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Non-Libyan URL Shortener

gadaf.fi

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Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#61

Post by jschuur »

dmor wrote: post #52
jschuur wrote: post #34

Slightly unrelated, but given the current sanctions, you can't renew a .ly domain name right now as a US business, correct? Bit.ly's domain name expires early next year, last time I checked.

do you have a source? i have some .ly domains to renew and have been considering what to do with them

I'll confess, I hadn't looked into my assumption further until now. Details of the US sanctions against Libya can be found here (look for the Executive Order 13566 PDF):

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/p...

The .ly registrar Libyan Spider has been fairly communicative and open with its customers. Their CEO Hadi Naser says they are a 'private company run by ordinary citizens that have no affiliation with the government' and that 'purchasing the .ly domains supports Libyan citizens, not the government'. A 10 percent fee goes to a nongovernmental organization in Libya that mantains the .ly network:

http://www.businessinsider.com/ly-registrar-our-servers-have... http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-libyan-con...

There was some prior disruption of service when Softlayer, their ISP outside of Libya raised some sanction related concerns, but that appears to have been resolved later:

http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=20

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#62

Post by dgl »

zackattack wrote: post #36
soult wrote: post #16

While it is a funny play on all those .ly domains and the fact that vb.ly got seized by the Libyan government, it is my opinion that yet another URL shortener is a stupid way of protest. Let me explain: I work with the Urlteam, a group of people that saves shorturl->longurl mappings for a bunch of shorteners. The typical life cycle of small shorteners is this: - URL shortener opens, gets some praise for weird feature…

How do spammers successfully abuse shorteners?

Like other comments have said spammers use it as a form of obfuscation. They even chain URL shorteners to obfuscate things even more.

I work for an anti-spam company. We see a constant stream of spammy short URLs -- peaking at tens of new unique links per second.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#63

Post by gaius »

wladimir wrote: post #55
soult wrote: post #16

While it is a funny play on all those .ly domains and the fact that vb.ly got seized by the Libyan government, it is my opinion that yet another URL shortener is a stupid way of protest. Let me explain: I work with the Urlteam, a group of people that saves shorturl->longurl mappings for a bunch of shorteners. The typical life cycle of small shorteners is this: - URL shortener opens, gets some praise for weird feature…

URL shorteners are evil. It's the digital equivalent of stepping into a car driven by a stranger, blindfolded. You don't know where you're going before you're there. It might not necessarily be a pleasant place.

Plus, they are stupid. What, are we short of space for email? Are links people send each other consuming too much disk? I've barely touched my howevermany squigabytes GMail is giving away these days. I can guarantee that there is no "URL shortening service" that has the longevity of DNS either. If you want any more proof of a bubble, it's that it's possible to operate a business doing this.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#66

Post by adam-_- »

gaius wrote: post #63
wladimir wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

URL shorteners are evil. It's the digital equivalent of stepping into a car driven by a stranger, blindfolded. You don't know where you're going before you're there. It might not necessarily be a pleasant place.

Plus, they are stupid. What, are we short of space for email? Are links people send each other consuming too much disk? I've barely touched my howevermany squigabytes GMail is giving away these days. I can guarantee that there is no "URL shortening service" that has the longevity of DNS either. If you want any more proof of a bubble, it's that it's possible to operate a business doing this.

We're short of space for twitter messages. And maybe IRC topics.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#67

Post by gaius »

adam-_- wrote: post #66
gaius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, they are stupid. What, are we short of space for email? Are links people send each other consuming too much disk? I've barely touched my howevermany squigabytes GMail is giving away these days. I can guarantee that there is no "URL shortening service" that has the longevity of DNS either. If you want any more proof of a bubble, it's that it's possible to operate a business doing this.

We're short of space for twitter messages. And maybe IRC topics.

That's not true either, there aren't many 140-char URLs anyway.

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#68

Post by ay »

staktrace wrote: post #41
Xk wrote: post #24

You should block me from redirecting a link to itself. http://gadaf.fi/5j And probably block cycles too.

Isn't that impossible? You can redirect to a page (under your control) that redirects to itself, if your goal is to get the user stuck in a redirect loop. Until their browser decides enough is enough, that is.

"browser decides enough is enough"

IIRC from reading the sources, both FF and Chrome had a limit of 30 hardcoded - after this many redirects they would give up and say "uh, it's a redirect loop".

Re: Non-Libyan URL Shortener

#69

Post by St-Clock »

gaius wrote: post #67
adam-_- wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're short of space for twitter messages. And maybe IRC topics.

That's not true either, there aren't many 140-char URLs anyway.

Sure, but the relatively short link to your reply, http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492783, is already 44 characters, so I'm only left with 96 characters on a twitter message.

With bit.ly, the link is much shorter with 21 characters, http://bit.ly/j8IpC8, and I'm left with 119 characters to describe the link in a twitter message.

Oh, and I'll know how many people clicked on my bit.ly link. I've become addicted to that feature.

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