Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I just think it's annoying that if I see a reference to "foo.zip" or "foo.mov" it's not immediately clear anymore whether it's a file or a domain.

The fact that file extensions and TLD's were roughly the same length in the same format wasn't a big issue, when it's generally understood that ".com" and ".edu" are domains, while ".jpg" and ".mp4" are files. (And as the author states ".com" files are rarely seen by users anymore.)

But if the .zip TLD takes off, it's just adding a little bit more cognitive load. Sure, hopefully it's usually clear whether somebody's discussing a filename or a domain name from context. But not always, and that's annoying and anti-user. Conventions have value, and this decreases that value.

So really, it's just like... of all the possible TLD's, is there really any benefit to picking ones that are also common filename extensions? Is our economy really going to suffer if we say, hey let's not make things like .txt and .doc into domains as well? There are tons of other TLD's we can create instead.

This solution only works if you believe no filename extensions will ever be created (or popularized) from here on out.

So, instead of hoping for that, why not search for solutions that actually will stand the test of time and aren't as fragile as "freeze the filename extensions!"

Also one of the really funny parts of this entire debate is the focus on filenames when most average people aren't even aware of their existence. Windows and Mac have hidden them by default for years now. It's only an image if it shows the image thumbnail, it's only a folder if it shows the folder icon, and so on. I bring this up because it shows how fragile this solution is. You can't get people to adhere to the rule of looking out for ".zip" if they don't even know it exists!

> This solution only works if you believe no filename extensions will ever be created (or popularized) from here on out.

It works if you just don't believe a filename extension like .com or .net will be popular in the future. Personally I don't think they will, as people rightly find it annoying if the clash with TLDs.

Not much of a solution if it requires hoping something doesn't become popular in the future. That's more like a hot potato you've just passed on.

In fact, if something like a .net file does become popular, it just shows that people don't care as much as I assumed, and so the problem has solved itself.

Would you settle for it being popular in the past? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COM_file

That predates widespread use of the internet. Also by the time Internet Explorer took off, COM files ceased to be relevant.

So no, COM files aren't relevant at all in this discussion.

My first internet computer ran dos and Windows 3.1 and it was chock full of .com executables.

Almost no one had internet access back then and Internet Explorer didn't even exist at the time of Windows 3.1's release. So still not relevant.

In response to the new TLDs I’ve made www. the official primary part of most of my websites.

www.example.com would be the primary, and example.com redirects to www.example.com

It’s my simple approach to overcome the cognitive overload issue.

We've done a full reversal and instead of dropping the www because its a given, now we're having to bring it back because it's not a given.

Even if its not a given just set it www.yourdomain.tld to redirect to yourdomain.tld

It's not a new problem. The Polish TLD is ".pl", which is also the file extension of Perl scripts. We get by just fine with that.

And .sh (shell script or Saint Helena), and .rs (Rust source file or Republic of Serbia). The latter in particular is quite popular for Rust-related websites.

Or Moldova's .md, Anguila's .ai, Cocos Islands' .cc, Palestine's .ps, Paraguay's .py, Somalia's .so... The list goes on. Filename extensions have always been confusable with TLDs. And yet we've somehow coped for decades.

Ah yes the infamous Cocos Islands TLD/file extension conflict.

These, as well as the ones cited in the next comment down, are all file extensions only developers or perhaps power users would know. But .zip is a very mainstream file extension, perhaps one of the most mainstream ones besides the media ones (mp3, mp4, jpg, png, gif) and .exe.

So if it's a domain, you should fully qualify it: https://foo.zip.

Over time, this can become a convention. Part of the price you pay in using a .zip domain will be that software doesn't auto-linkify it unless you prefix it with http(s)://.

And with chrome leading it (IIRC) and other browsers following, end users don't even see http or https:// prefixes in their browser bar anymore. Further adding to confusion.

I don't see a reason for adding these new TLDs other than a cash grab.

hiding the protocol prefixes was always a bad idea. the .zip domain would be an argument to revert that. but i don't have high hopes.

W W W PERIOD FOO PERIOD ZIP

SLASH DOT DASH DOT SLASH DOT DASH DOT SLASH DOT DASH DOT COM DOT COM DOT COM

But domains and protocols are orthogonal?

The domain has no relation to the protocol. I can own domains and never use http or https on them.

Right but if you're not hosting Web content then you wouldn't want it linkified in a Web context. If you're using it for something else, e.g. SMTP, then you'd represent the domain name differently as username@your.domain

Why wouldn't someone follow the standard of prefixing it with an appropriate subdomain? E.g., `smtp` or `imap` if it's something they're going to be discussing publicly?

Furthermore, why not use port numbers as a suffix? That's how we can have umpteen services across different protocols on a single domain.

I'm sure that bagder (https://twitter.com/bagder) tweeted about this, but I cannot find the tweet (either I'm losing it, bagder deleted it, or twitter's search is broken)

At any rate, `.com` is a (windows) file extension and we've not been too fussed about that as a TLD for the last 40 years.

Yeah I think there is potential for confusion given users have been warned for years not to download zipped files as they could harbor malicious payloads, now they have to think is it a link to a file or a tld?

Completely agreed. It might not be an immediate disaster, but it adds cognitive load. And for what benefit exactly? What's the use in having these TLDs?

Why not just prefix it with the appropriate protocol? We managed to differentiate between HTTP, HTTPS and FTP just fine.

Better yet, why not just suffix it with a `/` if you're lazy?

Fwiw once upon a time .com was the file extension that predates .exe

> when it's generally understood that ".com" and ".edu" are domains

.com is also a file extension. It describes an executable format that predates the web.

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