Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
I shut down my server the other day after people on HN were sharing horror stories about runaway bandwidth bills. I could not find a good (easy) way to ensure that my gemini server shuts down if hit by DDOS. I want to set it up again, but need to find some place to host it that has a guaranteed maximum bandwidth cost.
When I was younger, I thought Gemini was very cool mostly because it was an alternative protocol to the mainstream. It made me feel very inner-circle in the development world, for some reason.
As I've grown, I've come to learn I'm a very visual learner. I've learned that "clear is kind", and for many, image and text are both important, but many images have a way of conveying what is difficult to express in words without being overly verbose.
I agree, illustrations are an essential part, especially when teaching something.
Some clients have a setting to inline images, or/and a shortcut to do so on the current page. Most clients can display images when the user follows a link to one. So images are quite useless as decorations (as most will probably not see them) but if an article contains useful images most users will be able to see those.
I found it funny that they propagate the no image thing and the screenshots of android clients showcased some sites that did ascii art and other ways to "fake images".
The Gemini protocol does not mandate lack of images. It is simply left up to the implementation to decide how (or whether) to display those.
One of the most popular Gemini browsers, Lagrange, shows images inline once downloaded. But you need to click their link to ensure you want to see the content first.
E.g., view this in lagrange to see what I mean: gemini://8by3.net/~xkcd/
I initially found this project kind of fun, almost like an art project. But realistically, it’s easier to just use the web. Nothing about the web implies heaviness. If you want a minimalist website with no photos, you are absolutely free to make one, and you’re also free to use e.g. Lynx/w3m/elinks browsers to browse the modern web or the subset that renders well on it. Way, way more websites will look awesome on these in text mode than the content available on Gemini.
I’ve recently started hosting a Gemini capsule for myself, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. Browsing Geminispace has been very refreshing.
Kinda bummed that other threads here are focusing on how Gemini does not replace certain things we can do on the web like it’s a failure. I’d say it’s fine and good that the two have different capabilities!
In my experience, Gemini does not aspire to replace the web, but just to add a different internet experience for those who want the option.
I discovered Gemini years ago and was completely enchanted by the whole concept. There are two main buzz kills though.
1. The TLS requirement really undercuts the idea of using Gemini for whatever you want. I know how to set up certificates and run DNS but it's too much infrastructure. I've seen the rationale and don't find it realistic.
2. The barriers to entry are so high that only hardcore tech enthusiasts survive the journey. I don't dislike the people on there but they ran out of stuff to teach me pretty quickly.
Due to these two things I find Gemini very self contradictory in it's goals. Is it serious or just for fun? Is it meant for everybody or for a small covenant of nerds?
In the end I was unable to find any value in Gemini, however I'm still very interested in the gmi format and gempub ebooks. It's my opinion that unlike web pages, ebooks actually DO need to be rescued in the style of Gemini. The creator of gempub gives a very good rationale of what problems ebooks have and why gmi is much more condusive to a comfortable and consistent reading experience than html and css.
From what I can tell I'm the only person on earth who gives a rat's ass about this (even more than the dev possibly) so I would really appreciate people checking this out.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 87.8 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For me there wasn't really a point to the effort. I'm glad the protocol exists and that people are enjoying it, but I'll stick to HTML.
It's more sensible to build the sort of websites I want to see, and to use Reader Mode for other people's websites.
As I've grown, I've come to learn I'm a very visual learner. I've learned that "clear is kind", and for many, image and text are both important, but many images have a way of conveying what is difficult to express in words without being overly verbose.
I agree, illustrations are an essential part, especially when teaching something.
Yeah - images are an integral part of the www.
One of the most popular Gemini browsers, Lagrange, shows images inline once downloaded. But you need to click their link to ensure you want to see the content first.
E.g., view this in lagrange to see what I mean: gemini://8by3.net/~xkcd/
Also, they should rename it to bard:// (just kidding)
I don't think most of the ones I like would be possible to implement in gemini because it doesn't have images.
Kinda bummed that other threads here are focusing on how Gemini does not replace certain things we can do on the web like it’s a failure. I’d say it’s fine and good that the two have different capabilities!
In my experience, Gemini does not aspire to replace the web, but just to add a different internet experience for those who want the option.
(As you can tell, I still browse the web.)
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=oppen.gemini.a...
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.snoe.deedum
[3] https://oppen.digital/software/ariane/
I wonder if that has to do with that app change google is trying in order to be a walled garden like Apple.
I hope the EU is still sticking it to google and that carries over to the US.
1. The TLS requirement really undercuts the idea of using Gemini for whatever you want. I know how to set up certificates and run DNS but it's too much infrastructure. I've seen the rationale and don't find it realistic.
2. The barriers to entry are so high that only hardcore tech enthusiasts survive the journey. I don't dislike the people on there but they ran out of stuff to teach me pretty quickly.
Due to these two things I find Gemini very self contradictory in it's goals. Is it serious or just for fun? Is it meant for everybody or for a small covenant of nerds?
In the end I was unable to find any value in Gemini, however I'm still very interested in the gmi format and gempub ebooks. It's my opinion that unlike web pages, ebooks actually DO need to be rescued in the style of Gemini. The creator of gempub gives a very good rationale of what problems ebooks have and why gmi is much more condusive to a comfortable and consistent reading experience than html and css.
https://codeberg.org/oppenlab/gempub
From what I can tell I'm the only person on earth who gives a rat's ass about this (even more than the dev possibly) so I would really appreciate people checking this out.