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On your Google, with your results, with your search history and thus in your specific filter bubble.

Fuck, people, don't you get this already? There is no n-th result on Google. Don't act like there is.


I seriously do not understand his problem. I don't like LotR either, but its cultural impact is huge and it does in no way devalue the gigantic literary work that Tolkien has created. Idiotic copyright lawsuits won't change reality, either.


Do yourself a favor and use a native client. Every single web client for IRC sucks. No exceptions.


I'm sorry to say this, but all issues you describe are instances of PEBKAC.


Most of his issues barely even sound like that. He just chose a client he doesn't like.


Exactly.


Can you suggest a client which:

1) handles ssh tunnels for me after being configured

2) Automatically handles notifications that I'm being talked to

3) Can retrieve chatlogs from when I'm offline

4) Handles afking automatically

5) Encrypts chats between people

for the mac? It would be really useful.


1-4) Long-running irssi in tmux. Throw a shellscript onto your desktop that pulls up a terminal with ssh, and runs tmux when you click it (should be just 1 line).

5) Use PGP/GPG and email if you don't trust your IRC server. If you do, just use SSL. Since this is presumably an internal server, why wouldn't you trust it? There are of course encryption plugins for all the major IRC clients, but if you think you need one you are almost certainly Doing It Wrong(tm).

I don't know any Mac specific clients, not sure why you would want one.


> Long-running irssi in tmux. Throw a shellscript onto your desktop that pulls up a terminal with ssh, and runs tmux when you click it (should be just 1 line).

Which doesn't resolve issue 1 (since the server is not available outside of 127.0.0.1 on the ssh host), or issue 3 since it can't see what happened when I was offline (though the bouncer idea is a good one, if fundamentally flawed in that it requires its own full time connection to the IRC server). My computer travels with me, and can not maintain a full time connection to the internet.

> There are of course encryption plugins for all the major IRC clients, but if you think you need one you are almost certainly Doing It Wrong(tm).

Why? Not everyone in the company needs access to client data. Why would I not want encryption options? The marketing folks don't need to know the internal hostnames of a client. The sales folks don't need a copy of customer chats while troubleshooting an issue.

> not sure why you would want one

Seems like a trip into OS holy war territory that I have no desire to get into.


Wait... what?

You can only access this IRC server from the machine it is running on... but anyone in the company has highly priveleged access to it? But you can't run a client on the machine itself? And why would you be running a BNC locally? Who the hell set this system up, and do they run your mail system like this too?

There are so many PEBKACs here they are hard to count.


I would suggest a combination of SSH config, ZNC and Textual.


Is this supposed to be a joke? Why in all seven hells would you use a proprietary, hosted service which brings you zero advantages over a time-tested, open and simple network protocol which you can extremely easily host and extend yourself?

I don't get you people. I really don't get you.


I've just started writing it off as "Because startup!". There really are just some protocols that don't need to be reinvented as companies. Yeah, twitter is better than finger, but IRC has proven itself.


>twitter is better than finger

sure if you enjoy proprietary walled gardens with uptime issues


I mean, I can give you the reasons that I have a hipchat account which I use with my coworkers, even though a good 50% of us are also on IRC for other purposes.

1) It proved to be a pain supporting the non-techies using IRC

2) Nobody wanted to maintain the IRC server and set up logging. (And, if you add up the couple hours to do so and maintain it in a year, hipchat ends up being a good deal)

3) Some of our people use the SMS and xmpp integration, which makes it easily fit into their existing communications.

4) The API, web based search, gui admin, github integration, unfuddle integration, etc are already setup and/or written (an extension of #2)

5) Nice handling of large chunks of pasted text. (The web and desktop clients format them in fixed width properly and limit the size but provide and expand link.) This is more convenient than pasting a pastebin link, and works better than irc because of line breaks.

I mean, basic economics as well. If someone spends an hour a year maintaining the IRC server, helping non-tech people get onto IRC, etc, then paying for hipchat instead, for 4-8 people is well worth it each year.

(This is all after having used a channel on a public irc server, then someone set up IRC on a vps, then we used grove , and ended up on hipchat for the past year.)


When you host your chat on somebody else's service, you don't have privacy (or confidentiality).

For me, that trumps all your points. It seems that for you, it doesn't. The world's a crazy place.


Yeah. We use google apps, dropbox, unfuddle, GitHub, hipchat, Linode and amazon. Basically, we're pretty comfortable trusting our business with these companies. We're not in a space where we have secrets that really would give someone a competitive advantage. A few things like security credentials are shared offline or in a truecrypt volume.

I mean. If that's truly a concern, it seems like you need to own and configure your own physical hardware and require VPN access to all of them. For us/me, the cost and inconvenience isn't worth it, considering the basically valueless data to an outsider.

That's not to say that everyone decision matrix is the same or should be... As you mention.


I assume you also don't get people who use proprietary, hosted services to host (Github) and run (Heroku) their code, manage their projects (Jira), email (Sendgrid), forums (vBulletin), helpdesk (Zendesk) and a whole lot more.


It makes me extremely sad - and somewhat angry - that a lot of people just associate Tor with CP and criminals. Tor enabled and helped carry out fucking revolutions. Hundreds, if not thousands of (not only) chinese dissidents use it to communicate safely. It protects lives. Tor is a blessing upon humanity, and a big, fat, thorn in the side of every oppressive government on this planet.

The fact that some individuals use Tor for accessing child pornography is sad, but that constitutes a miniscule amount of its entire traffic. Stop looking at the few bad apples and look at the big picture.

Oh, and if you're at it, watch Jacob and Roger's talk at the 29c3 as soon as it is available. They explained this awesome piece of software a bit more in detail there, amongst all the other amazing projects related to the Tor Project.


> The fact that some individuals use Tor for accessing child pornography is sad, but that constitutes a miniscule amount of its entire traffic.

Do you have a citation for this? Specifically, that illegal activities in general are a minuscule amount of its traffic?


I agree with you about how awesome Jacob Appelbaum makes Tor sound, but you could still make a case about not wanting your computer to be used without your consent for stuff like that.

For example, as much as cancer research can benefit from extra computing power, I wouldn't want web sites to start including secret javascript code meant to "reap the spare cpu cycles" available when I visit their site.


It's equally debatable whether it's okay to put stupid advertisements or tracking technology on your website - which have infinitely less positive benefits for humanity than Tor.

Anyways, my answer wasn't about Flash-Proxy at all (which is, polemics aside, indeed debatable). I was pissed about the attitude that Tor == CP, which is a dishonest fallacy thrown around by supporters of surveillance and spying.


There are at least three actual possibilities there:

1. People afraid of being tracked down and prosecuted because someone used their exit node for criminal behavior

2. People concerned about limiting criminal behavior

3. People who want to stop free speech

Assuming #3 seems like a stretch even if it is easy to conclude that people pushing for constraints on free speech for the sake of limiting criminal behavior under-appreciate the vital importance of vigorous anonymous public discourse, even in countries without dictators.


>1. People afraid of being tracked down and prosecuted because someone used their exit node for criminal behavior

Again, Flash Proxy is not an exit node, it's a bridge. It merely helps people to access the Tor network, and does not relay traffic back out (which, as far as I know, is not even technically possible). There's zero risks involved. Also, why are you not running at least a relay, anyways?

>2. People concerned about limiting criminal behavior

Limiting criminal behavior is fine, but never at the cost of essential liberties and rights. This is inarguable. People rallying against Tor for "criminal behavior" are the very same people we need Tor to protect ourselves against.

>3. People who want to stop free speech

I you[1] are such a person, I hate you and you more than deserve to have your browser turned into a powerful weapon of the very thing you want to stop.

[1] This is the general you, I'm not talking to the parent poster specifically.


I agree about the debatable status of the stupid advertisements running without my permission. As you're pointing out, the worse aspect of them is that they're involved in a large-scale tracking scheme. It wouldn't be as bad if you got your ads and nothing else (no tracking on top of the ads).

The "Tor == CP" reasoning is as absurd as saying "Free Speech == Rampant Nazi Propaganda". =)


>a serious crime

You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

Piracy is not a crime, much less a serious one. Murder, for example, is a serious crime. Please don't spout nonsense. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not even a felony.

That is not to say that what Canonical did - if the accusations are justified - is ethically sound. But please don't spread the bullshit propaganda of certain industry representatives.


At least in the US, some forms of copyright infringement are crimes, as demonstrated by the Ninjavideo, TVshack, and Megaupload cases.


At least in the case of Megaupload, that remains to be seen.


The bad thing about the "nothing to hide" camp usually isn't their opinion that they themselves have nothing to hide, but the fact that the majority of these people seem to want to force this opinion on the rest of society. Fine, live your rose-colored post-privacy life. But leave me the fuck out of it. I have things to hide. Everyone has. You included.


You're exaggerating.


We look forward to seeing all of your account passwords posted in the next comment, then. I would recommend starting with your Hacker News account.


Irrelevant comparison.


"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

- Cardinal Richelieu


>For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have better options, is pretty unfair.

I don't think so. It's very valid to criticize someone who works for a morally corrupt, unneeded and socially harmful agency, no matter the reason. Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument.

If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt), then it's another gigantic fucking failure of the government that needs to be fixed ASAP.


> Your argument is basically a sophisticated "but think of the children!!11oneone" appeal to emotion, ie not a valid argument.

No. Criticising someone for engaging in lawful employment because you think that job is immoral is fine, but don't pretend there are no valid arguments for having that legal job.

> If there aren't any better job options (which I highly doubt),

We could have a look at job ads for TSA, and the requirements of the job, and then have a look for similar jobs; and then somehow find out how many people are applying for those jobs.

And we don't know the churn rate of TSA. Perhaps people take work there and leave after 3 months because they realise it's "evil" or a waste of money or whatever.


> don't pretend there are no valid arguments for having that legal job.

Is anybody? A valid argument for having a job does not place an individual above criticism.


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