I miss the #internet of the early #90s; the highlight probably being #IRC - #Internet Relay #Chat.
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I miss the #internet of the early #90s; the highlight probably being #IRC - #Internet Relay #Chat. The internet hadn't really made it into the average Danish home at this point, so getting access meant you'd have to be a student loitering at school or someone working at a large computer company or telco. Although I've been chatting with these people for ages - some for decades - there are still some I haven't met face to face yet. Once in a rare while it happens, but mostly unexpected as I don't visit IRC that often any more. One turned out to be a coworker. Another turned out to be my department head. Weird how that goes.
Here's thing I found on the 'Tubes that describes the whole thing:
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I miss the #internet of the early #90s; the highlight probably being #IRC - #Internet Relay #Chat. The internet hadn't really made it into the average Danish home at this point, so getting access meant you'd have to be a student loitering at school or someone working at a large computer company or telco. Although I've been chatting with these people for ages - some for decades - there are still some I haven't met face to face yet. Once in a rare while it happens, but mostly unexpected as I don't visit IRC that often any more. One turned out to be a coworker. Another turned out to be my department head. Weird how that goes.
Here's thing I found on the 'Tubes that describes the whole thing:
@saustrup I used to play online political roleplaying games - specifically something called #CyberNations - and we had so much fun on IRC.
Everyone organized themselves in alliances and used IRC for daily comms. Haven't used it since, probably, 2006.
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@saustrup I used to play online political roleplaying games - specifically something called #CyberNations - and we had so much fun on IRC.
Everyone organized themselves in alliances and used IRC for daily comms. Haven't used it since, probably, 2006.
@EvilCartyen IRC was the gateway to knowledge, meetups, parties and I even found a partner there!
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@EvilCartyen IRC was the gateway to knowledge, meetups, parties and I even found a partner there!
@saustrup yeah, I had a girl from cybernations and irc fly to Denmark for a weekend too.
IRC - helping nerds get laid!
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@saustrup yeah, I had a girl from cybernations and irc fly to Denmark for a weekend too.
IRC - helping nerds get laid!
@EvilCartyen It was a beautiful thing
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I miss the #internet of the early #90s; the highlight probably being #IRC - #Internet Relay #Chat. The internet hadn't really made it into the average Danish home at this point, so getting access meant you'd have to be a student loitering at school or someone working at a large computer company or telco. Although I've been chatting with these people for ages - some for decades - there are still some I haven't met face to face yet. Once in a rare while it happens, but mostly unexpected as I don't visit IRC that often any more. One turned out to be a coworker. Another turned out to be my department head. Weird how that goes.
Here's thing I found on the 'Tubes that describes the whole thing:
@saustrup Ubuntu Denmark is still on IRC, however many of the regular users have chosen proprietary Discord as their primary communications platform which I sometimes call a "reskinned disco version" of IRC. Not really sure why they didn't choose Matrix.. Maybe they didn't want to operate their own server.
It's funny that even though people have flocked to other services, then ... IRC would still be the cosy, steady. reliable granddad they know and love, and could choose to fallback to, because it's still around and will outlive most of the other services
I still feel like IRC could play a role now that the social media landscape is being reshaped bit by bit (heh) - I don't know if it has "connectors" to Matrix? Nevertheless IRC probably needs a renewed marketing push.
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@saustrup Ubuntu Denmark is still on IRC, however many of the regular users have chosen proprietary Discord as their primary communications platform which I sometimes call a "reskinned disco version" of IRC. Not really sure why they didn't choose Matrix.. Maybe they didn't want to operate their own server.
It's funny that even though people have flocked to other services, then ... IRC would still be the cosy, steady. reliable granddad they know and love, and could choose to fallback to, because it's still around and will outlive most of the other services
I still feel like IRC could play a role now that the social media landscape is being reshaped bit by bit (heh) - I don't know if it has "connectors" to Matrix? Nevertheless IRC probably needs a renewed marketing push.
@simonjust Honestly, Matrix is a nightmare to run compared to the simplicity of IRC. Of course IRC is a lot simpler and doesn't offer P2P encryption or file attachments, but why needs that fancy pants stuff anyway?
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@saustrup Ubuntu Denmark is still on IRC, however many of the regular users have chosen proprietary Discord as their primary communications platform which I sometimes call a "reskinned disco version" of IRC. Not really sure why they didn't choose Matrix.. Maybe they didn't want to operate their own server.
It's funny that even though people have flocked to other services, then ... IRC would still be the cosy, steady. reliable granddad they know and love, and could choose to fallback to, because it's still around and will outlive most of the other services
I still feel like IRC could play a role now that the social media landscape is being reshaped bit by bit (heh) - I don't know if it has "connectors" to Matrix? Nevertheless IRC probably needs a renewed marketing push.
@simonjust I have read about bridges Matrix-IRC and fiddled with getting one set up from irc.libera.chat but I couldn't get it going.
So now I use Matrix as my main chat-channel and erc (emacs irc client) for thing that are only there. Had to set up a bouncer, though, so the learning curve for this librarian was no mean feat.
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@simonjust Honestly, Matrix is a nightmare to run compared to the simplicity of IRC. Of course IRC is a lot simpler and doesn't offer P2P encryption or file attachments, but why needs that fancy pants stuff anyway?
@saustrup Yeah, I certainly don't need all of that
I remember we ran our IRC-server on a tin can and people could connect from everywhere thats the cool thing about interoperability. I mostly used mIRC, but the convinience of being able to connect via a Java applet embedded in a website was also very nice (Matrix also has a webapp for that)
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@simonjust I have read about bridges Matrix-IRC and fiddled with getting one set up from irc.libera.chat but I couldn't get it going.
So now I use Matrix as my main chat-channel and erc (emacs irc client) for thing that are only there. Had to set up a bouncer, though, so the learning curve for this librarian was no mean feat.
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@simonjust @fritjof https://mtrix.dk is running Synapse on Kubernetes. It's actually working quite well and I like the Matrix approach to P2P encryption, but I fear the climb is a little too steep for the average user. Of course it's a lot less complicated if you skip out on all the encryption stuff, but it's kind of their main selling point.
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@simonjust I went for synapse.
Have considered changing, but a bit scared og the process at the moment. @saustrup -
@simonjust @fritjof https://mtrix.dk is running Synapse on Kubernetes. It's actually working quite well and I like the Matrix approach to P2P encryption, but I fear the climb is a little too steep for the average user. Of course it's a lot less complicated if you skip out on all the encryption stuff, but it's kind of their main selling point.
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@simonjust I went for synapse.
Have considered changing, but a bit scared og the process at the moment. @saustrup -
@simonjust @fritjof @saustrup instead of matrix, which seems somewhat unwieldy, I am considering setting up an XMPP server again.
That can also bridge to IRC if I need to perhaps through my bouncer, which would be nice.
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@simonjust @fritjof @saustrup instead of matrix, which seems somewhat unwieldy, I am considering setting up an XMPP server again.
That can also bridge to IRC if I need to perhaps through my bouncer, which would be nice.
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@simonjust @jazz @fritjof I ran ejabberd a decade (and a half?) ago. Absolutely rock solid piece of software. Everyone was free to join my server. Nobody did
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@simonjust @jazz @fritjof I ran ejabberd a decade (and a half?) ago. Absolutely rock solid piece of software. Everyone was free to join my server. Nobody did
@saustrup @jazz @fritjof Cool! Hehe, no it's pretty difficult to get people to join sometimes.
At one point Jabber/XMPP felt like it was everywhere, even in the early Facebook Messenger, but the guidelines for connecting with it was tucked away at the bottom of the Facebook docs. And then Zuckerberg probably figured out that he needed to tie people to the platform, so XMPP support was eventually phased out, but I did manage to test it shortly before it was.
We could have had more openness. I think, say, Mozilla wasted a great opportunity by not integrating an XMPP client directly into Netscape/Firefox to counter the Microsoft Skype buyout
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@saustrup @jazz @fritjof Cool! Hehe, no it's pretty difficult to get people to join sometimes.
At one point Jabber/XMPP felt like it was everywhere, even in the early Facebook Messenger, but the guidelines for connecting with it was tucked away at the bottom of the Facebook docs. And then Zuckerberg probably figured out that he needed to tie people to the platform, so XMPP support was eventually phased out, but I did manage to test it shortly before it was.
We could have had more openness. I think, say, Mozilla wasted a great opportunity by not integrating an XMPP client directly into Netscape/Firefox to counter the Microsoft Skype buyout
@simonjust @jazz @fritjof Not sure a #Mozilla integration would benefit the cause - they added Matrix support to #Thunderbird, and it's not pretty. At all.
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@simonjust @jazz @fritjof Not sure a #Mozilla integration would benefit the cause - they added Matrix support to #Thunderbird, and it's not pretty. At all.
@saustrup @jazz @fritjof Yes, there's also IRC and XMPP support (I just noticed, LOL.. I've been using Thunderbird for many, many years).
But it's not really an visible, advertised feature, it just sits there in the sidebar - so I don't think people know it's there? It seems a bit out-of-place - I'd want the feature in a browser, I think. Hm, I need to test it
I agree that the integration is not pretty, but there's always this clash between having an abundance of features and then simplicity on the other side.
