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12
Via Mastodon

my line for insanity was creating the .zip TLD
- 11
  United States
  
  A close second being .app. "What would you be doing differently if your goal was to enable phishing?"
  - Not Frank says:
    
    1
    United States
    
    The only thing I can think of, and I'm scared to check if it exists, would be creating .verified ... And even then I suspect folks with a goal of enabling phishing would consider .zip and .app too obvious of a ploy and likely to be rejected as TLDs
5
Via Mastodon

Who administers .gov? If it’s the federal government, there is the option some dissenting city may get disconnected. I imagine that is why SF could see a commercial domain as safer, or at least as harder to meddle with …
McDanno says:

12
Netherlands

You are of course, correct. The stupid burns bright.

Q: Why is the City's web site using the top-level domain ".org" rather than ".gov"?
A: The City has adopted the simple and easier to remember "sfgov.org" domain to facilitate Citizens' access to information which is our main objective. At the same time, we have also registered the "sanfrancisco-ca.gov" domain.
- 5
  United States
  
  JFC they have two dot govs, and in a decade there will need to be another legislation change, well, ok, but I could just burn this place down
  - McDanno says:
    
    1
    Netherlands
    
    Look we both know the SF government, if it's not incompetence, it's corruption. So we should be grateful it's not stupid, it's advaaaaaaaaanced, er, "simple and easier to remember"
  - Not Frank says:
    
    3
    United States
    
    Coming soon, for ease of memory: sfgov.org.com
- 13
  United Kingdom
  
  simple and easier to remember
  
  sf.gov vs I've already forgotten what it was.
- United States
  
  Here’s my theory: they got tired of being contacted by people who tried to reach sf.gov.com or sf.gov.org and did not get through, so they gave up and registered sfgov.{com,org} so as not to “confuse our citizens.”
  - United States
    
    Please note that the question I asked was not: "Why are there typosquatted backup domains that redirect to the canonical ones?"
3
United States

I wonder if they were having problems with the .gov registry. For instance, whois.nic.gov takes half a minute and then returns an empty response.
2
Via Mastodon

Nah, .gov is only for federal agencies. Why would you think local governments get access to .gov? San Francisco is only allowed their one true domain, ci.san-francisco.ca.us (ALL PRAISE IANA). Now let me turn on the TV and see if Clinton is likely to win re-election.

(Hmm, I wonder if they'd also be eligible for co.san-francisco.ca.us)
- 4
  Via Mastodon
  
  Semi-related tangent: Many states use license plates to advertise, say, their state tourism board. My pet peeve is California advertises... the web site of the DMV.
  - 11
    Via Mastodon
    
    Some states have state birds, state cactuses, we have a state dying-inside.
  - Nathan Roberts says:
    
    2
    United States
    
    "Florida and George put the county. In case these people forget where they live overnight."
    - George Carlin
    - skofarrell says:
      
      1
      United States
      
      In similar license plate stupidity, Indiana used to have a plate that said "Wander" on the top it. "Indiana" was on the bottom. Intent was to "Wander Indiana"
      
      Many of my friends thought that that Wander was the county that Indianapolis was in. 😂
      - Cordwainer Fish says:
        
        1
        United States
        
        "'Wander'. Yeah, just go out and get hit by a Greyhound bus!" - George Carlin
        
        skofarrell says:
        
        1
        United States
        
        Yep, and to make it even worse, they threw all of about $300k behind the marketing budget. People were as confused inside of Indiana as out.
      - United States
        
        You have very stupid friends, since for years the first two numbers on the plate indicated the county, and the "Wander Indiana" slogan was all over billboards and TV back when those were the backbone of mass media.
  - United Kingdom
    
    This just makes me think of grifters again. California has a "DMV", but a lot of states don't, e.g. Florida has their HSMV.
    
    But a lot of Californian TV and film with worldwide reach mentions the DMV, so a lot of people think they have a DMV. So they would search "florida dmv", and they got an answer, DMV.com, which was a scam site that sold free information to suckers.
    
    So, perhaps having a URL on the license plate is a good thing? Advertising the correct website for your services without having to rely on Google.
- Mike Sipior says:
  
  2
  Netherlands
  
  I'm pretty sure that's not true; or at least the rule is not rigidly enforced. New York runs out of ny.gov, and my home town runs out of buffalony.gov. Many other cities do indeed use .gov. I don't happen to share our host's strong opinion on the matter, but I do get it.
- McDanno says:
  
  7
  Netherlands
  
  Incorrect. As long as it's a government in the US, you can get a .gov.
- Via Mastodon
  
  I'm a city employee and $PLACE_OF_ORK's domain *changed* from a .CITY.STATE.us to a .gov just a few years ago. Care to try again?
  - 2
    Via Mastodon
    
    The joke was those were the rules in place for .gov and .us domains at the time... in the 1990s.
2
Via Mastodon

gov.uk gives the side eye
- 3
  Via Mastodon
  
  Bart.gov side eyes the side eye
60
Via Mastodon

UPDATE!!!

I am begging -- begging -- every one of you sad-ass Well Actually motherfuckers who feel the need to explain the dot-gov domain to me to first CLICK THE LINKS IN MY POST.

Yes. Yes I know that. Yes I know that too. Yes, also as cited. Thank you for your service.
- Derpatron9000 says:
  
  1
  United Kingdom
  
  Sadly we now seem to live in a post clock world.
- 10
  Via Mastodon
  
  well actually, clicking the link isn't enough, you also need to read them.
  
  (Sorry, couldn't resist please don't block me :D)
9
Via Mastodon

I'd assume any email I received from 'sfgov.org' was a phishing attempt.
- 1
  United Kingdom
  
  Correctly so
Via Mastodon

visited the link out of curiosity and the links led to links led to links... it brought back nostalgia for a certain era of the internet
- phuesken says:
  
  Denmark
  
  ...i've read this before and find this hard to believe. I call ch.
- skofarrell says:
  
  2
  United States
  
  My former employer had to scramble at the last minute to buy a 800 number, because a typo in a federally regulated product insert was missed. It connected to a porn chat service. 😂
1
Via Mastodon

TLD. Totally Lame Decisions. :)

i gave up after they let anyone register a .net which wasn't being used to label a network. nothing has made any sense since. that was 1990? ;)
6
Via Mastodon

people straight up do not believe us when we say "a .org domain used to mean the website belonged to an actual nonprofit", because that hasnt been the case for 25 years at this point
Via Mastodon

Checked the links. The reasoning is indeed pretty stupid.
8
United States

The question that none of the cited links have answered is: given that sfgov.org and sf.gov have had the same IP address for who-knows-how-long-now, why are they still advertising sfgov.org instead of the other one?

"AB 1637, signed into law in 2023, mandates that all public-facing websites and email domains operated by California state and local government agencies transition to domains ending in .gov by January 1, 2029."

Presumably someone will start trying to search-and-replace the web sites two years from now in December 2028, screw it up, and then an extension will be granted. It should be finished by around the time Caltrans reaches Salesforce.

Also: if you have two different domains that serve the same content, instead of one of them being HTTP 301 Moved Permanently... I hate you.
1
United States

Stay tuned for "sfgovorg.biz".
- Cordwainer Fish says:
  
  5
  United States
  
  And for sfpd.mil.
Via Mastodon

the rules are constructs no one cares to enforce.

Maybe start a new internet with a cleaner dns system, some admittedly-mythical guard against bots and similar, and some way of actually getting people to use it,
- Kite Healer says:
  
  1
  Czechia
  
  Oh, and be sure to scare off all crypto- and AI-bros from it, or they'll turn it into shit again.
  
  Especially cryptobros. Those fuckers turn everything into some sort of surreal shit.
chicovstheworld says:

4
United States

Call me a cynic, but whenever it comes to city government, I just try to follow the grift. If I had to guess, somebody at some level of city government spent thousands, if not millions, to hire their cousin's or brother-in-law's or college roommate's consulting agency to do a study on online branding that recommended a domain name change. After which, the new domain names get registered via a registrar run by somebody's aunt or golfing buddy or mistress. Pass around the kickbacks, everybody wins. Except the taxpayers who funded it.

But you know me, just a cynic...
United States

Back at my old bookstore in the long-ago, the re-engineers/new owners/shiftless assholes decided that "brownbookshop.com" was too difficult for people to remember, so they pushed out for public use "browntechnical.org".

Between the unnecessary (and frankly less clear) new name and the minor issue of .ORG MEANS SOMETHING SPECIFIC YOU FUCKING PHILISTINES WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, I kinda went apoplectic.

(motherfuckers still owe me a few thousand bucks from the bookstore they killed, too.)
United States

As an administrator for a number of US locality domains on the Internet, I wish they would bring back ci.sf.ca.us as their domain.

RIP Jon Postel (RFC1480)

TLDs used to mean things. We used to be a society.

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