11 ms·

I know this is supposed to be an april's fool joke, but dang, it reminded me of how much I hate this new unlimited TLD crap. I don't really have a good reason,

• beaner 12y ago
  That's exactly it.
• vhost- 12y ago
  What don't you like about it? Finally things are categorized.
• adityasankar 12y ago
  Could you elaborate on this unlimited TLD? I'm a bit out of the loop (but had heard of the .porn TLD!). What's going on? Isn't this going to cause a lot of confusion and compound the issue of domain squatters?
  • caust1c 12y ago
    Anyone can apply for and potentially get, a top level domain. If you can prove that you deserve it more than everyone else, then it's yours (sort of). http://newgtlds.icann.org/en http://newgtlds.icann.org/en
    • joeblau 12y ago
      I thought it costs 180k a year to run a TLD?
    • dragonwriter 12y ago
      Well, they could years ago. The application period ended in April 2012. http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/gtld-facts-31jul11-en.pdf http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/gtld-facts-31ju...
• kudu 12y ago
  I still feel like The Right Thing for techies to do should be to oppose NewTLDs, although I have no idea why. I personally find them repugnant.
  • adamnemecek 12y ago
    I think it's because it's kind of fragmenting the name space. Now instead of having to remember one thing (the domain name) you might have to remember two.
    • icebraining 12y ago
      That hasn't been true since at least 1997, when whitehouse.com was registered.
  • daemin 12y ago
    New TLD's are just a money grab for ICANN. Every big business will be having to buy its name in each new TLD.
  • rtpg 12y ago
    I realllllly don't get why anyone is mad about the new tld concept in itself. domain names are the ultimate in rent seeking. Now, as to people buying up rights to gTLDs and charging way too much...
  • dbecker 12y ago
    I'm surprised to hear this. I think most techies hate how crowded the .com space is (especially with domain squatters). I'm thrilled to see a dramatic increase in namespace.
  • thewhitetulip 12y ago
    Yes, TLDs should be opposed, for lack of a better reason we would need to change the way we look at domains! Earlier it was simple. google.com, facebook.com now it is weird com.facebook, it would feel as if the web has become a java namespace :D :P and I think java namespace conventions need to be changed after this :P and it is silly
• est 12y ago
  you know you are fucked then day when a gTLD happens to conflict with your corporate pseudo-TLD
  • JonathonW 12y ago
    You've only had about 16 years since the formalization of RFC 2606 [1] as a best current practice to move your internal DNS over to a namespace you actually control. Yes, it's most likely going to be more typing, but this way, you're not risking having everything break at some point when your pseudo-TLD gets picked up by someone (maybe even yourselves) and becomes a real thing on the public internet. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606
    • lultimouomo 12y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't see anything in RFC 2606 that suggests a way to choose your internal namespace not to confict with external names. I only see a bunch of reserved TLD and second level domains, of which non seems reserved for such use. Can you elaborate a bit?
      • JonathonW 12y ago
        The only way to choose your internal namespace so that it doesn't conflict with external names is to use a namespace you own, because there are no reserved domains for "internal" use. Specifically, that's going to mean that your internal names need to be subdomains of a domain name you control, such as your organization's domain. Something along the lines of "*.internal.companyname.com".
• jimktrains2 12y ago
  This has nothing to do with gtld, but I think what bothers me most is that domains are in the wrong order. It should be com.ycombinator.news or com.google
  • pbreit 12y ago
    Maybe if you're a computer. But for us humans, google.com makes more sense.
    • saraid216 12y ago
      > Maybe if you're a Java programmer. Fixed that for you.
    • shurcooL 12y ago
      Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www? And if www.google.com is okay, what's wrong with www.google/stuff. Left to right order.
      • mikeryan 12y ago
        Why is it www.google.com and not google.com.www you know there's an actual reason for this? com > google > www "www" is a subdomain of "google" which is a subdomain of the top level domain "com" historically that was a conventional way to separate services (ftp.google.com, www.google.com gopher.google.com)
        • aroman 12y ago
          Are you suggesting that the strategy you describe above wouldn't just as well if the names were reversed?
          • shubb 12y ago
            I think he is guessing that the grandparents thinks that www or 'world wide web' means 'the internet' and should be root. But actually 'web' reveals to the graph of hyperlinks between http/html pages that let you navigate from page to page, server to server. www denotes the host is primarily a http server serving web pages. You could argue it's superfluous these days - if you are typing it in an address bar, you hope it is a http server, and if you are typing it in a ssh prompt, you know it's your ssh server. People add it because it's a convention and some users might get confused if you don't... (it's probably a vhost anyway most of the time)
• pbreit 12y ago
  I sorta thought that as well but I think the end result is that TLDs have lost a lot of importance which is a "good thing" IMO. There's far less need to pay exorbitantly for a great .com and it lessens the value of squatting. It seems messy but I suspect will work out fine.
  • madeofpalk 12y ago
    Ideally yes... But then Google wants to purchase the whole .dev TLD for their own private, internal use http://sealedabstract.com/rants/google-our-patron-saint-of-the-closed-web/ http://sealedabstract.com/rants/google-our-patron-saint-of-t...
• justinpaulson 12y ago
  You sound like you are telling the kids to get off your lawn. The web is getting so crowded that the old .com/net/org/edu/gov system is not going to be sustainable. The next generation will definitely think you are showing your age when you assume everything is .com, grandpa.
  • vinhboy 12y ago
    LOL, that is so true. I guess 30-something is the 80-something in tech. Now get the fuck off my lawn.
  • bzalasky 12y ago
    What's up Justin?! Spotted your name and then figured out it was you from comment history. It'll be interesting to see what happens over time, but I think that with the proliferation of mobile we could see something akin to Okta for consumers that gives them a page of icons to click on... like the apps on their phones. Chrome already does this (kind of), but people tend to be very habitual in the way they browse and I could see it go a bit further.
• Animats 12y ago
  What to do about single-word domains? Is "google", standalone, a valid domain? This is a big problem for browsers which use the same input form box for URLs and search keywords. Do you look up in DNS first, or with the search engine first? DNS no-finds are relatively expensive operations; they may have to go to the root servers to get a definitive "not found". Having a relatively small set of TLDs avoided confusion between domain names and search queries. Then there's the relative domain problem. Although it's not used much any more, it's a feature of DNS that if you're on machine "abc.example.com", and you look up domain "xyz", it will try "xyz.example.com". The idea was that you could get at servers within your own organization without typing the fully qualified domain name. If you want the domain to be searched from the root, you're supposed to type "." after the domain, as in "example.com." Nobody knows this unless they're really into DNS. There's an adspam exploit that uses relative lookup to turn certain mistyped domains into ads on the domain "com.com", which pretends to host all subdomains of the form "*.com.com". If you're on "example.com", and you look up "nonexistentdomain.com", which doesn't exist, the domain "nonexistentdomain.com.com" is tried as a relative lookup. You get ads. Then there's the problem of determining what's a second level domain. For that, you now need a very big list. (The list is here: https://publicsuffix.org/ https://publicsuffix.org/) Current thinking seems to be to disallow single-word domains. There are already, though, a few two letter country code domains which host valid web sites at the TLD. (Try "http://ca." http://ca.")
  • itsybitsycoder 12y ago
    This is already a problem for intranet, e.g., if there's a web server accessible by just the machine hostname. Most browsers default it to search unless you remember to prefix it with "http://" http://" every time (even if "devbox" is already in your history... thanks browser guys). It makes me miss the days when the search and address bar were totally separate.
• sneak 12y ago
  Here's your good reason: putting random shit into the root of a hierarchy subverts the entire reason a hierarchy exists in the first place.
  • chinathrow 12y ago
    "putting random shit into the root" I would change that... to "putting random shit into the root if you're rich and can afford to buy your own TLD" There is nothing subversive within the new gTLDs unless you're up to pay for it.
    • Aldo_MX 12y ago
      You don't need to be rich, ex. donuts.co, they raised money from rich people.
  • ta82828 12y ago
    I think of it this way: they didn't create a new infinite set of TLDs, they just created a single new TLD which is the empty string. So what was the point? Is having ".com" or similar at the end such a huge burden?
    • tokenizerrr 12y ago
      Sure, now where can I, as a consumer with a reasonable budget, register a domain under this new TLD?
      • ta82828 12y ago
        I was only trying to make an analogy for the effect on the namespace.
      • wongarsu 12y ago
        There already are TLDs which have stricter requirements (residency requirements, .edu, .mil etc.) as well as TLDs that were significantly more expansive than others. gTLDs are not that unique in that regard, except for being even more expensive.
• flyinghamster 12y ago
  Part of why I hate it is that it gives spammers, phishers, and other miscreants a new, inexhaustible supply of domains to abuse. I've already seen it happening with spam coming from .club, .work, etc.
  • warp 12y ago
    Part of why I like it is that it devalues domains for domain squatters. It is much easier to get a good enough new domain now for whatever idea you come up with, because there are so many more available again.
    • stingraycharles 12y ago
      I think you are looking at it in the wrong way. The squatters are still there, they are just new people who feel like they missed their chance early in the game and playing catch-up.
• bhauer 12y ago
  Don't forget a very good reason gTLDs are a scam: it's a land-grab by the enormously wealthy—those who can afford the opening bid of $185,000—that shuts out the plebes like you and I.
  • oldmanjay 12y ago
    You'll need to walk me through how that's a scam. Fair warning; If you start down the path of asserting that you deserve everything you desire I'll have a very hard time believing you.
    • fapjacks 12y ago
      Two simple TLDs: .porn and .sucks. The wealthy people who applied for those (and were approved) will enjoy every entity being forced to buy their names of those domains, if they want to avoid obama.sucks or taylorswift.porn. That is called extortion, regardless of whether or not someone "asserts they deserve everything they desire" (as if that lessens the shitty crimes of another).
      • Aldo_MX 12y ago
        Whats the difference between obamasucks.com, obamasucks.net, obamasucks.org, ... and obama.sucks? If you really want to prevent any possible domain which contains "obama" and "sucks" from being registered, there is a serious problem with freedom of speech. In the case of .porn, do you know you can submit your trademarks to the ICANN so they enforce them? ex. http://who.is/whois/barely.legal http://who.is/whois/barely.legal You can read more about protecting your trademarks here: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/rpm/ http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/rpm/
        • fapjacks 12y ago
          The process is long, arduous, and holds no guarantee for the victim of extortion that the case will be ruled in their favor. Some of these cases go on for years before a ruling is made, especially in the case of corporations or people that are not necessarily household names. And this is when the paperwork is in order. I think this pay-to-play DNS naming scheme is awful and clearly a rigged system supporting an oligarchy.