It's kinda funny that I don't even care anymore that "not everyone is on Mastodon". It is definitely a good thing. The same happened in the past with IRC and Telegram. You know they still exist, lots of people like me use them and I still will not use the popular ones that much or at all.

#Mastodon #Fediverse

@rolle I was very much into IRC back in the day and having a channel with half a dozen people was great. I think I’d only miss the big audience if I had something to sell, so having less of that pressure is a positive.

News tends to find me regardless.

@donovanh We still have a very active IRC channel today that has over 100 people.

Social media has never been a channel to sell for me. Marketing, perhaps, but that does not require tens of thousands of followers. A couple of thousand will do.

@rolle @donovanh My main tool for informing about new kernel features is mastodon, and IRC for syncing up in dev (OFTC). I use IRCCloud for convenience and first class per-network bouncer (~60€ annually). They are my main tools for communicating in professional life in addition to plain text email. BTW I dislike Matrix 🥲 Nothing ever works when Ive tried it. The product I sell is being a hacker and TikTok and Instagram do not reach my potential ”customer base”.

@rolle Well.. IRC is still very much popular among the people. Especially when uses some of the modern updated or already new features equipped servers. Such options I like a lot. For example being able to download on demand all of the previous conversations from the time period when I wasn't logged into the channel. For me personally that's an great idea, because I don't have any gaps in the whole topic being discussed. Same as this new variation of gopher called gemini, which is awesome idea.

@MartinBe Yeah, I still use IRC daily and our channel has a very active userbase.

@jarkko @donovanh IRCCloud is great! Used it in the past. I personally prefer irssiproxy + Thelounger or irssiproxy + Beeper. Beeper's Matrix instance is the only one I use any more, I agree the Matrix and Element are too hacky and complicated even for a server owner like me.

@rolle Too true! I thought I would miss the other platforms, but I find I have more engagement here.
And the people I want to stay in touch with, I stay in touch IRL (or via signal/etc).

Mastodon/Fediverse has given me new contacts and more engagement than I had on other sites/platforms.

@leonieke @rolle
My experience exactly. I miss some of my old contacts and wish they were here, but this is so much easier on my brain!

@markmetz @rolle Exactly that! I've tried to get some IRL x/twitter-using friends over, because knowing their political/life leanings, I do not understand why they stay, but they say it's what they know. Still I carefully try to remind them of the fun days of early twitter, and how mastodon/fediverse is much more accepting.
Mostly they reply "yes, but so-and-so is not there", and they do not want to acknowledge the stockholm syndrome they find themselves in.

@rolle

In a sense, everyone IS on Mastodon. 😅 I mean, you can share your sh... stuff by link and it's open for everyone to view, unlike walled gardens. (if not closed post)

@rolle @jarkko @donovanh Do you use Beeper for SMS/WhatsApp/etc? Recently switched to Android and wanted to try it, but the whole idea of giving a single app all of my messaging data feels icky. Supposed to be private, but you never know.

@exerra @jarkko @donovanh For WhatsApp, IRC, Signal and Discord. Yes, privacy is always something you should think about and if you're unsure, do not use. https://www.beeper.com/faq#our-primary-objective-is-to-earn-and-keep-your-trust

@rolle @exerra @donovanh

Few things I like in IRC over Matrix, or any other protocol in professional setting:

1. Does not try to blend #security and #decentralization. By not having security at all is one way to implement a sound security model. This allows to design security properties both by means of infrastructure security, i.e. outside the protocol, and also by tunneling, i.e. inside the protocol (classic example is off-the record messaging). This keep the core protocol compact and sound, and easy to verify for correctness, which is by itself a strong security property.
2. Has both decentralized and client/server based topology since 1988(!). It is a network of servers, which together form an IRC network.
3. Protocol messages are both rigidly structured AND still human-readable (unlike JSON), and have a clean specification (RFC 1459).
4. Features not in the protocol itself can be implemented efficiently with bots, given the ease parsing and producing IRC protocol messages.
5. IRC network heals fast from failures and has high #availability properties, given the clean and rigid definition of what it does and what it does not do.

#IRC #infosec

@rolle @donovanh @exerra A problem for me with Matrix is that I consider it as a failure in protocol design, like just from pure engineering perspective. So even if I had a really good user experience for it, given that I also engineer security stuff, I'd feel bad using it ;-)

@donovanh @exerra @rolle

Modern protocol story goes like this:

1. First a company creates a JSON protocol because it is what everyone else is using.
2. After a while a scalability/bandwidth issue is hit.
3. Someone finds out about protobuf, and it is used as duct tape to address the bad design choice.

If text protocol was designed in the first place from grounds to fit the application, one could realize that it could become an investment.

As long as data is UTF-8 text representation, it is dead easy to convert to some other format (for e.g. protocol bridges) despite not using a standard syntax (JSON, XML). JSON is totally over-rated these days ;-)

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architecture-astronauts-scare-you/