It’s worth noting that HTTP itself has unparalleled performance for the Web due to the protocol itself (and web servers that deliver it) being optimized over the years to support compression, transfer encoding, encapsulation, etc.
Gemini also transmits a mimetype that’s text-based (text/gemini) but it runs on port 1965 — as opposed to the usual 443 (HTTPS) or 80 (HTTP) that Web browsers usually connect to by default. Gemini therefore needs customized “browsers” that will read the protocol and parse the data that’s received from a Gemini server, however there are Web Proxies that do this as well [0].
In that sense, it’s an alternative to the Web inasmuch as it’s an alternative to HTTP; but (importantly) without any maturity, performance, or scalability whatsoever.
Now to be fair, Gemini doesn't claim to replace HTTP in any way; being a niche, small-web technology.
But in my opinion it's pretty pointless since it uses a strict subset of the HTTP spec which makes it feature-delimited by design.
Using HTML sans CSS/JS will give you a similar yet better experience.
I can understand why the vast Gopher community would immediately dump/mirror all of their content into Gemini Space. My question is why anyone else will, when one can easily create an equally-spartan experience using universal web technologies.
If you approach that question as a developer, it makes sense. Why not just restrict yourself to a subset of HTML+HTTP, which is what many people do.
However, as a user, I can't be sure what's behind each URL. Does communitywiki.org require JavaScript? Do they set cookies? Do they violate my privacy with telemetry and analytics?
If I see a gemini:// link, I know the answers to all of those questions -- they don't because they can't, not because they choose not to.
You can check what any URL does, actually; unfortunately, the browser does not make that easy.
A gemini:// link can't set cookies, but it doesn't prevent serving HTML or any other type of file. However, a browser may disable HTML with Gemini by default, or not support HTML with Gemini at all. Doing so may be useful in order to more easily answer the questions you mention.
Using HTML over HTTP in any form opens you to tracking, through the referer header, ETag lookup, and cookies.
The idea behind Gemini is to cut off all such capabilities (even when useful for good things) and prevent attempts to add them as extensions. This may make sense in the niche they are targeting.
This also prevents common session tracking mechanisms, but even form submission is not a thing in Gemini anyway.
It won't prevent serving HTML with GET forms (although POST forms won't work, and neither will cookies), although a client may very well not understand the document (or any other HTML document) and not display it (and even if it does understand HTML, it might restrict HTML with Gemini by default, in order to avoid tricking the user into thinking that one kind of document is a different kind, and/or in order to avoid doing things which are undesirable with Gemini; HTML is probably mostly undesirable with Gemini anyways).
If you need an interactive system, then SSH or Telnet might be better, rather than Gemini or HTTP(S). For other things, other protocols will be better, e.g. for communications, IRC or NNTP would help (depending on the kinds of communications). They also mentioned a Titan protocol, for writing to Gemini files.
I suppose that as the Gemini network grows, someone will create a search engine. The old-school "?foo+bar" style of GET queries should be enough even on clients supporting only standard Gemini markup. (Arbitrary MIME types are supported, so enhanced or entirely different interfaces are possible.)
Gemini has decided to invest in a "technical solution to a social problem". Usually a terrible idea, but having spent some time in Gemini they seem to be succeeding. There's more concentrated random, weird, interesting stuff there than you can find on the web.
Notice that there's more of that stuff on the web, but you can't find it because search engines don't lead you there, and link connectivity between the interesting parts of the web is low.
I agree that technology shouldn't be used to solve social problems, but in some ways, the problem Gemini aims to solve is technical -- software and network protocols permit surveillance. We should be moving towards systems that have privacy-by-design rather than privacy-by-policy or privacy-by-convention.
I don't see how a social solution would work -- do we just make analytics, telemetry, etc... illegal? And then watch as people break the law or do what they did with GDPR: implement just enough to follow the letter of the law, but completely ignore the spirit of the law?
The sole case I can think of is GitHub removing cookies when you're not logged in so they never have to show a cookie banner. One exception among thousands of cookie banners and GDPR violations.
The NSA isn't allowed to spy on American citizens, so they get the GCHQ to spy on Americans and they exchange data on British citizens in return.
You literally have a government helping another government to break the fucking law. Not to mention it's illegal to not pay your taxes, and yet almost every big company does.
So I'm just not convinced the solution can be as simple as "just enact legislation".
We need a technical solution. Even if you want legislation, a technical solution is good to act as another layer of protection.
Technology can be checked -- by reading the source code or inspecting network traffic -- to make sure you're not being spied on. That's vastly superior to any solution that expects people to pinky promise to not do anything bad.
I thought so too, but after spending a while in the Gemini space it really grew on me. Having one semantic meaning per line actually makes content flow much more naturally. I find myself scanning backwards a lot less.
Sometimes what's easier for a software parser is also easier for the parser in our brains. Give it a chance; it takes time to un-learn Web habits.
I remember seeing a similar technically restricted community on HN a few months ago but can't quite remember the name. I think something with club in the name? Can anyone help me untie the knot in my brain?
Curious what actually defines a tilde site now? This seems to have stylesheets etc, not quite as minimalist as what I remembered the other pages to be like.
A tilde is a pubnix server that also serves as a social community. They typically let users host pages on Web, Gopher, Gemini, and/or Finger protocols too.
Admins often run services such as IRC bouncers, mail servers, pastebins, or (in my tilde's instance) a Fediverse node and Matrix server.
The official IRC channel of the Gemini community is on the tilde.chat server, made for members of the Tildeverse.
I couldn't tell you what the exact definition might be...but according to tildeverse.org's homepage, "...tildes are pubnixes in the spirit of tilde.club, which was created in 2014 by paul ford..." So, sort of unix/linux shell accounts for public users; in essence a *community of people on a single unix/linux server*. And then these users do stuff on the server (virtually of course), like chat with each other, have really meaningful discussions, share stuff, publish basic blogs, etc. The appearance of many (though not all) tilde-related sites seems to have the aesthetic of the typical linux/unix command line with black background, and green or amber or white text; that sort of look. But beyond that command line-esque appearance, there seems to be a desire to experience a simpler internet; without too much of the glitz, bloat, over-done "design", etc. Between tilde sites, geminispace, the fediverse, and the matrix network, it sure seems like quite a number of folks are seeking engagement away from the typical web/social destinations. While i clearly frequent HN, i've spent lots more time on tildes.net in the last year (because of the engaging discourse, not because of the site's aesthetic). You might want to conduct your own research around tilde communities. If you're interested in joining tildes.net specifically, feel free to reach out to me as i still have a few invites left. Good luck!
Gemini also transmits a mimetype that’s text-based (text/gemini) but it runs on port 1965 — as opposed to the usual 443 (HTTPS) or 80 (HTTP) that Web browsers usually connect to by default. Gemini therefore needs customized “browsers” that will read the protocol and parse the data that’s received from a Gemini server, however there are Web Proxies that do this as well [0].
In that sense, it’s an alternative to the Web inasmuch as it’s an alternative to HTTP; but (importantly) without any maturity, performance, or scalability whatsoever.
Now to be fair, Gemini doesn't claim to replace HTTP in any way; being a niche, small-web technology.
But in my opinion it's pretty pointless since it uses a strict subset of the HTTP spec which makes it feature-delimited by design.
Using HTML sans CSS/JS will give you a similar yet better experience.
[0] https://proxy.vulpes.one