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30 pointsvolida41 comments

PG could configure the news.ycombinator.com server to return a 301 to any request which has a HOST header that's not news.ycombinator.com - either that or hardcode the domain name in links.

I'm sure that Volida's motives are honest as he stated but this practice - buying a domain name that sounds like something popular and setting the A records to the intended site - has the potential to be used maliciously. All you'd have to do is wait for traffic to grow and then, in time, switch the DNS records to your own site. Of course, the HTTPS pages are going to show certificate problems while your A record is pointing at the original target - but many users will just go ahead and accept bad certificates.

How would a legitimate site owner defend against this sort of thing? Would the solution I described in the top paragraph be effective? Has this ever been done maliciously?

> Of course, the HTTPS pages

What HTTPS pages?

The hypothetical ones.

I don't know too much about web whatnots but couldn't this be done through virtualhosts? like say ip/other domains go to nothing or another place, domain.tld/subd.domain.tld goes to the main website?

Or am I mistaken and this circumvents that?

Sure, if he wanted to block it completely. Or he could just do the redirect with a simple check of the Host header.

If the only reason is shortness of typing, why don't you use a bookmark? Even s60 browsers have those.

Sometimes you have to access something from cybercafes. I bought qwertqwert.com so I could access "Dvorak anywhere" quickly with a qwerty keyboard.

Except that you don't seem to be doing anything with it.

protip: www

So adding www makes his example completely moot. If shortness were an issue then why only use www.qwertqwert.com ?

qwertqwert Ctrl-Enter is pretty short and works in most Windows browsers (such as you're likely to find in an internet cafe)

(ctrl-enter adds a leading http://www. and a trailing .com if either is missing)

good point. thanks for the hint.

I never claimed that his example was representative of a useful, short domain name, I simply pointed out that you came to a conclusion that was wrong after doing far too little research. If you have a problem with the length of his domain name, I'd suggest commenting to him, not me.

The downmods are ridiculous, did I honestly distract from the conversation or did everyone disagree that putting www in front fixes it? This place is dying.

Domains that require www need to die.

google 'hn'.

With autocomplete, typing can be faster than a bookmark when all you have to do is type "h" then press down and ok.

Amusingly, all I do is type "n" and then press enter, and Google Chrome takes me here using the normal address.

I typically get as far as "new", but then, I routinely have more than a hundred tabs open in Firefox. If Chrom(e|ium) worked on FreeBSD, I'd probably be using that instead.

I like leaving things open, but I'm really curious how having over 30 tabs is an improved user experience. The most common places I visit are either always etched in the address bar history, and so are reachable in a few keystrokes, or have outright aliases, so I can type a keyword and it transforms into a URL. Everything else is just a handful of keystrokes away, via Selfmarks (my bookmarks-on-the-internet service).

How can you navigate among your tabs with any semblance of ease or speed?

Yeah, I keep hearing of people (esp. power users) using web browsers with hundreds of tabs open, and I don't understand why they need so many, nor how it remains manageable/useful/navigable. When I end up with > 25 tabs, it usually just means I need to run a garbage collection cycle. Whatever the reason is, it's probably some use case(s) that could be better handled by the browser or an extension. Are they using all the tabs as a queue of stuff to read? That's a problem I run into, and I deal with it by keeping a vim buffer open with a list of URLs.

When I end up with > 25 tabs, it usually just means I need to run a garbage collection cycle.

I agree in theory; that many tabs are pretty difficult to manage. Unfortunately, a garbage collection cycle forces me to focus on garbage collecting (since I will usually have several important sites open among the trash), breaking my concentration on the research. It ends up being more productive to leave them open for a while, until they reach some threshold where I have to do too much work to find the important open sites among the garbage. That point for me is definitely more than 25 but also less than 100. I assume that it's different for different people.

I use my browser as my 'auxiliary memory', if I don't have time to read something right away I just open a tab and leave it until I have time.

On a typical day this means that in the morning I start with the session I left the evening before, say 25 tabs or so (usually project + whatever documentation I need for it), then as the day goes by the number of open tabs slowly increases. By the evening it probably is at its peak somewhere between 50 and 70 or so, then before I go to bed I catch up on my reading and close anything that doesn't have to do with work ready for the next cycle.

You should try instapaper.com

. . . or the Read it Later extension for Firefox.

I write professionally, and I often have close to a dozen tabs open for research toward the completion of a single article.

Exactly, the same happens for me "n" is for Hacker News in my Firefox vunderbar.

I just type "Hacker news" into the awesomebar of Firefox and Google does the rest.

seems more like a Chuck Norris fact

For vimperator users you can use marks:

    'M<a-z>' where <a-z> is the letter you want, to set the mark.

Then:

    'go<a-z>' to open in the current tab.
    'gn<a-z>' for a new tab.

Its a good example of how poorly Google's duplicate content filter works[1]. But I agree, its quite deceptive.

[1]http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahackerne.ws

Why not donate the domain to YCombinator?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=84040 (found via http://searchyc.com/hackerne.ws?sort=by_date_r) — Sounds like he's offered to do so in the past.

Like Zev pointed out, I am willing to do so.

Why should he donate it? He should sell it. If PG decides it adds usefulness, guy should at least get the purchase price back, if not more.

Obviously it's just a convenient domain name, so he won't sell it for a lot of money, but should sell it for _something_. PG can afford a reasonably priced domain, I think.

Or, PG could easily block it, rendering it useless.

"Well, I don't plan in doing any kind of man-in-middle attack. Neither I am planning to selling the domain to a 3rd party."

Well, I still think it's irresponsible to provide or use such a "service". I can't think it's good for security if people get in the habit of relying on potentially unreliable third-parties just for the heck of it.

Why ask people to trust that you have only good intentions when that wouldn't even be necessary if you didn't provide a (IMHO less than worthless) "service"?

I might sound harsh, but the whole matter just reeks of sloppiness to me.

1) I don't think the domain adds a wide spread value (if any). 2) Dunno why people are getting their panties in a knot.

Thank you for posting this.

Since the domain is registered at GoDaddy, it's trivial to set up a redirect. Just select the domain and click the "Forward" button.

By the way, for someone who prefers to remain anonymous you don't make it very easy to post anonymously on your weblog.

I do not see a need of short or fancy URL for HN.

BUT

since it's out there and the owner is willing to donate, I think it's better PG getting it.

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