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Re: "Stumbled upon this article, "Gemini is solutionism at its..."
I remember that article. There's an awful lot that the author just ignores, in particular the idea that Gemini is more complex than Gopher, less complex than the Web, and replaces neither. All emphasis on that last part, replaces neither. Gemini is it's own thing. It's not a replacement for the Web and isn't trying to be.
Sep 08 · 4 months ago
I stopped reading after
completely replacing existing infrastructure and standards that humans have mutually agreed upon
Who exactly agreed on what ? from 1990 to 1996 there was even no agreed-upon standard for HTTP while the whole explosion happened. There was no 'mutually agreed upon' standard. People and institutions *adopted* sets of idea implementations they thought were right. These ideas mostly started in universities by 1 or a few persons and only years after the implementations suceeded the standartization happened. That's just one example. This person is too ignorant about the subject's history to be taken seriously
🚀 clseibold · Sep 08 at 06:19:
I remember this article too. Didn't take it very seriously - it's too illogical. Being a billionaire has nothing to do with small communities of working people creating their own space on the internet. Standards *should* be replaced when we can think of something better. "Don't reinvent the wheel" is an extremely harmful dogma to have in software development. Gemini doesn't replace all of the existing infrastructure, but considering the replacement of this infrastructure might actually be a good thing because the infrastructure has several problems because it's old and outdated, hence why you DO need to "reinvent the wheel" sometimes. Finally, you can replace standards with new better-thought out standards.
Oh, also, the biggest fallacy of them all is the cost-sunk fallacy - thinking that HTTP is so far-developed and popular that we shouldn't replace it because of all the effort that went into it. This is literally cost-sunk fallacy and it's one of the reasons why tons of software becomes terrible - because people don't know when to let a dying software/standard go and leave it to work on someone else. Had the Unix developers had this mindset with Multics, we would not have gotten Unix.
Also, for all of the people that keep lying to themselves that you can make websites that don't track users and aren't a bunch of JS - not once will they bring up that the HTML language (as well as XML) literally sucks. Like, HTML is an awful language. Sorry!
Anyways, I just find it deeply ironic that this author is using Matrix, another new protocol that decided to make the slowest chat protocol in existance rather than just use existing chat protocols like IRC or XMPP, lmao.
👻 mediocregopher · Sep 08 at 06:41:
This person seems to have missed "lack of extensibility" as one of Gemini's design goals. Once that enters the picture it's pretty obvious why HTTP is not suitable for what Gemini is trying to do.
They've also apparently decided to start keeping a running tab of "notable" people leaving Gemini, as if that's proof of their technical criticisms being right. It tells me this person doesn't really care, they're just putting on a show for attention.
🐉 gyaradong · Sep 11 at 06:24:
IMO it's not the protocol, it's the browser. The issue is that you cannot up and build a browser that's a rational alternative to Firefox or Chrome. Even just switching off JavaScript in Firefox basically breaks half the web. Switching off cookies turns it into a nightmare space where you can see the demons behind the pretty faces.
Yes there's a small web, but the feature set is so distinct from the modern web that you can probably split out two browsers with mutually exclusive functionality where one would work in the modern web but not small web, and the other would work on small web but not modern.
@gyaradong You're right, http is a good protocol, but browsers were left with the liberty of improvising and adding more stuff as time went by. Cookies are a good example of that, and something that should have never been adopted widely, it's an abomination that destroys any semblance of privacy.
Stumbled upon this article, "Gemini is solutionism at its worst" [https link] "Gemini is solutionism at its worst" "Bottom line is, if you agree that the modern web has become an awful place, let’s work on changing that for everyone, instead of abandoning it like a bunch of billionaires trying to escape to a different place, before this one collapses." I think that's where i disagree the most. The "modern web" won't be reformed, not a chance, it will stay the same, or get worse. So what's...