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Gemini is Solutionism

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Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#101

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"Why couldn't one simply build on top of existing HTTP infrastructure, throw away all the baggage and instead implement a new Content-Type, which existing browsers then could parse?"

Because escaping the annoyances of the "modern web" may require escaping from the "modern browser". The changes users want to "modern browsers" will never be made. The vendors of these programs do not answer to users. They answer to web developers and advertisers. These are large, complex, insecure programs usually controlled by organisations that seek to profit from online advertising. The advertising focus leads to complex web pages. Not the type of simpler pages that some users want. (NB. Not "most", but "some".) Gemini, because of its limitations, allows users to retrieve resources without the need for one of these "modern browser" programs. If a new Content-Type was added to HTTP, what is the likelihood that other parties outside the "modern web browser" cabal would write small, simple, alternative browsers, e.g., aimed only at this Content-Type. Look at the market share, i.e., available selection, of web browsers. It is not diverse.

Whereas, writing a Gemini client is dead simple. A Gemini browser cabal where users have only a few choices and they are each controlled by corporations is unlikely.

Asking web developers to "please make simpler web pages, thanks", when the "modern browser" allows for complex pages and integration of advertising is not a succesful course of action. Most of these web developers answer to advertisers or to employers who answer to advertisers. They are not going to ditch the user annoyances, they are going to seek profits. Gemini seems to address this problem by making advertising difficult. Without the "modern browser", the possibilities for advertising are limited.

Similarly, asking web users to "please use a text-only browser", e.g., Links, when so many web pages try to use "modern" browser features that enable complex web pages is probably not a successful strategy for many users either. As a long-time Links user, that strategy has worked for me, though.

The only complaint I have about Gemini is the absolute requirement for SNI. Not every IP addresss will necessarily be hosting multiple Gemini sites. Under the current protocol, even addresses hosting only a single site must require SNI. That makes no sense. It serves no purpose. It should be optional not mandatory.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#102

Post by CookieMon »

duxup wrote: post #58
square_usual wrote: post #50

I agree with the author, but from a different direction. The Gemini community has this ethos that stripping away all the styling etc. makes the internet about "content" again. Setting aside for the moment that the definition that content = text is unnecessarily reductive (and insulting to other forms of content - is a beautiful animation not content? is an interactive map of a country showing how covid is affecting i…

The great thing about the web when I came along with was all the character, good, bad or otherwise that personal sites, even some corporate sites that people build had. GeoCities came along and things could be ugly, but it felt genuine. Even just background choices or ugly gifs… I miss the personal wonkiness and folks not afraid to make ugly sites. The race to ultra minimalism feels as cold as a Facebook profile, may…

https://search.marginalia.nu/ made the interesting observation that a big chunk of that amateur OG internet never stopped or went away, Google etc. just stopped linking to it and it went invisible.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#104

Post by foxfluff »

gerikson wrote: post #82
eternityforest wrote: post #13

Having a new protocol has value for the same reason HAM does. You hope that the character of the content itself will be interesting enough to be it's own subculture. Unfortunately it looks somewhat nontrivial to use and unnecessarily different from everything else without offering any true new features. All it has is the content and culture. It's also yet another privacy at all costs project. Which is fine, but I fee…

I'd start by checking out Antenna: https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/warmedal.se/~antenna/ It's an aggregator of sorts, but with a bit of a twist. Clients, for the terminal I recommend Amfora https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora and Lagrange is a great GUI client https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange Communication, there's an informal way of addressing other gemlogs using 'RE: '. It's fraught with issues, as…

> now that the mailing list (itself a potent source of drama) has gone to the great bitbucket in the sky

Oops, what happened? Now that was short lived.. EDIT: apparently hardware failure

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#105

Post by lmm »

PinkMilkshake wrote: post #100
dexwiz wrote: post #80

I find it ironic to read an English blog post deriding something for being inaccessible hosted on a domain containing Katakana, something most English keyboards would not be able to type. I cannot tell if the author is Japanese, but I am not sure it matters since the content appears to be exclusively English.

> something most English keyboards would not be able to type English language keyboards are how you type Japanese. Those keyboards you see with Katakana or Hiragana are rarely used in Japan, pretty much everyone uses romaji. And it's easy to set up on Windows. I can toggle English and Japanese input with Windows Key + Space. ナイス！

> And it's easy to set up on Windows. I can toggle English and Japanese input with Windows Key + Space.

It's virtually impossible to set it up if you don't use a QWERTY layout. I have a horrible pile of hacks that more or less work for now, but are being removed in windows 11.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#107

Post by lmm »

tlamponi wrote: post #61
ryukafalz wrote: post #51

I don't often use Gemini, but here's the thing that I think this misses and that Gemini does well: If I click a link in a Gemini browser, I know for sure that it will not start loading and running a ton of resource-intensive scripts. I know that it will not start autoplaying audio or video. I know that it will display fine in plain text, every single time - so it works in my terminal, in Emacs, on my phone, etc. And…

> If I click a link in a Gemini browser, I know for sure that it will not start loading and running a ton of resource-intensive scripts. I know that it will not start autoplaying audio or video. I know that it will display fine in plain text, every single time - so it works in my terminal, in Emacs, on my phone, etc. And I know it will be fast. With a `text/gemini` content type over HTTP/1.1 you could just use cURL,…

How would a text/gemini content type guarantee that links did not go to pages with those issues?

And given that HTTP has content negotiation, how could you ever be assured that a given link goes to a text/gemini page?

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#108

Post by progval »

square_usual wrote: post #26
brimble wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it would be really nice to have back a Web where clicking a link couldn't result in loading a page that's tracking your mouse movements while you're on it. IOW a web that's safe and user-controlled, again. Just a damn hypertext document browser that doesn't also bundle a spying suite and hand control of it to anyone by default. We should have realized when people started putting up troll pages that broke your com…

> Eh, it would be really nice to have back a Web where clicking a link couldn't result in loading a page that's tracking your mouse movements while you're on it. It's still possible if you use uBlock, or enable JS only when you need it. You don't have to throw the baby (gemtext missing inline links !) out with the bathwater.

> It's still possible if you use uBlock, or enable JS only when you need it.

Possible, but painful. Take HN's official search engine, for example: https://hn.algolia.com/

I open it. "This page will only work with JavaScript enabled" sigh Accept JS from hn.algolia.net and the mangled cloudfront domain (and make sure not to accept ravenjs.com). Possibly cdn.jsdelivr.net if I want to spare a click later, because I don't know if it's useful (it's not). Reload. Now the results are blank. Ah, it makes XHRs to telemetry.algolia.net, a mangled algolia.net domain, and three mangled algolianet.com domains. Think for a second. Accept the latter too (actually, either is enough, but I don't know that). Reload. Oh, it works now. Luckily there isn't a privacy consent popup I need to reject (or block with uBlock).

It's exhausting to do that almost every time you visit a new website. And with https:// URLs, you don't know ahead of time how many rounds of accepting you'll need to do before opening.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#109

Post by PinkMilkshake »

lmm wrote: post #105
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> something most English keyboards would not be able to type English language keyboards are how you type Japanese. Those keyboards you see with Katakana or Hiragana are rarely used in Japan, pretty much everyone uses romaji. And it's easy to set up on Windows. I can toggle English and Japanese input with Windows Key + Space. ナイス！

> And it's easy to set up on Windows. I can toggle English and Japanese input with Windows Key + Space. It's virtually impossible to set it up if you don't use a QWERTY layout. I have a horrible pile of hacks that more or less work for now, but are being removed in windows 11.

Interesting! I had never tried. Do you know if the Google IME has the same issue?

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#110

Post by bawolff »

Gemini is so silly. The logic is basically as follows:

- people are using web features in a way we don't like. They could do it in the way we like but that's unpopular.

- instead lets make it impossible to do things that we don't like in our system. But people have to voluntarily use our system. For some reason people will use gemini voluntarily even though they refused to voluntarily use the web in a way we approve of in the first place.

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