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https://hexchat.github.io/news/2.16.2.html
Am I the only one who is astonished at how much at how much traction this threat got? I was going to post this earlier but didn't want to bump the thread if it was dropping away.
Hi @Mumbly!
Probably I made a mistake, but the reason +r is set on #metalvps is that, according to Libera, "most bots do not log in to accounts." It seemed to me that, at the beginning, it might be better to try keeping the channel more simple by excluding bots and unregistered users.
Libera says, "users connecting to Libera.Chat without accounts will remain uncloaked." Do you want to stay uncloaked?
Are there differences between logging in to Libera and logging in to a green forum?
Could you please help me understand other reasons why people might not want to register their nicks with Libera and log in to their Libera accounts? What am I missing?
Thanks for helping me understand! Best wishes!
Tom
I do actually wonder as well. Especially since you could also delete your NickServ registration and data, other than here. I've personally never had any issues with bots, but I really only had smol channels on libera for testing around.
Hello @ReallyOldGuy!
How old is "really old?" I'm 76. I keep looking for a Low Ender who iis older than I am. Could it be you?
It seems that almost all major free and open source software projects have an IRC channel, right? Maybe open source is the reason IRC continues to have substantial momentum despite many people saying IRC is dead?
Since free software projects interest me, it seemed like a good idea to try learning more about IRC. Now that I got the ancient ircii IRC client up and running again, I've been able to hang out on the #netbsd and #openbsd channels as well as others such as Lasse Collin's channel for xz and #lowendtalk.
Probably I want to hang out in about ten or twenty channels.
What are your favorite IRC channels?
Best!
Tom
Ah! So that's one difference between the Green Forums and FreeNode!
I thought they were re-instated for existing users, but not for new purchases.
Mine works from I don't know how long ago.
Pretty much!
And, well the only other difference is a forum vs a chat channel and all the differences attached to that
I hope to be 76 one day but not yet. Proportionally, I'm catching up though.
I can't figure it out. To me, back in the day, IRC really met a need and it still does. Things got weird with proprietary messaging formats and cutsie clients. It seemed like reinventing a wheel for no good reason. There is almost nothing (important) you can't do with IRC that you can with other messaging platforms.
I had written my own IRC client a long time ago. I wanted to play with the protocol and see how ugly the data stream was. It was a linux console-based thing and it wasn't designed for usability by anybody other than me. I'm quite sure I wrote it in C. You just can't do that with today's modern tools. Can you imagine writing your own WebEx or MS Teams client?
For something like IRC to make a "comeback", it needs to be critically integrated into something. I don't think the major players are likely to let that happen.
I'll leave that for somebody who still uses IRC. I just don't have time for another hobby.
It's really not that important, but I can help you understand.
At the beginning, you want visitors. Locking the channel is counterproductive in that sense. The best analogy for +r would be a non-public/secret/locked forum where only registered users can see posts.
Channel owners generally want the channel filled with people and set +r as a temporary measure only in cases where there are problematic ban evaders, etc. Exceptions may include some "teamler" channels (i.e., internal forum staff sections) or the need to stay exclusive for some reason.
It makes no difference for casual visitor. People from EFnet and IRCnet survived 30 years of IRCing without cloaking
It's nice option to have it, but some people still prefer "vanity vhosts" (that's part of the irc culture) or simply don't bothet with that. Just hopping on IRC every now and then does not require a cloak. Especially if that's not your primary IRC network (Libera is just one of many).
Yes, of course - it's just IRC. That's completely optional on some IRC networks, and there's no option to do that on the others. It makes sense to register in case you want to "own" a nickname if the network supports it, but apart from that it's just optional.
Just hopping on IRC every now and then does not require a account. Especially if that's not your primary IRC network (Libera is just one of many) - again. That's the beauty of IRC compared to all those newer, modern social platforms that require registration.
When you started researching IRC, how many channels did not let you in because you weren't registered?
I found that when I tried to install it on a new machine. The old 6.xx installations on the old machine, of course, didn't stop working. However, when I tried to install the newer 7.xx version, I encountered a "no-license" splash popup.
https://www.pocnetwork.net/internet-news/mirc-ended-its-lifetime-license-agreement-with-all-who-purchased-its-software-10-years-out/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33864660
https://www.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/h9i42p/mirc_registration_expired/
I'm afraid so, yeah.
To be honest, that's what got me into "domaining", during the late 90s and early 2000s, back when shells at KIRE, Lomag, RisingNET, Jeah etc., were a thing
Yeah, I know, as I said, I thought they changed how they were doing it..
I guess not then? Or they did make changes, but not as many as I thought.
@Mumbly Thanks for explaining about the +r!
It seems okay if there is a low, easily overcome barrier to entry.
Is there a way for someone like you to be allowed in as an individual exception to the registration requirement?
About the first thing I did was register an account on Libera, so trying to join channels while unregistered hasn't really come up yet for me.
Thanks again!
This is not how IRC works. IRC can't be judged through modern platform glasses or compared with forums.
The beauty of IRC is that anyone can join and start chatting. IRC itself does not require user account registrations. The original idea of IRC was that a nickname is just a nickname, not a form of user identification. The original IRC networks still adhere to that philosophy, while others may not. However, IRC networks including Libera do not require user account registrations just some channels do.
While some channels do require registration, it's rare. There are usually one of the two reasons for this. One is due to a tendency to create an exclusive "1337" club, and the other is entirely legitimate, such as preventing too much noise from visitors on high-traffic support channels.
When you said, "It seems okay if there is a low, easily overcome barrier to entry," you're actually creating a limitation, barrier, for the channel, not for the visitors. You see, there are hundreds of IRC networks and thousands of IRC channels. People have choice. But it depends on what you want to achieve with the channel. Do you want to build a nice community or just to keep around half-dozen of idlers?
The primary reason why most people try to join channel as yours is curiosity. It's not for some significant, important reason, just curiosity. But when faced with a message like "Cannot join channel (+r) - you need to be logged into your NickServ account," they will simply flee away and forget about it instantly. Because they don't need your channel to exist on IRC. It's other way around - you need a people to call your chatroom a #channel. That's how things work on IRC.
People in general wont invest effort into joining your channel; if anyone it will likely be you investing the effort to invite people on the channel.
If you simply want to keep some potential nuisances out (new, small channels won't experience noteworthy nuisances), there are proper channel modes to achieve that, such as +s (secret) or +p (private).
When a channel is set to +s mode, it means that the channel will not appear in the list of channels when someone uses the "/list" command. Users also won't see +s channels when they use the "/whois" command to retrieve information about a specific user.
The writing above is solely for your understanding of IRC. It's not meant to pressure you into anything. I am also aware that my perspective may differ from the perspective of those who have grown up with the internet and social networks over the last 15 years or so.
If you feel more comfortable with +r mode, then so be it. How channels are managed is solely in the hands of the operator, or to say it differently, "your channel - your rules," and there's no one who can object to that as long as it's within network guidelines.
Registration of the nick guarantees:
Whoever runs the channel about the identity of the person in front of them
Whoever uses that nickname that no shit will be done using his nickname
@Mumbly if you join #lowendtalk (the way it's set up now) you'll be able to join but you won't be able to write in the channel if you're not registered
The mindset of those using IRC networks where one can register has changed from that of the initial networks where one could not
@Carlin0 that's not the #lowendtalk (or was it #lowendbox) from old Freenode I remember. We did not have such restrictions and everyone could talk. But then again, I was active there between 2012 - 2014 or so when @Infinity was still running it.
I still visit Libera every now and then, but my true 'home' network is IRCnet, where I need to take care of my business by myself.
btw. We just got new server (irc.spadhausen.com) hosted in Ravenna, Italy - must not be that far from you, right?
What a dreadful reminder. Thanks really!
It's been around 26 or 27 years since I purchased my first IRC shell account. I wasn't so experienced back then; I just wanted to have 5 or 6 linked Eggdrops to keep my channels up when I (still on a dial-up connection) went to sleep.
So I got this "genius" idea to purchase one big IRC shell account (8 processes allowed - I still remember that). I sent money (yearly payment!) via Western Union to Taiwan. Or was it Hong Kong? Hmmm... I was waiting at my bank for almost an hour to get the WU payment confirmation (good old times...).
So I went home, got login credentials, made those 6 or so Eggdrops with fancy vhosts, linked them, and proudly parked them on my IRC channel. Until they died. All of them! At once! What did I know about network outages, server outages, diversity, etc... back then.
This was periodically happening on a daily basis for the next two months or so, what a frustrating experience, and then this shell provider deadpooled.
Oh, and that jerk CB3ROB, later famous for running Cyberbunker, also ripped me off. He discontinued the shell service right after he got my 10 bucks. :P
The next botnet was way better ...
The last shell provider I used was ShellFx.net/Xzibition.com. I stopped using them around 2007 when I got my first $5/month VPSes (Datarealm, Rapidxen, Vps4less...). That's also the reason why I started to follow this new blog lowendbox.com in 2008.
Oh, and I think I still have shell or two at http://polarhome.com/ For more than two decades. That's some sort of MetalVPS predecessor!
I'm still paying them for an IRC shell for about 20 years now.
Oh, the nostalgia.
Cyberbunker, Polarhome, RisingNET and what was that dutch one? xs4all or something like that?
I still have a bunch of domains that was only used for vhosts, running eggdrops and muh's on shells everywhere so you could switch vhost whenever.
And just thinking about the vast amount of late hours scripting tcl to get the coolest botnet makes me cringe.
Hey, no complaining about TCL please!
All it would take to make it into one of the best scripting languages ever is having arrays (which it admittedly probably didn't have at all back then) be actual first class variables. Still very much ahead of it's time.
To me, this represents one of the saddest news of 2024. Without Hexchat I don't know what I will use for IRC. I really fell in love with that client.
Just continue using it until something drastically changes, so that you won't be able to use it anymore.
Some people use IRC clients that haven't been seriously updated for two decades, while this one was actively developed until 2024.
Life on IRC moves slower than life outside.
Yeah, as long as GTK2 continues to function there isn't really all that much that could stop it from building with more than a couple slight nudges at worst, i guess.
@default switch to a non-graphics client : weechat or irssi
Not complaining about the language, just all the hours I spent with it.
It was (is?) a really neat language.
Don't even tell me... I still use several of them today, including the perfectly active Pisg stats page generated from the Eggdrop chan log
It still very much exists, even if it's nowhere near as popular as it used to be in the 90s or early 2000s (not very surprising as it's only real competition back then was perl). Even in 2024 i quite often write TCL code when the requirements start to go beyond what can sanely be achieved with shell scripting.
I mostly target Jim (https://jim.tcl.tk) though. It's a pretty neat little interpreter. My only real complaints would be that it's code base is kind of badly organized and that they should have added sugar for multidimensional arrays by default (even if implementing that comes with a somewhat weird syntax due to simplicity of the parser - doing stuff the TCL way using dictionaries sadly gets pretty clunky beyond a certain level).
Reposting from OGF as someone here may be interested in this too:
Many sources have disappeared over time but here is some interesting reading that delve into historical details, tracing the development of various things from their early years up to 2005.
Some things that appear completely illogical from today's perspective on social networks made complete sense back then.
https://ishii.de/kei/codegovernance/Ishii2005-CodeGovernance.pdf
Thanks @Mumbly! Somehow I missed your post here until just now. Apologies!