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A URL Lengthener

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Re: A URL Lengthener

#291

Post by bartread »

unnah wrote: post #239

Microsoft also provides a URL lengthener via "Advanced Outlook.com security for Office 365 subscribers". Thanks to them, any URL we send or receive by email at work turns into an unrecognizable monster. At least the links include comforting words like "safelinks" and "protection" so that everyone can feel safe and protected.

Oh my goodness, yes, safelinks: no doubt they provide some security benefits but from a UX perspective I detest them. The redirect to the real URL often takes far too long and sometimes Outlook, being the apparently single-threaded "let's make all network requests on the UI thread" pile of stinking fecal matter that it is, appears not to respond to your click, so you click again, and then maybe again, and then maybe yet again... and then all of a sudden you've got four browser tabs opening up to load the same URL and taking several seconds to redirect.

I hate, hate, hate, HATE, HATE safelinks.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#292

Post by rnotaro »

On a related note, I did a client side (really badly coded) link lengthner 5 or 6 years ago. : https://rickynotaro.github.io/B.U.R.N/

It basically just base64 encode the url to generate the link and decode the url arg to do the redirect.

I also own this email address that I made just for fun: JesuisLeProprietaireDeCeNomDeDomaineTresLongBonjourCaVaBienAller@icirickynotarodemontrealetceciestunnomdedomainebeaucouptroplong.club

Re: A URL Lengthener

#293

Post by gumby »

vanderZwan wrote: post #242
marmot777 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss getting Rick Rolled.

These days it's all about personalised, targeted rolling . You have to find out what song your friend hates the most (say, "Africa" by Toto) and try to trick them into listening to ever-more-horrible cover versions of it. At least, that seems to be the thing in my friend group.

Someone should offer this personalization as a service. I’m sure it’s easy to purchase all the necessary PII

Re: A URL Lengthener

#294

Post by Siira »

cube00 wrote: post #248
patrickmcnamara wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when you Google something and copy a link straight from their search page. Novel-length URLs.

This is so frustrating, I just want the url, but NO, you can an escaped version of the URL embedded inside another escaped blob instead. Ditto with Facebook.

Try https://github.com/AmanoTeam/Unalix-nim .

Re: A URL Lengthener

#295

Post by Nition »

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #246
unnah wrote: post #239

Microsoft also provides a URL lengthener via "Advanced Outlook.com security for Office 365 subscribers". Thanks to them, any URL we send or receive by email at work turns into an unrecognizable monster. At least the links include comforting words like "safelinks" and "protection" so that everyone can feel safe and protected.

Or when you Google something and copy a link straight from their search page. Novel-length URLs.

Or when they helpfully add www.google.com/amp/s/ to the start of it.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#296

Post by caslon »

TimLeland wrote: post #285
caslon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I have some software that has it as a hard-dependency.

I feel for you :(

I actually like using it. There's something comfortable about using an operating system that's old enough to have kids. Another benefit is that screens are high enough resolution nowadays that it doesn't look like a child's toy.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#297

Post by schoen »

buffrr wrote: post #245
schoen wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, so I think I'm seeing something weird where some software isn't allowing this particular recursive query? I'll dig into it more. By the way: > The A record was never in the root zone. Are you sure of that? I don't have any proof, but my impression was that the DNS registry for ai (which was also just Vince Cate...) was able to ask for it because at one time the root zone was less restrictive in what RRtypes cou…

> Are you sure of that? I checked an archive of root zone data from June 1999 to May 2021[0], and there don't seem to be A records for any TLD. Not sure why you're having this issue, but I'm curious to know which Linux distro/software doesn't resolve ai. [0] http://stats.research.icann.org/root-zone/data/root-zone-arc...

It looks like it's systemd-resolve. I just checked on several machines and, when using nslookup to query the recursive nameserver that systemd-resolve is forwarding to, the ai A record does resolve, while when using systemd-resolve itself, or the local instance on 127.0.0.53 configured via /etc/resolv.conf, it returns a failure every time.

I'll have to look into this some more.

Edit: I think I found it! From systemd-resolved.service(8):

       ·   Single-label names are routed to all local interfaces capable of IP
           multicasting, using the LLMNR protocol. Lookups for IPv4 addresses
           are only sent via LLMNR on IPv4, and lookups for IPv6 addresses are
           only sent via LLMNR on IPv6. Lookups for the locally configured
           host name and the "_gateway" host name are never routed to LLMNR.

       ·   Multi-label names are routed to all local interfaces that have a
           DNS server configured, plus the globally configured DNS server if
           there is one. Address lookups from the link-local address range are
           never routed to DNS.
So, systemd-resolved.service appears to treat single-label names inherently differently from multi-label names when doing a DNS lookup. (LLMNR is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-Local_Multicast_Name_Reso..., which is ... not exactly DNS.)

Presumably ai is the only name on the Internet concretely impacted by this behavior. :-(

Re: A URL Lengthener

#298

Post by schoen »

schoen wrote: post #18
TimLeland wrote: post #5

haha nice! I built the exact opposite the shortest possible URL shortener :) https://t.ly/

For many years (but no longer) Vince Cate's Offshore Information Services had a DNS A record for the ccTLD "ai", so that http://ai/ was a valid URL that worked in browsers. (A few people also had e-mail addresses @ai.) Today, there are no longer any TLDs of any kind with their own A records. https://www.internic.net/domain/root.zone

I can't edit this anymore, but further down in this thread it turned out that it's just systemd that refuses to attempt a global DNS A lookup for a single-label name, so this record DOES still exist, just like it ever did, but all the machines that I've tried on for the past few years as well as yesterday were Linux systems using a local systemd stub resolver that enforced this rule. :-(

I guess I should get some servers running other operating systems, or something.

It might be difficult to convince the systemd developers that this special case should be removed just because of this one anomalous DNS name...

Re: A URL Lengthener

#299

Post by cbolton »

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #246
unnah wrote: post #239

Microsoft also provides a URL lengthener via "Advanced Outlook.com security for Office 365 subscribers". Thanks to them, any URL we send or receive by email at work turns into an unrecognizable monster. At least the links include comforting words like "safelinks" and "protection" so that everyone can feel safe and protected.

Or when you Google something and copy a link straight from their search page. Novel-length URLs.

I think they fixed this... did you try it recently?

Re: A URL Lengthener

#300

Post by prox »

boomlinde wrote: post #238
prox wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you make whole webpages just through urls? Such as they will completely portable? Portable being taken with a grain of sand ofc.

Yes, I did this for self-contained reports in maybe 2014. All images referenced (containing diagrams) were embedded as data URIs. Restrictions are AFAIK more picky now, though so YMMV in 2021.

Cool project! It is kind of interesting that the link is the content, not sure it’s always useful, but for twitter like short form content perhaps?
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