Gemini Is What The Web Should Have Been

Gemini is a new, collaboratively designed internet protocol, which
explores the space in between gopher and the web, striving to address
(perceived) limitations of one while avoiding the (undeniable) pitfalls
of the other. I have created my own Gemini capsule and played around with a couple of Gemini clients.
Be sure to checkout HexDSL's videos on Gemini on KZbin:
► • The Modern web is terr...
► • Gemini Clients that I ...
► • How to make a Gemini C...
REFERENCED:
► gemini.circumlunar.space/ - Project Gemini (http)
► gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/ - Project Gemini (gemini)
► github.com/mbrubeck/agate/ - Agate server
► github.com/makeworld-the-bett... - Amfora client
► bombadillo.colorfield.space/ - Bombadillo client
► github.com/skyjake/lagrange - Lagrange client
► thelambdalab.xyz/elpher/ - Elpher Emacs Gemini client
WANT TO SUPPORT THE CHANNEL?
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SOCIAL PLATFORMS:
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📽️ LBRY: lbry.tv/$/invite/@DistroTube:2
DT ON THE WEB:
🕸️ Website: distrotube.com/
🐿️ Gemini Capsule: gemini://distro.tube
📁 GitLab: gitlab.com/dwt1
🔊 Audio Podcasts: www.buzzsprout.com/1263722
FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE THAT I USE:
🌐 Brave Browser - brave.com/dis872
📽️ Open Broadcaster Software: obsproject.com/
🎬 Kdenlive: kdenlive.org
🎨 GIMP: www.gimp.org/
🎵 Audacity: www.audacityteam.org/
💻 VirtualBox: www.virtualbox.org/
🗒️ Doom Emacs: github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@HexDSL]

Oh hello, Im HexDSL :D

[@SankoshSaha_01]

Enjoyed your content, nice work!

[@metastag]

@linus meth tips 👀

[@user-ln6bq1gc9t]

Nice. Thanks for the info about Gemini! && Thanks DT for pointing out Hex DSL channel.

[@priyojitdeb9127]

i was going to look you up on KZbin. Thanks you made this easier.

[@Ponk_80]

Great spelling.

[@SkyyySi]

One thing I never understand with these "alternative protocols" is, if you want a cleaner web, just don't bloat up your HTTP(S) page. You don't need another protocol if what bothers you is the content it delivers.

[@favor94]

its only apply to your website, not everyone. while with the "alternative prot" its apply to whoever make a page on that protocol

[@SkyyySi]

@@favor94 Yes I know that that's the thought behind it, but this thought has a major flaw: The only ones that would actually use it *are* the people who want the web to be like it's the 70s. The ones who would design their HTTP(S) sites like this as well. Only people who want something like this would ever use it.

[@Flackon]

Yeah. And this doesn’t even do hypertext It’s interesting as some light teletext like toy but can’t compare with http

[@rizkyadiyanto7922]

the reason why they dont do that is in their FAQ page.

[@aaaa9r]

Agree. I think there's a "simpler" solution than building a whole new protocol because everything here can be done in a standard website no problems whatsoever. Here's just a brain dump of what I think is a more inclusive solution using http: Let's call this new pseudo protocol (pseudo because it's all still http anyway) "Hemini" - Leave your site as plain as possible, using proper html5 tags so the client apps of Hemini can stylize the content properly. This is crucial. Just a limited set of tags, similar to markdown. - A special tag in the html head can state that the site is compatible with Hemini - Then, the client app you choose for Hemini can use whatever theme/css style they want to customize the look of it. This retains the best of Gemini and the best of HTTP. Think about it. You don't have to have a whole new separated protocol. People using any browser, even your old PSP web browser can browse through it. The only thing you would need to set your custom style for this kind of sites in a normal browser would be just an simple extension that works for every Hemini site. The site's creator can still retain the possibility to add a custom theme/css for other normal http users to see it or for the users of Gemini if they want to retain the custom design the owner did for that specific site. Everyone wins. The only "drawback" that I see from this idea is that, apparently, Gemini sites are easier to host and maintain. Well, that /should/ be solved with new apps or scripts to make hosting those sites easier, and markdowns/Hemini sites to HTML converters, which there are plenty of them if I'm no mistaken. I imagine the development and maintenance of a project like this is far easier than the whole Gemini protocol. And with far more advantages compared to it. Would like to know your opinion on this guys!

[@AshtonSnapp]

Gemini is interesting. I like it.

[@TheSulross]

Been fantasizing for a few years about an Internet protocol that is lean and mean and clean, and friendly to text mode rendering - and wow - my fantasy has now been implemented! Fantastic!

[@stefanosias7422]

A thrill to watch and learn from. I was glued to this video and lost track of time. Excellent content and presented by a really good guy in every respect. Peace to you too man! :)

[@yjk_ch]

I keep seeing people saying “Why don’t use HTTP without styling and scripting?” and sure, it is possible. But at the same time, devs won’t stop writing bloated web pages because *they can* do it.

[@DJ_Cthulhu]

The Web isn't the problem. People are the problem. Get rid of the people, and all the problems go away. 😉

[@shunkongcheung4323]

solving problems by "solving" the people who notice it

[@zionlee1004]

well you can get rid of them by using gemini lol

[@DJ_Cthulhu]

@@zionlee1004 I was thinking more along the lines of sterilising this planet down to bedrock.

[@zonnodon163]

Thanks for the suggestion, Stalin!

[@codeartha]

I like the idea of Gemini protocol as i do agree that the web is bloated, far too much so. However i do feel that some media should be included. To me the ideal ballance between modern function and media is Wikipedia. Its largely text and static content, but it does include the occasional image, diagram, schematic, table, and sometimes even a short audio snippet like on the bio page of some bird where there sound is showed to allow persons to identify them. To me that is all we need, but having only text and links feels a little short in terms of functionality.

[@ThatWhiteHand]

I was waiting to see if you would ever do a video on the gemini :D I've been hanging around on there for a few months now.

[@jorgemarcelo4708]

Dudes be living like this and see no problem

[@tylerdean980]

What problem would their be?

[@Raine_uwu]

yeah?

[@Raine_uwu]

yeah... I see what you mean now

[@TheSulross]

Because lets face it - 70 percent of what gets rendered on a modern web site page is pure crap that we try to install plugins to filter out (but those don't go near far enough). So just pare back to new Internet rendering protocol that has essentially eliminated that 70 percent of visual crap (and the dangerous client side scripts)

[@Gabifuertes]

@@TheSulross I think it's great the web is actually able to do so much. The problem is not that browsers have too much capability. The problem is monetization which is strongly based on advertising, which in turn inheirts the worst of that industry. To be honest we don't need javascript to read an article. Nor cookies. CSS should be optional too. Functionality should be progressively enhanced. Deliver your markup, then your styles, then animations, then scripts, depending on user choice.

[@1monki]

Gopher! Cue Obi-Wan: "That's a name I haven't heard in a long time."

[@bryanhoffman4331]

I think this is a really cool idea, and great for Linux nerds. As far as replacing the internet, it won't happen. The direction of computing is cloud-based and people want web apps that work inside of a browser. But I really like the idea of a simple text-based network. The speed of development on these pages is insane vs making a site with scripts, so it would be great for stuff like interactive manpages and for project development.

[@DanielBjorndahl]

I think one of the biggest advantages might be avoiding caching, search engine crawling, etc. would be good for "hiding" content in plain sight

[@awwastor]

“Today’s browsers are bloated” *literally opens a browser in a text editor*

[@singletona082]

Emacs is an operating system.

[@krzysztofwaleska]

@@singletona082 Only kernel is missing in that OS. Or perhaps there are HURD plugins for emacs?

[@singletona082]

@@krzysztofwaleska Wouldn't surprise me.

[@krzysztofwaleska]

@@singletona082 :)

[@IAmOxidised7525]

What do you think of IPFS ?

[@gabrielcoronelcascante9111]

"They follow the Unix philosophy" *He uses Emacs*

[@zoom0211]

I just paused the video to see if there's someone who noticed that, too :D Browsers do too much... What about emacs, huh? At least you can say that emacs can run in terminal :)

[@JoelJosephReji]

He was once asked the question in a "hey DT" video and he replied saying that Emacs is an "e-lisp" renderer. Don't agree with him but just saying.

[@TheSulross]

I guess within the emacs context that one might say that it can be script enhanced in accord with Unix philosophy - where the some of the scripts is greater than the whole kind of argument - but yeah, if it's not a C-compiled binary coupled to a primary utilization of the Unix pipes feature, the the Unix philosophy has squarely been jettisoned

[@rwxrob]

Emacs doesn't follow the UNIX philosophy.

[@twb0109]

Emacs is an ELISP machine, not a text editor

[@BulletsToBrainRatio]

I like the idea of Gemini, but I don't think its a replacement lol. I think there's a lot of inherent value of being able to freely use different types of media, even at the expense of preformance.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

is there really an expense of performance? computers are pretty beefy right now, there is no performance to worry about nowadays, if anything in data for mobile connections.

[@BulletsToBrainRatio]

@@diablo.the.cheater I guess you're right and the biggest bennifit is the simplicity and lack of trackers. Bloated web is what this is trying to fix and with websites relying more and more on client side rendering I do kinda feel happy when I run into a website that only uses html and css. Theres a lot of stuff websites implement now adays that they dont need. See every blog using 5gb of node modules. Visit old reddit and compare the speed to current reddit for an example of bloat.

[@MadsterV]

@@BulletsToBrainRatio you could still be tracked easily. Trackers do not self insert themselves into the page, someone went out of their way to do it in their own site. If the site wanted to, they could just fingerprint you and send that via a separate stream to advertisers..... and you lost a ton of functonality in the process, while gaining nothing.

[@BobAg_]

It's not meant to replace anything. It's a place to go if you want to cut out the bullshit and just want raw info.

[@octagear]

Why do we need a new protocol for it though? Why not make an html page and simply not use all the funky clunky features?

[@Lee_Adamson_OCF]

Aright, I have been looking into Gemini pretty closely. It has potential, but it is pretty much stuck in hipster blog land. The main dude won't support inline images or forms, which are pretty much a requirement for anything beyond hipster blogging. It's far too close to gopher and too far from basic HTML. That being said, I keep thinking about extending my own spec that supports inline images and forms, and then writing a server program that will parse it both up to HTML and down to gopher, and serve both. I would not, however, actually serve up the Gemini protocol. At least not until it can move out of hipster land a little.

[@lorenzocabrini]

Gemini, master of demise, Your death is my salvation to a Kingdom mine, ... Oh, this wasn't about the Slayer song?

[@slowdeath8628]

Lol

[@koszegimatyas]

A very nice idea! I will follow the project.

[@learningbird9940]

Derek, buy one of the cheapest Raspberry Pi soc and install on it a dedicated Agate server for your Gemini capsules.

[@tyh2989]

Yes! That would make a good vid.

[@dimus63]

IPSF is a very interesting project, one of its goals is to replace http, but it is much more than that

[@harshsubhan2911]

IPFS it is.

[@chaseopsahl]

Man the Gemini project is so amazing! Thanks for sharing, DT!

[@miguelrobles9062]

Very interesting, trying it with Amfora. Thank you!

[@ancapftw9113]

It reminds me of the internet of 20 years ago when I had a geocities page.

[@erikp6614]

Out of genuine interest, why gemini? It seems to be a (functional) subset of http and html. Why not use a simple web browser and simple html pages instead?

[@naltun4702]

I think one reasoning is to remove features that people expect to find. Why worry about security when one can remove ads, client-side scripting, etc.? Why worry about complex protocols when resources are simple plaintext documents? Etc. Simplicity from the ground-up FOR people interested in such domains. The exclusionary "you probably won't like this" is a feature, not a bug. This is because people will complain, etc. which is very distracting. Make a protocol for people of like-minded individuals.

[@erikp6614]

​@Danny Kirkham I have no problem understanding the need for a lighter web. However introducing yet another protocol with new clients, new servers and possibly new security risks to reach a lighter web seems to throw out the baby with the water. If we use clients like w3m, lynx etc we may be nearer the intention of the web and html as a markup language (as opposed to the graphical layout language html more or less has transformed into and the javascript runtime engine browsers have transformed into).

[@Jammet]

Doesn't make sense to me either. I still have uses for Telnet today, but this ...

[@jgttech]

See, here's the thing. It's not a subset of anything. HTTP and HTML are, respectively, a transfer protocol for text and a markup for text. It's all one thing..., TEXT. So when he says or these other commenters say that the web is bloated, slow, insecure, and/or not private I would be willing to bet my nice fat Senior Software Engineer income that they don't understand the first thing about the web and why HTTP was so successful. With HTTP you can transfer ANYTHING as text. Literally, anything. Which means , technically speaking, you could pass your gemini through HTTP super easily because Gemini is ultimately text. Which makes Gemini unnecessary. Plus, you have to consider the trade off to those who don't understand web technologies. Gemini looks compelling to someone who thinks less flexibility and stricter page requirements and fewer options is a good thing. Because, to someone who doesn't understand the web, restrictions in a different protocol sounds "more secure". But, in reality, it doesn't guarantee safety, it doesn't guarantee every page will work, and it doesn't guarantee it will be faster. Here's the thing, browsers are desktop applications that render these text files (i.e HTML) through a file transfer protocol (i.e HTTP). Then you're browser receives the file. Any additional assets the file requires are linked inside the markup you received. Thus, triggering additional files to be downloaded. Depending on the file type, it will either get handled through one or more rendering engines that are build into your browser. Which means, the point at which a page will fail to render correctly depends on the browser, not the HTTP or HTML. It's about the rendering engines in your particular browser application. Which means if Gemini was actually to be a stand in replacement for HTTP or HTML it would have to contend with how each browser made to render it decided to render it. Then, at some point (because this is how things happen and if you don't think so go research why JavaScript was made) there will be someone who wants to add the ability to keep data on different "capsules" (Gemini websites) and render it on their capsule. So, someone somewhere will create a JavaScript-like language that runs along side your browser to increase it's functionalities to accomplish their goal. Then history repeats itself. The people pushing this simply don't understand how the web was created and do not understand how the technologies work that make it up.

[@josecruz2574]

@@jgttech this. This makes sense to me. So essentially if I wanted a gemini site to have a form. I could make up a markup for it. But then I could take one of the browsers and input some code that would allow a user to insert information right? Then essentially I would have to build some kind of connection or build an API to send those values over to right?

[@threepe0]

Why not just deliver plain text over http and skip scripts? No complicated methods or new protocols needed to do that. Don’t understand the need to reinvent the wheel.

[@jaythomas3180]

It's amazing how few people understand http is just plain text. I mean just look at wikipedia's example http request and response. What people mean when they don't like the behavior of the web is they don't like is the html, js, css, cookies, service workers, intrusive ads, lousy scaling across different screen sizes, and the plethora of graphical issue and sluggishness that comes with incorporating all these features. 10 seconds to load, 3 popups, and 100MB of assets to view a news article on your site? No thanks.

[@BryanEaton]

This reminds me of my bulletin board days.

[@Jammet]

That might be the one thing going for it. A sort of nostalgia.

[@PinakiGupta82Appu]

Good explanation! Great work!

[@quarteratom]

"When you're just dealing with plain text, why do you want a graphical application, right?" Says the Emacs user.

[@Atom-ly6tf]

I might find it useful when I just want to read online documentation (or anything involving just reading) that don't include all that animation stuff and distractors using more band width than necessary and that don't let me focus on what I'm looking for while still using a well formatted page that fit with the look of my local environment. Thanks for the tip!

[@harshsubhan2911]

Like reading an arch wiki

[@RandyandPetraJ]

Great video, very interesting and yes...the web is so dang bloated I do think we'll have to get away from it one day. When? We'll see. Thanks for educating and sharing. 100K subs here we come!!!!

[@GodIsTheReason]

Sounds interesting to play with, but what's the case for using this over http? Gemini sounds like it's just a combination of http and its payload, but much more limited. So why not make a simple, 90's-style website that doesn't require its visitors to use a special web browser?

[@TheSulross]

It's markup language (Gemini - is it based on Markdown? Maybe not because .md has inlined hyper links...) should support an annotation that will appear as a JavaScript library load to a conventional browser, and once that JavaScript library is loaded by said conventional web browser, it then is able to interpret and render what follows in a manner that has visual fidelity to what it would render as in a Gemini browser. It really would then be much like the Markdown language, which was designed for easy translation into Web HTML.

[@TheSulross]

Oh, even the 90s web standards had a number of things regarded as verboten in Gemeni - inline images, inline hyper links, different font sizes and proportional fonts - all manner of things that make it hostile to being rendered aesthetically in text mode. Gemini is basically optimized, aesthetic text mode rendering for the Internet.

[@GodIsTheReason]

@@TheSulross Oh yeah, makes sense. There are textmode browsers like Links and Emacs W3, but even though I use the terminal and emacs a lot, I really don't enjoy using those at all, mostly because it really doesn't work well with many websites which are designed for graphical browsers. So it's quite understandable how someone who really "lives" in the terminal or emacs would desire a simpler web protocol that makes that experience a lot nicer.

[@rilian226]

NASA's Gemini program ran from 1965-66. What carried forward into the 70s was Apollo...

[@charlessmith5465]

4:30 when you mention getting sloppy with links, my first thought was the people who put links around consecutive words of a sentence and the links go to different pages. 🧐 I like the way "lynx -dump -stdin" handles links: it puts a bracketed number where each link starts and it lists all of the numbered links at the bottom of the page, making it easy to skim over all the links on the page, seek between the link and the anchor, etc.

[@torspedia]

Sounds like an interesting project, might have to give it a go. Ta :-) Have you any thoughts on the Solid Project, from Tim Berners-Lee?

[@AcidiFy574]

& the Loki project

[@torspedia]

@@AcidiFy574 not heard of that one.

[@jgttech]

No offense, but I really think you don't understand the components of the modern web. HTTP (Hyper TEXT Transfer Protocol) does NOT include graphical additions. HTTP is just text, that's it. HTML (Hyper TEXT Markup Language) is a was of describing TEXT in a web browser. If you use HTTP and HTML you would ONLY have a pure text based website. That's just a fact. So saying things are bloated or too whatever really just seems to me like a poor understanding of web technologies. It was the development of engines that run along side webpages on the client side that gives you graphic and functional beauty if animations, colors, icons, etc. Therefore, you have a problem with browser engines rendering CSS (also a separate language for pure styling) and engines executing JavaScript (ANOTHER separate language for adding functionality to static pages). If you removed CSS and JavaScript engines you would have pure text. Again, I don't think you understand what you're talking about when you try to sell Gemini. P.S: I'm a Senior Software Engineer who develops web technologies. I'm not always right, but I enough knowledge and experience to know when I am. Update: If you want to know more about why your statements and understanding are incorrect about other things you've said here, I'll gladly explain it. Again, I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just saying that as someone who builds websites and technologies for a living I think my knowledge and experience grant me some greater level of insight than someone who didn't get that HTTP only transfers text and HTML is markup for displaying text. ... "text" is in the acronym's.

[@fabiano9277]

Hi Derek. Did you notice the Gemini Client Elpher for Emacs? I use that one right now. Works for Gopher also. Very nice.

[@AugustusBohn0]

try 10:30

[@davidyu1813]

Tell me if I'm wrong: this protocol won't even support (render as intended) LaTeX formulae since it's plain text based. It'll be awful if I have to use a different app only to view a math formula. Not only adds more key strokes, but also interrupts thinking.

[@singletona082]

Gemini has what I feel are some shortfalls, but I can understand why soldrrpunk drew the line where they did. For a lot of people for non shopping purposes Gemini actually serves needs well. Sure I wish there was a way to have user groups and forums in the Gemini space itself, but I can get the fact that level of complexity and purpose goes astray of the core 'serve txt pull information with links to otherbthings' purpose.

[@GabrielSantos-th7ww]

Nice. Now I can literally never get out of Emacs if I search the web like this.

[@gidalveupsoro4525]

Good content !

[@juryrigging]

Agate is ag-ate, not a-gate. So have you looked into TBL's Solid or the Interplanetary File System?

Nothing is preventing people from building JS and embedded video on top of another protocol. HTTP is not the bloat, although it has some shortcomings. Javascript and CSS is the bloat, and that's all up to your browser to decide whether or not that's supported.

[@Riflik45]

"At some point we need to go away from the modern web". Really? I don't think so and I don't think it will ever happen. It's nice to have alternatives to explore and to use but the "modern web" (a.k.a. "the web") is not going anywhere, it's here to stay and I believe we gain more from trying our best to inform people about better ways to use it and from improving web standards to make the web a secure and inclusive place for everyone. The web came a long way and despite all the flaws that still exist, it's a success. #feelFreeToDisagree

[@JoelJosephReji]

My opinion is that it is impossible to have a text-only internet. You can't do any kind of internet shopping stuff without rendering the photos. If you were dependent on the client's image viewer for that and if the image viewer tends to be outdated or corrupted, it might end up being the loss of a sale. The only use case where something like this would happen is where there is a browser which is constituted on multiple components integrated with common protocols and that looks super improbable to happen because we are human beings xD

[@nerdnotawheep5474]

Web is what it is. There's a reason people ( not some general people but creative minds ) opted to shape the web into a what it is today. I do agree though with the simplicity of gemini but everything has a so called advantage and disadvantage. U weigh them both and when positive points weigh more u than negative points that's when we choose it. This is just my thought and not trying to impose it on anyone.

[@CasperLabuschagne]

OK, I am now convinced that I should use Gemini and not gopher. Now there is one product, that does not exist to my knowledge, that would perfectly serve my needs, and that is if there as a plugin for the Apache server that could parse, convert to plain HTML and serve Gemini .gmi pages. Thus I could use Agate to serve Gemini documents and I can symlink the path to the Gemini documents into the public_html directory of Apache. Failing such an Apache plugin, I will have to use geminitohtml to create static HTML pages of the Gemini content.

[@FrethKindheart]

I got recommended your Gopher video from four years ago today (KZbin algorithm), and I had watched the Gemini video from two years ago. Neither your Gopher, nor your Gemini sites appear to be active, so I'm commenting to ask what you've settled on concerning Gopher, Gemini and the web. Are you using Gopher and Gemini still?

[@nevoyu]

I'm going with BBS

[@toosafelol]

so.. can gamini serve files? if it shouldn't be the browser playing the video then atleast it should be able to deliver i.e. an mp4 file to my ~/Downloads so i can open it with a video player

[@BrodieRobertson]

If I understand it correctly it can, it's just that the gemini text format is a part of the spec

[@skaruts]

Problem with a text only protocol is that it never appeals to the masses. Not when there's a protocol that allows for nice visuals and stuff. I suppose that's the reason why http prevailed, and why all others were always doomed to fail.

[@praetorxyn]

Every time you talk about the web I just picture a website from 1999 with the repeated image background 😂

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

With spinning skulls, flames and anime gifs everywhere. Remember when the internet was cool?

[@praetorxyn]

@@censoredterminalautism4073 I remember. As a developer though I think we're way better off looks wise now lol.

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

@@praetorxyn Only if you like soulless things that all look the same (like nothing).

[@threepe0]

@@censoredterminalautism4073 describe the 90’s look, then proceed to say that everything looks the same now while we have way more options, and most sites look very different from one another 😆

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@censoredterminalautism4073 yes, i like souless things that all look the same, that is cohesive, the alternative is cringe

[@AliensInc.]

This I just gotta setup soon :)

[@ditchcomfort]

Hi there. I really like your colors/theme you are using in Vim/terminal. Maybe a stupid question but I have to ask anyway… 😊 I’m not on Linux but macOS, so I was wondering if you have the theme for iTerm2, or know of any place I can download something relatively similar? And by the way, I love your videos. Very informative for a dude new to the command line and stuff. Cheers from Norway Alex

[@hihello-tp3wi]

It looks interesting but that's sorta it. Not every host of a browser can afford to run every computation on the server side, executing code on the client(your end) is an incredibly easy way to offset performance costs and issues. I suspect gemini will likely end up being more used in the same vein that Tor is, in fact, I'd expect it to become an alternative to Tor, given its highly secure nature. But Gemini, or at least how its being presented here, doesn't seem like a replacement for HTTP or HTTPS, especially if you lose a lot of the visuals and other forms of media playback/consumption in the process. Websites like youtube wouldn't exist under the Gemini protocol, neither would game websites for that matter. As some other people pointed out, this isn't really what the internet should have been, its far too restricting for the current business models and expectations. User editability is typically not things the average end user cares for, and if they do, simple browser extensions tend to work well enough.

[@famailiaanima]

We could call gemini capsules "gapsules", for short.

[@shady6131]

or just capsules

[@francescovolpini]

@@shady6131 gapsules is just cooler bruh

[@shady6131]

@@francescovolpini if ya say so

[@jamegumb7298]

Just like my wife has. He gapsule is very efficient and has a massive DNA databank, it includes all males in the street, even some women, most males in the town and many others in the country, thousands of them.

[@pguti778]

Great video!

[@PinakiGupta82Appu]

The modern web is horrifically privacy-intrusive. Something like Gemini is the need of the hour. Please try to make a video about alternative search aggregators. Got extremely disappointed with Google, Bing, Yahoo. The experience has always been a nightmare with any of them. So, please... 🙏

[@illuminaut9148]

100k ???? Congrats @Derek!

[@deterdamel7380]

It seems that this was a topic a year before. Today nobody talks about it. Gemini looks like a minor upgrade to gopher to me. That's not much. Why not support images? Is it forbidden to put images into a book? Is gemini unable to compete with a book? Why sticking to text-only? Due to it has to run in a text console? Sorry.. yes the web is broken, but gemini is not the solution.

[@davidjackson7675]

Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing users to more easily identify specific files

[@winneratwin]

how would you make a website like youtube in gemini? or would you need to make a external program for every slighly advanced website you would make

[@aa-vb9tj]

I want to know the answer to this question.

[@victorpinasarnault9135]

Have you see Tim Berners-Lee's pod project?

[@Amike]

A wikipedia on gemini would be awesome. Not sure if something like that exist already

[@kumarcgowda]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

[@savedgez]

gopherpedia does exist

[@doigt6590]

Is your gemini capsule still online? When I try to connect, it says connection refused!

[@kmemz]

I don't think that going back to a full plaintext style web experience is something that can really be done. I do agree, the modern HTTP/S web is heavily bloated, mostly thanks to modern JavaScript, but without the ability to make your website beautiful the way you want, rather than follow plaintext formatting, as well as the ability to put stuff inline, embed media, etcetera, it's not something that you can move a larger audience onto for the sake of a more efficient and secure internet browsing experience. My proposal: A protocol that allows for advanced formatting of text, as well as embedding images and other content such as videos. However, all of the added functionality is not considered a core part of the server software, nor the browser client; All of the extended functionality beyond a basic webpage layout would be handled by a standardized call set, and if the client doesn't have the corresponding additional software to respond to and play back the embeds, it just doesn't play; the web server won't send its own player just to handle the content for one session, it just doesn't send anything, and the client puts a note in where the content would have been. If the client doesn't have an image handling software that supports the browser, then any image content wouldn't load; This would encourage websites to focus on not making images a crutch for web design, having to do things like gradients and fancy border setups using actual web layout, and provide formatted text for titles instead of the entire title being an image, etcetera. If a website has video content, the client will have to call to an installed and supported video playing software to access it; instead of sites like KZbin or Odysee all having their own video players, there could be better standardized video transmission formats, and your video player controls would be standardized regardless of site, to match whichever supported player you're using, be it VLC, the Windows 10 Video app, etcetera, as long as the player supports the website's chosen video or stream format; If the website creator wishes to do so, they could also have the user install their own client, and set the video player call to prefer that if available, or even to just not play if that client isn't available to call to. The user preferences will override preferential calls if set, but will not override X Client only calls. Advenced web behaviour scripts like JavaScript would not be necessary, as website layout and behaviors would be handled entirely by the protocol; The protocol would be more than advanced enough to handle things like elements animating, as well as floating elements on top of the website, etcetera, but the protocol would be very specifically designed to do all of that in an entirely client-side manner; the server will only get return data for things like site-changing button presses, or a video/livestream plugin sending current buffer status so the server knows how much is loaded, if it can keep up at the set quality, and when it needs to send more data. If we can have a web standard that's both designed to run in this sandboxed, module-based system, and encourages web developers to always design around the LCD of not having any of these plugins to add the extended function, the internet could be a much better, and more secure, place. And think of how much harder it would be for malware to get by such a web design that's both limited yet advanced, as well as how much easier it would be to block ads, not to mention that the capability of serving ads would be more limited to start with, either having to serve text ads for people either without an image plugin kr with images disabled on the site, or having to make complex chains and layering of still images and gifs to make interactive advertisements, that would all be subsidized into a text box saying what the ad was for if it were not loaded, or just nothing if it were ad blocked. And the whole getup would have two separate modes, simklar to HTTP/HTTPS; a cleartext protocol, and a secure protocol using heavy end-to-end encryption, something like AES-256 or 512. The website itself should strictly contain the text, the layout, and the color/gradient data, so it should be decently quick to decrypt and load on most systems, even with AES-512; though if plugins are jnstalled, Images and/or videos will be run via the encryption as well, but will only begin loading after the website itself has finished. The web server can support one or multiple encryption standards, and the user can set preferences in the client, although if the user preference is unavailable on the server, the user can also choose whether the client seeks heavier or lighter encryption if the chosen preference isn't available; If AES-256 is set and unavailable, and the client ks set to seek heavy, it will probe the server for AES-512, but if it's set to seek lighter it will probe for AES-128. If the first seek fails, it will probe for a list of server-supported protocols and choose the most relevant available as per user preferences. But this is just my pipe dream of an internet model; we've already run HTTP/S six feet into the ground, and it's only alive thanks to the fact that HTTP had a far less limited scripting and web design model compared to what my proposal is; if not for HTML5 and JavaScript, the internet as we know it would probably be forced to adopt another internet protocol as HTTP wouldn't even have the entire feature set of Gemini.

[@kmemz]

@Miguel de Luis I'm aware, I'm just stating things as it is, because most youtubers who do videos on Gemini and Gopher play it up like it's something lots of people should try to use in place of HTTP/S, and this video isn't much of an exception.

[@cezarygrzanka4229]

I listening to you, as a web developer... and also Linux and unix fan. I can't understand why you want to go back to 90s with internet. I just don't get it. Ofcourse, with things like Wikipedia or Blog plain text will be much better... but consider on-line shop, or KZbin, are you rly want to resign from things like paying with PayPal or credit card online? You have only one perspective - "unix philosofy", and it's incomplete. It can't work in modern times when you sell somethig with it's look. (sorry for my bad english)

[@champfisk5613]

How do you get the Tag name to show up when you switch between them?

[@shawnh8498]

Till it has images and video and sound support I can't see this taking off of me even trying it out. It's more like a book than a webpage. This needs a lot of work for the regular person to even consider it. Now doing it in html on a web structure that is not on the current google controlled web would catch on fast just blocking the big tech companies or search bots need blocking also. Even a not evil dark web type web without the TOR browser needed to access it safely.

[@mjdxp5688]

I'm interested and installed Amfora, but I'm not sure how to use it. Any chance of an Amfora tutorial?

[@RedFenceAnime]

chmod +x amfora ./amfora gemini://whereyouwantogo ? for the keybinds

[@janimaharsh]

How do you get your news dt ?? ... ( AND ALSO YOUR SOOOO CLOSE TO 100K !!!!)

[@CrustyAbsconder]

Could you someday look at any way to modernize the concept of a electronic-typewriter for use in 2021

[@chokfulla]

Is there an index of gemini sites that are available somewhere?

[@Siskiyous6]

I wish you would spend the time to describe agate's installation. i am not having much luck at it. it wants a PATH change - it gives me errors. I wish 10 minutes. I really want to host it on the server in my home. All anyone shows now is hosting on cloud servers.

[@DistroTube]

The path to the agate binary needs to be in your shell's PATH or you could simply start the server by typing the full path to agate. For example, on my server it is /root/.cargo/bin/agate (I think).

[@johtfloridaman6227]

Are the transfer protocols and the markup language inextricably linked? It would seem not since you can pipe markup through a websocket thereby replacing the transfer protocol. My point is why throw out html with the transfer protocol to just to replace it with text? Maybe markdown lol

[@mke7605]

It’s because parsing html is very complicated to parse, which is why the code bases of web browsers are very complicated as well. One of their goals is that an average programmer can write a client in a limited amount of code.

[@johtfloridaman6227]

@@mke7605 thanks for explaining

[@soulofhogwarts]

I wonder why nobody is talking about ipfs interplanetary file storage protocol.

[@warpspeed8305]

Maybe because we live on one planet

[@warpspeed8305]

ok... i am confused... i tried to open d.tube in ipfs protocol but it doesn't work. Are there any sites in IPFS network?

[@AShortBusVet]

I never really understood why gopher fell by the wayside. Each has its purpose; http is better for commercial content, while gopher, gemini, etc. is much better suited to informational content.

[@wikinut1]

Unfortunately gopher, despite its early success, was slowly forgotten for the some of the same reasons that Linux has succeeded over proprietary UNIXen despite being technologically inferior early on. The University of Minnesota put licensing fees on gopher and it wasn’t clear if it was legal to make free implementations of the protocol. Whereas HTTP/HTML had no such restriction, had early advocates from different organizations, and it represented some trendy technology too (XML). Free vs non-free, while gopher is free now, it wasn’t when it counted.

[@joshwizardguy7662]

This is the modern equivalent to BBS from the 1980's

[@afterthesmash]

Yeah, what the world needs is a protocol so regressive you can't render a basic Wikipedia lead and the bog-standard infobox beside it in a recognizable format, or display a table with locally sortable columns. But other than that, what's not to like?

[@bazilkorath3620]

It feels like forcing yourself to use telephone, because smartphones aren't secure enough.

[@oscarhagman8247]

I like your content and all but I really don't understand this one tho. Why is the the htpp(s) protocol so bad, and why is going back to the 90s a good thing? I don't see the point for using this unless you have a website that is designed to only display plain text, which is rare these days

[@oscarhagman8247]

@BlackWorm That makes more sense to me, thank you for your reply!

[@davidjackson7675]

Say DT` do you a have a Gemini capsule I can borrow?

[@id104335409]

That looks like a decent Matrix saver in the background. Anyone has a link for that?

[@davidjackson7675]

What are other options beside gopher and gemini?

[@StarlasAiko]

We don't need a devolution of website competency. Being able to have inline links and hot links, images, videos, etc is not a and thing. Sure, there are people with no idea of good design and composition, who stuff their websites with as much content bloat a they can fit, but bad bloat is largely caused by all the cookies and trackers and analytics scripts that come nowadays with the pages. The main problem the net has is the people in control, the centralisation. What we need is a net where everybody is their own ISP; where everybody has their website on their own server, housed on their own premises, not in large third party farms; where the routing to the website you want to visit is by default automatically onioned. We have the technology to do that.

[@_Stin_]

I had a similar idea, but more along the lines of a server per house, where you keep your personal details, records, files, etc, encrypted but accessible from the outside via a secure VPN and any data required by a 3rd party would need to be signed and sent by you to a signed, authenticated destination. When you move house, your data is transferred, encrypted, to your new 'house server' and the old one is reset for the next tenant's datastore. All IoT devices would connect to your house server, not the Internet, and it would mediate requests to and from your household to other households and businesses. Then I realised people are really lazy and don't care :/

[@StarlasAiko]

@@_Stin_ The laziness of people is the main reason corrupt thugs are allowed to micromanage and sell our data without our consent

[@AzVidsPro]

IS there a need to port forward and pay for a domain? or is it completely frree? It would be nice to use a new protocol where I can just host a site without having to pay for anything. Say I have a solar powered information repo, the only thing I want to pay for is the internet connection. SHOO! Bots promoting scam registrars for domains.! SHOO!!! (EDIT) Yes, I still do have to pay. What about ipfs? It's slow AF.

[@wojtekburzynski654]

http is not bloated. The problem is how webpages are designed. Html is bloated. Javascript is mostly signle-threaded. Pages often load ads and trackers before it's content. But none of it fault of protocol.

[@AcidiFy574]

JavaScript is pretty bloated too

[@parityviolation968]

Well, you can solve the issue with the loading of ads etc. by using Pi-Hole or equivalents. You dont even need a rasp pi to set this up, you could just buy a cheap VPS and set it up remotely and then even use it on your mobile devices of sorts.

[@wojtekburzynski654]

@@parityviolation968 that solves symptom, not the cause.

[@felipej.oribeiro6700]

Would be nice a Gemini client vim plugin.

[@em_the_bee]

OK, and what exactly stops you from serving plain text over HTTP?

[@mattx5499]

The thing is Gemini is very limited from the start, so nobody can mess it up. The only way o make it "bloated" is to overuse emojis or ASCII art... I've seen some capsules made by people and they rather keep it simple and consistent with one ASCII art banner, simple, clean menu and proper use of headings.

[@bhargavdasgupta6580]

The set-up in details please

[@edipocorreia5879]

In my experience as a developer, I can relate to the fact that HTTP and all it entails has become an SDK. It has become a poisonous apple of sorts. It looks good but it is detrimental. In my mind, it would be interesting to be able to develop native, cross-platform apps (GTK/QT/whatever) as easy as it is to build webapps. Websites should stay that. Gemini looks refreshing. Derek, how does discoverability play a role in Gemini? I'm not entirely aware of the protocol but one thing that might detract from critical mass adoption is how to discover these capsules. What are your thoughts on this?

[@gardenapple]

Right now Gemini is small enough that you can kinda explore it manually. People post articles on their blogs and reply to each other, providing links. RSS is a thing in Gemini. There are also feed aggregators like Capcom and Spacewalk, and also the GUS search engine.

[@waraiotoko374]

Can gemini be classified as dark or deep web?

[@ultrapoci]

Jesus Christ, can't we have something in between? Ultra flashy and heavy web pages or plain text with no inline links. C'mon. I get the whole "browsers are supposed to be browsers", and the idea of, for example, a video playing in my installed video player makes sense to me. But this is way too basic. It's basically a regression.

[@n7ghtmareee]

you should definitely look into the loki project

[@Glurgi]

I love the idea of Gopher/Gemini but without some sort of picture capability it will never go anywhere mainstream. The flip side of that is that it's a great way to get away from the scrubs that already ruined the "normal" net ;) Still, a non inline image would be a nice addition.

[@cryptoguru6797]

I didn't know this before

[@jamiegossett]

what about streaming video and photos and games?

[@AssemblyWizard]

4:17 Wow, this is next gen grasping... I agree with the video argument though

[@wobble_cat]

Emacs used gopher protocol when accessing your gemini site at 10:50