15 ms·
Git.io deprecation: Active links to be maintained in a read-only state
- baisq 5y agoI understand closing git.io if they were having to spend too much time moderating it, but they could have limited it to links to github.com instead. We use git.io a lot on irc because channel topics have a short character limit and links to pages on github wikis/etc are useful.
- Dayshine 5y agoWasn't it already limited to github? It would be weird for them to create a general purpose link shortener.
- baisq 5y agoHonestly I have no idea. But if they were having issues with spam hosted on github.com, what problems does deactivating git.io solve? The spam still exists and it's hosted using their service. Just the link is a bit longer.
- Sharlin 5y agoThe short URL doesn't tell you where it's going to lead, so can be used to mislead people.
- hiptobecubic 5y agoThis is how all shorteners work, isn't it? Otherwise we just call them "links."
- Sharlin 5y agoYes, but it’s presumably why Github doesn’t want to maintain their own.
- shp0ngle 5y agothe issue seems to be that it included github pages, which can then redirect wherever.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago>they could have limited it to links to github.com instead Isn't this how it worked?
- vel0city 5y agoNo, you could use it to link to anything. Which is the stated reason why they're killing it off. It was being abused and Github/Microsoft didn't want to take the time to maintain/moderate it.
- ricardobeat 5y agoNothing stops you from using another link shortening service, git.io has no particular value or special integration with GitHub.
- forgotpwd16 5y agoThat's the same thing goo.gl did.
- zinekeller 5y agoIf you've missed the news (and wondering why this is being voted), initially GitHub plans to fully shut down Git.io without redirection. Understandably, many people were dismayed by that and concerned of brooken links in research articles, printed media and source code comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31162829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31162829).
- lou1306 5y agoAs a researcher that has used git.io in at least one paper in the past, this is a relief. Unfortunately, GitHub permalinks to specific files (at a specific commit) are rather ugly, especially if you need to put them on paper. Hope they come up with an alternative.
- bhaak 5y agoYou know you can shorten the commit hash? For example https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/9e02977bfa/kernel/dma/direct.h#L54 https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/9e02977bfa/kernel/dma... I don't find this ugly, it's even very human readable. There's all info in the url that you even can use in the future if GitHub ever goes away.
- madsbuch 5y agoI think this is an elegant point. The URL is clickable and if you clone the repo you are still able to find that exact file from the link alone. Actually, I would use this argument that people should refrain from using url shorteners in papers for this very reason: It is anti-reproducible.
- wang_li 5y agoThe institution or publisher of the paper should maintain their own link shortener if this is something they want to use in the paper.
- dewey 5y agoThat's even worse than using some larger url shortener used by many people. The incentive to keep that one running are way larger than having it as side project of some publisher or university.
- markstos 5y agoA line in an Nginx file is easy to maintain. I’ve been neglecting some Nginx redirects for about 20 years that still work. At some point I did a fairly automated from Apache but otherwise the redirects have been zero maintenance. Notable, they I have broken since I own them!
- nelsonic 5y agoIs this Microsoft "killing" off a perfectly stable and low maintenance/overhead product/service just to save a few pennies? As a GitHub paying customer, I would gladly pay an extra few cents per month for this feature to continue. We use link shortening all the time especially for linking to a specific commit + line reference in our code. Shutting this down makes zero sense. :-(
- Dayshine 5y agoFrom the blog posts and sudden speed it reads more like a spam/phishing problem. The original blog post suggests you can make vanity urls. So perhaps it's open to git.io/your-bank-here-etc Does it support github pages? Because then it's clearly a massive problem.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- OldTimeCoffee 5y agoI think the problem is that it wasn't low maintenance. The moderation of the links for malicious links was becoming an increasing drain on resources. It's the same problem most large tech services run into eventually.
- zinekeller 5y agoUnfortunately, most people just throw "eh, it's low-maintenance". To bring down the point, here's the source code for that link shortener: https://github.com/technoweenie/guillotine https://github.com/technoweenie/guillotine. It was last updated in 2015. If you don't believe that this is the source code, this was directly linked to in its announcement: https://github.blog/2011-11-10-git-io-github-url-shortener/ https://github.blog/2011-11-10-git-io-github-url-shortener/. If the extreme lag (in an attempt to save the links) is indicative if its backbone, it's probably just running in a single server, which is very likely to be horribly outdated. It might not be due to the cost of removing the malicious links, it might be that Git.io as a platform has a cost in of itself (even excluding common things like domain and hosting costs).
- pygy_ 5y agoThis is very good, but... > As we continue our analysis, we may remove individual links that point to spammy, malicious or 404 links. Please be careful with 404 errors. They can be the result of temporary server misconfiguration.
- half-kh-hacker 5y agoCan git.io links point to a server that's not controlled by GitHub though?
- trevcanhuman 5y agoNot directly. According to github, only `github.com` and `*.github.io` links were enabled. But one could set up an html on github pages that redirects to the 'real' URL.
- samwillis 5y agoNot only 404 but also 5xx errors. As an example, I run an online store, Google checks the landing page urls for ads once a day. If you happen to have a temporary outage (surprisingly common on Heroku) at that exact moment your ads will be deactivated and not run for up to 24hrs! I’m somewhat suspicious it also dumps your ad back into a learning phase.
- CodesInChaos 5y agoAnd learning the target url allows you to look it up on archive.org, even if the target is permanently unavailable.
- tigerlily 5y agoAnd so, the Sun began its sullen plunge into the horizon, until a dusky pall crept over everything. Night’s drear countenance faced down the light of all that had gone before it; now fading, now flickering, now Extinguished.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoIs this where the ashen one is supposed to link the fire?
- can16358p 5y agoWhat was the effect on security? Really curious about the security implications as they've shown that as the reason to shut it down almost immediately without the grace period.
- srmarm 5y agoProbably none, just the balance between resources needed to keep it running (more dealing with potential legal and brand issues then technical) vs shutting it down shifted in response to the backlash and bad press around shutting it.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago> That said, we still encourage users to make use of one of the many URL shortening services available with greater functionality than the git.io service provided. Unless you need to change where the URL shortened link points to, don't do this, provide the full, canonical link instead. Is it common in papers to attach a copy of a reference as an addendum? That would make sense if the sources cited are web pages. Thinking about it, Wikipedia should maintain their own index and archive of cited sources, instead of or in addition to relying on archive.org.
- derefr 5y ago> Thinking about it, Wikipedia should maintain their own index and archive of cited sources, instead of or in addition to relying on archive.org. Why? Wikipedia and the Internet Archive are partners, each working to their comparative advantage. If Wikipedia has archival needs, they ask the Internet Archive to facilitate those needs.
- codesections 5y agoIn case you're looking for an alternative: consider using Perma.cc links, which both serve as a URL shortener and an archive of the current page. (Plus they're expressly intended to last "forever" and are maintained by one of the few organizations with the multi-century history to credibly make that claim (Havard Law School)) https://perma.cc/about https://perma.cc/about
- paulryanrogers 5y agoStrange they'd lean on a country code TLD since those can go sideways for political reasons.
- codesections 5y agoThat's a good point. For .cc in particular, it's the TLD for an Australian territory and is managed by Verisign so I'd expect the risks to be lower than with some TLDs. Still, though, a lot can happen in "forever" and you're right that it adds an (unnecessary?) risk
- mwint 5y ago
- jrochkind1 5y agoThat's odd, the US usually has Secretaries and Departments instead of Ministers and Ministries. Is it a cabinet level position? I'm having trouble finding it's web page. But I would have used `.net` personally, rather than a country-specific domain.
- lekevicius 5y agoURL shorteners were (still are!) probably the worst idea/trend on the internet. They solved a silly short-term pain (twitter not storing full URLs) but introduced a long term dependency, and normalized tracking via these links.
- JamesSwift 5y agoThey are also useful for reducing SMS cost EDIT: also for vanity "rememberable" urls
- lekevicius 5y agoI have nothing against "owned" short URLs, without external dependencies. But for "vanity", the best vanity URL is a domain name. Buy it, own it.
- JamesSwift 5y agoThe vanity part is not the domain, its the path. foo.com/sites/blog/signup-for-my-conference-2022-seo-friendly-url vs shortenedurl.com/conf-2022
- mygo 5y agoDNS solved vanity memorable URLs, and continues to do so if someone is not looking for a .com URL shorteners offering vanity urls solved people not needing to deal with the hassle of purchasing a vanity domain via a registrar, setting up DNS records, and waiting for propagation.
- JamesSwift 5y agoAre you suggesting that instead of short.com/foo you register foo.mydomain.com and setup a reverse proxy to redirect? Isnt that just a url shortener with more steps? Why wouldn't I just setup my own shortener service instead and send a `POST` request when I want a new url?
- batterylow 5y agoI've been using a personal link shortening service (using the domain https://m8.fyi https://m8.fyi) for a few years now... e.g. https://m8.fyi/gitio https://m8.fyi/gitio. I use http://yourls.org http://yourls.org if anyone's interested
- ajb 5y agoI don't understand companies using a 3rd party service for something like this. Unless you really, really need an ultrashort domain, it's pretty trivial to do your own - for example, if you have an aws account you can use a bucket as a redirector. No code version: aws --profile $PROFILE s3api put-object \ --bucket $BUCKET \ --key $KEY \ --website-redirect-location $URL
- JamesSwift 5y agoYes, url shortening is about the simplest thing you can build honestly. I'm all for not hand-rolling everything but its honestly just not worth the cost/headache of relying on someone elses service for this.
- WorldMaker 5y agoOn the flipside, "build it yourself because it is easy" is what led exactly to the mess at hand with git.io. It was someone's fun hackday project that quietly people and teams (including teams internal to Github) started to rely on it and then the site turned out be a maintenance burden and spam vector and needed to be shutdown.
- JamesSwift 5y agoThe difference is internal vs public. I'm saying build one for internal use (public is readonly). That way you don't deal with moderation and spam.
- ajb 5y agoExactly. I did this at one company because it was less hassle than making sure that finance update the CC on yet another external service every year.
- WorldMaker 5y agoYeah, I'm just saying that's how it sometimes starts: a "quick and dirty" internal tool to just get something done snowballs over the years into "this needs an easier self-service interface to make it easier for Bob in Accounting because he just has so many slides" into "hey since we have this great self-service tool, let's make it customer facing and bill it as a product since we already put all this work into it". Maybe your internal systems are less prone to such complexity effects that turn "internal only" tools into "customer facing products" accidentally all the time, of course. Just that it's an interesting risk, well worth stating, and it is fun seeing all comments on shutdown notices of exactly one such "internal only" tool that accidentally became a "customer facing product" saying "just build it yourself". "Just build it yourself" doesn't entirely protect you from it being your "internal only" tool that's the next trending HN deprecation notice headline.
- Jupe 5y agoKind of reminds me of Hyrum's Law [1] And the comments elsewhere on this thread should remind us all that "a lot can happen in forever"... My interpretation: eventually, everything will be deprecated. There may be some web sites (github.com, for example) that are "too big" (or "too important") to fail or disappear; but they eventually will. [1] https://www.hyrumslaw.com/ https://www.hyrumslaw.com/
- jrochkind1 5y agoIt might remind us hyrum's law, but in this case weren't the people who are not wanting it to go away -- using it as intended? I feel like there's a different "law" here, involving persistence and memory and history and recordability on the internet -- people want it, but it doesn't come for free, and there isn't necessarily anyone with a profit motive or business plan to make it happen.
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago"With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody." I can never remember all the laws
- TimLeland 5y agoURL shorteners still serve a purpose for sms, marketing, smart redirects, and more. One of the ways to combat some of the concern around what happens if the service shutdowns is to use your own domain when creating short links. This allows you to export your links since you control the domain. I've been running https://T.LY https://T.LY URL Shortener for the past 2 years and I'm the creator of the URL Shortener Extension (https://t.ly/extension https://t.ly/extension) that has over 400K users. Let me know if any questions around url shorteners.
- treesknees 5y agoMy biggest problem with short URLs is they appear spammy. I can't look at it and decide whether it's safe. Just yesterday I received a text from a shortcode with a "bby.me/XXXX" URL saying my Best Buy order was canceled. Turns out it was a legit order I placed nearly 6 months ago and was on backorder that I forgot about. I'd love for a shortening service to offer an "unfurl" tool where I could paste in the URL, and it shows me what the redirected site is without clicking it and potentially activating their clickthrough tracking.
- bithaze 5y ago> I'd love for a shortening service to offer an "unfurl" tool where I could paste in the URL, and it shows me what the redirected site is without clicking it and potentially activating their clickthrough tracking. For Bitly, at least, you can add a plus sign to the end of a short URL to preview what the destination URL is. I don't know if other URL shorteners have something similar.
- TimLeland 5y agoYou are in luck I also built a link unshortener :) https://linkunshorten.com/ https://linkunshorten.com/
- password4321 5y agoThis one seems the worst: https://github.com/zws-im/zws https://github.com/zws-im/zws (Shorten URLs with invisible spaces.) I played around with it and there was some seriously sketchy interstitial stuff going on.
- asddubs 5y ago>That said, we still encourage users to make use of one of the many URL shortening services available with greater functionality than the git.io service provided. GitHub support will not be able to update or edit redirection records served by the git.io archive service. No, wrong. Don't use a URL shortening service. Don't use any of them. Especially not in anything long-term.
- anderspitman 5y agoCame here to say this. Someone needs to make registering domain names less daunting. It shouldn't be any more difficult than having a phone number.
- cheschire 5y agoHow is domain registration more daunting than the process to get a phone number? I felt like I had to give a lot more info, time and money to my phone carrier than to Hover.
- daok 5y agoExactly, it is not daunting and way easier than 20 years ago. We went a long way to improve the process.
- tragictrash 5y agoI got like 5 of them and I don't even use them!!
- anderspitman 5y agoI should have been more specific. Registering is indeed pretty easy. But using a domain is quite difficult without a lot of background knowledge. Everyone understands how phone numbers work well enough to use them, and there are lots of systems in place to walk you through the process whenever you need to change phones (or numbers), etc. Connecting a domain name to a piece of software running on any of your devices should require nothing more than a quick OAuth flow to your domain provider to connect a tunnel to the application. You shouldn't need to understand DNS, TLS, HTTP, ports, ip addresses, NAT, CGNAT, etc in order to self-host simple programs like URL shorteners quickly and securely.
- hoten 5y agoI'd like to see link shortening somehow supported as git objects. That's primarily where I will always want to shorten links- to make unwieldy URLs fit in a comment.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoHonestly, any kind of linking is broken in long-term... Sometimes the content on the link doesn't exist anymore, sometimes the eg. newssite changed their url scheme, so the content still exists, but not on the same url, sometimes the media changed their story, so linking to the "same" article, now paints a different picture, and of course, sometimes old domains get hijacked by spammers... and more related, sometimes everything works except the url shortener. Honestly, if I ever link anything that will be read after a long time, I only use archive.org/ links, and I cross my finger, that the snapshot will still exist in X years.
- jolmg 5y ago> Honestly, if I ever link anything that will be read after a long time, I only use archive.org/ links, and I cross my finger, that the snapshot will still exist in X years. I don't understand this practice. It seems more proper to use the original URL and let readers themselves use archive.org when the link becomes dead. Using the nonprofit's archives when you don't need them seems abusive. On average it should be simpler for the original server to render the page than for the wayback machine to fetch a particular snapshot. What's worse is that I don't think you're the only one needlessly using their archive like this, and wonder if, as a collective, uses like this significantly increase their operational costs.
- ajsnigrutin 5y agoThe problem with direct linking is, that content is sometimes changed without any indication. Something happens, you link to cnn/fox/whatever, and discuss the news story or their comment or whatever, and two hours later, the whole article is rewritten, the headline is different and the subtone is different. This would be ok, if there was a "history" section at the beginning of the article, saying "this article was changed on date X and Y and Z, click here to see previous versions", but usually it's not. an example widely publicized last year: https://web.archive.org/web/20210525043631/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/israel-palestine-zionism.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210525043631/https://www.nytim... Then people get angry for newyork times using anti-semitic attacks for left-right politics, and soon after: https://web.archive.org/web/20210525173242/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opinion/israel-palestine-zionism.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210525173242/https://www.nytim... Different headline all together, same url. Now if i said that ny times is using those attacs for politics, and linked the article directly, you (visiting the second version of the article) wouldn't find the headline "problematic", and you'd think i was just some far-whatever nutjob conspiracy theorist... by linking to the archive, you see the headline that I saw.
- dang 5y agoRecent and related: Git.io deprecation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31162829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31162829 - April 2022 (106 comments)