Gemini Articles of Interest
A Gemini client* is needed for the following links.
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Technology and Free Software
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Working with Elpher
I like Emacs quite a lot. There's something about the "everything app" (the real one, Elon) that can be quite liberating. However, Emacs has quite a steep learning curve. This, combined with the insistence on "self-documentation" can make using the software quite a challenge, particularly for those of us that don't work in elisp all that much.
Recently I took some time to sit down and... read some code. And some changelogs. All in the pursuit of a simple goal: making Elpher work with client certificates.
Elpher does support client certificates and has a really nice workflow for adding new ones. It also supports associating these certificates with specific sites so you don't need to be prompted. Sounds fantastic, but this second feature isn't very well documented nor is it particularly obvious. Really, it needs to be documented with an example.
Since I've worked this out and am a professional technical writer, I figured I'd give a short and sweet overview of the process of setting up the elpher-certificate-map.
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Internet/Gemini
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The Guppy Protocol Specification v0.2
I don't know if anyone is interested in this, but let's give it a try. It started as a thought experiment, when I looked for 'lighter' protocols I can implement on the Pico W. I see Spartan mentioned here and there, and I wonder if there's any interest in going even more ... spartan
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Notes on Running Mastodon
Federation is the major thing to learn here. From the start a new instance will be completely empty, and not just because nobody's posted on it yet. The new instance doesn't yet know about any other instances, and other instances don't know about it.
This changes as soon as any user on the new instance starts creating a network by following or getting followed by other users. Once your instance learns about other users on other instances, those users will start showing up in places like your instance's federated feed.
This leads to a chicken and egg problem if you're a new user on a low population instance. You'll be looking for people to follow but you'll only be able to see users that your instance knows about, which might not be very many.
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* Gemini links can be opened using Gemini software. It’s like the World Wide Web but a lot lighter.