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The title was "Gemini's uselessness is its killer feature", and it gained a couple of hundred comments. We need neon lights around what the point of Gemini is - it's human scale publishing.
What stands out in the comments is a willingness to chime in with opinions without even bothering to learn enough to form that opinion. The Gemini web site isn't exactly tortuous reading. It even has a FAQ!
Here are snippets of the top comments on the HN post, and the responses I might have posted if I could be bothered.
I don't like that "Gemini has no support for caching, compression, or resumpton of interrupted downloads"
There's no need for any of that. If you do need it, then you're abusing Gemini. Use HTTP.
If Gemini documents could support static HTML and CSS it would be more useful to people who it is intended to benefit.
If Gemini documents could support HTML, then they would no longer be Gemini documents. Use HTML.
Seems like some folks like simple stuff because they feel more included in the magic of it all.
This is literally meaningless.
Gemini feels like a job half done.
This is correct, give or take, since the spec is still a work in progress. However the comment wasn't really coming at it from that direction.
Indeed, tables are an essential a thing which should be there, but it should be implemented in a way which makes it impossible to abuse it for layout, it should only be used to represent actual tables. I would even add...
Would you like to join the mailing list?
I dislike that Gemini require an another web server and another web browser.
The full comment reads like satire, but it's not. Gemini doesn't require *any* web browser, nor web server. It's not the web.
There are still a large number of people creating blogs and websites without analytics etc., and with no expectation of being able to monetize their work.
Okay then, find them for me. It's like trying to find chocolate spread in a vat of slurry.
Gemini misses the point. The problem with the web is Javascript, not italics. It's a good example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Ahhhh, so _that's_ the problem. Now it all makes sense. Thanks!
Why not simply use HTML with JS off, plus userscripts to block cookie banners and sticky headers? You get modern CSS features like column display.
Sorry buddy, you're one comment too late with that one. See above.
It's a shame it can't add on any innovations that didn't make the cut to the current web
That's not a shame. I mean, it will evolve. Hopefully not quite as fast as Gopher, but I'm sure it will evolve nonetheless.