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The story of .io

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Re: The story of .io

#11

Post by mynameisvlad »

quadrangle wrote: post #10

Fascinating story. I personally wish the article had gone a little further into being snarky, perhaps subtly, in recognizing how stupid, meaningless, unfunny, and unclever the idea of .io for "in/out" is for domains. Most websites and all computers do input/output and there's nothing interesting about that fact. I think it's a dumb trend, and I have an irrational, emotional dislike of the suggestion that it is good i…

Wut? .com is supposed to be for commercial sites only. I see it everywhere, regardless of if someone is selling something or not. .net is for network infrastructure, I see it used all the time. Other than strict TLDs like .gov, they're used for things other than their intended use all the time.

.io is a good way to get a name that would otherwise be taken up by a squatter while still having some technological tie. The former is really what it's all about.

Re: The story of .io

#12

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
ryan90v wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the story of the .su (Soviet Union) domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/31/ussr-cyber...

> The .su domain was invented by the then-19-year-old Finnish student Petri Ojala. "Invented" seems like the wrong word to use here.

Wikipedia is publicly editable. Most people forget that these days.

Re: The story of .io

#13

Post by comrh »

MichaelGG wrote: post #9

I don't see what the issue is here, apart from non-DNS things (kicking people out, etc). If Chagos got autonomy, it wouldn't be keeping .io as its ccTLD - what sense would that make? And if Britain wants to have .io, they'd just need some other random island with enough of a presence to justify the country code. Phrasing it as if somehow .io belongs to these people is simple intellectual dishonesty.

I think the main point of the article is the country codes are not very defined in the process of creation, their use and who reaps the rewards of ownership.

Re: The story of .io

#14

Post by nickysielicki »

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line.

> As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us.

Why has every Silicon Valley leftist gotten it into their heads that this isn't a completely ridiculous statement? We're not superheros or magicians, in spite of the fact that the technical illiteracy of the rest of society may make us believe we are. We had some power a decade ago, but we've spent that. How did we spend it? What do humans historically do with power? They leverage it!

We pillage and rape the earth. Five million people are dead in the congo so that we can steal their minerals and ship them to China where a suicidal 9 year old makes it into an iPhone, which is sold at exorbitant prices to lower and middle class Americans who consume websites that act as Centrifugal Bumble-Puppies and Orgy-Porgies that we create.

But yeah, the real tragedy is that there's a TLD for an island of 2000 people who are losing their culture. Techies needs to be aware of THAT and stop THAT tragedy. Get real.

The only power of the Internet ever held any promise in was allowing fringe opinions to be heard. Anyone could publish and be heard and read about certain taboo subjects and not be publicly shamed for entertaining a certain thought. 4chan still holds this sentiment. Reddit did for a while until it decided it had to make more money. I grew up on that Internet.

It's long dead. Political correctness has killed everything. We had an opportunity to expose the masses to truly uncontrolled thought and discussion. We had an opportunity to embrace society-- ALL of society. We had an opportunity to create forums where we could all try to understand each other. Yes, that means racists and pedophiles and sexists and dickheads. But we instead created controlled environments like Facebook and reddit that represent nothing new and the world will flow on as it always has. We've created systems that encourage homogeneity in opinion and have marginalized the same people we always have.

Tech isn't special.

Re: The story of .io

#15

Post by cvet »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line. > As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us. Why has every Silicon…

Cynicism like this only leads to self imposed amorality. It makes stagnation a self fulfilling prophecy.

You're basically making a bandwagon argument that humans historically have abused power, so this frees anyone in tech from any obligation to try to not abuse power. This is an absurd argument because it precludes progress.

There's a fair criticism of bleeding heart syndrome in the article. It's not the job of "tech" to solve every problem. But this doesn't mean we should just say "fuck it" when confronted with moral ambiguity because millions of people died in the Congo. The only way things improve is by large numbers of people speaking out. Power has no inherent motive to change, people need to push. And if pushing veers into silliness sometimes, who cares.

Re: The story of .io

#16

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line. > As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us. Why has every Silicon…

> But yeah, the real tragedy is that there's a TLD for an island of 2000 people who are losing their culture. Techies needs to be aware of THAT and stop THAT tragedy. Get real.

So because big bad things happen, we must ignore the small things?

This is nihilistic and selfish.

Re: The story of .io

#17

Post by stvswn »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line. > As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us. Why has every Silicon…

You had me nodding in agreement when I thought you were standing up against slacktivism and outrage-bait. Then I got puzzled when you started railing against consumerism and its consequences. Finally I realized you were just nostalgic for when the internet wasn't mainstream -- as if you are starved for open forums on today's internet. I think your real issue is that regular "lower and middle class Americans" are also on your internet, and as such it reflects society, which you find conformist and boring. Fine, just don't tie it into some nihilistic rant about how we're all complicit in mass murder because we consume electronic devices.

Re: The story of .io

#18

Post by stvswn »

Some additional context from wikipedia: the island was originally 100% uninhabited in the 19th century when the French brought slaves there. Over the course of the next century, it was mostly privately owned, and the majority of residents were employees of plantations who were under temporary contracts and would return to Mauritania or the Seychelles after the contract was over. Ever since the slave days, there was a creole population, and that's the relevant group -- they were not indigenous peoples, but rather freed slaves and their descendants living on private land. In the 1970s, about 1100 people were forcibly removed after the British government took control of the island for the US naval base. They were compensated in cash. I think it's absolutely reasonable to feel like this was a dirty land grab, but whether they were really permanent residents, and how many they were, is in dispute. This sort of falls in the category of eminent domain seizures. I generally have a problem with those, but I don't spend too much time dwelling on the displaced populations that resulted from other government land seizures. Should we all feel guilty when we visit national parks? Or when we drive on highways? Or for the many military bases throughout the US? Do you think they just happened to find land with exactly zero residents?

Re: The story of .io

#19

Post by raintrees »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line. > As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us. Why has every Silicon…

For me, that last line conjured memories of Blank Reg from Max Headroom when one of the episodes examined a possible futuristic court of law. No official identity, no justice.

Re: The story of .io

#20

Post by nickysielicki »

stvswn wrote: post #17
nickysielicki wrote: post #14

I lack an ability to put into words just how much I hate the tone of this article and the tone of this author. Particularly this last line. > As we build new worlds with our technologies, knitted from fiber-optic light and lines of code, it is incumbent on us to ensure it does not reproduce the erasures and abuses of the old, but properly accounts for the rights and liberties of every one of us. Why has every Silicon…

You had me nodding in agreement when I thought you were standing up against slacktivism and outrage-bait. Then I got puzzled when you started railing against consumerism and its consequences. Finally I realized you were just nostalgic for when the internet wasn't mainstream -- as if you are starved for open forums on today's internet. I think your real issue is that regular "lower and middle class Americans" are also…

> I think your real issue is that regular "lower and middle class Americans" are also on your internet, and as such it reflects society, which you find conformist and boring.

That's exactly my point. I'm upset that the internet going mainstream meant that they're not on "my" internet. They're on the part of the internet accessible via facebook and maybe reddit if they're <25y/o males.

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