Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
loading story #50229407
prologic | parent | next
I still think Gopher (the protocol that is) is still very relevant today. The beauty of it really is in its simplicity. Great to see that the library I wrote all those years ago is still being used :D

https://pkg.go.dev/git.mills.io/prologic/go-gopher

II2II | parent | next
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.
marttt | parent | next
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.

grumbel | parent | next
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.

loading story #50230950
NoboruWataya | parent | next
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.
post-it | parent | next
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.
Vaushite | root | parent | next
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.
vconnor | root | parent
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.

abc123abc123 | parent | next
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.
loading story #50230467
anthk | parent | next
gopher://sdf.org and gopher://magical.fish have far more than retro-onanism.
warkdarrior | parent | next
Maybe they are passionate about themselves??
hujun236 | parent
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?
loading story #50232980
rektlessness | parent | next
Proud exSDF member from the old days. SDF was considered 'vintage' back when i joined so must be doubly so now. Was introduced to Gopher back then too, along with NetBSD.

What a blast from the past to see SDF.org make it to HN in 2026. Proud grandpa. lol.

rustyhancock | parent
Why exSDF member? Your account is surely still there waiting for you!
loading story #50238846
ecliptik | parent | next
Few months ago I had Claude build me a Gopher browser for Classic Macintosh systems, geomys[1]. I was using TurboGopher[2] before then, and it worked, but had a lot of design choices that are clunky today.

I tried to focus on keeping with the Apple HIG from the 1990s, while also making it more aligned with modern browser principles.

1. https://github.com/ecliptik/geomys

2. https://www.macintoshrepository.org/265-turbogopher

loading story #50230117
ottoflux | parent | next
SDF is wonderful. Been supporting them for around 20 years.
loading story #50233504
loading story #50231048
vaporup | parent | next
- https://geminiprotocol.net

- https://reticulum.network

GuB-42 | parent | next
Gemini is essentially GopherS, Reticulum doesn't seem to operate at the same level (it is L3, like IP, from the look of it).

I hold the controversial opinion that encryption can be an anti-feature on the "small web". One of the reason is technical: encryption takes computing resources, and can hardly be made time proof, as it has to evolve in response to threats, and certificates tend to have expiration dates. The other is more philosophical: you use encryption when you want to share secrets: personal data, passwords, credit card numbers, etc... A system that doesn't support encryption doesn't support transfer of personal data, accounts or commercial transactions, which I believe is a good thing in this niche. There is no shortage of secure communication systems when you need one, let that niche stay a niche.

loading story #50235535
anthk | parent | next
Gemini it's good on legacy machines and some clients can be really barebones (awk+less), and for some security there are clients written in Go. For awk+less, do yourself a favour. Run

    unset LESSOPEN
or have it at ~/.profile.

Reticulum it's unusable in 32 bit machines, it badly needs a Go port for nomadnet.

On Gopher, well, lynx/sacc and maybe i2pd for some security and anonimity.

As a start, there's:

     gopher://magical.fish
     gopher://sdf.org
For gemini,

     gemini://gemi.dev it's nice.
'Lagrange' covers both gemini and gopher as a client.

You can set an HTTPS proxy for it and read news sites and blogs over Gemini.

Just set

     stargate.gemi.dev:1994
As the HTTP proxy in the settings for Lagrange.

For the terminal guys, there's Telescope and it can use HTTP proxies as well. Read the man page.

loading story #50232242
loading story #50228010
vconnor | parent
Time to stop posting about these, there’s no rush for them to have their Eternal September moment. Let us enjoy the good vibes for a while longer.
loading story #50230990
loading story #50230128
hugodan | parent | next
i would love it to have support for images, but maybe i'm missing the point i guess
jmclnx | parent | next
Why ? It is not owned and controlled by billionaires. Plus no AI slop being spammed to gopher sites.

FWIW, the same applies to gemini protocol.

cowlevel | parent
Same applies to HTTP too though
loading story #50232554
quimawen | parent
This is a useful angle on Go. I'd want to see how it holds outside the initial conditions.