Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Six Years of Gemini

geminiprotocol.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 169 posts

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#71

Post by Gormo »

troupo wrote: post #18
fishgoesblub wrote: post #11

It was sad seeing the hate for it on here when it was new-ish, and while I haven't used it in a while, I'm glad to see it still kicking around. Such a neat and fun project.

I don't remember there being hate. I remember a lot of people, including myself, questioning Gemini's decisions. E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33470229

There were people questioning decisions in relation to goals they were projecting onto the project, but which were not actually the goals of the project. That often resembles 'hate'.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#72

Post by Gormo »

sneak wrote: post #16
fishgoesblub wrote: post #11

It was sad seeing the hate for it on here when it was new-ish, and while I haven't used it in a while, I'm glad to see it still kicking around. Such a neat and fun project.

I don’t hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do what it does, but better. The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren’t SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code. HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it isn’t HTTP’s fault. It’s the sites you visit. If you want to build new and smaller commun…

> I don’t hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do what it does, but better.

I'm not sure I understand that. HTTP is the fundamental protocol of the web. If your goal is to create an ecosystem that is deliberately set apart from the web, how would using the same underlying tech stack help rather than hinder you in doing that?

> HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it isn’t HTTP’s fault. It’s the sites you visit.

And why are those sites so awful? Did they decide to become awful from the outset, or is it because they've gradually adapted to a userbase that has regressed to the mean due to the mass-market nature of the web?

The whole point of developing a new protocol is to create a non-negligible threshold of though and effort for participation, precisely so that it doesn't get popular quickly and end up subjected to Eternal September.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#73

Post by jmclnx »

FWIW, I have moved my WEB site to Gemini an decided a little later to mirror it on gopher (for fun).

I find maintaining these 2 sites far easier then dealing with html and the *panels I need to use to upload to my old WEB site.

People who have never viewed Gemini are missing some decent content.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#74

Post by RiverCrochet »

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 experience using HTTP and modern browsers, but both are so complicated that you don't know what's really happening without a lot of work.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#75

Post by rollcat »

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…

> Again, I get it, but I can live with visiting only the websites or gopherholes I want. [...] Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all gemini capsules.

I agree. Personally, I'm a fan of progressive enhancement.

E.g. I use this Hugo partial to hide emails; it de-obfuscates an address using JavaScript, and falls back to printing a shell command:

    {{ $id := substr (sha256 .) 0 6 }}
    echo {{ base64Encode . }} | base64 -d -var el = document.getElementById("{{ $id }}"); el.innerText = atob("{{ base64Encode . }}"); el.href = "mailto:" + el.innerText;
(Hopefully HN will preserve all the characters.)

Similar for CSS, although that one is a forever WIP...

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#76

Post by grep_name »

jmclnx wrote: post #73

FWIW, I have moved my WEB site to Gemini an decided a little later to mirror it on gopher (for fun). I find maintaining these 2 sites far easier then dealing with html and the *panels I need to use to upload to my old WEB site. People who have never viewed Gemini are missing some decent content.

I checked out gemini maybe four years ago? And I remember really liking the idea but struggling to find content. Got any tips?

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#77

Post by debo_ »

I like Gemini. My (anonymous) blog (gemlog) is posted there and has an http proxy, and is a no-brainer to maintain.

Once in a while I check Lagrange (Gemini "browser") for gemlogs I've subscribed to and catch up with what other anons are going through. It tends to be a lot more raw and persona-less than what I find on the web, which I appreciate. It's generally just cozy.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#78

Post by hombre_fatal »

fallat wrote: post #61
uamgeoalsk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to parse gemtext line by line with almost no context is a big win for simplicity - you can't really do that with markdown.

Uh, how much simplicity do you really gain? What's an instance of needing to backtrack?

You can have "[click me][1]" at the top and then "[1]: https://example.com" at the bottom. You wouldn't be able to render the link until the whole document was downloaded.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#79

Post by Gormo »

rglullis wrote: post #31
bayindirh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all respect, this viewpoint rivals the infamous Dropbox comment.

Problem: you are looking for a way to get rid of the annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution that solves this with the least amount of work? A) Develop a whole new transport protocol that does less than HTTP, develop client applications that use this protocol, convince a sufficient number of people to use this protocol, at least to the point where the majority of your activity happens there? or B) Ins…

The answer is "A". Perhaps some people are avoiding saying this too explicitly because it might sound a bit elitist, but I'll put how I see it as frankly as possible for the sake of clarity.

Gemini is not trying to solve a technical problem with the web. Is trying to solve a cultural problem that arises from the web having become a mass medium, in which every site's focus gradually erodes under pressure to optimize to the lowest common denominator.

Creating a new protocol from the ground up, and requiring users to install a distinct client to access it, isn't just about keeping the software aligned with the project's goals, it's about creating a sufficient threshold of thought and effort for participation that limits the audience to people who are making a deliberate decision to participate. It's about avoiding Eternal September, not about creating a parallel mass-market competitor to the web.

It's not about blocking the annoying ads, popups, and trackers, just to access sites where the content itself is full of spam, scams, political arguments, LLM slop, and other assorted nonsense, and instead creating an ecosystem that's "air-gapped" away from all that stuff, filled with thoughtful content produced deliberately by individuals. It's about collecting needles together away from the hay.

Re: Six Years of Gemini

#80

Post by rickcarlino »

Regardless of the technical shortcomings of the protocol, a grassroots group of individuals has managed to create a viable new network protocol. The user base is small, but it is not tiny and it is not nonexistent and it has been going for years now. You can download a Gemini client and find regularly updated blogs on a Gemini search engine. You can have discussions on Gemini applications like Antenna or Station. It has managed to solve many of the problems it intended to solve (privacy, resource bloat, protocol specification bloat, etc.).
Post reply on HN