Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AIM will be discontinued today

help.aol.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 274 posts

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#241

Post by saltcured »

oblio wrote: post #125
Cknight70 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here! I'm really sad they never added anymore chat protocols, and now most of the ones I used are obsolete or don't work. I stopped when all my friends switched from Skype (which I used Trillian for) to Telegram, but I missed how compact Trillian was.

I get the impression that Pidgin, Trillian and the other one I can't really remember just gave up at some point. I'm using Pidgin, mostly out of nostalgia, but the default configuration basically can't connect to any mainstream messenger these days (Facebook, WhatsApp, Hangouts, Skype or Viber). Plus the UI is so dated, especially regarding emojis. Before anyone asks, it's in C and I'm nowhere competent (or intereste…

I use Pidgin with Gmail and Slack accounts today, much like I used it with MSN and AIM accounts many years ago.

I use the Hangouts and Slack apps on my Android phone to read scrollback history for the time period when Pidgin is signed off, or to monitor channels in mostly read-only mode while away from my desk.

I find responding via swype infuriating and rarely worth the effort. It leads to very low information content since people use poor grammar and vocabulary when writing on a touch screen and having every third word randomly replaced with something else by the UX.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#242

Post by jharger »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #28
majewsky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LTE equals 4G.

LTE is an extension to 4G. That said, I'm pretty sure he meant 3G.

So I'm an iPhone user as well, and what he said is correct. The phone normally displays LTE when full LTE service is available. In my experience. when you're in a normal LTE area, the 4G display usually indicates a really bad signal, as in it can't establish a full LTE connection, so it's trying to fall back to an old protocol, and thus your data performance is really bad.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#243

Post by jasonkostempski »

wl wrote: post #238
wil421 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have cellphones now no need to know when someone is online. AIM and AOL before it were great when you don’t have text. No one needs that now when you have texts app or snap chat. The one thing I do miss are times when you could just find a random classmates username and message them. When you do this with text it can be a little more awkward if you don’t know each other. Why do you need to know if a freind is only…

The point is that with AIM (or instant messenger, generally), you knew who was up for chatting. If someone wasn't up for chatting, they either would have an away message or wouldn't be signed on at all. Sure, I can text my friends at any hour. But they might be out at dinner. Or at a concert. Or trying to sleep.

I made quite a few friends as a result of friends-of-friends joining a chat, friend leaves for the night and the conversation continues even without the intermediary friend. That happens with IRL interactions sometimes too but not as often in my experience, usually everyone leaves if the links are broken. I don't think most people would continue a conversation with someone they didn't really know after they happened to be part of the same group text either.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#244

Post by Andrenid »

Jarwain wrote: post #197
tunesmith wrote: post #182

One thing I'll miss about AIM is that it's a communication modality that doesn't exist right now. It was everywhere, and on MacOS it was integrated into the OS. For most people I knew, they had it set to join when they got on the computer. So it meant that you knew when your friends were at the computer, and you knew when you could have long "in the background" conversations with your friends. It was just a different…

I find Discord to fill this space in a slightly more effective way, although I don't believe they differentiate from mobile vs. computer use quite yet. However, I find a majority of my friends (and I personally) use discord mainly on desktop. I don't even have discord on my phone.

Discord has absolutely replaced AIM/MSN/ICQ/IRC for my friends. Everyone I care to chat to uses it, and has it on all their devices, including phone, as our primary messenger. My circle of friends is admittedly nearly entirely techies (and some finance crowd who seem to love Discord too).

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#245

Post by Frondo »

ImSkeptical wrote: post #135
Frondo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is permanent, exactly so. Our ability to slog around drives full of data lets us gloss over this fact, but when we're dead, are our kids gonna keep slogging around our drives? Nah. Better way to get permanence in your life is to do things that people will remember you for, if permanence is what you're after. Crowd-sourced in other people's memories.

That's why you need to keep it on some kind of cloud storage drive arranging an annuity or trust to keep paying the bills. Then, you have a script on a cloud server that posts on Craigslist once a year or month, hiring someone to duplicate your setup on a new cloud provider, opening a port for one of your existing nodes to connect to and verify, and also ask that person to modify the reproduction script of the clone,…

Haha, a never-ending hell for the kids you leave behind when you die. Love it. It should email them monthly messages, too. "Your dead parents data is STILL SAFE."

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#246

Post by jasonkostempski »

klez wrote: post #79
kodt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, am happy to see all my old AIM conversations deleted and lost forever.

Ok, but that should be your choice, not AOL's.

I would have preferred AOL not have the ability to even read it, let alone store it.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#247

Post by eropple »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #243
wl wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that with AIM (or instant messenger, generally), you knew who was up for chatting. If someone wasn't up for chatting, they either would have an away message or wouldn't be signed on at all. Sure, I can text my friends at any hour. But they might be out at dinner. Or at a concert. Or trying to sleep.

I made quite a few friends as a result of friends-of-friends joining a chat, friend leaves for the night and the conversation continues even without the intermediary friend. That happens with IRL interactions sometimes too but not as often in my experience, usually everyone leaves if the links are broken. I don't think most people would continue a conversation with someone they didn't really know after they happened…

Happens sometimes amongst my friend groups with Facebook groups. Though I also don't really have a problem with going "hey, I'm not headed home, want to go get a drink at the next place?" with folks I've just met through a friend, and nobody really ever seems to have a problem with the question.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#248

Post by aninteger »

esotericsean wrote: post #224
veridies wrote: post #207

I still used AIM up until today. My friends and I just switched over to a private XMPP server, and we've been using Pidgin/Adium anyway, so it's not a huge change. AIM has been extremely reliable, I've been able to use it on every platform I've ever owned (usually with free software), and it's easy to end-to-end encrypt messages. My friends and I just never saw a reason to move away from AIM. Everyone just decided to…

You'll still be able to use AIM if you setup a private server? I need to look into this.

If you ever get around to making a private OSCAR based server and publish the code somewhere please let us know.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#249

Post by et-al »

tunesmith wrote: post #182

One thing I'll miss about AIM is that it's a communication modality that doesn't exist right now. It was everywhere, and on MacOS it was integrated into the OS. For most people I knew, they had it set to join when they got on the computer. So it meant that you knew when your friends were at the computer, and you knew when you could have long "in the background" conversations with your friends. It was just a different…

Yeah, there's a push towards asynchronous communication (e.g. Gchat -> Google Hangouts), but what makes real-time synchronous chat so great was the attention from both parties.

When messages have a lag in response, there's generally not as much excitement and before you know it, one person is preoccupied with something else.

Re: AIM will be discontinued today

#250

Post by jedberg »

DarronWyke wrote: post #180
jedberg wrote: post #126

Goodbye. :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Z2CklSxM0 Since everyone is sharing their AIM memories: When I was in college (1995-1998), AIM was the #1 way to flirt with people. Today the kids worry about whether they got a like or not. Back then, you'd sit and stare at your buddy list waiting for that person you liked to come online so you could say something witty, and then stew with worry if they didn't respond bu…

>Back then, you'd sit and stare at your buddy list waiting for that person you liked to come online so you could say something witty, and then stew with worry if they didn't respond but remained online. Or you'd get a friend/another account to IM them to see if they'd really blocked you or not.

Yes! You had your alt account to check for blocks. I forgot about that.
Post reply on HN