• June 2010: Several servers and websites have migrated to new hosts.
• The PSYC 1.0 release initiative is recruiting volunteers.

In beta

The following psyced features are new and currently being tested on beta:

• New microblogging functions in web profiles with comment function and cross-publishing to Twitter and StatusNet.
• Persistent context slaves which detect when member lists or friendships get out of synch.
• Experiments in SOCKS and RTMP.

psyced Incompatibilities

• We are now using git instead of CVS for distribution and update.
• Newly generated psyced scripts will support -u, -d and -m for update, diff and merge functionality.
• Download a new snapshot of psyced to have an initial clone of the git repository.
• Reverted default for strangers filtering until trustiness is enforced.
• The config structure has changed a bit, get yourself a copy of config.h from config/default.
• We had to change our URI strategy for XMPP. As with the newer URI RFC it is no longer permitted to have # in an entity name, we cannot call our rooms xmpp:#place@host. We'd have to write %23 which is seriously ugly and far from user friendly. So we now use the xmpp:*place@host syntax with asterisk being one of the few glyphs left without meaning in all of URI, XMPP, IRC and SMTP. Sorry if it isn't as nice as @ or #, we have no choice there. You may need to fix your MUC subscriptions.
• For better keyword naming (and amusement, too) the exposefriends setting has turned around into friendsexpose.

psyced News

• Bugfixes in presence and subscription functions of Jabber clients. Still not completely bug-free.
• Allow multiple PSYC clients simultaneously linked to your account.
• Bugfix! /friend was not storing pending for strangers!
• New /call command negotiates phone calls over an RTMP server.
• Active TLS connect to psyc:s uniforms.
• New certificate-based host auth strategy.
• IRC fixes: remote /topic, RPL_ISUPPORT, new (unimportant) /presence command and /info, /s, /st fixed to work with IRC. Filter buggy CTCP XCHAT. Show when you are being redirected. Timing/formatting error in /names and /who replies.
• Fixed some installation issues. CONSOLE_CHARSET. Tunings.
• Bugfix: don't use SRV if an explicit port number was given.
• Support for _check_integrity_SHA1 (see Checksums)
• New net/spyc implementation of PSYC according to new specification.
• Jabber fixes: _request_friendship, _request_examine_vCard
• place.gen knows #define ON_STATUS and LOCAL now.
• the default rendezvous place is now configured to have no history - this is to safeguard the privacy of new installations which didn't care to change the name of the default place and haven't learned about history yet. we could alternatively distribute the place as local-only instead.
• Typing notification in PSYC, XMPP and IRC as experimental CTCP TYPING extension.
• Timestamps for IRC history messages with optional CTCP TS encoding.
• IRC: Fixed 512 byte limit splits to behave like ircd.
• Simple web-based /edit command, needs work.
• Fixed: remote idle/age time display and handling of '.' message.
• Various related PSYC fixes including method inheritance in all entities.
• Optimizations by refactoring the method handler switches in user entities.
• limited anonymous access to profiles on http://psyc.example.org/~nick, new personal profile inspection notices
• examine profile: animalfave and big photos upgraded to friends-only
• modularized debug flag mechanism
• Friends are no longer exposed by default.
• install.sh no longer re-unpacks psyclpc so you can tweak the compilation process should it fail.
• A serious bug in PSYC authentication was fixed.
• Some fixes in IRC and XMPP accesses.
• New tunings in Tuning.
• Mailcast
• Minor PSYC client and virtual host recognition fixes.
• Improved psyconf.
• Missing template made web inspections show up as templates on IRC.
• Subscribe permanently
• Greetings
• More IRC RFC compliance.
• New buffered output class allows you to make asynchronous web applications using psyced's builtin web server. Thx fip.
• New charset info at login.
• CDATA support for XMPP.
• Your groups may now be shown to friends in your profile description, but unlike IRC they are by default kept private. You can expose all of them with /set groupsexpose <degree> where degree is a value from 0..9 indicating how much trust is necessary to see them. 5 is enough to have them visible to friends by default. Or you can /expose specific places using the expose command. Yet, a tuning is in place which by default limits the maximum amount of exposed groups to 4. So go ahead and /expose your top 4 groups. Also, when using /expose with places you can only use the full PSYC uniform you get from /status, not the place nickname.
• archetype.gen is a generator of models for places. Wicked stuff that merely gives you more freedom in the options you can choose in place.gen. For instance now you can have a room with masquerade and a scratchpad, impossible in the past.
• New tuning that allows to specify a _path_archetype_place_default.
• New administrative commands to inspect routing: /route /objects and /remove.
• Three spectacular improvements/bug fixes concerning remote place leave operations.
• Persistent places allow for painless server restarts remembering all remote guests - you don't need to re-join remote places any longer.
• Improved /reload to keep member data warm while reloading places, so you can change the code of your place as there are people in it until you make a mistake and break it. Even then only local users are lost and you can try to recover quick enough so that nobody else notices.
• Lots of new actions inspired from Nemesis.
• Removed /act command. you can type /whatever actions directly, like /curtsy.
• Language support for PSYC clients.
• Friendcast any _method using _request_do_cast.
• Pike compatibility changes, try bin/psyked for a proto-psyced running under pike.
• Simplified new register_person(): Proper unregistering instead of periodic cleanups, but only with remote control privileges, not by /unregister command which too easily could be abused to destroy your chatting persona.
• Improved clean-up strategy when network links break and do not recover (but it doesn't seem to work properly.. sigh)
• /set id <uniform> lets you set up a forward service for _messages.
• Major XMPP support fixes, minor IRC support fixes, minor fixes in install and psyconf.
• Minor improvements/fixes concerning /log, shutdown_in_progress, jabber disco & utf8 conversions, create places, living, newsrooms, /wish_luck, /owners, /surf, client linking protocol, console charsets, net/root and my first try & slice inheritance implementation

More News

• Future PSYC strategy has been discussed and development teams are being formed.
• echox held a lecture on the State of PSYC in german language at MetaRheinMain Chaosdays, September 5th, 2009.
• There have been meetings of psyced humanoids in Berlin and Munich in December 2009.

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PSYC graffiti somewhere in New Orleans

• Experimental new irssi-psyc plugin which turns irssi into a PSYC client.
• We have new mailing lists connected to the @welcome and @dev channels, the subscription mechanism still needs to be integrated with the websites though.
• New newsfeeds available from psyced.org
• With the acquisition of Jabber.com by Cisco new competence enters the XMPP protocol scene. We may hope for the long overdue multicast fix.
• psyclpc comes with zippo's new support for 64 bit architectures.
• The procmail integration supports relay mode using a PSYCRELAY setting, so now you can make e-mail notifications go straight to your Jabber account.
• We are contributing to IRC+.
• Wiki must die. Today a crawler decided to quickly download the entire wiki, too bad our CGI-like PHP sandbox configuration, which is a good safety precaution, is quite processing power intensive, so it took down the entire machine. Sorry for a bit of psyced.org downtime. We are planning to activate our static website, generated out of the wiki, soon. The best way to be independent from any voluntary or involuntary attacks against psyced.org: Run your own server!!
• Unnecessary parts of psyclpc are now deactivated resulting in a slimmer and faster executable, additionally it now compiles for Windows under cygwin.

about: New documents and discussions

• A whole new PSYC protocol specification in the making.
• Talking about Encryption. Today: OCSP.
• How to forward portage notifications into psyced using mailcast.
• Newly documented here: psyced's Masquerade function.
• Beyond Atom: Generic update notifications.
• Revamp the PSYC syntax? Only if it's worth it!
• Message flow in psyced places
• Pings and pongs in PSYC.
• New developer docs: How to write a PSYC parser and how to get the inheritance right.

ve.symlynX.com completed migration away from psyced.org

After continously running into problems with our double-headed hydra strategy of having a different name for XMPP as our server has on other protocols, we gave up and did one of those complicated migration strategies, since no simple ones have been invented yet.

Should you have an account on psyced.org and have Jabber friends on it, then you are affected by this change.

We moved the ve.symlynX.com domain over to the beta server. We automatically configured a forwarding to your psyced.org address, so you will be able to receive messages directed to your former Jabber address.

Technical details: I copied all affected accounts to beta, then applied multipatcher to remove the personal message lastlogs from the files and to autoconfigure the id setting. I still have a back-up of the original beta files before I replaced some of them (in case you prefer those).

You have a couple of options what to do now:

• You can use the new ve.symlynX.com server for your XMPP needs. Just issue a /set id - if you prefer to disable the message forwarding feature. You will probably want to clean out your Jabber friendship data on the psyced.org account then, by using /cancel xmpp:whoever, or those Jabber servers out there will see presence news from you from both accounts (and see the psyced.org stuff as unsolicited).
• You can join in on the migration by renegotiating friendship subscriptions from your flashy new psyced.org account (simply re-issue /fr for each xmpp: entry in /show nf), should you want to send and receive presence information from psyced.org, again.
• You can clean up your old friendships by logging into ve.symlynX.com and issuing /show nf and lots of /unfr. Or you can let your friends clean up their rosters by themselves. Or you can leave everything to rot.

It's painful, but saves us from more pain later, and stops pains we had in the past.

Not doing anything is not an option also because ve.symlynX.com has moved to our beta development server, so intensive debug logging may be taking place. Noone is intentionally looking at those logs other than looking for bugs, but you should be aware of this and seriously consider migrating those friendships.

PSYC at LinuxTag in Berlin

LinuxTag 2007-05-30 thru 2007-06-02 saw a PSYC paper presentation and several side activities!

Our special guest Stephen R. van den Berg co-hosted the presentation of the new procmail integration with PSYC! See page on linuxtag.org.

Update news story in German: LinuxTag is proud to be and having been the platform for the public discurse and criticism on the views of a singular politician concerning his Internet policies, while his other policies are capturing everybody else's attentions.

We got blogged on mozilla.com...

PSYC in Copenhagen at the Europe Music Awards

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Think of the music whatever you may, the EMA is the world's largest music awards event, and to keep things working under heavy load MTV and MES are again relying on symlynX and PSYC for the annual video chat event during the awards show. Inspect your regional MTV website for details, or simply enter psyc://MTV.ve.symlynX.com/@ema. You can even access the event using xmpp:*ema@ve.symlynx.com. See you in Copenhagen.

Surprise PSYC Talk at CCC's 23C3

nei, a PSYC critic and user we first met just recently at the Chaos Computer Congress on its last day spontaneously held a Lightning Talk dedicated to PSYC, that even we didn't know about and thus unfortunately didn't attend.

We Wos There!

Feel free to pick up a white paper...

We wos having some guests from the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin in psyc://psyced.org/@WOS. See also http://www.wizards-of-os.org

psyconaut

psyconaut has been a stub client for years, but recently with the many improvements to psyced's client protocol it is turning into a seriously powerful chat/messaging client program. Give it a click: psyconaut (open source in C#, comes with windows .exe, supposed to also run on unix using mono.