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Comment by quadrangle | Hacker News Reader

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 in any way for all these annoying startups and their dumb domains. end rant

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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.

Yeah, and people don't use .com well either. But "commercial" actually is a reasonable class of site.

Um, strict TLDs like .gov are misused?? What's a .gov site that isn't a government site? That is actually regulated…

.io is a stupid TLD name (except for actual Indian Ocean sites). I think what bugs me is "some technological tie" — wut? It's not anything. Input/Output isn't a nifty technological idea even.

Re: squatters: they could squat on any TLD. The only reason they squat on .com or .net is because you want it. Now, they will start squatting on .io because people want that. I don't see the difference.

I'd argue that maybe things like http://davisut4health.gov/ and http://bart.gov might not properly belong under .gov?

BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit light-rail line, is perfectly appropriate as a .GOV site. It's administrated as a branch of the California government, with a Board of Directors elected by residents of the area they serve.

I don't know what davisut4health.gov was, but right now it just appears to be an alternative URL for the Davis County Library. (And oddly enough, your post appears to be the only reference to this domain on the Internet!)

You misread, I said .gov is a strict TLD, as in you need to be some sort of government agency to get one. Although that's washy as well, but not to the extent that .com/net/org/io are.

Ha, let's be honest, they will always squat com and net first as long as they're the most popular TLDs, which I don't see changing anytime soon.

Ah, indeed, sorry for my misreading

But getting a .io domain already taken by a .com is also kind of stupid. It's only useful if the .com is being squatted on and you hope some day to make enough money to buy the .com too (see e.g segment).

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