💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › geminilist › 005437.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 17:22:02. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-11-30)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
avr at geminet.org avr at geminet.org
Mon Feb 22 11:30:42 GMT 2021
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 12:23:15AM -0500, Michael Lazar wrote:
This is disgraceful, shameless intimidation.
At the moment there's nothing preventing a gemini client from runningan interpreter for a gemtext embedded scripting language other thangood habits and intent. The only thing anyone in the gemini-versecan do to prevent such things is to not play along. Self-regulationis all we have.
Maybe it's unfortunate that this truth has been stated with, let's call itDeVaultian flair, but that doesn't make it wrong or even "intimidation".
The threat isn’t to blackhole all requests to /favicon.txt, which
might have been considered reasonable. No, the thread is to blackhole
the IP address of every amfora user, cutting them off from a large
swath of gemini and thereby crippling the client. Destroying the
hundreds of hours that makeworld has no doubt spent building up his
software and community. Unless he submits, unwavering, to ddevault’s
ultimatum to "fix" his software.
I think a returning a 58 error code ("Client is broken and smells bad") on requesting favicons would be a more appropriate respons but I can see where he's coming from. It's a form of "not playing along" with something he might think is very detrimental to the health of the gemini-universe. Drew beingprolific and/or provides resources in the public interest should not be used against him.
Think carefully about the consequences of using gemini://srht.site.
It's a bit early for such warning. Gemini is commercially worthless. Thereare no big consequences to simply moving a capsule. And if one thinksgemini will become big and commercially succesful, now is the time to pay special interest as to what might turn out to be a slippery slope.
The web didn't get to be in the abysmal state it is in today by a fewbad actors with lots of influence who ruined it for the rest. It's mostlybeen well intentioned people thinking "This is probably okay. It's not reallyworse than what other-site is already doing". Then copy/paste repeat thatfor a couple of decades and you'll arrive at the Jenga tower of crud thatis the current web. The web is a poster child of the slippery slope argument inaction and something the gemini community should be wary of and keep akeen eye on.
Gemini is nothing more than a set of common-sense solutions to
The secret to gemini is not what it restricts; but what it enables.
Constraint breeds creativity.
I came up with the favicon emoji RFC because
I thought it was a fun idea.
And it is a fun idea, but..
Another fun idea from the web is javascript. In essence it can be a reallyconvenient way to cross t's and dot i's in the content, and add some funcreative flourishes. In practice it's turned the web into a network for distributing (proprietary) software and burying actual content for nefarious purposes.
It's not about what nice conscientious people will do with a fun extention;it's about how greed and corruption ultimately can co-opt it for theirown purpose.
The best way to prevent going down a slippery slope is to *not step onto the slope*.
I think that for every fun extension it is wise to ask oneself thequestion, "Is this creative, or am I re-inventing the web?"
"Favicon" sounds particularly web-ish, especially in light of the two solutionsalready brought up ("if the first level 1 title of the homepage starts with a unicode character, use that as a favicon" and "generating a colored icon or imagebased on the hash of the domain"), which do feel more in line with gemini.
Feel free to disagree with Drew's delivery, but I think it would be best to keep any arguments related to current and future gemini.
cheers, Andreas