From 63c5fc4ab09e4a6fef52208a0ab0c2341860fbde Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Rohan Kumar Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2022 21:44:30 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] New note: problems with Gemini --- content/notes/problems-with-gemini.md | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/notes/problems-with-gemini.md diff --git a/content/notes/problems-with-gemini.md b/content/notes/problems-with-gemini.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4349968 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/notes/problems-with-gemini.md @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +title: "Problems with Gemini" +date: 2022-09-05T21:43:11-07:00 +replyURI: "https://nya.social/notes/818310555359e1292a5f9b15" +replyTitle: "Hey what if we remade Gopher but closed it off to older machines by forcing usage of TLS?" +replyType: "SocialMediaPosting" +replyAuthor: "@allison@nya.social" +replyAuthorURI: "https://nya.social/@allison" +--- +You can [run TLS 1.2 and 1.3 on plenty of 90s-era setups](https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2022/07/crypto-ancienne-20-now-brings-tls-13-to.html). A typical Gemini page is small, so you might have to blink twice while ChaCha-POLY1305 does its thing. TLS might exclude retro servers, but not clients. + +If Gemini had these changes, I'd be happy: + +- Use something better than TOFU-based TLS for transit encryption (Tor, Yggdrasil, DANE-based-TLS, etc.) + +- If using TLS: use a small subset of TLS 1.3. Maybe just stick to ECDSA + ChaCha-POLY1305. + +- Drop ASCII art: overloading programming-language indicators and ASCII-art alt-text is an accessibility hazard + +- Add some sort of "download finished without aborting early" indicator (e.g. something like Content-Length) + +- Add some way to reliably work with a larger page, e.g. using compression or range-requests with pagination. My full-text Atom feed is almost 1 mb uncompressed, but under 200 kb with Brotli compression. Downloading a full-text export of my Gemini capsule without a content-length header or compression sounds bad. + +The main thing I like about Gemtext is links on their own lines. This gets people to use longer/descriptive link text and also makes them serve as navigational aids better than their HTML counterparts. + +Honestly, I'm less interested in the technology than the community. Gemini Space is a comfy change of pace.