I love the idea of Gopher (even more so of Gemini), but the basic hurdle I run into is content. It feels like half of it is talking about how great gopher/gemini is, and the other half are deeply personal blogs. While the technology reflects the early days of the Internet, the content reflects the early days of blogging and social media (which came later). Rather than talking about things they are passionate about, they are talking about themselves.
I've become stuck in a strange metaphor regarding this: Gopher, Gemini etc are like an indicator of "biodiversity". Like a species living happily inside a small, even tiny ecological niche, having discovered that they don't really need much more.
Small protocols don't (?) disturb the mainstream internet in any meaningful way, but they simply deserve an opportunity to "be". They'll never be "big" these days (or, maybe in the scifi-scenario of complete societal collapse?). The content might, indeed, be a from-geek-to-geek thing these days, but they're a lovely sign of cultural richness, different thinking patterns etc.
That's one big issue, but I feel like the even bigger one is that neither of them fixes what's wrong with HTTP: Publishing is not a first-class citizen on the net.
As long as you need to rent servers and domain names all those alternatives are a waste of time, as they are just repeating all the missteps from HTTP. We need an alternative where you can type some text, hit publish and have it appear on the net with zero friction and in a way that isn't tied to a single third party. Publishing a site needs to be as easy as browsing one.
So far Nostr it's the only thing that gets close at the protocol level, but still lacks a good client.
Neocities is just a repeat of Geocities, and like everything else on the Web, it depend s on a third party to keep the service running, and whenever they lose interesting, all the content is lost. Even when somebody archives it, all the links are broken and the content becomes nearly impossible to find.
One of the big problems with the Web is that it's all ephemeral, it not a question of if it breaks, but when and how badly. A book doesn't disappear from your shelves just because the author lost interesting or the publisher goes out of business, but websites disappear from your bookmarks like that all the time. That's what needs fixing.
The other part is HTML itself. You shouldn't need to write raw HTML to write a website. That's the job of the browser. The very first browser that Tim Berners-Lee wrote supported editing, but that got completely lost over the years. A little bit still exist in the form of the 'contentEditable' attribute, but you can't author websites with that all by yourself, as there is no means of saving or publishing the results. No modern browser supports WebDAV either.
>it depend s on a third party to keep the service running
Does Nostr address this? Even things like freenet, tor, i2p rely on third parties...just more third parties than the traditional web, with the idea being that more means more uptime and less individual power.
But if you spin up a nostr (or any of the above) relay after the others have shuttered, you'll have no data because there are no peers. Torrents are fairly durable because there's usually at least one peer, but when there isn't, there just isn't.
>A book doesn't disappear from your shelves just because the author lost interesting
That's because the book is actually on your shelf. If you have local backups of websites, they don't disappear quite so easily. The web is just the library but on the web - you send a request to borrow, they let you if they have a copy, what you do with that copy is up to you and your legal system.
>You shouldn't need to write raw HTML to write a website
wysiwyg editors are better than ever, no? Plenty of themes available to take the burden of CSS off. Plenty of engines to take the pressure of JS off. Even in-browser IDEs and the inspect window if you do want to play with the code.
> Does Nostr address this? Even things like freenet, tor, i2p rely on third parties...
Yes, as Nostr and Freenet disconnect the storage location from the document identifier. Thus your link keeps working, even if the servers change.
The problem with the Web isn't a lack of cheap storage or people willing to mirror content, it's that none of that matters when the links keep breaking anyway and nobody can find the content anymore.
For how to do it right, see Usenet, the messages are held together by unique message-ids and the protocol was designed for distribution. Thus archives could be put together from random backup tapes and even 45 years later, you can browse and read the discussion threads.
Your average web forum just disappears when something goes wrong and even if somebody has mirrored the HTML, they'd have a rather bad time trying to recreate the original database, since the HTML is really more like screenshots of a GUI than the actual content.
> The web is just the library but on the web
Many countries have a legal requirement that every book published has to be send to the national library. We also have ISBNs that uniquely identify books. We have nothing like that in place for websites.
> they don't disappear quite so easily.
A local copy doesn't preserve it on the Web. Even if you wanted to preserve it on the Web, you can't, since the original domain belongs to somebody else.
I usually check in on gemini://antenna.michaelnordmeyer.com/ and think the content is a bit broader than you suggest. Recent posts cover topics like OpenBSD, Disney movies, Arch Linux, UK local radio, socks, books, and so on. Yes, there are a number of posts about Gemini, too, but it's a minority.
I feel the same about Gander (the Canadian Bluesky-compatible startup). The only content on it is people talking about how it's not Twitter. One of my top three beefs with it.
I think these projects focus way too much on platform building than content acquisition. The valuable platform is the one where the content is, whether that's celebrity feeds or professional networking. It doesn't matter how technically good your platform is if there's no casual reason to visit.
The early years of BlueSky were people talking about how it’s not Twitter.
People stick to a social network, and when they move is because they have big complaints about their previous home. If they didn’t, they would never have moved at all.
That’s probably the biggest lesson of the Web 2.0 era that everybody that tried to create a new social network had to learn.
What are you missing? Just write a bot that pulls interesting content into gopher, and start filling it. Since the protocol is so easy, nothing could be easier.
I am not looking for particular content, just for something that is interesting to read. Typically, that falls into the realm of things that people are passionate about. It may be a project. It may be an issue. It may be something they research in their spare time. It may be silly, or it may be serious.
While extolling the virtues of the protocol may fit in that, it gets excessive. Blogs that border on diaries strike me as too personal.
It's not that I'm looking for something on the scale or scope of the web. People have already written bots that pull over interesting content anyhow. What I am looking for is an environment that I'm comfortable with participating in.
The content split is what keeps me from staying. Once you leave the two or three hosts everyone names, it is hard to tell a technical phlog from another post about the protocol itself. Do you keep a short list of non-meta phlogs, or is it mostly hopping between known hosts?
True. Those who only care about meeting regulatory requirements are not going to care if the regulatory requirements cease to exist. Those who care about security may be dismissive of regulatory requirements, but they will do so primarily when they are insufficient or when they conflict with their opinion. In the former case, they probably have the ability to go beyond the regulatory requirements. In the latter case: while I won't claim that regulations are perfect, I would trust them over the an anonymous person who may be going on anything from their personal opinion to legitimate research.
The thing is, we tend to hear about the politicians who are ravenous for power, wealth, or recognition. The politicians who aren't (the backbenchers, the ones who run for local office, etc.) we rarely hear about outside of election cycles. While we may not agree with their politics, and may even go as far as disparaging their politics, it doesn't mean they are dishonest. It simply means that our personal values aren't aligned with the values of that politician.
Games were licensed long before Steam. Heck, I remember buying a game in the early 1990's that would disable use of the floppies once it was installed to the hard drive. By the time Steam rolled around, registration keys with online verification were normalized.
It's civil disobedience, at least once she refused to step aside when told to do so by the police officer. (I don't know if she was breaking the law by obstructing the robot.) So yeah, I would say there is nothing inherently wrong with you obstructing the entry of the local library -- provided you are willing to be peacefully arrested.
That doesn't mean that I agree with your right to obstruct entry into the library, nor does it mean that I agree with your reasons for blocking entry to the library. I also suspect that the courts would reject your reasoning.
The thing is, ham and hacker are defined in entirely different ways. Hackers can refer to people doing good, ill, or morally grey things. Think of how the term applies to certain software developers, people who breach networks to steal data, or circumvent security out of technical curiosity. In contrast, a ham is a licensed radio operator. While you certainly have lids, the vast majority have some sense of being a "good citizen" by the simple merit of being licensed. Unlicensed operators fit under other terms, like pirate.
Even the scope of the terms differ. Hackers have to make or break something. Hams may do anything from rag chew to build orbital satellites. If you're more inclined to do legal stuff and aren't inclined to build something, things involving community service are going to be more appealing.
Small, even tiny, homes are not a new thing. The house I grew up in was not much larger than the Futuro. A local museum has the house of a local artist inside, and it is about the size of a tiny home. Of course, you also have people living in mobile homes and trailers. I doubt that building codes have much to say on small homes, though zoning would.
That said, the design and materials would have an impact for more innovative designs.
I wouldn't go that far. If it's a legal practice, it's a legal practice. I can understand why a company would want to limit their liability over something that happened seven years in the past, even when they are confident that their procedures are both rigorous and in compliance with the law.
On the whole, I would say the problem isn't so much using language to whitewash the practice as the troublesome tendency to turn a blind eye until someone becomes persona non grata.
I don't think anyone is claiming that the destruction of evidence is right or good for society. On the other hand, do we really want to live in a world where everyone needs to be paperwork pack rats? One thing that I can assure you is requiring the retention of documents that provide evidence of a crime, while allowing for the destruction of everything else after seven years, wouldn't have the desired outcome. (Though it would be amusing to see which corporations have the largest indefinite data retention warehouses if it did work!)
I also think the right and good for society means addressing crimes in a timely manner, which likely means more auditing by independent bodies. Punishing someone for a crime that happened 7+ years ago may feel good, but it is meaningless for a couple of reasons. Should we be punishing people who have reformed? And for those who don't reform, should we be letting criminal behaviour occur across multiple decades?
Look, if you want better behavior lobby for longer retention, simple as that, laws will be passed if there is enough will behind. Or some centralized store, whatever. Eveeybody will align if things are clear and legally required by date xyz.
Dont blame any private company that its not overstepping its legal requirements and adding risks and costs to their business. Its like blaming a guy, any guy, heck all HN we dont pay more taxes than we have to pay, it goes to good things and is moral no?
We can do both, it's not hard to advocate for change while calling out bad actors as bad actors. Many companies openly degrade society while following the law. That still doesn't make it right. These are just excuses to allow authoritarians to degrade our lives and society unabated.
You can be sarcastic but there is no reason you've said why emails and documents of a few megabytes can't be permanently saved by companies using Exabytes of data. Make your point
Understanding the intricacies of large enterprise data and all the forms it can take is an exercise left to the reader. It isn't simple and I'm not sure why anyone would think it is. There isn't just like, a single fileshare you have to monitor. There are many more numbers than just X amount of data.
In a world where I’ve had a dossier in some corporate database since Rapleaf in 2007, I’m completely unwilling to accept your opinion that basic document retention based on account id is more complicated than I’m assuming. edit: the only things that I can see motivating it's lack of existence is lack of law and the desire for greater profitability. nothing technical has prevented it
How many times has the company changed their archiving service? How many datacenters do they have? How many network shares? What about one drive? Local docs? Gsuite? Remote profile accounts on RDS servers? AS400 shares? What about CAD cloud docs? How many times has the email archiving service changed? Warm storage vs cold storage? How will that be managed? When does it go into read only state? How are you tracking document changes? What about SharePoint docs and lists? Do you need to save vm snapshots? And on and on.
Everything you listed, including the on and on, is immaterial to the point I'm making. You're just listing the costs of doing business. I'm not saying there are no challenges, especially given how history has unfolded. I'm saying that in a world where google has maintained a copy of my gmail account since 2004, its reasonable that we should have written into law "If you send an official communication to a customer you must maintain a record of that communication which can be obtained by request of the customer or customer's estate until the dissolution of the company (upon which the state government would take custody)", and if we had, along with all the downstream effects from implementing such a law, we would live in a better society. I'm not saying it wouldn't be expensive and potentially dangerous given how poor we are at data protection presently, but IMO it would be worth it compared to the shitshow we inhabit.
You're talking like doing anything at a company is impossible when the company is only that large because they employ people to do many things. Everything on your list is just a job for a few people with some executive decisions. Maybe even just a list to feed into an LLM
Some of those decisions should just be forced by law.
Apparently it's way too hard and complicated for a multi-billion dollar enterprise to retain documents but quite easy to tell clients how to evade taxes.
Now you have me wondering how I would have responded to it back in the day. Personally, I avoided the humor sections of campus papers because they felt like more they were by written by teenagers pushing the boundaries (by going for shock value) than anything else.
> When I asked an AI how I would go about judging interest, building, raising funds, and manufacturing, it seems doable but expensive
Just a thought: make a small business out of setting up people's home networks and small business networks. The cost is negligible, you will learn about unmet demand, and you will be able to reach people who aren't technical in the process. It will cost you some money, in the sense that your service fees would almost certainly be less than your day job. On the other hand, potential customers would be paying you for market research and product development. In some respects, the market research will be more valuable in the sense that you are working with potential customers.
I say potential customers because selling a kit will reach different people. On the otherhand, it will tell you what has to go into that kit. For example: I doubt that flashing DD-WRT to existing hardware will suffice. There will be some people interested in that (someone else does the research, fear of bricking), but would those people commit to buying and setting up your product? Throw in a setup wizard that makes setting up ad blocking, VPN, or anything else that major vendors don't have much interest in simplifying, and you will likely have more success.
As someone who has worked for MSPs serving small and mid sized businesses, I would not do this. They aren't going to pay you monthly, they have very little free cash for invisible things like this. There's just no value add here. If anything goes wrong, you're on the hook. You'll need insurance for sure. They may not pay you. You'll need a lawyer on retainer. If their printer stops working, you'll have to prove it wasn't you and you're not getting paid for that time.
Stay far far away from small businesses unless you want it to be your full time job.
Ages ago I made OK money doing support contracts to SMB. Basically selling 12h use it or lose it support on monthly basis. Show them the value add and get pre-paid. Revenue in 2004 was like $120k, working maybe 20h/week, of course 2026 is very different.
This is an idea that a platform like Kickstarter used to be great at validating. I did this in 2012 and found around 500 users willing to pay for an open source photo management software.
Finding customers will be difficult. I suggest finding a couple and then talking with them to learn what they want first and then understand their willingness to purchase by offering them a device at a cost.
For me - I’m in the market. I flashed my Asus router with Merlin. I’d do the same for my next router. What might lead me to buy my next device from you?
- I like to support independent vendors when I can. (See caveats below)
- I would like a built in way to keep the firmware up to date … mine is old.
- I would want to understand the commercial equivalent router based on specs to make it easier for me to decide if it will meet my needs.
- The rest is provided by DD-wrt.
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