hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2169.txt

Episode: 2169
Title: HPR2169: How I connect to the awesome #oggcastplanet on mobile
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2169/hpr2169.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 15:12:32

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This is HBR episode 2,169 entitled How I Connect to the Awesome Hash on Cast Planet on Mobile.
It is hosted by Klackit and is about 13 minutes long.
The summer is.
I give a quick overview of the challenges of IRC on the go and how right and matrix sold
them for me.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
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Hi, I'm Klackit.
I'm on my way home from work and I figured I would expand a little bit on a thing I mentioned
the other day.
In my episode reviewing some gift criticisms, I mentioned I was hanging out on the awesome
all cast planet IRC channel.
And here's how I do that.
First the quick quick version to try it out.
Just go to rightim slash app r-i-o-t.im slash a-p-p.
And I think if you're not logged in, the first thing you will see is a search window for
rooms.
And there will be some rooms suggested already that are on free node and they will be named
like hash, free node, underscore hash, channel name, colon, matrix.org.
So using that as the pattern, you will immediately realize that you could just type hash, free
node, underscore hash, augcast, planet, colon, matrix.org.
And you hit enter or you click join or something like that.
And you would immediately be seeing conversations between some familiar names from the hacker
public radio podcasts.
I think you would have to click join in the screen that pops out as well.
You would be doing it using some username like guest 576 or something, but you could tell
it to change the display name to whatever you would like to use on the channel.
The users on the IRC side would see you as user name bracket m and bracket m for matrix.
But other than that, you're a perfectly normal IRC user.
And the difference is compared to, for example, the web chat that free node have on the
wrong web server.
If you close this window and then later you go back, find the channel the same way.
Your unauthorized user, your guest user that you created, would still be in the channel
and you could see everything that has happened from the point that you left.
And the main reason I got into this was to be able to participate on mobile.
And for that, I just had to install the Riot app.
Sadly it's not available in F-Droid, but if you go to the Google Play Market, you find
an app Riot or IoT, then you install that.
And probably I think the easiest way is to just join the channels you want in the web application
first.
And then when you have installed the Riot app and you logged in with the credentials
that you will have to create in the web app, then you'll be ready to go and the same
rooms we'll show up there as on the web.
So I'll have to backtrack a bit.
You join as a guest user, you also have the chance to create an actual user with the username
and password.
And that's what you would use in the app.
I'm not sure if guest users are available in the app, but I don't think so.
I think you'll have to create a real one.
Anyway, there will be no way to sync the guest users between desktop or browser and app
since there's no password or anything involved.
So that's the quick version.
You go there, you create the user, you find the channel, you can access it on mobile,
everything's great.
If someone mentions your name in the channel, it will even buzz your phone.
So that's all great.
So here's a bit more of background.
Riot is an application that uses the matrix protocol.
More information available on matrix.org.
This is a protocol that aims at bridging several other protocols.
It in itself is focused around rooms or conversations and synchronizing the state of these rooms
between participating servers and the clients connecting to those servers.
It's a federated protocol, so if you are registered on one server, like the Riot server,
and you connect to another server, like the matrix server in our example, because the matrix.org
server is the one that has the bridge to free node.
And you can use that identity from the Riot server and go through the matrix service on
the matrix.org server and act as if you were a local user.
I don't think they have a web application actually running on matrix.org.
So even in this first simple example, you will already be federating.
Of course, if you are a true decentralized web, decentralized application, so if you are
not old, you should not be using Riot.m. or you should be setting up your own instance.
Of course, this is all free software, so you can do that.
I haven't done it myself.
I've been using an instance, not Riot.m, but an instance that one of my new social contacts
mentioned.
And matrix as a protocol is a bit different from, for example, XMPP.
XMPP is another protocol that people use for bridging to IRC.
And I haven't looked into this at any kind of depth, but I think the main difference that
is obvious between these two protocols is that XMPP is all about message delivery, whereas
matrix is about syncing the state of a chat room.
And the difference becomes quite obvious when you go offline and you come back and you
have to catch up with what's been going on.
Because in the XMPP case, this is a sort of add-on that XMPP is about delivering messages.
If there's nobody there to deliver the message to, the server will have to have an added
feature to keep a copy of the undelivered messages.
And then as soon as you connect, those messages get delivered to you.
But if you then connect with a second client, either the server would have had to keep all
messages forever, or you would just be starting from a clean slate.
And okay, I'm in this room and now I'll see what happens from here on.
I'm not sure how that looks on the XMPP front now.
Probably there are some servers and extensions that do store the complete conversation.
But anyway, in matrix, that's where it all starts out.
The complete conversation is the thing that you access.
If you've been using ICQ way back, that was message oriented, but then if you were using
Skype later on, you might have noticed that you connect to the internet with your Skype
client and you hang around and then your friend comes online and suddenly blop, blop, blop.
Also things pop up that your friend said a couple of days ago when you were both online
at the same time.
Because Skype also was centered around this sinking the state of the conversation idea.
So I don't think I'm going to go into that discussion anymore.
So I'm going to link to some criticisms one pump I always used her had.
Basically that XMPP does everything already.
There's several extensions that take care of all the perceived problems with XMPP.
And matrix is just a big nod invented here.
It may be the case.
I haven't invested enough effort in finding out if XMPP actually enables in a new use
case is on the technical level, but I had to say that given the applications that exist
now, getting started and just using matrix was really simple.
And I don't know if I would have reached this level of functionality, bridging to IRC using
the apps and servers available for public use on XMPP network.
So a bit of a background to my personal use case at work.
We're using Slack as many people do and I've been looking into various alternatives and
there's like at least seven of them, each meriting their own HPR episode.
If anyone has looked into these, that would be great to listen to.
So after Kaffir can mention ZULIP, Rocket Chat, and oh, what's the other one?
So it seems I can mention only two, I'll list more in the show notes.
And I'll also list a link to a pump I owe discussion around this.
So I was looking for that and then I discovered matrix and I saw that it had an IRC bridge.
And I've been meaning for a long time to join more IRC channels, but I always found
that the mobile use has been a bit too complicated.
The other week I was looking into using ZNC or Quasal or something and then I discovered
that matrix seemed to have great bridging capabilities and I tried it out and turned
out they are actually great.
So I'm pretty satisfied here, I'm not going to investigate the other IRC options.
Even if you don't use any of the Federation advantages, even if you don't create a user,
I think that Riot, the web app, is a far better web client to IRC than the web app included
on FreeNode.
So I would recommend to anyone, just use that.
And if you really want to make the world better, create your own matrix server, create
your own Riot server and run on that and invite your friends, and invite me too.
I'm eager to try out more of this federated stuff and see how well it all fits together.
In my copious spare time, trademark.
So yeah, that's it for now.
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