#dev 2025-10-24

2025-10-24 UTC
[snarfed] joined the channel
#
[snarfed] I thought internet archive ignored robots.txt, at least sometimes? viewed it as damage and routed around it?
#
[snarfed] or is that archive team
doesnm, [0x3b0b] and Buddy joined the channel
#
[artlung] the distinction is to what it makes available to _the public_ and whether there's an archival value to the content. here's one post on that. https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/
claudinec, srazkvt, DanQ, [artlung], [Al_Abut], [jeremycherfas], [Murray], [morganm], [snarfed], [capjamesg], grufwub, [KevinMarks], thegreekgeek_ and qbrack_ joined the channel
#
jbcrn Does hiding the h-card on users be fine? For design reasons, I have a separate about page but still want tools to discover my info
#
jbcrn also I might disable cloudflare email protection for good (it shows the email protection URL on tools like indiewebify.me)
[lazcorp] joined the channel
#
capjamesg I think there is a way to indicate your h-card is on another page but I don't fully understand it.
ttybitnik joined the channel
#
capjamesg I _think_ https://microformats.org/wiki/representative-h-card-authoring is the relevant document, but maybe someone else can help.
#
capjamesg [edit] I _think_ https://microformats.org/wiki/representative-h-card-authoring is the relevant document, but maybe someone else can help.
chimo and phobos joined the channel
#
[snarfed] https://indieweb.org/h-card#Issues
marc_in_space, [schmarty] and gRegor joined the channel
#
gRegor short answer, yes, elements with microformats can be visually hidden on the page and still parse. It's usually recommended against because invisible information can go stale, or if it breaks it's not as obvious. But that's just a recommendation.
#
gRegor *and will still be parsed
#
gRegor what is authorship
#
Loqi authorship is how to indicate who the author is for a post, and an algorithm that determines the author of a post https://indieweb.org/authorship
#
gRegor https://indieweb.org/authorship#How_to_publish has some options if you're talking about avoiding repeating the author information in individual post permalinks
#
gRegor Which could point to the representative h-card on the homepage
#
gRegor If you're already displaying your name on your homepage in a header or footer, that's a good candidate to make a representative h-card, and you don't have to hide it
[fluffy] joined the channel
#
[fluffy] What are folks' opinions on Gemini? I got someone who started out asking about using Authl for a comment system (which is totally a good idea and something I've been wanting to build) but now they've pivoted the thread over to talking about Gemini in what feels like a total nonsequitur. https://github.com/PlaidWeb/Authl/discussions/142#discussioncomment-14775368
#
[fluffy] ... oh wait I just lookeda t their user profile, they're a freaking LLM.
#
[fluffy] or maybe I'm just not understanding their github profile
[aciccarello] joined the channel
#
[aciccarello] I think they mean they are mad that github is using their code for LLM training so they migrated off.
#
[fluffy] I hope that's the case.
#
[aciccarello] I don't understand their ask though. I'm not familiar with Gemini BBS
#
[fluffy] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) is like... trying to reinvent the web as if it were Gopher.
#
[aciccarello] What is the smolweb?
#
Loqi Small Web (or smallweb) is a term used in a 1999 article, a hosting service, two consulting services, a May 2020 article, a Aug 2020 blog post that describes a subset of IndieWeb principles, a HackerNews summary of Gemini, a curation of indie websites, most recently a blog + Mastodon account, and has variants smol web (smolweb) and smol net (smolnet) https://indieweb.org/smolweb
#
gRegor what is gemini protocol
#
Loqi The Gemini protocol is an alternative to HTTP with similar use-cases, with intentional consideration of privacy and security, that could be an alternative way to serve an IndieWeb site https://indieweb.org/Gemini_protocol
#
gRegor Think there's some criticisms on there
#
[fluffy] And it purposefully does not allow for authentication mechanisms to begin with, as I understand it, and Authl is nothing but an authentication wrapper, so.....
#
[aciccarello] Seems like people don't actually want the limitations of the protocol 🤔
#
gRegor Only one I think I've read so far is https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2023/05/28/the-gemini-protocol-seen-by-this-http-client-person/
#
[fluffy] Yeah. And I mean I have no idea how an Authl flow would work through Gemini anyway. If this person wants to build something *like* Authl for Gemini, they're certainly free to do so, like Authl itself is basically a selfhosted clone of Auth0
#
[fluffy] (in concept, not in API)
#
[fluffy] I installed a gemini browser just to look at the two links they posted and they have nothing to do with anything
#
[fluffy] The first one is just a big unstructured pile of links and the second one is some sort of RSS-to-Gemini adapter.
#
[aciccarello] I think there are also gemini proxy websites if you don't want to install a browser.
#
[fluffy] yeah I couldn't find one easily because "Gemini" is not an easily-searched name due to also sharing a name with a NASA program and a cryptocoin
#
[fluffy] oh also Google has a "project Gemini" too
#
[aciccarello] Yeah, pretty unfortunate discoverability with the naming conflicts
#
gRegor Here's a proxy: https://portal.mozz.us/
#
aaronpk yeah that is not a person
#
[aciccarello] Oh. BBS stands for Bulletin Board System
#
gRegor their website is written in quite an odd tone, not sure if LLM or what
#
[fluffy] Okay I don't think this is an LLM, just someone who comes across as one.
#
gRegor updated to make it more discoverable: https://indieweb.org/Gemini_protocol#Browse_on_the_web
#
[artlung] Gemini has incredibly minimal markup akin to Gopher and last I looked was pretty hostile to notions about storing data, cookies, metadata (like, the stuff that makes making applications of websites possible), and in the conversation they say http is a bad protocol.
cotsuka joined the channel
#
[fluffy] Yeah I think this is a person, just one with some very odd beliefs.
#
[fluffy] Or some bad misunderstandings about things.
#
[artlung] philosophically I'd paraphrase Gemini as "the web is part of the surveillance economy, so we need something simpler, and a text based system without all the tooling the web is using is the answer"
#
[artlung] so "I want to add identity management and commenting" is, to [aciccarello]’s point, pushing against that idea. Again, if I'm understanding the POV represented by the comments.
#
[aciccarello] Good point [artlung] I didn't have a good grasp on the motivations for gemini other than wanting something "simpler"
#
[fluffy] It feels like one of those fun ideas that some people take a lot more seriously than it merits. There's some concepts to it which are at least relatable but it goes *way* too far in throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
#
[fluffy] If this person wants to build some sort of federated IndieAuth-like identity metaprotocol within Gemini, sure, I guess that's possible, but Authl would still have nothing to do with it.
#
gRegor Yeah, seems reasonable
#
[artlung] yeah! I browsed some fun Gemini sites, I think [Jo] was the first person I knew who had Gemini sites going and there was a spirit of Tilde/GeoCities fun to it. And I had a comment in Mastodon from someone hoping to do their website in such a way that they could also publish it as Gemini and Gopher.
#
[fluffy] Authl just exists as middleware to make it easier for Python apps to support multiple other identity layers (OAuth-based SSO, emailed tokens, etc.)
#
[artlung] yeah, implementing the parts of the web stack that do *that* in Gemini is out of scope for Authl. To understate it grossly!
#
[fluffy] Gemini reminds me of those old information retrieval platforms that were getting big in the 80s, like the Albuquerque public library system got one that was really cool and I spent most of my time trying to break it 😉
#
[artlung] Or even how ftp sites once worked! I remember some ftp sites that were all documents, back when web browsers were tasked to browser ftp more than now. (decades ago)
#
[fluffy] Yeah, that too. I remember Archie and Veronica and having to go through all the rigmarole of downloading a thing to my shell account and then transferring that to a floppy with Kermit or XModem or whatever
#
[fluffy] at one point there was a fun experimental protocol called SModem that let you transfer files while continuing to use your shell account for other things, and it was amazing
#
[fluffy] It never got very wide support though, and of course it came about just as PPP was starting to become more widely-available
ttybitnik, DanQ, DanQ1, bterry, [Roy] and CrimeWave joined the channel
#
gRegor what is OGP
#
Loqi The Open Graph protocol (OGP) is an open* standard developed and controlled by Facebook for expressing the primary subject of an HTML page in custom <meta> tags for the purpose of Facebook showing link previews; in practice only a couple are even sometimes necessary for that use-case, and you can use existing open standards instead https://indieweb.org/ogp
#
gRegor m​rmet86[d], I think [artlung]'s posts have OGP that shows up on Mastodon, at least some instances like https://xoxo.zone. Maybe could compare against his links
#
gRegor https://xoxo.zone/@artlung
#
gRegor Always trips me up that Mastodon URLs require that "@" in the username.
#
Loqi [preview] Joe Crawford
#
[artlung] On many page the *only* og property meta tag I add is the `meta property og:image`
#
[artlung] I use a script called shot-scraper to generate them and use a standard width and height: 1200 x 630. jpeg. https://github.com/artlung/lab.artlung.com/blob/master/og-images.php has code which does this for my purposes on my lab site.
[Jo] joined the channel
#
[Jo] Oh you were talking about gemini 👀
#
[Jo] I have a gemini:// sticker on my laptop and people always think it's a cute way of sharing my star sign but it's not 🙅
#
[tantek] Note to self, don't name projects, protocols, formats after anything astrolology related
DanQ, gRegor and troojg joined the channel