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"Weird" Web-site domains? (Indirectly TI-related)


Kchula-Rrit

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Not sure if "domain" is the right word, I'm talking about the part between the dot and the slash in Web-site addresses, line .com or .gov or .org.  Anyway, I'm seeing Web-sites called something like this.io, or bit.ly?  It's usually followed by a slash, and then some gibberish, like they're trying to hide something.   They look iffy to me, like those scam sites that put viruses into your computer.  I thought the two-letter thing is a country code, but I doubt youtu.be is in Belgium.  That one is, at least, easy to figure out and change to www.youtube.com/watch=? or some such.  But goo.gl?

 

The TI connection is that yesterday I was trying to find a schematic to wire-up the keyboard connection on my USB keyboard adapter that I purchased from arcadeshopper a couple of months ago.  On the Installation section of the Web-page http://ti994a.cwfk.net/TiUsbKeys.html there is an entry that says in pictures.  When I put the cursor over the entry, the link name shows at the bottom of my screen as goo.gl/gibberish.  That made me wonder of someone's trying to hack Google or, maybe, Google itself is being underhanded.  I've seen a few of these things over the past few years, but it seems to be getting "worse."

 

Are these things safe?  I doubt that Jupiter's inner moon has a government Web-site, but you never know these days...

 

K-R.

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16 minutes ago, Kchula-Rrit said:

Anyway, I'm seeing Web-sites called something like this.io, or bit.ly?  It's usually followed by a slash, and then some gibberish, like they're trying to hide something.   They look iffy to me, like those scam sites that put viruses into your computer.  I thought the two-letter thing is a country code, but I doubt youtu.be is in Belgium.  That one is, at least, easy to figure out and change to www.youtube.com/watch=? or some such.  But goo.gl?

 

These are all URL shortening services.  The idea is that they'll take a URL that would be a pain to type or view in a document, email, etc. and make it a more manageable (and readable) size.  For example:

 

www.atariage.com

 

When put through bit.ly, becomes:

 

https://bit.ly/2SJYsfs

 

Some of them allow you to preview the text of the URL they redirect to, so you can decide if you want to visit the link or not without having to actually go to it.

 

Yes, they can be used to obfuscate a malicious URL, but very few URLs are going to announce themselves as being malicious when you read them.  Best to check the preview (if available) and decide from there.

 

FWIW, goo.gl is run by Google.  I believe that youtu.be may also be, but don't quote me on that one.

 

Late edit: running a traceroute to youtu.be shows it to be sitting inside of Google's network, so it's almost certainly theirs as well.

Edited by x=usr(1536)
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If I may add some more confusion:

 

The two-letter TLDs designate countries. At least, it was intended that way.

 

be = Belgium

de = Germany (Deutschland)

fr = France

it = Italy

us = USA

...

io = British Indian Ocean Territory

gl = Greenland

tv = Tuvalu

ly = Libya

to = Tonga

 

However, the countries that own their TLDs are more or less restrictive when you try to register a domain in their TLD. Some of them developed a business of selling domains in their country domain (e.g. Tuvalu or Tonga) because their TLD makes it easy to create "domain puns" - and people pay for it.

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Wow!  Thanks for the quick responses.

 

I agree that evil-doers rarely advertise themselves as such, outside of the Adam West Batman series.  8-)  Just trying to avoid any traps.

 

It is disturbing to hear about the 'relaxation' of domain names.  Never fails that someone creates something useful and someone else comes along to ruin it.

 

Sigh.  Anyway, thanks.

 

K-R.

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4 minutes ago, mizapf said:

If I may add some more confusion:

 

The two-letter TLDs designate countries. At least, it was intended that way.

 

be = Belgium

de = Germany (Deutschland)

fr = France

it = Italy

us = USA

...

io = British Indian Ocean Territory

gl = Greenland

tv = Tuvalu

ly = Libya

to = Tonga

 

However, the countries that own their TLDs are more or less restrictive when you try to register a domain in their TLD. Some of them developed a business of selling domains in their country domain (e.g. Tuvalu or Tonga) because their TLD makes it easy to create "domain puns" - and people pay for it.

Sorry about the .io thing.  Weak attempt at humor.

 

But I see what you mean about the puns.

Thanks,

K-R.

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37 minutes ago, Kchula-Rrit said:

Not sure if "domain" is the right word, I'm talking about the part between the dot and the slash in Web-site addresses, line .com or .gov or .org.  Anyway, I'm seeing Web-sites called something like this.io, or bit.ly?  It's usually followed by a slash, and then some gibberish, like they're trying to hide something.   They look iffy to me, like those scam sites that put viruses into your computer.  I thought the two-letter thing is a country code, but I doubt youtu.be is in Belgium.  That one is, at least, easy to figure out and change to www.youtube.com/watch=? or some such.  But goo.gl?

 

The TI connection is that yesterday I was trying to find a schematic to wire-up the keyboard connection on my USB keyboard adapter that I purchased from arcadeshopper a couple of months ago.  On the Installation section of the Web-page http://ti994a.cwfk.net/TiUsbKeys.html there is an entry that says in pictures.  When I put the cursor over the entry, the link name shows at the bottom of my screen as goo.gl/gibberish.  That made me wonder of someone's trying to hack Google or, maybe, Google itself is being underhanded.  I've seen a few of these things over the past few years, but it seems to be getting "worse."

 

Are these things safe?  I doubt that Jupiter's inner moon has a government Web-site, but you never know these days...

 

K-R.

that's google's link shortening for photos.google.com links  pretty standard

 

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You know, the "abuse" of country code TLDs is not what worries me. I'm writing in quotes because I'm not to tell a country how to manage its domain. Tuvalu, Tonga, Vanuatu - all mini-states in the Pacific ocean - just don't have so many inhabitants to make good use of their domain, and when there are people who pay, well.

 

What worries me is the inflation of TLDs. "Clever" people seem to have discovered a business model by promoting new TLDs ... to make you look more important. Why do cities have a need for an own TLD? Or companies? What was wrong with the hierarchy concept?

 

This reminds me of my late father who always struggled with the concept of directories on a drive. For me, it was nothing to discuss - files should be organized in a hierarchical structure, just like we put paper sheets in a binder, the binder on a shelf etc. Our mind works with hierarchies. But it seems to me that people don't get this concept any longer. My father always asked me (in DOS times) whether I could not just drop everything in the C:\ directory, and I started to argue with file name clashes and so on.

 

Have a look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

This does not make sense.

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The expansion of that 'in pictures' link takes you to my google photos shared album... https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNBc9n5hRvu7PHE1rhbrxI5TrtUPeRuVPJtfNL2z-umIhl6wwx2obSUAXILc4BOHg?key=ZG1VNzQyTlcwRlJpejR2cHAwYTA3U0ZFY2pqUVpR

 

The opposite of short.

 

goo.gl can be read about here: https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-google-url-shortener.html <- seems like it is going away. 

 

What sucks though, is I can't find a `whois` service that will describe goo.gl... .gl is Greenland... 

 

The other thing that sucks, is that ti994a.cwfk.net is still there. I need to finish migrating that to jedimatt42.com.

 

--- 

I still have and use that breadboard shown in those photos, to hold headers when soldering... but it is considerably brown and melty after building a bunch of the sideport extensions on my 32k memory boards. 

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On 10/17/2020 at 8:05 AM, jedimatt42 said:

The expansion of that 'in pictures' link takes you to my google photos shared album... https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNBc9n5hRvu7PHE1rhbrxI5TrtUPeRuVPJtfNL2z-umIhl6wwx2obSUAXILc4BOHg?key=ZG1VNzQyTlcwRlJpejR2cHAwYTA3U0ZFY2pqUVpR

 

The opposite of short.

 

goo.gl can be read about here: https://developers.googleblog.com/2018/03/transitioning-google-url-shortener.html <- seems like it is going away. 

 

What sucks though, is I can't find a `whois` service that will describe goo.gl... .gl is Greenland... 

 

The other thing that sucks, is that ti994a.cwfk.net is still there. I need to finish migrating that to jedimatt42.com.

 

--- 

I still have and use that breadboard shown in those photos, to hold headers when soldering... but it is considerably brown and melty after building a bunch of the sideport extensions on my 32k memory boards. 

I appreciated ti994a.cwfk.net when I was trying to get my keyboard adapter to work.  It was nice to look over it without the scripts, moving menus and other "stuff" on most Web-sites these days.

 

I know I'm old-fashioned, but sometimes I like to save the material so I can look at it at the workbench, and a lot of sites with scripts don't let you save anything.

 

K-R.

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