16 ms·

What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it? (2020)

248 points by als0 5y ago

Daegalus 5y ago
Gemini is great, but I'm would love one step up from this. html/css support, no JS. or Markdown with CSS styling or something that's just a little more than plain text but still close. I've been meaning to try and make my own browser that only supports html/css or Markdown and maybe its own protocol like Gemini's I'll add it to my ever growing Todo list.
- Andrex 5y ago
  Nothing stopping you from turning off JS in your web browser. ;) I have, and whitelist the sites that really need it.
  - Daegalus 5y ago
    I did that for a while, but I want to kind of enforce it. If a sight is unusuable without JS, maybe its worth finding an alternative. Or maybe form a new sub-internet of just javascript-less web. HTML, server-side rendering, etc.
    - Andrex 5y ago
      Definitely a cool idea. I've thought a lot about this idea as I'm sure many others on this post have. A protocol for just HTML/CSS (and a lightweight bridge) could be cool to see. This desire was why I was initially on board with AMP (before I saw the bigger problems with that format.) I've also thought about a JSON-only protocol. In my mind this would make it simple to do AJAX-type interactions for loading content (the core benefit of JS to me) while still excising JS in its entirety, but I haven't thought it through very far admittedly. This is the first time I'm hearing about Gemini and I'm really intrigued, especially how it's handling input and identity. There's potential here...
  - Seirdy 5y ago
    If I see an http(s) URL, I have no idea whether I'll have to play whack-a-mole with selective attack-surface expansion (enabling JS, media, SVG, third-party JS, or JIT) for a rich text document to load. If I see a gemini:// link, I know in advance that a singe download will give me a single readable page, and that it probably won't make my old laptop's fans spin or kill my battery. This significantly improves usability.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  Gemini's text specification is kind of a subset of Markdown -- it supports three levels of headings, block quotes, bulleted (but not numbered) lists, preformatted text, and links (but not inline links). While I'm a fan of richer text styling -- I'm often the dingus on HN being downvoted for suggesting that web fonts are not an intrinsically bad thing -- I think Gemini is mostly just fine the way it is. The thing that's kind of a blocker for me is, of all things, no way to emphasize inline text. Changing text from regular to italic/oblique carries semantic meaning. If you could mark it with _underlines_ like Markdown, for instance, it could be just like some of the other Gemini text that's described as "strictly optional for clients to do anything special with".
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    In the very first days of Gemini's design, I was arguing with other implementers for using a large subset of CommonMark (no raw HTML, no inline images, but pretty much everything else) as the preferred content-type to serve over Gemini. In the end, the goal of ease of implementation for client authors won out. The main arguments were that while there are Markdown parsers for many languages, most of them are narrowly aimed at converting to HTML; Markdown has known ambiguities; the line-oriented markup we ended up with was a strict improvement over Gophermaps while remaining equally simple to parse. I also miss inline emphasis and other kinds of text-oriented typography, but the reasons gemtext omits them are fairly good.
    - __void 5y ago
      I come to think of it, this is a client problem (specifically the client used to write the pages): gemini is natively utf8, bold and italic are present in unicode! In general, on gemini, all "problems" are with the client and not with the protocol ;)
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  That would be pretty cool, but I do think that having CSS would be worse for what I like about gemini. To me, the point is that you don't need style if the idea and writing is great. It would be lovely if something like gemini caught on. I'd love to discover a treasure trove of great writing and ideas (again). That's how I felt in the early days of the internet, and it was amazing. To me, the current web feels like walking down the street while being verbally accosted by a gauntlet of strip mall sign spinners.
Animats 5y ago
It's like Gopher, but dumber.
- juice_bus 5y ago
  I think "dumber" is a feature in this case.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    It really isn't. If you want people to use it, you have to provide some utility. If you just want to make a point about how things could be different, you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'.
    - alexwennerberg 5y ago
      > If you want people to use it, you have to provide some utility People do use it, though. > you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'. Gemini is basically a movement in this direction
    - Talanes 5y ago
      >you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'. The stickers would have less of a discoverability problem too.
- plebianRube 5y ago
  Gopher was my intro to the internet. Coming from BBSs it was very natural. I loved Gopher and I am happy to see it's ideology progress to the next evolutionary step. I am aware that that the protocol still exists, but I'm hoping Gemini can bring back the desire for text content. I don't ever want to watch a video of a solution that can be written down in 3 lines.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Yes, videos are a poor method of distributing most types of information IMO, especially solutions.
betwixthewires 5y ago
I've been a reader of this gemlog and a fan of Gemini, I have been looking at minimal featured Gemini servers (everyone seems to be building one) and looking for one specifically that offers an http mirror, text and maybe inline images only. Particularly I'd like to do everything in markdown, does anyone know of a good one?
- alexwennerberg 5y ago
  Kineto might be what you're looking for: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/ https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/ Inline images is a violation of the Gemini spec: > clients MUST NOT automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. links beginning with gemini://, gopher://, https:// https://, ftp:// , etc.).
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    Isn't it OK to offer that option, but disabled by default?
    - alexwennerberg 5y ago
      It's not OK in the sense that it is a spec violation, at least. Some clients have images that load in-line on mouseover or click, which isn't a spec violation. You could do that with HTML.
      - Andrex 5y ago
        If people specifically sought out your client because it automatically renders images inline, who could be bothered to get upset about a "spec violation"? The author of Gemini? What would he be able to do? Honestly asking because I'm curious.
        alexwennerberg 5y ago
        Probably someone would submit a PR complaining. A lot of folks in the gemini community are strict about the spec. In my view, they would be justified in doing so — I think adherence to specs is important in any domain, not just gemini.
MartijnBraam 5y ago
I'm a bit annoyed with the lack of _some_ inline image support. but making a browser for gemini is really really easy at least.
- mostlylurks 5y ago
  You could very easily make a browser that displays image links inline. Contrary to what is suggested in the sibling comments, you don't need to extend the format with special syntax for inline images.
- haolez 5y ago
  You could create a client that uses a non-standard markup and be able to render inline images just fine... oops! I think I just broke the web again :)
  - MartijnBraam 5y ago
    That would be against the spirit of the whole Gemini thing
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    Just put them in markdown and have compatible clients inline render an image and non compatible clients get a link.
    - edflsafoiewq 5y ago
      Compare this thread with the thread about <img> 30 years ago: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht...
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        Thank you! The HN crowd has an extremely short memory.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"My disdain for web browsers is well documented1." Ha, I am not the only one. I do like links though, somewhere around 2.3pre2, with stunnel or haproxy for up-to-date TLS. Someone submitted an "improved" version of linenoise the other day, which added UTF-8 and ANSI codes by default. But I prefer to avoid Unicode in the console (cf. terminal, I do not use a graphics layer plus emulator). This is an example of enforcing developer preferences on the user where the result is added complexity. Perhaps nowhere is this added complexity more evident (obvious) than in the "modern" web browser and websites. Links does not try to enforce its authors preferences too much on the user; for example, it has compile time options to disable utf8, ipv6 and getaddrinfo. The user makes the choice, not the developer. The fundamental problem with "web development" is that its extremely aggressive in enforcing the developers (or web development cargo cult) preferences on the user. Anyone remember that period where many commercial sites were a hollow shell that loaded a Flash animation. Perhaps a precursor to todays "SWAs". Funny, the Flash idea didnt last long. It died out long before browsers stop supporting Flash. These "trends in web development" are tiring and annoying. Gemini doesnt allow for that level of "creativity". The focus is shifted to the information, not the presentation. The user comes first. The protocol may refelect the authors preferences but the result is reduced complexity. Great project.
- john-aj 5y ago
  Could you elaborate (or share a configuration example) on how you use stunnel or haproxy to connect an old browser to encrypted websites? I usually use squid for that purpose, but I've been looking for alternatives.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    stunnel configuration is useful for a limited number of sites, since one has to specify every remote ip address in the configuration file. haproxy configuration doesnt have that limitation; it can do dns lookups, use maps, etc. for example, one can force all http and https to connect to a backend as https with a specific tls version. this is much simpler than eff's "https everywhere", IMHO. the problem with tls is it keeps changing. as users, we have to bet that every application will stay up-to-date with the changes, and that the software authors wont make mistakes when adding/updating tls support. IME, this has been a losing bet. by just focusing on haproxy and stunnel i only have to worry about a couple of applications staying up-to-date with tls and implementing support correctly.
cortesoft 5y ago
I don't quite get this... it sounds like the author mostly has issues with the HTML part of the web, but much of this seems to focus on the HTTP part.... why not keep http and just make a replacement for HTML? Writing an http server is very simple, too
- RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
  Writing an http client, on the other hand, is rather complex.
  - cyounkins 5y ago
    It's really not - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32341518/how-to-make-an-http-get-request-manually-with-netcat https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32341518/how-to-make-an-...
    - NoGravitas 5y ago
      It's not complicated, if you only care about implementing HTTP/1.0 and selected easy/high-value parts of HTTP/1.1. If you want to comprehensively implement an HTTP/1.1 client, it's much harder. Doubly so for HTTP/2.
- cheesetable 5y ago
  HTTP supports extensibility via HTTP headers and methods. Gemini to not be evolved: * HTTP is now for interactivity, complex clients, WebGL, Webassembly, ... * Gemini is for a segregated simpler web: links and text.
  - zchrykng 5y ago
    And Gemini being its own stand-alone thing that is different from everything is a serious hindrance for people to try it. I've read Drew's stuff for a while and even wanted to test out Gemini out of interest, but it is really annoying/frustrating to use in my experience. And that is even before you get to the fact that there is nearly nothing there and/or it is nearly impossible. to find.
skybrian 5y ago
What’s something interesting to read that’s on Gemini?
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  I keep asking this question and not getting a useful answer. Someone made a Wikipedia bridge for it, which is the best thing I've seen so far, but it took me a while to find it. Most Gemini users with their own pages seem to be coming at it from the perspective of 'you are someone who is already interested in me, so you be motivated to investigate my Gemini address.' But if I don't know anyone else who is using it, why do I want to click on a bunch of random links with no context in hopes of finding something interesting? The darkweb has a similar discoverability problem though there it's more reasonable to assume that page owners may not want to be found by casual users.
  - tadfisher 5y ago
    Because it's exactly how the Web used to be. Gemini supports form input, BTW, so a search engine could be built if someone wanted one.
- t-3 5y ago
  Not much, unless you follow some of the bloggers on it. It's a nice idea, but doesn't really have anything to recommend it over just making a website without javascript and ads.
- Calamitous 5y ago
  Gemini is gaining some traction in Tildeverse communities. I run a Gemini server on http://Ctrl-C.club http://Ctrl-C.club that has a pretty good number of users posting things: gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club
- dflock 5y ago
  This is the Capcom aggregator, have a poke around: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/ This is a fun episodic fiction thing that I found on there: gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/users/joneworlds/index.gmi If not, there always the pub: gemini://midnight.pub/
dang 5y ago
Here are the major past threads. Others? Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27490769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27490769 - June 2021 (193 comments) Gemini Space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670464 - April 2021 (27 comments) Agate, a simple Gemini server written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401158 - March 2021 (34 comments) Beyond the Web: Gopher, Gemini, and the Rise of the Small Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359454 - March 2021 (5 comments) gemini:// space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986378 - Feb 2021 (170 comments) The Tragedy of Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807633 - Jan 2021 (28 comments) Hacker News over Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225810 - Nov 2020 (21 comments) Show HN: Taurus – A Concurrent Gemini Server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045130 - Nov 2020 (5 comments) A Gopher View of Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005307 - Nov 2020 (9 comments) A look at the Gemini protocol: a brutally simple alternative to the web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408 - July 2020 (347 comments) Castor: A browser for the small internet (Gemini, Gopher, Finger) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922 - May 2020 (75 comments) Gemini – A new, collaboratively designed internet protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 - May 2020 (62 comments)
- nervuri 5y ago
  Bombadillo: a non-web browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223184 - Nov 2020 (50 comments)
advisedwang 5y ago
I understand the desire to use trust-on-first-use to get rid of certificate authorities (some of the most dispicable and untrustworthy organizations around, and the largest security hole in TLS). However trust-on-first-use basically hands any long-term man-in-the-middle a complete victory. Authoritarian regimes are going to require ISPs to mitm every connection from first use, and hand over whatever data is desired to the secret police. CAA, Key Pinning, certificate transparency all bring the risk of CA abuse way down without opening a huge new vector of ISP abuse.
- ronsor 5y ago
  Trust on first use combined with preloaded public key lists is the best of both worlds in my opinion. You may say that browsers made in authoritarian countries would sabotage the preload lists, but they could also bundle illegitimate CAs or break HTTPS in other ways anyway.
  - jtl999 5y ago
    This. Some standards bodies (arguably) made a big deal about client certificates some time ago to reliably pin client identities for client->server connections (whether it worked is a different story), and I certainly think having functionality for the reverse (pinning server identities) should exist too. Doesn't have to be Gemini even, but I think getting buy in from browser vendors after the removal of HPKP is going to be a problem...
  - judge2020 5y ago
    'HTTPS in other ways': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_a...
  - Seirdy 5y ago
    Another option would be something similar to Go's sum database, but with something like a DHT instead of a hosted centralized service. Or perhaps instead of a DHT, users could export all their certs to a file and combine/compare entries in a grassroots manner with each other and with devices on different networks.
kemiller 5y ago
An evolution of Gopher. I love it. The internet in 1993 was a special place.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
This name is so overused that when I see it, I think I know the project in several different contexts. Choose another name… please.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  That ship has sailed a while ago. Gemini is already the established name, and doesn't clash with other names in its context.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Sorry to hear that; the project is simply ignored because of naming conflicts “oh, I know that already.” There’s precedent for renaming projects.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  Overloading names is frustrating. It's also disappointingly ubiquitous, and whether or not it's a problem depends strongly on your context and expectations. For example, the English dialect I learned growing up exclusively used "autumn" to refer to the season after summer and before winter. Every time I see a phrase like "we will complete this project after the fall" I end up parsing it as something like "after the fall [of civilization]" and have to manually correct. Presumably when people give something a name that has conflicts, they themselves don't see it that way. This makes it an especially difficult kind of problem, since you have to then argue that a) people like you (but unlike them) have a problem and b) this problem is worth caring about and maybe even c) this isn't going to happen all over again when the new solution is troublesome for some other group. I find that societal issues fitting this pattern are a real sticky wicket generally.
tdeck 5y ago
When I was in high school, I was part of an online community that wrote graphical shells for DOS (really NTVDM) in QBasic. One of the things we all started to want was a web browser, but most of us had no idea how to write a parser, let alone deal with the complexities of HTML and JavaScript. So we created our own markup language, where each "tag" was on it's own line, with the first character indicating the type of tag. Only HTTP GET requests were supported, all output was in color CP437 text, and there was really limited layout support. After a while there were maybe 5 or 6 different clients and maybe 10 different people had created websites, including a forum, a chat app, an RSS reader, a search engine, and some pages advertising various software people created. Sometimes it can be really fun to start "from scratch" with something simple.
- tester34 5y ago
  >but most of us had no idea how to write a parser, let alone deal with the complexities of HTML and JavaScript. >a search engine how did that search engine work?
  - tdeck 5y ago
    Pretty much all the apps were written in PHP on shared hosting. Since the system had support for a simple kind of forms (using GET requests), it was possible to accept queries for the various web apps. The search engine crawled the pages that existed looking for links from a few "start" pages, and built a primitive index.
- skissane 5y ago
  How did you do networking from QBasic? (And especially when running under NTVDM?)
  - mysterydip 5y ago
    Using serial or parallel ports, or communicating over modem was done in QBasic. It's possible they did something like that.
vgb2k18 5y ago
> Gemini is designed to be difficult to extend without breaking backwards compatibility, and almost all proposals for expansion on the mailing list are ultimately shot down. This could lead to some interesting adaptations. I'm thinking like the way usenet, news-groups were adapted to store and transmit binary files in the form of NZB's. So while the underlying protocol remains pure and simplistic (relatively), the overlays and adaptations build upon it may bring unweildly levels of complexity. Not inherently good or bad, but interesting to think about.
andrewstuart 5y ago
So sort of like Teletext or Prestel, is that right?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  A bit more interactive. Teletext was mostly one-way, where Gemini is sort-of two way and interactive.
cyounkins 5y ago
Is extensibility really the Pandora's box the author makes it out to be? Just because something is extensible doesn't mean it has to be extended in monstrous ways.
- NateEag 5y ago
  Human nature being what it is, anything that can be extended will be extended in monstrous ways. It is no coincidence that "hack" means both "abuse of a system's intended design" and "clever trick that we all admire."
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Yeah I agree with you here. Gopher had Gopher+ that allowed for quite rich extensions - the original gopher authors had early prototypes of a 3D "VR" interface for example. No one really used it for anything though, and then most people moved on as technology moved on. I think perhaps the Gemini folks are acting slightly paranoid here - like the minute they allow extensions they will be flooded with ads and tracking. I am reminded of https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ - I suspect that really no one cares enough to flood Gemini sites with ads and tracking, and likely never will.
- slx26 5y ago
  It's interesting to think about this: a simple and ordered space is the most seductive platform to start messing with. When something is complex and chaotic enough, we start losing the drive to make it even more complex, as it takes too much effort and it's too painful to do. But when a system is simple enough... you have ideas, you think them possible, you feel the opportunity, you want to experiment and explore and create; and it's hard to resist. Therefore, software systems (and many others, maybe we could spend a few thousand pages discussing this for societies as a whole) develop a tendency towards complexity. You could describe programmers as data manipulators or complexity managers. Don't make your first job harder, don't make your second one impossible.
- severak_cz 5y ago
  Gemini is not extensible by design.
Semiapies 5y ago
This all seemed interesting at first, but the more I look at Gemini, the more I shrug and say, "Why not just build some text web sites without ads or trackers?" Literally millions of those exist, some dating back to the first eta of the web that every geek my age or older seems nostalgic for. (Really, they're nostalgic for an era when almost everybody else they ran into on the internet shared the background of being a white, male American geek, very few people were online, and nobody cared about anything said online. Not anything technical.) You don't want JavaScript, videos, images, styles, or fonts? Don't use them. Nobody is going to come and force your site to have them. On the other hand, your site will load so fast that it won't feel remotely retro. ;) You can use a static builder (or slap one together that fits your needs) if you don't like hand-coding HTML. Though, really, basic HTML is dead simple for pages of text. If you want to go full 1994, set your robots.txt to block all search engines. Make it so people can only find your site by following links from the sites of the like-minded. Don't link out to anything that isn't a similar site. Boom, you've done everything Gemini does with off-the-shelf software, leaving you with more time to read and write. (I've seen the counter-arguments from Gemini boosters, but none are very convincing. A Dogme 95-esque approach to the web accomplishes everything interesting about Gemini.)
- AstralStorm 5y ago
  > Nobody is going to force you to use JavaScript. But they sure try. Latest iteration of coercion is called Google AMP. Images, videos and other embeds are fine, because they're clear siloes; it's easy to make sure the website degrades gracefully. JS is not, and fonts are not. These do not degrade gracefully. Neither do complex styles in CSS. Canvas does not degrade either. Gemini is a bit too simple to be really useful. What is needed is something closer to old HTML 2 before all the browser warfare, with a few small extras tossed in from later versions. Maybe with bit more of semantic format than representational.
  - Santosh83 5y ago
    Are you sure fonts don't degrade gracefully? The font stack can always fallback to serif/sans-serif right? Icon fonts are a different beast though.
napolux 5y ago
I only read about Gemini here on HN. Pretty sure an HTTPS website with text only is way superior.
martinrue 5y ago
For anyone reading this and jumping into Gemini for the first time, I made a micro social network which already has a nice little community – come hang out on Station: gemini://station.martinrue.com
jokoon 5y ago
Seems to use some sort of markdown To be honest I really wish a markdown-like syntax would replace HTML. But I would rather see HTML remove old features and have a stricter syntax.
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Markdown-like maybe, but certainly not markdown. Markdown itself has tons of rabbit holes and is deceptively complex, and that's before you get into the issue where you can just insert HTML as HTML. I really wish more people would give AsciiDoc a shot, it's basically a stricly better Markdown with awesome tooling, sadly it lacks the general in-app support that Markdown has accumulated.
soapdog 5y ago
People here saying they'd rather use just text-only HTML, or HTML+CSS sans JS, don't understand that what attracts people to Gemini is the ease of implementation. The main quality of Gemini is that it is easy to understand and implement thus allowing normal developers to create clients and servers from scratch with minimal fuss. You can actually keep the whole spec in your head which is no longer something anyone can do with the Web stack. What goes on inside a WebView? There is no single person that can reimplement all of that alone anymore, it is too big, too complex. Meanwhile Gemini is so simple that people like me can craft a simple browser in a couple hours.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  But still, there is TLS. Gemini is a bit conflicted here. It has both privacy and simplicity as design goals. But privacy (materialized by encryption) is far from simple, so much that "rolling your own crypto" is seen as a cardinal sin, and for good reason. Crypto is an arm race, constantly under attack, constantly updated, and very easy to get wrong. The argument on the Gemini website is to use a library, which is indeed the most sensible thing to do, but if you allow code you don't really understand, one might as well use a webview and call it a day.
  - soapdog 5y ago
    I agree, and to be honest I'd rather the TLS was optional because this would open Gemini to a lot of retro computers. Anyway, there is Mercury which is a simplified Gemini without encryption IIRC which solves that. The important part is that you can treat the TLS as a black box and still hold the Gemini spec in your head. It is easy to implement by simply leveraging a TLS and a network lib. To implement a modern Web browser you need way more than that these days, which is why almost all browsers are chromium :-/ no company can justify the effort to develop new engines and clients anymore (my opinion).
    - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
      If you want Gemini without TLS there is Gopher. LaGrange supports both Gemini and Gopher - and I believe there's at least one server out there that does serve both as well though I can't remember the name of it.
nathias 5y ago
for me the real benefit of gemini is the separation from the rest of the internet, a part where only the technically savy can go to escape what internet has become
bencollier49 5y ago
Is there the equivalent of a Gemini "home page" anywhere? I'm after some links.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  There are a few....but on Gemini itself :p
  - bencollier49 5y ago
    Oh I finally found the Gemini search engine. That'll do!
Shtirlic 5y ago
Gemini looks extremely close to "Hypertext" Fidonet ideas circulated some time ago.
ziml77 5y ago
I just browsed around a bit and was left annoyed by the lack of styling. I clicked on a link that I knew was supposed to bring me to another Gemini site and yet I couldn't tell that's what happened. Until I compared the domains, I thought I may have still been on the same Gemini site. On the web, even sites that use templates tend to have customizations that make them distinct (even if it's just a logo change in the header). As long as no one is intentionally trying to trick me, I can tell without thinking about it when I've clicked a link that's brought me to a new website.
richardfey 5y ago
I don't understand why HTTP over TLS could not be used here
0xCMP 5y ago
I have really enjoyed using Elaho on iOS to explore gemini sites. I think there is some value to it and would love to see it grow. That said I wasn't aware of the TOFU aspect. I think thats a mistake. At the very least it should support WoT and etc.

248 points by als0 5y ago

Gemini is great, but I'm would love one step up from this. html/css support, no JS. or Markdown with CSS styling or something that's just a little more than plain text but still close. I've been meaning to try and make my own browser that only supports html/css or Markdown and maybe its own protocol like Gemini's I'll add it to my ever growing Todo list.

Andrex 5y ago
Nothing stopping you from turning off JS in your web browser. ;) I have, and whitelist the sites that really need it.
- Daegalus 5y ago
  I did that for a while, but I want to kind of enforce it. If a sight is unusuable without JS, maybe its worth finding an alternative. Or maybe form a new sub-internet of just javascript-less web. HTML, server-side rendering, etc.
  - Andrex 5y ago
    Definitely a cool idea. I've thought a lot about this idea as I'm sure many others on this post have. A protocol for just HTML/CSS (and a lightweight bridge) could be cool to see. This desire was why I was initially on board with AMP (before I saw the bigger problems with that format.) I've also thought about a JSON-only protocol. In my mind this would make it simple to do AJAX-type interactions for loading content (the core benefit of JS to me) while still excising JS in its entirety, but I haven't thought it through very far admittedly. This is the first time I'm hearing about Gemini and I'm really intrigued, especially how it's handling input and identity. There's potential here...
- Seirdy 5y ago
  If I see an http(s) URL, I have no idea whether I'll have to play whack-a-mole with selective attack-surface expansion (enabling JS, media, SVG, third-party JS, or JIT) for a rich text document to load. If I see a gemini:// link, I know in advance that a singe download will give me a single readable page, and that it probably won't make my old laptop's fans spin or kill my battery. This significantly improves usability.
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
Gemini's text specification is kind of a subset of Markdown -- it supports three levels of headings, block quotes, bulleted (but not numbered) lists, preformatted text, and links (but not inline links). While I'm a fan of richer text styling -- I'm often the dingus on HN being downvoted for suggesting that web fonts are not an intrinsically bad thing -- I think Gemini is mostly just fine the way it is. The thing that's kind of a blocker for me is, of all things, no way to emphasize inline text. Changing text from regular to italic/oblique carries semantic meaning. If you could mark it with _underlines_ like Markdown, for instance, it could be just like some of the other Gemini text that's described as "strictly optional for clients to do anything special with".
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  In the very first days of Gemini's design, I was arguing with other implementers for using a large subset of CommonMark (no raw HTML, no inline images, but pretty much everything else) as the preferred content-type to serve over Gemini. In the end, the goal of ease of implementation for client authors won out. The main arguments were that while there are Markdown parsers for many languages, most of them are narrowly aimed at converting to HTML; Markdown has known ambiguities; the line-oriented markup we ended up with was a strict improvement over Gophermaps while remaining equally simple to parse. I also miss inline emphasis and other kinds of text-oriented typography, but the reasons gemtext omits them are fairly good.
  - __void 5y ago
    I come to think of it, this is a client problem (specifically the client used to write the pages): gemini is natively utf8, bold and italic are present in unicode! In general, on gemini, all "problems" are with the client and not with the protocol ;)
gorjusborg 5y ago
That would be pretty cool, but I do think that having CSS would be worse for what I like about gemini. To me, the point is that you don't need style if the idea and writing is great. It would be lovely if something like gemini caught on. I'd love to discover a treasure trove of great writing and ideas (again). That's how I felt in the early days of the internet, and it was amazing. To me, the current web feels like walking down the street while being verbally accosted by a gauntlet of strip mall sign spinners.

Animats 5y ago

It's like Gopher, but dumber.

juice_bus 5y ago
I think "dumber" is a feature in this case.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  It really isn't. If you want people to use it, you have to provide some utility. If you just want to make a point about how things could be different, you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'.
  - alexwennerberg 5y ago
    > If you want people to use it, you have to provide some utility People do use it, though. > you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'. Gemini is basically a movement in this direction
  - Talanes 5y ago
    >you may as well print up stickers that say 'get off the internet and talk to people in person'. The stickers would have less of a discoverability problem too.
plebianRube 5y ago
Gopher was my intro to the internet. Coming from BBSs it was very natural. I loved Gopher and I am happy to see it's ideology progress to the next evolutionary step. I am aware that that the protocol still exists, but I'm hoping Gemini can bring back the desire for text content. I don't ever want to watch a video of a solution that can be written down in 3 lines.
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  Yes, videos are a poor method of distributing most types of information IMO, especially solutions.

betwixthewires 5y ago

I've been a reader of this gemlog and a fan of Gemini, I have been looking at minimal featured Gemini servers (everyone seems to be building one) and looking for one specifically that offers an http mirror, text and maybe inline images only. Particularly I'd like to do everything in markdown, does anyone know of a good one?

alexwennerberg 5y ago
Kineto might be what you're looking for: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/ https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn/kineto/ Inline images is a violation of the Gemini spec: > clients MUST NOT automatically make any network connections as part of displaying links whose scheme corresponds to a network protocol (e.g. links beginning with gemini://, gopher://, https:// https://, ftp:// , etc.).
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  Isn't it OK to offer that option, but disabled by default?
  - alexwennerberg 5y ago
    It's not OK in the sense that it is a spec violation, at least. Some clients have images that load in-line on mouseover or click, which isn't a spec violation. You could do that with HTML.
    - Andrex 5y ago
      If people specifically sought out your client because it automatically renders images inline, who could be bothered to get upset about a "spec violation"? The author of Gemini? What would he be able to do? Honestly asking because I'm curious.
      - alexwennerberg 5y ago
        Probably someone would submit a PR complaining. A lot of folks in the gemini community are strict about the spec. In my view, they would be justified in doing so — I think adherence to specs is important in any domain, not just gemini.

MartijnBraam 5y ago

I'm a bit annoyed with the lack of _some_ inline image support. but making a browser for gemini is really really easy at least.

mostlylurks 5y ago
You could very easily make a browser that displays image links inline. Contrary to what is suggested in the sibling comments, you don't need to extend the format with special syntax for inline images.
haolez 5y ago
You could create a client that uses a non-standard markup and be able to render inline images just fine... oops! I think I just broke the web again :)
- MartijnBraam 5y ago
  That would be against the spirit of the whole Gemini thing
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Just put them in markdown and have compatible clients inline render an image and non compatible clients get a link.
  - edflsafoiewq 5y ago
    Compare this thread with the thread about <img> 30 years ago: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0182.ht...
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      Thank you! The HN crowd has an extremely short memory.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"My disdain for web browsers is well documented1." Ha, I am not the only one. I do like links though, somewhere around 2.3pre2, with stunnel or haproxy for up-to-date TLS. Someone submitted an "improved" version of linenoise the other day, which added UTF-8 and ANSI codes by default. But I prefer to avoid Unicode in the console (cf. terminal, I do not use a graphics layer plus emulator). This is an example of enforcing developer preferences on the user where the result is added complexity. Perhaps nowhere is this added complexity more evident (obvious) than in the "modern" web browser and websites. Links does not try to enforce its authors preferences too much on the user; for example, it has compile time options to disable utf8, ipv6 and getaddrinfo. The user makes the choice, not the developer. The fundamental problem with "web development" is that its extremely aggressive in enforcing the developers (or web development cargo cult) preferences on the user. Anyone remember that period where many commercial sites were a hollow shell that loaded a Flash animation. Perhaps a precursor to todays "SWAs". Funny, the Flash idea didnt last long. It died out long before browsers stop supporting Flash. These "trends in web development" are tiring and annoying. Gemini doesnt allow for that level of "creativity". The focus is shifted to the information, not the presentation. The user comes first. The protocol may refelect the authors preferences but the result is reduced complexity. Great project.

john-aj 5y ago
Could you elaborate (or share a configuration example) on how you use stunnel or haproxy to connect an old browser to encrypted websites? I usually use squid for that purpose, but I've been looking for alternatives.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  stunnel configuration is useful for a limited number of sites, since one has to specify every remote ip address in the configuration file. haproxy configuration doesnt have that limitation; it can do dns lookups, use maps, etc. for example, one can force all http and https to connect to a backend as https with a specific tls version. this is much simpler than eff's "https everywhere", IMHO. the problem with tls is it keeps changing. as users, we have to bet that every application will stay up-to-date with the changes, and that the software authors wont make mistakes when adding/updating tls support. IME, this has been a losing bet. by just focusing on haproxy and stunnel i only have to worry about a couple of applications staying up-to-date with tls and implementing support correctly.

cortesoft 5y ago

I don't quite get this... it sounds like the author mostly has issues with the HTML part of the web, but much of this seems to focus on the HTTP part.... why not keep http and just make a replacement for HTML? Writing an http server is very simple, too

RodgerTheGreat 5y ago
Writing an http client, on the other hand, is rather complex.
- cyounkins 5y ago
  It's really not - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32341518/how-to-make-an-http-get-request-manually-with-netcat https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32341518/how-to-make-an-...
  - NoGravitas 5y ago
    It's not complicated, if you only care about implementing HTTP/1.0 and selected easy/high-value parts of HTTP/1.1. If you want to comprehensively implement an HTTP/1.1 client, it's much harder. Doubly so for HTTP/2.
cheesetable 5y ago
HTTP supports extensibility via HTTP headers and methods. Gemini to not be evolved: * HTTP is now for interactivity, complex clients, WebGL, Webassembly, ... * Gemini is for a segregated simpler web: links and text.
- zchrykng 5y ago
  And Gemini being its own stand-alone thing that is different from everything is a serious hindrance for people to try it. I've read Drew's stuff for a while and even wanted to test out Gemini out of interest, but it is really annoying/frustrating to use in my experience. And that is even before you get to the fact that there is nearly nothing there and/or it is nearly impossible. to find.

skybrian 5y ago

What’s something interesting to read that’s on Gemini?

anigbrowl 5y ago
I keep asking this question and not getting a useful answer. Someone made a Wikipedia bridge for it, which is the best thing I've seen so far, but it took me a while to find it. Most Gemini users with their own pages seem to be coming at it from the perspective of 'you are someone who is already interested in me, so you be motivated to investigate my Gemini address.' But if I don't know anyone else who is using it, why do I want to click on a bunch of random links with no context in hopes of finding something interesting? The darkweb has a similar discoverability problem though there it's more reasonable to assume that page owners may not want to be found by casual users.
- tadfisher 5y ago
  Because it's exactly how the Web used to be. Gemini supports form input, BTW, so a search engine could be built if someone wanted one.
t-3 5y ago
Not much, unless you follow some of the bloggers on it. It's a nice idea, but doesn't really have anything to recommend it over just making a website without javascript and ads.
Calamitous 5y ago
Gemini is gaining some traction in Tildeverse communities. I run a Gemini server on http://Ctrl-C.club http://Ctrl-C.club that has a pretty good number of users posting things: gemini://gemini.ctrl-c.club
dflock 5y ago
This is the Capcom aggregator, have a poke around: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/ This is a fun episodic fiction thing that I found on there: gemini://republic.circumlunar.space/users/joneworlds/index.gmi If not, there always the pub: gemini://midnight.pub/

dang 5y ago

Here are the major past threads. Others? Gemini's "uselessness" is its killer feature - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27490769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27490769 - June 2021 (193 comments) Gemini Space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670464 - April 2021 (27 comments) Agate, a simple Gemini server written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401158 - March 2021 (34 comments) Beyond the Web: Gopher, Gemini, and the Rise of the Small Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359454 - March 2021 (5 comments) gemini:// space - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986378 - Feb 2021 (170 comments) The Tragedy of Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807633 - Jan 2021 (28 comments) Hacker News over Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225810 - Nov 2020 (21 comments) Show HN: Taurus – A Concurrent Gemini Server - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045130 - Nov 2020 (5 comments) A Gopher View of Gemini - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005307 - Nov 2020 (9 comments) A look at the Gemini protocol: a brutally simple alternative to the web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408 - July 2020 (347 comments) Castor: A browser for the small internet (Gemini, Gopher, Finger) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922 - May 2020 (75 comments) Gemini – A new, collaboratively designed internet protocol - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 - May 2020 (62 comments)

nervuri 5y ago
Bombadillo: a non-web browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25223184 - Nov 2020 (50 comments)

advisedwang 5y ago

I understand the desire to use trust-on-first-use to get rid of certificate authorities (some of the most dispicable and untrustworthy organizations around, and the largest security hole in TLS). However trust-on-first-use basically hands any long-term man-in-the-middle a complete victory. Authoritarian regimes are going to require ISPs to mitm every connection from first use, and hand over whatever data is desired to the secret police. CAA, Key Pinning, certificate transparency all bring the risk of CA abuse way down without opening a huge new vector of ISP abuse.

ronsor 5y ago
Trust on first use combined with preloaded public key lists is the best of both worlds in my opinion. You may say that browsers made in authoritarian countries would sabotage the preload lists, but they could also bundle illegitimate CAs or break HTTPS in other ways anyway.
- jtl999 5y ago
  This. Some standards bodies (arguably) made a big deal about client certificates some time ago to reliably pin client identities for client->server connections (whether it worked is a different story), and I certainly think having functionality for the reverse (pinning server identities) should exist too. Doesn't have to be Gemini even, but I think getting buy in from browser vendors after the removal of HPKP is going to be a problem...
- judge2020 5y ago
  'HTTPS in other ways': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan_man-in-the-middle_a...
- Seirdy 5y ago
  Another option would be something similar to Go's sum database, but with something like a DHT instead of a hosted centralized service. Or perhaps instead of a DHT, users could export all their certs to a file and combine/compare entries in a grassroots manner with each other and with devices on different networks.

kemiller 5y ago

An evolution of Gopher. I love it. The internet in 1993 was a special place.

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago

This name is so overused that when I see it, I think I know the project in several different contexts. Choose another name… please.

selfhoster11 5y ago
That ship has sailed a while ago. Gemini is already the established name, and doesn't clash with other names in its context.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Sorry to hear that; the project is simply ignored because of naming conflicts “oh, I know that already.” There’s precedent for renaming projects.
Y_Y 5y ago
Overloading names is frustrating. It's also disappointingly ubiquitous, and whether or not it's a problem depends strongly on your context and expectations. For example, the English dialect I learned growing up exclusively used "autumn" to refer to the season after summer and before winter. Every time I see a phrase like "we will complete this project after the fall" I end up parsing it as something like "after the fall [of civilization]" and have to manually correct. Presumably when people give something a name that has conflicts, they themselves don't see it that way. This makes it an especially difficult kind of problem, since you have to then argue that a) people like you (but unlike them) have a problem and b) this problem is worth caring about and maybe even c) this isn't going to happen all over again when the new solution is troublesome for some other group. I find that societal issues fitting this pattern are a real sticky wicket generally.

tdeck 5y ago

When I was in high school, I was part of an online community that wrote graphical shells for DOS (really NTVDM) in QBasic. One of the things we all started to want was a web browser, but most of us had no idea how to write a parser, let alone deal with the complexities of HTML and JavaScript. So we created our own markup language, where each "tag" was on it's own line, with the first character indicating the type of tag. Only HTTP GET requests were supported, all output was in color CP437 text, and there was really limited layout support. After a while there were maybe 5 or 6 different clients and maybe 10 different people had created websites, including a forum, a chat app, an RSS reader, a search engine, and some pages advertising various software people created. Sometimes it can be really fun to start "from scratch" with something simple.

tester34 5y ago
>but most of us had no idea how to write a parser, let alone deal with the complexities of HTML and JavaScript. >a search engine how did that search engine work?
- tdeck 5y ago
  Pretty much all the apps were written in PHP on shared hosting. Since the system had support for a simple kind of forms (using GET requests), it was possible to accept queries for the various web apps. The search engine crawled the pages that existed looking for links from a few "start" pages, and built a primitive index.
skissane 5y ago
How did you do networking from QBasic? (And especially when running under NTVDM?)
- mysterydip 5y ago
  Using serial or parallel ports, or communicating over modem was done in QBasic. It's possible they did something like that.

vgb2k18 5y ago

> Gemini is designed to be difficult to extend without breaking backwards compatibility, and almost all proposals for expansion on the mailing list are ultimately shot down. This could lead to some interesting adaptations. I'm thinking like the way usenet, news-groups were adapted to store and transmit binary files in the form of NZB's. So while the underlying protocol remains pure and simplistic (relatively), the overlays and adaptations build upon it may bring unweildly levels of complexity. Not inherently good or bad, but interesting to think about.

andrewstuart 5y ago

So sort of like Teletext or Prestel, is that right?

selfhoster11 5y ago
A bit more interactive. Teletext was mostly one-way, where Gemini is sort-of two way and interactive.

cyounkins 5y ago

Is extensibility really the Pandora's box the author makes it out to be? Just because something is extensible doesn't mean it has to be extended in monstrous ways.

NateEag 5y ago
Human nature being what it is, anything that can be extended will be extended in monstrous ways. It is no coincidence that "hack" means both "abuse of a system's intended design" and "clever trick that we all admire."
mattlondon 5y ago
Yeah I agree with you here. Gopher had Gopher+ that allowed for quite rich extensions - the original gopher authors had early prototypes of a 3D "VR" interface for example. No one really used it for anything though, and then most people moved on as technology moved on. I think perhaps the Gemini folks are acting slightly paranoid here - like the minute they allow extensions they will be flooded with ads and tracking. I am reminded of https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ - I suspect that really no one cares enough to flood Gemini sites with ads and tracking, and likely never will.
slx26 5y ago
It's interesting to think about this: a simple and ordered space is the most seductive platform to start messing with. When something is complex and chaotic enough, we start losing the drive to make it even more complex, as it takes too much effort and it's too painful to do. But when a system is simple enough... you have ideas, you think them possible, you feel the opportunity, you want to experiment and explore and create; and it's hard to resist. Therefore, software systems (and many others, maybe we could spend a few thousand pages discussing this for societies as a whole) develop a tendency towards complexity. You could describe programmers as data manipulators or complexity managers. Don't make your first job harder, don't make your second one impossible.
severak_cz 5y ago
Gemini is not extensible by design.

Semiapies 5y ago

This all seemed interesting at first, but the more I look at Gemini, the more I shrug and say, "Why not just build some text web sites without ads or trackers?" Literally millions of those exist, some dating back to the first eta of the web that every geek my age or older seems nostalgic for. (Really, they're nostalgic for an era when almost everybody else they ran into on the internet shared the background of being a white, male American geek, very few people were online, and nobody cared about anything said online. Not anything technical.) You don't want JavaScript, videos, images, styles, or fonts? Don't use them. Nobody is going to come and force your site to have them. On the other hand, your site will load so fast that it won't feel remotely retro. ;) You can use a static builder (or slap one together that fits your needs) if you don't like hand-coding HTML. Though, really, basic HTML is dead simple for pages of text. If you want to go full 1994, set your robots.txt to block all search engines. Make it so people can only find your site by following links from the sites of the like-minded. Don't link out to anything that isn't a similar site. Boom, you've done everything Gemini does with off-the-shelf software, leaving you with more time to read and write. (I've seen the counter-arguments from Gemini boosters, but none are very convincing. A Dogme 95-esque approach to the web accomplishes everything interesting about Gemini.)

AstralStorm 5y ago
> Nobody is going to force you to use JavaScript. But they sure try. Latest iteration of coercion is called Google AMP. Images, videos and other embeds are fine, because they're clear siloes; it's easy to make sure the website degrades gracefully. JS is not, and fonts are not. These do not degrade gracefully. Neither do complex styles in CSS. Canvas does not degrade either. Gemini is a bit too simple to be really useful. What is needed is something closer to old HTML 2 before all the browser warfare, with a few small extras tossed in from later versions. Maybe with bit more of semantic format than representational.
- Santosh83 5y ago
  Are you sure fonts don't degrade gracefully? The font stack can always fallback to serif/sans-serif right? Icon fonts are a different beast though.

napolux 5y ago

I only read about Gemini here on HN. Pretty sure an HTTPS website with text only is way superior.

martinrue 5y ago

For anyone reading this and jumping into Gemini for the first time, I made a micro social network which already has a nice little community – come hang out on Station: gemini://station.martinrue.com

jokoon 5y ago

Seems to use some sort of markdown To be honest I really wish a markdown-like syntax would replace HTML. But I would rather see HTML remove old features and have a stricter syntax.

blacktriangle 5y ago
Markdown-like maybe, but certainly not markdown. Markdown itself has tons of rabbit holes and is deceptively complex, and that's before you get into the issue where you can just insert HTML as HTML. I really wish more people would give AsciiDoc a shot, it's basically a stricly better Markdown with awesome tooling, sadly it lacks the general in-app support that Markdown has accumulated.

soapdog 5y ago

People here saying they'd rather use just text-only HTML, or HTML+CSS sans JS, don't understand that what attracts people to Gemini is the ease of implementation. The main quality of Gemini is that it is easy to understand and implement thus allowing normal developers to create clients and servers from scratch with minimal fuss. You can actually keep the whole spec in your head which is no longer something anyone can do with the Web stack. What goes on inside a WebView? There is no single person that can reimplement all of that alone anymore, it is too big, too complex. Meanwhile Gemini is so simple that people like me can craft a simple browser in a couple hours.

GuB-42 5y ago
But still, there is TLS. Gemini is a bit conflicted here. It has both privacy and simplicity as design goals. But privacy (materialized by encryption) is far from simple, so much that "rolling your own crypto" is seen as a cardinal sin, and for good reason. Crypto is an arm race, constantly under attack, constantly updated, and very easy to get wrong. The argument on the Gemini website is to use a library, which is indeed the most sensible thing to do, but if you allow code you don't really understand, one might as well use a webview and call it a day.
- soapdog 5y ago
  I agree, and to be honest I'd rather the TLS was optional because this would open Gemini to a lot of retro computers. Anyway, there is Mercury which is a simplified Gemini without encryption IIRC which solves that. The important part is that you can treat the TLS as a black box and still hold the Gemini spec in your head. It is easy to implement by simply leveraging a TLS and a network lib. To implement a modern Web browser you need way more than that these days, which is why almost all browsers are chromium :-/ no company can justify the effort to develop new engines and clients anymore (my opinion).
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    If you want Gemini without TLS there is Gopher. LaGrange supports both Gemini and Gopher - and I believe there's at least one server out there that does serve both as well though I can't remember the name of it.

nathias 5y ago

for me the real benefit of gemini is the separation from the rest of the internet, a part where only the technically savy can go to escape what internet has become

bencollier49 5y ago

Is there the equivalent of a Gemini "home page" anywhere? I'm after some links.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
There are a few....but on Gemini itself :p
- bencollier49 5y ago
  Oh I finally found the Gemini search engine. That'll do!

Shtirlic 5y ago

Gemini looks extremely close to "Hypertext" Fidonet ideas circulated some time ago.

ziml77 5y ago

I just browsed around a bit and was left annoyed by the lack of styling. I clicked on a link that I knew was supposed to bring me to another Gemini site and yet I couldn't tell that's what happened. Until I compared the domains, I thought I may have still been on the same Gemini site. On the web, even sites that use templates tend to have customizations that make them distinct (even if it's just a logo change in the header). As long as no one is intentionally trying to trick me, I can tell without thinking about it when I've clicked a link that's brought me to a new website.

richardfey 5y ago

I don't understand why HTTP over TLS could not be used here

0xCMP 5y ago

I have really enjoyed using Elaho on iOS to explore gemini sites. I think there is some value to it and would love to see it grow. That said I wasn't aware of the TOFU aspect. I think thats a mistake. At the very least it should support WoT and etc.