I don't knock Gemini for existing and being a neat project, but even for hobby it seems too restrictive. No cookies means no authenticated interaction with a site, no inline images means it's less informative than a 100 year old encyclopedia.
Perhaps a "Simple Web" spec could be created to audit a site and verify its privacy and simplicity protections. Things like "Cookies only for auth", "No JS" or "low JS", "No ref tracking in or out", "No tracking pixels", etc.
Authenticated sessions are supported using client certificates.
No inline images is a significant restriction indeed but it also gives you a high degree of confidence that most Gemini pages will be very lightweight. I don't find it that limiting. It all goes back to the point that Gemini is intended to supplement the web and not replace it - if you want image heavy content you can get it elsewhere. Personally I find the lack of inline formatting and links more frustrating.
I do think it's a shame that Gemini doesn't have images and richer text, but maybe it would be even less popular/successful if it had those. Gemini won't be the last of these simple protocols so it's a useful learning opportunity.
My project at the moment is kind of related to these "simple web" ideas. Instead of giving up on HTML altogether I'm making a simple web browser, to see if there's a way to render even relatively complex existing pages, like Wikipedia or news sites, without needing to implement much or any CSS. A bit like "reader mode". (link if you are interested: https://codeberg.org/kaimac/weaver)
No inline images is not a restriction of the protocol. It's a restriction of the text/gemini MIME content type, and of the browser implementations. A server can still respond with text/html content over the GEMINI protocol, with embedded <image/> data. The GEMINI protocol specification does not restrict what RFC2045 types can be used.
Inline images are a client implementation/styling detail. Some clients have it, but most don’t as most users don’t seem to want it. I believe Lagrange (the most “visual” browser) has this feature.
Inline images can be advertising. Images you have to fetch manually can be advertising. Text can be advertising. Anywhere you have a means to exchange information, you can also have advertising.
There's a difference between push and pull for images.
If you have to manually click a link to an image, and it's advertising, then there's a loss of trust with the rest of the links on the page.
If the page includes adverts that render automatically, you just say "meh" and try to read the content in a sea of increasingly intrusive and repetitive advertising.
Text advertising is not as successful or intrusive as image advertising.
Finger was the original Twitter. We used to get updates on Quake's development from John Carmack by fingering his email. He used to write elaborate ".plan" files too, no nonsense character limits were in sight yet. It was magical. It worked like this:
$ finger johnc@idsoftware.com
No retweets, no likes, no notifications, no HN frontpage, but John Carmack kept writing them, and we kept reading. Even without any amplification dynamics, it was still engaging.
I've tried the same now, 30 years after my last finger. It wasn't even installed on Ubuntu by default. I had to install it, and expectedly:
$ finger johnc@idsoftware.com
finger: connect: Connection timed out
Why is it that every gemini/gopher discussion throws out the baby with the bathwater?
> Chrome alone controls roughly 73% of global desktop browser market share.
> More and more, the webdevs of the world test and develop for Chrome only.
> It doesn't need to be this way. https:// is not the only way to connect and interface with the Internet
These are completely unrelated concepts! Google/Chrome doesn't control HTTP nor HTTPS. There is nothing wrong with the protocols, you can just make your website plaintext file if you like.
I have started to try and always develop Gopher versions of my sites for my research work. I try and promote that version especially to those who live in countries where internet access is costly relative to income or internet access is limited. Usually the key differences are diagrams become ASCII based.
Objections to Gemini that point out that nothing is stopping people from writing simple HTML miss the point.
It's not that HTML forces well-meaning creators to add complexity, size, or user-hostile behavior; it's that an ecosystem that permits such behavior eventually becomes swamped by adtech and other user-hostile content for financial gain. The problem is that this content drowns out organic, human-centric content.
Having said that, while format restrictions (to plaintext, markdown, gemtext, HTML without JavaScript) do help mitigate the damage somewhat by making tracking harder, I doubt they are sufficient: even text-only forums can become overrun with spam, ads, bots, and propaganda if they lack suitable moderation.
Ultimately folks who want to browse a web of authentic human content need to combine format restrictions with blocklists and web-of-trust tools. Browser plugins, reader mode, and customized search engines can already get us partway there, but there are still gaps.
Thats a big assumption. As Michael Goldhaber put it in the early days of the Internet - people have limited capacity to give Attention to anything but unlimited capacity to receive Attention.
Scientists and technologists are not immune. And it shows up in what they cook up.
You could theoretically have a web that does not bloat. HTML is a very good technology for building clean documents. You are not going to get that, though. What happens instead is that you start on a thoughtfully designed page and are always one click away from a cookie consent banner on top of an email capture modal beside four flavors of ad. "Sure, but you can install adblock/VPN/Pi-hole/reader mode/turn off JS/etc/etc..."
I like Gemini because it actually delivered a lightweight protocol that provides what I was looking for. Additionally, it is not just a technology. It is an ecosystem that gained more traction than the hundreds of other attempts that never went anywhere.
The spec made mistakes, but HTTP has mistakes too.
It's a good point, but I think the counter is that if the only people writing anything available via Gemini would have written nice simple HTML anyway, then not an awful lot is gained.
I’d love to see CoAP/wg play a part here. It’s similar enough to HTTP to be familiar, but not supported in any browser. It supports content types and server sent events. It can be implemented in far less memory and uses far less CPU than TLS. It seems like the perfect protocol for this kind of thing.
> Mozilla, which still maintains one of the only independent rendering engines (Gecko), is the only viable competitor. Everything else is Blink and Google.
IMHO Promoting lo-spec computing and text-based is always good, seems limiting but that's what I like about it. I tried fingering as the article says, but I only got a BRENNAN: no such user :(
Man, Gopher was part of my first internet experience. It felt so magical to basically explore a (seemingly) infinite file system. Found great servers that had all sorts of interesting stuff, and then would link to other interesting servers.
I still remember a book about the internet I got in the early 90s... it was a couple of hundred pages, and then in the last chapter there was one paragraph in a section about new technology for something called "the World Wide Web".
For years I would be frustrated at people who would conflate the internet and The World Wide Web. I gave up on that years ago, though.
As a younger person I always see these discussions and I want an alternative to the modern web. But reading this I cant help but think "why are people so focused on building a web with none of the useful features". What use is any of this without a realtime component.
...because a lot of us remember a web that was very useful already, without needing a realtime component? We did the realtime stuff over other protocols; the web was literally just a web of static hypertext documents.
In fact, even search engines were originally optional; various people and organizations used to simply maintain huge static directory service websites, simply listing out "everything else on the web" (or more often, just the parts the author thinks are cool.)
The largest disconnect between then and now, is the degree to which the internet was many things (telnet, ftp, usenet, finger, gopher, http, irc, mail, etc...), and not just webpages. Each with their own specific flavors. The article is trying to recapture that to a small degree.
Over time, almost everything has been compressed into this HTTP/HTML/JScript agglomeration. When the original thought was that there would be dozens of protocols for various uses, and a lot more client applications than the browser.
The best analogy I can think of is, imagine that plays(theaters), movies(bigscreens), novels(books), operas(concert halls), art(galleries), museums, etc... All disappeared in favor of delivering that content through games on your Xbox. All of that experience compressed into one method. Then the next generation says:
"Why would anyone miss physical art galleries? I can see art much faster on the 'Louvre 2026-season pass' on my Xbox? No travel, no walking, no lines."
> Particularly after Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations about mass surveillance, running an unencrypted protocol started to feel more and more like bad practice.
As far as i understood, NSA has access to the encrypted communication on the internet so all bets are off. They '"collaborate" with certificate issuers, they monitor all big internet nodes in the "west" and all relevant software is produced in their jurisdiction.
I use a modified, "modern" text-only browser that compiles to 1.4 MB static binary after I remove some multilanguage encodings
I've been using this browser since around 2000. I think some HN commnters would be syrprised at how much of the www I can digest using this program. They wouldn't believe it was possible
I use localhost TLS forward proxies for HTTPS. Breaking TLS turns out to be an excellent method for blocking ads and telemetry, in addition to DNS and "ad blockers"
People like to pretend that Google and other so-called "tech" companies have killed off HTTP
It may be true depending on one's www usage, but I see evidence that HTTP still alive
When their "business model" is collecting data from and about unsuspecting computer users, it makes sense for these companies to want the transmissions encrypted. If users saw what is being sent over the wire to these companies they might be upset. If competitors saw it then they might use the data themselves. Too much data collection... I digress
There are bands of vocal "tech" workers who try to drown out any mention of HTTP. Others try to make fun of FTP
But both are still being used in a variety of places, whether it's by CAs themselves^1, Google, e.g., for autocomplete^2 or even the NY Times^3 or MSN
Anyway, the point is that these companies may try to kill off usage of certain protocols where it suits them, e.g., remember FTP in the web browser. But the protocols still survive and people still use them, even if it's only the "tech" workers themselves, and others in small numbers
Ugh, the table of gopher search results in this article is like seeing someone take a can of modern expanding spray foam and using it to repair an axle on a horse buggy. ‘We have an excellent old technology and we’re doing our level best to backport our modern torment nexus to it’, sigh. For the first bit of the article I was really excited but of course there’s gopher crawlers now. Still, at least that opens up some ideas for ephemeral-rotating URIs that contaminate scraper databases.
31 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 54.6 ms ] threadPerhaps a "Simple Web" spec could be created to audit a site and verify its privacy and simplicity protections. Things like "Cookies only for auth", "No JS" or "low JS", "No ref tracking in or out", "No tracking pixels", etc.
- no scripts of any kind
- no cookies
- no forms
- all resources (e.g., styles, images) needed for display inlined
- a spacious minimum cap on data URI length
- elaborate the <a> tag a bit to allow a series of content addresses (hashes, IPFS, magnet URIs, etc.) for references
Basically, a "dead" subset of HTML suitable for distributing documents.
No inline images is a significant restriction indeed but it also gives you a high degree of confidence that most Gemini pages will be very lightweight. I don't find it that limiting. It all goes back to the point that Gemini is intended to supplement the web and not replace it - if you want image heavy content you can get it elsewhere. Personally I find the lack of inline formatting and links more frustrating.
My project at the moment is kind of related to these "simple web" ideas. Instead of giving up on HTML altogether I'm making a simple web browser, to see if there's a way to render even relatively complex existing pages, like Wikipedia or news sites, without needing to implement much or any CSS. A bit like "reader mode". (link if you are interested: https://codeberg.org/kaimac/weaver)
* https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/protocol-specification.gmi
* https://iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml
And "tracking pixels".
Keeping them separate was a smart move, and entirely consistent with the underlying philosophy.
If you have to manually click a link to an image, and it's advertising, then there's a loss of trust with the rest of the links on the page.
If the page includes adverts that render automatically, you just say "meh" and try to read the content in a sea of increasingly intrusive and repetitive advertising.
Text advertising is not as successful or intrusive as image advertising.
I've tried the same now, 30 years after my last finger. It wasn't even installed on Ubuntu by default. I had to install it, and expectedly:
> Chrome alone controls roughly 73% of global desktop browser market share.
> More and more, the webdevs of the world test and develop for Chrome only.
> It doesn't need to be this way. https:// is not the only way to connect and interface with the Internet
These are completely unrelated concepts! Google/Chrome doesn't control HTTP nor HTTPS. There is nothing wrong with the protocols, you can just make your website plaintext file if you like.
It's not that HTML forces well-meaning creators to add complexity, size, or user-hostile behavior; it's that an ecosystem that permits such behavior eventually becomes swamped by adtech and other user-hostile content for financial gain. The problem is that this content drowns out organic, human-centric content.
Having said that, while format restrictions (to plaintext, markdown, gemtext, HTML without JavaScript) do help mitigate the damage somewhat by making tracking harder, I doubt they are sufficient: even text-only forums can become overrun with spam, ads, bots, and propaganda if they lack suitable moderation.
Ultimately folks who want to browse a web of authentic human content need to combine format restrictions with blocklists and web-of-trust tools. Browser plugins, reader mode, and customized search engines can already get us partway there, but there are still gaps.
You could theoretically have a web that does not bloat. HTML is a very good technology for building clean documents. You are not going to get that, though. What happens instead is that you start on a thoughtfully designed page and are always one click away from a cookie consent banner on top of an email capture modal beside four flavors of ad. "Sure, but you can install adblock/VPN/Pi-hole/reader mode/turn off JS/etc/etc..."
I like Gemini because it actually delivered a lightweight protocol that provides what I was looking for. Additionally, it is not just a technology. It is an ecosystem that gained more traction than the hundreds of other attempts that never went anywhere.
The spec made mistakes, but HTTP has mistakes too.
Notably missing Safari and WebKit
I still remember a book about the internet I got in the early 90s... it was a couple of hundred pages, and then in the last chapter there was one paragraph in a section about new technology for something called "the World Wide Web".
For years I would be frustrated at people who would conflate the internet and The World Wide Web. I gave up on that years ago, though.
In fact, even search engines were originally optional; various people and organizations used to simply maintain huge static directory service websites, simply listing out "everything else on the web" (or more often, just the parts the author thinks are cool.)
Over time, almost everything has been compressed into this HTTP/HTML/JScript agglomeration. When the original thought was that there would be dozens of protocols for various uses, and a lot more client applications than the browser.
The best analogy I can think of is, imagine that plays(theaters), movies(bigscreens), novels(books), operas(concert halls), art(galleries), museums, etc... All disappeared in favor of delivering that content through games on your Xbox. All of that experience compressed into one method. Then the next generation says:
"Why would anyone miss physical art galleries? I can see art much faster on the 'Louvre 2026-season pass' on my Xbox? No travel, no walking, no lines."
As far as i understood, NSA has access to the encrypted communication on the internet so all bets are off. They '"collaborate" with certificate issuers, they monitor all big internet nodes in the "west" and all relevant software is produced in their jurisdiction.
I've been using this browser since around 2000. I think some HN commnters would be syrprised at how much of the www I can digest using this program. They wouldn't believe it was possible
I use localhost TLS forward proxies for HTTPS. Breaking TLS turns out to be an excellent method for blocking ads and telemetry, in addition to DNS and "ad blockers"
People like to pretend that Google and other so-called "tech" companies have killed off HTTP
It may be true depending on one's www usage, but I see evidence that HTTP still alive
When their "business model" is collecting data from and about unsuspecting computer users, it makes sense for these companies to want the transmissions encrypted. If users saw what is being sent over the wire to these companies they might be upset. If competitors saw it then they might use the data themselves. Too much data collection... I digress
There are bands of vocal "tech" workers who try to drown out any mention of HTTP. Others try to make fun of FTP
But both are still being used in a variety of places, whether it's by CAs themselves^1, Google, e.g., for autocomplete^2 or even the NY Times^3 or MSN
Anyway, the point is that these companies may try to kill off usage of certain protocols where it suits them, e.g., remember FTP in the web browser. But the protocols still survive and people still use them, even if it's only the "tech" workers themselves, and others in small numbers
1.
http://ocsp.globalsign.com/ca/gsatlasr3dvtlsca2026q2
http://secure.globalsign.com/cacert/gsatlasr3dvtlsca2026q2.c...
http://crl.globalsign.com/ca/gsatlasr3dvtlsca2026q2.crl
2.
http://clients1.google.com/complete/search?client=heirloom-h...
3.
via Fastly
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rezmoss/cloud-provider-ip-...
http://ipv4.games