[HN Gopher] Poor Man's Web
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Poor Man's Web
        
       Author : Looky1173
       Score  : 105 points
       Date   : 2023-12-27 09:30 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (zserge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (zserge.com)
        
       | danishbread wrote:
       | The article title didn't express what this was about, but it
       | seems seems to be a revival of the old, pre-WWW web, via a new
       | protocol Gemini.
       | 
       | I'm not sure why it's "poor man's" web, other than being
       | minimalistic (text and images only.) I thought the phrase meant
       | something less desirable to use, less capable. But this could be
       | genuinely pleasant!
        
       | troupo wrote:
       | People keep trying to make Gemini happen.
       | 
       | I will keep repeating that in its quest for simplicity Gemini
       | threw the baby out of with the water.
       | 
       | Basic styling and inline images are invaluable.
        
         | antiframe wrote:
         | I agree that basic styling and in-line images add something,
         | but I like how Gemini strips so much faff out that the prose
         | and links must stand strongly on their own.
         | 
         | I've taken to writing my markdown and other documetns simiarly.
         | Cory Doctorow does something similar.
         | 
         | https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/20/em-oh-you-ess-ee/#sexytim...
         | 
         | We don't need Gemini. We can get the feeling of the Smol Web by
         | just choosing an effective subset of the features of HTML.
        
           | PurpleRamen wrote:
           | > I like how Gemini strips so much faff out that the prose
           | and links must stand strongly on their own.
           | 
           | I don't think that's working at all. Their website is so
           | unapproachable bad, that it fails in selling me reasons why I
           | should even care about this or read further. Letting
           | something standing on its own only really works well if you
           | have a small amount to deliver. Any slightly lengthy text
           | will just bury you in a desert of letters.
        
             | II2II wrote:
             | > Any slightly lengthy text will just bury you in a desert
             | of letters.
             | 
             | Is this a bad thing?
             | 
             | Books are a "desert of letters", with little to break the
             | text up outside of chapters, sections, and paragraphs. If
             | you broaden the scope a bit, you can added illustrations
             | and photos. People have been reading books for generations.
             | While many books do break that mould, many books continue
             | to follow that tradition.
        
               | giantrobot wrote:
               | > Books are a "desert of letters", with little to break
               | the text up outside of chapters, sections, and
               | paragraphs.
               | 
               | You're forgetting pages. The fact pages physically limit
               | the visual bounds of all the letters helps people read
               | them. The words from page 6 aren't going to come into
               | view while you're reading page 4 but scrolled down a
               | little too far.
        
               | PurpleRamen wrote:
               | > Is this a bad thing?
               | 
               | Depends on the purpose. For a Webpage, which is a
               | collection of short texts, to sell you on something, it
               | is bad.
               | 
               | > Books are a "desert of letters"
               | 
               | Depends on the book. A phone book would be a desert of
               | letters, I don't think many would enjoy reading them.
               | Something like a novel, would be a forest of chapters,
               | full of trees with letters arranged in a meaningful way,
               | leading you on a road toward a goal. But a webpage is not
               | a novel, it has an informative purpose, and is full of
               | little small texts of equal value.
        
               | troupo wrote:
               | Have you actually seen books? While typographic
               | traditions did go down the drain in the recent decades,
               | it's still hard to find a domain as varied as books.
               | 
               | Even the most boring books often have things that Gemini
               | purposefully omits: from styling to inline illustrations
               | to diagrams to insets, asides, footnotes, tables of
               | content, just tables, typographic marks etc. etc. etc.
        
             | ertian wrote:
             | > Any slightly lengthy text will just bury you in a desert
             | of letters.
             | 
             | So what do you make of books, then?
             | 
             | I don't think people "keep trying to make Gemini happen" in
             | the sense that you mean. They're not aiming to replace the
             | web. They've got a cozy little community that likes the
             | 'smol', text-based web. And while 90% of people might think
             | they're crazy, there are others out there who would like it
             | too if only they knew it existed. Posts like this make the
             | community a few individuals larger. I think _that 's_ the
             | goal.
        
               | PurpleRamen wrote:
               | > So what do you make of books, then?
               | 
               | This webpage is not a book. It has a different purpose.
               | With a book, I know what it contains, where it's leading
               | to, usually they have an abstract for this.
               | 
               | I have nothing against Gemini and the people in general,
               | I'm just saying the limitation is not working well for
               | every type of text. Pictures and a bit more structure
               | would be useful for the boring informative texts.
        
               | antiframe wrote:
               | Webpages aren't as monocultural as books, though. There
               | are webpages that have interactive 3D models (which
               | physical books can't). There are webpages that are
               | basically books though. Some webpages will port well to
               | gemtext, some will not. The purpose isn't to replace
               | HTML. The purpose is to make long-form uninterrupted text
               | a first-class citizen by forcing other elements to be
               | second-class citizens.
        
               | PurpleRamen wrote:
               | > Webpages aren't as monocultural as books, though.
               | 
               | Depends on the definition of Webpage and book.
               | 
               | > There are webpages that have interactive 3D models
               | (which physical books can't).
               | 
               | Pop-up-Books?
        
               | troupo wrote:
               | > So what do you make of books, then?
               | 
               | Have you ... seen books? You can't compare a medium as
               | varied as books to a purposefully limited and primitive
               | medium of Gemini.
        
           | lproven wrote:
           | Entirely this.
           | 
           | I feel that if there were some way of promoting a Javascript-
           | free web, everything the world needs is already there in all
           | modern browsers.
           | 
           | I suspect that between HTML5, and indeed XHTML, and CSS and
           | all the many modern image formats and so on, everything
           | important that almost any site needs could be done using
           | these tools and no JS at all.
           | 
           | And the result could also be interpreted and rendered
           | successfully by much smaller simpler browsers, along the
           | lines of Netsurf and Dillo, which are 10% of the size of a
           | full dynamic-content browser or less.
           | 
           | The question is how.
           | 
           | A contest? Make the richest website you can that uses no
           | Javascript, Typescript or anything else, and win a prize as
           | well as promotion?
        
             | sircastor wrote:
             | I think a contest would be antithetical to the idea being
             | circled here. The early web (to me) was filled with content
             | front people who put out there because they wanted to
             | share. Put your page up because here's something you think
             | is cool. I feel like it loses something with a contest.
        
             | giantrobot wrote:
             | I don't think a contest is needed. Just a desire to
             | participate in the "Smol Web". Back in the day we had the
             | "best viewed in any browser" badge indicating a page worked
             | fine in IE and Navigator and probably also lynx. Personally
             | I hate making web pages that _don 't_ work in Dillo or
             | lynx.
        
           | Gualdrapo wrote:
           | Not sure if going back to 2008 or so pre-HTML5 will prevent
           | people from injecting kilobyes and megabytes of JS libraries
           | or nesting dozens of divs because reasons.
        
         | II2II wrote:
         | The problem with most of these discussions is they assume
         | Gemini is a substitute for the web, when it is actually a
         | substitute for Gopher.
         | 
         | Gopher never really went away. A few enthusiasts were keeping
         | it alive. Those enthusiasts realized that Gopher had a number
         | of shortcomings, so Gemini was created to address those
         | shortcomings. It was not created to address the shortcomings of
         | the web. (At least not directly. Indirectly one could argue
         | those enthusiasts kept Gopher alive due to the shortcomings of
         | the web.)
         | 
         | As for styling and inline images: in a sense, Gemini offers
         | styles to a limited degree. Those styles are tied to the
         | structure of the document, while the appearance is left to the
         | software rendering the document. Even though inline images are
         | considered a faux pas, I seem to recall Lagrange offering that
         | feature. Again, we are dealing with the rendering software
         | making the decision rather than the author. Since the end user
         | chooses and configures the rendering software, it is the end
         | user who has control (rather than the author).
        
           | classichasclass wrote:
           | I think this is true only up to a point. The sets of Gopher
           | enthusiasts and Gemini enthusiasts surely overlap, but they
           | are not coterminous (disclosure: I administer
           | gopher.floodgap.com).
           | 
           | From my view in Gopherspace, Gemini is a better fit for the
           | Gopher+TLS thing people keep trying to do which is both
           | incompatible and doesn't square with Gopher being an ultra-
           | light protocol, and thus most appealing to those people who
           | thought Gopher would be the "new smol web" but found it's
           | more its own thing. In particular, Gopher's signature strong
           | menu-document hierarchy that a lot of us Gopher nerds like
           | doesn't have any true parallel in Gemini.
           | 
           | I started gopher.floodgap.com back when it was
           | gopher.ptloma.edu in the late 1990s largely as a historical
           | preservation because I remembered all the cool stuff you
           | could get there. Back then the Web hadn't metastasized to the
           | Tetsuo blob it is today, so that obviously wouldn't have been
           | the reason. I can't speak for the later adopters, but Gemini
           | doesn't scratch my Gopher itches fully (see also
           | https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-gopher-view-of-
           | gemini.... , my notes on this from 2020).
        
             | II2II wrote:
             | I didn't mean to suggest that Gopher and Gemini enthusiasts
             | are one and the same. Rather, I meant to suggest that it
             | was a subset of Gopher enthusiasts that decided to address
             | some of the shortcomings of Gopher. At least that is the
             | impression that I received while watching from the
             | sidelines. It never really struck me as being a derivative
             | of the web.
             | 
             | And thank you for gopher.floodgap.com. While I had some
             | exposure to Gopher in the mid-1990's, most of my exposure
             | was through Floodgap (and SDF) in the early 2000's.
        
         | GuB-42 wrote:
         | My feeling is that Gemini's entire purpose is being opinionated
         | and somewhat inconvenient. It purposefully threw the baby out
         | because it didn't want the baby.
         | 
         | Everything Gemini does, you can do it in HTTP. In fact, a
         | subset of HTTP+HTML would be even simpler than Gemini (mostly
         | because of a lack of TLS) and still compatible with all the
         | modern web stack. Simplicity isn't the main goal of Gemini.
         | Exclusiveness is.
        
       | arkh wrote:
       | Gemini protocol using :// again. I feel like more people should
       | watch Dylan Beattle's "The Web that Never Was" presentation.
       | 
       | > gem:my.domain.com/hello
        
         | guestbest wrote:
         | Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't slashes typically reserved
         | for flags on Unix and back slashes on dos/windows? If that's
         | the case then surely the vertices line, pipe symbol |, would be
         | the most visually appropriate? Piping remote data over a
         | network connection and through the local client program to
         | parse seems to be the kind of thing bike shedding was intended
         | for, in agreement but focusing on semantics. It just seems new
         | by safe and only requires reprogramming the kernel for the
         | shell semantics.
         | 
         | # gemeni:|bike.domain.com|shed
         | 
         | Or even better, everything is little endian to allow
         | autocomplete from previous entries by the user in the shell so
         | that once the user hits the domain keyword the shell history
         | parser assumes the user wants to stay on the site
         | 
         | # gemeni:|shed|bike|domain|com
         | 
         | I'm not sure how feasible this as I've never written an
         | internet or shell language
        
           | WaitWaitWha wrote:
           | > Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't slashes typically
           | reserved for flags on Unix and back slashes on dos/windows?
           | 
           | Forward slash (/) in DOS, while dash, tack, or hyphen (-) are
           | used for UNIX for command line flags or parameters. The / in
           | UNIX was for the path. The backslash (\\) is for DOS paths.
           | (Caveat: I started with UNIX in the mid-80s.)
        
             | guestbest wrote:
             | Ah, thanks.
        
         | chatmasta wrote:
         | Maybe I'm mis-reading the URI spec [0], but it seems that // is
         | required to separate the scheme from the "authority" part when
         | it's present (as it is for my.domain.com).
         | 
         | [0] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986#section-3.2
        
         | AlbertoGP wrote:
         | > _I feel like more people should watch Dylan Beattle 's "The
         | Web that Never Was" presentation._
         | 
         | Didn't know about it, here is the video of that talk in
         | YouTube:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JOD1AQGqEg
         | 
         | There is a poem-style intro titled "Flatscreens / a song about
         | code" until the talk proper starts at 5'11":
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JOD1AQGqEg?t=311
         | 
         | Edit: I'm watching it and it is done in an entertaining style
         | but is a bit loose on some details I know about, such as
         | implying that the IBM PC development was started in the early
         | 1970's when it was in fact started in 1980. Still worth
         | watching so far.
         | 
         | Edit 2: finished, it is definitely worth watching. It goes into
         | "The Twilight Zone" of a very interesting alternative history.
         | And does a good job reporting on the Gary Kildall / IBM missed
         | deal for their PC OS.
        
       | spiritplumber wrote:
       | Love Gemini but it really could use inline images.
        
         | chwilson wrote:
         | Up to the client really, I know that Lagrange[1] supports this.
         | 
         | [1]https://github.com/skyjake/lagrange
        
           | giantrobot wrote:
           | Maybe Gemini could use some lightweight markup language. Shit
           | it could be a form of hypertext. Maybe it could be called
           | something like "hypertext markup language". Then clients
           | could still decide how to render the page but there could be
           | clear links between documents and sites.
           | 
           | Nah, that probably will never work.
        
             | eep_social wrote:
             | Sounds like markdown, where do I sign!
        
         | threatofrain wrote:
         | If Gemini really wanted to embrace a world of writing then they
         | should've had the elements which HTML lacked, such as a table
         | of contents or bibliography.
        
       | fabianholzer wrote:
       | I am under the impression that an unstated design objective of
       | gemini was preventing eternal september by trading it off for
       | staying an eternal echo chamber tobe inhabited only by people
       | smart enough to write their own client and server software.
        
         | Kamq wrote:
         | Huh? There's plenty of ready clients and servers.
         | 
         | It's limited to those that are primarily interested in text
         | (and the occasional image). Which probably prevents it from
         | ever going mainstream (and thus an eternal september). What
         | it's generally sacrificing is interactivity.
         | 
         | That seems like it's shooting more for the early internet.
         | Which, yeah, has quite a bit of overlap with people who can
         | code, but not as much as you're implying. And I do remember
         | quite a few echo chambers on the early internet, but I remember
         | a lot less of them without algorithmic feeds. Just by chance,
         | you'd end up running across a bunch of people who disagree with
         | you on a lot of things.
        
           | fabianholzer wrote:
           | > There's plenty of ready clients and servers.
           | 
           | Sure, but being smart enough to implement one usually also
           | means being smart enough to use something of the shelf. But
           | few of the available clients are very accessible to a non-
           | programming audience. It is basically a "natural" filter
           | mechanism.
           | 
           | > What it's generally sacrificing is interactivity. That
           | seems like it's shooting more for the early internet.
           | 
           | There is a very rudimentary form mechanism, resembling a bit
           | HTTP 0.9, where you could only do get requests with query
           | parameters, which might allow to simulate a bit of
           | interactivity, but I with the protocol being set in stone
           | that would forever remain a hacky simulation (if you only
           | have a hammer...)
        
             | doublepg23 wrote:
             | > But few of the available clients are very accessible to a
             | non-programming audience. It is basically a "natural"
             | filter mechanism.
             | 
             | ? There's a very nice one that runs fine on my iPad, Elaho.
        
               | fabianholzer wrote:
               | Then I stand corrected (at least for the iOs ecosystem)
        
       | surprisetalk wrote:
       | I recently documented some similar thoughts on the "cheap" web:
       | 
       | [1] https://potato.cheap
       | 
       | IMO, protocol is largely a distraction from the good stuff.
       | 
       | The question I've been wondering lately is, "why don't most
       | people I meet have personal websites?"
        
         | basscomm wrote:
         | I can think of three reasons that more people don't have
         | personal websites:
         | 
         | 1. For non technical users (and there are lots of them)
         | learning enough HTML and figuring out how to put it somewhere
         | accessible is too high of a bar to overcome (forget about
         | updating it ever). It's quicker and easier to just establish a
         | presence on some social media site.
         | 
         | 2. For technical users who are capable of setting up a website,
         | it's easier to just go where people already are (i.e. social
         | media).
         | 
         | 3. It's anecdotal, but I rarely see anyone browsing the web
         | these days. Most web usage seems to consist of endlessly
         | scrolling through Facebook looking for something to interact
         | with. A link to somewhere else _might_ get clicked on, but the
         | user always goes back to the newsfeed once they 're done
         | looking at the link.
        
           | ugjka wrote:
           | If you host things on a cheap VPS you also have to pay
           | attention how much traffic you are allowed to consume and
           | excess will add up to your bill. Some bad bot or enemy can
           | certainly give a nice surprise at the end of the month if you
           | don't pay attention to alerts on your account
        
           | ravenstine wrote:
           | > 3. It's anecdotal, but I rarely see anyone browsing the web
           | these days.
           | 
           | Exactly. People on HN overestimate today's use of the web.
           | Regular people barely know what a website is at this point or
           | have any idea what a browser is or does. They only know it as
           | a place to ask The Google something, but even that has
           | changed with The Google's app/widget and voice activated
           | assistants. Sure those things open up web views, but that
           | view may not even have a URL bar, so as far as the user
           | knows, they're in "the app", which is kind of true I guess.
           | That "Chrome" or "Safari" app is just kind of a funny thing
           | that opens up sometimes. Most users aren't opening up the
           | browser and typing in URLs. A fraction of them are, but that
           | fraction is diminishing, and I would guess that fraction
           | mostly reflects desktop users. All this is to say that, if
           | you want to create a blog today and not spend effort to
           | heavily promote it and use SEO tricks (that will immediately
           | go out of date), you can basically forget it if you want
           | anyone to read it.
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | >The question I've been wondering lately is, "why don't most
         | people I meet have personal websites?"
         | 
         | Isn't it obvious? It's simply easier to use a social media
         | platform that makes it easy to publish without having to know
         | how to set up a server or mess with frameworks or code, and
         | that makes it more likely that people will _read_ what you have
         | to say. The utility of personal websites has been replaced by
         | services which solve both the problems of ease of publishing
         | and ease of discovery and networking.
        
         | zoogeny wrote:
         | There is a proverb: "If the Mountain won't go to Mohammed, then
         | Mohammed must come to the Mountain"
         | 
         | Most people don't have personal websites because getting an
         | audience of users to a personal website is like asking a
         | mountain to come to you.
         | 
         | Another proverb is: "Meet people where they are at"
         | 
         | There are exceptions to these proverbs but they require
         | exceptional people or exceptional circumstances. The vast
         | majority of people are not trying to be exceptional with
         | respect to the kinds of things they would put on their personal
         | websites. Very few individuals are willing to put the effort
         | into "moving mountains" to build an audience on their own
         | website.
        
         | aleph_minus_one wrote:
         | > The question I've been wondering lately is, "why don't most
         | people I meet have personal websites?"
         | 
         | The answer from my experience is simple: _because most people
         | that I meet are not programmers_ (at least not in a strict
         | sense), and don 't know many programmers.
         | 
         | On the other hand: most programmers and many STEM degree
         | holders that I meet _do_ have their own websites.
        
         | ArekDymalski wrote:
         | > "why don't most people I meet have personal websites?"
         | 
         | I think that valuable follow-up question would be "Should they
         | have one?"
        
         | benrutter wrote:
         | I absolutely loved reading potato.cheap- nice work!
         | 
         | I think there's currently a discoverability problem. I _love_
         | small websites, blogs, passion projects etc and they give me
         | 1000x more joy than social media posts. But I still don 't
         | really know a good way to discover them.
         | 
         | Hacker news is honestly probably the way that I find most small
         | web stuff, I like kagi's "small internet" filter a lot too. But
         | as a whole, the likes of google etc are really geared up
         | towards funneling me into looking at posts in social media
         | sites rather than anything else.
        
         | threatofrain wrote:
         | It's possible that a social media profile is the new website.
         | Rather than stand alone as a single page, it's often connected
         | to other people and orgs that you may want to be affiliated
         | with, so it comes with its own relevant blogroll.
        
         | wharvle wrote:
         | Any social media or messenger program:
         | 
         | 1) search name
         | 
         | 2) install app
         | 
         | 3) open app
         | 
         | 4) tap through sign-up. Maybe type your name or other familiar
         | details.
         | 
         | 5) Nothing to do here because it already imported all your
         | contacts, if relevant.
         | 
         | 6) Post/message. You did this all from your phone. It was free.
         | Everyone you care about automatically knows you're there and
         | how to reach you in the app. Tap camera icon to post pictures
         | or video.
         | 
         | If you have trouble with any of it, ask literally anyone for
         | help.
         | 
         | Personal website:
         | 
         | 1) ???????
        
         | troupo wrote:
         | > The question I've been wondering lately is, "why don't most
         | people I meet have personal websites?"
         | 
         | Because it's still nearly impossible for a non-tech person to
         | create one. Facebook/Tiktok/Instagram offer a lot of what
         | people would want from a personal website for free _and_ give
         | you connections to your friends /family/strangers
        
         | emrah wrote:
         | > "why don't most people I meet have personal websites?"
         | 
         | The bigger question for me is, if it was dead simple and all
         | they had to do was -say- pay $10/mo, would most people actually
         | choose to have a personal website?
         | 
         | I think the issue comes down to most people not seeing enough
         | value to have a personal site to pay for it. And if they don't
         | want to pay, the free DIY options are either a site like Medium
         | or the technical hurdles they have to jump through to get it up
         | and running manually
        
           | appplication wrote:
           | I wouldn't have one even if it was dead simple and free (or
           | honestly even paid). I just have too much on my plate, and I
           | struggle to see what value it could bring. Let's say I If I
           | had a personal website, then what? I have to create content
           | for it on some consistent cadence, which feels like a job.
           | And then either no one reads it, which would feel both
           | pointless and demoralizing, or I have to actively market it
           | to try to get people to read it, which sounds even more
           | depressing.
           | 
           | I'm sure this is where people chime in with their
           | survivorship bias ("you'd be surprised how many people would
           | read your site") or wildly different value sets ("even if no
           | one reads it, it can help you _grow!_ "). But some of us just
           | want to work as little as possible, and then go home and play
           | with our dogs, or go for a run, or binge watch Netflix, or
           | read a book, or pop an edible and make some music, or pen
           | overly grumpy comments on HN. A personal website doesn't just
           | bring me no value, I'd go so far to say it would bring
           | negative value.
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | I like the gist and spirit of this, of course, but isn't this
       | basically impossible in today's day and age? For instance, if I
       | want to host a small web server running in my closet to serve cat
       | memes to a small number of users, I still am beholden to my ISP
       | who 1) must allow me to host a web server in its TOS and 2)
       | provide me a static address.
       | 
       | I don't really see any way to get around corporations on the
       | internet, unless I'm missing something.
        
         | anamexis wrote:
         | I think that depends on how robust you want to be.
         | 
         | I don't have a static IP, but it only changes on the order of
         | weeks or months. So a dynamic DNS configuration with a 5 minute
         | TTL works fine for me.
         | 
         | I have no idea if web hosting is in my ISP's TOS, and I also
         | don't care.
        
         | 0xEF wrote:
         | I don't know about elsewhere, but I regularly set up small
         | self-hosted web servers at my home (Midwest US) and have never
         | heard a peep from my ISP about it. Some of the aforementioned
         | servers get 25 - 50 unique visits on a high day, and my ISP
         | couldn't care less. I'm not sure they would unless I was
         | calling a lot of traffic, which is not really a huge concern
         | for Small Webbers. We are few and relatively unnoticed by the
         | larger Internet, which is just the way we like it.
        
         | torh wrote:
         | 1) Haven't really checked, but...
         | 
         | 2) I have a fixed IPv4 address, and a dynamic IPv6. So far the
         | latter also seems to be fairly stable, and I host my webpages
         | on both IPv4 and IPv6 these days.
         | 
         | My server is a ThinkPad X240 with VMware ESXi which in turn
         | host Ubuntu for SSH, Web, etc... And a Pi-hole VM just to block
         | the "wost" of the internet.
        
         | jw_cook wrote:
         | ISPs that allow hosting web services are fairly common, but
         | you're right, if all your local providers forbid it, you're
         | probably out of luck.
         | 
         | For your second point, Dynamic DNS is super useful. I've had a
         | good experience with noip.com/ddns.net, but there are plenty of
         | other options out there.
        
         | brabel wrote:
         | The easiest choice today is to use either GitHub Pages or
         | Netlify to host your website. You can literally just drag and
         | drop files on their Admin web page and have something
         | immediatelly published online.
         | 
         | If you want to run code instead of just keep a static website,
         | then you may need to get a cheap server from a multitude of
         | companies that offer that (Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS etc) but
         | I find that you can almost always get away with static sites
         | which require next to no work and will stay up as long as those
         | companies are still functioning (or don't shut down the free
         | plan).
        
         | kej wrote:
         | If anything I think it's easier today than it was 10 or 20
         | years ago. There are plenty of free static hosts, free tiers on
         | various cloud hosts for interactive sites, and services like
         | ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnels that can safely expose a home
         | server to the internet.
        
       | nonrandomstring wrote:
       | Nice little article but I could hardly disagree more with the
       | headline.
       | 
       | The small web is not for _poor_ men and women. It 's for the
       | rich. Those who are rich in culture, intelligence, curiosity,
       | engagement...
       | 
       | The existing "web" is for the technologically poor. It's a
       | chavvy, shallow plastic shit-filled trench, a ghetto where
       | thieves and pimps run free, and good ideas die like dogs - to
       | somewhat paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson. I can't see anything of
       | value left there, and cannot imagine how anyone would equate
       | leaving it behind with being poorer.
        
       | aleph_minus_one wrote:
       | Relevant concerning the given example server typed-hole.org:79:
       | $ echo "feed" | nc typed-hole.org 79
       | julienxx@nein.club toots:              thread 'main' panicked at
       | src/main.rs:52:39:       called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err`
       | value: reqwest::Error { kind: Request, url: Url { scheme:
       | "https", cannot_be_a_base: false, username: "", password: None,
       | host: Some(Domain("nein.club")), port: None, path:
       | "/api/v1/accounts/01C2ETC44GDGZ27S9WKZMSHKWV/statuses", query:
       | Some("limit=5&exclude_reblogs=true&exclude_replies=true"),
       | fragment: None }, source: hyper::Error(Connect, Ssl(Error { code:
       | ErrorCode(1), cause: Some(Ssl(ErrorStack([Error { code:
       | 167772294, library: "SSL routines", function:
       | "tls_post_process_server_certificate", reason: "certificate
       | verify failed", file: "../ssl/statem/statem_clnt.c", line: 1889
       | }]))) }, X509VerifyResult { code: 18, error: "self-signed
       | certificate" })) }       note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1`
       | environment variable to display a backtrace
       | 
       | Looks like an error.
        
       | mattlondon wrote:
       | I think Gemini has missed a trick being being deliberately _too
       | simple_ - e.g. no inline images, no tables, no forms, no basic
       | formatting etc.
       | 
       | I know these were deliberately left out for "simplicity" reasons,
       | but then they have a fairly unsimple mechanism for user
       | login/auth that totally undermines their claim for making clients
       | little more than slightly-augmented-terminals, which for me is a
       | smoking gun for these things being missing purely on an
       | ideological basis only and an attempt at controlling how people
       | use it. That's fine, it's their thing and they can do what they
       | want with it.
       | 
       | There is a growing trend of people simply choosing to use XHTML
       | Basic (1). This is a "stripped down" version of HTML originally
       | intended for early phones, PDAs, set top boxes etc - it has the
       | critical missing features of Gemini, but forgoes some of the more
       | "advanced" features of the modern web people have issues with.
       | I'd highly recommend people simply target that instead.
       | 
       | 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML_Basic
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | It looks like this still supports the script tag, which seems
         | to be the biggest "modern web" feature people want to abandon.
        
           | giantrobot wrote:
           | So don't include one. JavaScript isn't fucking mandatory.
        
       | chrsw wrote:
       | I think IRC would fit in here too
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | (2021)
        
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       (page generated 2023-12-28 23:02 UTC)