[HN Gopher] History of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
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       History of IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
        
       Author : oedmarap
       Score  : 49 points
       Date   : 2021-04-04 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (daniel.haxx.se)
 (TXT) w3m dump (daniel.haxx.se)
        
       | atdt wrote:
       | Speaking of IRC and the Gulf War, I remember reading somewhere
       | that the US Army was using IRC and at one point it was used to
       | coordinate airstrikes. I don't have a source for this, and it
       | certainly sounds fantastical, but maybe someone here could
       | corroborate it (or refute it decisively).
        
         | Donald wrote:
         | https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a465828.pdf
         | 
         | IRC is still used, and some communities have switched to XMPP.
        
         | desktopninja wrote:
         | I recall the same. It was so long ago but it came from a
         | reputable site.
         | 
         | A quick search brought up:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147321
        
           | msla wrote:
           | Clickable:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147321
        
         | na85 wrote:
         | IRC was used quite extensively among NATO militaries (to the
         | point that I've seen mIRC referred to as "Military Internet
         | Relay Chat", lol) but they've begun migrating away from it
         | towards XMPP solutions such as JCHAT[0] which IMHO has a very
         | poor UX but unfortunately IRC stagnated and doesn't work on
         | mobile devices very well.
         | 
         | [0] https://npc.ncia.nato.int/Pages/Product-Delivery.aspx
        
       | vpilcx wrote:
       | It's a decade since this was created. Is QuakeNet still the
       | biggest? Because it feels like FreeNode is now the only place
       | left.
        
         | oarsinsync wrote:
         | That changed in 2012:
         | 
         | https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2012
        
         | ddevault wrote:
         | At least OFTC and Rizon are also still going strong, in
         | addition to Freenode. There are also many private IRC networks
         | which serve smaller communities and have not seen much in the
         | way of stagnation.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | abecedarius wrote:
       | Prehistory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET_Relay
       | 
       | We called it just 'Relay' as I remember it. A much smaller world
       | than IRC today, mostly students with a scattering of university
       | IT workers.
        
       | dijit wrote:
       | [comment was deleted as I was replying]
       | 
       | > I was introduced to IRC back in 2002 by a Russian girl called
       | Svetlana (lost contact sadly) a few years my senior at a language
       | school I attended that summer. She introduced me to the channel
       | for the Sub7 trojan horse virus. It was there that I first learnt
       | about IP addresses and ports, and pissing my dad off playing
       | around with his (and others') PC remotely, printing things like.
       | I remember MoSucker being another trojan horse that was popular
       | on the network.
       | 
       | > We used to share victims and laugh at what we found them doing.
       | I would hang out on other networks on teen channels posing as a
       | girl, sending .scr 'slideshows' of my 'pictures'. Then there were
       | all the warez channels with 0-day releases and the ability to
       | download directly and quickly.
       | 
       | >After quite a few months of script kiddying I was introduced to
       | FreeNode. From there I was introduced to things like Python,
       | FreeBSD, Linux, Emacs, Scheme, SICP, Lisp, Haskell, a free
       | Mathematica subscription, fun mathematics, the idea of going to
       | university abroad, the friend whose house I'm at right now and
       | much more. Obviously there are other sources for this kind of
       | thing these days, but I do look back on that period quite fondly,
       | and cannot imagine where I would be without the people I came
       | across on IRC. I still go back to FreeNode if I ever need some
       | quick help, but I can't imagine spending my hours hanging out on
       | IRC anymore. Things have changed.
       | 
       | My experience mimics your own. It's surprising how "closed"
       | computer science was to British teenagers in 2003-2010, computing
       | was reduced to Microsoft Access/Excel and word.
       | 
       | But the skiddy hacker groups were always so willing to teach to
       | those who wanted to listen, which led me to open source, which is
       | similar but a lot less forgiving than I remember the old hacker
       | groups.
        
         | dopidopHN wrote:
         | Very similar experience... we must be in the same age group.
         | 
         | I would not be in the same place in life without IRC.
        
       | jcpham2 wrote:
       | IRC user for 23 something odd years, no real replacement for
       | real-time chat. I know many substitutes have come along such as
       | discord and whatnot but I've never seen the need to use any of
       | them.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-04 23:02 UTC)