Now you may be thinking; “That chat program is still around?” or “What the heck is a eye-arr-see?”

Well let me tell you my friend. It stands for Internet Relay Chat and it’s been around for 34 years. It’s pretty much perfected at this point and quite easy to use if you have even the slightest technical knowledge.

So IRC servers are separate from one another with each server having it’s own admins. Each server you connect to has it’s own bots ran by individuals to messages and ask for things.

IRC servers work by sending slash commands much like discord does. To message another user you might type /msg coolboot2000 hello world! Piracy on IRC works by sending a bot a pm with the pack number you want.

“Where do I find servers and bots and pack numbers?” It’s as easy as using a xdcc search engine. http://sunxdcc.com/ has both a search and a list of networks. (DCC is Direct Client to Client meaning no files pass thru the server and XDCC is a version of DCC that allows large files to be transferred.)

“How do I connect?” You use an IRC client with SSL support. mIRC for windows and Hexchat with a patch for Linux. Once installed you can use the slash command /connect or use the clients GUI buttons to make a connection to the server.

“How do I make my own IRC client?” Follow the specifications here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_commands There are a ton of pre-made IRC libraries for pretty much every programming language.

Best luck friends!

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I think this post should come with a huge disclaimer that IRC is highly addictive and a major time suck. If you’re trying to remain productive, avoid IRC.

    SOURCE: I was on IRC all the way back to the 90s.

      • noisypine@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        I have to agree. I love the idea of Matrix, but as someone who pushed his family to use it for the last two years, it is not reliable. Messages not going through, or going through but delayed, or having decryption errors. We moved away from it about two weeks ago due to important messages not making it through on many occasions and the confusion and frustration it’s caused.

        • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          I want to move over to it (in the medium-long term) but yes, there are a few deal breakers.

          First, the clients are horribly resource hungry. If I open Element on my phone, it will keep synchonizing my messages for minutes until I can see any new messages, all the while CPU usage is through the roof.
          Then, push notifications on my phone are not working even in the official client, Element.
          But I’m aware of the pitfalls of how encryption work there, so I would just not bother using that feature for now. Like, if 2 if you start exchanging messages, and a 3rd family member joins, they will not see previous messages, even if you have set history visibility that way, and there is no solution whatsoever. This is because encryption keys that were used in the past are not sent to new participants.

          Currently we use Telegram, and there are disturbing changes lately, but that is at least performant, it works, and still much more trustable then facebook or google.

          • nIi7WJVZwktT4Ze@fost.hu
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            1 year ago

            Speaking about notifications, did you check out your phone’s battery conserving settings? My friends having a Samsung or Xiaomi also have this issue due to aggressive restrictions on less-used apps. You can find more info and workarounds here: https://dontkillmyapp.com

            • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Yes, but because of the resource usage of that app, I’m kind of reluctant to allow it to run more.
              Also, I forgot to mention that I’m trying to use UnifiedPush (with ntfy) instead of google’s infrastructure. Sorry for that.

        • Display Name@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I’ve got similar experience. And I brought way more people to matriy than just my family. People are slowly mirgrating away from matriy to signal. The shitty part is that right now there’s a huge rewrite of element (element x) and it’s much more reliable in my experience. Right now when people move away, it becomes actually usable. We moved too early to matrix with the normies.

      • tetra@feddit.de
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        Also, while Matrix offers E2EE, the amount of metadata the protocol generates by design is something you should be aware of.

        There is also this issue with portalled rooms regarding the libera IRC bridge.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        Server resources are not that high because of the protocol, but because it’s done in fucking Python, which is inherently inefficient.
        Yes in any other language it will still need more resources than IRC, but not that amount as now, and I think the tradeoffs are worth it.

        An other thing is the resource usage of the clients.
        Well yes if nearly all of the clients are made in web garbage then it’s no surprise they’ll be resource hungry.
        But an other point that worsens the situation is that currently synchronization is done in a way that practically requires clients to keep all your joined rooms in memory. Change is on the way, fortunately, though.

        • Boinketh@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          That’s why I’m glad Lemmy is written in Rust. I know that the instance admins are getting the most bang for their buck when they aren’t wasting CPU cycles on running an interpreter.

      • iopq@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Okay, but I’ve been using it for my chat rooms for a year now and it works just as well as IRC. I don’t host the server so I don’t know how much more resources it takes, though

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        https://joinmatrix.org should have answers to most of your questions.

        If you read the site carefully it will make you set up key backup, but please for the love of god, do set up key backup asap after registration! Without it, it is so easy to lose access to all your former encrypted messages, and you will be very disappointed when that happens.

      • 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There is the default matrix.org server you can join.

        There are others out there as well. https://joinmatrix.org/servers

        You can also create your own server if you’d like. Servers are federated, so you’ll be able to communicate with any/all of them (as long as you follow the rules of each one)

        You can search for chat rooms in the app. You’ll easily find all the rooms hosted on your server, but you can also join chats on other servers.

          • 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Honestly, not sure how well the piracy experience is on Matrix. I’m not a pirate myself, but I imagine it would work fine if it was smaller files. You could make a separate thread per item.

            There is probably an upload size limit on the server though. As far as I know, you can’t transfer files peer to peer.

              • 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I can’t vouch for any since I have no skin in the game. I did a quick room search and found quite a few “piracy” rooms. No idea who or what is going on in each of them though.

      • can@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        It’s what lemmy recommends for private messages since admins can see lemmy DMs. A lot of instances have matrix rooms too.

    • bulbasaur@lemmy.world
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      Matrix is awful, sorry. I tried using it for like a year, but it kept randomly encrypting things and not letting ppl see messages, or worse, kicking them out of the chat

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Yes, that’s true. Does IRC have any support for encryption? Because of it doesn’t, then there is no way at all to keep it E2E even past the bridge, as IRC users wouldn’t be able to decode the messages

      • Uninvited Guest@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        They are referring to using Matrix as a bridge to connect to IRC - not as a replacement - for the purpose of improving privacy.

  • Reocken@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Since RARBG shut down, I been using IRC more often for 2160p releases that are tougher to come by. Also, I never stopped using it for chatting. You won’t ever catch me using that bloated Discord garbage.

  • Catasaur@lemmy.catasaur.xyz
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    My experience with IRC is that just like Reddit was, it is filled with entrenched mods and admins that act like petty kings and treat the channels/servers as their personal fiefdom. Some of these people have been mods and admins for like 15+ years. Incredibly cliquish and off putting, hostile to new users.

    I think IRC could work but only if you create your own server and invite like minded people, and maybe rotate mods/admins regularly, lest the same thing happen to your server.

        • fluffyb@lemmy.fluffyb.net
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          Think I replied to the wrong comment:/

          But obviously no. It’s so you can create your own community with your own rules etc .

          I am not important enough to have my own community following but I assume someone will have a use for it

    • Comment105@lemm.ee
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      Do you also rotate yourself out, then? Perhaps just symbolically with a hand picked temporary replacement?

  • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I love IRC. Love its simplicity and instantaneous nature messages. Nothing feels as realtime chat like IRC does. It’s also dead simple to implement and self-host. Only downside is iffy file transfers which don’t work unless you have public IP. Inline images would be useful. Perhaps time is ripe for IRC+ protocol. Add few extensions and you are good.

    • iopq@lemmy.world
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      IRC+ is called matrix, and it’s great. Has images and offline messages

      • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Matrix is anything but great. Tried using it for months, forced my employees to use it for business communication. Worst decision I’ve made of late. Messages would get delayed or never arrive. Frequent issues with clients. Server drops. Etc. Gave up on it long time ago.

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      The XDCC bots maintain a queue of recipients and transfer to each of them in turn (to avoid overwhelming the owner’s connection). They’re usually also capped on bandwidth. Each bot typically advertises its queue capacity, number of send slots and bandwidth.

      And yes the connection is peer to peer (means you must have a connectable public port) and the transfer happens without going through the server.

  • Xeknos@lemmy.world
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    Mozilla Thunderbird can connect to IRC servers as a chat client. Just sayin’.

    Edit: got downvoted for some reason, so clarified.

    • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      One of my earliest experiences online was on an irc server.

      I was showing my mom how it worked and she pissed some other woman off on there. The lady told her she was going to hack her.

      Well, she started sending a bunch of ascii text and my mom panicked and forced me to unplug the computer.

      My mom said, “How long should we wait to connect to the internet? We probably need antivirus.” Haha

      I felt like a goddamn explorer in those days.

  • DanTheMan827@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    IRC really needs a discord styled client.

    Something where if you drop an image or video onto it, it’ll automatically upload it to a private imgur link and share it.

    If you want to share a larger file, maybe it uploads to wetransfer or something automatically.

    Discord is basically IRC and more, but it’s also easier for non-techies to join a discord server, and you have a common identity across all servers.

    The beauty of something open like IRC though is the fact that you can make and use any client you want, including an old C64 if you really wanted to… with additional adapters of course

    • jecxjo@midwest.social
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      IRC does have file transfer, was how all us cool kids back in the early to mid 90s shared stuff. Its just that sharing is either p2p or you need a bot to mimic p2e.

      As for the images, part of the benefit of IRC is its so ridiculously simple that you barely need anything to do it. Yeah features can be added to apps but the payoff isn’t great. If you have the imgr app installed you already have quick image hosting. Tying apps to other services seems counter to how generic and open IRC is.

      • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        mimic p2e.

        What does p2e mean in this context? Tried looking it up but not finding anything that sounds right. I’d infer it may mean something similar to client-server, but I’m blanking on what the ‘e’ would stand for then.

        • jecxjo@midwest.social
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          Person to Everyone. In the context of this discussion i can post an image, video or file to a discord channel and everyone who goes in there can download it.

          In IRC you make a client to client connection and send files directly to one another. You can setup a bot to respond to individual requests and transfer files but there is no “hey everyone download this”

      • AndrewZen@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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        1 year ago

        I could never get into web based clients. Always seemed backwards to me to have a web browser as a dependency.

        • neo (he/him)@lemmy.comfysnug.space
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          1 year ago

          I definitely understand that.

          I personally gave in because it made file uploading easy as well as the fact that thelounge also acts as a bouncer, keeping me online 24/7 even when my browser isn’t up.

          Also, it’s not discord. :o

    • AndrewZen@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      Something where if you drop an image or video onto it, it’ll automatically upload it to a private imgur link and share it.

      If there’s not a script out there that does something like this i’d be surprised. If not IRC daemons and clients are mostly open source.

      I never found ways to pirate with discord. i’m sure there are but IRC is just so easy.

  • SETECT Astronomy @lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Never moved away from IRC even though most everyone else has; been a pirate’s invaluable friend for decades. Plus, y’know, still need it for every private tracker these days.

    • qprimed@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      all accurate.

      I will say that a combination of…

      • quassel (IRC connection mediator)
      • quasseldroid (android client for quassel)
      • TLS protected Tor hidden service connectins to your fav. IRC network

      is an absolutely fantastic way to be always-on connected to IRC. turns it into a modern experience.

  • cestvrai@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Where are the files ultimately hosted and who is paying for the bandwidth?

    How do the servers avoid being taken down?

    • AndrewZen@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      Where are the files ultimately hosted.

      by the bots.

      How do the servers avoid being taken down?

      connections are Direct Client to Client. the server never sees any data. Same way google gets around linking to pirate sites. They don’t host any files themselves.

      • dartos@reddthat.com
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        That’s not true. IRC is a client-server system. Your messages go to a server and are “relayed” to clients.

        It’s not a p2p messaging system

    • azron@lemmy.ml
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      DCC = direct client-to-client. With IRC the server is not hosting or distributing any files it is making connections between clients similar to edonkey or soulseek just with a different protocol. Which means you connect directly with your IP to the client that has the files you want and the bandwidth is dependent on how fast each of the clients’ internet is.

  • xan1242@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Fun fact - some games also have integrated IRC clients!

    Unreal Tournament 99 (and now Unreal 227) is one of them. Don’t seriously use it lol, it’s just funny how the internet worked back then to have that included in a game.

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.ee
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      Unreal Tournament 99 (and now Unreal 227) is one of them. Don’t seriously use it lol, it’s just funny how the internet worked back then to have that included in a game.

      But…You’re saying we could have an Unreal IRC client!? Who wouldn’t want an IRC client with a retro game attached? 😂

      • xan1242@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I mean, you can do it, like right now. It totally still works! Heck, there’s even Linux builds for 227 (Unreal) and 469 (UT) and Mac (469 only). It’s a bit rudimentary but it does the job.