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The Dark side of .io TLD
- jfernandez 11y ago"...its possiblities for domain hacks..." Ok I'll admit it, I'm a little lost. What do they mean by this?
- yannickmahe 11y agoCompanies will get .io domains to appeal to developers as it looks like I/O (in/out).
- jfernandez 11y agoOk cool, I knew that part...phew. I thought they were referring to something fundamental to the way the TLD worked etc. that they were fiddling with.
- talles 11y agoOr for using it with words ended with "io" (like scenar.io, portfol.io and such)
- MichaelGG 11y agoDoes this work well? A friend did that for his company and it was a real pain to explain that the last two letters of a full word have a dot first. Ended up getting the .com. I've got ci.al (so.ci.al, fa.ci.al, etc), I think, but trying to tell someone that over voice seems... problematic.
- mortehu 11y agoUsually startups using this kind of domain end up moving to .com once they get funded. I do data mining for a VC, and see this all the time.
- richardbrevig 11y agoOff topic, but I'm curious what kind of data mining the VC has you doing.
- ForHackernews 11y agobr.io, mercur.io etc.
- amelius 11y agoI'll just buy the TLD ".rio", and have "b.rio" and "mercu.rio". I don't understand the big deal here.
- Argorak 11y agoFor .rio, you need an address in Rio. Often, this is rather strongly enforced, see .ie and .cat for other examples.
- duskwuff 11y agoRequirements for .cat are easily gamed. You need some "Catalan content" on your site, but this can be as little as a single page. Or see nyan.cat for a humorous implementation.
- forgottenpass 11y agomildly clever + has something to do with computers = lets call it a hack
- eli 11y agoPaypal donate link to a gmail address makes me a little nervous. Is http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/ http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/ a legitimate and well-run charity? Where specifically does the money go?
- kjjw 11y agoNot registered in the UK: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/SearchMatchList.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=0&SubsidiaryNumber=0 http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfC...
- Sulfolobus 11y agoIt isn't a charity as far as I can tell (or at least does not have UK charitable status): the only registered charity with Chagos in the name is the Chagos Conservation Trust[1]. This means that UK Chagos Support Association does not have to follow charity law (i.e. be open about their work among other things), have a purpose considered as "charitable" [2], be run my trustees that don't personally benefit and/or be run independently. However, they could still be doing these things but be unable to register as a charity due wanting to do things that are prohibited as a charity e.g. "benefiting interests of a narrow closed group" or "campaigning for a change of government" among others [3] (Of course it is open to debate whether many actual charities properly fulfil the stated requirements) [1] http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithoutPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1031561&SubsidiaryNumber=0 http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfC... [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a-charity-cc4/what-makes-a-charity-cc4#part-2-about-charitable-purposes https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a-char... [3] https://www.gov.uk/how-to-set-up-a-charity-cc21a#step-1-decide-if-a-charity-is-the-right-option https://www.gov.uk/how-to-set-up-a-charity-cc21a#step-1-deci...
- eli 11y agoThanks for the detailed answer. Even if the law doesn't require it, I'm pretty wary of donating to a cause that doesn't voluntarily open its books. And I say that as a .IO owner who was ready to get out my credit card.
- mahouse 11y ago>They lost all rights to their homeland, now including the valuable .io TLD. You don't want to know what happened in the United States... Or everywhere, to that matter.
- andyjohnson0 11y agoSome background via gigaom: The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is-making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-... UK government denies receiving .io domain profits https://gigaom.com/2014/07/11/uk-government-denies-receiving-io-domain-profits/ https://gigaom.com/2014/07/11/uk-government-denies-receiving...
- dogma1138 11y agoThe archipelago was first settled in the 19th century, only about 1500 people were displaced, yes the British government mistreated these people by not properly compensating them because the US and NATO needed a military base in the region. However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident. And while i understand that some people might feel they've been stripped of their homeland, but considering that the Islands were populated for the 1st time in modern history less than 200 years ago and remained populated for a period of only about a 100 years it's not exactly the strongest backing for a claim to a nation.
- creshal 11y ago> However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation Such as? Most western legal systems require compensation in such cases… at least in theory.
- talmand 11y agoI think the key is in who gets to define what is "proper" compensation.
- teknologist 11y agoThere's no number high enough- at the end of the day people will just cry out "amagad but our homes!" and claim that that's priceless and forever want money and sympathy from everyone. A line must be drawn somewhere.
- talmand 11y agoAs long as the line is more on the side of the majority feeling it fair as opposed to a certain minority feeling it advantageous, then I'm fine with that.
- tajen 11y ago
- kenrick95 11y agoThe site pointing out the dark side of .io is ironically on .io TLD.
- pervycreeper 11y agoCertainly on purpose, although probably a poorly thought out decision.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- worklogin 11y agoNo, it's not ironic at all. It's not asking people to stop using .io. It's asking people using .io to support a fund that supposedly helps the cause of natives of the island. Did you read the link?
- mattezell 11y ago"...and for being cheap." Admittedly, I am ignorant to many of the TLDs available today... But having primarily dealt with .com and .net TDLs previously (and their <$20USD price tag), is there something else at play when considering the cost/value ratio of an .io domain? Something that would make sense to refer to it as 'being cheap', despite it's costing 100%+ more than a 'traditional' TLD? I get that 'io' is two letters rather than three and so it's "cool"... And that an io domain has potential for "domain hacks" (I assume they are talking about a neat looking URL, where the 'io' has significance in the brand and URL)... But is 'cheap' accurate? Just curious - honest question... When I read 'cheap' as one of the primary bullet points (of the few cited bullet points) for the io TLD, I thought "There must be a lot that I don't know about io TLDs - let's ask". Thanks!
- gabipurcaru 11y agowhile a .io domain is more expensive than a .com domain, you have to take into consideration that all the good .com domains are already taken (and you have to buy them from third parties for more money), while you still can get some good .io domains
- talles 11y agoSure, but there's still some good .io domains available exactly because they aren't cheap (right?).
- teknologist 11y agoDeported at the request of the United States. A crucial bit of information left out on that fancy page there.
- davidjgraph 11y agoAlexa ranked .io domains list from last month http://hack.ly/articles/the-most-popular-dot-io-domains-2015/ http://hack.ly/articles/the-most-popular-dot-io-domains-2015....
- profmonocle 11y agoNot to ignore the bigger issue, but the site implies .io would belong to the Chagossian people today if this hadn't happened. But the IO country code is derived from "British Indian Ocean Territory". Is it likely that the Chagos Archipelago would have this ISO 3166 code if the deportation hadn't occurred?
- r0muald 11y agoWell, it would still be in the Indian Ocean, for a start. However, if you look at the list of .cX TLDs, all possible obvious results are already taken by (alguably) bigger states: Switzerland, Canada, Congo, Colombia and .. well .cs is complicated. That still leaves room for solutions like .ic (Islands of Chagos), in a similar vein to .im for the Isle of Man, and you could have cool domain hacks like fanf.ic or grabthem.ic. Or, since Diego Garcia is the largest island, .dg, and cash out from D&G.
- skandl 11y agoThanks for sharing. This is a history I was completely unaware of.
- Dirlewanger 11y agoHaha, oh wow. This is actually real? The irony of it...holy shit it's painful. And listed supporters all having .io. If people can't see the near-masterful irony here, you're already lost. Has someone bought up thedarksideof.ly yet????