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Comment by antran22 | Hacker News Reader

This is a misleading title. Not to attack the merit of the project (it's can still be used to host stuffs), this is not free domain, this is free subdomain.

The main difference is that I don't own the subdomain, and should the organization decide to forgo the domain, my subdomain is also gone. On the other hand, if I buy a domain, my name is attached to it in the registry to denote that I am the "rightful" owner of the domain, and it is going to be way harder for me to lose access to it (I read a post on HN sometimes ago that some governmental cybersec task force can just terminate access to your domain if they deem you are using it for malicious intent, but otherwise you can only deliberately lose the domain)

This is just like a github.io subdomain. IME the only true free domain service is Freenom.

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Also there is a Code of Conduct associated with it that's much more restrictive than, "We'll comply with law enforcement requests if you are doing something illegal with the (sub)domain."

Nope.

I mean couldn't a registry also shaft you?

This should be less frequent and IMHO, under many circumstance, you are protected by consumer law (citation needed). You also have more freedom when picking the domain name (fuckmicrosoft.co is less than 2$ on GoDaddy, but good luck trying to get fuckmicrosoft.github.io).

Also one issue that I neglected to raise is this can be very unstable. If some scammer/malware use your service (I know that you have a review process, but you still won't know for sure), Google SafeBrowse may mark your whole domain as harmful. I don't know if you have a contingency for this, but you need one in place.

If a registrar dies you could transfer to another one. That's not possible with subdomains since there can only be one issuer

registry, not registrar

how is freenom different?

Misleading? This is outright wrong:

> this is not free domain, this is free subdomain

A subdomain is a type of domain.

You misunderstood the definition of domain in my context. In terms of ownership, if I tell you I am owning a domain, I am owning something along the format of "${name}.${tld}". I can't say that I own the domain of "example.github.io", because, well, if somebody look up for example.github.io in the ICANN domain (provided it is not redacted), it's not going to be my name in there, it's going to be Github's.

In terms of "string that I can type in the Browser address bar to go to a website", I agree with your definition.

> In terms of "string that I can type in the Browser address bar to go to a website", I agree with your definition.

That isn't a domain either. An address in there is a URL, a partial or complete one (it also recognizes search terms, but that's different).

It's actually really simple.

> In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is a part of another (main) domain.

Having a subdomain be a type of domain is really important for speaking concisely about web security. If I say "what's the domain of the cookie?" and the answer can't be "news.ycombinator.com", that's suboptimal. At the same time for security it is also important to know who the registrar is, but for that there is the term TLD.

You are still not looking at the definition of"domain name" in my context: the ownership context. I totally agree with you on the technical side, in most technical context a root-level domain or subdomain is largely the same thing.

In the ownership context the definition differs. Please if you want to challenge my notion of "subdomain" please only challenge this definition only. You don't own a subdomain as strongly as owning a root-level domain, because in the first case the only attestation is on the database of obl.ong/github.io/etc while in second case your ownership is attested by the ICANN registry, which is how things has been working for the past 20/30 years.

you put "domain name" in quotes but in the title it says "domains"

> you can only deliberately lose the domain

Or your can be me. For some convoluted reasons I had the contract email set to my company mail and the domain was paid for 10 years. I left the company in May and in September the registrar started to send reminders which were of course bounced.

Then around Christmas I realized something is wrong, tried to get the domain back but it was too late.

This was an unfortunate set of circumstances, all my fault, but "deliberate" is a bit too masochist :)

I would like to first sympathize with you. That is a crappy situation to be in.

I also agree, "deliberate" is a bit too strongly worded.

So in order to lose the domain, there is just a very few modes of failure that has a 3rd party factor. In most case, the domain-owning entity is accountable for losing the access.

I was joking about this "deliberate" part - it was all my fault and a web of small mistakes/procrastination that led to that.

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