Huh, I guess file transfers were never "officially" part of IRC?
I kind of forgot given one of my friends in high school (I graduated in 1994) was running (x)dcc warez bots on popped shells all over the place.
"Nature finds a way" or something. ;)
A lot of those other deficiencies apparently ameliorated by IRCv3 were also addressed in SILC, decades ago, e.g.
1. unique identity based on public key cryptography, so you can have individuals with identical nicknames on the same server/network (just like real life has people with identical names, but different DNA). So: no need for NickServ. UNIX/Linux: still never figured this one out. Windows/NT/Active Directory has UUIDs, but z0mg, so broken [esp. with UTF-8/Unicode usernames]! Do not recommend as a viable alternative either.
2. channel "founder" status, so riding netsplits to takeover channels with ops? Eliminated. So: no need for ChanServ.
3. /disconnected mode. So no need for a bnc to store/forward messages.
SILC also had things such as:
end-to-end encryption, by default.
Perfect Forward Secrecy, by default
Messages are encrypted from server operators, by default (this is still rarely acknowledged as a real threat, perhaps the lawsuit against WhatsApp with whistleblowers alleging that they were able to read users' presumed private messages, en masse, will start to open up folks' eyes to that threat model? I have similar horror stories I've kept private for decades that were shared as gloating points by some less scrupulous hackers with whom I crossed paths.)
Additionally, private messages can be cryptographically signed (for an added layer of comfort I guess?).
Circa 2014 I released an encrypted OpenBSD VM with some tools to show a proof of concept of tunneling OTR (
https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/) over SILC, just because well: why put all your eggs into one basket? I also threw in Tor, for folks who wanted to torify things; and I made sure all the clients were configured to be UTF-8 clean. I called it: "Merry Cryptmas" and uploaded it to archive.org with a 30 day retention, because I didn't want folks to run into stale Docker container type vulnerabilities.
Best part? I didn't need to write a
single line of code! That was all using
existing libre/free open source software.
I guess it is debatable whether configuring some clients to handle UTF-8/Unicode gracefully is writing code? IMHO, such things should have been defaults (particularly in 2014 by which point UTF-8 was already over two decades old) but at least everything
supported UTF-8/Unicode even if it had braindead ASCII defaults.
Meanwhile, in 2026: Discord face scan/ID debacle has apparently asploded to the point where in the past day or two: Twitch has turned every chat into "Verified Accounts Only" and the old loop hole of: "I am a subscriber, thus obviously, I am a verified account" no longer seems to function!
Brilliant! /sarcasm
Twitch want me to "verify" with a phone number, but the VoIP # I have used quite successfully for nearly two decades, is apparently not considered "blessed" in whatever broken database Twitch uses (presumably the same database that is used by LiveNation/TicketMaster, Discord, etc.).
Particularly ironic: Twitch Chat is derived from IRC. I had zero problems connecting to it years ago via irssi! Though, I met some junior midwestern sysadmin at TwitchCon last year who seemed amazed I had gotten that to function. I think he maybe wasn't enough of a nerd or something?
So, IRC: which required:
no email addresses, and
no phone numbers? Developed in an era when folks coding stuff online probably still had very fresh memories of AT&T as being a convicted monopoly and best avoided
entirely Is now being perverted by the machinations of broligarch billionaire Jeff Bezos' minions to require
both! It's as if they took jwz's law of software (see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski's_Law ), and decided it wasn't Tetsuo Shima mutation scene from アキラ「AKIRA」enough.
sighYear of the Fire Horse is off to a ragin start! Of, stupidity, apparently?
"There are typing notifiers, if you want them
there are message reactions, if you want them"
Interesting! I do not want them. I do not want message read receipts either. I also do not want message "likes", emoji-reactions, etc. (I realize, it's too late for ActivityPub/Mastodon which already has such things).
Those IMHO, are all anti-patterns and going backwards in usability and create perverse social incentives. ;(
I think the current hearings with Mark Zuckerberg testifying about how addictive IG/Meta/FB/etc. are may raise similar issues? I wonder how he will wriggle under scrutiny?
Particularly given that one of my other friends from high school used to work for that conglomerate (incidentally, his team apparently helped give their avatars
legs so they weren't just disembodied 3D heads!) and told me, first hand, that they studied uhh, what would the dumbed down euphemistic term be, "engagement metrics"? Something like that. Basically every little feature was more or less A/B tested to see what would be the most addictive
possible and that's what got deployed. I doubt that friend will get subpoenaed. Moreover, that friend and I still see each other infrequently and I wouldn't wish court room appearances on my worst enemies, let alone friends.
"Television is the last technology we should be allowed to invent and put out without a surgeon general's warning."ーAlan Kay
IMHO, Alan Kay was mistaken, Television, should
also have shipped with a surgeon general's warning.
Similarly, Australia and all these other countries banning "social" media for 16 and under? IMHO, it doesn't go far
enough no one should be using that crap. Ah well!
As I get older, I increasingly seem to relate to Gene Wilder's portrayal of Willie Wonka with the despondent delivery of lines such as, "No. Stop. Don't." As children must learn these things for themselves or something?
Still, IRC iterating, is kind of charming, in its own way.
Is NNTP iterating? I realize, NNTP still exists too, but it seemed much less progressive. NZBs were more or less dug by a limited subset of the warez scene which perpetuated commercial alt.binaries servers with long retention policies. Meanwhile, FTP warez stuff, though it evolved TLSed FXPing, largely seemed overshadowed by Torrenting decades ago; while outspoken security experts such as
@tqbf@infosec.exchange couldn't seem to be convinced that FTP is older than TCP/IP and there's something rather charming to such a venerable protocol which survived the NCP to TCP transition.
CC:
@whitequark@treehouse.systems
