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Re: In the news

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From: David <david@arch.invalid>

Subject: Re: In the news

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2022 11:02:47 +0100

Message-ID: <st5no8$l7l$1@gioia.aioe.org>

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On 30/01/2022 01:22, rtr wrote:

David writes:
> Article in The Register about Gemini with lots of links
> https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/27/gemini_protocol/
Also what's with this fella:
> A post this week gained a lot of traction on Hackernews forums, when a
> software engineer calling themselves "マリウス" – that's "Marius" to
> gaijin – called it "solutionism at its worst". They argued in a blogpost
> that Gemini is an answer to a problem that doesn't exist and encourages
> a bunker effect, excluding people who use ordinary web browsers, perhaps
> due to accessibility issues.
I'd argue that gemini is an answer to a problem that does exist. And
frankly, I don't think it was ever an issue for geminauts whether people
would or would not be excluded from gemini. It exists by itself as an
independent means of obtaining information. For that alone, it is really
great.

Indeed! Suppose Gemini built on HTTP(S) instead of the current TOFU

approach, and used AsciiDoc, MarkDown or whatever as a default text

format ...

- Would http(s):plain/markdown have a catchy name, say Mercury?

- Would such beautiful clients exist like Amfora and Lagrange?

- Would there be concerns about privacy that do not exist with Gemini?

- Would there be a tangible community around it, a Wikipedia page?

This newsgroup?

I doubt it. Or is it just luck, that Gemini became quite popular?

Maybe it's as simple as that: a blog post by an influential hacker once

got enough clicks on Hackernews. At least that's how I got to know of

Gemini, if I remember correctly.

I took the liberty to skim this fella's blog here:
https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/gemini-is-solutionism-at-its-worst/
It seemed to me that he is a developer of something called
Superhighway84 which seemed to be a USENET clone from I read about it.
On that, I find it funny that he is talking about Gemini being ``an
answer to a problem that doesn't exist'' when he himself have created
``an answer to a problem that doesn't exist'' with his Superhighway84.

Superhighway84 seems similar to Usenet regarding the organisation of

messages with groups, posts and threads, but data transfer is different:

- The data of the messages is kept locally in a database (OrbitDB).

- Changes to the database are propagated to and from connected peers.

- Peers are connect via the IPFS protocol.

- There is no central server (or few servers as in Usenet?).

- When installing IPFS on your machine, the software comes with a set of

pre-configured peer addresses to connect to initially (bootstrap).

So there's no single point of failure, which is impressive in itself.

Are there other notable uses of IPFS, would sci-hub be one (or is it)?

> Either way, it's a lengthy blogpost for anyone who is interested in

> reading what he has to say. The general idea that I took from it is we

> shouldn't really mess with experimental protocols because we already

> have ones that ``work'' and that we should be as inclusive as possible

> to everyone (for some reason X that he didn't elaborate on).

It is definitely an interesting read. Cheers!

Related

Parent:

Re: In the news (by rtr <rtr@haraya.invalid> on Sun, 30 Jan 2022 08:22:04 +0800)

Start of thread:

In the news (by David <david@arch.invalid> on Sat, 29 Jan 2022 19:07:21 +0100)

Children:

Re: In the news (by news@zzo38computer.org.invalid on Sun, 30 Jan 2022 18:51:50 -0800)

Re: In the news (by rtr <rtr@haraya.invalid> on Mon, 31 Jan 2022 07:43:04 +0800)