Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down • Hacker News Board

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#31

Post by rasengan » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

airstrike wrote: post #27

rasengan wrote: post #11

I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10]. IRC is no longer difficult to u…

If only I could build weechat from source on windows! If anyone out there is willing to provide binaries I'd be glad to buy you coffee so I can switch over from irssi mIRC is what got me into programming, actually... I miss the good old days

Another option is to try cygwin [1] as it has a weechat build [2]. Weechat also runs under WSL [3].

[1] https://cygwin.com/

[2] https://www.cygwin.com/packages/summary/weechat.html

[3] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#32

Post by dhodell » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:03 PM UTC

myu701 wrote: post #2

So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is? On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie? IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

I've used IRC for over 20 years and have never heard of this service. On your scale, it's "your second cousin's friend's sister's dog's goldfish had a VPS that went down."

This is #2 on HN because people are reading "Freenode IRC ... is shutting down." That'd be closer to the gmail end of your spectrum. We are not shutting down freenode.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#33

Post by andarleen » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #11

I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10]. IRC is no longer difficult to u…

Is Rizon still the crime haven it was?

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#34

Post by hguant » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #26

myu701 wrote: post #2

So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is? On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie? IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

IRC is still, in my experience, the best place to get technical help and discussion for most projects.

The various haskell IRC channels are some of the best places to learn and get help/mentoring with that language - so many patient, genuinely helpful people. It's one of those things that made me go "Oh, that's what everyone is moaning abut" re demise of the old web etc.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#35

Post by mattl » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

kgraves wrote: post #18

Can I use this on my iPhone? I haven't been able to find easy to use ones.

I use IRCCloud, the app is decent.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#36

Post by echelon » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

ori_b wrote: post #26

myu701 wrote: post #2

So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is? On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie? IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

IRC is still, in my experience, the best place to get technical help and discussion for most projects.

It absolutely still is.

If I have an in-depth technical question about Rust, I can make a post about it on the Rust subreddit, Stack Overflow, or the Rust community forums, but if I jump in IRC I'll have an answer in under five minutes and an interactive explanation.

IRC is the internet of the 90s and 00s. Without all the spam, advertisement, and noise.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#37

Post by buovjaga » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

rasengan wrote: post #11

I just wanted to take a moment and share with the HN community that IRC is definitely very alive and kicking! There are great channels for thousands of amazing projects, communities and teams spread across so many great IRC Networks, from Freenode [1] to OFTC [2], to Rizon [3], to DALnet [4], to tildeverse [5], Snoonet [6], Quakenet [7], EFnet [8], IRCnet [9] among other networks [10]. IRC is no longer difficult to u…

The awesome list: https://github.com/davisonio/awesome-irc

Supybot's successor is Limnoria: https://github.com/ProgVal/Limnoria

GitHub plugin: https://github.com/ProgVal/Supybot-plugins/tree/master/GitHu...

Btw. on the topic of bouncers, Simon Ser is developing a new one in Go: https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#38

Post by jtakkala » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

A long time ago parsing Echelog logs was how I was able to monitor the IRC activity of an attacker at a company I used to work at. I didn't normally sit on these channels myself, but Echelog enabled me to look back and collect data on the various handles that this person operated under.

There were 20-something handles they used over approximately a 6 month period of monitoring. I was always able to find a small piece of information to correlate these handles together. Sometimes it started with a hunch, such as the language (even slang) they would use, but eventually they'd slip up in some way and we'd have a pretty irrefutable link to the person.

This information helped us develop a motive behind the hack and the ongoing public info was then fed to national crime agencies. My employer never went through with prosecution, but as this person was of much interest behind other hacks they were eventually prosecuted and convicted. I always wondered if my occasional Echelog intelligence reports ever had a role in that conviction.

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#39

Post by ken » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

myu701 wrote: post #2

So, I'm too young to have ever used IRC. This must be a biggish deal to make it #2 on HN homepage. But can someone put this in perspective of how big a deal this is? On a scale of 'Rando County Legacy ISP-provided email service' to 'Gmail' is shutting down, where does this lie? IRC is not email, etc. but again, never seen this community.

This is just one logging service, not any actual IRC servers. So today's news is not necessarily a huge deal.

IRC as a system, though, is massively important. I'd say it's like the Twitter of the first half (so far) of the internet. When the (first) Gulf War began, the first reports were via IRC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7990835

Re: Freenode IRC logging archive Echelog is shutting down

#40

Post by uk_programmer » Thu, Apr 16, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #29

uk_programmer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC is still used massively. It is a relic of the days before corporations took the internet. When it was was still fun. TBH Discord is the closest modern equivalent and the only thing that discord really does better is the embeds and voice. IRC has a ton of advantages: 1) IRC will run on ancient computers, I was chatting to people on IRC using an Amiga which is 25 years old and will run with virtually no bandwidth.…

re Discord, the funny thing is that Discord is proprietary, and I'm not sure how exportable any data and/or voice/embeds are when you want to download it out of the service itself.

Also can't script the client, you can't run your own server. Also with MIRC IIRC correctly you could layout the chat windows pretty much anyway you wanted and even have like a desktop background.

Discord is a lot easier to use, but in a lot of ways it is really limited compared to the IRC clients.