[HN Gopher] Project Gemini
___________________________________________________________________
Project Gemini
Author : andsoitis
Score : 181 points
Date : 2025-11-17 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (geminiprotocol.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (geminiprotocol.net)
| rappatic wrote:
| Why is everything named Gemini these days?
| adocomplete wrote:
| yeah seems like an odd choice for a new project.
| mpalmer wrote:
| The project is six years old
| adocomplete wrote:
| I stand corrected.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| This long predates Google LLMs
| mock-possum wrote:
| Yeah it seems like everybody and their brother is naming things
| Gemini, is there a dual meaning I'm not aware of?
| incognito124 wrote:
| Nice pair of Gemini puns
| arnaudsm wrote:
| The Gemini protocol started in 2019, before Google's Gemini in
| 2023.
|
| It's proably a popular word for tech workers fans of the
| american space race.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Or for people who want to evoke notions of
| duality/parallels/twinship.
| didi_bear wrote:
| Because Copilot was already taken
| throitallaway wrote:
| Google renamed Bard to Gemini last year. Side note: Google's
| "Gemini" product name is way overloaded. They have like 6
| different things that you can buy/use that are named that.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Right? I clicked in here thinking it meant Google's Gemini but
| of course not just another uncreative name that clutters search
| results. (I'm not sure if Google's Gemini or Project Gemini is
| the uncreative clutter, but either way.)
| blcknight wrote:
| So Gopher?
| billfor wrote:
| gopher over http: Seems like firefox et al removed support for
| it years ago.
| blcknight wrote:
| Gemini's native protocol isn't HTTP, they invented their own.
| I don't really see what this does you couldn't do with simple
| HTML pages (or Gopher 35 years ago).
| jerf wrote:
| Nothing.
|
| But that's not the point.
| josh-sematic wrote:
| I think some of the point is what you _can't_ do with it
| rather than what you can. It's an intentionally very
| restrictive protocol.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Even simple HTML pages may require Javascript and want to
| run code on your computer or phone. You need knowledge of
| the document, knowledge of its author, or constant keepup
| and awareness of browser settings (e.g. did some update re-
| enable Javascript) to mitigate this.
|
| A .gmi is 100% certain not to need any extra code capable
| of potential unwanted external communications, not now and
| not in the future.
|
| Also .gmi is extremely simple and can be rendered very
| simply (and thus more securely) because it can be processed
| nearly statelessly line by line, without need of a
| rendering tree or document model.
| djaboss wrote:
| ... which looks even more stupid when you can force quite a
| number of browsers to _get_ you something through gopher if
| you just pretend it 's http on port 70. of course you have to
| self interpret the result, but gophermaps are quite readable.
| :)
| bnchrch wrote:
| If we maintain this trajectory Gemini is going to have as many
| dual meanings in the software world as Map.
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| Why do programmers have so little imagination when it comes to
| names? It should almost never be the case that project names
| conflict
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| Ask Google, this project predates the LLM.
| saretup wrote:
| Too small for Google to care about.
| rapnie wrote:
| Large tech molochs don't care about any name, it seems.
| Their power and weight makes the name point to them. Seek
| on "Amazon" and find that, oh the 7th Wonder of Nature the
| "Amazon rainforest" is ranked second after some random Big
| Tech company run by a guy named Jeff. The "lungs of the
| earth" vs. cheap package delivery and AWS dashboards.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I mean, yeah. What percentage of searches for "Amazon" in
| today's world do you think is going to _not_ be about
| acquiring cheap shit very quickly? I would expect the
| tech company to be a better answer than most when someone
| searches for Amazon. Searching for "the amazon" gives
| the expected results as that's how it is more commonly
| referred. So it does seems like your search query as
| performed was just a bad search
| immibis wrote:
| I bet it would be a few percent less and the world would
| be a fraction of a percent better if the first result was
| the rainforest.
|
| I wonder how much they pay Google for the top spot.
| ChipopLeMoral wrote:
| Back when I was a Googler, I used to play a little game where
| I would think of a random word and then check if there was a
| Google internal project code named for it. It was a bit hard
| finding stuff that wasn't some system or project, and often
| there would be multiple ones. I actually found one that I
| thought would be a nice name and reserved the go link for it,
| but naming anything after it never panned out, when I finally
| got to design a system from scratch my manager wanted a
| boring descriptive name like "consolidated data system" (it
| was a bit more specific but that was the vibe).
|
| Side note: I noticed that more "boring" and less sexy
| projects had cooler names a lot of the time, and my theory
| was that people were compensating for doing unsexy work.
| morkalork wrote:
| Google eats their own with names. Their latest and greatest
| AI framewofk is Agent Development Kit (ADK). Not to be
| confused with the Android Development Kit...
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| At least the internal name of that kit is a cool name. So
| we should blame the Cloud marketing people who likely
| don't know about Android since they're Cloud people.
| goatsi wrote:
| I remember a comment on here years ago from someone in
| GCP who mentioned that they did not control the "Cloud"
| namespace. So any VP could launch a new project and call
| it cloud something and make people very confused about
| why it wasn't showing up in the cloud dashboard and API.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Can't wait for Google to announce a humanoid robot
| project called "Google Android"...
| mkoryak wrote:
| I reserved go/poop years ago, but the ability to name a
| project with that name is diminishing
| ChipopLeMoral wrote:
| What happens to your go links when you leave Google?
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| This one is still up. I just checked it. I was
| underwhelmed by where it linked to.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Please no more "Project Espresso" nonsense that is entirely
| meaningless to anyone reading this.
|
| Pick a descriptive name. _Everyone else_ who is not in your
| team will thank you.
| kixiQu wrote:
| An alternate take that I tend to agree with:
|
| https://medium.com/better-programming/software-component-
| nam...
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Fun fact: one of the first 10 bugs filed on the Go
| programming language was "Hey, I've been working on a
| programming language named Go for the last 10 years, please
| pick another name." https://github.com/golang/go/issues/9
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache
| invalidation and naming things.
|
| -- Phil Karlton
| johnnyo wrote:
| "There are only two hard things in computer science. Cache
| invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors."
| newswasboring wrote:
| My favorite form is when someone shouts "concurrency" in
| the middle of the sentence.
| begueradj wrote:
| "There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache
| invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors"
| roomey wrote:
| You forgot the "and off by one errors"
| tracker1 wrote:
| You forgot "Off by one errors."
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I would add also hearing this quip every time either of those
| things come up un conversation.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I've always wondered if he meant coming up with good names or
| if he meant ensuring that names, however they're chosen,
| reliably resolve to the named thing.
| corysama wrote:
| For one, the project started in 2019
| https://geminiprotocol.net/history/ So, I guess Google should
| rename their LLM?
|
| For another, to do that we'd have to follow something like the
| prescription drug naming process
| https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-07/why-do-prescription-drug...
|
| That way, instead of "Gemini", they could have named it
| something like "Cymbalta", "Xeljanz" or "Cialis" :P
| mtzaldo wrote:
| They all watched the same movies or read the same books
| ddellacosta wrote:
| "It should almost never be the case that project names
| conflict"
|
| My corollary to this is "You should never reach for a language
| you are not fluent in for a name. Especially, just stop it with
| using Japanese words to name stuff please ffs"
| SkyeCA wrote:
| > You should never reach for a language you are not fluent in
| for a name
|
| I agree, but that still doesn't stop funny name related
| issues between languages. One of my favourites was Pidora (a
| Fedora release for the RPI) which caused offence to some
| Russian speakers.
| ddellacosta wrote:
| Heh good point. Coq comes to mind too...there was something
| else recently that sounded terrible in French..."Bitchat"
| maybe?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Why single out programmers? Name collisions happen in
| constantly, across every single industry.
|
| It turns out that there really aren't that many possible
| project names before you get into the made-up "that sounds
| stupid" words.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > It should almost never be the case that project names
| conflict
|
| Sure, if you want projects to have the same naming strategy as
| Chinese Amazon Marketplace vendors.
|
| Away from that, significance in naming begins to cluster quite
| quickly.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Do you have a pile of projects lying around with good names?
| Coming up with a good one is hard and getting harder every day.
| agiacalone wrote:
| I've had a Gemini Capsule (what Gemini calls a 'website/blog'
| since about 2021. It gets very little traffic, but it's fun to
| have. Browsing the smallweb is nice in the evenings when I want a
| high signal-to-noise ratio of interesting content.
| ecliptik wrote:
| From what I remember about the name, it's derived from NASA space
| programs. Where Gopher is Mercury, Web is Apollo and Gemini is in
| between.
|
| Gemini is a new internet protocol which:
|
| - Is heavier than gopher
|
| - Is lighter than the web
|
| - Will not replace either
|
| - Strives for maximum power to weight ratio
|
| - Takes user privacy very seriously
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I wonder how discovery and search work if it's just a bunch of
| linked documents? Do search engines exist outside of Gemini and
| link into it?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| There are several search engines of Geminispace, running as
| Gemini servers. There are also a number of feed aggregators
| that are widely used.
| agiacalone wrote:
| Also, part of the idea is discovery through linked high-
| quality sites. Like the webrings of the 1990s.
|
| You find a capsule you like and discover others through
| that person's links.
| IshKebab wrote:
| No images is a bit of a deal-breaker for almost everyone I
| would have thought.
| karmakaze wrote:
| If this is being developed, it should have a more modern
| description. Comparing it to Gopher is fine as a historical
| point, but comparing it to http/html is more useful today. I read
| the faq for geeks and didn't learn much:
|
| > 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, 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.
|
| Annoyed that for a system about plain text links, there's no link
| to "section 4".
|
| The transport sounds like http without saying so. It doesn't go
| into why it doesn't use http. I'd probably be fine with HTTP and
| Markdown + image/video links. Maybe the Gemini document
| capabilities/scope is better but they're not described.
|
| _Edit: they are in "4.1.2"_[0] _Be warned, there 's still a lot
| of beating-around-the-bush._
|
| > 4.1.2 I'm familiar with HTTP and HTML. How is Gemini different?
|
| [0] https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#412-im-familiar-
| with...
|
| _Edit 2: Seems opinionated in many stupid-by-todays-needs ways.
| It feels like text-web made by some group of deniers._
| jadbox wrote:
| Ya, I still don't understand how this works at a high level.
| Does anyone actually understand how it works?
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Given the amount of servers and clients people have written
| for it[0] I'd say there are definitely people out there who
| understand how it works. What don't you get exactly?
|
| 0: https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini
| NoGravitas wrote:
| A Gemini client is an application like a web browser, but
| simpler. It sends a one-line plain text request to a Gemini
| server over a TLS socket. The server sends back a document
| with a MIME type, or an error message, and closes the
| connection. The client renders the response for the user.
| That's basically it. It's similar to Gopher or to HTTP/0.9. A
| common document type returned is Gemtext, which is a text
| format like a simplified Markdown that can be parsed on a
| line-by-line basis.
| pianoben wrote:
| Gemini was so much fun during lockdown - I loved the distraction
| of a new simple protocol, and the challenge of writing a gui
| client for it.
|
| Can't say I'm surprised that it hasn't taken the world by storm,
| but it's still a cozy part of the Internet.
| ramon156 wrote:
| I completely missed out on this :'(
| corndoge wrote:
| No doubt you were doing a myriad of other things that were
| worthwhile to you at the time.
| denysvitali wrote:
| Not the Gemini I was hoping to see in the front page today :D
| TuringTest wrote:
| Honest question, how do you discover interesting content over
| this protocol?
|
| Is there people building the equivalent to web directories and
| web rings? Or search engines? What are the cultural expectations
| on navigating other people's published resources?
| ecliptik wrote:
| There are search engines, directories and feed aggregators [1].
|
| Best means of discovery is like the original web, you surf it,
| bouncing from capsule to capsule finding what you like.
|
| 1. https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini?tab=readme-ov-
| file...
| dexwiz wrote:
| I looked at this a few years ago and it seemed to be a graveyard
| of toy implementations and personal blogs.
| Jotalea wrote:
| Isn't that what it's meant to be?
| RealCodingOtaku wrote:
| I have got only two annoyance on Gemini, lack of inline links and
| _font styling_, and they are by design
| (https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#44-questions-about-t...)
|
| It's fine for something like HN, but I heavily rely on named
| links and emphasis on all my blogs and is a dealbreaker.
| cfiggers wrote:
| Same here. Those are my gripes exactly.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Yeah they missed an opportunity to more fully support something
| more like markdown that offered in-line links and basic text
| formatting. Missing tables is also quite the deal breaker for a
| bunch of things.
|
| But yeah it seems like these lack of features is a willful and
| highly-opinionated approach to what the author of the protocol
| wants to take a stance on (their excuse is ease of
| implementation for clients, but I think it is a more of a
| deliberate choice). That's fine. It's their protocol and they
| can do what they want with it, but I think they missed an
| opportunity for it to take off.
|
| Various people since have suggested we just settle on HTML 4
| (with no scripting) and we'd be way better off and I agree.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| And CSS from the client only!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| * Inline links * Image support * Video/audio support?
|
| I /kind/ of like the idea of fonts not being customizable, that
| it makes people focus on the content rather than over-styling.
| A lack of server-side font customization would be good for
| forcing inline links to be obvious, rather than potentially
| obfuscated.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree that fonts should not be specified by the document,
| although it would make sense to specify that you want a
| fixpitch font, or emphasis font. Pictures within the document
| might make sense (especially if you want to print it out);
| video/audio would be better as a separate file that you can
| link to, and display using a separate program.
| RealCodingOtaku wrote:
| Font customization is need to emphasise, it helps the reader
| understand the sentence better, other styles such italics,
| underline, and strike through... would greatly improve
| understanding the context and increase readability, it's just
| a matter of good typesetting.
|
| Inline links also help with the same, people who dislike it
| should be able to move them out of the context (like some
| terminal based browsers).
|
| I don't care about image, video etc, they can just be a link
| to the resource if/when needed... given alt text/CC is
| supported or accessibility. Same for color coding stuff and
| CSS, users should customize their client for that if they
| want to, not the server.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I had a different set of criticisms, such as: mandatory TLS, no
| file size in the response, no range requests, etc. (I made up
| my own in order to address these and some others.)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Recently:
|
| _Six Years of Gemini_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44578143
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| I'd love a minimal protocol like this that was also somehow
| scraping resistant.
| graypegg wrote:
| I really enjoyed messing around with Gemini a while ago! But
| after the "messing around" stage with the protocol itself, the
| restrictions inherent to gemtext sapped my excitement around it.
|
| It's a mark up language squarely focused on those that write
| text, but arduous to use if you want to share things you've
| illustrated, which is most of what I share online that isn't tech
| related. There's of course the argument that inline images/a
| spec'd way to expose an image directory listing with
| thumbnails/etc would only serve to distract or exploit you... but
| that also ignores the fact that people make art for your eyeballs
| too. Text is certainly the first class citizen, where
| images/music/video are all tied for second class, accessible only
| by downloading them 1 by 1.
|
| That does mean it's perfectly fit for purpose! I wouldn't say
| it's bad just because I don't get my specific needs met. Someone
| who's needs are met by Gemini will love it.
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| There are Gemini clients that can inline images, so visitors to
| a site could decide to enable that if they wanted to see for
| instance a list of thumbnails.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Are clients permitted/expected/tolerated to run off and fetch
| the contents of image links for inline display, once a page
| containing such links is retrieved?
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| They are not supposed to do that, but some clients have an
| option to enable it anyway.
|
| There are also clients that make a second request to ask
| for a favicon. In the spirit of the protocol the "icon" is
| just a UTF-8 symbol, but that behaviour is still
| controversial.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Only if the page is inside of a ZIP archive stored on the
| local computer and only if the link is to a picture within
| the same ZIP archive. (However, it would be good to have an
| option to disable inline display even in that case.)
| immibis wrote:
| Not really, in fact they're forbidden - those clients are
| spec-uncompliant.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Permitted? Technically, it can't be stopped (well, it kind
| of can, see "Tolerated?").
|
| Expected? No, it's counter to the intentions of the
| community.
|
| Tolerated? Maybe. Here's a fun one (saw this in one of the
| past discussions dang linked):
| https://github.com/makew0rld/amfora/issues/199. That was
| over favicons, but the response would be similar if linked
| images were automatically fetched. Though the protocol has
| a "backoff" return code that could be used to throttle
| those things that would be less disruptive than Drew's
| approach of banning specific clients.
| rollcat wrote:
| Agree. I don't think Gemini plugs any hole that Gopher could've
| left open. As it is, it's just a motherfuckingwebsite.com,
| except it's trying to take itself seriously.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| I want my protocols to take themselves seriously.
| debo_ wrote:
| My main blog is now an "anonymous" gemlog. I use the kineto http
| proxy to provide a website version as well. I wrote a little
| deploy script that scrapes my posts and creates an atom XML feed
| (static doc) that kineto serves for those few people who want to
| stay up-to-date.
|
| Once a quarter, I batch up the recent posts and bcc a bunch of
| folks I like to keep in touch with. Some of them respond. This is
| what I do in place of social media now; outside of email, Discord
| and WhatsApp are all I use to keep in touch with folks.
|
| I also like to poke around different gemlogs with Lagrange, which
| is a nice desktop-oriented Gemini client. It's good fun.
| aeternum wrote:
| Too many things are named Gemini
| billyhoffman wrote:
| I built and run a search engine and a "Wayback Machine" for
| Gemini:
|
| gemini://kennedy.gemi.dev
|
| There are ~4K hosts and ~1M documents/images/files which make for
| nice playground with experimenting with crawlers, indexers, and
| more. Its a nice hobby. Lots of primarily static sites, and CGI
| is used to add some interactivity:
|
| gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/moon.py
| dang wrote:
| Related (and a little hard to sift apart from you-know-what):
|
| _Gemini (2023)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45238536
| - Sept 2025 (46 comments)
|
| _Six Years of Gemini_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44578143 - July 2025 (166
| comments)
|
| _The Gemini protocol as seen by cURL 's creator_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43054583 - Feb 2025 (6
| comments)
|
| _Ask HN: Are you using a Gemini browser? Would you follow a link
| if posted on HN?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41491928
| - Sept 2024 (5 comments)
|
| _The Gemini protocol seen by this HTTP client person_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104533 - May 2023 (107
| comments)
|
| _Bye, Gemini_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37049064 -
| Aug 2023 (159 comments)
|
| _Show HN: Gemini web client in 100 lines of C_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36786239 - July 2023 (45
| comments)
|
| _The Gemini protocol seen by this HTTP client person_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104533 - May 2023 (107
| comments)
|
| _What the eff Is Gemini?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34392811 - Jan 2023 (92
| comments)
|
| _On the Shortcomings of Gemini Protocol_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31560509 - May 2022 (46
| comments)
|
| _Lagrange Pre-Release - A Gemini client that also supports
| Gopher and Finger_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30998033 - April 2022 (30
| comments)
|
| _Offpunk 1.0: Offline Gemini /Gopher/Web Browsing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30669799 - March 2022 (17
| comments)
|
| _Gemini is a new internet protocol_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30667545 - March 2022 (72
| comments)
|
| _Gemini is a little gem_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30072085 - Jan 2022 (122
| comments)
|
| _Gemini is Solutionism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067400 - Jan 2022 (218
| comments)
|
| _Lagrange: A desktop GUI client for Gemini_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29291392 - Nov 2021 (90
| comments)
|
| _Gemini: The Misaligned Incentives_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28688232 - Sept 2021 (84
| comments)
|
| _What is this Gemini thing, and why am I excited about it?
| (2020)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28600436 - Sept
| 2021 (208 comments)
|
| _Gemini 's "uselessness" is its killer feature_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27490769 - June 2021 (193
| comments)
|
| _Why Gemini is not my favorite internet protocol_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27480324 - June 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _Gemini Space_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26670464 -
| April 2021 (27 comments)
|
| _Agate, a simple Gemini server written in Rust_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26401158 - March 2021 (34
| comments)
|
| _Beyond the Web: Gopher, Gemini, and the Rise of the Small
| Internet_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26359454 - March
| 2021 (5 comments)
|
| _gemini: // space_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25986378 - Feb 2021 (170
| comments)
|
| _The Tragedy of Gemini_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25807633 - Jan 2021 (28
| comments)
|
| _Hacker News over Gemini_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25225810 - Nov 2020 (21
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Taurus - A Concurrent Gemini Server_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045130 - Nov 2020 (5
| comments)
|
| _A Gopher View of Gemini_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25005307 - Nov 2020 (9
| comments)
|
| _A look at the Gemini protocol: a brutally simple alternative to
| the web_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23730408 - July
| 2020 (347 comments)
|
| _Castor: A browser for the small internet (Gemini, Gopher,
| Finger)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922 - May
| 2020 (75 comments)
|
| _Gemini - A new, collaboratively designed internet protocol_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042424 - May 2020 (62
| comments)
|
| ---
|
| Bonus: First Gemini AI thread looks to have been:
|
| _DeepMind 's new Gemini AI will combine LLMs with techniques
| from AlphaGo_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36495892 -
| June 2023 (6 comments)
|
| ... and the first mammoth one looks to have been:
|
| _Gemini AI_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38544729 -
| Dec 2023 (1602 comments)
| astrange wrote:
| > Project Gemini
|
| I have a theory that the idea you'd call your project "Project X"
| comes from TV shows.
|
| We work with project codenames and we don't call anything Project
| X. We just call it X. It feels like adding the word "Project" is
| something a screenwriter would do to make the dialogue clearer.
| nine_k wrote:
| I would say that it comes from the military, where projects are
| given codenames that try hard to be opaque random monikers, and
| spill no beans about the nature of the project. The Manhattan
| Project predates mass TV, and most of it did not happen on
| Manhattan.
| astrange wrote:
| I don't mean codenames. I mean literally saying the word
| "project". It's like meeting a friend and saying "hello my
| friend I've known for the last 20 years".
| nine_k wrote:
| Compare: "We are working on Project Paperclip" and "We are
| working on a paperclip". I suppose the former implies that
| what you're working on is _not_ a literal paperclip (but a
| secret operation to snatch scientists).
|
| So "Project Gemini" is not about, say, he constellation.
| floren wrote:
| With modern two-random-word codenames we tended to just
| say things like "I'm working on Crystal Banana all next
| week"
|
| (Crystal Banana was a local joke codename where I worked)
| afisxisto wrote:
| I created one of the first social networks for it. Still running:
| https://martinrue.com/station
| mmaunder wrote:
| Read the 100 word intro and still don't know what this is. Left.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's an alternative to HTTP and HTML (primarily). With the
| protocol sitting, in terms of complexity, somewhere around the
| early HTTP/1 protocol and gopher, and the geminitext format
| being suited for a variety of displays and more text oriented
| rather than for interactive or multimedia use.
| barbazoo wrote:
| And its simple implementation (client and server) comes from
| the simple protocol that doesn't seem to need much code to
| implement. The content seems to be in something similar to
| Markdown but fewer features. So if one wanted one could
| achieve the same with simple HTML over HTTP. My guess this is
| also a community thing.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm not sure that something like HTTP 1.1 is hard to
| implement. There are miriads of HTTP servers and clients.
| It has its quirks, for sure, but you can code basic
| implementation pretty easily.
|
| Now rendering HTML is completely another level of
| difficulty.
|
| If you ask me, I'd suggest to use Markdown instead of HTML
| for "simple web", but keep HTTP/1.1. Rendering Markdown is
| relatively simple and it's rich enough for a lot of
| document-based websites.
|
| As for "web apps": use webassembly as underlying execution
| engine, but build something new for rendering, not coupled
| with any markup languages. Just provide canvas to draw and
| efficient API to implement draw operations. Application
| developers will use frameworks and frameworks prefer to
| draw everything themselves anyway. I think that kind of
| "web app engine" would be possible to implement with
| limited development resources, unlike modern web browser.
| andrepd wrote:
| Are you for real? Or is this some irony I'm not getting
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Presumably these are the 100 words they read:
|
| > Gemini is a new internet technology supporting an
| electronic library of interconnected text documents. That's
| not a new idea, but it's not old fashioned either. It's
| timeless, and deserves tools which treat it as a first class
| concept, not a vestigial corner case. Gemini isn't about
| innovation or disruption, it's about providing some respite
| for those who feel the internet has been disrupted enough
| already. We're not out to change the world or destroy other
| technologies. We are out to build a lightweight online space
| where documents are just documents, in the interests of every
| reader's privacy, attention and bandwidth.
|
| Those words don't communicate much about Gemini at all.
| Gemini could be a webring for all this says (it's not, but
| you could build one on it), or it could be something entirely
| different. It turns out that Gemini is a protocol and a text
| format, but those 100 words don't say anything about either
| of those things.
| IshKebab wrote:
| It does a really bad job of explaining what it is. They could
| have said "modern gopher" and that would have conveyed way
| more information (for people who know what gopher is, which
| is probably 90% of the people ever reading it).
| ghssds wrote:
| It's Gopher + TLS + UTF8 + text wrapping + headers + unordered
| list.
| floren wrote:
| more like HTTP GET - LSB bit of response code + "please send
| the MIME type we like, not the MIME type we hate"
| barbazoo wrote:
| Unrelated but I went to the linked website, then a while later to
| Youtube and now I'm getting videos recommended about the Gemini
| protocol that I have never heard of before today.
|
| I'm on Arc and use uBlock Origin Lite, NextDNS, if I had searched
| I would have used Kagi. How do they know?
| meowkit wrote:
| The prediction algorithms are so good that indirect behaviors
| and data can be informative.
|
| You might also be profiled by Google and bucketed into a group
| of similar people who leak their data. They also went to this
| website and their YT recommendations became a signal to inform
| your own.
|
| Not claiming any certainty here just possible ideas.
| cfiggers wrote:
| They aren't necessarily tracking you personally. Gemini
| Protocol hitting the front page of HN means a spike in interest
| generally, which the YouTube algorithm could be reacting to in
| aggregate.
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