[HN Gopher] Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature ___________________________________________________________________ Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature Author : Melchizedek Score : 209 points Date : 2021-06-13 08:11 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (alex.flounder.online) (TXT) w3m dump (alex.flounder.online) | crazypython wrote: | Why not simply use HTML with JS off, plus userscripts to block | cookie banners and sticky headers? You get modern CSS features | like column display. | heisenbit wrote: | I don't think survival of a new protocol is predicated on it | being useless like a gnarly tree to a carpenter. It may be there | are niches in which survival for gnarly technology is possible | but like the quoted surviver tree they will be on hard to assault | spaces like gnarly usecases. | aceArtGmbH wrote: | How about replacing HTML with Markdown? | | Markdown is simpler than HTML, but has more to offer than Gemini. | You could have tables, images and depending on the flavor also | checkboxes. Client side styling would also be easily possible. | And if you want a simple browser, you don't even have to parse it | and simply show the plain text. | | You do not have to be a programmer to write Markdown and many | writers already write in Markdown and then convert to HTML. | objplant wrote: | It is possible to serve markdown files over gemini protocol (so | says the specs: | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi). As | for the tables, images, etc., it's up to a client (browser) to | render it. For example, even though gemtext doesn't specify | displaying images among text, some clients can display links to | images as actual images inside the same page. Luckily, the | gemtext is at least very similar to markdown, save for the link | markup. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Both Markdown and Gemini's markup are missing some semantic | tagging useful for screenreaders. The disabled should not be | second-class citizens in any new web community. | lolinder wrote: | What semantic tagging does markdown miss? | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Take ISO-639 tagging for words in a foreign language | different from the main language of the document. For | example, _real_ should be pronounced by the screenreader | differently in English and Spanish, _coin_ differently in | English, French or Irish, etc. A screenreader might be able | to use some heuristic to identify the language of longer | snippets of text, but for one-off words it doesn't have | enough data to work with. HTML has the lang= "" tag to | guide screenreaders, but I am not aware of any Markdown | equivalent. | samatman wrote: | How common is the use of these affordances in practice? | I'm just now discovering that it's possible. | | I'll say this: it's very cool that it's _possible_ to | make text more accessible to people using a screenreader | than it is to people reading it raw. For instance, if I | were to refer to the real _real_ , I would do what I just | did, and italicize the word to indicate that it's | foreign. Someone who knows how Spanish works can | interpolate from "italic real" and get /real/ instead of | /ri:l/ out of it, and that's basically what a | screenreader would do, literally say "italic real". | | I'm not convinced that accessibility demands that words | be pronounced properly under such circumstances. Note | that someone completely ignorant of Spanish would just | see "italic real" and maybe think it represents emphasis, | so the sighted are not at an advantage here. | | Again, it's pretty cool that there's a way to do it in | HTML! Semantic markup is neat, even if it doesn't get | used much. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | Foreign-language words used in a text are not always set | in italic. For example, the author might use a proper | noun (so unitalicized) like the name of a minor city in a | foreign country that isn't going to be in the | screenreader's dictionary. In these cases, language | tagging helps the screenreader output something | intelligible instead of garbage. | | Generally, use of this tagging is obligatory to meet | accessibility guidelines. If in practice people don't use | the tags so much, this is a problem. Again, the disabled | should not be second-class citizens on the web or any | medium that aims to substitute for it. | approxim8ion wrote: | Never thought of it this way (privileged enough to never have | had to). are there any good resources that discuss this a | little further? | chacha2 wrote: | It's a shame it can't add on any innovations that didn't make the | cut to the current web, such as Ted Nelsons parallel documents. | | Seems like any interest in making technology more than a replica | of reality has disappeared. Maybe its even going the opposite | direction, that what we have in reality is too complicated to | recreate so the digital becomes more constrictive than the real | thing. | selfhoster11 wrote: | We need a foothold first. The Web 3.0 (4.0?) took all the | oxygen out of the room for Web+ technologies, so we first need | a healthier ecosystem in which to frame the discussion. | fsiefken wrote: | I really like the idea but reading this in the FAQ disappoints | me: "Gemini has no support for caching, compression, or | resumption of interrupted downloads" | | Back in the day in the time of BBS with Fidonet or Usenet, I | really liked the offline first mentality. With zmodem you had | compressed and resumable downloads, with Echomail and Fidonet and | POP3/Usenet you had offline first forums. | | But the same FAQ says Gemini is also for those: "Interested in | low-power computing and/or low-speed networks, either by choice | or necessity" | | This seems to be contradictory. Have compression, caching and | resumable downloads omitted by default for the sake of simplicity | or can it still be added to the protocol? | | What's the rationale? A more formal seperation of simplicity of | presentation and use within slow and frequently disconnected | networks? | | That if you for example want zstd compression you can use a VPN? | Or that if you want resumable downloads or caching you can use a | local proxy? | | With the right proxy or browser one could emulate Gemini | experience with the regular www, similar to using the old Opera | Mini or force Reader View, block all images, javascript and ads | on all sites. Wouldn't that be 'better'? | DrBazza wrote: | I'm not sure about how 'low' low power computing is, but | consider this: a jpeg is compressed, and on a 1990 Acorn | Archimedes (ARM, 8Mhz 32bit, and the fastest home computer at | the time), you could watch a jpeg image being rendered in real | time. Uncompressed images, unsurprisingly, rendered instantly. | mananaysiempre wrote: | Well, I enjoyed using the "cached images only" mode in Opera | as recently as 2007 on a pay-per-minute 56K dial-up | connection that was more like 28K due to the crappy cheap | modem. (It wasn't impossible to get broadband, but nobody | felt it was important enough to bother until the last couple | of years, and then it took some time to actually get around | to it.) The relief at seeing that the JPEG you just commanded | to load turned out to be progressive (not that I knew how it | worked) was visceral, and the hate towards people making GIF | buttons with no alt-text practically unbounded. Uncompressed | images were beyond the limit of practicality. | astrange wrote: | If you design your low power computer to handle JPEG (eg with | a hardware codec), then using JPEGs will be cheaper than | uncompressed formats because there are less bits to move | around. | foobar33333 wrote: | Gemini has no media support so its only text. I'm not sure | what computer people are using which struggles to uncompress | text. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Some clients can be configured to load images inline. And | if they don't, it's not a big problem to click on an image | link for illustration. | fsiefken wrote: | Yes, but suppose I'm on a 200 bytes per second long | distance radio link. One average UTF8 encoded page would | perhaps take 10 seconds to load. With zstd or brotli | compression it would take half the time. | | For ultra low power computing (for solar power) with zstd | or brotli decompression support in a gemini client it would | for example be doable on a raspberry pico running fuzix | driving an e-ink display with keyboard. | https://liliputing.com/2021/05/picomputer-kit-turns-a- | raspbe... https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-qt-py-2040 | https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adafruit-qt-py- | rp2040-r... | zozbot234 wrote: | > with Echomail and Fidonet and POP3/Usenet you had offline | first forums. | | One of the side effects of ActivityPub is to standardize a | "post new content" endpoint that might be used by offline-first | clients with intermittent connectivity. This is in addition to | getting content via ActivityStreams format, which can be | implemented very easily, even by a cheap, statically-hosted | site with no reliance on JS webtech. | mananaysiempre wrote: | That's the other direction, isn't it? The point of UUCP, | NNTP, and Echonet (and SMTP, for that matter) is message | distribution between _servers_ with intermittent connectivity | by batching and relaying messages. Can I host an ActivityPub | node that both publishes and receives (and, if we're talking | Echomail, relays) stuff if I only have an Internet connection | for an hour per day? Can the whole federation function like | that? | | (An ActivityPub-NNTP interconnect sounds like something that | public-inbox really should support, now that I think about | it.) | zozbot234 wrote: | AIUI, ActivityPub allows for both POSTing content and | GETting it in either direction, that is, a node can be | acting as an "inbox", an "outbox" or both. | pmlnr wrote: | Activity*: let's overcomplicate xml by making it json! | mananaysiempre wrote: | ... Or simply a text-mode browser, yes. | | To be fair, full HTTP is ludicrously complicated on the server | and almost nobody actually does or uses it. I don't know of a | single web app framework or library that properly and | conveniently does all of content encodings, transfer encodings, | content negotiation, caching, ranges, ETags, and so on; what's | worse, if you're doing anything dynamic much of this is | application-dependent and so I don't really know how it | _should_ be done. The parsing (on both sides) also kind of | sucks, if not as much as for 822. Gopher (on which Gemini is | based) is almost laughably simple by comparison, you can do it | manually in shell script and not feel like a dirty hack. | | I do not understand why the Gemini people don't do NNTP, | though. The relative inaccessibility of Usenet in the modern | world? Still, you don't have to federate with it if you don't | want to, and the tech is quite nice, if somewhat difficult due | to the inherent complexity of the problem. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Gemini is symbiotic with other "old web" protocols, so Usenet | fits. If one is running Gemini, then their gemlog will likely | list an email address (SMTP) and host large files over FTP, | HTTP or IPFS. | pmlnr wrote: | Lack of guides for setting up a private nntp, I'd say. If you | have some resources, please share them. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | "With the right proxy or browser one could emulate Gemini | experience with the regular www, similar to using the old Opera | Mini or force Reader View, block all images, javascript and ads | on all sites. Wouldn't that be 'better'?" | | One of the neat things about Gemini is how quickly and easily | people started writing clients for it. Perhaps this illustrates | how we can influence client design, e.g., limit complexity (and | perhaps decrease insecurity), through protocol design. | | I use a text-only browser to read HTML. I often make HTTP | requests from the commmand-line using a variety of different | TCP clients in order to utilise a feature of HTTP/1.1 called | pipelining. I have been using the web this way for decades. | Needless to say, "new" protocols like HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 come | across as being 100% commercial in their vision of what the web | is; they are designed to acommodate a web full of advertising. | Their sponsors justify them based on problems that one might | encounter when trying to use the web for commerce. However, | they fail to account for non-commercial uses. For example, | there's no "HOL blocking" problem when all the resoources are | coming from the same server and the site operator is not trying | to "build complex, interactive [graphical] web pages." There is | an underlying bias with these protocols for enabling a | commercial, advertising-filled web. As one would expect | considering who is paying the salaries of their implementors. | | Then we have something like QUIC whose sponsors similarly make | justifcation arguments that assume every site's goals are | "complex [graphical] web pages", likely to be supported through | advertising. I have read articles arguing in favour of QUIC | that suggest TCP never achieves its true potential for speed | because we are only ever making large numbers of small TCP | "connections". That usage pattern is indeed something we see | with "complex, interactive [graphical] webpages".FN1 The kind | that serve advertising. However, with HTTP/1.1 pipelining, as I | use it, I have different goals. I make a single, longer-lived | TCP connection and make 10s to 100s of HTTP requests to the | same server. I am not using the web as an interactive, | graphical interface. I am doing [text] records retrieval. I am | using the web as an information source. Again, what I am seeing | with these "next gen" protocols are an underlying bias and | assumptions in favour of a commercial web filled with ads. | | As such, I agree the "limitations" of Gemini which make it cool | to some of us, i.e., it is inherently not advertising-friendly, | could be achieved using HTTP either by | | 1. users choice of client, i.e., stop using graphical browsers | that run Javascript, written by companies that rely on | "surveillance capitalism" or | | 2. a new standard that websites could adopt whereby they (also) | served content in non-advertising-friendly way. | | #2 is outside the control of the user. It is squarely under the | control of website operators and those with the power ($$) to | influence website operators. Indeed, it can also be brought | about through use of a proxy. I have also become a die-hard | localhost-bound proxy user. It is seemingly limitless what a | one can do with a good proxy, however it can quickly lead to | some rather complex configurations and much of the results can | alternatively be achieved by #1, simply using the "right" | client. I use both #1 and #2 together. | | 1. Not sure that Gemini supports pipelining. If not, how does | it allow for efficient, bulk text retrieval. Does it encourage | short, successive TCP connections. | | The mistake that the original lobster.rs "Gemini is useless" | commenter made is that he assumed Gemini is meant to "replace" | the web. Yet no one, certainly not the creator of the protocol, | ever claimed anything of the sort. In fact, Gemini | documentation explicitly disclaims this as a goal. The | commenter has constructed a strawman. He also assumed the only | worthwhile use for an internet is a web, and the only | worthwhile use for a web is to engage in commerce. To me, that | looks like myopia. The internet has historically been multi- | use, as the parent comment describes. The "www" is but one use. | Alas, it has been co-opted by those seeking to use it as an | advertising vector. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | I'm not a part of the Gemini community, but if I had to guess: | | * caching is like alcohol: it is both the cause of and solution | to all of life's problems | | * nothing Gemini serves should be so large as to need resumable | downloads or compression | | In other words they seem like deliberate choices to prevent | web-app-ification of Gemini. | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Nothing stopping the client from caching locally. I think | Lagrange and possibly the other clients display last download | time and allow a refresh. | api wrote: | Cryptographic content-addressability (with inherent data | deduplication) is superior to simple caching in every single | way: efficiency, facilitation of distributed storage, and | security. | | A link should point to a hash. Now you can go get that hash | from the same host you used to get the link _or any other | host that stores it anywhere in the world._ That hash could | unpack to data or to a list of other hashes. Go get those. | Where you get them doesn 't matter one bit. You can verify | the correctness of the data trivially. | | This is how BitTorrent works but it could work equally well | on top of a simpler protocol. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Would IPFS about cover this use case? | api wrote: | IPFS uses this, but it's more complex than necessary and | has a ton of added features that are not core to the | principle. (Not saying they're all bad... just that the | core principle doesn't require thousands of lines of code | to implement.) | | Here's the bottom line: | | The cryptographic content addressing I described sounds | complex but is actually super simple and can be | implemented in a page or two of code that will almost | never need to change because it is "correct." It could be | added to the gemini protocol in an afternoon. | | Caching sounds simple but is horrifically complex and an | endless source of bugs and failure modes. | selfhoster11 wrote: | > It could be added to the gemini protocol in an | afternoon. | | I'd actually like this to be a separate protocol that's | co-hosted with Gemini. It would make Gemini simpler, and | it would enable other protocols to reuse content | addressable storage. | hakfoo wrote: | This seems like it would be vulnerable to accidental or | malicious hash collision generation. | | You need a hash plus some "authorized mirrors list" or some | other anti-poisoning measure. Not sure offhand how | BitTorrent does it. | telotortium wrote: | Unless you are using an older hash function that doesn't | have sufficient collision or preimage resistance, that | should not be an issue, because finding 2 files that hash | to the same output is infeasible. It does point to the | need to be able to upgrade the hash function in your | protocol at some point, and preferably associate a set of | hashes generated by different hash functions to the same | file contents. | derefr wrote: | Any hash algorithm for which a single collision has ever | been generated would be an inappropriate choice for a URN | system. | | Re: malicious collisions, any modern hash algorithm | currently in wide use, if "broken" by some kind of | vulnerability, would cause far worse problems for the | world than just some URN system breaking down. As such, | literal man-millenia of cryptanalysis has gone into | ensuring that there are no vulnerabilities in popular | algorithms. | | Re: accidental collisions, please note that 128 bits of | entropy (i.e. a UUID) is already enough to ensure no | accidental collisions before the heat-death of the | universe. And most modern hashes have >=256-bit residues. | ltbarcly3 wrote: | FYI UUIDs are 128bits but only have 122 bits of entropy. | Still not going to get a collision with a good | implementation. | nullc wrote: | Content hash based distribution has downsides too: E.g. | updating content can result in people still stuck on old | versions because the links weren't updated. | | Content hash distribution can also easily have privacy | problems. Say there is a site for rubber band fetishists | that you don't want people to know you've visited. I can | interrogate if you've visited this site by embedding some | of its content-- if you load it instantly because you have | it cached, then I can be fairly confident that you've | visited that site before. | api wrote: | The first point is no different from regular dead links | or outdated URLs. | | The second can be mitigated but is a legitimate issue. | samatman wrote: | Unfortunately, stale hashes are a worse problem in | content-centric networks than dead links. | | So Alice links to some content in Bob's site, but Bob | made an embarrassing error and wants to update it. Very | well, and Alice has to update the hash pointing to Bob's | content: but now any hash pointing to _Alice 's_ content | is stale, and so on, ad infinitum. | | There are ways to solve this problem, but none of them | force a linear forward history. Basically, you can | request all Merkle chains featuring a base hash, and | verify that Bob signed all of the branches, but only | discipline can keep this collection in a linear order. | | This is probably fine in practice, just follow the | longest branch. | | And now you have Secure Scuttlebutt! | kstrauser wrote: | I think you're right, and I think those complaints are a | little ridiculous for a protocol primarily designed for | publishing text. I have a tiny Gemini site because it's fun | to play with, even if its audience is tiny. My average file | size is about 2KB. There's practically zero benefit for | caching or compression here, and much detriment toward making | the protocol more complicated to support them (again, given | the context of primarily moving small text files around). | canadianfella wrote: | > Have compression, caching and resumable downloads omitted by | default for the sake of simplicity or can it still be added to | the protocol? | | You're missing a word, which made this hard to read. | | "Have compression, caching and resumable downloads _been_ | omitted by default for the sake of simplicity or can it still | be added to the protocol?" | web007 wrote: | > Gemini will remain as it is, frustrating anyone trying to | extract value out of it. | | Why am I going to use _anything_ if I 'm not trying to extract | value? I don't mean in the sense of "make money off of lusers", I | mean as in "do something that provides value for my effort". | | I used gopher to "extract value" 25 years ago, but it turns out I | _want_ inline links and images and formatting and interaction | (and compression and caching et al) because they 're really | useful. Look no further than HN for the Gemini ideal use-case, | but even here the experience would be worse because of its | restrictions. | | Reading the spec, Gemini seems like it wants to be the elitist / | hipster version of both gopher and HT(TP|ML). It forgets that a | lot of user-agent features are pro-user, even if they've been co- | opted for nefarious means. It's the CLI tech nerd's dream of a | user interface, and discounts both the evolution of the web and | of UI/UX design over the past 30 years. | zxzax wrote: | As far as I can see, the value seems to be in using code | golfing as a form of artistic programming. Probably useless, | but not any more so than your average video game, or theater | performance, or art museum... | II2II wrote: | Those who use Gemini find value in it. Their definition of | value may be different. It may be expressed in terms of the | type of community they wish to participate in, the type of | environment they wish to expose themselves to, the hobbies they | pursue, how they entertain themselves, or any other reason that | keeps them returning. | | Painting people with negative stereotypes simply because they | seek something different from their online experience is | uncalled for. Nothing compels people to use Gemini aside from | their own personal interest. Its imprint upon the world is so | minuscule that it is impossible to complain of incidental | impacts. Simply put, it will not affect the lives of those who | choose to ignore it. Contrast that to the web, which is | virtually impossible to escape while remaining functional in | the modern world. | | And why paint it in terms of negatives? People tend to compare | Gemini to a crippled version of the web simply because that's | what most of the world uses, but is more accurate to claim it | is a modernized version of Gopher. It simplifies linking to | other documents. It is possible to reformat text for small | screens. It adds a layer of security. These are all positives. | tenebrisalietum wrote: | There's a difference between delivering value (a user searches | for or accesses a resource and fairly expects a resource to | deliver a value) and extracting value (a predator inserts | itself into the user->searching->accessing->resource chain and | opportunistically seizes value from stages in that process). | pizzazzaro wrote: | Hi, rando here. I'd just like to say, "for the lulz," as is a | grand tradition in the internet. | | And, as an end-user? A little respect might be nice. | teucris wrote: | The author's response doesn't really address the complaint in the | post quoted. | | The complaint was that Gemini lacks basic utility. Intentionally | making things that lack utility is a great way to express an | idea, but to me that's an art form or a statement, not a tool. | | Gemini is a communication tool. While it's noble to make | something that is difficult to extract value from, a tool has to | serve a purpose. The complaints, to me, feel legitimate critiques | for a communication tool. | | Whenever I venture into the Gemini-verse, I feel like I'm peeking | into personal diaries left out at random. I am not a person to | shy away from a good search for interesting information. But on | Gemini, I don't see a point in digging. That makes me feel like | it's still lacking as a communication tool. | qwerty456127 wrote: | Indeed, tables are an essential a thing which should be there, | but it should be implemented in a way which makes it impossible | to abuse it for layout, it should only be used to represent | actual tables. I would even add column data types so the browser | would be able to let the user sort them in a meaningful way (e.g. | I hate Wikipedia tables which have sorting but can only be sorted | alphabetically or something like that). | | As for multi-column layout - it's a work for the browser to do on | the user demand. View should be decoupled from the content. | | For cases when you want to control every aspect of how is the | information displayed there is HTML. | | Things like Gemini should not have formatting features besides | those semantic which MarkDown has. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Even better. Gemini supports alternative content types, so | there's nothing to prevent you from serving up Markdown | documents in response to a Gemini request. Worst case, your | client will display it as plaintext (which will be still very | readable), or in the best case, it will kindly render it into | something pretty but still simple. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | The fact that tables must be sorted with JavaScript is a | fundamental flaw in the HTML specification. Sortable tables | that the website cannot ask to be unsortable are a strong | disincentive to use those tables for layout. Mandatory thick & | ugly borders would also help. | draw_down wrote: | This project seems silly and this piece is extremely overwrought. | wly_cdgr wrote: | It's funny and poignant to see this sincere discussion here, at | the very heart of the commercial web | carapace wrote: | Heh. | | It seems to me that the discussion here is just rehashing all | the discussion on the Gemini mailing list from the past few | years. | aaron-santos wrote: | > If your technology can't emulate typography produced on a daily | basis - often in a hurry - 150 years ago then your tech is rather | limited. | | Just wait until Alex hears about illuminated manuscripts from the | 13th century. Gemini's inability to depict historiated initials | is an even bigger tragedy. | syrrim wrote: | People make out fine without a useless protocol, I think. There | are still a large number of people creating blogs and websites | without analytics etc., and with no expectation of being able to | monetize their work. As the lobste.rs quote points out, gemini | goes a step beyond that, in banning many features that even very | minimal websites might want to use. | | When I think of a minimal website, I think of danluu.com. But | even danluu occasionally uses tables and images. | https://danluu.com/cli-complexity/ https://danluu.com/branch- | prediction/ . I think these articles would be made worse if these | features were removed. I suppose they could be replaced with | carefully formatted code blocks, but these would be harder for | danluu to make, and would look worse to the reader. Consider the | dictum from motherfuckingwebsite.com: "shit works on all | devices"; codeblocks work very poorly across devices. | | I think claiming that gemini is intentionally useless is a bad | excuse. Gemini includes some features, but doesn't include | others. There needs to be better reasoning behind the fetures it | excludes. | selfhoster11 wrote: | > There are still a large number of people creating blogs and | websites without analytics etc., and with no expectation of | being able to monetize their work. | | Gemini is a social space as well as a protocol. Part of why | it's got such a sharp break with HTTP than e.g. being a subset | of HTTP with a special client, is to demarcate such a space for | those who want it. Minimal websites still operate within the | larger context of the HTTP web, where this demarcation doesn't | exist. Click a link to a Facebook profile from that small blog | and you've unwittingly chosen to load half a megabyte of markup | and tracking scripts. This is not possible with Gemini because | such a capability simply is outside the protocol. | | > But even danluu occasionally uses tables and images. | https://danluu.com/cli-complexity/ https://danluu.com/branch- | prediction/ . I think these articles would be made worse if | these features were removed. | | I agree that this could be annoying. Gemini has support for | alternate mimetypes, so it's possible to return Markdown to the | client. I think that Markdown is still in the spirit of | Gemini's minimalism, but it does support more things (including | tables). If a particular client refuses to render markdown, | it's still readable as plaintext. | meltedcapacitor wrote: | Gemini feels like a job half done: the presentation layer is | simplified, but the TCP/TLS stack is still there in all its | monstrosity, and so is the model that the user agent downloads | stuff from the authoritative source live in response to | interaction, with all the associated issues, like leaking meta- | data. It also lacks a discoverability protocol improving on the | search engine model. | | These are hard problems arguably. | selfhoster11 wrote: | TCP is not hard. It's not perfect, but for what Gemini needs | (ordered guaranteed delivery of packets) it's a good tradeoff. | Many firewalls would happily drop non TCP/UDP traffic as well, | which would hurt adoption. | | For TLS, I agree it's a monstrosity, but it was an intentional | protocol tradeoff. We really want to have privacy, so the only | other way is to homebrew your crypto protocols (which is just | as dangerous as homebrewing your crypto algorithms). | | Since we're basically stuck with TLS, Gemini asks the question | of how to make TLS make a run for its money - and this is by | using TLS asymmetric crypto keys for persistent or semi- | persistant identity handled by the client. The HTTP web still | doesn't have single sign-on, but Gemini does. Just present the | same key everywhere. | | As for search, it's not like the HTTP web has a good | discoverability story either. The only reason why we have | search that can pull up any page based on any keyword is | because we've spent decades selling our eyeballs to a company | that indexed it all by sheer brute force. The Gemini web is | arguably no different here - if someone wants to build a search | engine, they are free to do so. | baq wrote: | > Since we're basically stuck with TLS, Gemini asks the | question of how to make TLS make a run for its money - and | this is by using TLS asymmetric crypto keys for persistent or | semi-persistant identity handled by the client. The HTTP web | still doesn't have single sign-on, but Gemini does. Just | present the same key everywhere. | | and the selling point is 'no tracking'? i must be missing | something. | jlundberg wrote: | Well, the client don't need to send the key all the time. | Only when you want auth. | | And could easily implement one-keypair-per-server based on | user preference. | toast0 wrote: | TLS is kind of icky (so many size fields), but it's not really | a monster if you limit your scope; you can use ciphers from | elsewhere, maybe limit to TLS 1.3 if daring, or just 1.3 and | 1.2 if you want broad (but not infinite) compatability. | | The monster is x.509 certificates. | easterncalculus wrote: | I'm glad to see this article and posts like the one mentioned | because Gemini really doesn't make sense. It seems like a | hobbyist project that people now are getting defensive about when | questioned on the value of its spread and existence. Gemini | misses the point. The problem with the web is Javascript, not | italics. It's a good example of throwing the baby out with the | bathwater. | Semiapies wrote: | My problem is that protocols and software are not trees with | their own imperatives for existence. They're just tools for | people, and a useless tool gets neglected. Even a fun tool that's | not as capable as others gets used less and less over time, once | you get past a period of infatuation. And with a small user base, | that trend turns into a death spiral. | | I'm curious to see how long Gemini keeps an active community. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Gopher seemed to have a healthy (if small) adoption for years | after it was declared dead. If Gemini becomes a Gopher+, then | it has a strong chance at staying around. | Semiapies wrote: | Gopher has actually evolved since, though. The Gemini | community doesn't want their protocol to evolve. | Someone wrote: | Other products that _"can't emulate typography produced on a | daily basis - often in a hurry - 150 years ago"_ , but that you | may have heard of: Twitter, WhatsApp. | | Also, how well does html do multiple columns with text flowing | between them nowadays? | | = I don't think the original argument is a strong one. | thaunatos wrote: | > Also, how well does html do multiple columns with text | flowing between them nowadays? | | With the CSS property `columns`, this is pretty easy to do: | | https://jsfiddle.net/52j401rg/ | | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/columns | Madeindjs wrote: | I dislike that Gemini require an another web server and another | web browser. | | Isn't Gemeni can be simplified to a convention that forbid | CSS/JavaScript and allow only basic tags of HTML (<h1-6>, <p>, | <a>, etc..)? | | IMO this could be a better move because this will use any | performances improvement made on modern web stack (cache, | compression, etc..). | king_phil wrote: | What is Gemini? | squiggleblaz wrote: | A modern successor to gopher, with some extra features to make | it more useful in the modern day. | | Gopher was a competitor to the early web. It had a distinction | between contentful pages and link pages, so it was less | flexible than the HTML based web. I'm pretty sure this is one | of the things Gemini fixes | ilaksh wrote: | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ | h0l0cube wrote: | Or the direct answer to the question in the FAQ: | | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi | dddw wrote: | Better question maybe: why is Gemini? | squiggleblaz wrote: | Gemini is because some people are sick of the modern web. | | In the (idealised) olden days, the web was a place people | posted content. An amateur could make a geocities that showed | people their interests, an academic could have a collection | of pages that acted as notes for their lectures, or a company | could advertise the products that they sold. | | In the (distopianised) modern days, the web is a giant | network of interlinked computer programs, none of which can | be trusted, but most of which offer at least some attractive | distraction, whose primary purpose is to develop a small | number of competing databases about you to maximise the | amount of money that can be extracted from you while | minimising the amount of value that can be returned to you. | The providers of the computer programs take particular steps | which should cause rational people to distrust them (e.g. | hiding the button that says "Save my choices" to discourage | you from doing what you want and what they are obliged to | permit you to do), but healthy people can only tolerate so | much distrust in their day-to-day life that they become | exhausted. | | Gemini starts with extensions to Gopher to develop something | a little bit more like the first one. It acts as something | like a safe space. It is based on a similar sort of principle | to the black-and-white mode on a lot of modern phones, to | discourage you from overusing it by making it less | attractive. Although Gemini does support form submissions and | CGI, the primary form of interaction as far as I know is to | have multiple gemlogs. | | (I tried using Gemini last year when it was mentioned in this | place. But the content I want - e.g. programming language API | documentation - is not on Gemini, and I think the Hacker News | proxy is read-only, so I began to forget about it. I think | Gemini is perhaps a little bit too far over.) | goodpoint wrote: | > the web is a giant network of interlinked computer | programs, none of which can be trusted | | Agreed, but Gemini does address the problem of | surveillance. | | All metadata are still leaked: IP addresses, DNS queries, | FQDNs in the TLS session opening. Also timing attacks. | | Furthermore, there's nothing that Gemini can do to prevent | unofficial extensions, e.g. browsers detecting and loading | HTML/CSS/javascript found on a Gemini page. | selfhoster11 wrote: | > All metadata are still leaked: IP addresses, DNS | queries, FQDNs in the TLS session opening. Also timing | attacks. | | That's the problem with the current iteration of the | internet. If you run a Gemini-based hidden service, they | go away. | | > Furthermore, there's nothing that Gemini can do to | prevent unofficial extensions, e.g. browsers detecting | and loading HTML/CSS/javascript found on a Gemini page. | | That's the problem for the client to take care of. Those | clients that aren't built with web technologies are | unlikely to be subject to accidental web technology | execution. | eulenteufel wrote: | The analogy with the useless tree breaks down because gemini | still has to be useful to some people. I can understand the tree | living as an end in itself, less so for a web protocol. Gemini | has a mission and if it's usage is too restricted it will barely | be a safe space for anybody because barely anybody will be using | it. | | It's a tradeoff and I can't judge if gemini got it right, but | gemini obviously still wants to be useful in similar aspects in | which it wants to be useless enough. | krapp wrote: | >Gemini has a mission and if it's usage is too restricted it | will barely be a safe space for anybody because barely anybody | will be using it. | | I think that's the point. When you build a protocol so | restrictive and ascetically minimalist that even HN and | Lobste.rs, epicenters of the very sort of contrarian tech | hipster anti-modernist elitism that brought it about mostly | complain about it, it's clear that what you're really | optimizing for isn't utility but ideological purity and | cultural homogeneity. | ungamedplayer wrote: | TIL: protocols have a cuture. | _Nat_ wrote: | Seems like some folks like simple stuff because they feel more | included in the magic of it all. | | Kinda like.. some folks like manual-transmission cars with simple | constructions that they can modify. Or machine-code/assembly. Or | building their own computer. Because then they're not just a | _user_ -- an outsider to those who 've actually created the | technology -- but rather a fellow creator and equal participant. | | Projects like this give me the same vibe. This is, I'm skeptical | that anyone's doing this because it's practical, even in its | minimalism -- instead, it seems more like a hobbyist project | where folks can feel included. | bayindirh wrote: | Liking simplicity is not always about being "included in the | magic" IMHO (but it's a very valid and fine point). | | My observation is simple stuff is generally less wasteful and | designed with different set of goals. The simple stuff I | particularly like lasts a lifetime, its maintenance is minimal | and doesn't lock you into a single ecosystem. | | Since these items are used for much longer than their modern | counterparts, they become yours more. | | On the digital realm, simple stuff is less distracting, works | faster, is not short on essential features and can do 95% of | the more complicated stuff with minimal overhead. | | At the end of the day, people may like simple stuff more | because it does most of the work done by the complicated thing | with much less mental load. Funnily, sometimes the simpler | stuff actually does more than the complicated one. | II2II wrote: | People are attracted to Gemini for different reasons. While | feeling included in the magic of it all may appeal to those | developing clients, servers, or sites but it won't mean much to | those who simply want to read what others have to say. | | In my case, I appreciate the environment it creates while | reading. It is more like reading a book. The text is front and | center, progression is mostly linear, and the visual transition | between sites is less jarring. Minimalism is nice in the sense | that it makes the experience more cohesive, rather than being | an end in itself. | selfhoster11 wrote: | > Kinda like.. some folks like manual-transmission cars with | simple constructions that they can modify. | | Let me give you my perspective: the modern web client | experience is that of a sturdy, advanced alien spaceship. It | gets you from A to B and knows how to dock to all the popular | alien space station airlock models automatically (aka all the | HTTP/2/3/TLS/cookies, stuff that's expected by sites to work). | You chuck plenty of fuel at it (RAM and CPU) and cross your | fingers that it lifts off. | | If you prod the wrong part of the (browser) engine, the | universal constants change and you get turned inside out. You | still occasionally do it because the ship can be made to block | all the alien ads once you're on the space station. | | Gemini is just an old ICE car with an antigrav module bolted on | (the TLS engine). Its construction is simple enough that you | can hold it in your head. It doesn't change the universal | constants when you prod the wrong part of the engine, so it's | refreshingly free of the risk of turning inside out. It goes | into space just fine, but doesn't know how to dock on the alien | space stations. This is fine - you knew that from the start, | and the new human space stations are where all the quirky fun | stuff is happening anyway. And the human space stations have no | ads, for now. | coldtea wrote: | > _Seems like some folks like simple stuff because they feel | more included in the magic of it all._ | | Or, well, because: | | (a) it's more resilient (and they already have lost tons of | formats of the last 40 years that can only be read with | emulators now) | | (b) it's simpler | | (c) it does what they want (document web) without bloat | | (d) it's hella fast | | (e) it's light on resources | | So, it's not "kinda like some folks like manual-transmission | cars", but more like "some folks like a toaster that it's not | internet connected with 30 toast programs and 5 buttons", or to | squeeze their own orange packs without a $400 Juicer [1], or | they like the plain old Hacker News webpage and not some social | media sharing monstrocity with 200 options, and prefer static | file serving instead of a CMS+Database+... | | Gemini might not be practical, but that's because the majority | wont know about it, as it wont be pushed by companies, and thus | it wont be adopted in any large numbers (heck, advertising | wise, it's against the whole FAANG model). | | I don't have any plans on hacking with it, but I was looking | for something like Gopher-revived to cut back on web bloat, | years before Gemini started. That said, I'd prefer if it could | somehow be part of the web (not another server/protocol, but a | forcefully cut-down web - maybe with something like a HTML's | version of Javascript's "strict mode" - when that would be | toggled, only a minimal set of HTML and no JS would be | supported). | | [1] | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-19/silicon-v... | app4soft wrote: | > _Seems like some folks like simple stuff because they feel | more included in the magic of it all._ | | Gemini vs. HTTP ~ _HN vs. Reddit_ | iSnow wrote: | Wait, I like HN very much, but that's just wrong. HN is | basically what one tech-subreddit would be. This is fine, but | not very inclusive, just because it is focused. People also | like Facebook which is far from simple stuff. | | Inclusiveness via simplicity is just one axis in the space of | why people like things. | astrobe_ wrote: | > HN is basically what one tech-subreddit would be | | Not really. It may have been true ten years ago, but during | that time Reddit has slowly accreted "features" (Reddit | gifts, Reddit Premium, sponsored contents, a chat...) | whereas HN didn't. | app4soft wrote: | > _Reddit has slowly accreted "features" (Reddit gifts, | Reddit Premium, sponsored contents, a chat...) whereas HN | didn't._ | | Also there are NO native media (video/GIF, images, photo | albums) support & linked media previews on HN too. | | Additionally users on HN has no any administration or | moderation rights. | coldtea wrote: | > _This is fine, but not very inclusive, just because it is | focused_ | | That's neither here, nor there though. You can have 20,000 | other individual Hacker News style sites on every subject, | and the simplicity would still be there on each individual | one. | | Not every thing has to be everything to everybody, for the | category of the thing to be inclusive. | | And Gemini is not like content or like a speficifically- | themed website like HN, it's a content delivery format | (like HTTP/Gopher/etc). The allusion between Gemini to HN | was for the simplicity of the presentation, wasn't | referring to the kind of content HN carries. | | In a site's with HN design the content could still be | whatever, from whaling to development, and from rocket | science to religious practices. | | (If anything, something like Gemini would be much easier to | make inclusive to e.g. low powered devices in the | developing world, or screen readers, compared to the modern | ultra dynamic news and content websites that have tons of | moving parts, trackers, popups, interstitials, animations, | and random JS just to deliver news and text content). | xwolfi wrote: | I think you like manual because that's all you know at first | but when you try a hill start in an automatic the first time | you're sold on its comfort. | | Now the next step is deciding wether you enjoy the precise | control of the manual vs the liberating comfort of the | automatic. | | I d argue that a tiptronic like solution that does both is | perfect and should be default in all cars. But then it s a | matter of cost. | | At least you're totally wrong thinking we buy manual because | they're simple enough we can modify them :D We're 70M people | where I come from, 95% of cars are manual, never ever heard | this one. | _Nat_ wrote: | It's that " _precise control of the manual_ " that's | enabling. | | Presumably we'll see the same thing with fully self-driving | cars in the future. This is, a mature self-driving technology | should eventually out-perform (unmodified) humans, but even | then, when there's no argument for manual-driving's | practicality, some folks'd probably want to drive manually | anyway. | coldtea wrote: | > _At least you 're totally wrong thinking we buy manual | because they're simple enough we can modify them :D We're 70M | people where I come from, 95% of cars are manual, never ever | heard this one._ | | And 400M people with manual in Europe, where an equal share | (95% or so) is manual. And 99% of the people seldom if ever | "modify" or hot-rod their cars. | | That's more of an American thing, in the country where they | have the automatics as the first choice. | cesarb wrote: | That will probably change once EVs become more popular. All | EVs I've heard of use either single-ratio transmissions, or | automatic transmissions, even in Europe. | [deleted] | _wldu wrote: | Manual transmissions are very rare in the USA now. Most auto | manufacturers don't use them anymore (even in trucks). And | the few that do, only do so in certain models that have to be | ordered. I bought a manual in 2019. I had to drive to another | state to get it. That was the last year the car I bought came | with an option for a manual. | mattlondon wrote: | I like the approach modern gopher clients are taking by natively | supporting markdown content. Does Gemini not support that? | | Some people (maybe they call themselves "purists") rage against | this and kind of insist that gopher is all about text and only | text. | | To a certain extent they are right - gopher has traditionally | been about text, but the designers of gopher didn't have this | dogmatic obsession with text-only but actually wanted to do "VR", | I e. a graphical 3D interface for gopher (complete with "flying" | transitions between servers) as well as doing visual overlay over | a globe etc showing where gopher servers were physically located. | They had dreams of a much richer interface so I don't think we | should artificially constrain ourselves. | | The real modern benefit of gopher is the lack of pervasive | scripting and cookies/tracking (and FYI modern gopher clients and | servers support TLS) | shakna wrote: | > I like the approach modern gopher clients are taking by | natively supporting markdown content. Does Gemini not support | that? | | Gemini supports RFC2046 mime types. So you can serve using | their own text/gemini, text/markdown, text/html, and so on. You | can go ahead and serve images and video, too. | | It's up to the client to support the mime type, but a lot of | clients have pretty wide-ranging support (a few actually are | re-using a web browser engine, so have full support for a lot | of formats). (And markdown will fallback to plain text when | unsupported, which is what it is defined for, so would be | fine). | squiggleblaz wrote: | I am not convinced. Gemini is useless, and the Web is tracked, | because Gemini is a platform for distributing data/documents, and | the Web has become a platform for distributing random executable | code. | | If Gemini documents could support static HTML and CSS (i.e. | without anything like SCRIPT elements or cookies), it would be | more useful to the people who it is intended to benefit - you | could port Wikipedia or distribute journal articles - without | being a tracker haven. I don't hate the modern web because I can | read the results of a scientific study that mentions its | statistics in tabular form. I hate the modern web because the | first thing I have to do is sign away my right to be treated like | a customer in business, a curious child in a library or a guest | at a friends house, and instead must agree to involuntarily yield | wealth for the company. | tomjen3 wrote: | You wouldn't need something that complex, and it seems the | author has a philosophical disagreement with CSS as such. | | I would love be able to write a gem document where I can say | this is a quote, this is an emph light text and this is an emph | text, this is a table and this is a link and then it will be up | to the client to choose how it wishes to display it, including | just as text. | | I prefer inline links strongly, but I require inline images and | tables for it to have any value directly. It would be an | obvious benefit to include support for inline math too, | something that we still don't have on the web. | | And no a link to a table or an image is not a replacement for | an inline one (though it is an obvious fallback for terminal | renders). | | Such a format would be really nice to access information in, it | would be easy to save/proxy for online access and it would | still be possible to include ads (of the still image, non | tracking variant). | minitech wrote: | A client for HTML and CSS is much more complicated to implement | than a client for Gemini and its rich text format. But you can | serve HTML pages over Gemini either way. | benrbray wrote: | Why a whole new protocol? Why not start a collective of like- | minded users who design plain HTML/CSS websites that work for | users who have JS disabled by default? As far as I can tell | that would be a strict improvement over Gemini. | yoz-y wrote: | You could also build a community around a static site | generator (and maybe a hosted version), where everybody | would pledge to not customise anything except a set of | offered css variables. Then federate those blogs somehow. | Though I somehow doubt that such a community would stay | "pure" for long. | josephg wrote: | Probably. But you can see what would happen - without a new | protocol or new document structure, traditional web | browsers would work with the system. And because of that it | wouldn't have an identity outside "the web, but worse". | | Gemini's different protocol isn't important for technical | reasons. Its important for social reasons - to make it | effortful to move content to gemini, and effortful for | users to start using it. The result is that all the content | and users on gemini are people who have done work to opted | in to it. And the space populated by small community like | that will necessarily end up different from the culture on | the web. (If they were happy with the web, they would have | stayed there.) | krapp wrote: | >And the space populated by small community like that | will necessarily end up different from the culture on the | web. (If they were happy with the web, they would have | stayed there.) | | But they have stayed there. Gemini users still use the | modern web all the time, mostly to remind everyone that | they exist and are rejecting the modern web _so hard you | guys._ | selfhoster11 wrote: | Well duh. If you have a race bike, of course you'll also | keep a metro pass or a car. You still need to get places. | But the race bike is your instrument of leisure and a | place to unwind. This role cannot be fulfilled by a car | or a metro pass for some people, because it just doesn't | have the same relaxed atmosphere. | hollerith wrote: | One advantage of Gemini is that it is easier to attract new | users to the cause: even if a particular user is being | helped by the collective you describe, he or she probably | won't realize (because most users are oblivious to | many/most of the effects of UI and architectural design | decisions). He or she will ascribe the good experience | provided by the collective to the web. | | The web is like a badly architected government such that | most citizens are unaware of the badness. The collective | you describe is like a group who use their own awareness of | the badness to improve the country, but that does raise | awareness of the government's badness whereas starting | fresh by founding a new country does. | | Actually, the analogy I just gave is a little too harsh on | the web. A more charitable description is that a _subset_ | of the web 's users is poorly served by the architecture of | the web, but most of that subset is unaware of that fact | (what with not being experts on the effects of subtle | technical decisions on something as vast, open and complex | as the internet). | | I am not defending Gemini in particular; I use it but have | yet to form an opinion of it; I am defending the strategy | of founding a new internet service to compete (for the time | and attention of users) with the web. | coldtea wrote: | > _One advantage of Gemini is that it is easier to | attract new users to the cause: even if a particular user | is being helped by the collective you describe, he or she | probably won 't realize (because most users are oblivious | to many/most of the effects of UI and architectural | design decisions). He or she will ascribe the good | experience provided by the collective to the web._ | | I don't buy this argument. | | Even if "he/she ascribes the good experience (...) to the | web": | | (a) the subset of users that could fell into one of the | "participating sites" would be much larger than the | subset of users that would install something like Gemini. | The subset is open with no barrier at all to every web | user. They just need to visit a page. The second subset | requires them to have heard about Gemini, to care enough | about it, and to actively download a client. | | (b) For this reason, even the subset of (a) that could | tell "Ahh, this site is fast and nice because it's simple | web code" would be much larger than the subset that would | install something like Gemini. | | (c) If the subset that recognizes the benefits from the | simple web design designs to join the movement, they just | need to code simple html and deliver to everybody (an | easy sell, no new tools needed). For the subset that | discovered and likes Gemini, they'd need to find a host | and install a Gemini server (much fewer options, no | turnkey-host that supports it, unknown code | quantity/quality), and then their potential audience is | severely limited to Gemini client users (a much harder | sell). | hollerith wrote: | My response to you is to say that although it is nice to | help users in the short term, it is more important to | increase the number of web users who know that the web | poorly serves some of their needs, specifically their | need to read, to discover things to read and to publish | plain-text writings. | | (The main problem with using the web to publish plain- | text writings is that unless the person doing the | publishing is an expert on the technology, in which case | he will use something like Github Pages, there is no | cheap way to publish a few paragraphs or a few dozens of | paragraphs where it fill find a decently-sized audience | without enriching some intermediary and subjecting most | of the people who over the years will read the writings | to either advertising or paywalls.) | | I offer no criticism of the web as a way to buy things | online or to apply for a passport online or such. | | I am avoiding saying that the web is bad: the web might | be bad only for a small fraction of web users. I don't | know enough about how web users differ from each other to | say how large the fraction is. I do know enough about | software and how site owners will respond to incentives | to be able to tell that the web is bad for users | sufficiently like me. Well, I'm fairly certain, too, that | the web is severely sub-optimal for blind users (and I | wonder if attempts have been made yet to tell blind users | about Gemini and to make it easy for blind users to get | started with Gemini). | | Someone could write a whole book about how seemingly | insignificant decisions in the design of something like a | web browser (e.g., decisions in the design of web | _standards_ ) can have profound effects, but I think in | this case it is better to _show_ than to _tell_. | | Improving Gemini might eventually _show_ a lot of people | that the web is a sub-optimal solution for some of their | needs. Note that Gemini need not _completely_ replace the | web in a user 's life: one session with the improved | Gemini might get the point across to a new user (and the | user might do nothing but browse Wikipedia during that | session). | | In contrast, the strategy I originally replied to, | namely, a collective of web sites, might significantly | improve the experience of many web users, but will cause | approximately zero web-tech non-experts to become | dissatisfied with the web. | | I have no road map for how a large numbers of people | dissatisfied with how the web serves _some_ of their | needs will eventually find their way to something better. | I figure it will take many years. I do believe that | increasing the numbers of dissatisfied users is probably | a necessary first step. | foobar33333 wrote: | Because its easier to create an in group of sites which | follow the same standard. Gemini sites will link to other | gemini links only which you know will be minimal before | clicking. | coldtea wrote: | That's trivial to do in participating "minimal web code" | group too. | | You could e.g. color the links to other participating | sites to highlight them (and still have the option to | link to a conventional bloated website). | rakoo wrote: | The faq answers your question: | | => https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi | | > 2.5 Why not just use a subset of HTTP and HTML? | | > Many people are confused as to why it's worth creating a | new protocol to address perceived problems with optional, | non-essential features of the web. Just because websites | _can_ track users and run CPU-hogging Javsacript and pull | in useless multi-megabyte header images or even larger | autoplaying videos, doesn 't mean they _have_ to. Why not | just build non-evil websites using the existing technology? | | > Of course, this is possible. "The Gemini experience" is | roughly equivalent to HTTP where the only request header is | "Host" and the only response header is "Content-type" and | HTML where the only tags are <p>, <pre>, <a>, <h1> through | <h3>, <ul> and <li> and <blockquote> - and the | https://gemini.circumlunar.space website offers pretty much | this experience. We know it can be done. | | > The problem is that deciding upon a strictly limited | subset of HTTP and HTML, slapping a label on it and calling | it a day would do almost nothing to create a clearly | demarcated space where people can go to consume _only_ that | kind of content in _only_ that kind of way. It 's | impossible to know in advance whether what's on the other | side of a https:// URL will be within the subset or outside | it. It's very tedious to verify that a website claiming to | use only the subset actually does, as many of the features | we want to avoid are invisible (but not harmless!) to the | user. It's difficult or even impossible to deactivate | support for all the unwanted features in mainstream | browsers, so if somebody breaks the rules you'll pay the | consequences. Writing a dumbed down web browser which | gracefully ignores all the unwanted features is much harder | than writing a Gemini client from scratch. Even if you did | it, you'd have a very difficult time discovering the | minuscule fraction of websites it could render. | | > Alternative, simple-by-design protocols like Gopher and | Gemini create alternative, simple-by-design spaces with | obvious boundaries and hard restrictions. You know for sure | when you enter Geminispace, and you can know for sure and | in advance when following a certain link will cause you | leave it. While you're there, you know for sure and in | advance that everybody else there is playing by the same | rules. You can relax and get on with your browsing, and | follow links to sites you've never heard of before, which | just popped up yesterday, and be confident that they won't | try to track you or serve you garbage because they _can | 't_. You can do all this with a client you wrote yourself, | so you _know_ you can trust it. It 's a very different, | much more liberating and much more empowering experience | than trying to carve out a tiny, invisible sub-sub-sub-sub- | space of the web. | chacha2 wrote: | What good is competing implementations if they all have to | keep to the same spec? | selfhoster11 wrote: | The same reason that it's good to have different clients | for other protocols. Some clients lean heavily to one side | on the CLI vs GUI vs VR debate, some choose to have | convenience over technical complexity and so make choices | that other Gemini users would disagree with, some allow a | degree of automation, some are a multi-protocol client that | has Gemini as just one supported option. | coldtea wrote: | Different quality, support, tradeoffs, maturity levels, | focuses, and add-ons? | | Might as well ask "what good is competing webservers". | smichel17 wrote: | Read the spec, it's not long. It leaves plenty of room for | variation. | turminal wrote: | Not keeping to the same spec is one of the reasons why | modern web is a dumpster fire. | squiggleblaz wrote: | That's true. Perhaps the solution is to explicitly agree that | the Gemini format will expand to a certain goal complexity - | so that there's always several implementations, and it's | possible to ramp up to something with more flexibility. | | > But you can serve HTML pages over Gemini either way. | | The important question is what people can read over Gemini, I | guess. Do Gemini clients effectively render that? I imagine | it would be difficult to take Webkit and make it work without | supporting JS. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Basic HTML doesn't need WebKit. If what you want is basic | HTML 4 tags set with a couple of HTML 5 tags, this is not a | big task. | swiley wrote: | I wrote an HTML parser while waiting for Firefox to build | once, it didn't take a ton to turn it into a minimal browser. | Web browsers are hard when they have to be an application | runtime instead of a document viewer, HTML grammar is easy. | minitech wrote: | I don't agree that HTML grammar is easy, but either way | it's objectively more complicated than Gemini markup. I | also don't agree that web layout is easy. Dillo, for | example, is not the best document-viewing experience (even | when I've designed for it specifically) despite putting in | much more effort than I'd be willing to. | | Also, if this[1] is your HTML parser, it doesn't look like | an actual HTML parser with implicit tags and error | correction, just a parser for some easy subset of HTML. If | we're not going to be web-compatible anyway, why not spec a | language that's actually good? | | [1] https://github.com/s2607/webthing/blob/d6dd43aa5a3cc6de | e15f8... | pfalcon wrote: | HTML parser is trivial. There's a huge difference between | HTML parser and HTML rendering engine. "A minimal browser" | which you allegedly wrote isn't something you or anyone | else does, or would, use. | swiley wrote: | I didn't "allegedly" write it, it's on my github. Yeah it | doesn't do box model layout but (and this was my point) | that's not as big a deal without js because the pages are | still perfectly usable. | leephillips wrote: | Point taken, but you probably know that some pages will | not be usable in a browser that does not implement CSS. | As in, completely unreadable. | yborg wrote: | There are a great many pages that are not usable on a | browser that does not implement JS. None of these things | are "hypertext" anymore, the original idea was that all | web locations would fall back to simple text rendering of | the content, the fact that much of the modern web can't | be read on a base HTML renderer is more of a statement of | what a website is now - an application server. | arp242 wrote: | I wrote a toy browser in a weekend too; I just used an | existing HTML and CSS parser. The hard part isn't the | HTML parsing, that's pretty easy and mostly just basic | lexing/parsing stuff. It's applying the CSS to the HTML | and rendering a document that vaguely looks right. There | are loads of different interactions, and even Firefox and | Chrome actually get it wrong in many edge cases (and also | frequently in not-so-edge cases). I wrote a list some | time ago of all the interactions "position: sticky" | breaks in Firefox, and there's loads of them (I can't | find that list now though, it was a HN comment from last | year). It was pretty basic stuff like z-index, tables, | flexbox, etc. Nothing _too_ obscure. | | If a lot of the cruft would be removed then actually, it | probably wouldn't be so bad. But you know, compatibility | and such. Still, a <link rel="newstylesheet" | href="style.newcss"> probably wouldn't be such a bad | idea. The base CSS specification can probably be reduced | by half if not more, both by removing cruft and by | learning from mistakes. | throwawayboise wrote: | So you're asking for something a bit richer, say maybe | Markdown, that is still well-contained and limited. | dvfjsdhgfv wrote: | > I am not convinced. | | Frankly, I don't think that it even makes any sense to convince | anyone. There are people who like Gemini and for them it's good | enough, the rest will never use it. Both camps have excellent | arguments and I see no point of arguing here. It's like Vim vs | Emacs wars in the old days, as if people couldn't use their | $EDITOR of choice. | lal wrote: | People can and have already ported Wikipedia. | pmlnr wrote: | The only issue with gemini is that is should parse gopher for | backwards compatibility. | tenebrisalietum wrote: | Lagrange handles both gemini and gopher URLs. It's pretty | seamless. | Animats wrote: | Direct browser support for Markdown would accomplish many of the | same goals. | api wrote: | The lack of images is really an important "feature." | | Images seem to do something to the human brain. They grab | attention in ways text does not as evidenced by the fact that a | dumb image meme can be used as an anchor point to advance the | most inane bullshit in either meme or short-attention-span text | form. | | Image boards and their capacity to originate and amplify utterly | inane bullshit are the canonical case, and the format illustrates | the principle exactly. Each post consists of an attention | grabbing catchy image along with text that is usually one or more | of banal, mean spirited, or irrational, and the image meme sells | the message to the point that these sites almost feel like cults. | Take the images away and there is virtually nothing compelling | there. | | Edit: there was interesting stuff on the chans once. 4chan was | not always identical to /pol. The fact that /pol, originally a | containment board, became 4chan and edged out everything else | tells you everything you need to know about the format and the | medium and what kind of thinking it encourages. | | Media guides discourse. This is the most important idea of | Marshall McLuhan and why we still talk about him; "the medium is | the message." When the quality of the ideas on a medium almost | universally declines over time, the medium is the problem not the | users of it. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | The lack of images limits the ability to create Gemini content | on many subjects, however. Just off the top of my head I could | name discussion of artworks, some travel writing (no, it isn't | all just inane "influencer" shots - bicycle tourers and | overlanders like getting some photos to have an idea of what | the terrain to traverse is like), building stuff, classical | philology where the original edition of a text as it was | typeset has to be examined, and so on. | | These are subjects for which there are already many minimalist | HTML blogs around, but the lack of image support on Gemini | makes it impossible for them to support that ecosystem. | RodgerTheGreat wrote: | Nothing about Gemini prevents you from linking to images. | | Furthermore, nothing prevents Gemini clients from eagerly | fetching linked images (based on the URI) and displaying them | inline- if the user chooses such a client. | | Being strictly text-oriented is simply the default, and a | default that must be taken seriously by anyone writing a | page. | slver wrote: | The initial quote is very odd. Someone complaining you can't do | newspaper layouts in Gemini. Newspaper layouts are determined by | the needs of the medium, that being fixed content printed on | paper of specific proportions. | | Gemini isn't useless because it can't do some arbitrary thing, | but I think it's useless because it has no pragmatic purpose. The | article author even claims it won't be modified once it's formal. | It's like the definition of "dead on arrival". | username91 wrote: | Browsing around the Gemini community is a thousand times more | relaxing than reading on the web. I really recommend picking a | nice client and enjoying a look around. | oscargrouch wrote: | This is funny because the only way for Gemini to keep that way, | is by not becoming popular. Because that's exactly what | happened to the web. | | It was also an idyllic place in the beginning that got crowded, | and giving we didn't figure it out the next step beyond | capitalism the trash from our material world started to fill | the digital realm because we are still in the same culture. | | So to solve the problem Gemini is trying to solve, is not by | fixing the web standards, but by fixing our culture, which is a | much harder and bigger problem. | | Gemini will want to keep working, than it will figure it out a | way to sustain itself economically that in turn will make it | possible to create profitable services on it, and it will be | just a matter of time to become exactly as the web is now. | | If it doesn't take that path, giving the Web is a superset of | it and it doesn't provide a unique value on its own, it will | probably fade away or keep very niche. | username91 wrote: | > ..the only way for Gemini to keep that way, is by not | becoming popular. Because that's exactly what happened to the | web. | | I felt like the web's "change" was when it became skewed | towards high-bandwidth content like images and videos, more | so than popularity alone. | | I can't imagine Gemini becoming as popular, but if it does, | another new protocol can grow. :) | | > it will probably fade away or keep very niche | | Sounds nice, actually. | selfhoster11 wrote: | The whole reason why the Web became what it is, is because | HTML tags and JavaScript allowed for unbounded feature creep. | Gemini purposely specifies a simple protocol that puts | boundaries around what's allowed. | | You would need a critical mass to get an extended Gemini off | the ground now. Between the die-hardness of the early adopter | community that realises that this extensibility is why they | needed Gemini in the first place, the support for HTML and | Markdown mimetypes over the core protocol (to alleviate some | pain points) and lack of commercial attention, I have high | hopes for Gemini. | | > it will figure it out a way to sustain itself economically | | Why should it? It's not a platform for commerce. Hosting a | Gemini server on a residential connection has a negligible | cost (a Pi and a few kilowatt-hours per year). Some small web | communities host it for free. For personal expression, Gemini | should be very cheap. | oscargrouch wrote: | When the web was there, it had no historical record to rely | on, everything that happened was unprecedent in history | because it was the "killer app" of the internet, and by | virtue of being the killer app it made the internet | something people want. | | Now in 2021 we have a lot of historical records of how | things shaped and get in the way they are now. Everything | that you are saying about the Gemini is exactly how the | primary web was in the beginning and yet it changed because | a lot of forces happened. | | I completely agree that the Web now is a whale and its too | fat (BTW this is the point that Gemini is getting right), | but i don't agree with the approach at all, as its not | possible to have a time machine and make the technological | status-quo get back to were it was in the nineties so a | project like Gemini can be a successful branch of WWW. | | A "skinny web" standard would be much more useful, and here | i think that Tim Berners Lee is missing the point by | creating something like Solid instead. | | Anyway, its a chance missed to point to something for the | future, pointing to the past instead and making a lot of | good folks lost by following the wrong way. | | I consider Gemini part of the "retro technology movement", | that while cool and while having its heart in the right | place, miss a nice chance to help us all change a very dark | future ahead of us of digital feudalism imposed by the big | tech goliath monopoly. | | We, the tech crowd need to step back and stop following | them into that bleak future, Gemini is subversive in that | sense, but while the goals are great, its alienatory nature | negating the status-quo and forgetting to learn with | historical events its not a step into the right direction. | | But if at least take some people away from the WWDC's and | Google IO's, at least it will be a little bit less people | into this army that is leading us into this dystopic future | we are heading right now.. and i just hoped that Gemini | with a little more contextual knowledge could be at least a | stone in their path. | kissgyorgy wrote: | I would say Gemini have about the same characteristics as Hacker | News which is why we love it so much! | agumonkey wrote: | I tried gemini, i like the idea of a frugal web protocol, it's | just too esoteric as it is IMO. I like different but it felt | just a tad too much and too crude. | detaro wrote: | HN is IMHO a good counter-response: It works just as it is on | the web, and you afaik couldn't build it on Gemini, because | having forms etc is "going to far" for Gemini. (And to be fair, | if your model is the imaginary "good old web", then maybe | forums _are_ a step to far, because that 's what mailing lists | are for? It's an exercise in making things purposefully extra | effort after all) | squiggleblaz wrote: | You can have forms on Gemini. | | > if your model is the imaginary "good old web" | | Is your assertion that the original cookie free, javascript | free web was a hellscape of arbitrary executable code | intended to exfiltrate as much monotisable information from | the user as possible? Just because someone doesn't like the | current situation doesn't mean the past was imaginary. | Semiapies wrote: | Why is it that people who go, "Is [it] your assertion-" or | "Is it your contention-" never actually get their | rhetorical question right? | detaro wrote: | > _You can have forms on Gemini._ | | Oh interesting, had missed that when I took a look at it. | | > _Is your assertion ..._ | | Obviously not, and responses like this from its proponents | are a main reason I'm not interested in it, despite quite a | lot of ideological overlap. Saying that not all was as | perfect in the past as it's sometimes presented is not | asserting that all everything today is better. | squiggleblaz wrote: | > Obviously not, and responses like this from its | proponents are a main reason I'm not interested in it, | despite quite a lot of ideological overlap. Saying that | not all was as perfect in the past as it's sometimes | presented is not asserting that all everything today is | better. | | Some people are optimising for different properties than | the current web. They are developing new technologies to | do that. | | It is entirely hostile to say that their model is 'the | imaginary "good old web"' or to imply that they present | the past as perfect (as you do here - clearly in poor | faith). They do neither. They are learning from the past | and the present and trying to develop some other | technologies and a new community that addresses some of | their concerns. With great success! | | It's strictly impossible for a person who advocates for | Gemini to believe the past was perfect. A person who felt | the past was perfect would be using the technologies of | the past. The people who use Gemini want some things to | be different, and find it productive to learn from the | past and the present in building this new space. It is a | new and fulfilling project. This entire thread is based | around the premise that is sufficient as it is, even if a | bazillion people aren't posting on it. No imaginary | models need enter into it. | | Twice now you've used standard but false tropes: Anyone | who wants to learn from the past and the present instead | of accepting the present as good enough has an imaginary | view of the past and believes the past is perfect. Some | times, a person runs "git checkout -- some/file" while | fully acknowledging that the reason they started editing | some/file was because it wasn't perfect when they | started. Sometimes a person runs "git bisect" to see how | they next version of the code can have the wins of the | past and the wins of the present. Acknowledging value in | the past is not presenting it as perfect, nor mere | imagination. | | If you don't like getting pushback for mischaracterising | someone's opinions and projcets, feel free to not do | that. If the main reason you're not interested in it is | because people defend themselves against such | unreasonable mischaracterisations, it's probably Gemini | who's winning. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | We're not looking for perfect. We're looking for good | enough. The web isn't. | lifthrasiir wrote: | > You can have forms on Gemini. | | As far as I see this doesn't cover most uses of forms, | since its result should be appended to the URL with `?` and | the URL is limited to 1024 bytes. | selfhoster11 wrote: | For short to mid length posting, it should be probably | enough. Long-form content could be handled by e.g. | uploading posts via SFTP or IPFS. As a bonus, the user | can also download all of their previous posts and take | them elsewhere if they want to jump ship or export. | lifthrasiir wrote: | I don't consider 1024 bytes as "mid length", especially | considering non-Latin scripts. For the comparison | Twitter's 280-character-of-sort limit translates to the | maximum of 840 UTF-8 bytes (reachable for many Middle | Eastern writing systems). | | I also don't find the usage of SFTP or IPFS reasonable | because that would mean two separate clients necessary | for a single Gemini site. In fact I personally imagined | email instead and email alone can already handle the | forum usage (i.e. mailing lists). Gemini at the current | state is simply not meant to be used as a full-featured | forum. I do think there is a rather simple extension to | allow that usage (add an equivalent of HTTP POST to the | request protocol, and extend INPUT to give a pre-filled | template), but any additional feature to Gemini can | possibly weaken its merits. | selfhoster11 wrote: | I can imagine a PhpBB alternative written for Gemini very | easily, both on the posting and reading side. 1024 character | post limit is plenty for a thriving discussion. | mrtnpwn wrote: | But you can actually build HN on Gemini! | | gemini://geddit.glv.one | https://proxy.vulpes.one/gemini/geddit.glv.one | heinrichhartman wrote: | I think you will like this gemini site, then: | gemini://geddit.glv.one | | It's a Reddit/HN cone for gemini. | | cf. https://github.com/pitr/geddit ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-13 23:00 UTC)