14 ms·

Wizards use IRC, and their apprentices use discord. Some of the most deeply technical people in the world use IRC. Being able to talk to them is a superpower.

shadowgovt 3y ago
IRC's biggest weakness is the protocol didn't transition cleanly to a mobile world. But apart from that, it's still as good as it always was.
- mlyle 3y ago
  IRC's biggest weakness is the lack of a consistent history mechanism and that you usually need to idle.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    things like irccloud made this easier for consumers this but it was too late
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      As does quassel <3
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    IRCs other biggest weakness is that to host images is a PITA. As is sending files. DCC works, if/when it wants.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      Hosting images is a great way to waste a lot of money and have to hire a squad of lawyers. There's a reason free image hosts have well known short lifecycles. The strength of IRC is that it is mostly stateless. Just lists of IPs subscribed to sockets.
      - doublerabbit 3y ago
        As beautiful as it is. You don't need to host anything. Image capabilities are still possible as all you'll need to do is encode media in to base32 and then spew that to brother channel, #hn-images or something. IRC is perfect for long blinding data dumps. If the user opts in to imagery, let the client connect to that channel. Sure you'll loose out on the image if you were not available but irc is like that anyway. Having your client throw [image:~hackernews_logo] to indicate that you've posted an image is no less spam than someone announcing that they've changed their nick to "doublerabbit|Zzz".
mortallywounded 3y ago
puts on wizard hat
Syonyk 3y ago
Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana. Discord is awful. It's most of the downsides of IRC, with all the downsides of a centralized company running it, with a very resource heavy client. You can run IRC on just about nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a 16MHz 68030 with 8MB RAM just fine), and I know quite a few quiet little backwaters servers doing exactly that.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Discord is as if IRC and MSN/Y!M/AIM had an orgy and gave birth to an illegitimate child. Discord got it right but wrong. Channels are correct. Image / File sharing is correct Closed gardens and gimmicks with paid subscriptions is where it falls.
  - immibis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 3y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing a ton of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

shadowgovt 3y ago

IRC's biggest weakness is the protocol didn't transition cleanly to a mobile world. But apart from that, it's still as good as it always was.

mlyle 3y ago
IRC's biggest weakness is the lack of a consistent history mechanism and that you usually need to idle.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  things like irccloud made this easier for consumers this but it was too late
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    As does quassel <3
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  IRCs other biggest weakness is that to host images is a PITA. As is sending files. DCC works, if/when it wants.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    Hosting images is a great way to waste a lot of money and have to hire a squad of lawyers. There's a reason free image hosts have well known short lifecycles. The strength of IRC is that it is mostly stateless. Just lists of IPs subscribed to sockets.
    - doublerabbit 3y ago
      As beautiful as it is. You don't need to host anything. Image capabilities are still possible as all you'll need to do is encode media in to base32 and then spew that to brother channel, #hn-images or something. IRC is perfect for long blinding data dumps. If the user opts in to imagery, let the client connect to that channel. Sure you'll loose out on the image if you were not available but irc is like that anyway. Having your client throw [image:~hackernews_logo] to indicate that you've posted an image is no less spam than someone announcing that they've changed their nick to "doublerabbit|Zzz".

mortallywounded 3y ago

puts on wizard hat

Syonyk 3y ago

Indeed. The only sane place on the internet to get answers to a range of deeply technical questions about modern tech (or, at least, a discussion that will get you closer to the answer) I've found is IRC. It's filled with a lot of "old tech guys who have been doing this forever." And, often enough, that's who you need to make sense of some bit of architectural manual arcana. Discord is awful. It's most of the downsides of IRC, with all the downsides of a centralized company running it, with a very resource heavy client. You can run IRC on just about nothing (I ran an IRC network in college on a 16MHz 68030 with 8MB RAM just fine), and I know quite a few quiet little backwaters servers doing exactly that.

doublerabbit 3y ago
Discord is as if IRC and MSN/Y!M/AIM had an orgy and gave birth to an illegitimate child. Discord got it right but wrong. Channels are correct. Image / File sharing is correct Closed gardens and gimmicks with paid subscriptions is where it falls.
- immibis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing a ton of this. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.