[HN Gopher] Six Years of Gemini
___________________________________________________________________
Six Years of Gemini
Author : brson
Score : 193 points
Date : 2025-07-16 02:37 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (geminiprotocol.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (geminiprotocol.net)
| monkeywork wrote:
| Gemini is one of those things I see pop up and tell myself I
| should look into it more and then it fades into the back of my
| mind.
|
| Anyone have any hints on getting more use out of it or ways to
| make it more present in my day to day.
| martinrue wrote:
| I made the first (and still popular) "social network" 4 years
| ago. Still going strong. More info:
| https://martinrue.com/station
| tvshtr wrote:
| it's this federated with anything?
| martinrue wrote:
| No, it's as simple as it sounds. I should think about that
| at some point.
| grep_name wrote:
| This is an interesting project. So the whole thing is
| hosted at gemini://station.martinrue.com, with no way to
| host other instances? Stuff like this that leverages the
| default TLS nature of gemini is pretty exciting. I'm
| going to have to set up an account later to check it out.
|
| Edit: Checked it out and this is definitely a cool idea.
| Is there any way to change the unicode emoji next to your
| name?
| dimkr1 wrote:
| https://github.com/dimkr/tootik is another Gemini social
| network that _does_ federate over ActivityPub, and I 've
| been thinking about developing a minimalist ActivityPub
| alternative (maybe using Gemini and Titan to replace HTTP
| GET and POST, respectively) that can coexist with
| ActivityPub support
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's brilliant, and exactly the sort of thing that
| could get me back into Gemini. Nice!
| agumonkey wrote:
| I love the frugality, overall project goals, and I'm used to
| non mainstream ergonomics (I enjoy gnu ed..). But something
| about Gemini search engines and browsing was unfit for me to
| keep using it.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| NewsWaffle gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/
|
| takes a url to a regular webpage and spits out a gemtext
| version that is much more sparse and, for me, is much more
| readable.
|
| For example, here's this very website:
|
| gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-
| bin/waffle.cgi/feed?https%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2Frss
|
| it's honestly the only reason I still use gemini since the rest
| of it is abandoned gemlogs, rehosts of web content I don't care
| or ersatz social media
| akkartik wrote:
| Oh nice, a gateway in the opposite direction!
| anthk wrote:
| There are far more gopher phlogs than gemini gemlogs.
|
| Still, both communities overlap of course.
|
| Setting up a gopher phlog requires no TLS at all and any
| machine from 1980 (even maybe ITS with a Gopher client
| written in MacLisp) will be able to read it with no issues.
| safety1st wrote:
| Perhaps this may help: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/geminize/
|
| You will need to prefix a gemini URL with "gem " if you're
| pasting it into the address bar.
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| Kristall[1] is my favourite browser, Antenna[2] is my favourite
| aggregator.
|
| Get browser, read some capsules!
|
| [1]https://kristall.random-projects.net/ [2]
| gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/
| martinrue wrote:
| Gemini for me has been such a breath of fresh air in contrast to
| 2025 Internet, with so many ads, grift and now AI slop.
|
| Back when I first discovered Gemini, I wanted to create a space
| for people to have a voice without needing to run their own
| server, so I built Station (https://martinrue.com/station). I've
| been running it ever since.
|
| Gemini in general, and specifically folk who use Station
| regularly, make it a friendly, throwback-to-the-90s vibe, and I
| still value it a lot.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Does gemini have any concept of feeds or pub/sub?
|
| I noted there were a few capsules that acted as a sort of hub for
| other peoples capsules. which suggested to me there was a way to
| automate it, and I might be able to make my own
| ecliptik wrote:
| Are SpaceWalk [1] or Moku Pona[2] what you're looking for?
|
| 1. https://tildegit.org/sloum/spacewalk
|
| 2. https://github.com/kensanata/moku-pona
| VariousPrograms wrote:
| These are some feeds and aggregators I have bookmarked
|
| gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/view.gmi
|
| gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/
|
| gemini://calcuode.com/gmisub-aggregate.gmi
|
| gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/
|
| gemini://tinylogs.gmi.bacardi55.io/
|
| gemini://sl1200.dystopic.world/juntaletras.gmi
| Gormo wrote:
| Does gemini have any concept of feeds or pub/sub?
|
| Yes: https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/companion/subscription.gmi
|
| Many clients, including my favorite, Lagrange
| (https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/) support feed subscriptions.
| fishgoesblub wrote:
| It was sad seeing the hate for it on here when it was new-ish,
| and while I haven't used it in a while, I'm glad to see it still
| kicking around. Such a neat and fun project.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP to do
| what it does, but better.
|
| The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren't
| SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code.
|
| HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get that
| they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but it
| isn't HTTP's fault. It's the sites you visit.
|
| If you want to build new and smaller communities, I really
| think we should be building for browsers. Perhaps a website
| design manifesto is in order.
| treve wrote:
| The limits of the medium and the creativity this enforces is
| why people like it. It caters a niche audience with a shared
| set of values. I get why people don't really care for it
| personally or on a technical level (myself included), but it
| always surprises me that it's hard for people to understand
| that others do.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I agree the limitations are what makes the platform great,
| but I really wish they had included a simple image block in
| the spec.
|
| Text only is just a little to limiting if you ask me.
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| Many browsers will render a link to an image as an
| embedded image block!
| MrVandemar wrote:
| > The modern web is opt-in. I build and use sites that aren't
| SPAs and shitted up with 3p resources and images and code.
|
| That is a microscopic subset of the modern web.
|
| I don't use Gemini-- though I am highly tempted --but I
| expect some of the attraction is that you can click on any
| link and pretty much guaranteed not to be socked in the face
| with a sign-up-for-my-newsletter or cookies-accept-all-yes-
| later or paragraph-ad-paragraph-ad-paragraph-ad or fiddling
| with NoScript to find the minimum amount of Javascript that
| will let you read some article that looks interesting. In
| Gemini, all that friction just goes away.
| sneak wrote:
| You can achieve that on HTTP with a browser extension or
| customized browser that checks for certain tags in the
| page, or disables certain features altogether. It isn't the
| transport's fault.
| bayindirh wrote:
| With all respect, this viewpoint rivals the infamous
| Dropbox comment.
| rglullis wrote:
| Problem: you are looking for a way to get rid of the
| annoying issues of the modern www. What is the solution
| that solves this with the least amount of work?
|
| A) Develop a whole new transport protocol that does less
| than HTTP, develop client applications that use this
| protocol, convince a sufficient number of people to use
| this protocol, at least to the point where the majority
| of your activity happens there?
|
| or
|
| B) Install a handful of browser extensions that block ads
| and other nuisances on the modern www, and have it
| working right away?
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| What's more fun? Definitely A.
| rglullis wrote:
| You are not solving the stated problem. You are just
| admitting that working on a new protocol is a
| masturbatory, "the journey is the reward" kind of
| exercise.
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| I'm not aiming to solve the stated problem, I'm having
| fun with gemini.
| shakna wrote:
| Considering "B" is becoming less possible, thanks to
| Google dropping Manifest 2, and going out of their way to
| enforce a lot more tracking, "A" looks like a lot less
| effort - you don't have to fight FAANG.
| rglullis wrote:
| Chrome is not the only browser out there. Firefox is
| still a good browser. If you depend on Chromium: Brave is
| keeping Manifest v2 and their ad-blocking extensions work
| out of the box.
| shakna wrote:
| And HTTP is not the only protocol out there. Plenty of
| others exist. Like Gemini, that has multiple browser
| implementations.
|
| What's your point, exactly?
| rglullis wrote:
| My point is that the choice of protocol (much like the
| browser) is not a relevant factor if your goal is to be
| able to participate in the www without dealing with the
| issues.
|
| We can have all the upside of an http-based web, without
| dealing with the downsides. The converse is not true. A
| Gemini network is _by design_ limited in functionality,
| which is a downside that can not be mitigated.
| Gormo wrote:
| > My point is that the choice of protocol (much like the
| browser) is not a relevant factor if your goal is to be
| able to participate in the www without dealing with the
| issues.
|
| Right, but that _isn 't_ the goal of Gemini. It's goal is
| to create a distinct ecosystem, not to participate in the
| existing one with marginally less annoyance.
| rglullis wrote:
| Even worse! This makes the whole proposal even more
| misguided.
|
| Different ecosystems only make sense when we have
| distinct populations that might be as well considered
| different species.
| Gormo wrote:
| There's no 'proposal' here -- this is a review of an
| active ecosystem that has already had its ideas
| implemented and iterated on for the past six years.
|
| Having a different ecosystem is _the exact intention_ of
| this project. If that 's not for you, you're certainly
| not required to participate, but the world is a vast
| continuum of variation, and is full of niches and clines
| that are intentionally distant from the global mean.
| Complaining that non-mainstream stuff _exists_ seems
| pretty nuts to me -- the world _is_ full of 'distinct
| populations'.
| rglullis wrote:
| > a vast continuum of variation, and is full of niches
| and clines that are intentionally distant from the global
| mean.
|
| But they are all sharing the _same world_. It 's all the
| same ecosystem.
|
| My objection is not because I am against people trying to
| do something different. My objection is to this
| delusional idea that this work needs to be _isolated_
| from everyone else. It 's sterile at best and elitist at
| worst.
| shakna wrote:
| Its a protocol. A means of communication. It can't be
| isolated, by definition. There's plenty of cross-platform
| things using it.
|
| It is as elitest and isolationist as RSS - another
| limited system.
|
| The format is limited, to preserve the user agent's
| ability to act... As a user's agent, rather than the
| host. That's it.
|
| Your objection seems to be... People walking a path you
| wouldn't.
| fiverz wrote:
| It's not FAANG anymore, it's GAYMMAN now
| bayindirh wrote:
| Option "B" implies a cat and mouse game, which you can
| never win.
|
| You can't win a game designed and implemented by a mega
| corporation which is specially made to earn them money
| and protect their monopoly by being reactive and
| defending all the time. Instead you have to change the
| game and play with your own rules.
|
| That's option "A".
| rglullis wrote:
| > Instead you have to change the game and play with your
| own rules.
|
| That only works if you can convince the a substantial
| part of the _participants_ to also play your game.
|
| It's very easy to create an alternative internet where we
| can take away the power from incumbents. The hard part is
| creating all the activity that is taking place in the
| current one.
|
| "Oh, but I can mirror the parts I want from the current
| internet into the new one!"
|
| Not without playing into the same cat-and-mouse game.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Who says I'm trying to pull in _everyone_ from the old
| internet to the new internet (Gemini)? If the people I
| care comes along, that 's enough for me, and it's up to
| them.
|
| For example, I switched to Mastodon, and follow people
| who I really want to follow are already there, plus I met
| a ton of interesting people, and was able to see real
| forms of people I followed before, so I have updated my
| views on them.
|
| > "Oh, but I can mirror the parts I want from the current
| internet into the new one!"
|
| Personally, I see Gemini or other protocols as equals to
| HTTP/S. For example, my blog is already text in most
| cases, has a full content RSS feed, so, also publishing a
| Gemini version is not mirroring what's on the web
| already, just adding another medium to my blog.
|
| If I was pumping a 3rd party site I don't own from web to
| Gemini with a tool, then you'd be right, but publishing
| to Gemini is not different than having a RSS feed in my
| case.
| rglullis wrote:
| > For example, I switched to Mastodon (...) and was able
| to see real forms of people I followed before, so I have
| updated my views on them.
|
| Isn't that strong evidence that it is possible to have a
| "human-scale" web built on HTTP, and consequently that
| there is not much benefit in restricting yourself to a
| protocol that is _designed_ to be limited?
|
| > Personally, I see Gemini or other protocols as equals
| to HTTP/S
|
| Except they are not. Maybe it can do _enough_ of the
| things that you care about, but Gemini is (by design!)
| meant to do less than HTTP.
|
| > publishing to Gemini is not different than having a RSS
| feed in my case.
|
| Again: if all you want is to be able to publish something
| in a simple format, then why should we care about the
| transport protocol?
|
| I get the whole "the medium is the message" idea, I
| really do. I get that people want a simpler web and I
| look forward to a time where we have applications
| developed at a more "human scale". But I really don't get
| why we would have to deliberately be stripping ourselves
| of so much power and potential. Talking about Gemini as
| the best solution to the problems of the modern web is
| like saying we should wear chastity belts to deal with
| teenage pregnancies.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, but it's important to understand that limitations
| are moved to Mastodon "layer" in that case. It takes
| careful deliberation and restraint to keep something
| tidy. Mastodon does this by limiting its scope and
| organizational structure. We as humans like to abuse
| capabilities. So, to keep something tidy and prevent (or
| realistically slow down) rot, you need a limit somewhere.
| Putting that limit to humans vs. the protocol is a trade-
| off.
|
| In that scenario W3C doesn't put any brakes, Mastodon
| puts brakes on development, organizational structure and
| scope, and Gemini puts brakes on the protocol. So, it's
| the most limited but hardest to abuse in a sense.
|
| I probably worded my "I see them as equals" part of my
| comment wrong. I know Gemnini is a subset of HTTP, it's
| more Gopher than HTTP, and that's OK by me. Moreover,
| that leanness is something I prefer. See, the most used
| feature on my browser is Reader mode, and I amassed
| enormous amount of links in Pocket just because of the
| reading experience it offered.
|
| > I really don't get why we would have to deliberately be
| stripping ourselves of so much power and potential.
|
| Because power corrupts and gets abused. A friend of mine
| told me that they now use Kamal which makes deployment
| easy. How it's deployed? Build a container -> Push to
| registry -> pull the container on the remote system ->
| runs the container -> sets up and runs a proxy in front
| of that container to handle incoming connections.
|
| That's for a simple web application...
|
| I mean, I push files to a web server and restart its
| process. I'm not against power, I'm against corruption,
| and given human nature, restraint is something hard to
| practice, and that's _if_ you want to learn and practice
| it.
|
| > Talking about Gemini as the best solution to the
| problems of the modern web is like saying we should wear
| chastity belts to deal with teenage pregnancies.
|
| I _never_ said Gemini is _the only and the best way_
| forward. Again, _for me_ It 's another protocol, which
| offers a nice trade-off for some people sharing a
| particular set of values. It's like a parallel web like
| BBSes or public terminals (e.g.: SDF).
|
| Being an absolutist benefits no one. We should learn,
| understand and improve. We can have multiple webs, and we
| shall be free to roam them in a way we like. I'd love to
| use my terminal to roam some text only web with my
| favorite monospace font and terminal theme, but I like to
| write comments here and think on the replies I get, too.
|
| I find myself preferring a text-only, distraction-free
| web more and more, and naturally evolving my habits and
| personal infrastructure in that way, but I'm not carrying
| a flag, shouting about end-times and preaching stuff as
| savior. I'm not _that_ person.
| rglullis wrote:
| > it's important to understand that limitations are moved
| to Mastodon "layer" in that case.
|
| Mastodon may be my preferred social network nowadays, but
| it's _despite_ the prevalent philosophy from the
| development team. It 's also arguably the reason that the
| Fediverse can not manage to grow to more than 1 million
| MAU.
|
| >Because power corrupts and gets abused
|
| The solution to this is not to get rid of power and keep
| everyone in the same small crab bucket. It's to make
| access to the powerful tools as universal and ubiquitous
| as possible.
|
| > I push files to a web server and restart its process.
|
| Your friend not being sensible enough to know when to use
| a tool vs when to keep it simple is not a problem of the
| tool. Also, talking about deployment methods seems so
| orthogonal to the discussion that I am not sure it makes
| sense to carry this conversation further.
| sneak wrote:
| Not really. You could have tinyweb/oldweb sites identify
| themselves with a meta tag, and have a browser that only
| browses those. A opt-in, web-within-a-web. And turns off
| js, cookies, and images.
|
| You don't need another transport protocol.
| bayindirh wrote:
| We have Kagi Small Web and Marginalia already, if that's
| your aim.
| Gormo wrote:
| How do you stop users who aren't using the custom browser
| from accessing these 'tinyweb' HTTP sites? How do you
| prevent content scrapers and search indexers from
| accessing them? How do you suppress direct incorporation
| of 'mainstream' web content into 'tinyweb' content?
|
| If your goal is precisely to create an parallel ecosystem
| that's "airgapped" from the mainstream web, and you're
| already going to have to develop custom clients, content
| formats, and server-side configuration to implement it on
| top of HTTP, and engage in lots of development work to
| imperfectly isolate the two ecosystems from each other,
| why _wouldn 't_ you just develop a parallel protocol and
| start with a clean slate?
| rglullis wrote:
| > How do you prevent content scrapers and search indexers
| from accessing them?
|
| How do you that with Gemini?
|
| > If your goal is precisely to create an parallel
| ecosystem that's "airgapped" from the mainstream web
|
| There is no way you can have an air gapped network with
| public access. The moment this "parallel ecosystem"
| showed any content that _hinted_ at something lucrative,
| you will have people creating bridges between the two
| networks. Case in point: Google and USENET.
| Gormo wrote:
| > How do you that with Gemini?
|
| You keep it isolated from the ecosystem in which all of
| those things are taking place.
|
| > The moment this "parallel ecosystem" showed any content
| that hinted at something lucrative, you will have people
| creating bridges between the two networks. Case in point:
| Google and USENET.
|
| The whole point is to minimize the chance of that
| happening -- by _limiting_ mainstream appeal, keeping it
| a niche, and avoiding Eternal September -- and to
| maximize the friction of bridging these two ecosystems.
| And so far, they 've done a fairly good job of it, since
| Gemini has been expanding for six years without any
| indication of any of this starting to happen.
| rglullis wrote:
| > and to maximize the friction of bridging these two
| ecosystems.
|
| There is no friction. It's trivial to write a program
| that can scrape a Gemini network.
|
| If there is no one pulling data from Gemini servers yet,
| is not because it's difficult do it, but merely because
| it's still too small to be relevant.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The benefit with A is that it also removes higher order
| effects of the modern web. You may for example remove
| adverts by installing an ad blocker, but that wont change
| the incentives that advertising creates (eg. clickbait,
| engagement maximizing, etc.). With A you can guarantee
| that the content is not shaped by these incentives.
| rglullis wrote:
| > With A you can guarantee that the content is not shaped
| by these incentives.
|
| Without those incentives, you will quickly find out that
| there will not be much of an Internet out there.
|
| If you don't believe me, check how many people are on
| _YouTube_ talking about Open Source, when PeerTube exists
| and already can reach millions of people.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The internet and web existed for a long time before
| everything became infested with advertisement: Hobbyist
| bulletin boards, Wikipedia, the blogosphere, etc. These
| had enough content that a single person couldn't consume
| it all in a lifetime.
| rglullis wrote:
| That internet was also only interesting and valuable to a
| fraction of the people who use it today.
|
| And if you don't care about that and you are thinking
| from what you might get out of it: an internet where 99%
| of the content is crap but universal will end up with
| more valuable content than a neutered internet that can
| prevent the emergence of crap, but is tailored to appeal
| only to 1% of the people.
|
| IOW, no one cares about reading all of Wikipedia, and
| Wikipedia would never reach the size it has if it was
| something only for a handful of individuals obsessed
| about their particular hobbies.
| Gormo wrote:
| > Without those incentives, you will quickly find out
| that there will not be much of an Internet out there.
|
| Well, there is plenty of interesting content on Gemini.
| If you're OK with having 50% fewer needles in order to
| get rid of 99.999999% of the hay, then it's a win.
| Gormo wrote:
| The answer is "A". Perhaps some people are avoiding
| saying this too explicitly because it might sound a bit
| elitist, but I'll put how I see it as frankly as possible
| for the sake of clarity.
|
| Gemini is _not_ trying to solve a technical problem with
| the web. Is trying to solve a _cultural_ problem that
| arises from the web having become a mass medium, in which
| every site 's focus gradually erodes under pressure to
| optimize to the lowest common denominator.
|
| Creating a new protocol from the ground up, and requiring
| users to install a distinct client to access it, isn't
| just about keeping the software aligned with the
| project's goals, it's about creating a sufficient
| threshold of thought and effort for participation that
| limits the audience to people who are making a deliberate
| decision to participate. It's about avoiding Eternal
| September, not about creating a parallel mass-market
| competitor to the web.
|
| It's not about blocking the annoying ads, popups, and
| trackers, just to access sites where the _content itself_
| is full of spam, scams, political arguments, LLM slop,
| and other assorted nonsense, and instead creating an
| ecosystem that 's "air-gapped" away from all that stuff,
| filled with thoughtful content produced deliberately by
| individuals. It's about collecting needles together away
| from the hay.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I've been exploring this problem for a while, and have been
| building something which I think might help solve it.
|
| I'm currently building a browser-based static site generator
| that produces clean, simple code. But it does more than that.
|
| Alongside the generated HTML, sites also publish their public
| configuration and source files, meaning they can be viewed in
| more than just a browser, for example in a CLI or
| accessibility device.
|
| The client interface is also more than a CMS - you'll be able
| to follow other sites, subscribing to updates, and build a
| network rather like a webring. The idea is to provide human-
| powered discovery and community tools. The reach may be less
| than if algorithmic, but it's designed for genuine
| connection, not virality.
|
| As the client is smart but sites are simple, sites can be
| hosted on anything, from the cheapest shared host up.
|
| I'd be happy to talk further if that's interesting in any
| way.
| rglullis wrote:
| That sounds a bit like the dat browser, no?
| mattkevan wrote:
| Not familiar with dat browser, but I'll take a look.
|
| You can see an early beta of what I'm thinking about
| here: https://app.sparktype.org/#/sites
| CJefferson wrote:
| In terms of levels of current support, you would be hard-
| pressed to find anything better for accessibility than
| simple, well-formed HTML. It's better even than plain text.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| HTTP is intermingled with a lot of the shitty SPAs,
| advertising and SEO of the web. You _can_ make a simple text
| only site but the noise of the modern web is only ever a
| couple of clicks away. Gemini silos itself off. You know that
| a link you click will be an equally clean text-first site. To
| me that is _the_ feature.
| prmoustache wrote:
| HTTP is great but with AI crawling being all over the place
| maybe it is not a bad idea to publish in a safe / niche place
| if one is not obsessed on how much people will be reached.
|
| I am saying this but I have no idea if AI crawlers have
| started to crawl gem capsules.
| Gormo wrote:
| > I don't hate it, but I question the use. You can use HTTP
| to do what it does, but better.
|
| I'm not sure I understand that. HTTP is the fundamental
| protocol of the web. If your goal is to create an ecosystem
| that is deliberately set apart from the web, how would using
| the same underlying tech stack help rather than hinder you in
| doing that?
|
| > HTTP is great, and deserves our time and attention. I get
| that they seem upset with the modern web, and I am too - but
| it isn't HTTP's fault. It's the sites you visit.
|
| And why are those sites so awful? Did they decide to become
| awful from the outset, or is it because they've gradually
| adapted to a userbase that has regressed to the mean due to
| the mass-market nature of the web?
|
| The whole point of developing a new protocol is to create a
| non-negligible threshold of though and effort for
| participation, precisely so that it _doesn 't_ get popular
| quickly and end up subjected to Eternal September.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Though there are any number of nonstandard things you can
| do over HTTP to restrict your community from the unwashed
| eternal september noobs from joining it.
|
| Requiring a markdown content-type would probably even be
| enough.
|
| Consider the fact that TFA is already proxied over HTTP
| just so more than 3 people will read it, so it seems more
| sane to be HTTP native.
| Gormo wrote:
| > Though there are any number of nonstandard things you
| can do over HTTP to restrict your community from the
| unwashed eternal september noobs from joining it.
|
| But why would you bother with that, when your whole goal
| is to create an ecosystem that's separate from the web in
| the first place?
|
| > Consider the fact that TFA is already proxied over HTTP
| just so more than 3 people will read it. Seems more sane
| to be HTTP native.
|
| Podcasts are often rehosted on YouTube, blog content is
| often reposted to social media, etc. Making content
| viewable from the other medium without making it _native_
| to the other medium is a common practice, and wouldn 't
| defeat the purpose of trying to build a distinct
| ecosystem on top of the same foundation that underlies
| the ecosystem you're trying to avoid.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Podcasts are often rehosted on YouTube
|
| I actually don't know of any other way to get them. I
| suspect I'm not alone. That's how pervasive the dominant
| platforms are.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Its a fun concept but the community around it had a strong
| tendency to want to proselytize their values to you. I enjoyed
| playing around with it in the beginning but it introduced me to
| too many tech preachers each with their own similar but
| slightly different philosophies that they felt like I must know
| about.
|
| It may have changed but that's what largely turned me off from
| it. I find other networking projects to have a less preachy mix
| of people.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| The selection effects of people seeking out something like
| this are probably intense, but that was also true for the
| early web, and is what people liked about the early web.
| troupo wrote:
| I don't remember there being hate. I remember a lot of people,
| including myself, questioning Gemini's decisions. E.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33470229
| Gormo wrote:
| There were people questioning decisions in relation to goals
| they were projecting onto the project, but which were not
| actually the goals of the project. That often resembles
| 'hate'.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| The biggest thing I've seen is outsiders who find protocol
| issues to be non-starters. It's certainly not a perfect
| protocol, but neither is HTTP or email. It works and I'm happy
| that we have another option for hypermedia.
| dxyms wrote:
| For those that were thinking of the LLM and don't know what this
| is, like me, their FAQ details what it is:
| https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi
| snthpy wrote:
| Thanks. For this that don't want to have to click through:
|
| Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol
| for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special
| consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which
| facilitates linking between hosted files. Both the protocol and
| the format are deliberately limited in capabilities and scope,
| and the protocol is technically conservative, being built on
| mature, standardised, familiar, "off-the-shelf" technologies
| like URIs, MIME media types and TLS. Simplicity and finite
| scope are very intentional design decisions motivated by
| placing a high priority on user autonomy, user privacy, ease of
| implementation in diverse computing environments, and defensive
| non-extensibility. In short, it is something like a radically
| stripped down web stack. See section 4 of this FAQ document for
| questions relating to the design of Gemini.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think Gemini is a step in the right direction for some things.
| I usually mention my "tersenet" ideas when I see Gemini. Now that
| we have the Gemini LLM and Claude etc. there is less excuse for
| me to not finish any real software demo for it. Maybe one these
| days I will make an actual client for part of it.
|
| I think there is room for things like media and applications even
| on an idealized web. But they should not necessarily be combined
| along with information browsing and search into one thing.
|
| https://github.com/runvnc/tersenet
| rcarmo wrote:
| I wrote a server for it a while back (am still running it
| someplace behind a CF tunnel) but I've never really found either
| the community or the protocol were taking off:
|
| https://github.com/rcarmo/aiogemini
|
| A key issue with the ecosystem (not the protocol) as far as I'm
| concerned is that it would have been stupendously better to
| settle on Markdown (even a simplified form) for content creation.
| The rest is OK, I guess, but it's just a nuisance to maintain
| "dual format" sites.
|
| (I see a few comments here about the community's opinions and
| leanings, but to be honest it's not any weirder than your average
| old-timely IRC channel or fringe Mastodon server---live and let
| live, read what you want and just skip Antenna listings you don't
| like)
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| Being able to parse gemtext line by line with almost no context
| is a big win for simplicity - you can't really do that with
| markdown.
| blueflow wrote:
| It is possible if you restrict yourself to an subset of
| markdown. It works pretty well, actually, i have two awk
| scripts that take in a subset of markdown and generate either
| HTML or LaTeX.
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| Sure, that's fair! In any case, I personally prefer the
| aesthetics and the readability of gemtext to markdown
| (especially when it comes to links!)
| Etheryte wrote:
| Pure ascii text is also a subset of markdown, so it doesn't
| really say much that it works for a restricted subset.
| fallat wrote:
| Uh, how much simplicity do you really gain? What's an
| instance of needing to backtrack?
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You can have "[click me][1]" at the top and then "[1]:
| https://example.com" at the bottom. You wouldn't be able to
| render the link until the whole document was downloaded.
| Avshalom wrote:
| It's not like by line but djot was designed to be parsed
| easier/more efficiently than markdown while being basically
| as featureful and ergonomic.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I love the idea, but it's just to fringe to use for me. But I
| will say that I think the internet was far better before Google
| search really became strong, and before the corresponding massive
| increase in SEO spam.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I'll add my name to the list of people who like the idea and were
| very curious about it when they first heard about it but now
| don't think about it as much.
|
| It's very fun to develop for. The simplicity of the protocol
| means that writing a server, client or "web app" (equivalent) is
| a weekend project. So there is a proliferation of software for it
| but that doesn't necessarily translate into content.
|
| There _is_ content, though. My favourite aggregator is gemini:
| //warmedal.se/~antenna/ and I do still drop by there regularly
| enough to have a browse. It's no longer all meta content which is
| good (people used to just use Geminispace to write about Gemini).
| It's still quite tech/FOSS focused, unsurprisingly.
|
| I agree with the other comments that are saying that a simple
| markdown would have been better than gemtext.
|
| Whenever Gemini gets mentioned on HN there are a lot of
| commenters who seem to have an issue with the "views" or "values"
| of some people within the community. They never go into detail. I
| can honestly say I'm not sure what the issue is. As a very
| middle-of-the-road centrist I have never had much of an issue
| with the content I find on Gemini. Sure, you had a few
| interesting "characters" on the mailing list (back when it
| existed) but they were a minority and it was nothing you don't
| also find on the web. I guess people there tend to be more
| dogmatic about sticking to FOSS and keeping the internet non-
| corporate, which can rub people the wrong way, but again you can
| find similar views on the web (and IMO it makes for interesting
| discussions even if I don't agree with the dogmatism).
| snvzz wrote:
| This is just somebody's "finished" pet protocol (author did not
| allow anybody to give input). Narcissism we should not enable.
|
| I will stick to gopher, as it is mature and much friendlier to
| low spec / retro machines.
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| That's not narcissism - it's just someone building something
| they enjoy and sharing it with the world. Do you have the same
| objections to fiction writers or songwriters?
|
| It's totally fine to prefer gopher for its maturity (I'd
| vehemently disagree, but that's for another day) or
| compatibility with retro machines, but framing someone else's
| creative project as a character flaw is just rude.
| spc476 wrote:
| The author very much _did_ allow others to give input. The
| original protocol had single digit status codes, I was arguing
| for three digit codes, he compromised with two digit codes. It
| was my idea to include the full URL for requests, and for
| redirections. It 's just that it wasn't easy, but he could be
| reasoned with. The only two hard lines Solderpunk had for the
| protocol was TLS, and single level lists (why, I don't know).
| anthk wrote:
| Gopher user there from texto-plano (and seldomly, SDF).
|
| Gopher often sucks for 40x25 devices or mobile ones. Yes, word
| wrapping, but everyone uses the 72 char limit or even doesn't
| give a heck and I have to set my own $PAGER calling fmt, fold
| or par before less.
|
| On TLS, you are right. But I've got to build BearSSL and some
| libreSSL for for Damn Small Linux. The 2.4 kernel one, were
| ALSA was a novely and DMIX was hard to set, the one you got
| with Debian Woody... with the bf24 at the LILO prompt.
|
| So, if DSL can run some BearSSL based OpenSSL-lite client, a
| gemini client for it should be totally doable.
| Wild_Dolphins wrote:
| Gemini is a beautiful idea.
|
| However, it works on the basis of mandatory-prohibition. The
| prohibition is: "You cannot track and exploit your site
| visitors". This philosophy is enforced 'remotely', by the
| creators of the Gemini protocol.
|
| An identical end-result can be achieved in HTML, by choosing not
| to use hostile markup. However, with HTML the prohibition must be
| enforced 'locally', by the ethical-philosophical position of the
| website-designer.
|
| The problem with the Gemini-protocol is that it introduces an
| attack vector: The Gemini 'browsers' themselves. The most popular
| one is not audited; has a huge code-base; and has relatively few
| eyes-on-it.
|
| I'm not saying that Gemini protocol is a honey-trap for those
| trying to exit the surveillance-internet; but if I was a tech-
| giant / agency profiting from the surveillance-internet, I would
| definitely write browsers for the Gemini protocol and backdoor
| them.
|
| As a former "Don't be evil" company, it would be of great
| interest to me who was trying to exit my 'web'; how; and why :)
|
| Food for thought...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Gemini the protocol is still a bit mysterious to me. Why not use
| plain HTTPS and just serve a new text/x.gemini MIME type? Or even
| serve plain old text/html and enforce no-JS-or-CSS in the Gemini
| client.
| mcluck wrote:
| Part of the goals of making it so tiny, as far as I understand
| it, is that a normal person could reasonably implement the
| entire thing from server to client. Going full HTTPS and HTML
| is a bit of a lift for a single person in a short period of
| time
| Gormo wrote:
| Because then it would be using HTTPS, and would not be isolated
| from the web in the way Gemini intends.
| thisisauserid wrote:
| "1.1.1 The dense, jargony answer for geeks in a hurry
|
| Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol
| for the distribution of arbitrary files"
|
| If I were one, I would consider that to have been buried.
| vascocosta wrote:
| As an early adopter and developer of a couple of service oriented
| capsules, as time went by my interest faded completely. I'm a
| strong advocate of live and let live, so this is not a critique
| or discouragement post, but rather my own perspective.
|
| Like many have mentioned already, I personally would have
| preferred pure markdown and no gemtext at all. Similarly, and
| although I understand the reasoning behind making encryption
| mandatory, I believe it should be optional in the spirit of KISS.
| I'm more of a minimalist than I am a privacy evangelist. In this
| regard, I felt a bit out of place within the gemini community.
|
| Finally, the argument that it takes a new protocol to avoid a
| broken user experience, often exemplified by someone jumping from
| a simple and well behaved HTTP website into a chaotic one,
| doesn't resonate much with me. Again, I get it, but I can live
| with visiting only the websites or gopherholes I want. This comes
| with a great advantage. Even if we consider just the minimalist
| and well designed websites, this means hoards of content when
| compared to all gemini capsules. I missed a broader set of topics
| when I used gemini and ultimately that was what killed my
| interest.
|
| All that said, I loved it while I used it and I stumbled upon
| some really nice people. Maybe I'll fall in love again one day...
|
| gluon
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| The thing I liked about Gemini and its self-imposed limitations
| is that it was very much impossible to create a misbehaving
| Gemini document. There is no way a Gemini browser will phone
| home, run malicious code on my side, grab/upload my browser
| history or send sensor or other data because I forgot to turn
| off various options, etc. To me the entire thing was much more
| trustworthy.
|
| You can of course recreate this experience using HTTP and
| modern browsers, but both are so complicated that you don't
| know what's really happening without a lot of work.
| vascocosta wrote:
| I liked that as well, but wouldn't remember it before reading
| your comment. I guess all in all it is a pretty nice
| protocol, the only real problem for me is that the content is
| too niche to appeal to me on a daily basis.
| jug wrote:
| This should really be a more common feature in web browsers.
| Yes, it can be achieved by turning off JavaScript and so on
| but it should be a feature like Incognito mode where you have
| either a high visibility toggle button, or open tabs in this
| mode, where tabs with the same kind as the parent keeps being
| opened in this mode. That way, you'd have Gemini for the
| regular web just by making websites that don't break when
| that kind of code is disabled.
| GoblinSlayer wrote:
| HTTP has infinitesimal complexity compared to basically any
| other feature of a browser.
| rollcat wrote:
| > Again, I get it, but I can live with visiting only the
| websites or gopherholes I want. [...] Even if we consider just
| the minimalist and well designed websites, this means hoards of
| content when compared to all gemini capsules.
|
| I agree. Personally, I'm a fan of progressive enhancement.
|
| E.g. I use this Hugo partial to hide emails; it de-obfuscates
| an address using JavaScript, and falls back to printing a shell
| command: {{ $id := substr (sha256 .) 0 6 }}
| <a id="{{ $id }}"><noscript>echo </noscript>{{ base64Encode .
| }}<noscript> | base64 -d -</noscript></a><script>var el =
| document.getElementById("{{ $id }}"); el.innerText = atob("{{
| base64Encode . }}"); el.href = "mailto:" +
| el.innerText;</script>
|
| (Hopefully HN will preserve all the characters.)
|
| Similar for CSS, although that one is a forever WIP...
| vascocosta wrote:
| This kind of approach is exactly why I believe we can have a
| nice experience over HTTP. Progressive content enhancement
| nails the perfect balance between too simple and too bloated.
| I personally believe client side scripting is important and
| ideally should be used sparingly. Your example illustrates a
| perfectly reasonable use case where JavaScript makes sense,
| yet still providing a scriptless alternative that solves the
| problem. Nice stuff.
| gcarvalho wrote:
| I can attest that CSS is very effective for obfuscating
| e-mail. I displayed my academic e-mail on my webpage for over
| half a decade using CSS to flip the text direction[1] without
| getting significant spam.
|
| [1] https://superuser.com/a/235965
| ndiddy wrote:
| > Even if we consider just the minimalist and well designed
| websites, this means hoards of content when compared to all
| gemini capsules. I missed a broader set of topics when I used
| gemini and ultimately that was what killed my interest.
|
| This is definitely Gemini's biggest weakness. I looked around
| on it a bit when it was gaining attention, and most of the
| sites I saw were just complaints about how bloated the modern
| web had become. I get it, but it's kind of treating the whole
| thing as a novelty rather than an actual medium that can be
| used to convey information. It didn't have the wide and varied
| userbase that even the mid-90s academic web they were trying to
| replicate had. It kind of reminded me of all the people who
| write a static site generator for their blog, and then only
| write a single blogpost about how they made their static site
| generator.
| jmclnx wrote:
| FWIW, I have moved my WEB site to Gemini an decided a little
| later to mirror it on gopher (for fun).
|
| I find maintaining these 2 sites far easier then dealing with
| html and the *panels I need to use to upload to my old WEB site.
|
| People who have never viewed Gemini are missing some decent
| content.
| grep_name wrote:
| I checked out gemini maybe four years ago? And I remember
| really liking the idea but struggling to find content. Got any
| tips?
| jmclnx wrote:
| try gemini://sdf.org/ and gemini://gem.sdf.org/
| Gormo wrote:
| gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/
|
| gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/
| debo_ wrote:
| I like Gemini. My (anonymous) blog (gemlog) is posted there and
| has an http proxy, and is a no-brainer to maintain.
|
| Once in a while I check Lagrange (Gemini "browser") for gemlogs
| I've subscribed to and catch up with what other anons are going
| through. It tends to be a lot more raw and persona-less than what
| I find on the web, which I appreciate. It's generally just cozy.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Regardless of the technical shortcomings of the protocol, a
| grassroots group of individuals has managed to create a viable
| new network protocol. The user base is small, but it is not tiny
| and it is not nonexistent and it has been going for years now.
| You can download a Gemini client and find regularly updated blogs
| on a Gemini search engine. You can have discussions on Gemini
| applications like Antenna or Station. It has managed to solve
| many of the problems it intended to solve (privacy, resource
| bloat, protocol specification bloat, etc.).
| throwaway328 wrote:
| What did it do for privacy?
|
| I think Gemini is great, and read from Nyxt browser. Don't know
| if I've seen any references to privacy benefits, so curious.
| rickcarlino wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they talk about privacy directly in the spec,
| but I haven't read the spec in years. Going off the top of my
| head, they had the decision to not include things like user
| agent headers or anything that resembles a cookie
| specifically with the goal of preserving privacy. There is
| also the obvious point of the protocol not supporting raw TCP
| sockets and requiring encryption by default.
| floren wrote:
| The thing about Gemini is that it reads like someone who thinks
| Gopher sounds neat but has only ever dealt with HTTP and
| HTML/Markdown... so they took HTTP GET, chopped a digit off the
| response codes, and called it a new protocol, then tacked on an
| intentionally-broken Markdown implementation (more broken than
| the original Markdown, I mean).
|
| Interesting note: the first line of a Gemini response is a MIME
| type. It's usually `text/gemini` but there's no reason it can't
| be `text/html`, `application/javascript`, or anything else. A
| while back I did a little poking in some Gemini server code and
| made it do precisely that: serve HTML files which I accessed via
| elinks. Of course once you're serving HTML over Gemini you might
| ask, exactly what advantage am I getting by putting it over a
| purposefully-broken subset of HTTP, and I would say that's a damn
| good question.
|
| In 2024 I wrote 'The modern Web and all its crappiness didn't
| come about because there's something inherently wicked in HTML
| and HTTP, it came about because people built things on top of the
| basic foundation, extending (sometimes poorly) and expanding. The
| more people play with Gemini, the more they'll want to "extend"
| it... and the closer they'll bring it to HTTP, because it follows
| the exact same fundamental model once you strip off the
| extraneous document format specification' and I stand by it.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| > The more people play with Gemini, the more they'll want to
| "extend" it... and the closer they'll bring it to HTTP
|
| Then it's not Gemini. Interestingly this is why it was decided
| for Gemini not to have a protocol version. To prevent
| extension.
| floren wrote:
| 2019: Gemini introduced
|
| 2022-ish: Titan created (based on existed of https://web.arch
| ive.org/web/20220126075826/https://transjovi...).
|
| The spec for Titan (https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/transjovian
| .org/titan/page/The...?) appears to be an implementation of
| PUT for Gemini, but since Gemini doesn't have verbs (GET is
| implied) it does it by creating a whole new "protocol"
| titan://
|
| So you're right, they didn't extend the Gemini protocol, they
| created an entirely new protocol which many clients, servers,
| and libraries now implement because the functionality was
| desirable.
|
| Wonder what they'll call the protocol that implements
| DELETE... maybe Deorbit?
|
| Edit: oh there's also Spartan (2022), another protocol which
| is Gemini but if there are bytes after the request line, it's
| an implicit PUT: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/michael-
| lazar/spartan/refs...
| uamgeoalsk wrote:
| Your use of "they" here is misleading. Many, if not most,
| people in the Gemini community see no need for Titan. The
| existence of a new protocol doesn't imply that Gemini is
| somehow lacking. A Gemini client that doesn't support Titan
| is still a fully-featured Gemini client.
|
| Additionally, your description of Spartan is simply
| incorrect. There are several significant differences
| between it and Gemini - the most obvious being that Spartan
| doesn't use TLS at all!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-16 23:02 UTC)