Gemini is Solutionism
xn--gckvb8fzb.com
Gemini is Solutionism
1–10 of 227 posts
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#2Nah - Gemini FORCES people to use a very strict small surface area. Building on top of existing tech you would need to trust people to do it right, and that ain't something you trust.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#3You’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.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#4Super pedantic but you don't need to send the Host header either to get a response.
I use the telnet trick often as debug step number one.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#5Nah - Gemini FORCES people to use a very strict small surface area. Building on top of existing tech you would need to trust people to do it right, and that ain't something you trust.
Yep there would always be the temptation to say "well I need just one cookie" or "well I need just this bit of javascript" Gemini doesn't give you those options.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#6You’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.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#7I 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.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#8The 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 about inline-links (though that isn't the only issue).
I wrote a server in elixir, and tried to convert Wikiversity's Introduction to Programming (1) both manually and automatically. I found the output unusable and couldn't come up with a case where I'd ever prefer/recommend it.
(1) https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Programming
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#9Nah - Gemini FORCES people to use a very strict small surface area. Building on top of existing tech you would need to trust people to do it right, and that ain't something you trust.
Exactly.
It's similar to how, here in HN comments, you cannot embed a giant 300MB javascript advertisement monstrosity. Or even just an image.
If people could do that, then the space would be destroyed by malicious actors.
What if we eliminate HN and do the communication P2P? Where author hosts own content. How can I as author still guarantee you as reader that I won't do that?
One answer is to publish over Gemini.
Re: Gemini is Solutionism
#10Super pedantic but you don't need to send the Host header either to get a response. I use the telnet trick often as debug step number one.
OP is correct. HTTP/1.1 requires the Host header (1). The client must send it, and the server must reject requests without it. Some implementations simply don't follow the standard. For example, you can test this on twitter.com, which appears to be correctly following the specification.