
Convos IRC client now supports video chat - jhthorsen
https://convos.by/2020/5/23/experimental-video-support-using-webrtc.html
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GekkePrutser
How is this still IRC? :)

I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients
adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer,
push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server
with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a
client thing only. IRCCloud does a similar thing though not self-hosted.

I'd love to see IRC make some big strides like it did in the 90s. I don't care
about video etc though. It shouldn't become another whatsapp or facebook
messenger. Though embedding pictures would be useful.

I know IRCv3 is a thing but development is way too slow and isn't really
taking the new requirements of the mobile world into account.

But clients adding proprietary stuff that only works with themselves has
nothing to do with the idea of IRC.

~~~
dTal
>I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients
adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Unless there's a Council of IRC who decrees changes in protocol (and if there
is, they clearly aren't doing their job), then "proprietary" features is how
the protocol expansion happens - provided the features are useful and easy to
implement (read: documented), other clients will jump on the bandwagon. An
example of this already happening is colors in IRC - mIRC defined some
proprietary control codes, and now every client supports them and it's de-
facto part of the standard.

I agree with your feature list, especially scrollback. All that needs to
happen is some very popular IRCd taking a stand and making a trivial extension
to the protocol, which reports scrollback given a particular server command.
Standards be damned - clients will rush to add support for this feature, and
servers will soon be seen as second class if they don't support it. It could
happen so easily!

~~~
chrismeller
> Unless there's a Council of IRC who decrees changes in protocol (and if
> there is, they clearly aren't doing their job)

IRC was established through the normal RFC process at the time, so there is,
in a way, a “council” governing it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat)

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FranOntanaya
Kudos for maintaining a Perl app in 2020. I went into the github expecting
some huge node.js jumble and was surprised to see a couple .pm files running
everything.

~~~
jhthorsen
Thank you! It's all because of Mojolicious real time web framework. The fun of
using the well designed components, and not to mention the ease of writing
tests makes it a no-brainer to me :)

It's fun running cloc from time to time: Very evenly between Perl, JavaScript,
CSS and template files:
[https://convos.by/doc/#statistics](https://convos.by/doc/#statistics)

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dijit
I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate
details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p
communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange.

But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT.
So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay.

I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to
have a second renaissance.

~~~
jstanley
I always wonder why P2P applications don't just use Tor hidden services to
communicate:

\- NAT hole-punching for free

\- end-to-end encrypted for free

\- peers identified by a hash of their public key, so no CA or similar
required

\- no metadata leakage

It seems like the perfect solution, but hardly anyone does it.

[https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/) is a chat program that works this
way, but the client is pretty minimal.

~~~
p_l
You forgot "slow as molasses".

That said, it made the tor-specific sites simple not just because JS was
banned, but that's not video chat, isn't it?

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obilgic
Demo hacks the back button though.

~~~
jhthorsen
Can you explain? I don't understand "hacks the back button" :/

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app4soft
> _.by_

Just curious, why they use such a weird domain zone?

~~~
jhthorsen
It comes from "conversation by" iirc.

