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Nice! Evidence #835 that ageism is still socially acceptable in tech... To your point, though. Nobody is asking you to use IRC. The "older" people are only giv

Nice! Evidence #835 that ageism is still socially acceptable in tech... To your point, though. Nobody is asking you to use IRC. The "older" people are only giving a warning: don't build your house on someone else's land. Sooner or later, the land owner will take notice of all the nice things that are built there and will find a way to extract rent and/or take it from you. It has happened before and it will keep happening until all the coming generations (i.e, the young know-it-alls who think have everything under control) learn the lesson. IRC is "old"? Fine. Go help build a better alternative, in any small way you can. But please don't continue to build your house on someone else's land.

323 5y ago
I'm old and I don't like IRC. It's so annoying to use. It's almost as bad today as it was in the 90s. > Go help build a better alternative Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.
- rglullis 5y ago
  No, it's not. "People" didn't build Discord. A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. There is nothing guaranteeing that it's still going to be around in the next 5 years, let alone the next 10 or 50 or 100. Remember the last "better alternative" that was also very good, worked on all major platforms, also got sold to MS for multiple billions? To go back to the OP's point and the article. If you are a neophyte who cares about nothing but the immediate convenience, sure, stick with whatever Big Tech is pushing you. But if you want longevity and stability, DO NOT BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND.
  - bikingbismuth 5y ago
    Discord didn’t end up selling to Microsoft.
  - a2128 5y ago
    > A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. Didn't Discord end up ending talks with Microsoft and staying independent? I don't think this deal ever actually went through.
    - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      Yes. Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/discord-terminates-buyout-talks-with-microsoft-wsj-2021-04-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/discord-terminates-buyout-t...
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Ok. I stand corrected. Doesn't change much of the picture, does it? Do you think it is wise to concentrate so much power into one single corporation? What is Discord going to do in order to make enough profits to beat the return of a 10bi sale?
  - nlowell 5y ago
    We're in all-caps italics territory so I'm not sure how helpful I can be, but I just want to stress the fact that as a modern human we all have to rely on organizations and companies outside of our control. Things like IRC, in 2022, are for software developers to talk to each other. Things like Discord, are built for my mid-twenties friends to talk to each other. If I moved to IRC for the control, I would have no one to talk to!
    - rglullis 5y ago
      Last paragraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30332146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30332146
    - Agamus 5y ago
      I have been using IRC as a means to stay in touch with the people I actually care about since the 90's, and it hasn't let me down yet. Many of my friends are in their 20s, and only a few are developers.
      - oblio 5y ago
        1. How many of them technical? 2. How many of them are of a libertarian mindset? Or very politically active/vocal, otherwise?
        Agamus 5y ago
        1. Probably ~30% or so 2. Probably ~10% or so
        Hakashiro 5y ago
        Maybe you should have asked him how many friends he has. When MSN Messenger existed, I pushed hard to get people on XMPP. "It's no problem, there are multiplatform, multiprotocol clients anyway". I had more than 200 contacts on MSN Messenger. Most or all of them, people I met in real life. On XMPP? Maybe like... 10? Out of which perhaps only 2 I met in real life, and the rest I met on Linux forums. I was really aggressive on getting people to XMPP to the point I eventually closed my account and told people to reach me on XMPP. Nobody gave a fuck, of course they didn't. The world doesn't revolve around me. Look, we get it. It's sad that corporations are realising they can hold users hostage for profit, but unfortunately that's the tradeoff with ease of use. Oh, and Discord does so much more than IRC. It has voice chats "well just use Mumble", yeah but... why? Discord already has it. Or desktop sharing "use Jitsi", again, Discord already does it. Or large file sharing "roll your own FTP server", uhhh... no? Discord does it? And a web UI if you don't want to chat online. And reliable mobile notifications. And two factor authentication. And in-game overlays. FOSS fanatics struggle to admit commercial tools are so frickin' easy to use. I used to be like that, I understand. And then I got a job :P
- balabaster 5y ago
  They did build a better alternative - Slack, then Teams came along and tried to rebuild Slack and then Skype and then Bluejeans came along... and then Zoom... and then Discord and the comms environment keeps evolving and the rent keeps going up. This is life. Another product will be along shortly, and another, and another, and another... Whatever you build on will be ripped out from under you and you'll be forced to evolve, just as we all have had to since the beginning of software engineering. One thing is true as has been since the beginning - the next generation always knows better than the previous until life bites them in the ass and they learn their lessons the hard way too. As sure as the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow. There's little point in complaining about it. What will be, will be.
  - quadrifoliate 5y ago
    > Slack, then Teams came along and tried to rebuild Slack and then Skype and then Bluejeans came along... and then Zoom... and then Discord and the comms environment keeps evolving and the rent keeps going up. This is life. Well, you could equivalently say that the problems with IRC are just life. It's relatively easy to have data from my IRC from 15 years ago -- do you think that will be true for people who are using Discord today? All I'm saying is, if you value your conversations and data, maybe explore the other side of that tradeoff where you don't have to keep moving from one platform to another, but keep working for 15-20 years on continuously improving an open platform; and get to keep all your data into the bargain. And it doesn't have to be IRC. It can be Matrix or Zulip or Mattermost (instead of Slack or Discord).
    - balabaster 5y ago
      My main point still stands - subsequent generations always thinking they know better until life bites them in the ass and delivers them a new order of humility. Life has a way of teaching us all a lesson or two when we get too big for our britches.
dotnet00 5y ago
Matrix would be a pretty good "modernized" IRC.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  It's not bad, and I use it/like it, but it's also exceedingly heavy compared to IRC. If you want to join large rooms, your server really needs a couple gig of RAM, and the "full featured" client (Element) is an Electron mess that uses an awful lot of RAM. A freshly launched Element connected to my server is idling with 200MB of RAM used, and it'll go up from there.
  - dotnet00 5y ago
    Yep, I completely agree with you on that. Making the client in Electron is somewhat understandable given the effort it would take to maintain a client for every platform, but synapse is really heavy. Synapse's heavy resource usage is one of the many issues the second-generation server - Dendrite - is intended to solve, but it seems like it's still likely a year or so out from being production ready.
- creesch 5y ago
  Except that it isn't really, the protocol from what I gather is very convoluted which is seen in the amount of mature featured client and server implementations for it. It also doesn't solve some of the problems that got in the way of IRC in the later years with regard to ease of use. Specifically in regard to onboarding new users. I mean, it is "fine" but it isn't great. The most mature client is supposed to be Element and signing up is fairly easy (although explaining if you should use matrix.org to register your account or a home server is done by linking to technical documents). Once you have signed up the client bothers you with a variety of onboarding attention grabbing blinky things that are really not relevant at that stage and only serve to confuse a new user. For example, there is a blinking dot on the + sign for creating spaces. But a new user will have not the slightest clue what they are and why they would make one. But okay, once you are through that you are greeted by an [absolute barren client experience](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a73fd0f540.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a73fd0f540.png) which gives the impression that some things are still loading. Once you figure out that everything is loaded you might figure that you want to explore rooms, which seems sensible enough. So you click on it [only to be greeted by what amounts to effectively the exact same thing IRC would show you](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a745a33dad.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a745a33dad.png) when you used the `/list` command but with actually fewer options to filter through the ridiculously long list other than searching by keyword. And if a new user is really receptive, they might spot the fact [that this isn't the only list they can get overwhelmed by](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a7545a8517.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a7545a8517.png). Just to be sure I wasn't talking nonsense, I tried some other clients listed on matrix.org and most of them show even less and give even less options. Some of them don't even allow you to browse lists and others make it even more confusing in many areas. Matrix has added some new features to the IRC experience but generally hasn't made it an easier experience to work with if you are starting out as a new user.
Aeolun 5y ago
I don’t understand why everyone is so hung up over IRC. It’s the very definition of a centralized platform. For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode. Until the powers-at-be tried to take advantage of their position, and then everyone else just left and continue their lives peacefully on libera.chat The point is not IRC. The point is about open standards and freedom. Use IRC, XMPP, Matrix. I don't care, as long as it not something where the landlord can come and take it away from us.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  > For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode. Much did, yes, and when Freenode went belly up for insane reasons, everyone active moved their channels over to "What is it? Not Freenode! What's it like? Freenode!" and life went on as normal, because it doesn't take much to host IRC, and there's not much friction to move over. But there are also an awful lot of quiet little backwaters IRC servers, with a few dozen users or less, floating around the internet - and that's where some of the most interesting content on the internet lives. You can host them on almost nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a couple Mac SE/30s - yes, 16MHz CPU, 12-16MB RAM), and if the link to them goes down for a few hours, well, doesn't seem to bother anyone, you just wait for your client to rejoin. As for why people are hung up over IRC? I can't speak for others, but as a long time IRC user who still uses it: - Native clients for everything that aren't a hot mess of Electron, because IRC predates that. I don't need a high end modern system to connect to IRC, I can connect from a terminal, from a gutless wonder, from an old [whatever] system, etc. xchat/hexchat/(is mIRC still a thing?) just don't take much memory or CPU. - It requires almost no bandwidth to connect. If you're on a crappy connection, IRC will work just fine. Not all of us live on high bandwidth gigabit fiber. - It's not constantly changing. It does what it does, does it well, and pretty much hasn't changed meaningfully in 20+ years. It's stable, and I don't have to worry about some company suddenly deciding they need to growth hack and adding Javascript confetti or whatever to try and excite me into doing some action more. - Most importantly, it's filled with the sort of people who value these things. It's a good filter for technically minded people who aren't up to their necks in the latest consumer electronics nonsense. I like talking to those people, as I'm one of them.
natpalmer1776 5y ago
I love that warning, it speaks to the issue on so many levels. Today's technology market is built around rent-seeking for services that individuals take for granted while starting 'the next big thing' and then suddenly when they blow up they're charged an arm and a leg for these 'basic' services. I would personally refine the warning to say "don't build your factory on someone else's land." because in most cases the landowner isn't concerned about houses so much as they are about groups generating revenue that they can get a cut of.
- rglullis 5y ago
  > in most cases the landowner isn't concerned about houses so much as they are about groups generating revenue that they can get a cut of. It goes beyond that. "Houses" or "factories", the rent-extraction doesn't have to be from you. Following the analogy, the reason you shouldn't build a house is that the landowner might find someone else interested in building a lucrative shopping mall in the area, and you will get evicted mercilessly.

323 5y ago

I'm old and I don't like IRC. It's so annoying to use. It's almost as bad today as it was in the 90s. > Go help build a better alternative Yeah, people did that. It's called Discord.

rglullis 5y ago
No, it's not. "People" didn't build Discord. A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. There is nothing guaranteeing that it's still going to be around in the next 5 years, let alone the next 10 or 50 or 100. Remember the last "better alternative" that was also very good, worked on all major platforms, also got sold to MS for multiple billions? To go back to the OP's point and the article. If you are a neophyte who cares about nothing but the immediate convenience, sure, stick with whatever Big Tech is pushing you. But if you want longevity and stability, DO NOT BUILD YOUR HOUSE ON SOMEONE ELSE'S LAND.
- bikingbismuth 5y ago
  Discord didn’t end up selling to Microsoft.
- a2128 5y ago
  > A company built it, then sold it to Microsoft for more than $10 billion. Didn't Discord end up ending talks with Microsoft and staying independent? I don't think this deal ever actually went through.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    Yes. Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/discord-terminates-buyout-talks-with-microsoft-wsj-2021-04-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/discord-terminates-buyout-t...
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Ok. I stand corrected. Doesn't change much of the picture, does it? Do you think it is wise to concentrate so much power into one single corporation? What is Discord going to do in order to make enough profits to beat the return of a 10bi sale?
- nlowell 5y ago
  We're in all-caps italics territory so I'm not sure how helpful I can be, but I just want to stress the fact that as a modern human we all have to rely on organizations and companies outside of our control. Things like IRC, in 2022, are for software developers to talk to each other. Things like Discord, are built for my mid-twenties friends to talk to each other. If I moved to IRC for the control, I would have no one to talk to!
  - rglullis 5y ago
    Last paragraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30332146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30332146
  - Agamus 5y ago
    I have been using IRC as a means to stay in touch with the people I actually care about since the 90's, and it hasn't let me down yet. Many of my friends are in their 20s, and only a few are developers.
    - oblio 5y ago
      1. How many of them technical? 2. How many of them are of a libertarian mindset? Or very politically active/vocal, otherwise?
      - Agamus 5y ago
        1. Probably ~30% or so 2. Probably ~10% or so
      - Hakashiro 5y ago
        Maybe you should have asked him how many friends he has. When MSN Messenger existed, I pushed hard to get people on XMPP. "It's no problem, there are multiplatform, multiprotocol clients anyway". I had more than 200 contacts on MSN Messenger. Most or all of them, people I met in real life. On XMPP? Maybe like... 10? Out of which perhaps only 2 I met in real life, and the rest I met on Linux forums. I was really aggressive on getting people to XMPP to the point I eventually closed my account and told people to reach me on XMPP. Nobody gave a fuck, of course they didn't. The world doesn't revolve around me. Look, we get it. It's sad that corporations are realising they can hold users hostage for profit, but unfortunately that's the tradeoff with ease of use. Oh, and Discord does so much more than IRC. It has voice chats "well just use Mumble", yeah but... why? Discord already has it. Or desktop sharing "use Jitsi", again, Discord already does it. Or large file sharing "roll your own FTP server", uhhh... no? Discord does it? And a web UI if you don't want to chat online. And reliable mobile notifications. And two factor authentication. And in-game overlays. FOSS fanatics struggle to admit commercial tools are so frickin' easy to use. I used to be like that, I understand. And then I got a job :P
balabaster 5y ago
They did build a better alternative - Slack, then Teams came along and tried to rebuild Slack and then Skype and then Bluejeans came along... and then Zoom... and then Discord and the comms environment keeps evolving and the rent keeps going up. This is life. Another product will be along shortly, and another, and another, and another... Whatever you build on will be ripped out from under you and you'll be forced to evolve, just as we all have had to since the beginning of software engineering. One thing is true as has been since the beginning - the next generation always knows better than the previous until life bites them in the ass and they learn their lessons the hard way too. As sure as the sun will set tonight and rise again tomorrow. There's little point in complaining about it. What will be, will be.
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  > Slack, then Teams came along and tried to rebuild Slack and then Skype and then Bluejeans came along... and then Zoom... and then Discord and the comms environment keeps evolving and the rent keeps going up. This is life. Well, you could equivalently say that the problems with IRC are just life. It's relatively easy to have data from my IRC from 15 years ago -- do you think that will be true for people who are using Discord today? All I'm saying is, if you value your conversations and data, maybe explore the other side of that tradeoff where you don't have to keep moving from one platform to another, but keep working for 15-20 years on continuously improving an open platform; and get to keep all your data into the bargain. And it doesn't have to be IRC. It can be Matrix or Zulip or Mattermost (instead of Slack or Discord).
  - balabaster 5y ago
    My main point still stands - subsequent generations always thinking they know better until life bites them in the ass and delivers them a new order of humility. Life has a way of teaching us all a lesson or two when we get too big for our britches.

dotnet00 5y ago

Matrix would be a pretty good "modernized" IRC.

Syonyk 5y ago
It's not bad, and I use it/like it, but it's also exceedingly heavy compared to IRC. If you want to join large rooms, your server really needs a couple gig of RAM, and the "full featured" client (Element) is an Electron mess that uses an awful lot of RAM. A freshly launched Element connected to my server is idling with 200MB of RAM used, and it'll go up from there.
- dotnet00 5y ago
  Yep, I completely agree with you on that. Making the client in Electron is somewhat understandable given the effort it would take to maintain a client for every platform, but synapse is really heavy. Synapse's heavy resource usage is one of the many issues the second-generation server - Dendrite - is intended to solve, but it seems like it's still likely a year or so out from being production ready.
creesch 5y ago
Except that it isn't really, the protocol from what I gather is very convoluted which is seen in the amount of mature featured client and server implementations for it. It also doesn't solve some of the problems that got in the way of IRC in the later years with regard to ease of use. Specifically in regard to onboarding new users. I mean, it is "fine" but it isn't great. The most mature client is supposed to be Element and signing up is fairly easy (although explaining if you should use matrix.org to register your account or a home server is done by linking to technical documents). Once you have signed up the client bothers you with a variety of onboarding attention grabbing blinky things that are really not relevant at that stage and only serve to confuse a new user. For example, there is a blinking dot on the + sign for creating spaces. But a new user will have not the slightest clue what they are and why they would make one. But okay, once you are through that you are greeted by an [absolute barren client experience](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a73fd0f540.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a73fd0f540.png) which gives the impression that some things are still loading. Once you figure out that everything is loaded you might figure that you want to explore rooms, which seems sensible enough. So you click on it [only to be greeted by what amounts to effectively the exact same thing IRC would show you](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a745a33dad.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a745a33dad.png) when you used the `/list` command but with actually fewer options to filter through the ridiculously long list other than searching by keyword. And if a new user is really receptive, they might spot the fact [that this isn't the only list they can get overwhelmed by](https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a7545a8517.png https://www.creesch.com/dump/img/img_620a7545a8517.png). Just to be sure I wasn't talking nonsense, I tried some other clients listed on matrix.org and most of them show even less and give even less options. Some of them don't even allow you to browse lists and others make it even more confusing in many areas. Matrix has added some new features to the IRC experience but generally hasn't made it an easier experience to work with if you are starting out as a new user.

Aeolun 5y ago

I don’t understand why everyone is so hung up over IRC. It’s the very definition of a centralized platform. For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode.

rglullis 5y ago
> For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode. Until the powers-at-be tried to take advantage of their position, and then everyone else just left and continue their lives peacefully on libera.chat The point is not IRC. The point is about open standards and freedom. Use IRC, XMPP, Matrix. I don't care, as long as it not something where the landlord can come and take it away from us.
Syonyk 5y ago
> For a long time basically anything of relevance happened on freenode. Much did, yes, and when Freenode went belly up for insane reasons, everyone active moved their channels over to "What is it? Not Freenode! What's it like? Freenode!" and life went on as normal, because it doesn't take much to host IRC, and there's not much friction to move over. But there are also an awful lot of quiet little backwaters IRC servers, with a few dozen users or less, floating around the internet - and that's where some of the most interesting content on the internet lives. You can host them on almost nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a couple Mac SE/30s - yes, 16MHz CPU, 12-16MB RAM), and if the link to them goes down for a few hours, well, doesn't seem to bother anyone, you just wait for your client to rejoin. As for why people are hung up over IRC? I can't speak for others, but as a long time IRC user who still uses it: - Native clients for everything that aren't a hot mess of Electron, because IRC predates that. I don't need a high end modern system to connect to IRC, I can connect from a terminal, from a gutless wonder, from an old [whatever] system, etc. xchat/hexchat/(is mIRC still a thing?) just don't take much memory or CPU. - It requires almost no bandwidth to connect. If you're on a crappy connection, IRC will work just fine. Not all of us live on high bandwidth gigabit fiber. - It's not constantly changing. It does what it does, does it well, and pretty much hasn't changed meaningfully in 20+ years. It's stable, and I don't have to worry about some company suddenly deciding they need to growth hack and adding Javascript confetti or whatever to try and excite me into doing some action more. - Most importantly, it's filled with the sort of people who value these things. It's a good filter for technically minded people who aren't up to their necks in the latest consumer electronics nonsense. I like talking to those people, as I'm one of them.

natpalmer1776 5y ago

I love that warning, it speaks to the issue on so many levels. Today's technology market is built around rent-seeking for services that individuals take for granted while starting 'the next big thing' and then suddenly when they blow up they're charged an arm and a leg for these 'basic' services. I would personally refine the warning to say "don't build your factory on someone else's land." because in most cases the landowner isn't concerned about houses so much as they are about groups generating revenue that they can get a cut of.

rglullis 5y ago
> in most cases the landowner isn't concerned about houses so much as they are about groups generating revenue that they can get a cut of. It goes beyond that. "Houses" or "factories", the rent-extraction doesn't have to be from you. Following the analogy, the reason you shouldn't build a house is that the landowner might find someone else interested in building a lucrative shopping mall in the area, and you will get evicted mercilessly.