6 ms·
Escape the Surveillance Web with Gemini
- superkuh 2y agoOr just set your browser javascript to temp whitelist only and rarely enable it while using HTTP/1.1. 99.99% of surveillance is mediated via javascript execution if only because it's the easiest way. Not a lot of people using actual logs anymore since they doesn't allow one to be really invasive. The trust on first use self-signed TLS culture of gemini is great though and should be applied more widely by individuals in their behavior on the normal web.
- meiraleal 2y agoInteresting but I couldn't understand what Gemini does. It is the web recreated on top of the web?
- jeffbee 2y agoSome nerds prefer a closed system where the main topic of discussion is the system itself.
- koito17 2y agoBefore HTTP became popular, there was another protocol for accessing remote documents on the internet. This protocol was called Gopher. Gemini is an extension of the Gopher protocol that includes things like TLS. Gemini exists separately from HTTP and thus "the world-wide web".
- meiraleal 2y agothanks!
- troymc 2y agoNo, Gemini is not built on top of the web (HTTP). It's an alternative to the web.
- phoe-krk 2y ago> Intrusive advertisements, Bloated JavaScript widgets, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated, Search Engine Optimized (SEO) slop suffocate our web browsing experience. Says the article whose splash image is AI-generated slop, that reads like an intrusive advertisement, and whose source code contains links to scripts from www.googletagmanager.com. You can't make this stuff up.
- jmclnx 2y agoI just completed moving my WEB site to Gemini, I find it far easier to maintain. There is a lot of content out in Gemini without the annoyance of the modern WEB.
- superkuh 2y agoHow is it easier to maintain? A website on HTTP/1.1 can be just as simple as one on gemini. Files in directories.
- jmclnx 2y agoNo special tools, I can use vim, Emacs or any text editor to changed files. File format is very simple. With HTTP the formatting is far more complex.
- hermanradtke 2y agoMy markdown file format is really simple too
- hagbard_c 2y agoIn what way is formatting more complex with HTTP? Assuming the mime mappings are set up correctly the HTTP server pushes out the files with the correct content type and with that you can edit your text files with ed for all I care and it will work. The fact that you can do more complex things with HTTP does not mean you should, the aforementioned example of a directory full of files is just as valid as it was when Tim Berners-Lee fired up the first site on his Next cube.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoWhat special tools? Since when is vim a special tool? What special file format? Special file formats exist but none are required. I don't see an answer to the question here.
- superkuh 2y agoNo it's not. That is entirely a choice. My website is just HTML files in directories with other files. The html is handwritten and just <p> and <ul> and the like. I just use a normal text editor. Gemini is not simpler than HTTP/1.1 and writing HTML. Gemini is like forcing yourself to write in Haiku because it constrains you rather than just limiting yourself ... yourself.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- imiric 2y agoThe deployment procedure is too complex. Have we learned nothing in the past 30 years? One of the major shortcomings of the WWW is that it requires technical skills to publish content. If this was as simple as consuming it, and we had the equivalent UX as the web browser, the centralization we got and all its associated problems would've been minimized, if not avoided altogether. Maintaining the P2P distributed nature of the internet is crucial in protocols of this type. Otherwise once (if) it ever gains traction, the alternative will have the same problems. Gemini doesn't address these issues directly, other than by being very niche and deliberately brutalist. This means it was never designed to be popular, so this article will not appeal to anyone who doesn't already have an interest in it. Let alone entice anyone to escape the current web. Yes, the current web is deeply broken beyond repair. Using it is a hostile and frustrating experience. I'm not sure what the solution to these problems is, but it's certainly not Gemini.
- spc476 2y agoWe've forgotten. Back in the mid-90s, most ISPs gave space to users to host a website. There were produts like Dreamweaver and (although I hate mentioning it) Microsoft FrontPage that provided WYSIWYG editing of HTML and used FTP to upload the pages to the server (although using FTP was usually an implementation detail, I think FrontPage had its own way of uploading). Easy. > Yes, the current web is deeply broken beyond repair. Which web are you referring to? The document web from the 90s to early 2000s, or the now app-centric web we have now? If TBL's view of the web emerged, you wouldn't need a separate tool to author web pages, the browser could do it, and use PUT to store new pages on a web site. But alas, we don't have browsers capable of editing (but we can always download a gig of Javascript to do it! Yeah! That'll work!)
- sssilver 2y agoIf only, if only Gemini had embedded images and a decent layout engine to position those. This isn’t new to HTML. Medieval books had embedded images. Heck even ancient manuscripts had embedded images that were beautifully laid out. I simply don’t see why Gemini couldn’t fulfill its mission with beautifully laid out embedded images. It would have been delightful. Now it’s merely a gimmick.
- wink 2y agoI've read a lot about Gemini and nothing really excites me the same way the web excited me in the late 90s. To me it mostly seems different to be different, not better in any way (except claiming that it undoes the badness of the "modern web", whatever that really entails). I still write my websites like I did in the 90s, just with HTML 5 and CSS, and JS where needed. Maybe the better path would have been to base something on HTTP, with a defined subdomain (remember when we saw www. at the start of 90% of urls?) and some sort of trust model