I've seen the convention of saying "afk&" instead of just "afk" in a few #irc channels. I've got 2 questions:
1. Does that mean anything different than just "afk"? It doesn't seem to, but I'm reluctant to assume IRC users are typing an extra char for no reason.
2. Where does it come from? I'm assuming it's related to backgrounding linux processes, but is there more to the history?
@codesections Don't you think it means kind of like "nohup" for a command, maybe meaning that "I will be away for a while and I want the rest of you to carry on without waiting for me to be back"?
@codesections DISCLAIMER: no idea what this actually means.
I would imagine that it means "I'm backgrounding the conversation to focus on something else but I'm still at the keyboard" as opposed to afk which is "I'm walking away from the computer"
@codesections have you tried asking the users directly? 😇 I’m curious now! 😄
@codesections Interesting, I've not seen this.