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Shortest URLs on the Internet

jameswillia.ms

121–130 of 208 posts

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#121
post #11

At one point of time, ` http://to ` resolved to a "It works!" page [1]. I've always thought it would be cool to have a URL shortener with links such as ` https://to/library ` or something similar. Oh, how much fun running your own TLD would be... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150319211308/http://to/

Many years ago, there used to be http://www.tk/. They would let you register free domains (which I think technically were actually subdomains, but I'm really not sure). You could point these to anywhere online and it would maintain your [whatever].tk URL in the address bar. I remember hosting some pages on Geocities and using .tk to make it look "authentic" since it appeared to be self-hosted, which was 1337.

It seems that the service now redirects to a site called Freenom where you can still get .tk names, but they appear to be priced based on the length and whether or not the domain contains known words or phrases (though some free ones are apparently still available if you don't mind having a gibberish name)

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#122
post #28
post #11

At one point of time, ` http://to ` resolved to a "It works!" page [1]. I've always thought it would be cool to have a URL shortener with links such as ` https://to/library ` or something similar. Oh, how much fun running your own TLD would be... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150319211308/http://to/

At Google and many other tech companies, internal machines are configured to have go/ work just like you describe. Looks like someone even made a whole company around it https://www.golinks.com/blog/go-links-history/

I had worked at a bank as an IT professional and it works wonders, until the browser tries to be smart and attempts a Google search

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#123

It would be great if someone with an ultra-short URL could run one of the "what's my IP address" sites on it, like: ifconfig.co ifconfig.pm ifconfig.show ipaddr.in ipconfig.io They return plain-text IP address to curl/wget, while serving up a more detailed web page to other web browsers.

I like to use eth0.me for this purpose. Short and memorable.

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#124

All the domains have an invalid TLS certificate. Now, it would be very interesting to see the process for actually obtaining a valid certificate for one of these. Anyone know if there are reasons one could not be obtained?

I think these weren't meant to run on the apex domains, so nobody even bothered getting a certificate. Would be interesting to try and get one, I agree.

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#127

It would be great if someone with an ultra-short URL could run one of the "what's my IP address" sites on it, like: ifconfig.co ifconfig.pm ifconfig.show ipaddr.in ipconfig.io They return plain-text IP address to curl/wget, while serving up a more detailed web page to other web browsers.

There's https://ip.me/, it supports curl like you describe!

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#128
post #11

At one point of time, ` http://to ` resolved to a "It works!" page [1]. I've always thought it would be cool to have a URL shortener with links such as ` https://to/library ` or something similar. Oh, how much fun running your own TLD would be... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150319211308/http://to/

Many years ago, there used to be http://www.tk/ . They would let you register free domains (which I think technically were actually subdomains, but I'm really not sure). You could point these to anywhere online and it would maintain your [whatever].tk URL in the address bar. I remember hosting some pages on Geocities and using .tk to make it look "authentic" since it appeared to be self-hosted, which was 1337. It see…

> which I think technically were actually subdomains, but I'm really not sure

IIRC, anything that isn’t the TLD is a subdomain. It’s just that we typically think of a subdomain as starting at the third-level. So, for this site, news is the subdomain of ycombinator.com, but also, ycombinator is a subdomain of com.

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#129
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem with this approach is browsers love to resolve it to http://go.com , so Disney may be getting a feed of what Googlers are interested in.

I can’t speak for anywhere else, but I’m pretty sure Google uses a Proxy Auto Config script for go links, which should prevent that from happening in most cases. Disclosure: I work for Google.

Same for Target

Re: Shortest URLs on the Internet

#130
post #82

Shortest address is http://1 Not on the internet, though. Just on the network. Kinda surprised Linux routes 0.0.0.1 to my router, when used as a destination address. Might be fun to use it as a local redirector whitout having to do any DNS shenanigans. Edit: yep, it works

That's new in 2019 (0/8 was prohibited), and there is a story... https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
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