Are you old enough that you spent your time on IRC back in the days? Do you like your chat infrastructure free of billionaire influence? Do you have free time? Are you experiencing nostalgia? If you answered yes to one or more of the questions above, here’s what it takes to connect to the IRC network in 2025.

The IRCv3 protocol update aims to fix the (let’s be honest) awful user experience of IRC. They even have a draft for server-side chat history! Meanwhile, the Open-Source community congregates on libera.chat, and if you're looking for channels on different networks, Netsplit.de is a great resource.

Totally forgot this track. What a synth-dub beauty.

Discovery of the day: This cool J-Pop music video. The lyrics are made of all the Japanese tongue twisters (or so the comments say). I really like the vibe. Check the original song by Mono No Aware also!

Nor nationalist nor military music are my kind of stuff, and discovering Turbofolk through pure randomness, I didn't expect learning about this particular aspect of the Yugoslav War.

I was converting "Harmonique" to Katakana and googled the result (ハルモニク). I was surprised to see a Japanese wikipedia page of a band. My Japanese isn't that good yet so I switched to English and felt curious about what I just discovered.

I heard recently that Allen & Heath released (without too much of a bang) an updated version of their Xone:92 DJ mixer. This mixer is one of the greatest and the Xone sound is so, so great. One night in a club, I remember Objekt starting his set on a Xone mixer while the previous DJs were playing on a Pioneer mixer. That sound difference was crazy. While Pioneer's sound was all flat and crispy, the Xone sound was punchy, breathy, and lively.