Comment by 🚀 stack
Re: "A Payment Layer on Gemini? Remember the old web you did…"
@argyle, I was at a book store recently and can't say that it was flooded with AI books. Didn't look specifically, but I don't think I saw any...
2025-12-23 · 4 months ago
18 Later Comments ↓
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 23 at 22:01:
@stack How many gay/vampire/occult mostly aimed at teens books did you see? Odds are, any one of those is AI or greatly assisted by it.
You got me, didn't look there.
I don'r think I would mind 'greatly assisted' if well executed.
Also, don't want to be a snob but I don't think there were many pre-AI masterpieces in these niche genre books.
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 23 at 22:14:
@stack in the Indie markets that is mainly what moves right now. It's not my genre, but the crowding is starting to cut into all other fiction. The original Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker were both in that genre and reasonably well written. Add to that pretty much anything by Poe. More modern might be House of Leaves. I think the problem is you aren't well-versed in literature in that specific realm. I don't especially try to be, but I know enough to know enough.
👻 darkghost · Dec 23 at 22:28:
I saw some online foraging books written by AI for sale. Seems like a dumb way to die.
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 23 at 22:36:
@darkghost Good lord...
I am definitely ignorant on this subject, although have read and enjoyed Frankenstein. From shallow personal observation, vampire fanfiction read much like AI slop way before AI was around...
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 23 at 22:53:
@stack Fun trivia fact: Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein during the summer without a summer wherein there was no typical summer because a volcano had erupted and caused a seasonal change and very little summertime sun.
@argyle - I hope things work out for you! I have little doubt that there always will be a market for writers. People always panic when a new technology seems threatening, be it computers separately threatening typography, design, art, music, and even money , or older tech like television, photography, the automobile or the printing press...
👻 darkghost · Dec 25 at 20:29:
Video killed the radio star.
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 26 at 04:24:
@stack Thank you for the wishes. In some sense, things have all ready not worked out for me, but that was previous to AI. De-platforming of payment processors is a thing, as well as being squelched. On the other hand, if those things happen, you could argue things are working out for you but not in a financial manner. The key then becomes having a way for people to hear and see you and possibly value your work. Therein is the trick.
I wrote a draft specification of computer payment file:
— https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zzo38/scorpion/refs/heads/trunk/misc/payment.txt
(I did not implement it because I am not familiar with doing any kind of payment by computers; someone with a comment may make suggestions about changes to the specification so far. I probably missed some things and/or made some mistakes.)
Depending on corporations for one's well-being often leads to unpleasant surprises. That is why alternative solutions are important, even though it's getting harder and harder to even convince people of that.
@zzo38: what is the point of that? Is there a problem with existing tech that you are solving?
There are many points, such as: to improve security of payment, to avoid using overly complicated web browsers, to avoid some of the dishonest things that other ways do, to make it effective for many kind of payment (including anonymous payment), to be independent of the protocol, etc. (I might improve the document later today; I already found some mistakes, but there are some I probably don't know so if someone else knows enough about computer payment would be able to comment better.)
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 26 at 22:39:
@stack, Ah, but you see, there is the interesting part. I wasn't depending on a corporation. The corporation sent people out, however, to interfere in my business and ultimately use their leverage to shut my independence down. They did this illegally, and unjustly, but they did it just the same.
🚀 argyle [OP] · Dec 26 at 22:41:
@zzo38 That looks pretty neat. I'll have to look at it more carefully when I have some time to read. I like the basic ideas I see so far.
in generally i believe that commerce is what spoiled our internet, and that there ane very few, if any, ethicasl ways to earn on the intenrnet.
most ways i can imagine exploit the end user inevitably.
so i think it is the best when 'service' is being offered by a community or hobbyist, and the node is always very small, comparable with this bbs.
if gemini has more users, we'll need more forums and federation, or some decentralized system like usenet, or usenet with gemini frontend.
on topic: afaik all payments on the internet use https.
so if you implement something with gemini interface, it should talk to bank or other entity via http.
also, i guess you can implement a crypto payment that is possible to use via gemini. if we forget that crypto sphere itself is very questionable.
Original Post
A Payment Layer on Gemini? Remember the old web you did have some funky send us checks type of stuff going on that intersected with the web before Musk and Paypal. I remember CGI scripts for processing credit cards, specifically. What do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea? I feel like ads were the bigger ruining factor of the old web...