dns internet privacy · 4 comments · 900 words · Viewed ~783 times
You're the sort of cool nerd who knows all the weird esoterica which makes up DNS, right? In amongst your A, AAAA, SOA, and MX records, there's a little used NAPTR. Yes, you can use DNS to store Name Authority Pointers! What?! It is yet another of those baroque standards which spits out things like: cid.uri.arpa. ;; order pref flags service regexp replacement IN NAPTR…
Continue reading →dns internet trivia · 14 comments · 550 words · Viewed ~40,505 times
I love DNS esoterica. Weird little things that you can shove in the global directory to be distributed around the world instantly(ish). Domain names, like www.example.com usually resolve to servers. As much as we think of "the cloud" as being some intangible morass of ethereal Turing-machines floating in probability space, the more prosaic reality is that they're just boxen in data centres. They …
Continue reading →internet · 16 comments · 500 words · Viewed ~15,102 times
I went for a spelunk through an ancient codebase a few weeks ago which contained a curious regex that I just couldn't grok. {<((https?|ftp|dict|tel):[^\'">\s]+)>}i I'm familiar with HTTP and FTP. I worked in the mobile industry, so knew that tel:+44... could be used to launch a dialer. But DICT?!?!?! It turns out that, lurking on the Internet are Dictionary Servers! They exist to allow you…
Continue reading →africa domains ICANN internet tld · 400 words · Viewed ~265 times
It looks like South Sudan's Top Level Domain is going to start allowing direct registrations! Long-time readers of this blog will know that it's possible to register .me.ss domain names - there are various other 3rd level domains you can buy. But, from the 1st of August 2024, you'll be able to apply for a 2nd level. So you'll be able to grab example.ss. Here's the official announcement. As …
Continue reading →future internet isp · 12 comments · 450 words · Viewed ~448 times
Many years ago - when I was very young and you were even younger - it was standard for an ISP to provide all their users with a small amount of webspace. Both Pipex and Demon offered webspace back in 1996. If my hazy memory is correct, they offered a few megabytes - more than enough for a fledgeling website. But, over the years, ISPs shut down their bundled web offerings. Even their bundled…
Continue reading →internet isp virgin · 9 comments · 200 words
Virgin Media - a UK-based fibre-optic ISP - recently sent me a survey about their potential product offerings. It was desperate to know if I wanted bundled streaming video (no), or Sky Sports (LOL no), or any other digital subscriptions (no, go away), or a landline (what, is this the 1990s?). They even wanted to know if I'd pay extra for priority support. In amongst all the other offers, they …
Continue reading →HTML internet tld · 7 comments · 400 words · Viewed ~567 times
In linguistics, a "False Friend" is a word which looks similar in multiple languages, but means something different in each of them. For example the word "gift" in English means "a present", in German means "poison", and in Norwegian it means "married". The Internet uses Top Level Domains (TLD) to organise information into hierarchies. This website uses .mobi - you may also be familiar with .com …
Continue reading →Book Review Cory Doctorow internet politics · 650 words · Viewed ~258 times
This is beloved firebrand Cory doing what he does best. Rallying the rebellion with righteous indignation and a no-nonsense approach to fixing technology's ills. If you've read any of his fiction, or listened to him talk, you'll know what to expect. An overview of how big tech has screwed us over and the consequences of those machinations. Unlike other writers, Doctorow provides eminently…
Continue reading →internet predictions web · 7 comments · 700 words · Viewed ~1,481 times
Way back in 2011, I contributed to an article on The Next Web called "What will the Web be like in 20 years?". Foolishly, I missed the 10 year anniversary, but let's see how we're doing against those predictions a little over halfway through. My prediction for the Web? The same speed. Faster pipes & processors – more bloated markup & JS. Well... fuck! Bang on the money there. The web is f…
Continue reading →google internet tld · 9 comments · 350 words · Viewed ~8,884 times
Many years ago, Google applied for the .zip Top Level Domain. ICANN, in its infinite wisdom, granted it. And now, I think, bad things are going to happen. You see computers try to be helpful. They see you wrote "visit example.com" and autolink the thing which looks like a domain name. That's handy - especially as most people don't have the time or skill to write HTML. So what happens when…
Continue reading →http internet · 4 comments · 650 words · Viewed ~3,707 times
Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol is, by some measure, the most popular way for computers to talk to each other on the Internet. Generally speaking, clients (like browsers) talk to servers using a set number of HTTP "verbs". This tells the server what sort of thing the client is trying to do. The two most popular verbs are probably POST - which lets you send data to a server - and GET - which lets…
Continue reading →dns internet · 4 comments · 750 words · Viewed ~1,460 times
You've been on the Internet a long time, right? Of course you know what BIMI is. All the cool kids do. But, for those of you who aren't hip to the jive of the Infobahn... BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a new standard that can curb the issue of online impersonators. ... BIMI is a new standard that enables you to include your company’s logo alongside the emails you send. T…
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