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Everything there is correct except the response. Don't give up on the web. Just stop using websites that implement user hostile things like web components. It s

Everything there is correct except the response. Don't give up on the web. Just stop using websites that implement user hostile things like web components. It sucks but not nearly as much as switching to a new protocol. The corporate web (like github/youtube/etc) will become inaccessible but there's plenty of real websites out there. At least until the search engines start filtering them out for not leashing themselves to some TLS cert feudal lord. On this subject, see also: https://linuxreviews.org/Modern_Web_Standards_Are_Leaving_Niche_Web_Browsers_Behind https://linuxreviews.org/Modern_Web_Standards_Are_Leaving_Ni... "Modern Web Standards Are Leaving Niche Web Browsers Behind"

ddevault 6y ago
Speaking specifically as a Gemini enthusiast: We don't want "the web, but less of it". Do you not realize that "less of it" is still a whole hell of a lot of web? Take a look at Netsurf: 13 years of development and half a million lines of C and it's probably the most advanced rendering engine after the big three. And yet, one of my websites, sourcehut.org, renders like this: https://l.sr.ht/_2pv.png https://l.sr.ht/_2pv.png On WebEngine, it should look like this: https://l.sr.ht/bSdI.png https://l.sr.ht/bSdI.png And this is one of the most conservative websites on the modern internet. The problem with using the web, but less of it, is that the web is still incredibly complicated and even conservative websites require a massive engineering undertaking to render properly, and it just takes one link to a more liberal page to ruin the experience entirely. Gemini is a separate, self-contained network, based on a much simpler philosophy. I wrote my Gemini client in two afternoons, and it's already pleasant to use with all Gemini pages. We don't want the web, but less. We want something else entirely.
- est31 6y ago
  > The problem with using the web, but less of it, is that the web is still incredibly complicated and even conservative websites require a massive engineering undertaking to render properly The main problem is that "less of it" isn't well defined, so any website, while still appearing to require little of the web, requires its own subset. If there is a clear demarcation about which features are supported and which aren't, then websites can be built targeting this smaller subset, and everyone would be happy. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and start totally from scratch. Reading the Gemini specification, it seems like a NIH of HTTP. What's wrong about a HTTP 1.0 server?
  - ddevault 6y ago
    If you start with the web but less, you're never going to shake the web. You're still fundamentally buying into the same ecosystem. I don't want to be a subset of a broader ecosystem which I hate. I want a new ecosystem.
- oscargrouch 6y ago
  Is there anything on Gemini that prevents centralization? Because lets suppose this will happen, everyone now goes for the sweet land of Gemini. At the beginning it will be just like the web in the nineties, full of indies web sites, a dozen open source clients, that implements the protocol, yay! Profit right? Here now enter the 2000's of Gemini.. startups begin to grow stronger most of them mediating and selling the content of others that they get for free. The individual gemini sites begin to fade, the startups create Gemini clients with a lot of new features starting to turn impossible for new implementations. (Now its the time we start to ask ourselves, where did we see that movie?) So whats the point of a new protocol or standard, if it doesnt solve the real issues we are facing nowadays, and the only solution it provides its to manipulate people emotions that we should get back to that romantic era of the internet, the 'belle epoque'. "Its hard to solve the modern issues? get your time machine pal, lets get to the nineties and start everything again without solving the core issues, and if by chance we happen to thrive, just let those big problems to be solved by your grandson" There is only one thing we should be doing right now: Decentralize the internet, making "blue seas" for new things to thrive making the moves of FAANGS to centralize and control data, information and computation futile by getting people out of a game they control. A solution like Gemini would reset the game, yes, but only to have the same problems later, giving the creators were not trying to solve them in the first place. Gemini is trying to solve a problem by using denial, and as we know, it doesnt actually solve the problems. It just make them disappear temporarily to hit us again in a near future. You can make a Gemini client in two weeks? thats great, this is probably what you would take to make browsers in the nineties..
  - ddevault 6y ago
    >startups create Gemini clients with a lot of new features starting to turn impossible for new implementations I don't think this is going to happen. We're pushing very hard for a culture which embraces the limitations of the protocol. Anyone who even thinks about extensions has the fury of the mailing list wrought upon them as soon as they propose them. And Gemini is so simple that it's difficult to monetize. There's not much corporate incentive here. I think that corporations will continue to use the web, because the web was basically hand-designed for corporate needs - even going so far as to do so at the expense of the users. >You can make a Gemini client in two weeks? Two afternoons. And a stated goal of the specification is not to add substantial changes. We can decentralize the internet and serve Gemini over our new, decentralized space. We can work on more than just one of THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS™ at a time, you know.
mhd 6y ago
Even the people moving away from the regular web will most likely be switch-hitting. Using MegaGloboChromeWeb for all that stuff where you have to do it, but also trying separate approaches. Gemini might be one of them, for applications where hyperlinked text offerings make sense. But betting too much on a single protocol is what got us in this place. For example, this site makes no sense to me at all, technically speaking. There's nothing HN offers that couldn't be done with Usenet or a mailing list. Alas...
Dylan16807 6y ago
At what point is it okay to depend on a feature? > not leashing themselves to some TLS cert feudal lord Really? You can get one free and change at any time.
- eznzt 6y ago
  You can change what? How many companies are giving away SSL certificates?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    You can change if and who you get a cert from. If you're really that worried about Let's Encrypt turning evil, you could stop having one when that actually happens. Or get a free one from many DNS providers. Or pay $5 for one. There is zero lock-in, and keeping traffic encrypted is a good thing.
    - davvolun 6y ago
      And just for encryption, you can self-sign. Obviously that doesn't work for the web, but "TLS cert feudal lord" doesn't track for me at all.
      - superkuh 6y ago
        Self-signing is exactly what I've done for all my sites. But browsers are getting more and more restrictive about what they will allow their users to see. Right now technically ignorant people will be so confused and frightened by warnings they click away. That's okay, I don't care about those people. But for many it's a deal breaker. I give it about 3 years before the big corporate browsers stop allowing HTTP at all. Search engines already deprioritize HTTP and eventually they'll just delist. And it won't hurt their income one bit. The number of sites that don't HTTP and just 304 to HTTPS is already frightening.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
neurobashing 6y ago
I think giving up on the web is doubly wrong, because these days, the web is constantly changing. Just this week we've seen how QUIC/HTTP3 is a big thing, and it's a leap from HTTP2, and a huge leap from 1.1. We've seen small revolutions all over the place. Yeah, it's not clear which ones will "stick" but I think there's still time for meaningful change that doesn't require boiling the ocean.
- eznzt 6y ago
  Isn't QUIC/HTTP3 a protocol that improves the performance of pipelining which is something that very bloated webpages benefit from? Isn't that something we should move away from?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Sometimes you want to load a bunch of thumbnails. Pipelining is pretty good. Though you can pipeline just fine on HTTP/1.1 if people would actually enable it.
  - rektide 6y ago
    Pipelining is something that helps everyone other than the gigantic new breed of "single page web apps" that are actually just single gigantic JS files. We should definitely definitely definitely be trying to help pipelining. Unless you send only one resource, pipelining is probably a huge win. And it definitely, from the server side, makes things way easier. As you can get a bunch of requests & start satisfying them in whatever order works for you. This isn't like HTTP 1.1 Pipelining, which was in order: now connected systems can out of order send whatever data they have, without having to buffer it & wait for the first asked for data to clear the pipe. This is massively massively helpful tech we are creating. Attaching it to "very bloated webpages", & implying this is something "we should move away from" is a high level of shade that is not at all in any way deserved nor fair nor accurate.
  - neurobashing 6y ago
    I was arguing less for a specific tool, technology, or whatever, and more that the web as platform is constantly in flux and so "throwing it away" makes no sense. You don't stop using the Interstate system bc a stretch of road is bad.

ddevault 6y ago

Speaking specifically as a Gemini enthusiast: We don't want "the web, but less of it". Do you not realize that "less of it" is still a whole hell of a lot of web? Take a look at Netsurf: 13 years of development and half a million lines of C and it's probably the most advanced rendering engine after the big three. And yet, one of my websites, sourcehut.org, renders like this: https://l.sr.ht/_2pv.png https://l.sr.ht/_2pv.png On WebEngine, it should look like this: https://l.sr.ht/bSdI.png https://l.sr.ht/bSdI.png And this is one of the most conservative websites on the modern internet. The problem with using the web, but less of it, is that the web is still incredibly complicated and even conservative websites require a massive engineering undertaking to render properly, and it just takes one link to a more liberal page to ruin the experience entirely. Gemini is a separate, self-contained network, based on a much simpler philosophy. I wrote my Gemini client in two afternoons, and it's already pleasant to use with all Gemini pages. We don't want the web, but less. We want something else entirely.

est31 6y ago
> The problem with using the web, but less of it, is that the web is still incredibly complicated and even conservative websites require a massive engineering undertaking to render properly The main problem is that "less of it" isn't well defined, so any website, while still appearing to require little of the web, requires its own subset. If there is a clear demarcation about which features are supported and which aren't, then websites can be built targeting this smaller subset, and everyone would be happy. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and start totally from scratch. Reading the Gemini specification, it seems like a NIH of HTTP. What's wrong about a HTTP 1.0 server?
- ddevault 6y ago
  If you start with the web but less, you're never going to shake the web. You're still fundamentally buying into the same ecosystem. I don't want to be a subset of a broader ecosystem which I hate. I want a new ecosystem.
oscargrouch 6y ago
Is there anything on Gemini that prevents centralization? Because lets suppose this will happen, everyone now goes for the sweet land of Gemini. At the beginning it will be just like the web in the nineties, full of indies web sites, a dozen open source clients, that implements the protocol, yay! Profit right? Here now enter the 2000's of Gemini.. startups begin to grow stronger most of them mediating and selling the content of others that they get for free. The individual gemini sites begin to fade, the startups create Gemini clients with a lot of new features starting to turn impossible for new implementations. (Now its the time we start to ask ourselves, where did we see that movie?) So whats the point of a new protocol or standard, if it doesnt solve the real issues we are facing nowadays, and the only solution it provides its to manipulate people emotions that we should get back to that romantic era of the internet, the 'belle epoque'. "Its hard to solve the modern issues? get your time machine pal, lets get to the nineties and start everything again without solving the core issues, and if by chance we happen to thrive, just let those big problems to be solved by your grandson" There is only one thing we should be doing right now: Decentralize the internet, making "blue seas" for new things to thrive making the moves of FAANGS to centralize and control data, information and computation futile by getting people out of a game they control. A solution like Gemini would reset the game, yes, but only to have the same problems later, giving the creators were not trying to solve them in the first place. Gemini is trying to solve a problem by using denial, and as we know, it doesnt actually solve the problems. It just make them disappear temporarily to hit us again in a near future. You can make a Gemini client in two weeks? thats great, this is probably what you would take to make browsers in the nineties..
- ddevault 6y ago
  >startups create Gemini clients with a lot of new features starting to turn impossible for new implementations I don't think this is going to happen. We're pushing very hard for a culture which embraces the limitations of the protocol. Anyone who even thinks about extensions has the fury of the mailing list wrought upon them as soon as they propose them. And Gemini is so simple that it's difficult to monetize. There's not much corporate incentive here. I think that corporations will continue to use the web, because the web was basically hand-designed for corporate needs - even going so far as to do so at the expense of the users. >You can make a Gemini client in two weeks? Two afternoons. And a stated goal of the specification is not to add substantial changes. We can decentralize the internet and serve Gemini over our new, decentralized space. We can work on more than just one of THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEMS™ at a time, you know.

mhd 6y ago

Even the people moving away from the regular web will most likely be switch-hitting. Using MegaGloboChromeWeb for all that stuff where you have to do it, but also trying separate approaches. Gemini might be one of them, for applications where hyperlinked text offerings make sense. But betting too much on a single protocol is what got us in this place. For example, this site makes no sense to me at all, technically speaking. There's nothing HN offers that couldn't be done with Usenet or a mailing list. Alas...

Dylan16807 6y ago

At what point is it okay to depend on a feature? > not leashing themselves to some TLS cert feudal lord Really? You can get one free and change at any time.

eznzt 6y ago
You can change what? How many companies are giving away SSL certificates?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  You can change if and who you get a cert from. If you're really that worried about Let's Encrypt turning evil, you could stop having one when that actually happens. Or get a free one from many DNS providers. Or pay $5 for one. There is zero lock-in, and keeping traffic encrypted is a good thing.
  - davvolun 6y ago
    And just for encryption, you can self-sign. Obviously that doesn't work for the web, but "TLS cert feudal lord" doesn't track for me at all.
    - superkuh 6y ago
      Self-signing is exactly what I've done for all my sites. But browsers are getting more and more restrictive about what they will allow their users to see. Right now technically ignorant people will be so confused and frightened by warnings they click away. That's okay, I don't care about those people. But for many it's a deal breaker. I give it about 3 years before the big corporate browsers stop allowing HTTP at all. Search engines already deprioritize HTTP and eventually they'll just delist. And it won't hurt their income one bit. The number of sites that don't HTTP and just 304 to HTTPS is already frightening.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago

neurobashing 6y ago

I think giving up on the web is doubly wrong, because these days, the web is constantly changing. Just this week we've seen how QUIC/HTTP3 is a big thing, and it's a leap from HTTP2, and a huge leap from 1.1. We've seen small revolutions all over the place. Yeah, it's not clear which ones will "stick" but I think there's still time for meaningful change that doesn't require boiling the ocean.

eznzt 6y ago
Isn't QUIC/HTTP3 a protocol that improves the performance of pipelining which is something that very bloated webpages benefit from? Isn't that something we should move away from?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Sometimes you want to load a bunch of thumbnails. Pipelining is pretty good. Though you can pipeline just fine on HTTP/1.1 if people would actually enable it.
- rektide 6y ago
  Pipelining is something that helps everyone other than the gigantic new breed of "single page web apps" that are actually just single gigantic JS files. We should definitely definitely definitely be trying to help pipelining. Unless you send only one resource, pipelining is probably a huge win. And it definitely, from the server side, makes things way easier. As you can get a bunch of requests & start satisfying them in whatever order works for you. This isn't like HTTP 1.1 Pipelining, which was in order: now connected systems can out of order send whatever data they have, without having to buffer it & wait for the first asked for data to clear the pipe. This is massively massively helpful tech we are creating. Attaching it to "very bloated webpages", & implying this is something "we should move away from" is a high level of shade that is not at all in any way deserved nor fair nor accurate.
- neurobashing 6y ago
  I was arguing less for a specific tool, technology, or whatever, and more that the web as platform is constantly in flux and so "throwing it away" makes no sense. You don't stop using the Interstate system bc a stretch of road is bad.