Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdstyh | Hacker News Reader

Google should switch to https://google/

They already own the .google tld and you don't even need a subdomain. See http://ai/

It makes me irrationally happy to see that what must be one of the most sought-after domains resolves to a 90s web aesthetic site promoting beaches and fresh air.

... and the use of said country as a tax haven!

Having said that, I do like the website though.

Given how many people can't resolve http://ai or http://ai., there's your answer as to why they shouldn't switch to that.

Neither of those URLs work for me (DNS doesn't resolve).

use a better dns resolver

I don't think it's a dns resolver issue. I'm intentionally using 8.8.8.8 to prove the point (same results with other mainstream services like 1.1.1.1 by the way):

-----

$ nslookup google 8.8.8.8

Server: dns.google

Address: 8.8.8.8

Name: google.

------

$ nslookup google. 8.8.8.8

Server: dns.google

Address: 8.8.8.8

Name: google

-----

(Edit: formatting).

It's the local client not the resolver. Try "ai."

I had no issue with ai, I'm referring to google, see the nslookup outputs I pasted above.

Or use a worse DNS resolver. Your ISP may be trying to cash in on DNS names that don't resolve / ain't found by instead sending you to another website that pays the ISP a small fee.

https://google. isn't supposed to work, for ai try http://ai./ instead.

http://ai./ and https://ai./ does not work either. Is that an issue with my DNS resolver?

If you are using systemd's resolved you will have to disable `LLMNR` and enable `ResolveUnicastSingleLabel`. It should look something like this:

  $ cat /etc/systemd/resolved.conf
  [Resolve]
  LLMNR=no
  ResolveUnicastSingleLabel=yes

IIRC some gTLD rule prohibits non-NS records from being applied to root zones like this (ccTLDs not having this requirement obviously). I'll look for it.

I found some references:

* https://features.icann.org/dotless-domains

* https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/new-gtld-dotl...

Then whats happening with the domain http://ai/ mentioned in another comment?

ai. is a ccTLD and there are far fewer regulations on them since they're 'owned' and operated by nation state governments.

https://icannwiki.org/Country_code_top-level_domain

Country governments.

A nation state is not just a fancy way of saying country or state. It means a case where a nation (group of people with a common culture etc) form the vast majority of a country.

Japan is a nation state. The USA is not.

  dig +noall +answer   A ai
  ai.   86006 IN A 209.59.119.34

For better or worse the developers of browsers/libraires decided to allow it, it takes extra code to check for it and block it. Now that sites rely on it they can't exactly back track. Another strange one is domains with names that end in hypen - "example-.example.com". These are technically against standards, and don't work on linux/unix based OSs. However they happily work on windows. I've seen a github username that ended in -, which prevented me from viewing their github.io site. (Github seem to no longer allow this).

http://-emmawatson.tumblr.com/ is a real site, accessible only from Windows

I'm on Windows and it throws an HSTS error for me.

Works in Safari on macOS. It's mostly just a solid black page, though.

> For better or worse the developers of browsers/libraires decided to allow it, it takes extra code to check for it and block it

It's pretty integral to the functioning of DNS: a hierarchy of names which each have records.

I have one of those, and I learned about this when I created a github.io site. It worked fine on Chrome in Windows, but Firefox read the SSL cert as invalid. It took me a while to figure out that it was the URL that was invalid.

There is not a technical rule against it (mostly), there is an administrative rule.

I can't get the http://ai/ domain to resolve.

Same here.

> This site can’t be reachedCheck if there is a typo in ai. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

Works for me, but you might need to add a period, depending on the specifics of your DNS configuration: http://ai./

>>> What happened to Vince Cate? <<<

If you can get ai to resolve, click on the URL at the bottom of the page which takes you to http://offshore.ai/vince/

http://ai itself didn’t resolve in mobile safari here, though, so it seems like it’d be a bit broken in some environments.

http://ai./

I tried both already. Neither resolves, thanks though.

If you have a few minutes, you could file a bug here: https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/ and potentially get it in front of Safari's networking team.

It works in mobile safari for me, so it may be your dns/isp.

resolves for me on iOS 14 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m using NextDNS, if it matters

I’m on iOS 14 using NextDNS as well. Are you using the iOS app or dependent on setting dns manually?

That’s the coolest URL I’ve ever seen.

https should be the default so it could get better

Meh, not worth the extra roundtrip

Typing "google.com" in my url bar is way easier than typing "https://google". And typing just "google" results in a DDG search.

Try `google/` (well, it doesn't actually exist, but at least in Firefox/Chrome you can see that it will treat it as a URL instead of a search)

unfortunately Google doesn't seem to index http://ai/

So we're going back to AOL keywords?

I'm actually ok with that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com