Comment by 🚀 lars_the_bear
Re: "I feel myself becoming more and more of a tech separatist…"
@ingrix : sure -- twenty might be an exaggeration. But I wonder... ctrl-c.club alone has several hundred gemini capsules but, when I looked at them, I saw that many were just placeholders and, of those that had real content, most hadn't been updated for several years. My own capsule is at least up-to-date but, to be honest, 90% of it is stuff that I converted from other places. I wonder how many people are still posting stuff in 2026 that is uniquely Gemini? I certainly _hope_ it's more than 20, but I'm not convinced.
Feb 20 · 2 months ago
21 Later Comments ↓
☀️ TooDuskForDawn · Feb 20 at 17:22:
@lars_the_bear I'm not sure what counts as uniquely Gemini, but I log here & nowhere else. I moved my poetry and stuff over here as well, but there's no way to access it without knowing where it is beforehand on the open web (or snooping, I guess :P). Also, I see many people here & on Station, and as far as I can tell most of the stuff posted is "uniquely Gemini"...
@lars_the_bear that's a fair observation, I do also see the same sort of thing when I browse the tilde-style platforms too, and maybe it's cause for concern. It may also be the easy-come easy-go syndrome. The more important pieces I find when browsing other locations though. Places like here, Antenna, DSN, etc are good for finding new capsules and that's what I rely on. I suspect a lot of others around Geminispace do that too so seeing the empty tilde pages doens't dishearten me too much.
As for Gemini-specific stuff, maybe a lot of stuff is cross-posted to http but that also doesn't bother me too much. There still seem to be plenty of people who are interested in browsing around Gemini space that scoop up any new goings-on pretty quick. All that said, making more mention of Geminispace to people and its features (and antifeatures) is a good idea just to keep the mood lively.
I've been posting to my gemlog roughly since I discovered Gemini around COVID, 200+ entries. Strictly Gemini, would never and had never posted on normal social media.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Feb 20 at 17:53:
@TooDuskForDawn : Fair enough. I hope one day to feel comfortable posting in Gemini only. But there's little extra work involved in making an HTML/HTTP version of my Gemini capsule, so my only reason for posting in Gemini _only_ would be (I guess) because I want to live in a small-ish community. But to some extent, I guess, I actually do. So I don't know.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Feb 20 at 17:58:
@stack : Sure. I've read some of your posts, and found them all interesting, even though I don't agree with everything you say ;) I've never used regular social media, and can't even imaging doing so. But I do have a large, ordinary website, which is where I tend to post first -- mostly out of habit, I guess. I've had a website for 30+ years, after all.
Hey, even I don't agree with everything I say. Sometimes I just feel that someone has to say it.
I think the empty capsules are mostly "what's this Gemini thing" and people not knowing how or wanting to write long form. I kind of fall into the latter category. some are bot-made hosting capsules.
who remembers the discussion about the centralizing nature of Station and BBS? the purists argued anything centralized on Gemini went against core values and said it was a slippery slope to dark patterns. I can see it. sometimes these places and the games are my only draw to Gemini.
to it's credit, there's not a lot of addictive patterns here.
I grew up in a small town and I like small communities
👻 darkghost · Feb 20 at 22:13:
The smaller the community the more it needs an anchor. In meat space historically, this was a religious or social meeting space. Antenna, Station, BBS, they serve as these meeting places. But it isn't centralizing the way not participating in a religion ostracizes you. You can participate on Gemini and not set foot here. It also isn't a slippery slope until there is money involved. There is no algorithm optimizing your time here to shove more ads into your eyeballs.
Strong communities need a shared purpose besides a shared infrastructure.
I think a lot of us are drawn to Gemini because of what it isn’t, and although the medium may be a large part of the message, it’s rather purpose-neutral. I’m not sure the protocol alone can lead to community.
There isn’t a smart-phone-user community, but there is dumb-phone community or amateur radio community. I think “scale” is also important to define communities.
As an aside, I don’t think both “purpose-neutral” and “medium is [large part of] the message” go together. In the social domain, thinking that technology (or anything else, for that matter) can abstract out neutral parts is a big part of current problems. I noticed that tendency among some technologists/futurists of the last century, too.
— 1958 essay by Arthur C. Clarke
@sy I think you’d be right to call out that those two ideas are in tension. I see them working over slightly different dimensions. The nature of the medium attracts a certain mindset, so there is strong signal implicit in *anything* posted here, and yet that’s still not enough to give a shared purpose.
We might be like a suburban street where everybody lives in the same socioeconomic zipcode, but is absorbed in their own thing, and community is limited to polite greetings when passing, and the occasional shared infrastructural concern when there’s a problem with the trash collection.
I've been thinking recently how I want some fully open hardware (even at expense of performance) with a GNU licensed OpenBSD derivative (immutable and offline first?) that takes a generally suckless approach. Anyone got some relevant skills to give it a crack together? The only way I see anything like a fully Libre GNU/Linux succeed is if they produce some relatively modern hardware platform themselves.
👻 darkghost · Feb 21 at 12:03:
@drh3xx Fully open hardware exists but it runs Linux. I want you to sit down before you check pricing on it.
Ready?
It's made by MNT they have two laptops called the Reform and the Pocket. I've considered it but failed to act before tariffs made it much worse for me to buy.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Feb 21 at 13:18:
@darkghost : Thanks for the warning. I wonder if they sell many at that price?
Well, the tariffs had been struck down by the Supreme Court. We'll see what happens with prices.
@darkghost They look to be fairly well built and maintainable (beyond the main board/SoC dying many years down the line). Price is quite high for less than Intel N100 performance but if it's fully open with many years of support (even 3rd party) I'd be open it. The OS I mentioned would likely remain pretty niche anyway. Could start with a gutted (Libre?)Linux kernel to OBSDify it, add in some nice OBSD features like pledge, select base packages and from then on develop the OS as a complete OS, BSD style. Would probably have to go that kind of route anyway as not sure the BSD license could just be ripped out and replaced with one of the GNU compatible licenses without getting in any bother.
👻 darkghost · Feb 21 at 16:52:
Yeah it is hard to justify on the price to performance. If you want it and have the means, you'll get it. As one of the reviews said "it's the device for after the astroid hits" though making up a quick C app will be low on my list if I survive the asteroid.
I think there will be plenty of top of the line I9 PCs and licensing will not be an issue.
I'm fairly torn honestly. I'm very much against gatekeeping, & making newcomers feel unwelcome, but on the flipside it's saddening seeing niche communities experiencing influx of low effort memeish content, & can sense the eye rolling & general wincing from core contributors.
As with most things, there's likely a middle ground. I 100% agree with the notion that a critical mass rarely needs to be reached, or that an appeal to the popular needs to ever be made. Though I believe that ethos shouldn't overshadow being somewhat welcoming to newbs.
— https://reform.debian.net/d-i/
U-Boot for all platforms shipped by MNT require non-free material in the form of DDR training blobs, ARM trusted firmware blobs, WiFi/BT firmware and/or HDMI/eDP firmware.
not free enough, not expensive enough
— https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/purchase.html
Original Post
I feel myself becoming more and more of a tech separatist as time goes on. Not only do I like alternative tech-related things like Gemini or OpenBSD for example, but I would also prefer that these types of things never become mainstream, because it seems as though that once you cross that line, it's only a matter of time before it gets ruined for being too crowded. At least OpenBSD refuses to appease anyone outside the project and I don't really foresee Gemini appealing to the masses either. I...