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Gemini is Solutionism

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Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#91

Post by GoblinSlayer »

sertraline wrote: post #88

>it certainly does not justify completely replacing existing infrastructure and standards that humans have mutually agreed upon. It does, it makes sense. These standards led us to everything that has ruined the old web, it led us to corporate controlled Internet where few major websites aggregate 80% of the content. It led us to scroll-jacking, bot-driven, located behind firewalls and captchas websites where genuine…

I'd say, web standards are an antipattern anyway. Look at this dark theme: https://randomnixfix.wordpress.com/2021/10/23/why-the-freebs... should such things be supported? If not, how much effort would a browser implementation take?

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#92

Post by The_Colonel »

dopidopHN wrote: post #43
elteto wrote: post #7

I wondered the same thing... why invent a whole new thing? Making a web browser capable of displaying the Internet circa 1999 is not trivial but it is far, far, far easier than building a modern one. Let's keep it simple: HTTP 1.1, HTML, CSS 1 (maybe), _no_ JS.

The spec of Gemini state that a Gemini web client should be writable as a weekend project for a experienced dev.

Having this as a priority nicely demonstrates how dev-centric and user-ignorant this project is.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#93

Post by forty »

I think the author is analyzing Gemini from a technical / engineering perspective, and of course, it doesn't make any sense.

I think Gemini lack of compatibility with the Web is its main feature, and I think people using Gemini want to create a separate new "community". The spirit is "we lost the web, it was taken over by corporate interests, let's accept it, leave it and create our new thing" (you can replace "corporate interests" by "normies" for some people I'm sure).

I think this is all fine, creating new communities/clubs/whatever when you are not happy with existing ones is good, maybe you'll be alone in it, maybe not, good for you.

I think the main problem I see here is that, if I understood properly, a Gemini link was shared on a web page. I don't think it is okay. You want to have your own private club, you got it. But please leave other clubs alone. It's perfectly okay that you don't want to communicate with me. But then don't.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#94

Post by forty »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #91
sertraline wrote: post #88

>it certainly does not justify completely replacing existing infrastructure and standards that humans have mutually agreed upon. It does, it makes sense. These standards led us to everything that has ruined the old web, it led us to corporate controlled Internet where few major websites aggregate 80% of the content. It led us to scroll-jacking, bot-driven, located behind firewalls and captchas websites where genuine…

I'd say, web standards are an antipattern anyway. Look at this dark theme: https://randomnixfix.wordpress.com/2021/10/23/why-the-freebs... should such things be supported? If not, how much effort would a browser implementation take?

Enabling reader mode on my already existing Firefox web browser makes this page perfectly readable.

So very low effort as it already exists :)

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#95

Post by zppln »

DarylZero wrote: post #6
barakm wrote: post #3

You’re entirely right; the sole reason for Gemini is to exclude people. It’s more than solutionism, it’s elitism. It’s some people hiding their content to the quote-unquote “cool” kids and claiming it’s a “better” solution just because the primary clients are terminal based. Which is why nothing of value is lost by ignoring it, IMO.

Lagrange isn't terminal based.

And neither is Ariane for Android.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#96

Post by pedrogpimenta »

barakm wrote: post #3

You’re entirely right; the sole reason for Gemini is to exclude people. It’s more than solutionism, it’s elitism. It’s some people hiding their content to the quote-unquote “cool” kids and claiming it’s a “better” solution just because the primary clients are terminal based. Which is why nothing of value is lost by ignoring it, IMO.

Yet you are clearly not ignoring it.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#97

Post by Alekhine »

The_Colonel wrote: post #92
dopidopHN wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spec of Gemini state that a Gemini web client should be writable as a weekend project for a experienced dev.

Having this as a priority nicely demonstrates how dev-centric and user-ignorant this project is.

Is that so wrong? Must everything we create be for the masses to consume?

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#98

Post by CyberRabbi »

ranger_danger wrote: post #76

Why a new protocol? Because modern browsers are massive, and we need something much, much lighter that doesn't need to support HTML and such.

You can build a minimal browser that uses HTTP and only renders special markdown files. You can use the Accept header to send special markdown to these minimal browsers and minimal HTML to normal browsers. A new protocol is unnecessary to accomplish the goals you mentioned.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#99

Post by foxfluff »

latch wrote: post #8

The post is a broad, and IMO, valid criticism. Though I'm not sure having a different protocol is a _huge_ problem. If Gemini ever got popular both backends and clients would add support. I think the real issue, and the OP touches on it, is the text/gemini format. There's a ton of content that would enrich Gemini (and that fits Gemini's mission) but that simply isn't usable in text/gemini. Specifically, I'm talking a…

> There's a ton of content that would enrich Gemini (and that fits Gemini's mission) but that simply isn't usable in text/gemini.

That's kind of what I've concluded too. I like the mission of gemini (and I believe the web is fundamentally broken and unrepairable), but I do feel like text/gemini flings way too far in the opposite direction. It's not a new pattern, I see this all the time: thing X is too complex and bloated and user-hostile, let's make a suckless thing Y. Y is minimalistic to a fault.

Making something that's too minimalistic or too complex is easy. Finding the right balance and making something that is small and simple yet still capable of covering wide use scenarios is an engineering challenge..

Since I agree with gemini's mission, I'm not going to complain too much about it. It's not exactly what I want, but if it encourages people to write content and deliver it in a form that is guaranteed not to have web's problems, I'm all for it, because I do stand to benefit from it.

Re: Gemini is Solutionism

#100

Post by PinkMilkshake »

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！

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