[HN Gopher] NINA: Rebuilding the original AIM, AOL Desktop, Yaho...
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NINA: Rebuilding the original AIM, AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ
platforms
Author : ecliptik
Score : 79 points
Date : 2025-07-17 07:27 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nina.chat)
(TXT) w3m dump (nina.chat)
| benguild wrote:
| the sad thing about this is what made it magical before was the
| people that were on there, and it's impossible to get that back
| now!
| endre wrote:
| same with IRC except IRC never went down.
| Bluestein wrote:
| ... and never will :)
|
| Spaceships bearing our genes will still beam IRC from
| somewhere down deep in engineering.-
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| What would be the purpose of launching a decaying lump of
| monkey meat into space when the AI can explore just as well
| with a tiny fraction of the mass requirements?
|
| I'd wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but
| IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)
| Bluestein wrote:
| > wager that it will be AI's using IRC from space, but
| IPv6 still won't have replaced IPv4. :)
|
| You are indeed totally correct on all points!
|
| (But IRC it will be :)
| anthk wrote:
| Ditto with Usenet albeit there's always cool people there.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| no but apparently you can have some kind of coup on one of
| the most popular servers and cause a huge dent in it...
| thedanbob wrote:
| Yup, they can probably rebuild ICQ the way it was when I was 16
| but they can't make me 16 again.
| bulte-rs wrote:
| Hmmm... my wife constantly reminds me that I behave like a 16
| y/o child. Perhaps ICQ should be reborn!
| 5- wrote:
| what made it magical was us being younger. likewise, it's very
| likely impossible to get _that_ back.
| btucker wrote:
| Also, it was a time when being "online" was an active state.
| Now we're "online" passively 24/7.
| sylens wrote:
| Yes, this is it. "Logging on" and "Logging off" were explicit
| actions that you took as part of your day, instead of just
| being perpetually connected and reachable.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The invitation to join the project's Discord is magical.
| That's... where all your friends are now anyways.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Cool project, kudos to the devs, even though (as other comments
| say) it seems rather pointless. Some things better stay in the
| past while you enjoy the nostalgia once in a honeymoon.
| ck2 wrote:
| so basically Trillian?
| wolrah wrote:
| Other side of the equation. Trillian was an unofficial client,
| this seems to be a group running a series of unofficial servers
| that can be used with the original clients, and presumably also
| contemporary unofficial clients.
|
| I'm also aware of the P3OL project which supports AOL 2.x and
| 3.x clients.
| pjmlp wrote:
| What a way to make me feel old. Nice project. :)
| lukaslalinsky wrote:
| What I truly miss is the short era, when it looked like Jabber is
| going to win the chat world. At least here in Europe, ICQ was on
| its way out. Both Google and Facebook had interoperable XMPP
| servers. It ended very shortly after that, but it was good for
| the year or two while it lasted.
| tomschwiha wrote:
| For me it was xfire/icq => msn/skype => teamspeak 2/3 (short
| mumble) => discord
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Since Champions Online, Cryptic Studio's game chat server used
| to be Jabber compatible, too. I don't know if it still is, I
| haven't had a Jabber client running in a while. It might still
| be.
|
| There was something really cool about getting MMO Guild chat
| (or Fleet chat in my case as a big Star Trek Online player at
| the time) in your normal IM client.
|
| That was also about when we discovered the server would let you
| create channels that would be global across all the games (and
| any IM clients). I still tend to refer to Champions Online and
| (Cryptic's) NeverWinter Online as "Holodeck Adventures" for
| that reason, because I'd commonly play those in the days of my
| very active STO Fleet until people started chatting about STO
| in the global fleet chat.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I was just talking about this the other day... it was nearly a
| panacea of interconnected, interoperable messengers. My memory
| shortened it to a few months, but I remember it pretty well.
| The protocol sucked, but it did work.
|
| I really miss the group chats on Yahoo that included voice. X
| spaces is close-ish, and I know that discord and others have
| similar features... just feels a lot less connected.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Facebook never had an interoperable server. They operated a
| limited functionality gateway to allow using your own client,
| but it never worked well and never federated.
| fithisux wrote:
| Are Pidgin/MrandNG supported?
| anthk wrote:
| You might need to patch Pidgin/Libpurple plugins.
|
| An example for Escargot (MSN):
|
| https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan/commit/2bac1e...
|
| Repo: https://codeberg.org/transgirlphoebe/msn-pecan
| anthk wrote:
| I saw that referenced from an OCC challenger:
|
| https://occ.deadnet.se
|
| Here you would try to reuse your old computer (usually 15-20
| years old) for common tasks done in 2025. The web it's a no-no
| minus a few services but you would surprised. Hint: yt-dlp+mpv
| set to 480p and below, Retrozilla+ a TLS hack in about:config,
| fake User Agents (PSP, Opera Mini...), https://legacyupdate.net
| with a Gemini client and gemini://gemi.dev with the News Waffle
| proxy, RSS news delivered from Usenet with GMANE... there are
| tons of hacks.
|
| Patching the old clients it's often usually easy, even more in
| case of AMSN (TCL). It's a matter of changing the URL of the
| service and maybe some slight API change.
|
| Escargot covers the MSN services, which is similar to NINA:
|
| https://escargot.chat/
| sdoering wrote:
| From the NINA site:
|
| > Yahoo! Messenger support is publicly available and
| interoperates with our Escargot network.
| icedchai wrote:
| I loved the original AIM. I remember using it from roughly 1999
| to when it was finally deprecated in 2017. Almost 20 years!
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Create the Internet you want to see.
| acheron wrote:
| Ah nostalgia. My text message alert (when my phone is not on
| silent) is the "incoming IM" sound from AIM.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| at maximum gain, of course, to startle you into a heart attack.
| musicale wrote:
| What is the story for security/encryption to exist in a modern
| threat landscape? I expect with server-based systems you could
| have an encrypted tunnel to the server and just connect to a
| local proxy, or ??
| lvturner wrote:
| Arugably, ICQ is still going....
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent_QQ
| giantrobot wrote:
| ICQ was not QQ. The ICQ service finally shut down last year
| IIRC. I don't think QQ bought out the ICQ service or anything.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Dunno, last I tried it was very different and I couldn't login
| to my original 5-digit icq number.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Hangout.fm is like AOL chat rooms with music
| fishgoesblub wrote:
| Unfortunately, the dev refuses to opensource this and the
| Escargot rewrite. There's a FOSS AIM server[1], and apparently it
| supports ICQ, which is new from the last I saw it.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mk6i/retro-aim-server
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| Yeah very annoying. They ask for donations constantly but are
| enjoying keeping everything for themselves.
| fishgoesblub wrote:
| Especially since the original Escargot server software was
| open source.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| I have a lot of love and nostalgia for aim and AOL and
| think it would be a fun motivator to learn more programming
| with a project like that but not without sharing.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Unless they bring back personal filing cabinet, AOL will remain
| dead. I attribute the entire death of AOL to the death of cerver
| and mp3z
| marcodiego wrote:
| > We're working to primarily rebuild the original AIM (AOL
| Instant Messenger), AOL Desktop, Yahoo and ICQ platforms as close
| to the originals as possible, and document the entire thing.
|
| Why not contribute to one of many FLOSS implementations that were
| once maintained?
| deadbabe wrote:
| Someday someone will do a project like this but for Discord.
| whalesalad wrote:
| So Adium and Pidgin?
|
| https://adium.im/
|
| https://pidgin.im/
| anthk wrote:
| Or Bitlbee, but no. Here there are reimplementing the server
| side of the protocol.
|
| AIM, MSN and ICQ are reimplemented in a form that even legacy
| patched clients should work as they came minus the server URL
| patch.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| These guys are reverse engineering Skype now too. Really cool
| stuff.
|
| https://nina.chat/news/120500000101270/icq-now-in-open-alpha...
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(page generated 2025-07-17 23:01 UTC)