5 ms·

"One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level domains, they confuse consume

"One day in the microkitchen I met Vint Cerf and told him what I worked on. He very curtly told me that he hates generic top-level domains, they confuse consumers, and ICANN should have been focusing on making .com / .org / .net better instead." You're lucky you didn't meet Stanislaw Ulam, who, when anyone told him about a project they were working on always responded with "What is that compared to E=mc^2 ?"

jart 4y ago
That's totally not the same thing though. Vint Cerf wasn't telling me I was but a mere footnote compared to his invention of TCP/IP. He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Wait. Could you elaborate on this? What was his argument for that statement: "He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet." I might be missing something.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on it and it carries meaningful information about the owner of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org that owns it. So there's a net loss in meaning. Effectively the domain variability has leaked into the tld. It's a worthy discussion for HN.
    - arbitrage 4y ago
      The .com and .org namespace has been diluted in meaning for decades. You can make no useful inference about the owner of a .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify nothing anymore.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Originally the hierarchy was supposed to be much more defined. But domains are so cheap nobody bothers. You see it a bit in .gov and .edu where subdomains are actually delegated somewhat sometimes.
    - tomcam 4y ago
      Love your speculation, agree it would make a wonderful discussion here.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  Do you think he is right or wrong about gTLDs?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jart 4y ago
    My executables end with .com and my website ends with .lol so I disagree with him, even though he's right. My work doesn't target consumers though. What matters is that he's not just speaking only for himself and I would have liked his views to have carried more weight in ICANN's vision. Perhaps they would have addressed the domainer problem rather than simply making new digital land where the same problems would once again take root.
- esperent 4y ago
  If I was to share a piece of advice here it would be "even the smartest people in the world are wrong a lot of the time". There's never a case where you should accept conferred wisdom uncritically, no matter how much you respect a person or what else they created.
javajosh 4y ago
Ulam picked a strange place to stop zooming out. After all, E=mc^2 will be forgotten, too. Even now it is "forgotten" in the sense of not being understood by most of humanity. There is no static human achievement (scientific, artistic, or political) that survives into Deep Time. Consider that our most durable artifacts are the religious ones - some humans truly believe them to be otherworldly and precious beyond measure. Yet even those artifacts eventually get lost in the couch cushions and forgotten. Science text books will fair worse, in the long run.
- jart 4y ago
  You talk about E=mc^2 like it was some kind of Mayan idol waiting for Indian Jones to uncover. In a way I guess that's true. But Einstein wasn't the one who placed it there, so if the knowledge is forgotten then that just means someone else will eventually get the thrill of discovery.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It’s less that it gets forgotten and more that it’s not really useful to the vast majority of people. Most people who “know” E=mc² have zero use for it. But something like geometry has practical applications that continue even if people don’t know it by that name (most builders know the 3-4-5 triangle right angle trick, for example).

jart 4y ago

That's totally not the same thing though. Vint Cerf wasn't telling me I was but a mere footnote compared to his invention of TCP/IP. He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
Wait. Could you elaborate on this? What was his argument for that statement: "He thought gTLDs were actively harming the Internet." I might be missing something.
- javajosh 4y ago
  I will hazard a guess. Cerf liked the top-level organization scheme com/org/edu because he worked hard on it and it carries meaningful information about the owner of the domain. E.g. identifies the domain-owner as either a for-profit corp, a non-profit org, or a school. By contrast new tlds like "app" or "website" imply absolutely nothing about the domain or the person/org that owns it. So there's a net loss in meaning. Effectively the domain variability has leaked into the tld. It's a worthy discussion for HN.
  - arbitrage 4y ago
    The .com and .org namespace has been diluted in meaning for decades. You can make no useful inference about the owner of a .com or a .org domain name. They literally signify nothing anymore.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Originally the hierarchy was supposed to be much more defined. But domains are so cheap nobody bothers. You see it a bit in .gov and .edu where subdomains are actually delegated somewhat sometimes.
  - tomcam 4y ago
    Love your speculation, agree it would make a wonderful discussion here.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Do you think he is right or wrong about gTLDs?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jart 4y ago
  My executables end with .com and my website ends with .lol so I disagree with him, even though he's right. My work doesn't target consumers though. What matters is that he's not just speaking only for himself and I would have liked his views to have carried more weight in ICANN's vision. Perhaps they would have addressed the domainer problem rather than simply making new digital land where the same problems would once again take root.
esperent 4y ago
If I was to share a piece of advice here it would be "even the smartest people in the world are wrong a lot of the time". There's never a case where you should accept conferred wisdom uncritically, no matter how much you respect a person or what else they created.

javajosh 4y ago

Ulam picked a strange place to stop zooming out. After all, E=mc^2 will be forgotten, too. Even now it is "forgotten" in the sense of not being understood by most of humanity. There is no static human achievement (scientific, artistic, or political) that survives into Deep Time. Consider that our most durable artifacts are the religious ones - some humans truly believe them to be otherworldly and precious beyond measure. Yet even those artifacts eventually get lost in the couch cushions and forgotten. Science text books will fair worse, in the long run.

jart 4y ago
You talk about E=mc^2 like it was some kind of Mayan idol waiting for Indian Jones to uncover. In a way I guess that's true. But Einstein wasn't the one who placed it there, so if the knowledge is forgotten then that just means someone else will eventually get the thrill of discovery.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s less that it gets forgotten and more that it’s not really useful to the vast majority of people. Most people who “know” E=mc² have zero use for it. But something like geometry has practical applications that continue even if people don’t know it by that name (most builders know the 3-4-5 triangle right angle trick, for example).