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I second a comment made below regarding https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/. I've used IRC for years and still use it almost daily - but come on Mosh + tmux

I second a comment made below regarding https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/. I've used IRC for years and still use it almost daily - but come on Mosh + tmux + ec2 just to have permanent chat history? I seriously can't advocate this crap to anyone in 2016. It's too little, too late.

Gruselbauer 10y ago
Well, yeah. When I was a teenager my group of friends used to use a QNet IRC chat for communications. Most on mIRC and such clients. Today it's pretty much all nerds. I do enjoy IRC, and pretty much live inside my tmux session, but I don't think I can recommend it to anyone who isn't already probably using it.
- Dowwie 10y ago
  Let me get this straight... you keep IRC running all day but you wouldn't recommend it to others because it's all nerds?
  - Gruselbauer 10y ago
    > but I don't think I can recommend it to anyone who isn't already probably using it I wouldn't recommend it to my friends, who were hard enough to get off WhatsApp and into Telegram at least. To my parents, who have trouble enough running Skype. To the girlfriend, who's happy with Snapchat. IRC, even at the very basic level with a GUI or Web client, demands things from users I don't consider realistic to expect from them. I'm very happy with it the way it is though. Just saying that I won't waste time recommending Arch Linux as a desktop OS to friends who have trouble keeping a Windows install useable for six months.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      You have to take it step by step. Otherwise people keep in their backward systems or habits forever.
- ryanlol 10y ago
  >Today it's pretty much all nerds Probably says more about your social circle than IRC. There's a lot of channels and if hookers and blow are more your speed than say, gentoo, you can certainly find a channel primarily discussing them.
  - Gruselbauer 10y ago
    First off, I don't believe there's anything even remotely wrong with being a nerd. Quite the opposite. I do hang around in channels focussing on a diverse range of topics, from various freenode foss-channels to torrent trackers to radical politics and also, yes, shadier communities. I just believe that even the most benign, non-techy use of IRC poses demands that are incompatible with the vast majority of users today. But that's a strength to me. IRC is filled to the brim with some of the smartest, most creative, exciting people I could think of.
    - fapjacks 10y ago
      And a ton of awful shitheads, too. Freenode for example is about 25% toxic lowlifes lording over each other in popular channels.
  - serf 10y ago
    i'd just like to mention that hookers/blow & geek/nerd/gentoo are not mutually exclusive. that is all. see also: DEFCON, HoHoCon, pretty much any alt-Con.
    - natermer 10y ago
      All you need to have hookers and blow is money. Don't need to be sexy, smart, interesting, or good looking. Sounds like nerds and hookers and blow can go together just fine.
      - saintzozo 10y ago
        In fact, most men who enjoy hookers or blow suffer from low social standing. It takes a loser to seek fulfillment through the perverse.
bnjms 10y ago
The Web interface, Vector, works surprisingly well. Last I tried it, it still lacked polish on the surface but it functioned excellently.
- Powersource 10y ago
  Now riot.im
  - bnjms 10y ago
    Glad to hear they updated the name. Riot.im sounds better for telling others to use it.
    - Gruselbauer 10y ago
      It's a wonderful name, indeed. "Let's riot!", I totally approve.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - rat87 10y ago
        Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
        Gruselbauer 10y ago
        Absolutely not. It's got a bit of an edge without seeming like something an angry teenager came up with - murder.im or so, "Riot" doesn't have only inherently negative associations -, it's short, easy to remember... it would've been a great name for many software projects, but especially for collaborative, communicative software I find it to be a stellar choice.
        bnjms 10y ago
        I actually wrote a reply explaining why it was a great name and vector somehow fell flat before understanding that you were being genuine. I agree. Riot has that edge but a Riot is always a group activity. And it's something anyone can join. They only need jump into the riot.
dijit 10y ago
There's irccloud for that, or if you want to host yourself shout-IRC is really good.
- MaxLeiter 10y ago
  Shouts actually outdated, I'd checkout the fork The Lounge - https://www.github.com/thelounge/lounge https://www.github.com/thelounge/lounge
- pomfpomfpomf3 10y ago
  irccloud keeps going down every time freenode netsplits. It got so bad lately I actually canceled my subscription and instead set up weechat+glowing bear, which is not as polished, but it works fairly well on both desktop and mobile. (And cheaper) It's also free software and easy to set up so I encourage everybody to check it out.
  - Gruselbauer 10y ago
    Does it still work if you've got WeeChat customised or does it need to be vanilla? I'd like to keep using it from a shell while on a decent machine, but would absolutely not mind the option to connect from mobile clients.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      Dev here. It's completely independent of your config. Indeed many things carry over to Glowing Bear automatically, such as scripts that modify the lines (colorize_nicks.py) or create new text buffers (like highmon or grep.py), filters, triggers, etc.
      - Gruselbauer 10y ago
        Did check it out. Absolutely amazing project and if anyone still reads through this chat, absolutely what a modern IRC experience should be like in my view. Effortlessly does a lot of the things people on here like about Slack. I like WeeChat as a client, it's fast and lean and works inside the tmux session that pretty governs my digital life both private and professionally. Alas, it's not always accessible. Getting Putty to reliably work with tmuxed ncurses apps is a nightmare for example, imho. Glowing Bear solves this brilliantly. It looks great, you get features like inline display of media and is easily secured with certificates from Let's Encrypt. Thank you, devs. This'll make my "newly discovered FOSS projects of the year" list for sure.
FooBarWidget 10y ago
But it fits the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well and small, composable tools!
kennell 10y ago
Yup. Sadly. The hassle to get a fully working setup is too much, even for technical people.
ekianjo 10y ago
I have a raspberry pi server that does just that. No need for ec2.
pmarreck 10y ago
irccloud.com and get permanent chat history, and done.

Gruselbauer 10y ago

Well, yeah. When I was a teenager my group of friends used to use a QNet IRC chat for communications. Most on mIRC and such clients. Today it's pretty much all nerds. I do enjoy IRC, and pretty much live inside my tmux session, but I don't think I can recommend it to anyone who isn't already probably using it.

Dowwie 10y ago
Let me get this straight... you keep IRC running all day but you wouldn't recommend it to others because it's all nerds?
- Gruselbauer 10y ago
  > but I don't think I can recommend it to anyone who isn't already probably using it I wouldn't recommend it to my friends, who were hard enough to get off WhatsApp and into Telegram at least. To my parents, who have trouble enough running Skype. To the girlfriend, who's happy with Snapchat. IRC, even at the very basic level with a GUI or Web client, demands things from users I don't consider realistic to expect from them. I'm very happy with it the way it is though. Just saying that I won't waste time recommending Arch Linux as a desktop OS to friends who have trouble keeping a Windows install useable for six months.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    You have to take it step by step. Otherwise people keep in their backward systems or habits forever.
ryanlol 10y ago
>Today it's pretty much all nerds Probably says more about your social circle than IRC. There's a lot of channels and if hookers and blow are more your speed than say, gentoo, you can certainly find a channel primarily discussing them.
- Gruselbauer 10y ago
  First off, I don't believe there's anything even remotely wrong with being a nerd. Quite the opposite. I do hang around in channels focussing on a diverse range of topics, from various freenode foss-channels to torrent trackers to radical politics and also, yes, shadier communities. I just believe that even the most benign, non-techy use of IRC poses demands that are incompatible with the vast majority of users today. But that's a strength to me. IRC is filled to the brim with some of the smartest, most creative, exciting people I could think of.
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    And a ton of awful shitheads, too. Freenode for example is about 25% toxic lowlifes lording over each other in popular channels.
- serf 10y ago
  i'd just like to mention that hookers/blow & geek/nerd/gentoo are not mutually exclusive. that is all. see also: DEFCON, HoHoCon, pretty much any alt-Con.
  - natermer 10y ago
    All you need to have hookers and blow is money. Don't need to be sexy, smart, interesting, or good looking. Sounds like nerds and hookers and blow can go together just fine.
    - saintzozo 10y ago
      In fact, most men who enjoy hookers or blow suffer from low social standing. It takes a loser to seek fulfillment through the perverse.

bnjms 10y ago

The Web interface, Vector, works surprisingly well. Last I tried it, it still lacked polish on the surface but it functioned excellently.

Powersource 10y ago
Now riot.im
- bnjms 10y ago
  Glad to hear they updated the name. Riot.im sounds better for telling others to use it.
  - Gruselbauer 10y ago
    It's a wonderful name, indeed. "Let's riot!", I totally approve.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - rat87 10y ago
      Can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.
      - Gruselbauer 10y ago
        Absolutely not. It's got a bit of an edge without seeming like something an angry teenager came up with - murder.im or so, "Riot" doesn't have only inherently negative associations -, it's short, easy to remember... it would've been a great name for many software projects, but especially for collaborative, communicative software I find it to be a stellar choice.
        bnjms 10y ago
        I actually wrote a reply explaining why it was a great name and vector somehow fell flat before understanding that you were being genuine. I agree. Riot has that edge but a Riot is always a group activity. And it's something anyone can join. They only need jump into the riot.

dijit 10y ago

There's irccloud for that, or if you want to host yourself shout-IRC is really good.

MaxLeiter 10y ago
Shouts actually outdated, I'd checkout the fork The Lounge - https://www.github.com/thelounge/lounge https://www.github.com/thelounge/lounge
pomfpomfpomf3 10y ago
irccloud keeps going down every time freenode netsplits. It got so bad lately I actually canceled my subscription and instead set up weechat+glowing bear, which is not as polished, but it works fairly well on both desktop and mobile. (And cheaper) It's also free software and easy to set up so I encourage everybody to check it out.
- Gruselbauer 10y ago
  Does it still work if you've got WeeChat customised or does it need to be vanilla? I'd like to keep using it from a shell while on a decent machine, but would absolutely not mind the option to connect from mobile clients.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Dev here. It's completely independent of your config. Indeed many things carry over to Glowing Bear automatically, such as scripts that modify the lines (colorize_nicks.py) or create new text buffers (like highmon or grep.py), filters, triggers, etc.
    - Gruselbauer 10y ago
      Did check it out. Absolutely amazing project and if anyone still reads through this chat, absolutely what a modern IRC experience should be like in my view. Effortlessly does a lot of the things people on here like about Slack. I like WeeChat as a client, it's fast and lean and works inside the tmux session that pretty governs my digital life both private and professionally. Alas, it's not always accessible. Getting Putty to reliably work with tmuxed ncurses apps is a nightmare for example, imho. Glowing Bear solves this brilliantly. It looks great, you get features like inline display of media and is easily secured with certificates from Let's Encrypt. Thank you, devs. This'll make my "newly discovered FOSS projects of the year" list for sure.

FooBarWidget 10y ago

But it fits the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well and small, composable tools!

kennell 10y ago

Yup. Sadly. The hassle to get a fully working setup is too much, even for technical people.

ekianjo 10y ago

I have a raspberry pi server that does just that. No need for ec2.

pmarreck 10y ago

irccloud.com and get permanent chat history, and done.