Bonum Certa Men Certa

2021: The Year of Gemini on the Internet (From Around 500 Known Capsules to 2,000 or More, With Over 3 Months Left)

Along with or along the lines of "Linux on the desktop" (PC Magazine claims 2021 Is the Year of Linux on the Desktop)

Gemini Lupa
Gemini Lupa stats as OpenDocument Format (ODF)



Summary: We've decided to chart or produce a graph with some of the publicly-available numbers from Lupa, the Gemini protocol spider of Stéphane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer.org)

THE investment we've put into Gemini paid off; more so than IPFS for reasons that we explained yesterday.



The numbers shown in the graph (and spreadsheet) above are not complete, but they're the closest approximation we currently have because Geminispace (or Gemini space) is not centralised. The raw data comes from past stats and present stats. These do stress upfront: “There are several reasons why many URIs are not in the database: * the capsule may forbid retrieval, through robots.txt, * we do not know all the URIs and some cannot be found from the ones we know [...] 1186 (87.1 %) capsules are self-signed, 139 (10.2 %) use the Certificate Authority Let’s Encrypt, 37 (2.7 %) are signed by another CA (may be not a trusted one).”

CAs are part of the centralisation trap we've often spoken about. Web browsers actively encourage this centralisation if not monopolisation by issuing exceptionally nasty warnings to people (if not outright blocking access).

Here is what the monthly reports say or said.

Today (29th of September): "There are 1679 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 1362 of them."

Start of September: "There are 1538 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 1289 of them."

Start of August: "There are 1503 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 1210 of them."

Start of July: "There are 1342 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 1149 of them."

Start of June: "There are 1263 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 1062 of them."

Start of May: "There are 1093 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 926 of them."

Start of April: "There are 1028 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 850 of them."

Start of March: "There are 825 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 712 of them."

Start of February: "There are 606 capsules. We successfully connected recently to 519 of them."

Start of January: "There are 531 capsules. We successfully connected to 441 of them."

December 22nd: "There are 506 capsules. We successfully connected to 415 of them."

We've been feeling this phenomenal growth ourselves, as traffic doubles every 2 months or so. In the month of September: (so far)

        
  21236 requests on September 1                  
  20951 requests on September 2                  
   8955 requests on September 3                  
   8087 requests on September 4                  
   7986 requests on September 5                  
   8876 requests on September 6                  
  29780 requests on September 7                  
  41844 requests on September 8                  
   8853 requests on September 9                  
   9048 requests on September 10                  
   9206 requests on September 11
  10052 requests on September 12                  
  13739 requests on September 13                  
   9981 requests on September 14 
  12974 requests on September 15                  
  10816 requests on September 16                  
  10497 requests on September 17 
  10056 requests on September 18                  
  12172 requests on September 19                  
  11829 requests on September 20                  
   8993 requests on September 21                  
  20090 requests on September 22                  
  11978 requests on September 23                  
  10986 requests on September 24 
  10649 requests on September 25                  
  15293 requests on September 26                  
  14994 requests on September 27                  
  13672 requests on September 28   
  


That's about 13.8k page requests per day (0.16 per second) or more than double what we got last month. Most accessed URLs for the given day (or a prior day) can be seen here. Over the Web we average about 4.7 per second, i.e. 34 times higher than the above rate. But currently a lot more people use the Web than Gemini; that can change in the more distant future.

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM: The B Turns From "Business" to "Bailouts" to "Buybacks" ("IBM is the Next Intel")
Trying to shore up the falling share price/stocks while veteran workers and Vice President (with high salaries) are cut off
It's Friday Night Again, So Microsoft is Again Shelving (Under Weekend Lull) Nightmare News for XBox Staff
It did the same thing when the chiefs of XBox got canned
 
IBM CEO Can Become a Billionaire by Laying Off Tens of Thousands of Workers (or Buying Companies Using Borrowed Money, Only to Lay off Thousands in Them)
Like he did Confluent recently
Reminder That Linuxiac is a Slopfarm or Hybrid of Bobby and His LLMs
LLM fetishist that claims to cover Linux
BetaNews is Still Publishing Fake Articles, Sometimes Fake News, or LLM Slop Disguised as 'Journalism'
Slop isn't yet a thing of the past, but hopefully we'll get close to that by the end of this year
Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Writer's Block, Evil GAFAM (Google), and Scepticism of Slop
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2026: Fairphone 6, China’s Rise in Drug Development, Slop Wastes Money Without Delivering Value
Links for the day
Links 30/05/2026: Alarm Over Large Companies Cancelling Slop Contracts, Ozzy Osbourne Resurrection as Slop Draws Ire
Links for the day
Red Hat Exodus or RAs (or PIPs) in 2026 Not Limited to China, IBM is Doing Well at Hiding Layoffs
All we need to know is, does IBM hand out lots of PIPs?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 92 Out of 200: A Spouse Cannot be Turned "On" and "Off" Like a Faucet
Today's part will be very short because we keep the parts shorter in weekends and summer is officially around the corner (June on Monday)
The Register MS Has Just Published Fake Article That Mentions "AI" 23 Times. "Sponsored by Arm." It Does This Every Day.
A lot of the time we see this term everywhere in "the news" simply because slop pushers are paying for it
SQLite Under DDoS Attack by Slop Reports or Fake 'Bugs' (Just Like cURL and Many Other Projects)
Even Linus Torvalds is starting to talk about this
Links 30/05/2026: More GAFAM (Amazon) Mass Layoffs, Peter Schiff Warns of Trillion-Dollar Slop Bubble Waiting to Implode
Links for the day
Slop is Plagiarism
Trillions of dollars down the drain, invested in a dud
Gemini Links 30/05/2026: Rehabilitation and Taming Emacs Cache and Temporary Files
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks and Secure Transmission of Private Communications in Formats Everybody Can Access With Free Software
Maybe the FSF should step up a bit the campaign to use Free software to communicate with one another
General Consultative Committee (GCC) Discusses Working Conditions of Employees of the European Patent Office (EPO)
On the agenda: Salary Erosion Procedure, Breastfeeding Policy, New Amicale Framework, Public Holidays 2027
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 29, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, May 29, 2026
Links 29/05/2026: "Spyware Economy" and Cuba's Energy Crisis
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Rap Rant and LLMs Criticised
Links for the day
Akira Urushibata on Misleading Numbers From Anthropic's Project Glasswing (False Marketing by FUD Tactics)
Posted yesterday and approved a short while ago
Censorship of Information Unflattering to IBM (or GAFAM)
Years ago we gave a platform to a censored Microsoft whistleblower
Silent Layoffs at Microsoft in 2026
Time will tell is there are investigative journalists out there who will quit parroting Microsoft (e.g. false layoff figures) and relying on LLMs controlled by Microsoft to spew out false "facts" for them
SLAPP Censorship - Part 91 Out of 200: Legal Aid in Support of Freedom of the Press and British Women (Attacked by Americans)
bolstered by prominent counsels
Codecs and Software Patents - Part XII - GNU's Web Site Will Soon Have Many Recent Talks by Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman (RMS)
GNU videos being transcoded or converted into AV1
[Video] Richard Stallman's Rapperswil (Switzerland) Talk Online
accessible without proprietary software
Trusting Trust is an Old Issue, Predating Rust and LLM Slop by Over Half a Century
Microsoft Lunduke wants to make a case against Rust and slop (LLMs), but the issues he addresses aren't exactly new or unique
California Should Have Abandoned So-called 'Age‑Verification Laws', Not Make Exemptions (for Now)
This has nothing to do with 1) children 2) safety 3) safety of children
Links 29/05/2026: Cory Doctorow on Why the Internet Feels So Broken, American Pope on Defederation
Links for the day
Techrights Does Not Censor Information About IBM, It Platforms and Retains Suppressed Voices From Inside IBM
They don't like it when people criticise the management [...] panic attacks mentioned
Bob (Robert) Cringely Devoted Three Years of His Life Trying to Profit From LLM Slop and Now He Sounds Off, It's Just Not Working and It Can Crash the Economy Soon
"The labs raising money at valuations with too many zeros are happy"
Techrights After About 60,000 Articles in 20 Years
Sites fail if they don't offer anything new or if they wrongly believe that adopting slop to parrot other sites will give them exposure
Organised Plunder or Robbery: GAFAM and Hardware Companies Rely on Media Bribery to Perpetuate False Narratives and to "Drive Sales" (and Drive Prices Upwards)
The price-fixing seems plausible and, if so, we need to demand action
Linux Foundation Destroys the Identity and History of Linux
Groklaw's PJ was thorn on the side of LF sponsors
The Problem of Microsoft Crimes
Opposing crime isn't "hatred"
The Fall of Slop (Even Microsoft Admits There's a Problem)
If Microsoft admits that slop is too expensive and is for "entertainment purposes" because it cannot be relied upon, why would anyone other than the pushers and profiteers still insist that slop bears potential?
Red Hat Will Die Inside a Dying IBM
IBM isn't where Red Hat came to thrive but where it came to die
Very Large Strike at the European Patent Office Today, "Production" Sank a Huge Deal
At this pace, we might be looking at tens of thousands fewer European Patents being granted this year
Gemini Links 29/05/2026: Leadership and Religion, the Board Game (Second Edition)
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 28, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, May 28, 2026
Links 28/05/2026: Pakistan and Afghanistan Are Still Fighting, Iranians Back Online
Links for the day
"LLMs Are Not Much More Than Plagiarism Engines"
the impact of LLMs on communities and software projects
Is Slop Profitable Yet? No.
Everything is a giant minus
Bob (Robert) Cringely Has Just Explained That After 3 Years of Hard Work It Became Apparent LLM Slop is Unfit for Purpose in Courts
Added moments ago to Daily Links
Links 28/05/2026: LibreSSL 4.3.2, "Jeff Bezos Is Afraid Of What Comes Next", Measles Making a Comeback
Links for the day
PCs That Are Made to 'Expire' and 'Secure' Boot Contributing to Planned Obsolescence
People who are responsible for this ought to be held accountable
Evil, Faceless Corporation: Google Steals Money From You If You Don't Purchase an Android Device for MFA
At this point, under the guise of "hey hi" (slop) Google is firing tens of thousands of workers
People Go Back to Basics, Abandon Microsoft's GitHub to Avoid Slop
The media didn't pay any attention to GitHub's de facto chief quitting Microsoft only a few months ago
SLAPP Censorship - Part 90 Out of 200: When Efforts to Silence His Spouse and Also the Wife of a Blogger in Another Continent Only Give More Exposure to Embarrassing Information
The Garrett trial ended in October 2025
IBM - Much Like the European Patent Office (EPO) - Gives the President (Head of Board and CEO) All the Money While Staff Drowns in High Inflation Rates
They're discussing the same sort of thing we often see mentioned in the EPO
"THE REGISTER EXPLAINER" as "Paid-for SPAM" at The Register MS With "AI" 40 Times in the Short Page
What will be left of The Register MS in a few years?
2025: EPO President Campinos Breaks the Cookie Jar, Steals Another Million Euros While His "Brother-in-Law" Does Cocaine at the Office and Staff Prepares Rolling, Indefinite Strikes
any additional month of Campinos in charge of the EPO is a liability not just to the EPO but the EU as well
Gemini Links 28/05/2026: Dumping Microsoft GitHub, Gopher Rabbit Hole
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, May 27, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, May 27, 2026