So sort of like Teletext or Prestel, is that right?
What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
41–50 of 211 posts
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to some other blogs posted here (links are are elsewhere in this thread) the entire point of Gemini is that it's useless and annoying to use, so useless and annoying that it drives out any advertisers or businesses that would be potentially interested to use it. I understand the designer's reasons to dislike online advertising but the train of logic here seems to be "internet businesses like to make things…
I think useless and annoying are the wrong words here. It’s elegant in that efforts to extend it beyond its purpose are self defeating. It’s a Chinese finger trap for those who would attempt to embrace and extend for adtech and corp subversion. I love it.
I'm all for making it as difficult as possible for the adtech people to get their claws into it, but, at least IMO, this is way over the line into making things worse for end users. Most sites shouldn't be multimedia extravaganza, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for nicely designed websites.
Honestly, just the lacking of inline links makes this stuff more annoying than anything.
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to some other blogs posted here (links are are elsewhere in this thread) the entire point of Gemini is that it's useless and annoying to use, so useless and annoying that it drives out any advertisers or businesses that would be potentially interested to use it. I understand the designer's reasons to dislike online advertising but the train of logic here seems to be "internet businesses like to make things…
I think useless and annoying are the wrong words here. It’s elegant in that efforts to extend it beyond its purpose are self defeating. It’s a Chinese finger trap for those who would attempt to embrace and extend for adtech and corp subversion. I love it.
That's not really true though, myself or anyone else could fork Gemini right now and add a lot of "unwanted" features to it. The only reason nobody will follow through on that is because everyone who cares about those features is already using the web and has no reason to add them to Gemini. In that sense Gemini has skipped past the "embrace and extend" and moved itself right to "extinguish", which actually seems to be its central design.
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#44I understand the desire to use trust-on-first-use to get rid of certificate authorities (some of the most dispicable and untrustworthy organizations around, and the largest security hole in TLS). However trust-on-first-use basically hands any long-term man-in-the-middle a complete victory. Authoritarian regimes are going to require ISPs to mitm every connection from first use, and hand over whatever data is desired t…
SSH works.
SSH has a different service model; there aren’t masses of anonymous clients connecting to a typical SSH server, but rather deliberate 1:1 relationships, which is why the model works there. And still, high-security environments deploy certificate SSH, specifically to avoid this problem.
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I've come to believe none of it matters and that encryption is a total waste of time, at least for the kind of stuff I would want to publish using Gemini (long-form text) where there's nothing interactive or user-specific in any request. Just the act of making a network connection gives away who you are, where you are, when you are online, and what you're reading: https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013…
Restricting Gemini to just long-form text (one way consumption) is really reducing the possibilities Gemini can have, IMO. Though the whole minimalist attitude would probably preclude most of them.
> reducing the possibilities Gemini can have
Gemini is all about reducing possibilities. If you want more possibilities, use the web IMO
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think useless and annoying are the wrong words here. It’s elegant in that efforts to extend it beyond its purpose are self defeating. It’s a Chinese finger trap for those who would attempt to embrace and extend for adtech and corp subversion. I love it.
That's not really true though, myself or anyone else could fork Gemini right now and add a lot of "unwanted" features to it. The only reason nobody will follow through on that is because everyone who cares about those features is already using the web and has no reason to add them to Gemini. In that sense Gemini has skipped past the "embrace and extend" and moved itself right to "extinguish", which actually seems to…
Not just that. Whoever uses Gemini already is likely trying to escape those unwanted features, so they have no incentive to use something that adds them in.
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#47I don't quite get this... it sounds like the author mostly has issues with the HTML part of the web, but much of this seems to focus on the HTTP part.... why not keep http and just make a replacement for HTML? Writing an http server is very simple, too
Writing an http client, on the other hand, is rather complex.
It's really not - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32341518/how-to-make-an-...
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#48So sort of like Teletext or Prestel, is that right?
A bit more interactive. Teletext was mostly one-way, where Gemini is sort-of two way and interactive.
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#49I've been a reader of this gemlog and a fan of Gemini, I have been looking at minimal featured Gemini servers (everyone seems to be building one) and looking for one specifically that offers an http mirror, text and maybe inline images only. Particularly I'd like to do everything in markdown, does anyone know of a good one?
Kineto might be what you're looking for: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/
Inline images is a violation of the Gemini spec:
> clients MUST NOT automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. links beginning with gemini://, gopher://, https://, ftp:// , etc.).
Re: What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)
#50It's like Gopher, but dumber.
Gopher was my intro to the internet. Coming from BBSs it was very natural. I loved Gopher and I am happy to see it's ideology progress to the next evolutionary step. I am aware that that the protocol still exists, but I'm hoping Gemini can bring back the desire for text content. I don't ever want to watch a video of a solution that can be written down in 3 lines.
Yes, videos are a poor method of distributing most types of information IMO, especially solutions.