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posted by mattie_p on Monday February 24 2014, @01:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the ancient-but-useful-technology dept.

What is IRC? It stands for internet relay chat, and despite being developed in 1988, it is still a very useful means of low-bandwidth communication, serving hundreds of thousands of users daily across the world. We have created our own IRC Server at irc.sylnt.us, port 6667. Won't you join us?

Barrabas writes:

"Some have asked why we run our own servers instead of using a public one such as freenode.net. We did this to have control of the TOS, copyright, DMCA, and other legal issues. I like freenode (and their TOS) a lot, but we're building a community and we should make our own choices.

Landon, our overlord of IRC, set this up with a lot of help from his team. He also set us up a link-shortener sylnt.us domain for the Twitter account: that rocks! So send him some love if you see him on IRC - he's doing a bang-up job!

Speaking of Twitter, Bender, our IRC bot, posts the headlines to our Twitter account, so feel free to follow us there."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:20AM (#5450)

    That sounds better, but it doesn't answer the question. My speculation at this point is that it somewhat addresses the situation of the admin-less room, and exposing trolls who log in with different nicks frequently. Still, if that is the gist of it, I'd recommend a better default cloak until abuse levels indicate a lesser cloak is justified.(?) My personal threat model worries more about hackers using the info to target ordinary users, than trolls using it to mask their identity.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @02:27AM

    by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:27AM (#5456) Journal

    Disagree. Freenode doesn't even masquerade your IP/hostname in the first place, we do because we feel it's the right way, having that said. Increasing it, isn't going to any good.

    If you *really* desperately, need to protect your IP/hostname, you should /join #help and get one.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Monday February 24 2014, @02:36AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday February 24 2014, @02:36AM (#5460) Journal

      Well the thing about it is this....stalking. I know the reason I quit using IRC back in the 90s is I had a guy I beat in an online match become fucking obsessed!!! with trying to make my life miserable and with my IP address he used to DDOS the hell out of me, so I can see why that would bother some folks. Remember there are a LOT of sickos and mentally unbalanced out there, hell I had one guy follow me around the web for a year just so he could post "die you fat fucker die" after every post I made.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Landon on Monday February 24 2014, @02:38AM

        by Landon (45) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:38AM (#5461) Journal

        If you want to connect to IRC using a dedicated client and pm xlefay (or myself, Landon), we can get you a cloak set up before you enter any rooms.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @02:38AM

        by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:38AM (#5462) Journal

        The thing is, you're IP/hostname isn't entirely visible. We give out cloaks like candy, if you need one, we can provide one.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by unitron on Monday February 24 2014, @03:53AM

          by unitron (70) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:53AM (#5506) Journal

          "We give out cloaks like candy, if you need one, we can provide one."

          Could I get a nice velvet one, like Sir Walter Raleigh was known for?

          : - )

          BTW, is http://chat.soylentnews.org/# [soylentnews.org] supposed to be broken at the moment?

          --
          something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
          • (Score: 2, Informative) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @04:50AM

            by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @04:50AM (#5545) Journal

            Wow, what a big fuck up on my part. You can click "connect" for now, the webchat will be fixed in time (can't restart it manually, everyone will be booted, but it'll reload itself).

          • (Score: 1) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @05:06AM

            by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @05:06AM (#5557) Journal

            Update: I've fixed the issue and the regular interface is restored, sorry about that.

        • (Score: 2, Funny) by dilbert on Monday February 24 2014, @02:45PM

          by dilbert (444) on Monday February 24 2014, @02:45PM (#5826)
          Strangers have the best candy!
      • (Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @09:43AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @09:43AM (#5705)

        die you fat fucker die!!!

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:49AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @02:49AM (#5470)

      It's fine for you to disagree, but saying 'because freenode is that way' isn't actually an explanation of the motivation in the first place. It may be possible that freenode would see more users if they had a better default cloak. It may be that the admins of freenode have been infiltrated by the NSA or other well funded organized criminals.

      Increasing it to parts one *and* two would seem to greatly increase the kind of mapping needed to be done by an attacker (256 vs 256^2, not to mention probably many of the first segments are known and thus can not be scanned by the attacker). The more you make the attacker scan, the more vulnerable the attacker is to draw attention of other network admins).

      As for your assertion about desperation, the truth is I'm not desperate to join the room. I've mentioned why the IP address issue is a barrier to joining, and you haven't yet justified its usefulness (sufficient for my understanding of the issues).

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Landon on Monday February 24 2014, @03:08AM

        by Landon (45) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:08AM (#5480) Journal

        We're not against the idea of having a fully obfuscated hostname, BUT it does not seem like it is readily done with Charybdis (the IRC server we are using). If anyone has information to the contrary, we would like to know.

      • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by pk on Monday February 24 2014, @03:15AM

        by pk (2591) on Monday February 24 2014, @03:15AM (#5482) Homepage
        Anonymous Coward wants to remain totally anonymous.

        Maybe you should stick to USENET. You know the admins can see your IP address on this site... ;)

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @03:37AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @03:37AM (#5495)

          Anonymous Coward wants to remain totally anonymous.

          Maybe you should stick to USENET. You know the admins can see your IP address on this site... ;)

          Methinks you are trolling. If you read my comments closely, you won't see me specifically requesting a way to be totally anonymous. I.e. my intent was to use my SN username, but merely have my IP address not (even partially) broadcast publicly. Also, I may just be ignorant of a more educated defense of the issue that the freenode admins might give. I'm not claiming to be a professional network security expert like you are on your homepage- darkcalf.com-
          "
          Information security is a very serious business. With sites like Wikileaks divulging secrets, and...

          We also provide Social Management options that allow you to build and define your online image just by giving us basic guidelines on what you would like to see posted. Essentially we shine the spotlight and generate social media trafic..."

          Wow. Just Wow. What a sockpuppet. And why am I not surprised that your troll of a response had nothing to do with treating information security as a very serious business.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @04:19AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 24 2014, @04:19AM (#5526)

            Someone call the BOFH, he broke rule #1.

          • (Score: 5, Informative) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @04:44AM

            by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @04:44AM (#5540) Journal

            Agreed, what you're asking is not ridiculous at all and I _will_ look into the matter more closely, as it stands Charybdis masquerades the first part of your hostname/ip but not the entire thing which makes sense from one perspective.

            Generally, to cloak one segment is enough in case it isn't, you can apply for a cloak, however I do understand your point. I'll post my findings _and_ possibly my fix in the journal when I've looked more into it (just peaked earlier). I'll link back here. Also, feel free to PM me on IRC to get an update.

            Hope this is more satisfying.

            ~ xlefay.

          • (Score: 1) by pk on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:01AM

            by pk (2591) on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:01AM (#13460) Homepage
            Wow. Just Wow. What a sockpuppet. And why am I not surprised that your troll of a response had nothing to do with treating information security as a very serious business.

            Sez Anonymous Coward with stinging, stinging words. IRC isn't for the feint of heart, even with your IP address cloaked. Plus, if you're that concerned about people seeing your IP address on IRC, I would suggest a VPN anyway. You shouldn't be depending on someone else's application configuration for your defense, and that's what I was mocking you for.

      • (Score: 1) by xlefay on Monday February 24 2014, @04:47AM

        by xlefay (65) on Monday February 24 2014, @04:47AM (#5542) Journal

        I agree partially. Mostly, hosts are given out by ISPs and consist of actually valuable information for a direct attack at someone which is something we masquerade by scrambling it. And I apologize for the assertion (which was completely false) that you may be desperate to hide your IP/hostname.

        Having that said, please read my other comment: http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=261&cid=554 0 [soylentnews.org] - I hope this is more satisfying.

        ~ xlefay