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Six Years of Gemini

geminiprotocol.net

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Re: Six Years of Gemini

#131

Post by miragecraft »

RiverCrochet wrote: post #74
vascocosta wrote: post #63

As an early adopter and developer of a couple of service oriented capsules, as time went by my interest faded completely. I'm a strong advocate of live and let live, so this is not a critique or discouragement post, but rather my own perspective. Like many have mentioned already, I personally would have preferred pure markdown and no gemtext at all. Similarly, and although I understand the reasoning behind making enc…

The thing I liked about Gemini and its self-imposed limitations is that it was very much impossible to create a misbehaving Gemini document. There is no way a Gemini browser will phone home, run malicious code on my side, grab/upload my browser history or send sensor or other data because I forgot to turn off various options, etc. To me the entire thing was much more trustworthy. You can of course recreate this exper…

Instead of inventing a separate protocol, you can invent your own html meta tag that marks a website to be JavaScript-free.

This will let you create search engines that crawl and index these sites specifically.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#132

Post by zzo38computer »

ndiddy wrote: post #130
zzo38computer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some good information to be found actually, although it is true that it is not much. However, if you have something to write, then you can write it, and then if they are published then there will be more things to read.

Unfortunately, the topics I'm interested in writing about often require images, sound, and video to do a good page covering them.

You can still link to images, sounds, videos, and any other kind of files, even with the same protocol. (Inline pictures would be helpful for documents that you want to print out, or view at the same time as the text, though.)

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#133

Post by rglullis »

uamgeoalsk wrote: post #127
rglullis wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want "an user agent that can act as a user's agent", you just need to use a better user agent . They exist . They work . You don't need a whole transport protocol to achieve that. My objection is to the justifications people are using to walk this path. Even here, we have different people trying to argue completely different things regarding the isolationist nature. You say that it can't be isolated, Gormo say…

It's worth remembering that people are drawn to projects like Gemini for a range of reasons. That's not a weakness, it's a feature. One person might use it as a minimalist publishing platform. Another might enjoy the simplicity or find it a helpful alternative to today's web. Others might engage with it as a space for experimentation. These aren't contradictory; they’re just different use cases reflecting different p…

[dead]

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#134

Post by selfhoster11 »

rglullis wrote: post #57
_Algernon_ wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet and web existed for a long time before everything became infested with advertisement: Hobbyist bulletin boards, Wikipedia, the blogosphere, etc. These had enough content that a single person couldn't consume it all in a lifetime.

That internet was also only interesting and valuable to a fraction of the people who use it today. And if you don't care about that and you are thinking from what you might get out of it: an internet where 99% of the content is crap but universal will end up with more valuable content than a neutered internet that can prevent the emergence of crap, but is tailored to appeal only to 1% of the people. IOW, no one cares…

Good. Not everyone has to be invited.

If the global Internet is a train in the 70s, Gemini is meant to be the non-smoking car at the very tail end. Those who cannot tolerate smoking (malicious practices surrounding user attention and agency), then they are free to make their way there and sit with other non-smokers. You won't have as good a conversation as in the smoking cars, but if the smoke really, truly bothers you, it's a space where different cultural rules apply by design.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#135

Post by selfhoster11 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #104
Gormo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though there are any number of nonstandard things you can do over HTTP to restrict your community from the unwashed eternal september noobs from joining it. But why would you bother with that, when your whole goal is to create an ecosystem that's separate from the web in the first place? > Consider the fact that TFA is already proxied over HTTP just so more than 3 people will read it. Seems more sane to be HTTP nat…

> Podcasts are often rehosted on YouTube I actually don't know of any other way to get them. I suspect I'm not alone. That's how pervasive the dominant platforms are.

Check the description and the channel's About page. They usually list alternative routes to get the content.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#136

Post by selfhoster11 »

Wild_Dolphins wrote: post #44

Gemini is a beautiful idea. However, it works on the basis of mandatory-prohibition. The prohibition is: "You cannot track and exploit your site visitors". This philosophy is enforced 'remotely', by the creators of the Gemini protocol. An identical end-result can be achieved in HTML, by choosing not to use hostile markup. However, with HTML the prohibition must be enforced 'locally', by the ethical-philosophical posi…

The whole point of Gemini's simplicity and designed-in lack of evolution (through missing version numbers) is that you can write a fully featured client yourself, because the protocol surface is not that large once you leverage an existing TLS library.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#137

Post by bayindirh »

rglullis wrote: post #93
bayindirh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's important to understand that limitations are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case. It takes careful deliberation and restraint to keep something tidy. Mastodon does this by limiting its scope and organizational structure. We as humans like to abuse capabilities. So, to keep something tidy and prevent (or realistically slow down) rot, you need a limit somewhere. Putting that limit to humans vs. the pro…

> it's important to understand that limitations are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case. Mastodon may be my preferred social network nowadays, but it's despite the prevalent philosophy from the development team. It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU. >Because power corrupts and gets abused The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep everyone…

> It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU.

Shall the number go up indefinitely? I don't believe so. Something can be attractive to a group of people and the number may float somewhere as people come and go. If the main aim is to make "the line go up", then the users become the product, and this is what I'm against in the first place.

> The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep everyone in the same small crab bucket. It's to make access to the powerful tools as universal and ubiquitous as possible.

While stuffing people from a crab bucket is not the correct analogy for removing capabilities from the medium, I also believe giving people power to realize their dreams, but as you can see, this power corrupts (Meta, Google and Microsoft are great examples of things). Also, if we should give people all the power they need, then we arrive to the abolishing all law and regulation in all areas of the life.

What if someone have the dream of owning a bazooka and we enable them since it's a freedom, and they misfire it to a school bus?

What if we deregulate web space because people shall be free to do whatever they want in the internet, and somebody makes a fortune by selling targeted ads, and what if this ad platform is used to manipulate people to vote in a groomed way (Cambridge Analytica, everyone).

> Your friend not being sensible enough to know when to use a tool vs when to keep it simple is not a problem of the tool.

The tool is the result of exponentially increasing complexity of doing something simple. A perfect real-life example how modern web is bloating itself exponentially given its unlimited nature.

> Also, talking about deployment methods seems so orthogonal to the discussion that I am not sure it makes sense to carry this conversation further.

Please refer to above paragraph.

I agree that we look to the problem with a very different window, and you are not interested in a more minimal, saner or calmer space for distraction and abuse-free (or hard to abuse) environment. We're talking past each other. There's no need to continue this, since there's no desire to flex and widen the perspective.

With no hard feelings, have a nice day. :)

Hope to see you around in another thread.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#138

Post by rglullis »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #134
rglullis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That internet was also only interesting and valuable to a fraction of the people who use it today. And if you don't care about that and you are thinking from what you might get out of it: an internet where 99% of the content is crap but universal will end up with more valuable content than a neutered internet that can prevent the emergence of crap, but is tailored to appeal only to 1% of the people. IOW, no one cares…

Good. Not everyone has to be invited. If the global Internet is a train in the 70s, Gemini is meant to be the non-smoking car at the very tail end. Those who cannot tolerate smoking (malicious practices surrounding user attention and agency), then they are free to make their way there and sit with other non-smokers. You won't have as good a conversation as in the smoking cars, but if the smoke really, truly bothers y…

You may think that way, but to me a more apt analogy is that global Internet are the regular trains of today and Gemini wants to be a bizarre version of the quiet wagons where people can only talk if they don't use the letter "e".

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#139

Post by anthk »

b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #128
anthk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are far more gopher phlogs than gemini gemlogs. Still, both communities overlap of course. Setting up a gopher phlog requires no TLS at all and any machine from 1980 (even maybe ITS with a Gopher client written in MacLisp) will be able to read it with no issues.

that's another large chunk of gemini; rehosted gopherholes. Which is silly unless the originals aren't accessible anymore since gopher is already a minimalist protocol

They render better on Smartphones. Lagrange and such do a good job but is not perfect.

Oddly, the best client for Android (albeit clunky) has been Emacs+Elpher as it has the perfect options for word wrapping.

Altough as most Gopher sites are hosted under Unix, running fmt/fold/par on files is a non-issue modulo ASCII ART and inline code with hard requeriments on indentation (TCL for instance on code blocks) or Python.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#140

Post by rglullis »

bayindirh wrote: post #137
rglullis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's important to understand that limitations are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case. Mastodon may be my preferred social network nowadays, but it's despite the prevalent philosophy from the development team. It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU. >Because power corrupts and gets abused The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep everyone…

> It's also arguably the reason that the Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million MAU. Shall the number go up indefinitely? I don't believe so. Something can be attractive to a group of people and the number may float somewhere as people come and go. If the main aim is to make "the line go up", then the users become the product, and this is what I'm against in the first place. > The solution to this is…

> Shall the number go up indefinitely?

False dichotomy.

> Also, if we should give people all the power they need, then we arrive to the abolishing all law and regulation in all areas of the life (...)

Non-sequitur.

> The tool is the result of exponentially increasing complexity of doing something simple.

The tool is for someone that needs to solve a problem at a different scale than what you and I need. You don't have to use it. No one is forcing you to adopt it. Their problems do not apply to you and no one is stripping you of the ability to solve your problem the way you see fit.

> there's no desire to flex and widen the perspective.

There is. I'm honestly trying to understand whether there is any real value there. I consider myself to be reasonably capable of arguing for two conflicting points at the same time, provided that the trade-off is consistent.

E.g, I may not agree with the direction that Bluesky has taken, but once you understand their original motivation (to have a "credible exit" strategy for an existing centralized network), then it makes sense. I think that Nostr's decision to tie identity to their cryptographic keys is absolutely moronic, but at least their approach is consistent with their priorities and ideas about decentralization. I think that most ActivityPub devs are creating "horseless carriages" (recreating federated versions of the centralized networks, when ActivityPub has the potential to be the foundation of the Semantic Social Web [0]), but at least this approach can be justified as a stepping stone to reach the larger objective...

I can not say the same about Gemini. It is being developed and is guided only by the things that it does not do. My best attempt of steel-manning it goes like "Gemini users consider themselves so powerless against the traps of Surveillance Capitalism, they think that the only way they can resist the siren song is by tying themselves to the boat mast. They see themselves as alcoholics who know they will relapse if they go out to the bar with their old friends, so they are building a place where drinks are not available."

But this is not the argument I hear. All I hear is a bunch of people talking about how awesome it is to sail the seas while tied to the boat mast.

[0]: https://cosocial.ca/@evan/113143389340566731

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