(Emphasis mine.) Did this Namebase CEO just state on record that he doesn’t know how DNS works?
We are going to have to come up with a new metaphor soon. I haven't seen a phonebook in ages. Honestly I would be more likely to tell my kid "Phonebooks were like DNS for telephone numbers."
thanks I'll be stealing this quote 100%.
Just like DNS: - Which librarian you ask can result in being pointed to a different reference book. - If the librarian is already familiar with the subject, they may be able to give you the answer directly to save time instead of pointing you to the reference book.
The phonebook metaphor was a good one to give to completely non-technical people, but technical people used it as well, and so often didn't intuitively understand that DNS involves clients exchanging data with arbitrary servers on the internet, using their own DNS server as a proxy. As a result, they often leave s significant communication channel open to the internet even from supposedly secure environments.
There are mutiple phonebooks worldwide, each compiled by different organizations. There is just not one phonebook, similar to how there is not just one DNS-server.
A floppy was like the save icon on old software. :)
I suspect these jokes are more reality than we think.
"Phone[ ]book" is the 12th word on the page you linked, and described there as a synonym to "directory". There's no need to be that pedantic.
"A telephone book was a directory for telephone numbers" is clear and accurate. Unless knowing what the word "directory" means is asserted to be the domain of pedants.
"By providing a worldwide, distributed directory service, the Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985."
It's quite pedantic.
I'm the same way, here's an interpersonal relationship tip I've had to learn: If someone calls you an asshole, you can't say "No, I've thought about it and you're wrong, you don't really think I'm an asshole." Well, you can say that, but it just makes you come off as even more of an asshole.
A straightforward search for the term brings up large sites in the UK, India, Malta and Hong Kong. "Directory Enquiries" was (is?) the name for the service in the UK where you pay a fee for someone to look in the telephone directory for you.
[0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51uCASmsWxL...
That is probably fair. Anywhere I've lived in the US, someone would know (well, maybe not if they were young enough) what you meant by "telephone directory" but almost everyone would say "phonebook" at least in casual conversation. It's also true that when you would dial 411 for a number, that was called directory assistance. (And a listing of phone numbers for the staff in an organization would probably be called a staff directory or a telephone directory or something along those lines.)
I'm happy to talk through how Handshake works if you have any questions about it. I also wrote an article on how Handshake can improve the root of trust for DNS which was previously discussed on HN [1]
Can I configure my resolver to use this "Handshake" blockchain?
[1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...
Technically DNS-the-protocol is suitably decentralized to resist censorship[0]; it's the particular canonical infrastructure of the main DNS system that's the weak link there. (Edit: by which I mean I think emacdona was talking about the protocol in general, and if you meant to object to that admittedly-debateable choice of focus, you should probably explicitly point out the distinction between the protocol (that anyone can use) and the canonical system (that is run by (tautologically) malicious corporations).)
0: Although it could use some cryptographic additions for better security, and it has problems with global uniqueness in the face of malicious actors pushing records to the effect of "sci-hub.org IN A some.fbi.ip.addr". But if you can find a trustworthy (possibly-suffix-indexed collection of) root server to start from, the protocol itself works fine.
That works great until the only names that are left are all too long to remember.
And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well... you've just given someone the power to censor you.
Or am I missing something here?
For owners, it's important that their domain names can't be taken down or seized from them. Sci-Hub has dealt with this issue numerous times and has had to register a pool of domain names to try too counteract this issue before getting their Handshake name. Domain registrars can seize domain names and there isn't much recourse for the owners — it doesn't even need to be for a good reason[1]. On Handshake, ownership is controlled by your wallet's private key (similar to owning Bitcoin). As long as you control your private key no one can take your name from you.
For consumers, it's important that you can 1) access the domain name and 2) trust that the DNS records you're seeing are authentic. Handshake is a distributed network so as long as you can connect to a single node you can access it. This mechanic is what gives other distributed networks like Bitcoin and BitTorrent their strength. Furthermore, you can verify the authenticity of the records since each DNS update is reflected on the blockchain similar to how you can verify transactions on Bitcoin.
[1] https://www.izoologic.com/2018/12/20/zoho-domain-taken-mista...
Do you really believe this is a serious problem? I don't think it is by any stretch of the imagination.
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> It seems like the answer is "everyone buys their own TLD", right?
Yeah, why not? The conceptual distinction between a domain and a TLD isn't necessary. From the Namebase docs:
> For instance, if you own "nakamoto" on Handshake, you can use "nakamoto" as a domain itself. In that case, you would point "nakamoto" to your website and visit it at http://nakamoto/ in your browser. You can also use "nakamoto" as a TLD and issue your own subdomains. In that case you can create "satoshi.nakamoto" and visit it at http://satoshi.nakamoto in your browser. A Handshake name can be used as both a domain name directly and as a TLD at the same time.
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> And if you buy space from someone else's TLD, well... you've just given someone the power to censor you.
Maybe? Buying from someone else's TLD isn't the point of Handshake, for the reasons I mentioned above. But if you wanted to buy a subdomain for some reason, and still wanted it to be uncensorable, you should buy one from someone who revokes their censorship capabilities programmatically.
And that point is the big picture: reasoning about transparent code for very important things gives you a level of control you can't obtain through trusting people.
https://www.namebase.io/blog/how-to-access-handshake-domains...
A and J are controlled by Verisign (a US public company)
B and D by different US universities
C by Cogent (another US public company)
E by NASA
F by Internet Systems Consortium (an American not-for-profit)
G by the US Department of Defense
H by the US Army
I by Netnod (a Swedish non-profit)
K by RIPE (the European RIR)
and finally M by WIDE (a project of several Japanese universities)
>a privacy-focused, cloud-based domain name service resolver which converts IP addresses into domain names.
Except for being privacy focused, this literally describes every domain name service in the Internet.
To be forgetful or ignore this when turning the page regarding another subject on which you are less knowledgeable is known as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...