But that's not the point.
Side note: I noticed that more "boring" and less sexy projects had cooler names a lot of the time, and my theory was that people were compensating for doing unsexy work.
Pick a descriptive name. Everyone else who is not in your team will thank you.
-- Phil Karlton
For another, to do that we'd have to follow something like the prescription drug naming process https://globalhealthnow.org/2024-07/why-do-prescription-drug...
That way, instead of "Gemini", they could have named it something like "Cymbalta", "Xeljanz" or "Cialis" :P
My corollary to this is "You should never reach for a language you are not fluent in for a name. Especially, just stop it with using Japanese words to name stuff please ffs"
I agree, but that still doesn't stop funny name related issues between languages. One of my favourites was Pidora (a Fedora release for the RPI) which caused offence to some Russian speakers.
It turns out that there really aren't that many possible project names before you get into the made-up "that sounds stupid" words.
Sure, if you want projects to have the same naming strategy as Chinese Amazon Marketplace vendors.
Away from that, significance in naming begins to cluster quite quickly.
Gemini is a new internet protocol which:
- Is heavier than gopher
- Is lighter than the web
- Will not replace either
- Strives for maximum power to weight ratio
- Takes user privacy very seriously
You find a capsule you like and discover others through that person's links.
> 1.1.1 The dense, jargony answer for geeks in a hurry
> Gemini is an application-level client-server internet protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, with some special consideration for serving a lightweight hypertext format which facilitates linking between hosted files. Both the protocol and the format are deliberately limited in capabilities and scope, and the protocol is technically conservative, being built on mature, standardised, familiar, "off-the-shelf" technologies like URIs, MIME media types and TLS. Simplicity and finite scope are very intentional design decisions motivated by placing a high priority on user autonomy, user privacy, ease of implementation in diverse computing environments, and defensive non-extensibility. In short, it is something like a radically stripped down web stack. See section 4 of this FAQ document for questions relating to the design of Gemini.
Annoyed that for a system about plain text links, there's no link to "section 4".
The transport sounds like http without saying so. It doesn't go into why it doesn't use http. I'd probably be fine with HTTP and Markdown + image/video links. Maybe the Gemini document capabilities/scope is better but they're not described.
Edit: they are in "4.1.2"[0] Be warned, there's still a lot of beating-around-the-bush.
> 4.1.2 I'm familiar with HTTP and HTML. How is Gemini different?
[0] https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/faq.gmi#412-im-familiar-with...
Edit 2: Seems opinionated in many stupid-by-todays-needs ways. It feels like text-web made by some group of deniers.
Can't say I'm surprised that it hasn't taken the world by storm, but it's still a cozy part of the Internet.
Is there people building the equivalent to web directories and web rings? Or search engines? What are the cultural expectations on navigating other people's published resources?
Best means of discovery is like the original web, you surf it, bouncing from capsule to capsule finding what you like.
1. https://github.com/kr1sp1n/awesome-gemini?tab=readme-ov-file...
It's fine for something like HN, but I heavily rely on named links and emphasis on all my blogs and is a dealbreaker.
But yeah it seems like these lack of features is a willful and highly-opinionated approach to what the author of the protocol wants to take a stance on (their excuse is ease of implementation for clients, but I think it is a more of a deliberate choice). That's fine. It's their protocol and they can do what they want with it, but I think they missed an opportunity for it to take off.
Various people since have suggested we just settle on HTML 4 (with no scripting) and we'd be way better off and I agree.
Six Years of Gemini
It's a mark up language squarely focused on those that write text, but arduous to use if you want to share things you've illustrated, which is most of what I share online that isn't tech related. There's of course the argument that inline images/a spec'd way to expose an image directory listing with thumbnails/etc would only serve to distract or exploit you... but that also ignores the fact that people make art for your eyeballs too. Text is certainly the first class citizen, where images/music/video are all tied for second class, accessible only by downloading them 1 by 1.
That does mean it's perfectly fit for purpose! I wouldn't say it's bad just because I don't get my specific needs met. Someone who's needs are met by Gemini will love it.
Once a quarter, I batch up the recent posts and bcc a bunch of folks I like to keep in touch with. Some of them respond. This is what I do in place of social media now; outside of email, Discord and WhatsApp are all I use to keep in touch with folks.
I also like to poke around different gemlogs with Lagrange, which is a nice desktop-oriented Gemini client. It's good fun.
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It's proably a popular word for tech workers fans of the american space race.
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