$ 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> 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.
When you browse to a pristine html page containing zero adtech it contains links. Those links you might click on without first thoroughly vetting them for behavioral exhaust.
Hyperlinks are a vector for contagion. A new protocol creates isolation. What's wrong with both existing? Defense in depth at all levels, I say. You think https can't enshittify, maybe you just haven't waited long enough.
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.
* auth: Look at https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini#services Tons of services support some form of auth.
Edit: https://martinrue.com/station is another service I use that's missing in the above list.
* images: click to load
Janky but doable. Janky is the price you have to pay to avoid adtech.
I don't understand, unless adtech is holding your family hostage and forcing you to adtech. Can you elaborate?
But actually loading images separately can work well. If you are reading for the text content you can save the time and bandwidth to load of all the images, or maybe you want to look at one image in detail, you can load just that one, and zoom or frame that independently of the surrounding text.
> One can still be part of the solution without leaving the modern-standards-based mainstream altogether for the digital equivalent of an off-grid cabin in the woods.
So many judging words there. A new protocol is an off-grid cabin in the woods, but building a non-janky universally accessible website isn't? You'll have to prove you can get a random new website more traffic over https without doing nefarious shit and letting the big adtech companies crawl it.