15 ms·

Gemini is a little gem

192 points by soapdog 5y ago

mediocregopher 5y ago
> Also, focusing on protocol only makes one miss the rest of Gemini, which is the ecosystem and people who are having a great time using it. Sometimes, it feels to me like someone is at a party ranting about the music not being good enough while there is a smiling crowd dancing and having fun. This is the biggest point, imo. We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. There's room on the web for all of us. Gemini appeals to me as someone who appreciates well designed constraints. The fact that HTTP+HTML can accomplish the same things is not only missing the point but is actively against the point.
- tharne 5y ago
  > We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. This is one the main reasons I have a hobby computer just for playing around with openBSD. There's something really refreshing (and fun!) about a project that's just trying to do it's own thing without pleasing everyone and their mother.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  "This is the biggest point, imo. We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. There's room on the web for all of us." Exactly right. Tech companies that rely directly or indirectly on the survival and expansion of web advertising, i.e., most of them, prefer a world where web users do not think independently. It is easier to advertise on (and manipulate) a web where every participant likes the same things, uses the same tools, and belongs to the same communities.
hprotagonist 5y ago
>Instead of simply commenting on Hacker News like I did in previous similar posts, I thought I’d write a little blog post I could link there and in future discussions. ... published via https on a website, even.
- sudobash1 5y ago
  Since HN is on a https website, I think this makes sense. As the article says, Gemini is not going to (and shouldn't) replace the web: > Gemini is its own thing that will co-exist with the Web. So I think being published on the web for other people on the web makes sence and is not antithetical.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Dunno, I publish most of my content on both gemini and https. One does not necessarily exclude the other.
- thewakalix 5y ago
  Yes? It’s not Fight Club.
- soapdog 5y ago
  Because people inside Gemini ecosystem already know all the stuff I wrote in the post. That is an article for people on the Web who are talking about Gemini.
rossdavidh 5y ago
I have no idea what we are talking about, here. Can someone point me to a good, short introduction?
- tephra 5y ago
  Gemini is a neat little protocol with a neat community around it. https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    Cool, thanks.
- leephillips 5y ago
  https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/index.php/Issues/2021/245/The-Rise-of-the-Small-Internet/(language)/eng-US https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/index.php/Issues/2021/245/T...
  - saxonww 5y ago
    Thank you. Gemini is also a crypto exchange so I went into this thinking it was another article trying to justify Web3.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Oh, I didn’t know about that.
  - rossdavidh 5y ago
    Thanks!
- alamortsubite 5y ago
  I just read the post and take it as a good introduction. That's about as much as I've read about Gemini, though, so maybe I'm wrong. EDIT: The first few paragraphs of the post might lead you to believe it doesn't serve as an introduction, so maybe skip those.
zepto 5y ago
> The Web is your orchestral music, Gemini is low-fi chiptune. Likening the web to orchestral music is questionable.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  Noisecore might be a better comparison.
- gwern 5y ago
  The other end is questionable too. IMO, Gemini has too many features to be the 'low-fi chiptune' of hypertext. Every time I look at it, I come away thinking it is not in any sweet spot but perhaps the worst of both worlds: too featureful to truly foster creativity by constraint, and yet lacking entirely too many features to compete with a simple robust Markdown static site stack. If we wanted the pixel art or low-fi chiptune of hypertext, both historically and in terms of esthetic, we'd be targeting classic textfiles: 80-col ASCII art .txt (maaaybe with the absolute bare minimum of adding a clickable link for navigation to make up for the lack of a TUI BBS interface wrapping the individual text files).
  - zepto 5y ago
    That’s pretty much gopher already.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  The web used to be jazzier with blink tags, Comic Sans, red-on-blue H1, and giant spew walls of yellow text lacking subpages.
shuntress 5y ago
> Since the markup language is so simple, it lowers the barrier of entry for those wanting to produce content I see this as one of the major problems with The Web. It's just too technically difficult for a normal person to make a useful reliable website. That naturally drives people from the open web into closed web-replacements like facebook. EDIT: With that said. I can't really get behind something like gemini whole-heartedly. It just feels like adding rendering support to browsers for gemini style markdown and serving them with appropriate Content-Type headers over regular HTTP would be a better way to do it. EDIT 2: Or campaigning to add support for the protocol in common browsers. That is, after all, why URLs include the protocol and I know people here are extremely fond of bashing client implementations for not displaying the protocol part of a URL.
- errcorrectcode 5y ago
  That's a skills and lack of software (CMS) problem, not a blame-the-tools problem. Dumbing-down the web is a dumb idea. It's dumb enough already and shouldn't be any dumber.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lbotos 5y ago
  I think you are conflating two points. > It's just too technically difficult for a normal person to make a useful reliable website. There are many hosting providers from the hostgators of the world to wix and squarespace that make this pretty easy if you want to host content. > That naturally drives people from the open web into closed web-replacements like facebook. The social aspect is what drives people to social networks. All of their friends are there. Many people don't want to just host content, they want chat, video, messenger, photo storage. For those that don't need it widely accessible, group chats seemed to have filled gap between forum <-> text message/email.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    That all still relates to the technical difficulty of hosting (and, to be a bit more specific, account/identity management.) Facebook doesn't have some magic technical secret that makes chat, video, messenger, storage, etc handled by their servers somehow different than if it were handled by a server in your home.
velcrovan 5y ago
The key to understanding it is just not to expect it to have mass appeal, ever. It lowers barriers for developers and tech hobbyists. It is a nice crunchy area for developers to have fun with that doesn’t require herculean feats of programming to serve or consume. It's like ham radio. My only beef with it is we already have gopher!
- spc476 5y ago
  But gopher doesn't have TLS. Yes, there are clients that attempt to make TLS connections to gopher servers and will fall back to plain TCP on failure, but that's a hack (and a pretty annoying one at that).
  - owroomexorcist 5y ago
    What's wrong with not having TLS? If it's just for hobbiests to share text documents, why include a TLS layer?
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Suddenly you can't trust anything you're being served as there are so many endpoints you could be MITM'd at. Reading a text about some experience someone had? Snippets from that text could have been replaced if you are not using any cryptographic protocol what so ever.
      - owroomexorcist 5y ago
        Fair point. But if we're talking about a protocol not meant for the mainstream, is it really an attack vector to worry about?
        spc476 5y ago
        For some, yes.
harryvederci 5y ago
I upvoted both this and the "Gemini is Solutionism at its Worst" post mentioned. It's a radical idea, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  What is "radical" about Gemini?
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    It's a new internet protocol not designed to make somebody rich.
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      HTTP and Gopher both filled that role last century so I'm not certain how that's radical. Admittedly, part of Gopher's failure in the market was that someone, U of M, tried to get money out of licensing it, but that came after its initial release. What else is radical about it?
      - jl6 5y ago
        1) Restraint, and 2) the concept of it being finished and not extensible.
  - harryvederci 5y ago
    I didn't refer to Gemini. It was meant to be read as: "Here's a radical idea: the truth is probably somewhere in the middle."
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      That makes a lot more sense than how I initially read your comment.
tharne 5y ago
I'm really rooting for this project. Sure it's probably over-idealistic and not entirely practical, but I think that's part of the appeal - a group of folks trying to build a better web and having fun doing it.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
What is Gemini? Google turns up a Bitcoin Exchange and lots of astrology?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  There's a link to the description in the first paragraph of the article, and elsewhere in this discussion already: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
- airstrike 5y ago
  Ironically, there are two current projects competing for the Gemini name: the Winklevi's bitcoin exchange (indubitably named after their twinship) and the more-than-a-protocol for a no-frills version of the World Wide Web, which is what TFA is talking about.
koeng 5y ago
I have a lot of fun with Gemini! Since I couldn't find a good static gmi -> html converter that I liked for my website, I built my own. It works great and is pretty simple! This is one thing that people miss out on - I can actually build things on top of gemini / gemtext because it is so simple.
ReleaseCandidat 5y ago
I see, Gemini is not to make the life of content creators easier, but the life of the server and client implementers. The need for TLS is a bit strange regarding this, especially if they encourage the use of self-signed certificates. 4 TLS Use of TLS for Gemini transactions is mandatory. Clients can validate TLS connections however they like (including not at all) but the strongly RECOMMENDED approach is to implement a lightweight "TOFU" certificate-pinning system which treats self-signed certificates as first- class citizens. This greatly reduces TLS overhead on the network (only one cert needs to be sent, not a whole chain) and lowers the barrier to entry for setting up a Gemini site (no need to pay a CA or setup a Let's Encrypt cron job, just make a cert and go). https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/best-practices.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/best-practices.gmi
- spc476 5y ago
  Okay, so when you have the "Encrypt All The Things" campaign, and "never NEVER implement crypto on your own," what else is there besides TLS? One of the triggers for Gemini was the push to add TLS to gopher, which isn't that easy [1]. [1] http://boston.conman.org/2019/03/31.1 http://boston.conman.org/2019/03/31.1
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    My understanding of the issue as it relates to Gemini is that the Gemini community is: 1. Largely using self-signed certificates on the servers. That gets you into the protocol, but doesn't really help with trust. 2. Using "trust on first use" (TOFU) in the clients, which doesn't scale. The clients have to know whether a particular cert is valid or not, and that means the user needs to manually verify or some trusted data source has to be distributed to clients. Manual verification turns into "yeah, yeah, just let me read the page" after a while. And a trusted data source is, well, hard to keep maintained, and even harder if it wasn't in the model from the start. So TLS gets Gemini security, of a sort, but the way it's being used makes it less effective than it should be.
jalino23 5y ago
I downloaded the Lagrange browser. but how do I find content?
- tpoacher 5y ago
  start with geminispace.info enjoy the rabbit hole
- makeworld 5y ago
  Search engine: geminispace.info Protocol homepage: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Feed aggregator (one of many): gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ Curated Gemini directory: gemini://medusae.space/
throw10920 5y ago
The problem isn't Gemini, the problem is Gemini marketing. Gemini enthusiasts (or, at least the ones I've seen posts from, most notably ddevault) market Gemini as a replacement (edit: in whole or part, it doesn't matter, the argument is the same) for "the web". Then, when you point out that Gemini has basically none of the features of "the web" (and is incapable of supporting the vast majority of its content, and even the vast majority of its good content), they then say that "oh, you don't need those features, inline images are an anti-pattern!" Or something. The problem isn't that Gemini has no features, the problem is that it's being marketed as a replacement (edit: in whole or in non-trivial part, it doesn't matter) for the web, which is it clearly unsuited for. Gemini is bad at conveying almost any content except text, which also means that it's unsuitable for scientific papers, education, browser games, social media (even for less "social" social media, like Reddit and HN, where you could be exchanging purely technical information), web services, web applications (disclaimer: I think that web applications are generally slow and dumb, but I'd much rather use HN from my browser than download a dedicated .deb just for it), wikis and encyclopedias, Stack Overflow, search engines, and various other web things that your life would be significantly less great without. So, by all means, use Gemini. Just don't say that it's a "replacement" for the web (edit: not even part of it - Gemini does so little that the comparison is entirely invalid), or "better" than the web (or associated technology). It is its own thing with its own community that is entirely complementary to the web, and nothing more. If you want to go back to the internet dark ages without Wikipedia, Google, Stack Overflow, Compiler Explorer, and Shadertoy, have fun - just don't drag me down with you.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  to me what gemini lacks, is a sense of information ergonomics so far it seems less usable than a badly coded as400 terminal applicatoin
  - readyplayeremma 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on this a bit? The protocol itself, as far as how it conveys and interlinks information seems comparable to early HTML. Documents with very basic formatting, that can be navigated via a hyperlink, forming a web or information graph in the big picture. It sounds a bit like you didn't enjoy the browser you used rather than the protocol? There are terminal based browsers that might seem very non-modern, but there are also full GUI browsers that aren't much different than a web browser as far as UX. Within the limitation of the defined protocol of course, meaning text only with basic formatting and no inline images. I personally find the formatting limitations and lack of inline images leads to a richer experience of taking in the information being conveyed. It's almost like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. Both have their place in our culture. Even today in the age of VR/AR, 3D IMAX films, etc., we still read books, and it is a pleasant experience for many to take in content that way. There are no distractions, only the content. Gemini is uniquely enjoyable because the imposed limitations provide many of the same benefits that people enjoy about reading books vs watching movies. The modern web very rarely provides content in that form. Nearly every article is interspersed with all kinds of media to "engage" the viewer. I enjoy a lot of it, however, I think there is something to be said about just putting the text out there bare as it is. Gemini creates a space where the content doesn't have to compete with distractions. All content is on equal footing and must stand solely on the written words themselves. No distractions. No way for one piece of content to sway you over another just because of high-budget media production. Just bare words that you must interpret yourself. It leads to an atmosphere that is engaging in some ways today's web cannot be, like a movie cannot be in place of a book. It requires a different kind of interpretation and imagination to take in, and I really appreciate that.
seanw444 5y ago
This was weird timing. Haven't seen a post on Gemini on here in a while, and I just started yesterday building an Express-like Gemini server framework in Go, to get more familiar with Go.
jl6 5y ago
The most important words in the Gemini FAQ: a clearly demarcated space. Regardless of the protocol’s technical merits and demerits, that’s what generates a lot of the value.
skybrian 5y ago
One problem is the way Gemini and Mastodon (and even Twitter at one time) are often promoted: > Once you have a client that supports it, you’re free to enter the ecosystem. Once there, you’ll notice that it is composed of many vibrant communities. There are artists creating cool experiments, writers and essayists pouring their hearts and brains out, etc. You can find a tribe for you or start a new thing. I assume this is true for the person who wrote it, but finding people who are interesting is often a problem. There is lots of noise and I have trouble finding “vibrant” communities that are relevant to me. I’m following only two interesting people on Mastodon after several years and I found them because links to interesting things they wrote were posted to a link-sharing site. Specific examples beat abstract arguments. The best way to promote Gemini would be to quote and link to interesting content you found on Gemini. And that means you’re playing the same social game as everyone else, doesn’t it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pvaldes 5y ago
Feels like an improved gopher and facing similar problems. People try the vehicle, but stay for the content.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
I don't understand. What problem does it solve? Why fracture pervasive, compatible ecosystems with emperor's new clothes? It throws away decades of infrastructure interop and support. If you want to "take privacy seriously", there's onion hidden sites and tor browsers. It appears to mix together too many concerns, but best of luck.
ajioasfnokal 5y ago
Honestly insane this post is even needed. Doubters really glance at Gemini and just make up shit on the spot. Makes you wonder what else they bullshit about. I use Lagrange to browse Gemini blogs as a reprieve from the bloat, just gimme ideas with text. It's nice and super easy, just try it and find an aggregator like Antenna, and if you hate it uninstall it.
blippage 5y ago
I investigated Gemini a few months back. I had problems either getting the clients to compile or work. dillo-gemini looked cool, but I couldn't get that to work either. After trying a few clients, I eventually gave up.
dataangel 5y ago
ELI5 why use Gemini? This post is my first hearing about it, so maybe I'm missing something, but nothing here is obviously compelling. As a user, I could care less whether Gemtext is technically easier to parse than Markdown. "We simplified some technical details and left out all modern features" seems neither like a technical feat nor a selling point.

192 points by soapdog 5y ago

> Also, focusing on protocol only makes one miss the rest of Gemini, which is the ecosystem and people who are having a great time using it. Sometimes, it feels to me like someone is at a party ranting about the music not being good enough while there is a smiling crowd dancing and having fun. This is the biggest point, imo. We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. There's room on the web for all of us. Gemini appeals to me as someone who appreciates well designed constraints. The fact that HTTP+HTML can accomplish the same things is not only missing the point but is actively against the point.

tharne 5y ago
> We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. This is one the main reasons I have a hobby computer just for playing around with openBSD. There's something really refreshing (and fun!) about a project that's just trying to do it's own thing without pleasing everyone and their mother.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"This is the biggest point, imo. We don't all have to like the same things, we don't have to all use the same tools, we don't have to belong to the same communities. There's room on the web for all of us." Exactly right. Tech companies that rely directly or indirectly on the survival and expansion of web advertising, i.e., most of them, prefer a world where web users do not think independently. It is easier to advertise on (and manipulate) a web where every participant likes the same things, uses the same tools, and belongs to the same communities.

hprotagonist 5y ago

>Instead of simply commenting on Hacker News like I did in previous similar posts, I thought I’d write a little blog post I could link there and in future discussions. ... published via https on a website, even.

sudobash1 5y ago
Since HN is on a https website, I think this makes sense. As the article says, Gemini is not going to (and shouldn't) replace the web: > Gemini is its own thing that will co-exist with the Web. So I think being published on the web for other people on the web makes sence and is not antithetical.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
Dunno, I publish most of my content on both gemini and https. One does not necessarily exclude the other.
thewakalix 5y ago
Yes? It’s not Fight Club.
soapdog 5y ago
Because people inside Gemini ecosystem already know all the stuff I wrote in the post. That is an article for people on the Web who are talking about Gemini.

rossdavidh 5y ago

I have no idea what we are talking about, here. Can someone point me to a good, short introduction?

tephra 5y ago
Gemini is a neat little protocol with a neat community around it. https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Cool, thanks.
leephillips 5y ago
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/index.php/Issues/2021/245/The-Rise-of-the-Small-Internet/(language)/eng-US https://www.linuxpromagazine.com/index.php/Issues/2021/245/T...
- saxonww 5y ago
  Thank you. Gemini is also a crypto exchange so I went into this thinking it was another article trying to justify Web3.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Oh, I didn’t know about that.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Thanks!
alamortsubite 5y ago
I just read the post and take it as a good introduction. That's about as much as I've read about Gemini, though, so maybe I'm wrong. EDIT: The first few paragraphs of the post might lead you to believe it doesn't serve as an introduction, so maybe skip those.

zepto 5y ago

> The Web is your orchestral music, Gemini is low-fi chiptune. Likening the web to orchestral music is questionable.

boring_twenties 5y ago
Noisecore might be a better comparison.
gwern 5y ago
The other end is questionable too. IMO, Gemini has too many features to be the 'low-fi chiptune' of hypertext. Every time I look at it, I come away thinking it is not in any sweet spot but perhaps the worst of both worlds: too featureful to truly foster creativity by constraint, and yet lacking entirely too many features to compete with a simple robust Markdown static site stack. If we wanted the pixel art or low-fi chiptune of hypertext, both historically and in terms of esthetic, we'd be targeting classic textfiles: 80-col ASCII art .txt (maaaybe with the absolute bare minimum of adding a clickable link for navigation to make up for the lack of a TUI BBS interface wrapping the individual text files).
- zepto 5y ago
  That’s pretty much gopher already.
errcorrectcode 5y ago
The web used to be jazzier with blink tags, Comic Sans, red-on-blue H1, and giant spew walls of yellow text lacking subpages.

shuntress 5y ago

> Since the markup language is so simple, it lowers the barrier of entry for those wanting to produce content I see this as one of the major problems with The Web. It's just too technically difficult for a normal person to make a useful reliable website. That naturally drives people from the open web into closed web-replacements like facebook. EDIT: With that said. I can't really get behind something like gemini whole-heartedly. It just feels like adding rendering support to browsers for gemini style markdown and serving them with appropriate Content-Type headers over regular HTTP would be a better way to do it. EDIT 2: Or campaigning to add support for the protocol in common browsers. That is, after all, why URLs include the protocol and I know people here are extremely fond of bashing client implementations for not displaying the protocol part of a URL.

errcorrectcode 5y ago
That's a skills and lack of software (CMS) problem, not a blame-the-tools problem. Dumbing-down the web is a dumb idea. It's dumb enough already and shouldn't be any dumber.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lbotos 5y ago
I think you are conflating two points. > It's just too technically difficult for a normal person to make a useful reliable website. There are many hosting providers from the hostgators of the world to wix and squarespace that make this pretty easy if you want to host content. > That naturally drives people from the open web into closed web-replacements like facebook. The social aspect is what drives people to social networks. All of their friends are there. Many people don't want to just host content, they want chat, video, messenger, photo storage. For those that don't need it widely accessible, group chats seemed to have filled gap between forum <-> text message/email.
- shuntress 5y ago
  That all still relates to the technical difficulty of hosting (and, to be a bit more specific, account/identity management.) Facebook doesn't have some magic technical secret that makes chat, video, messenger, storage, etc handled by their servers somehow different than if it were handled by a server in your home.

velcrovan 5y ago

The key to understanding it is just not to expect it to have mass appeal, ever. It lowers barriers for developers and tech hobbyists. It is a nice crunchy area for developers to have fun with that doesn’t require herculean feats of programming to serve or consume. It's like ham radio. My only beef with it is we already have gopher!

spc476 5y ago
But gopher doesn't have TLS. Yes, there are clients that attempt to make TLS connections to gopher servers and will fall back to plain TCP on failure, but that's a hack (and a pretty annoying one at that).
- owroomexorcist 5y ago
  What's wrong with not having TLS? If it's just for hobbiests to share text documents, why include a TLS layer?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Suddenly you can't trust anything you're being served as there are so many endpoints you could be MITM'd at. Reading a text about some experience someone had? Snippets from that text could have been replaced if you are not using any cryptographic protocol what so ever.
    - owroomexorcist 5y ago
      Fair point. But if we're talking about a protocol not meant for the mainstream, is it really an attack vector to worry about?
      - spc476 5y ago
        For some, yes.

harryvederci 5y ago

I upvoted both this and the "Gemini is Solutionism at its Worst" post mentioned. It's a radical idea, but the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Jtsummers 5y ago
What is "radical" about Gemini?
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  It's a new internet protocol not designed to make somebody rich.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    HTTP and Gopher both filled that role last century so I'm not certain how that's radical. Admittedly, part of Gopher's failure in the market was that someone, U of M, tried to get money out of licensing it, but that came after its initial release. What else is radical about it?
    - jl6 5y ago
      1) Restraint, and 2) the concept of it being finished and not extensible.
- harryvederci 5y ago
  I didn't refer to Gemini. It was meant to be read as: "Here's a radical idea: the truth is probably somewhere in the middle."
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    That makes a lot more sense than how I initially read your comment.

tharne 5y ago

I'm really rooting for this project. Sure it's probably over-idealistic and not entirely practical, but I think that's part of the appeal - a group of folks trying to build a better web and having fun doing it.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

What is Gemini? Google turns up a Bitcoin Exchange and lots of astrology?

Jtsummers 5y ago
There's a link to the description in the first paragraph of the article, and elsewhere in this discussion already: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
airstrike 5y ago
Ironically, there are two current projects competing for the Gemini name: the Winklevi's bitcoin exchange (indubitably named after their twinship) and the more-than-a-protocol for a no-frills version of the World Wide Web, which is what TFA is talking about.

koeng 5y ago

I have a lot of fun with Gemini! Since I couldn't find a good static gmi -> html converter that I liked for my website, I built my own. It works great and is pretty simple! This is one thing that people miss out on - I can actually build things on top of gemini / gemtext because it is so simple.

ReleaseCandidat 5y ago

I see, Gemini is not to make the life of content creators easier, but the life of the server and client implementers. The need for TLS is a bit strange regarding this, especially if they encourage the use of self-signed certificates. 4 TLS Use of TLS for Gemini transactions is mandatory. Clients can validate TLS connections however they like (including not at all) but the strongly RECOMMENDED approach is to implement a lightweight "TOFU" certificate-pinning system which treats self-signed certificates as first- class citizens. This greatly reduces TLS overhead on the network (only one cert needs to be sent, not a whole chain) and lowers the barrier to entry for setting up a Gemini site (no need to pay a CA or setup a Let's Encrypt cron job, just make a cert and go). https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/specification.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/best-practices.gmi https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/best-practices.gmi

spc476 5y ago
Okay, so when you have the "Encrypt All The Things" campaign, and "never NEVER implement crypto on your own," what else is there besides TLS? One of the triggers for Gemini was the push to add TLS to gopher, which isn't that easy [1]. [1] http://boston.conman.org/2019/03/31.1 http://boston.conman.org/2019/03/31.1
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  My understanding of the issue as it relates to Gemini is that the Gemini community is: 1. Largely using self-signed certificates on the servers. That gets you into the protocol, but doesn't really help with trust. 2. Using "trust on first use" (TOFU) in the clients, which doesn't scale. The clients have to know whether a particular cert is valid or not, and that means the user needs to manually verify or some trusted data source has to be distributed to clients. Manual verification turns into "yeah, yeah, just let me read the page" after a while. And a trusted data source is, well, hard to keep maintained, and even harder if it wasn't in the model from the start. So TLS gets Gemini security, of a sort, but the way it's being used makes it less effective than it should be.

jalino23 5y ago

I downloaded the Lagrange browser. but how do I find content?

tpoacher 5y ago
start with geminispace.info enjoy the rabbit hole
makeworld 5y ago
Search engine: geminispace.info Protocol homepage: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Feed aggregator (one of many): gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/ Curated Gemini directory: gemini://medusae.space/

throw10920 5y ago

The problem isn't Gemini, the problem is Gemini marketing. Gemini enthusiasts (or, at least the ones I've seen posts from, most notably ddevault) market Gemini as a replacement (edit: in whole or part, it doesn't matter, the argument is the same) for "the web". Then, when you point out that Gemini has basically none of the features of "the web" (and is incapable of supporting the vast majority of its content, and even the vast majority of its good content), they then say that "oh, you don't need those features, inline images are an anti-pattern!" Or something. The problem isn't that Gemini has no features, the problem is that it's being marketed as a replacement (edit: in whole or in non-trivial part, it doesn't matter) for the web, which is it clearly unsuited for. Gemini is bad at conveying almost any content except text, which also means that it's unsuitable for scientific papers, education, browser games, social media (even for less "social" social media, like Reddit and HN, where you could be exchanging purely technical information), web services, web applications (disclaimer: I think that web applications are generally slow and dumb, but I'd much rather use HN from my browser than download a dedicated .deb just for it), wikis and encyclopedias, Stack Overflow, search engines, and various other web things that your life would be significantly less great without. So, by all means, use Gemini. Just don't say that it's a "replacement" for the web (edit: not even part of it - Gemini does so little that the comparison is entirely invalid), or "better" than the web (or associated technology). It is its own thing with its own community that is entirely complementary to the web, and nothing more. If you want to go back to the internet dark ages without Wikipedia, Google, Stack Overflow, Compiler Explorer, and Shadertoy, have fun - just don't drag me down with you.

agumonkey 5y ago
to me what gemini lacks, is a sense of information ergonomics so far it seems less usable than a badly coded as400 terminal applicatoin
- readyplayeremma 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on this a bit? The protocol itself, as far as how it conveys and interlinks information seems comparable to early HTML. Documents with very basic formatting, that can be navigated via a hyperlink, forming a web or information graph in the big picture. It sounds a bit like you didn't enjoy the browser you used rather than the protocol? There are terminal based browsers that might seem very non-modern, but there are also full GUI browsers that aren't much different than a web browser as far as UX. Within the limitation of the defined protocol of course, meaning text only with basic formatting and no inline images. I personally find the formatting limitations and lack of inline images leads to a richer experience of taking in the information being conveyed. It's almost like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. Both have their place in our culture. Even today in the age of VR/AR, 3D IMAX films, etc., we still read books, and it is a pleasant experience for many to take in content that way. There are no distractions, only the content. Gemini is uniquely enjoyable because the imposed limitations provide many of the same benefits that people enjoy about reading books vs watching movies. The modern web very rarely provides content in that form. Nearly every article is interspersed with all kinds of media to "engage" the viewer. I enjoy a lot of it, however, I think there is something to be said about just putting the text out there bare as it is. Gemini creates a space where the content doesn't have to compete with distractions. All content is on equal footing and must stand solely on the written words themselves. No distractions. No way for one piece of content to sway you over another just because of high-budget media production. Just bare words that you must interpret yourself. It leads to an atmosphere that is engaging in some ways today's web cannot be, like a movie cannot be in place of a book. It requires a different kind of interpretation and imagination to take in, and I really appreciate that.

seanw444 5y ago

This was weird timing. Haven't seen a post on Gemini on here in a while, and I just started yesterday building an Express-like Gemini server framework in Go, to get more familiar with Go.

jl6 5y ago

The most important words in the Gemini FAQ: a clearly demarcated space. Regardless of the protocol’s technical merits and demerits, that’s what generates a lot of the value.

skybrian 5y ago

One problem is the way Gemini and Mastodon (and even Twitter at one time) are often promoted: > Once you have a client that supports it, you’re free to enter the ecosystem. Once there, you’ll notice that it is composed of many vibrant communities. There are artists creating cool experiments, writers and essayists pouring their hearts and brains out, etc. You can find a tribe for you or start a new thing. I assume this is true for the person who wrote it, but finding people who are interesting is often a problem. There is lots of noise and I have trouble finding “vibrant” communities that are relevant to me. I’m following only two interesting people on Mastodon after several years and I found them because links to interesting things they wrote were posted to a link-sharing site. Specific examples beat abstract arguments. The best way to promote Gemini would be to quote and link to interesting content you found on Gemini. And that means you’re playing the same social game as everyone else, doesn’t it?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pvaldes 5y ago

Feels like an improved gopher and facing similar problems. People try the vehicle, but stay for the content.

errcorrectcode 5y ago

I don't understand. What problem does it solve? Why fracture pervasive, compatible ecosystems with emperor's new clothes? It throws away decades of infrastructure interop and support. If you want to "take privacy seriously", there's onion hidden sites and tor browsers. It appears to mix together too many concerns, but best of luck.

ajioasfnokal 5y ago

Honestly insane this post is even needed. Doubters really glance at Gemini and just make up shit on the spot. Makes you wonder what else they bullshit about. I use Lagrange to browse Gemini blogs as a reprieve from the bloat, just gimme ideas with text. It's nice and super easy, just try it and find an aggregator like Antenna, and if you hate it uninstall it.

blippage 5y ago

I investigated Gemini a few months back. I had problems either getting the clients to compile or work. dillo-gemini looked cool, but I couldn't get that to work either. After trying a few clients, I eventually gave up.

dataangel 5y ago

ELI5 why use Gemini? This post is my first hearing about it, so maybe I'm missing something, but nothing here is obviously compelling. As a user, I could care less whether Gemtext is technically easier to parse than Markdown. "We simplified some technical details and left out all modern features" seems neither like a technical feat nor a selling point.