SMS over IRC reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aftli · 2018-06-29 21:59 [Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/1782/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- damiankw · 2018-06-30 02:29 Does your entire family use IRC to communicate? What software do they use on which devices? I like IRC, but for a modern day communications platform for small communities on the run I think it lacks quite a bit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mndrix · 2018-06-30 13:59 > Does your entire family use IRC to communicate? Yup. At least my wife and five kids do. My extended family doesn't. > What software do they use on which devices? For mobile, everyone uses [Revolution IRC](https://github.com/MCMrARM/revolution-irc) on Android. My son uses [HexChat](https://github.com/hexchat/hexchat) on his Linux laptop. I use [ii](https://tools.suckless.org/ii/) on OpenBSD. If I have to use macOS for Android development, I use [Textual](https://www.codeux.com/textual/). > for a modern day communications platform for small communities on the run I think it lacks quite a bit If you have specific difficulties, I'd be glad to describe how we address them in our set up. It's all about trade offs, but IRC has worked better for us than other options we've tried. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- damiankw · 2018-06-30 22:57 I didn't read through all of your code or setup for this, so maybe the issues I see are already covered with additional software you've found/made for it, but! My biggest concern is about logging and message history, I like to have a history of everything that comes through me for reference, or lookup of important detail. Sure an IRC client can log history, but what about when you get a new phone, how do you transfer the history from Revolution from one phone to another? What about when a device is disconnected from the network for a short, or worse, long period of time, I saw you have a BNC in place, does it store all messages and replay them when you reconnect? How do you cope with old message date/time, when reconnecting to a standard BNC it can get really annoying if it replays a couple of days of logs, you have no idea when the messages actually came through. I completely get self hosted, up until recently nearly all of my stuff was developed and hosted by me, but things change and I've embraced it! With services like Slack you can pretty much interface it exactly as you would with an IRCd except it's prettier, works better, doesn't have maintenance, works on every device current and future, and is always updating to suit the needs of the end user without you having to do anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- veants · 2018-07-01 01:26 That's awesome, it gives me an idea. Having this kind of extension for bitlbee would be really great. Especially if it's possible to used different api, like voip.ms for example. I'm setting up a server with a bouncer to make it possible to receive messages while offline and have one user for multiple devices. It's pretty much like using other IM if you want and this way IRC on smartphone becomes a lot more interesting. Combined with a bitlbee gateway it becomes one of the most powerful way to communicate over internet. I'm certainly going to look into extending bitlbee with a SMS module. No reason to use anything else this way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- petteri · 2018-07-02 11:54 Nice story. I also really liked the other blog entry about the whole family switching from XMPP to IRC. I also have a IRC setup for the family. We use The Lounge, which is nice web interface to IRC. It was super easy to setup. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mndrix · 2018-07-02 13:08 > when you get a new phone, how do you transfer the history from Revolution from one phone to another? We used to have full chat archives, but none of us used them, so I haven't thought much about handling that in IRC. Revolution keeps its own chat history, so you could probably patch it to export that history as part of its existing backup/restore mechanism. > I saw you have a BNC in place, does it store all messages and replay them when you reconnect? Yup. > How do you cope with old message date/time, when reconnecting to a standard BNC it can get really annoying if it replays a couple of days of logs Yeah, that is annoying. Our devices are rarely offline for longer than a few hours. Since our IRC is relatively low volume, the server just replays the messages when a device reconnects, so the timestamps are wrong. I plan to add support for IRCv3 message timestamps, but haven't yet. > things change and I've embraced it I agree. Ten years ago, I moved everything from self hosted to third- party hosting. My kids were young and my business was starting and I couldn't justify the time to work on my own infrastructure. A couple years ago, I trimmed my outside obligations and finally had some free time again. I always enjoyed self hosting and making my own infrastructure, so I'm swinging the pendulum back that direction. Follow your arrow.