Ask HN: I have ssh, they have ssh, how can we chat?
Just use tail -f and a bash function.<p>Put this in your .bashrc file:<p><pre><code>    function talk { echo "$USER: $@" >> talkfile; }
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then run:<p><pre><code>    tail -f talkfile &
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The & puts tail into the background so it continues running, and "talkfile" needs to be a file that both of you have write access to.<p>You can both communicate simply by using the talk function like any other bash command:<p><pre><code>    talk whatever you want and it'll be written to talkfile
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This works on Linux, not sure about Mac.<p>It's nice because it records what you say, so there's no need for the other person to be logged in to get your message, and you get a printout of the last few lines of conversation when you "login" (run the tail -f command). There's nothing extra to install either.<p>(edit, apparently say is already installed on OS X, so I renamed the function "talk")