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Sooo... what? This is easily the third or fourth time this has been linked to in Hacker News. What relevance does it have to anything? Everyone who uses .io dom

Sooo... what? This is easily the third or fourth time this has been linked to in Hacker News. What relevance does it have to anything? Everyone who uses .io domains are horrible, insensitive people? Those who use .me domains should be forever ashamed of the various human rights violations of the Montenegrin government in 1995? Anyone who uses bit.ly is basically insulting the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing? Etc. etc. It's just stupidity, and given the vast numbers of gTLDs which are coming online every day, completely forgotten about relatively shortly.

hoprocker 12y ago
Another thing I've wondered about with suffix-hopping is the guarantee of stability there is -- in example, using the Libyan domain .ly in light of the recent radical changes. (An associated meta-question being, of course, if this is really the most important thing to worry about in relationship to Libya.) edit Whoops, I meant Libya.
- disordr 12y ago
  This is what I have wondered for a long time.
tarminian 12y ago
First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  If everyone's guilty, it means nobody is. If everyone has something they did, didn't do, or didn't stop which implicates them in being a horrible human being, all it becomes is an endless cycle of "well, you did that" "oh, and you didn't do that" which completely distracts from any honest effort to fix the underlying problems.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    And downvotes, once again, serve to prove my point. It's interesting how the metatext works around here, isn't it?
- sologoub 12y ago
  That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. Should they have been properly compensated or better yet relocated somewhere with better conditions than what they had? Absolutely! In fact, it seems that a law suite seeking that compensation might have better luck than trying to reclaim the land. The example used earlier with the Balkans is so much more complicated. Depending on who's side of history you take, all sides have a claim to most of the land in the Balkans. Things seem to be much more clear cut here.
  - geographomics 12y ago
    > That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. The argument is that they had lived there for generations and made it very much their homeland - only to be turfed out at the whim of a remote, overbearing colonial power.
    - sologoub 12y ago
      By that same token, the French that first colonized and settled the islands have a claim - they were there first. As do the British who conquered the possession from the French. These situations are much more complicated than the surface view that the "big evil colonial empire" is picking on defenseless people. If the original wrong of enslaving the population was corrected, the people relocated by force would have never been on the island in the first place. This of course is impossible. There are many more similar arguments for either side that one could make. It just shows the unproductive nature of such disputes. A much more productive approach would have been about compensation and rehabilitation of the displaced persons. Surely there are many things they need that can be provided to improve their lot in life. I strongly doubt that giving this island back (even if the military was willing to give it up) after all these years is going to do them any good.
sleepyhead 12y ago
Let's put another perspective on this. If you are buying clothes produced by child labour then yes you are contributing to the continuance of child labour. "Sooo... what?" is a terrible ignorant view of your actions in this world.

hoprocker 12y ago

Another thing I've wondered about with suffix-hopping is the guarantee of stability there is -- in example, using the Libyan domain .ly in light of the recent radical changes. (An associated meta-question being, of course, if this is really the most important thing to worry about in relationship to Libya.) edit Whoops, I meant Libya.

disordr 12y ago
This is what I have wondered for a long time.

tarminian 12y ago

First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.

cbd1984 12y ago
If everyone's guilty, it means nobody is. If everyone has something they did, didn't do, or didn't stop which implicates them in being a horrible human being, all it becomes is an endless cycle of "well, you did that" "oh, and you didn't do that" which completely distracts from any honest effort to fix the underlying problems.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  And downvotes, once again, serve to prove my point. It's interesting how the metatext works around here, isn't it?
sologoub 12y ago
That's a bit of a straw man argument. If you read closely, the article says: "The Chagossians are largely descended from African slaves brought to the previously uninhabited islands, 2,200km (1,367 miles) north-east of Mauritius, by the French in the 18th century." Yes, these unfortunate souls have suffered generations of evil, starting with the slave trade and finish off with being expelled from the island(s). That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. Should they have been properly compensated or better yet relocated somewhere with better conditions than what they had? Absolutely! In fact, it seems that a law suite seeking that compensation might have better luck than trying to reclaim the land. The example used earlier with the Balkans is so much more complicated. Depending on who's side of history you take, all sides have a claim to most of the land in the Balkans. Things seem to be much more clear cut here.
- geographomics 12y ago
  > That said, I don't really see the argument that it is somehow their land. The argument is that they had lived there for generations and made it very much their homeland - only to be turfed out at the whim of a remote, overbearing colonial power.
  - sologoub 12y ago
    By that same token, the French that first colonized and settled the islands have a claim - they were there first. As do the British who conquered the possession from the French. These situations are much more complicated than the surface view that the "big evil colonial empire" is picking on defenseless people. If the original wrong of enslaving the population was corrected, the people relocated by force would have never been on the island in the first place. This of course is impossible. There are many more similar arguments for either side that one could make. It just shows the unproductive nature of such disputes. A much more productive approach would have been about compensation and rehabilitation of the displaced persons. Surely there are many things they need that can be provided to improve their lot in life. I strongly doubt that giving this island back (even if the military was willing to give it up) after all these years is going to do them any good.

sleepyhead 12y ago

Let's put another perspective on this. If you are buying clothes produced by child labour then yes you are contributing to the continuance of child labour. "Sooo... what?" is a terrible ignorant view of your actions in this world.