Bonum Certa Men Certa

Converting/Turning Your Web Site Into Gemini Capsule is a Lot Simpler Than You've Probably Imagined

Video download link



Summary: Gemini mimics Gopher but does it better; both the Web and the Internet at large became far too bloated and monopolised (dominated by few oligopolies/giants), so this is the right direction to take if we're to liberate protocols from abusive monopolists and make the Internet work for people

THIS past week we spent most/much of the time dealing with DDOS attacks (and their grim consequences) while trying to research Gemini. I had personally researched Gemini last year, which is why we started working towards daily bulletins (which would later be shared over IPFS for censorship resistance). Gemini isn't a lot of work to set up; it's quite easy to use and access (as a user/visitor), never mind server configuration which turned out to be vastly simpler than I had imagined.



"We've not yet explained the scripts that can regenerate it based on content (to keep it up to date) and the setup process."Our Gemini capsule was formally launched or at least announced a couple of days ago. Since then we've seen growing interest in it and update cycles became more frequent (routine updates of the capsule, synchronising it with the Web site).

The video above explains some of the processes initiated towards the Gemini migration. It also shows how to structure one's Gemini capsule, how it's being managed etc. We've not yet explained the scripts that can regenerate it based on content (to keep it up to date) and the setup process. Those sorts of things would definitely require preparing prior to recording.

Monkeys in ThailandIn a sense, the Web (or World Wide Web, to use the full and complete term) is still our primary platform -- shall we call it the "master" -- whereas IPFS and Gemini are secondary. Over time, owing to increasing update frequencies, Gemini is becoming a 'first-class' citizen. If all goes according to plan, we might even convert all of our pages to Gemini syntax, in turn enabling people to browse everything in Techrights without touching the Web, a Web browser, HTTP/s, or HTML. The syntactic limitations notwithstanding, it'll be possible to quickly access (with a single click) the analogous/canonical Web pages.

Gemini mimics both the Web and Gopher, taking the best of the Web (notably certification, albeit self-signing rather than centralised and monopolised) while not allowing people to over-engineer their capsules (using a subset of HTML or an old version of HTML would not restrict overuse). Of course it's still possible (in 2021) to use Gopher, but there would be no assurances regarding privacy, just like using FTP (not over SSH, i.e. SFTP) in 2021 would be a bad idea as passwords and transmissions are visible to too many parties. Gemini is like the big sister of Gopher or a mildly modernised version of it. Maybe some day in the future we'll also explore expansion to GNUnet (when it's more stable; last year when we researched those matters it was GNUnet itself admitting it wasn't yet ready). GNUnet -- like IPFS -- contributes to tackling DNS as a centralisation issue. Unlike Gemini...

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