.io considered harmful
beep.blog
beep.blog
then ends with:
Every .io domain you buy funds a government committing crimes against humanity. Every .io domain you renew legitimises and reinforces the continued exile of the Chagossians.
which is hyperbole at best, and bollocks at worst. .io isn't sold or owned by the british (or US) government
Most people don't understand what .io is for, moreover the UK goverment has almost no idea what .io stands for.
so to say that its supporting crimes against humanity is somewhat of a stretch. Thats like saying that watching pakistan play cricket is supporting the deportation of 1.4 million afghan refugees.
> And so, Britain traded the land illegally.
Whoa, strong claim. Probably backed by facts below? Nope. At the same time, Wikipedia:
> In November 1965, the UK purchased the entire Chagos Archipelago from the then self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).
So, they bought it for 3 million pounds. Doesn't seem illegal to me.
People can't be legally bought and sold.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Amer...
Right -- that line doesn't seem blurry to me at all.
I'm no legal expert but I'm reasonably confident one or both of Florida and the USA would find that to be an illegal transaction. Presumably Britain and Mauritius did not, at the time.
The harsh reality is that it genuinely doesn't matter what the UN declares. General Assembly resolutions are non-binding and are almost universally ignored.
The UN also is not the ultimate authority on international law. The countries subscribing to said international law are.
In this case the claim of illegality is backed up by a court the UK was one of the original proponents of, that the UK has presided over, that the UK was the first state to submit a case to. As such, whether or not the decision is enforceable it's quite a bit more than "just claiming it's illegal".
The countries subscribing to said international law voted 116 to 6.
Unless the 116 countries voting to uphold it are actually willing to do something about it, it's near completely meaningless.
Can we stop pretending that the UN has power over anything?
Is any action enough to make it meaningful? Do they have to start a war? Win the war?
The US acquired territory from Mexico as part of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, intended to end the Mexican-American war. Mexico lost 55% of its territory, but did receive $15M as some sort of compensation. Is that legal and if so in what sense, given that it was driven by a desire to end a war?
Much more recently, how about territory acquired by Russia in the vicinity of Ukraine. Suppose that the Crimeans truly did unanimously agree to this, would that make it legal? Is it legal if 50% of the residents agree? What about those with economic interests there who are not residents?
Sub-areas within a nation may secede and form their own nations, but recognition of the new nations by peer nations is required for legitimacy.
So from that perspective: Mexico, agreed to by the government and done. Crimea, not consented by the Ukrainian government, and an open question as to peer recognition of independence (or now incorporation into Russia).
The grey areas (e.g. ceding land under duress) are why land has historically been the chief casus belli.
Bonded labour is still a thing, something that built a large amount of the middle east and parts of china.
But you're going to dwell on whether the first initial island purchase itself was "legal" being a strong claim?
Reevaluate your ethics. It's utterly irrelevant. Slavery was LEGAL.
> But you're going to dwell on whether the first initial island purchase itself was "legal" being a strong claim?
The article is claiming to be entirely factual. but this assertion is not actually true, so it isn't factual.
> internationally recognized crimes against humanity.
Most crimes against humanity are internationally recognised, its just not by the right people. frustrating, but not relevant to the point. Human rights watch have asserted that it is a crime against humanity. which is a strong indicator that it might be. but its not the same as a legal ruling from an international court.
> Reevaluate your ethics. It's utterly irrelevant. Slavery was LEGAL.
But thats the main point, all of this was legal. just not moral to our eyes. To assert that the land was illegally traded was incorrect, and an appeal bolster the original claim that people who buy and use .io are directly and actively supporting a very bad deed. The land was legally traded, the people were illegal moved.
Now its fair to say that Mauritius wants the land back, and without them, I doubt we would actually have known too much about this whole affair. (small island nations have a history of forced exile). This tale isn't unique or indeed unusual. what is unusual is that its been taken to court and won compensation.
Hence e.g an ICJ decision declaring it illegal in recent years, and a UN resolution declaring it illegal within weeks when it happened in 1965
The "self governing" colony was no more a legitimately truly independent government than the Apartheid bantustans.
The history there is unfortunate (although the history lesson itself is welcome), but at the same time this is akin to saying: you should boycott products and services from the UK/US. If you feel that way, you can try to do that, but I get the feeling that purely logistically that would get pretty difficult to do. Looking at every piece of food you buy at the store, to see where it's from, looking at every website of the companies that you want to do business with. You might lose access to a lot of hardware, appliances and even the majority of the websites out there to make a stand.
I get why one might single out the .io domains for symbolic reasons, but at the same time most people probably think of something like I/O and haven't even heard of Chagos Archipelago, ergo there's not a lot of intentional legitimization/reinforcement of any kind going on.
And none of that money goes to the people who historically lived there and were displaced.
So... that's a pretty shitty thing to support (as someone registering a domain), when the alternative is simply "Pick a different TLD."
Tbh, ICANN/IANA should either (a) dissolve the TLD as-is, as there is no independent country it covers (and the UK already has one and doesn't want it) or (b) switch it to Chagossian ownership, so they financially benefit.
The current situation and ownership is indefensible.
If ICANN were to actually step in, all they would realistically do (which, logically, should address your concerns) is designate that .io now stands for Input/Output and should be used for tech-related websites (which would merely legitimize how the TLD is currently used anyway).
But the private equity company that currently owns it bought it from him.
So I fail to see how the current PE owner has any legitimate claim to own the TLD.
They "own" stolen property.
ICANN should rip it from their hands, then re-bid it as a gTLD.
If the same PE company wants to rebuy it... that's their business, and fairly done.
but its not stolen?
> ICANN should rip it from their hands, then re-bid it as a gTLD.
but if it is stolen, taking it away and re-selling it isnt the correct remedy. surely it should go to the descendants of the people who are displaced? or better yet, put in trust to provide for them in perpetuity.
Highly unlikely. Two-letter (non-IDN) TLDs are strictly reserved for country codes. This would be a strange time to break that rule, and it'd send a really terrible message, i.e. "if your country's ccTLD falls into the wrong hands, we'll take it away from you forever".
What's a "country" here? .eu? .um?
It's very easily defensible. BIOT is internationally recognized as a sovereign territory of the UK.
> And none of that money goes to the people who historically lived there and were displaced.
I fail to see how this is relevant. It's a thing that has happened a million times in the past and has been rarely rectified. We don't (and never will) live in a perfect world.
The status quo offers the most certainty, therefore is the best option for holders of .io domain names.
It's internationally recognized as territory unlawfully occupied by the UK.[1]
> I fail to see how this is relevant. It's a thing that has happened a million times in the past and has been rarely rectified. We don't (and never will) live in a perfect world.
I fail to see how this is relevant.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Indian_Ocean_Territory...
From what I’ve seen, “fact” (especially in all caps) is often used as a hyperbole, similar to “literally” or the skull emoji.
What is it for?
Any suitable programming language will immediately recognize a space as a typo and fail compilation.
However, in the real world, attempting this won't work because there will be a minimum of 1 person in the team that configures their editor to convert tabs to spaces.
Ideally, that person should have their PRs rejected and be scolded into fixing their editor. But the real result ends up just forcing everyone to use spaces.
I for one would like to live in an era where we move beyond monospace text.
the first element of an array is at index zero. only a filthy heathen starts at one. to add a one to the beginning is arrogance, the mark of a human needing to see itself everywhere, while zero is pure, a beginning.
in before some one-head leaves a half-baked comment about why it makes more sense for the first element to start with one because one and first are same but different. so childish.
> Then the colleague continues by numbering the next apple "126", and the process ends at "188". At that point the colleague has to guess whether the counting started at 0 or at 1, i.e. whether the total number of apples is 188 or 189.
false. the next person, having heard 188, only needs to know what follows. 189. as this is a job that has been divided, so long as the beginning stage is recorded somewhere, as well as the end stage, each worker (save first and last) exclusively need to know the number of the apple prior to their first for their first apple is not zero or one, it is the number immediately following last. n+1.
counting could have started at -1.
heathen.
This kind of stuff in particular can be pretty disheartening to learn about in general, and I find misinformation/pathos around it can often come from resistance to confronting the sadder, more terrible aspects of it. Which is totally understandable honestly! But I haven't heard of "gibberish" before.. you mean like being nonsensical? Like its hard to understand?
Edit: ok all the downvotes makes me think I am missing something here.. Is this kind of thing in the culture war now?? Like British empire history?? I know I'm not the smartest guy (by far), but I can't even guess what, like, the controversy could be here. Truly trying to have the discussion, and I give anyone permission to be mean and tell me how I am being dumb here, I'd just be happy to know precisely how I am being dumb here.
The thing you’re missing is that, to a certain prominent subset of the tech community which is also prominent here on HN, “politics” should be “kept out of” tech. Also from this point of view, “politics” is anything uncomfortable which doesn’t reinforce status quo power dynamics; reinforcing those however is “not politics”, and should be explicitly not kept out of tech. One such topic of “politics” is any analysis of how those power dynamics came to exist and be sustained on a global scale in the first place. Analysis of how they might be undone is right out.
I too enjoy learning things outside my main areas of interest, sometimes even conversing with people who exist outside the monoculture of my university program. I find there's a lot of misinformation/pathos around these beautiful people and their diverse cultures.
Instead of using every word literally, they rely on a series of adaptive techniques (or "linguistic crutches", as I like to call them). They're just like the similes or metaphors we all learned about in English Composition I and II, but theirs don't always capture the depth, breadth, and/or nuance of a topic like ours do. Sometimes they speak in generalities or fail to support their comments with peer-reviewed meta-analyses. Nevertheless, they still seem to understand each other! It's truly very fascinating!
Despite not knowing how words work or what Science is, it's a longstanding cultural practice of theirs to make unlicensed casual, general observations about their lived experience and the world they live in. They're known to do it in bars, in line at the gas station, in newspapers, comment sections on the internet, and even over the telephone!
Sometimes, PhD students mistake these for formal theses and miss the point entirely. Other times, people who think they look smart ask them patronizing, bad-faith questions.
In this case, the user is likely not saying that the text fails to encode meaningful information or is especially difficult to understand. Instead, this is a commonly-employed polite term for "banal bullshit".
Put another way, they're likely expressing their opinion that this class of content is frequently superficial, lacks criticality, contributes minimally to the advancement of knowledge, and offers limited utility or actionable insight for broader discourse or practical application, as if the authors just wanted an excuse to use a new word or phrase they've just learned, whether to drive revenue, to prove to their peers that they're a Good Person, or some secret third thing.
But, got it: "colonialism" is just a word that gets people riled up, like gp, and so the comment it just mocking tech people who talk about colonialism. Its not making any claims about what they say necessarily, just that they are saying it.
Thank you! Good luck meaningfully encoding information today ;)
The only thing that I would suggest is learning about "historiography". As that's very important when you are learning about "contested" or "active" fields of historical research.
History is always biased, and often is used as a way to frame the present, more than it is the past.
to your point, Learning about the history of the empire is currently difficult for a number of reasons:
1) certain parts of the world are deeply ashamed of it, and will readily believe the worst, even if its logically not actually true.
2) other parts truly believe it was the best thing since sliced bread and civilised the world.
the truth lies in between.
Because the empire is now partly wrapped up in a culture war (renaming of streets, statues etc) internet and popculture sources for history tend to be either hyperbolic or really black and white.
For example "England was the real empire builder and Scotland were also victims and were not really involved." This is patent bollocks for a number of reasons not least of which Scotland had a much higher rate of literacy and numeracy, so were needed to actually run the empire. However this view as scotland being the Victim of Englands bloodthirsty slave trade, is a device that is (mostly unwittingly) used to further the othering of the UK to allow for scots independence.
This is where historiography comes in, an academic or, group of people will set out with a new narrative (Scots were the victims of empire) and start searching for sources to back that up. They will write a set of papers that will put forward the narrative. It will be challenged by others and perhaps it will shift accepted opinion on the matter.
Another example is "Britain stood alone against the germans in WWII and won the war". was very fashionable up until recently. Now people are pointing out that it had the biggest economy by far, and it's empire covered large parts of the planet. It wasn't one island, it was an entire empire. More over, it almost single handedly funded the American industrialisation that kickstarted the post war American boom.
Keep looking, keep questioning sources and motivations (including mine.)
The submission is about a colonial power (uk) forcibly relocating the occupants of those Islands with the uk high court and court of appeal ruling it wrong; so Did the UN
You think this is virtue signaling dig whistle? Strange
I don’t really see substance in your statements just accusations, vagueness and attempts to shut the dialogue.
Someone wronged wants justice we don’t shut the conversation because it’s boring to you (assuming good intentions). No one is forcing you to participate.
I regret giving your words the benefit of the doubt.
No, the submission was about establishing a very tenuous connection between said horrible acts and the existence of a very specific TLD. Then essentially making the claim that everybody who uses said TLD is an evil monster who is actively supporting genocide while everybody who doesn't use said TLD is a shining example of saintly righteous purity who has demonstrated that they are genuinely morally outraged at historical injustices.
I don't own an .io domain so therefore I am morally superior. And I didn't even have to lift a finger in order to earn that claim to virtue.
No, it doesn't. That phrase occurs nowhere in the article.
Advice to GP: Don't put something in quotes unless quoting literally.
It says here are the facts. It lists a lot of facts.
Then it ends with a conclusion:
> And so, finally, I reach my point.
> Every .io domain you buy funds a government committing crimes against humanity. Every .io domain you renew legitimises and reinforces the continued exile of the Chagossians.
To me, this is clearly an opinion. An opinion you can choose to disagree with. But disagree with it on it's merits, not on the author's preface.
Wikipedia - .io - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
> In 2014, Kane claimed that "profits are distributed to the authorities for them to operate services as they see fit" and that "Each of the overseas territories has an account and the funds are deposited there because obviously the territories have expenses that they incur and it’s offsetting that." However the UK government has repeatedly stated that this is untrue: “There is no agreement between the UK Government and ICB regarding the administration of the .io domain” and "the Government receives no revenues from the sales or administration of this domain."
So, you aren't funding the UK government, just a 'British entrepreneur' who bought the rights to multiple TLDs... I'm not sure that's better, but it's different.
Not anymore, instead an American private equity firm
> Commonwealth of Nations enters the chat
Your domain name is often your most secure key to your entire online identity, and you want that to be on as a secure legal footing as possible.
Older discussion here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32797286#32801880>
Disclaimer: I work at a domain name registrar.
Set it up right from the start with a domain name you control (or one that is reserved for private use in an RFC). You can still use internal DNS if you want the additional layer of obscurity.
If they really are gTLDs, I wouldn't worry.
I am an official representarive of the Balkan countries. A non-negligable chunk of our GDP is based on random Rust projects using Serbia's .rs and of course .me. If you stop using our TLDs our ecobomies will collapse.
Kind regards,
The Balkans
-- Sincerely, Everyone Else
Old article about how big of an export it is: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/10/me-10-years-and-two-percen...
I feel free with my .co domain and I'm not a citizen of Colombia TYVM.
No, it absolutely isn't. Domain names are rented from a TLD registrar, someone who literally just controls a bunch of DNS servers and some automated systems that's approved by and has paid ICANN. They can reject your renewal for any reason and there's nothing you can do about it from an ICANN or court perspective. Worse, what walks in domains is money, which is why registrars can sell "premium" domains that aren't owned for exorbitant prices.
Ordering from your own country maybe ups the ante from a civil court perspective if you have money to sue a registrar and the time to go to court for it.
First, you've confused registrars and registries - registrars don't operate DNS servers for TLDs; registries do. This isn't a pedantic point; understanding the distinction is absolutely key for understanding how domain registrations work.
Second, registries (for gTLDs) have agreements with ICANN that provide legal protections for domain registrants - including protections against denying renewals or jacking up renewal pricing. You can see the agreements here: https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements
This is not the case with ccTLDs; each ccTLD registry can operate as arbitrarily and capriciously as they want, which is why teddyh's advice to avoid foreign ccTLDs is quite sound.
I used the wrong word and suddenly I don't know what I'm talking about, but somehow I know how that system works.
ICANN defers to the courts and doesn't differentiate between a registrar and a registry in dispute resolution:
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en
https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/name-holder-faqs-2017-...
Yes, that’s my point. If your local government and associated court system is completely unworkable for you (corruption, onerous fees, etc.), then some other TLD might be preferable. But a local citizen will almost always have a large advantage in a dispute with some foreign entity. Therefore, you should almost always try to get this advantage by using your local ccTLD.
There is no such thing as absolute property. Legal entities can confiscate and expropriate whatever they think they should, regardless of ownership. Everything is fluid and exists on sufferance. If you want absolute irrevocable control, use a darknet, like .onion.
My name and identity are mine even if I don't pay taxes. Identities aren't fully immutable but certainly not transactionally transferable. PGP, for all its flaws, is much closer to the concept of provable identity, imo.
I do understand your underlying message which is to function independently on the web you absolutely need a name you can rely on. We agree there, I just don't think the system or things that support it match the underlying needs/wants.
Don't do this either.
Countries have rules and regulations around who can own certain domains. It's really annoying when there's a million problems to fix and a business restructure potentially affects whether there even has to be a conversation on if it affects the use of a domain name.
For your online identity (ie email address) I'd even go as far as suggesting not using a ccTLD at all, no matter if you check all the boxes. No fancy gTLD either, just use a .com. I don't think any TLD is remotely as reliable as this one (maybe .net because they're both Verisign, but that's it)
But either way I agree with another comment you're better off with a ccTLD of the country where you were born and/or are residing. Though if I were born in Russia and were residing in USA I wouldn't want a .ru domain (unless if I were running a criminal enterprise?). At least not now. I do think it would be cool to own a .su domain. But that's the thing. Cool, not for anything serious. This was cool in the beginning of the internet, with a fun play e.g. on your last name (gongri.jp comes to mind). But nowadays with the internet being deeply rooted into our every day lives, it is no longer the most clever thing to do. Although as a Dutch person, I wouldn't be particularly worried about a .jp domain. We're on friendly terms.
Fortunately .eu is not that popular as a TLD, and Brexit is not a common scenario, but the transition was painful. Honestly we’re all 1 bad election away from $CountryExit, so at least I’m not taking risks with my domains. I don’t want my contact@my-name.eu to become unavailable to me in 10 years.
But that limbo was quite scary to deal with, not being able to change my nameserver or renew the domain.
I’ve documented it here: https://gist.github.com/captn3m0/3ca2752f1394ef779d0e0bd0e04...
I still think that's probably the biggest mistake that company has made. It seems baked in to their architecture now. But I think any company using a vanity domain in this manner is acting irresponsibly.
FWIW I don't think the "colonialism" argument makes sense for this or other vanity domains. But the use of vanity ccTLDs is still a huge, underappreciated security concern. Companies willingly expose themselves to the risk of their domain being hijacked (or "legally" taken away) with zero recourse - or worse, putting their government in a situation where they have to choose between trying to intervene or having a bunch of their citizens' data compromised. It betrays a security naivete, oblivious to what state-sponsored APTs out there are capable of once enough is at stake.
Put another way: Many of these TLDs bring in little enough that it'd likely take a really small funding round to go to some of these registries and make them a nice offer to tighten rules so that e.g. all registrants outside the country needs a licensed representative in the country, and convince them to license only you.
Price by revenue or number of employees or something and give kickbacks to the right people.
.io for example should be considered harmful because their operator Ethos Capita has a history of incompetence, corruption and mismanage. They forgot to renew some of the nameservers for the TLD, allowing security researchers to take partial control of the TLD! They also had major outages like randomly giving NXDOMAIN for long periods, prompting articles like https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-produc.... Ethos Capita was also the company behind the infamous attempt to buy .org and the associated insider dealing.
Registering a domain name is a long term partnership, and the cost of breaking that partnership is usually much more costly than people realize until the point when forced to do it.
These are all general purpose and open for anything. You gotta get creative with the naming though!
i'm curious where morality fits in to anything in your worldview if telling the (well-documented) history of a forcible displacement of a people is "virtue signalling" and "getting the morality into it".
Virtue signalling usually does not genuinely solve anything anyway it's merely supposed to impress upon you that "this person is good", that's the entire goal. Whether it's meaningful or not doesn't enter into it.
This "acknowledgment" never seems to involve paying any rent to the Comanche for being on "their land", nor doing anything else that actually benefits the Comanche.
Taking the 15 seconds to add this to your social media profile means you can signal to everyone what a Good Person you are without ever having to actually do anything.
Voluntary land tax programs exist.[1] They seem to benefit from land acknowledgements.
> Voluntary land tax programs exist.
I'm not seeing any actual dollar figures there, nor in any of the linked examples, except the Duwamish site which mentions some guy paying $18/month. The mean rent for a one bedroom apartment in Seattle is around $2,000/month.
Paying a token amount like that doesn't make it any less virtue-signaling.
The virtue signaling meme tends to be a way of denigrating strongly held beliefs that conflict with the person calling “virtue signaling” in some way, and frankly is a virtue signal of its own. There’s literally no need to call people out for “virtue signaling” other than to stand up themselves for other like minded (often conservative) folks.
Frankly I read this as more a strongly held personal belief that something was wrong and they are doing their small thing against it. They could have just done their actions in silence, but that’s not nearly as effective as enlisting your fellows in the cause you identify.
I personally didn’t know any of the history, and while I take the stated facts with a grain of salt. But I found it an interesting read, and if it is largely true, what happened is outrageous. I’m not divesting my TLD, but it definitely sickens me to know this happened and my country is complicit and actively a part of it.
I think most people (including myself) find virtue signaling annoying for two reasons: first, it's usually conveyed in a smug, self-righteous, and even accusatory attitude, and second, because it rarely contributes anything or furthers discourse. In fact, it almost always stifles it. It's useful to call it out for the discourse-limiting technique it is, right up there with whataboutism, sealioning, etc.
Secondly, there's a belief hinted at in your justification that one must have an opinion on everything - that "silence is violence". You're either for (or sometimes against) the Current Thing, or else you're a fascist puppy-kicker who wants the terrorists to win. There's no in-between, no nuance, no additional considerations allowed. (See also: "That's a [republican|democrat|communist|nazi] talking point!") Virtue signalers communicate in talking points, betraying their tenuous grasp of a subject they have (ostensibly) strongly-held beliefs on.
Furthermore, in my personal experience, the loudest virtue signalers always seem to be the worst humans, so there's a kind of stomach-turning hypocrisy when (e.g.) you see someone who you know kicked puppies all through high school and college never shuts up about what a dog person he is (because dogs are good and people who don't like dogs are Bad; therefore, they are Good because they like dogs). Or the dirtbag who creeps out girls constantly posting feminist memes, illustrating that women can definitely feel comfortable around him. That is, it's not the dogs or feminism that's disgusting.
The way that "wokes" (where "woke" = "shitlib", shifted left) employ virtue signals is distinct from leftists engaged in debate, starting with the complete lack of dialectics. The conversation exists not to exchange information, reach an agreement, elucidate facts, or any of the normal reasons people discuss and debate things. Instead, it appears only to serve the external image projected by the speaker/author, whether erudition or to assert they're a Good Person™.
Part of it can be blamed on "eternal September" of sorts, where each year, a new group of freshmen are learning for the very first time that the world isn't as simple as their parents and high school teachers taught them. That sometimes, what's written was written for political and ideological rather than factual purposes (e.g., Columbus). It should engage a healthy dose of skepticism or criticality - even outrage - but the trend here in America seems more contrarian than critical, and it manifests in daft conclusions[2].
To further illustrate my point, I have many friends and family that are Spanish-speaking-born-outside-the-USA hispanic. Many of them work with other immigrants from all over the world, and I've sat around with people who each speak a different language and had totally reasonable conversations on all kinds of hot-button issues. We share, we learn, we shake our heads at each others' misunderstandings, and sometimes even call each other names. It only becomes a hostile shitshow when a white, liberal, middle-class, college-educated dork shows up and starts trying to rank Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Nigerians, Ugandans, Albanians, etc on their overly-simple oppression ranking scale, or shitlibsplaining to a native Spanish speaker about how they should use "Latinx" because Genders Bad. Usually, they just get laughed at, but it's devolved into some pretty heated situations that could have been avoided simply by shutting up and listening, instead of explaining to Ugandans and Haitians that their struggles are basically the same.
Another anecdote was a local in town who routinely inserted themselves into things that didn't concern them, often with a great sense of moral superiority. One day, they appointed themselves in charge of telling homeless people which side of the street they should be on. After lecturing the homeless white lady on race and that she needs to give up her spot to the black homeless man, she informed him that he assaulted her and took her spot, and that's why she was cry-screaming on the corner. He let out a literal shriek and tried to back out of it with a feeble "can't we all just get along" before the homeless guy assaulted him for interfering at all.
It was "her" spot. She sat there damn near every day. The dude was acting erratically and ended up going to the hospital - but the facts didn't matter - his mental health didn't matter - her physical safety didn't matter - only this simple, stupid, binary scale of oppression (to be created and enforced by you-guessed-it: overeducated and underemployed upper-middle-class white kids), and - presumably - the ability to go home and post on social media about what a Good Person™ he was to teach this homeless lady about her privileges he just learned about last semester.
Their blatant ignorance and racism shows through when they start generalizing about these peoples' countries, cultures, languages, etc through their own distorted lens; they expose their colonizer parts by lecturing South Americans on how they should change their language to match The Correct Idea of Gender; flaunt their internalized white supremacy by asserting themselves as the ad-hoc police, etc, etc, etc. On the bright side, at least they understand they're not allowed to call the cops if they get punched in the face by anyone with darker skin or a thicker accent than they have.
In short, it's so often transparently performative and done with such a repulsive attitude that their lectures are frankly beneath contempt, even if some of their talking points are occasionally correct/agreeable.
[1] https://xkcd.com/1096/
[2] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/29/the_disfiguring_prism_of_oppressor_and_oppressed_149977.htmlThe sooner the victim rejects the entire program, the better. Morality is not and has never been a simple issue easily resolved by dogma. In fact, I'd argue the the worst periods of human misery are dominated by dogmatic thinking and righteous bullying. It is bitterly ironic that people who enjoy the fruit of freedom willfully seek to undermine that progress. It is everyone's right to be stupid if they so choose but so too. Is it my right to judge them self-destructive and contemptible.
I didn't even see the queer thing you mentioned, but I also left the page pretty quickly once I realized it was just going to be the author patting herself on the back for social status.
There's a lot of people who think "virtue signalling" (and also "cringey") means "saying things I disagree with out loud," and it seems like you're tending in that direction.
It would have been a stronger case to make outlining the history and then listing a couple ways to help support the islands. Not buying a .io domain does nothing for that region.
[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/10/06/history-pu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
I admit I never considered the provenance of .io and its geopolitical history. I also use some .me domains that I now think I should have considered more carefully.
Reading about it now, I take the original article's point that a geo TLD that seems cute or fun or clever in one culture could have a very different connotation in another culture.
It may or may not be an ethics issue, depending on perspective, but that ambiguity might at the very least be an optics issue, since there is a moral question for at least some reasonable observers.
It appears that foreign use of these geo TLDs says something one way or another about a site/service/brand, whether that's support for the country or some sort of colonialism or something else altogether.
> Oof, sorry about this We chose .so when we were starting out (lots of other companies named Notion, and .so was available). Does it help that we own notion.com now? Automatic redirect for now, but we'll be switching to .com as soon as our engineering team has the bandwidth.
Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/f6x9mk/why_the_so_d... (3 years ago)
I always thought it was a play on shared objects (.so files).
I use a .io domain for my personal email as well. I did not reach the same conclusion though.
Hyperbolic pieces like this make me want to double down even further on whatever it is they are so against.
Yes, this is exactly what ethnic cleansing means in usual parlance and is totally not hyperbole.
An overlooked aspect is that some of them may be way slower to resolve on DNS level:
https://blog.nameshield.com/blog/2020/04/30/choosing-the-rig...
For example .io is about 50ms slower than .com on p50 and p85 percentiles (2020 data).
If you have a "serious" domain you may not want it on a "slow" TLD.
Thanks for letting me know about the Chagossian tragedy, but this boycot just sounds silly to me.
[1] Citation: Reddit.
It's always an opinion, which is fine, but too many of them are half baked, in my opinion.
Wait till the Taliban finds out how we all use .af domains
I imagine there are a few countries and companies that'd prefer the control of their internet presence not be strictly in the hands of the US government.
Though certainly there are folks who don't totally think through whose in control of their domain, see: https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/letter-ly-abrupt-ly-loses-...
You can make your own TLDs, like the Etherium folks do, but you have to convince other people to trust the name resolvers.