There’s a new application-layer Internet protocol like (but also very much unlike) http by the name of Gemini. It was first launched in 2019 and until yesterday, flew completely under my radar. It’s primarily meant to be used for uncluttered text-only pages (although any type of file can be distributed), which are created using a deliberately simple and limited markdown language. Unsurprisingly, this results in a plethora of small niche blogs being published through it.
The basic user experience is essentially the same as browsing the web, until you notice just how much it isn’t. You enter URLs (except that they start with gemini://) you read texts and you click on hyperlinks - except that every page looks exactly the same due to the markdown language. There are no pop-ups, no ads, nothing autoplays, nothing wants your consent to exploit your user data. Even images only load when the user clicks on them. It shows just how little is actually needed, how many aspects of the modern web are completely unnecessary and mere pointless distractions.
Gemini pages - and this is a small hurdle that will keep most people away from it - can not be accessed with a normal web browser and instead require a specialized client for viewing (although paradoxically, creating pages often requires a web browser, at least for now). The idea is that both the underlying tech and the browsers are much more straightforward than anything related to http and html. A Gemini client is not effectively an entire operating system of its own that can execute near arbitrary code. It displays formatted text with basic images and videos - that’s it.
Here’s a neat, but slightly outdated introduction that also recommends a few clients and where to find pages to read:
The entire thing feels very early, tiny, experimental and odd, almost like a parallel reality, as if the World Wide Web didn’t exist and someone came up with something like it only now, using today’s hard- and software. If Lemmy is a response to social media in general and reddit in particular, Gemini feels more like a response to the World Wide Web as a whole or like a time machine back to a highly idealized version of the early days of the information system (the primary difference being the lack of horrendous '90s UX design and malware everywhere), including some unfortunate aspects that I had long forgotten about, like how the common method of finding content next to feeds - manually updated indexes instead of search engines - is plagued by dead links; and these dead links, unlike on the normal Internet, cannot be attempted to be resolved using the Wayback Machine or some other cache, at least not yet.
Gemini is equally parts exciting and promising, like a new frontier, but also at times confusing and frustrating. Don’t expect your Gemini client of choice to replace your web browser any time soon (or ever), but it’s still worth trying out, if for the novelty alone.
I was initially interested in the idea of Gemini, but when looking for a client, I happened upon this blog post by the creator of one of the clients about why they were abandoning it.
After a lot of thinking, I’ve realized there is one main reason I don’t keep coming back to Gemini: it offers no advantage over how I already use the Web.
In practice, the Web already has all the Gemini content I’m interested in from various people, and then of course everything else. Having everything in one place (whether my web browser or feed reader) makes for a much nicer experience.
Gemini is a reaction to bloated modern websites, but in fact I don’t actually visit that many gross websites like that. When I do, my ad blocker and paywall bypasser usually make them decent again. Otherwise, I spend the majority of my non-work Internet time on lightweight sites like my feed reader and Hacker News, and some time on sites that Gemini can’t emulate: YouTube, Reddit, Discord. The reality is that Gemini just wouldn’t actually improve this experience for me.
These are exactly the reservations I had about the concept, so to have someone so invested in it reach this exact conclusion and leave it made me decide to forego it. I think it’s a neat toy, and if it becomes relevant I’ll definitely take another look, but I think it’s a bit of putting the cart before the horse. I don’t want to use a protocol for the sake of using a protocol, I want it to serve a purpose and solve an actual problem I have.
I enjoyed browsing Gemini capsules using the Lagrange browser. Its look and feel is awesome and made me want to write smol websites again. I’m appalled by what modern websites have become. I miss making light but cool sites without an ounce of scripts in them.
Have you looked at the source code of a capsule? It’s delightfully simple.
I’m not familiar with the Gemini protocol, but how does it differ from just starting up a webserver pointed at a single folder with an
index.html? Isn’t it still just as possible to make a simple site using http?
I have seen Gemini before but never tried it. Maybe i will but i do have a few questions first:
- Is there a Gemini search engine?
- Is there support for Forms/server side code
- How big is it? Is there like just a few sites or a few hundred?
Is there a Gemini search engine?
I’ve found this one:
gemini://geminispace.info/
Needs a client to access, of course. Basic, but functional. I found a general-purpose forum not too different from reddit or lemmy through it (and they decided to call it a BBS, because the Eternal September hasn’t happened to Gemini yet):
gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/
Is there support for Forms/server side code
To the best of my understanding (and it’s highly limited, since I only just learned about this, so take everything with a grain of salt), what Gemini does is primarily limit what the client can do. No local scripts, highly limited markdown. The server side is not limited. You can write any complex code you want that works behind the scenes - but it still has to deliver static pages (called “capsules”) to the end user. This series of articles explains the basic underlying tech and uses the example of a simple server to illustrate how Gemini works:
And yes, forms are possible, even though there appears to be a somewhat widespread misconception that they are impossible. Please excuse the sketchy-looking IP address instead of a URL, this was the best resource I was able to find on this (and yes, I checked if this page is on Gemini - this appears to be not the case):
http://216.218.220.144/tutorials/sig-tutorials/misc/gemini-forms.gmi
Screenshot if you don’t want to click on the above link: https://i.imgur.com/s2mL3bM.png
Disclaimer: This is two years old and I have not tried to implement it myself. Looks entirely plausible though.
How big is it? Is there like just a few sites or a few hundred?
According to the search engine linked above, there are 2420 domains and 1,854,666 individual pages as of yesterday. This is about comparable to the World Wide Web at the same time 1994, a number that grew to 10,000 by the end of that year; I wouldn’t expect the same explosive growth from Gemini - the field has already been plowed, after all. Gemini Space is small, but not a ghost town.
This is fascinating and I’ll have to take a look. I wonder where all the people creating this are hanging out as I’d love to get involved.
Appreciate all the detail and the extra mile of providing the screenshot!
Have some Lemmy gold: 🥇
Yes! I use the Buran app (open source on Android) to browse it. :)
What are your favorite sites?
I honestly don’t really use it, but I am excited about it in the future. :)
I installed it because of OSNews, my favorite tech news website. But the Gemini page seems to be down?
https://www.osnews.com/story/136770/osnews-launches-gemini-capsule/
It’s cool and all, but this feels more like a toy than a tool. I can make dead simple web site in minutes with current stack. Nothing, but plain static pages.
Heck, if I looked for it, I bet I could set up markdown to HTML converter as this is already a widely used functionality throughout the web.
Sounds a bit like Gopher.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, this is really fascinating and just my kind of thing.
I’d love to host my personal site over Gemini but that site doesn’t have any details about self-hosting. Guess I’ve got to research it in more detail. Do you have any recommendations? Should I just write my own server? 🤔
Ferrero (the company that owns Kinder, Nutella and Ferrero Rocher) controlled one quarter of the global production of hazelnuts in 2014.
(Edited to remove some unintentionally deceptive language)
That’s way too much for one company. Is it just me or does the world just keep making more and more monopolies?
That’s how capitalism works.
It’s just deceivingly worded. It’s not like they took that much out of the total supply, taking away from others that would have needed it. Reality is that hazelnut farmers were farming them in order to sell them to Ferrero.
I guess that makes somewhat sense. But it still gives Ferrero too big of an influence on the price of hazelnuts I would guess
NSA spends $250 million per year to insert backdoors in software and hardware
Sources:
I thought your post said NASA at first, and I was really skeptical.
They install backdoors on their spaceships though :p
Would be highly tragic if the astronauts only had a single exit.Just get Boeing to make the spaceships then
You are not alone.
Major sporting events are a popular time for men to schedule a vasectomy because they’re advised to take it easy for two to three days after the procedure. For most men, this means sitting on the couch in front of their television, and sporting events offer them something to watch while resting.
https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/why-more-men-get-vasectomies-during-march-madnessI find it hard to believe young guys still plan any aspects of their lives around watching sports events.
Earlier today I learned the voice of Shredder from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince. I never knew.
I knew. Then I forgot. Now I know again.
Sounds like a text book case of remembering. There’s a great tragically hip line that goes “it would seem to me, I remember every single fucking thing I know!”
But do you know what I remember? Checkmate non-believers!
runs away
Yep! Though he didn’t do all the episodes. They had a few stand ins too
They also kidnap baby seals and rape them to death, but cutely.
that’s otterly horrifying
That’s otterly adorable.
They also often have a favorite stone and a pocket to keep it.
The word “asteroid” literally means “star-like”, because when they were first observed, no telescope could see enough detail to know what they were, so they were basically just called “those things that look a bit like stars”.
Even when eventually we figured out what they were, they were generally considered to all be spherical like tiny planets (see: The Little Prince) until the 1970s when one of the Mars probes flew close enough to have a look at one.
It is only in the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Nah, pretty sure a microscope or telescope will not only do the job, they would be even better.
Hummingbirds eat mosquitoes.
Good on them
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Where can I learn more? This is fascinating.
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All mammals with a full bladder pee for precisely 21 seconds. Legit universal rule.
I tried recreating that experiment with my dogs over several months and can confidently say they pee anywhere from 7 seconds to almost a minute.
Just go to a dog park and observe them. You’ll be able to see for yourself. Hell, you might be able to search YouTube for videos of dogs, or any other mammals for that matter, pissing.
You know you’re also a mammal with a bladder, right?
A study showing that nearly all mammals take the same amount of time to urinate […]
Not Hank Hill and his narry urethra
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Watching historical stuff on youtube (I download and watch during my commute), today I learned how the Portuguese managed to get a very firm hold on the western coast of India in the early 1500s. The TLDR version is that they managed to get the cities that were vassals of Calicut under their wing, and even managed to fight off a massive siege the raja of Calicut sent to destroy their small garrison at Kochin in 1504: a 50k strong force was beaten by a garrison of 90 Portuguese soldiers + ~200 local Nayar warriors + 3 Portuguese ships (1 carrack and 2 caravels).
Before it got to that part, I also learned that Vasco da Gama, who led the initial demands on Calicut, was a short tempered psycopath and violent maniac hell bent on teaching “those muslims” a lesson.
Which videos did you watch?
Flash Point History - The bit on Kochin was in the last 2 or 3 videos about Duarte Pereira, I watched via the compiled stuff “Forging an Empire - The Portuguese Empire - Part 2 Commerce”
I’m not exactly fond of the excessive use of AI generated images, especially when the host could’ve used more historical pieces from wikipedia, but the overall structure of the video is really good.
Thank you!
I have to say though, the AI imagery is off-putting as an idea alone, because what else from the video is AI-generated? Text and perhaps even voice as well? I’ve seen this before, entirely artificial videos with absurd mistakes as part of the content or even entirely nonsensical content.
I share that sentiment. I can understand using some AI to give more visual candy so people have more help their imagination as to what things might have looked like. AFAIK, however, all the map and “token movement” (moving the portraits, ships, etc) can’t be done by AI, so there’s plenty of human meddling in the creation of the video.
A somewhat related channel that might interest you then is SAMA - Study of Antiquity and Middle Ages. Seems to be more focused on archaelogical findings than written history, the video on Sunken Sciences taught me a lot about stuff found in now submerged coastlines, as well as the Yonaguni Monument (with a nice tangent on why some people insist in conspiracy theories about “lost continents”)
A more directly related channel is Kings and Generals, it goes into good details of historical conflicts and battles. Seems to use the same graphic pack/map software as Flash Point
Fall of Civilizations podcast also releases big videos sometime after the podcast proper, and it’s always amazing.
baltic sea is the youngest ocean of the planet.
Most of the people I know don’t live, they just survive
Why do you believe that most people you know don’t live and are just surviving?
They do things because they must, and do them quick so they can continue to do the next thing they must do.
While they do these things, they don’t seem to enjoy the moment doing it, it’s like a robot doing something because it must.
Most of them has so many things they must do that they don’t have enough time sleeping, and that cycle just gets worse and worse.
And it doesn’t stop; they get old, they become unhealthy, but they must continue to keep up, because they pressure themselves to do so, or others do it or manipulate them to feel that.
They fake or ignore how they really feel, just to adjust to the environment, and actually they don’t really know what they feel, only what they must do.
That’s surviving in my opinion.
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As I suspect, unfortunately, both are part of the reason for it.
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25% of men’s hair will thin before 21
80% by 50
Is that 25/80% of men will have thinner hair, or 25/80% of a man’s hair will thin?
When this starts happening do yourself a favour and shave it off. I had a bald spot I hated for years until I started shaving my head. Looks a lot better now.
This applies to white people only right
Ball jars are made by Newell Brands. Ball makes spaceships now instead
Wow! I just looked at their wikipedia page, and that’s really fascinating! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_Corporation?oldformat=true
Sadly, they don’t do space anymore: https://www.baesystems.com/en/article/bae-systems-completes-acquisition-of-ball--aerospace
actually, i knew that too but admitting it would have ruined my fun fact…
