSS with the topic explicitly saying the channel wasn’t about Counter-Strike: Source. You’d still get new people asking for a scirm every so often though.

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#26

Post by traderjane » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #4

adreamingsoul wrote: post #2

I don't imagine that information will be shared here in an open forum.

Clarification - I don't mean "hackers" as depicted in the movies. I'm referring to nerds, geeks, engineers, tickerers etc. who do it for the love of doing it. Not for building a commercial operation.

I personally have the intuition that tinkerers and engineers on the verge of commercialization are the most interesting. The open open source world of completely passionate volunteerism just seems a bit anemic to me, unable to gather the momentum or energy of others around them.

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#27

Post by Millennium » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

Mostly the same places they always did. Inertia is strong like that. Most of them miss a simpler time, just like you do, but hey, so it goes.

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#28

Post by badsavage » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

In jail

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#29

Post by wyclif » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

silverfox17 wrote: post #14

Freenode is a good place.. the /list command will show you channels once you connect. Popular ones are #hardware, #linux, #windows, #python, #debian, #bash, ##networking, etc. There is a channel for most major technologies.

I spend a lot of time in #python and usually it's quite active and helpful.

Re: Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout?

#30

Post by Orion21 » Tue, Aug 13, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

leetbulb wrote: post #17

demygale wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience on irc today as well. It’s dead. I used to keep a few channels open at work all day long in 2007. #j2me, #java, #c. The conversation was active with no more than a few minutes of silence at a time. People would say good morning at the start of the day, goodbye at the end, they would talk about their weekend. It was like a virtual break room where you could ask tech questions (except #c was hosti…

This is just over the past couple days: https://i.imgur.com/WUFiL18.png I wouldn't call it dead at all.

where/how do you connect to these rooms? I would love to hang out in the #linux room