💾 Archived View for thrig.me › blog › 2023 › 02 › 24 › solutionism.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 16:28:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/gemini-is-solutionism-at-its-worst/
Some have asked for a response to the above; a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, so have a picture.
And now the words.
Let's see what マリウス complains about...wants things to be available via HTTP, thinks gemini makes getting content harder, does admit that the modern web sucks, but never says what the suck is. Hmm. Well. One could demand that books be written in English, in addition to the other languages the author might use, so that the English speaker need not go to the trouble of learning something else. Entitled, much? Realistically, new works will continue to be written in not-English, just as new materials will continue to be made available over not-web.
As to whether gemini is hard to use, I'm not the person to ask. I suspect that it is not.
solutionism at its worst
Ranked worst how, exactly?
If we do claim that gemini is "the worst" then where would you put ActiveX on the scale? I hear various banks went all-in on ActiveX as their solution to customer security. How could gemini possibly be worse than chaining customer bank logins to an unportable turd that Microsoft is now trying to hide?
So maybe it's not the worst of the worst, but what of the arguments presented? This turns out to be a pretty wilted salad.
Why couldn't one simply build on top of existing HTTP infrastructure
I don't know, maybe someone with bad intentions could buy the site or browser plugin or certificate authority and then ruin it; given that "the modern web sucks" there is a lot of suck that a bad actor could bring. How exactly would a malicious gemini server start doing bitcoin mining or whatever on a gemini client, for example? How exactly would that not happen for a bad website or plugin or browser?
Opted Out, Yet Tracked: Are Regulations Enough to Protect Your Privacy?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35003940
A nip here, a tuck there, and she'll be right as rain? Or not.
Simply have a browser extension ...
There is no simply here given how the browser companies break the plugin system now and then, or maybe a bad actor buys the plugin, or that the "heavyweight champion" browsers are terrible--"the modern web sucks"--taking up rather too many resources and having rather too many security vulnerabilities and maybe not the interest of the cattle at heart. Err, cattle? I mean customer. Yeah. I guess some countries have pretty good consumer protections, but I'm not in one of those countries, and even then you're still stuck with a browser that sucks.
and that’s why it’s obviously a good idea to introduce another variant of Markdown. Makes sense?
Yes, it makes perfect sense for gemini to have a gemini specialized version of markdown for what gemini needs, just like github has a github specialized version of markdown for what github needs, or how the Army has an army specialized version of English for their needs, and so do the lawyers, and so forth. I know, reality is a pain, but here we are.
Why not build on top of HTTP ...
Same reason as above, a bad actor ruins the site or plugin, or the browser company--that would be Google, who is being sugar daddy to Firefox more or less how Microsoft was to Apple back in the 1990s, probably to give the same illusion of competition--makes awkward changes to the browser or protocol to suit their needs. Or perhaps a not very nice government takes over a certificate authority you trusted and hopefully you do not say anything problematic. Then what?
And didn't the FBI recently issue a public service announcement about the dangers of using the web? You could install an ad blocker, or a pi-hole, or whatever the modern web needs these days to be somewhat less terrible. You could also minimize the use of "heavyweight champion" browsers and reject the wasteland that is the modern web...and, hey, why not try out some other protocols for a change? Why does it have to be the web?
it [gemini] even depends on it [HTTP] for e.g. offering large files
False. Large files could be served via rsync, torrent, by physically mailing a drive, etc. Other protocols have trouble with large files, and that is no deal-breaker. SMTP comes to mind. A limitation can also be a benefit, to keep things down to a sensible size.
It feels like the people working on/running Gemini infrastructure don’t want to actually solve the issues with the modern day web and instead just wanted to be different,
What are the issues with the modern web? I've got my list; it probably differs from yours. And some geminauts do want to solve issues, just not on the web. Too bad, life is like that. And there could be geminauts happily geminauting; why would they even care about the web?
A productive distinction might be to "work within the system, and try to reform it" versus "I'm going to do my own thing over here". Unlike, say, a nation-state (however dysfunctional it may appear) we are not really stuck with the modern web, and the cost to create some new thing is pretty low, and as a matter of fact the universe did roll up gemini, and a few other things. If this is a problem for you, then maybe find a mirror?
Another question is, what exactly is "the suck" of the modern web, and how would that be fixed? Could it be? The modern web, for me, would be less bad if JavaScript was disabled by default, and was in no way mandatory, if images and other media could optionally be loaded, perhaps via a menu option or keyboard shortcut. Animations, or any sort of pop-up, those would most certainly be disabled by default. Also it might be nice if the browsers used way less CPU and memory, and had fewer gaping security holes; matching OpenBSD would be a good start. The "heavyweight champion" browsers aren't even on that continent--they're way off on Proxima III munching crayons, last I looked.
Some of this suck, as I define it, can be fixed, some of it will not be fixed. Little of it is fixable by me, short of endless churn wrestling with plugins and browser configuration and did Firefox change my PDF preferences, again, and oh dear does it need yet another recompile? Better get that going, overnight. Been there, done that, it didn't work. Why should I hang around?
if you agree that the modern web has become an awful place, let’s work on changing that for everyone,
Why? Why should I put on my fishing waders and try to muck your Augean Stables? I am no hero, and certainly no billionaire. How much would you be paying me, how much stress is there, and how many uncompensated on-call hours would there be? And why might you think that any technological solutions I could cook up in your web space would make a whit of difference? Especially given how you failed to show how gemini is the worst, failed to show what the web suck is, and failed to show how that suck could be fixed.
Convince me. Write an argument that does not suck.
And on a happier note,
https://andregarzia.com/2022/01/gemini-is-a-little-gem.html
tags #legacyweb #gemini
