Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS

Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS(brennan.day)

47 points by ChrisArchitect 3 hours ago | 11 comments

sedatk 2 hours ago |

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

progbits 1 hour ago |

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.

goldenarm 9 minutes ago | |

Google almost shipped a DRM for the whole internet in 2023, and they will try again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

akkartik 51 minutes ago | |

Why is it that every criticism of gemini/gopher throws the baby out with the bathwater?

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.

akkartik 2 hours ago |

Wrt finger I want to point out https://plan.cat as a nice service in this spirit.

unethical_ban 2 hours ago |

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.

akkartik 2 hours ago | |

You'd have to prove these things are possible in the face of the ingenuity of the entire adtech industry. The limitations you point out, on the other hand, have easy solutions:

* 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.

CharlesW 2 hours ago | | |

> 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?

SoftTalker 2 hours ago | |

Nothing prevents a gemini browser from showing inline images (though it might be officially discouraged?). They are just links.

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.