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Show HN: Obl.ong, Free, quality domains for all
- denton-scratch 3y ago> No password required! > Login to continue to > Obl.ong > Don't have an account? Register What did I miss?
- 542458 3y agoAccounts secured with Webauthn instead of a password probably.
- reesericci 3y agoYep!
- arcanemachiner 3y agoThey send you a one-time code.
- reesericci 3y agoThat's only for verifying email - it's WebAuthn/Passkeys.
- esskay 3y agoYou're ok with cutting off a large number of potential users? Passkey isn't exactly working well on Firefox or Windows right now.
- jcoder 3y agoI’m confused about what “quality domains” means here. I’d honestly never heard of the `.ong` TLD, it seems intended for non-governmental organization. If you’re going to sell subdomains as “quality”, why not get a `.com`?
- Brendinooo 3y agoOh, interesting. https://thenew.org/org-people/about-pir/policies/ngo-and-ong-registration-policy/ https://thenew.org/org-people/about-pir/policies/ngo-and-ong... >The mission and purpose of the .NGO and .ONG top level domain (“TLDs”) is to serve the global Non-Governmental Organization (“NGO”) Community by supplying it with exclusive TLDs that will offer NGOs and associations of NGOs differentiated and verified online identities.
- bozhark 3y agoAs a founder of one, this seems unlikely to ever be used extensively
- rene_d 3y ago.ONG was new to me: "The PIR simultaneously applied for the top-level domain .ong, which is a similarly recognisable initialism for "organisation non gouvernementale" in French, and equivalent terms in many other Romance languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian." [1] So similar to e.g. NATO and OTAN. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NGO_and_.ONG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NGO_and_.ONG
- TrevorAustin 3y agoAnd here Oblong itself is the NGO, so mysubdomain.obl.ong isn't that crazy. "Oblong" is kind of an awkward word though. Anyone want to set up a fork at .bi.ngo? Dang, now I'm going to be thinking of .ngo and .ong domains all day...
- olodus 3y agoOh, now you got me started aswell. There are so many good ones. k.ong - cool word, don't know what it would be for. Maybe the home of the mascot of the K language (I don't think K has a mascot from what I know but they should have one). whats.wr.ong - find a therapist site. Much harder to figure out any on '.ngo' I feel...
- 3y ago
- Brendinooo 3y agoThe marketing site reads like it wants you to have short-ish, cheap identity; the code of conduct reads like it's trying to make a community. Which is more correct?
- reesericci 3y agoThe first one mainly. The Code of Conduct is just standard Contributor Covenant stuff for people who contribute back code.
- Merlin04 3y agoThe former - the CoC was adapted from the contributor covenant which explains a lot of the community language, we figured it (heavily modified) would work well enough for domain content too. Thanks for pointing that out though, we'll work on it!
- a9ex 3y agoIs anyone using these free subdomains professionally? A proper .com is only ~$8/year, quite a good deal — is free domains still a problem that needs to be solved?
- candiddevmike 3y agoIt's a problem that needs to be solved for spammers and scammers, in my experience.
- reesericci 3y agoThat's why we have manual review.
- p4bl0 3y agoWhat does OBL mean? Is it just a play on word with "oblong" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oblong https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/oblong) ? Anyway, I doubt depending on a unknown project may qualify as "quality" for something as important as you domain name. Especially since having you own domain name can cost less than $10 per year, I don't really see the value in something like this (and I never want to live the Freenom debacle again).
- reesericci 3y agoTo answer the first question, yep it's just "oblong". We exist so people don't have to go to freenom when they want their own but free domain. I've used Freenom in the past, and they are the worst experience.
- LoganDark 3y agoDoes this only support hardware security keys...? Not exactly what I expected from "no password".
- reesericci 3y agoNo it doesn't. Firefox has terrible support for Passkeys at the moment. Try using Google Chrome/Edge/Safari/etc.
- LoganDark 3y agoChromium 114 here, it only gives me the option to use a physical security key, or Windows Hello (which then proceeds to also demand a physical security key). Would prefer if they just accepted my randomly generated 64 character passwords, since I already use a password manager (KeePassXC).
- skybrian 3y agoNo specific hardware. It requires a password manager that supports passkeys. Password managers include major browsers. I’ve only tested with Chrome, but I’ve created passkeys on Android, an iPad, and a Mac. There will be some way to authenticate to the password manager. On my iPad, it’s a fingerprint sensor. With Chrome on a Mac, I don’t know where it gets stored (keychain?), but it prompts for your Mac password. That’s not no password but it’s no additional password.
- rodoxcasta 3y agoon my firefox it didn't work, just keep asking to connect a security token, with no other option. Firefox 116, Ubuntu 20.04, had an Yubikey in the past, never used passkey. I think it's asking for the old yubikey, but neither the site nor firefox give me other option or a link about what to do.
- LoganDark 3y agoMy Chromium 114 only allows me to authenticate with a physical security key, or Windows Hello (which then proceeds to also demand a physical security key). Not very user-friendly... Would prefer if they just accepted my randomly generated 64 character passwords, since I already use a password manager (KeePassXC).
- andrewfromx 3y agoI love this idea. I've registered so many domains over the years only to have that project fail and then feel bad about the money I wasted on "the perfect domain". I would love to try stuff without spending (yes even $8) and get live on the internet with this + letsencrypt !
- KomoD 3y agoSo take your primary domain you use... and make subdomains...?
- andrewfromx 3y agono it's like i get "new domain fever" and nothing can talk me out of buying thisgreatdomain.com even though yes I could use foo.myolddomain.com.
- skybrian 3y agoTo be clear, this is a way to get a free subdomain of obl.ong. No point in registering if you don’t want that.
- antran22 3y agoThis is a misleading title. Not to attack the merit of the project (it's can still be used to host stuffs), this is not free domain, this is free subdomain. The main difference is that I don't own the subdomain, and should the organization decide to forgo the domain, my subdomain is also gone. On the other hand, if I buy a domain, my name is attached to it in the registry to denote that I am the "rightful" owner of the domain, and it is going to be way harder for me to lose access to it (I read a post on HN sometimes ago that some governmental cybersec task force can just terminate access to your domain if they deem you are using it for malicious intent, but otherwise you can only deliberately lose the domain) This is just like a github.io subdomain. IME the only true free domain service is Freenom.
- reesericci 3y agoI mean couldn't a registry also shaft you?
- paddim8 3y agoIf a registrar dies you could transfer to another one. That's not possible with subdomains since there can only be one issuer
- reesericci 3y agoregistry, not registrar
- antran22 3y agoThis should be less frequent and IMHO, under many circumstance, you are protected by consumer law (citation needed). You also have more freedom when picking the domain name (fuckmicrosoft.co is less than 2$ on GoDaddy, but good luck trying to get fuckmicrosoft.github.io). Also one issue that I neglected to raise is this can be very unstable. If some scammer/malware use your service (I know that you have a review process, but you still won't know for sure), Google SafeBrowse may mark your whole domain as harmful. I don't know if you have a contingency for this, but you need one in place.
- 3y ago
- tamimio 3y agoThat’s subdomain though, not a donain. I remember back in the day .tk domains were completely free, good old days!
- tamimio 3y agoOk reading the comments seems .tk are still free!
- overcast 3y agoCan you imagine verbally trying to tell someone your new subdomain from these guys?
- olah_1 3y agoI would rather just use a public key. No need for an entity (no matter how benevolent) to manage my identity for me. In terms of the vibe that something gives off, stuff is usually "cooler" when it seems like you didn't care that much. A random pubkey is as care-free as it gets.
- shidayat 3y agoif the system is like js.org maybe it will attract many people to use it including me because it is more transparent
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago"For all" but from their cock, I'm sorry, Code of Conduct: > The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind No porn and probably more > Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission No saying the president of the united states lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. > Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting No t-shirts and jeans. > distributing or hosting any adult content, including but not limited to, pornographic images or videos No porn again > content which may be illegal under German or Scottish law No youtube-dl allowed! > This list is not comprehensive, and we reserve the right to revoke any subdomain at any time So basically if you piss off the CEO he might wake up one day and boot you off. Say hello cloudflare.
- Avamander 3y agoTo be fair most TLDs have similar rights and rules. Some don't and they're on most shitlists out there. In the end you're never buying a domain, it's always renting. Unless you're a TLD, then that actually is conceptually a bit different.
- someone1829 3y agoThe people at https://nic.eu.org/ https://nic.eu.org/ also provide decent free subdomains, only issue is they are manually approved, so may take a while to get a domain.
- theanonymousone 3y agoHow do such services deal with the danger of getting totally blacklisted (or worse) because of one malicious subdomain? How do they avoid being held responsible for what happens in the subdomains?
- isuleman 3y agoNo thanks. I'll Justs stick to .tk and .ga .. those are actually FREE DOMAINS.