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Google Achieves Its Goal of Erasing the WWW Subdomain From Chrome
With the release of Chrome 79, Google completes its goal of erasing www from the browser by no longer allowing Chrome users to automatically show the www trivial subdomain in the address bar.
When Chrome 76 was released, Google decided to no longer show the www "trivial subdomain" in the address bar when visiting a web site. This means, that if you are visiting www.bleepingcomputer.com, Chrome would only show bleepingcomputer.com in the address bar...
[...] According to a Google engineer, www is considered a trivial subdomain because "this isn't information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases".
Many users, though, felt that this was a security issue, could be confusing for users, and is technically incorrect because www.domain.com is not always the same host as domain.com.
So is this a distinction without a difference or a real issue?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:02PM (21 children)
Lying to the user is always bad. In this case, what Google is obviously doing is setting the stage for "helpfully" redirecting users to the places that Google thinks they should be. It's already just about impossible to avoid AMP (aggravating mangled pages) and Google has consistently taken steps, including AMP and things like the Google news frame or including other sites' content directly in their search results page, to force as much web traffic as possible to flow through them. Google will eventually "helpfully, because it doesn't hurt most users" start redirecting "foo.com" to "foo.google-sites.com" and then insist to the operator of foo.com that they must produce a Google-hosted version of their site, otherwise chrome users won't be able to access it.
And don't pretend this is just alarmism. Google has already done exactly this, several times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:32PM (1 child)
Ewww. The worst thing here is that I think you're are almost certainly correct.
I imagine what they'll do is translate e.g. a search for 'chess' into chess.google-internet.com where .google-internet.com is also removed. If the site exists the user simply goes to a site who's url would be shown as "chess". If the site doesn't exist, they are instead directed to Google search. And so if a site owner wants the ultimate search-engine-optimization (which is to by pass them altogether!) then he has to sign into the google world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:38PM
Even more compelling on top of this is that this would also screw with any user who tried to use a different browser.
For instance a low information user who is accustomed to being able to go to the "news" website, or "channel8", or "weather" or whatever else would suddenly find their search would simply be directed to a search engine where they may not immediately find what they were looking for. This other browser is so broken, back to Chrome they go.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:36PM (16 children)
Given that google search has got progressibely worse (for the kinds of things I search for, such as information and facts, rather than produits-du-jour and celeb goss) over the last decade, it downgrading www. would hardly affect anyone. Those after trash will be going to SEO-ed sites anyway, and I'm stuck in my '90s bubble for which google's trash anyway - who knows, things might even improve for me. Maybe adding "www" to every search might make it easier to find the stuff I'm after!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @11:51PM (5 children)
It is useless? They are literally two different and valid names. server.example and www.server.example can be two different servers. For example, one could be your internal webserver, another your domain controller. Or the PSL interaction, where the content of www.pvt.k12.id.us is not under the direct control of pvt.k12.id.us administrators and there is no guarantee of the same content. In my field I work with large sets of data, and it isn't uncommon to have "www", "ftp", no-suffix, and other, less-used names all point to different servers due to the special administrative needs of each.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by FatPhil on Monday December 16 2019, @01:04AM (4 children)
> server.example and www.server.example can be two different servers.
Noone is saying otherwise. That doesn't make the distinction one that is useful to exercise. And if it's not useful, it's useless.
> For example, one could be your internal webserver, another your domain controller.
What should an outsider expect to see when pointing his browser to server.example?
If you answer anything apart from "the company website", then you've lost a customer.
However, I said that above, so you're obviously clue-resistant.
I will confess to serving different content on the "www." adorned versions of one of my domains, for 25 years now. It was a pisstake page to punish the visitor for using the utterly pointless, and never otherwise used, adornment. It's clearly taken google 25 years to catch on to the idea. (However, their response is retarded).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @04:48AM (1 child)
An outsider shouldn't expect to see anything because not all addressable names are in the form of domain.example, not all names in the form domain.example have servers, not all servers are web servers, and not all web servers are public servers.
Plus, sometimes losing a customer who doesn't know the difference or showing different content is a feature, which you so elegantly illustrated yourself.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 16 2019, @12:46PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 16 2019, @11:56AM (1 child)
Why is "useful to exercise" even remotely relevant? The distinction between driving on the left versus right is not useful to exercise until you run into someone driving down the same side of the road. The point is that these can be very different and break the user experience for no valid reason (it doesn't help the users and it doesn't respect web standards). Google has just created an enormous headache for their own purposes.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 16 2019, @12:44PM
Because that is the point that is being debated. I.e. it's totally relevant, and the only thing that's relevant, in this subthread.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Monday December 16 2019, @12:29AM (7 children)
That's been driving me nuts as well, it's gone from "find pages with the terms you've listed" to "find pages that may contain some of the most popular/paid-for terms you've listed, but often contain zero instances of the other terms which zero in on the results you want". This often results in having to go multiple rounds of trial-and-error to figure out how to get Google to return the results you actually want, not the results Google wants to show you.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Monday December 16 2019, @01:06AM (5 children)
At some point, it might be less frustrating to use a different search engine like duckduckgo. Sure it will be different at first, but for me, after using DDG for several years, it is google that is unfamiliar and strange looking.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Monday December 16 2019, @01:57AM (2 children)
I use DDG on my laptop/desktop, but on Android devices it's a bit trickier to get away from Google everything as the default. Sure, you can run a third-party browser to get away from the built-in one or Chrome, but by default anything that searches for anything on Android inevitably winds up going to Google.
Another mild problem with DDG is that it sometimes misses stuff that Google gets, so it's a bit of guesswork as to whether you want to keep scrolling down DDG results or switch to Google in case that gets stuff DDG won't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @04:27AM (1 child)
Install IceCat. You can use your favorite Firefox plugins on your android devics. So much nicer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @07:54PM
I thought IceCat was unmaintained after Mozilla changed the branding requirements. Or, as it does look fairly well looked after by GNU, am I thinking of something else?
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 16 2019, @03:14PM
No doubt
With noscript blocking scripting, duck duck go works mostly the same as with it. Looks a little different, but a small compromise since overall it works fine. Sometimes I just permit scripts anyway. Sometimes they have hooha that pops up to self-promote, but that's about it that I've seen (maybe my other blocking prevents other advertising, I haven't looked into it).
With noscript blocking scripting on google's search engine, it shows like it is designed for a small phone on my 4k desktop monitor, and yields mostly sponsored results that are formatted for a phone with a small resolution. Like 600x800 instead of 800x600, on a 4k screen.
Not only is that strange looking, it is not very useful.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday December 16 2019, @06:17PM
duckduckgo is the Google of yesteryear. Hopefully, they don't go down the same rabbit hole that Google went down.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday December 16 2019, @06:48AM
Following up to my own post, I must say that DDG has been slowly succumbing to the Google brain rot in the last year or two, possibly due to taking results from Google or Google-fed sources. Try searching, for example, for _Requires_lock_held_ (a Windows SDK annotation) on Google and DDG. With Google, it actually produces relevant results while with DDG the third result already contains no mention of _Requires_lock_held_ anywhere on the page.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @02:21AM (1 child)
They kinda did the opposite.
They said they would penalize you for having multiple sites with the same data. The easy fix was to redirect either www.domain -> bare domain, or bare domain -> www.domain. Lots of folks weighed in on what was the best approach, and the accepted answer was to make www primary and redirect bare domain -> www.domain.
So, it is a side effect of another Google proclamation that made www become more prominent, again.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 17 2019, @01:22PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Sunday December 15 2019, @09:38PM (1 child)
What are you talking about? Does Firefox uses AMP too?
I use Firefox and duckduckgo, and the web is working just fine for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @10:10PM
If you use Chrome, Google, request the "mobile" version of some web pages or use a mobile user agent when accessing some web pages, they will give you the AMP version. Note that you are safe from the first two, but even if you use Firefox or another browser and request the mobile version or use a mobile user agent, you can end up on an AMP page. And do note, a majority, and an increasing majority at that, of web requests are considered mobile.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:07PM (2 children)
in some cases it is part of a trademarked name that they are mangling without the owners consent. What if I WANT my domain to render in conformance with the RFC? Isn't that why we have the RFC to begin with?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:17PM
When you hear "most cases" and "most people" in the domain of a software project, that project is going to cause disasters.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:18PM
The RFCs are irrelevant if you own the majority of the market. Google sets the rules, the open-source play-nice phase is over, it's monetization time.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Bot on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:14PM
google wanted to kill the www for a long time...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:25PM (10 children)
pool.ntp.org
The www. is necessary to distinguish between the NTP Pool project, and some random guy running a webserver on the same machine as his timeserver.
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:39PM (9 children)
And how many of these random people get to run the www.pool.ntp.org webserver? Again, where do I sign up?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by rigrig on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:10PM (8 children)
Those random people volunteer to run a timeserver and have it added to the NTP pool, you can sign up here [ntppool.org].
They don't get to run www.pool.ntp.org:
www.pool.ntp.org resolves to the NTP pool project webserver (which redirects you to www.ntppool.org).
pool.ntp.org resolves to a random timeserver in the pool, which may or may not be running a webserver as well, which may or may not bother checking the requested hostname.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Sunday December 15 2019, @08:22PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @10:50PM (1 child)
I think you are missing the point. You cannot tell, at a glance, if you are looking at a web page provided by the official NTP pool project or a web page provided by a random person with a multi-use server. In addition, how many random people would even realize that clicking and then scrolling the url in the bar to the left would show something different?
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday December 16 2019, @02:56PM
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Sunday December 15 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
When I checked, the two addresses would load identical webpages, but www.pool.ntp.org has a consistent DNS address of 151.101.190.217 while pool.ntp.org really is returning completely different DNS addresses each time it's accessed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @12:05AM
Yeah, GP should try it himself and look at the PTRs and ASNs. That will make crystal clear you are getting the random machines from the pool. The reason why www.pool.ntp.org is consistent is because it is the deprecated URL for the NTP pool project, and therefore controlled by the NTP project through their CDN. There is no guarantee that the page you get from pool.ntp.org matches www.pool.ntp.org because it isn't under the pool project's control. In fact, most servers you contact at pool.ntp.org won't run web servers at all, or redirect you out of courtesy (which is why you did, because the browser probably tried a couple of the addresses returned until one responded with a redirect). But that isn't a hard requirement nor can the NTP pool guarantee it.
(Score: 1, Troll) by FatPhil on Monday December 16 2019, @01:12AM (2 children)
If something attempts to break how the web works, then it becoming broken itself is entirely expected.
Doctor, it hurts when I do >this<.
Well, don't do that then.
Then again, there appears to be some contradiction between your posts, if www. redirects to something sensibly named, nothing confusing happens to either the browser or the server.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @03:05AM (1 child)
Unless you type in a domain name without the "www" part of the name because you don't see it in the address bar.
Regardless, I'd be fascinated to know how you think www and sans www not pointing to the same server or duplicating content violates the RFCs.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday December 17 2019, @10:36AM
Yes, not displaying it in the address bar is, to use my own words in this very thread "retarded". Do you have reading comprehension issues?
> Regardless, I'd be fascinated to know how you think www and sans www not pointing to the same server or duplicating content violates the RFCs.
In a twisted way, so would I, as that's not something I think at all, and certainly haven't expressed in this thread. Do you have reading comprehension issues?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:27PM (6 children)
This seems like fixing something that wasn't broken. It's not like they've gained more space or anything by removing www. It, in fact, does absolutely nothing except remove potentially usable information. It's like seeing that 99.999% of your users never created a custom audio equalizer using the built-in tools in Windows (probably an accurate statement), so then deciding to remove that functionality or make it even harder to access. I mean who is gaining from that? It's idiotic.
I've already found it somewhat annoying having to fidget around with the address bar when going to Reddit (the SpaceX sub there is decent.. what I can say?) which is only made usable by changing 'www.reddit....' to 'old.reddit....'
(Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Sunday December 15 2019, @04:41PM (4 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Sunday December 15 2019, @08:58PM (3 children)
They removed the "secure site" closed padlock, but kept the "Not secure" marker (although I just tried in in Chrome and apparently it's not a padlock anymore, just text; Firefox uses a closed padlock for https and a padlock with a strikeout line through it for insecure).
Apparently, giving $5 to Honest Akhmed (or $0 to Let's Encrypt) suddenly makes you trustworthy in Google's eyes.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday December 16 2019, @12:33AM (2 children)
Just a minor nitpick here, its actually Honest Achmed, not Honest Akhmed. Achmed is, as the name implies, a completely honest CA who will sell you only the best-quality certificates at very reasonable prices. Akhmed is an imposter in Indonesia who defrauds his customers with marked-up certificates resold from GoDaddy.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @04:56AM (1 child)
For those out of the loop: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647959 [mozilla.org]
It has such ringing endorsements. Two of the best being, "Honest Achmed is at least more honest than Comodo." and "Considering the problems at DigiNotar I vote for giving Honest Achmed a second chance!"
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday December 16 2019, @06:07AM
I particularly liked the Pratchett-inspired CA policy "nil certificati sine lucre". That, in a nutshell, is the policy of every commercial CA on the planet, only they hide it behind a mountain of legalese.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:28PM
Observed behavior just now--I'm not normally a Chrome user, but have a copy for occasional use.
1. Copied a full url of one of the pages of my company website from Firefox. This page is very simple read-only, HTML-only:
http://www.mycompany.com/book.html [mycompany.com]
Pasted into Chrome and it displays:
mycompany.com/book.html
I selected that URL (mycompany.com/book.html) and then hit the left arrow, thinking that I would try to add back in the "www." in front to see what happened. Surprise, the "www." is already there, just hiding to the left of the "left margin" of the address bar. However, the original http:// is nowhere to be found.
2. This time I copied the URL from a different page, from Firefox, not copying this part "http://www."
mycompany.com/program.html
Pasted into Chrome and it goes to the correct page. Then selected the full address bar, hit left arrow and it added the "www." back on.
3. A big company we work with sometimes distributes data files to a group of their customers by emailing out a URL that looks like this:
ftp://ftp.bigcorp.com/dropfile/Identfier_random-text.zip [bigcorp.com]
The data isn't super secret and they only leave the file up for a day or two (have to be quick to get it). Opening this in Firefox in a new tab starts the download automagically.
4. Pasted that same URL ftp://ftp.bigcorp.com/dropfile/Identfier_random-text.zip [bigcorp.com] into Chrome and now the whole thing displays, starting correctly with "ftp://", nothing removed or hidden. I couldn't actually test for file download (there aren't any files posted at this time), but it looks like it should work.
5. ???
6. Profit!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:20PM (2 children)
This is just blatantly stupid. If a site WANTED to hide the WWW they would do a simple redirect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:13PM
yes, which is what i do. i don't need the browser to change what subdomains i use or don't use.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Sunday December 15 2019, @10:13PM
It's the trend. How many years has Windows been hiding the file extension? Google is playing catch-up.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)
After all, it worked out so well when MS hid the file extension. What do you mean I have a virus? I would never click on FunnyCats.jpg.exe, clicking on a .exe is how you get.......OH CRAP!
I guess it's time for a new standard subdomain www-goodleisanidiot.example.com.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:08PM
This.
Hiding things from the user is at best a wash and in cases such as this it actually creates entire attack vectors out of whole cloth.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:41PM
Next step in the feature creep is google taking money to display competitor ads in place of the URL / domain name.
You'll never see "https://soylentnews.org" in the URL bar again, it'll be an ad for digg.com or something crazy like that.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:51PM (2 children)
Never to use Chrome.
I have to wonder why they even care.
What difference does the URL make anyway? Whether the url is 'www' or 'cockblock' or 'benihana' .site.tld, who cares?
If www.site.tld redirects to site.tld, all is good. if www.site.tld and site.tld are *not* the same thing (e.g., on intranets which use Active Directory, site.tld resolves to the Domain Controllers by default and are not redirected to www.site.tld), confusion will ensue.
Stupid. Stupid. And more stupid. Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:10AM (1 child)
What difference? Sometimes, a lot.
I work in an environment that is locked down. For a long time it was IE11 only. Recently they installed Chrome because some internal web sites don't work in IE11. Usually vendor software. So forced to support another browser they chose Chrome.
I was installing, configuring and testing new web based software. Chrome was an absolute pain in the ass. The default install is http, so it hid the fucking protocol. Several times I had trouble determining if it was the software or the browser. So bloody annoying. Edge case, I know, but still aggravating.
Our users get confused by URLs not working. Missing the S in https. Yes, I know, again an edge case, and the product of configuration and control. Still annoying. Having to teach people how to unwank a browser because it hides the uri. Having to add extra lines to documentation to counter it.
Chrome devs keep claiming they won't add switches to unfuck issues they cause like this, yet add all sorts of crap they want.Fricking hypocritical bastards.
No, compiling your own version or hacking theirs to fux it really is not a solution.
Microsoft's new browser may be an alternative if this keep up.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 17 2019, @05:09PM
Absolutely. That was actually my point. Thanks for providing a different example.
When I said:
I was directing that at Chrome, as *they* shouldn't be screwing with the parsing/display of URLs, which should be displayed exactly as they are parsed/sent.
I thought I made that clear with my example:
But I guess not. As such, perhaps folks will get a clearer idea from yours.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 15 2019, @05:52PM (17 children)
The url scheme is divided into PROTO (protocol, ex http, https, ftp), SERVICE (www, ftp, etc), DOMAIN (soylentnews, etc) and TLD (top-level domain, such as ORG, COM, EDU, NET, etc).
Custom services are allowed, as long as both sides of the connection agree as to the port number the service should connect to. In cases where the port number is unknown, or you want to override it to connect to a server on a port that isn't in /etc/services, you append a colon and the port number (eg :6892, if you're running a ghost web server on that port).
The average user won't care, which is why the average user can be easily fooled by typo-squatters, etc.
Next, they'll want to get rid of the protocol, because "the web is just the internet for most users."
Then the TLD, because users don't know about that stuff and don't want to know - so we'll choose which TLD to send them to.
Every time you use YouTube, GMail, Google Search, Google Maps, or any other one of their services, you are further enabling them. Ask yourself if it's really worth it in the long run - we're already further down the slippery slope than anyone could have predicted in 2000.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @06:15PM (14 children)
Another test, this time using the wonderful Toronto jazz station:
Typing "jazz.fm" into Firefox displays (after a moment) as "https://jazz.fm" and copy-paste here gives "https://jazz.fm/" -- so FF is not displaying the final "/"
Typing "jazz.fm" into Chrome displays as "jazz.fm" Selecting and left-arrow then displays "https://jazz.fm" and copy-paste does the same as FF, "https://jazz.fm/"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Sunday December 15 2019, @06:53PM (11 children)
That FF doesn't then display the trailing slash is an error in terms of following the standard, because it's supposed to show where you are currently, not where you started from.
When you write a web server, you will add the trailing slash so that any other links generated by the page work out. Otherwise, instead of https:/soylentnews.org/comments.pl, you'd get https:/soylentnews.orgcomments.pl. which just doesn't resolve to anything rational.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @11:27PM (10 children)
Wrong on both parts. According to Section 5 of RFC 1738, the BNF for a url is:
For HTTP schemes, they are defined as:
You'll notice that the slash after the hostport is required only if you include a path or a query, or, as 3.3 puts it, "If neither <path> nor <searchpart> is present, the "/" may also be omitted." Which makes since because scheme normalization states that empty paths should be normalized to "/". They are literally references to the same location, and no redirects are required. In fact, a redirect from one to the other or serving different content is a violation of the RFCs for most Internet protocols, including HTTP.
In addition, hosts are defined in 3.1 as:
And none of the referenced RFCs describe the SERVICE.WHATEVER syntax you describe.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 16 2019, @12:51AM (7 children)
Read the man pages. If you're going to actually implement a server, they're the authoritative source. Not the RFCs. They don't do anything for giving actual implementation details. Where's SO_KEEPALIVE and SO_LINGER in your RFC? Nowhere. They are far from complete when it comes to actually implementing a server. Where's the description of how to open a socket? How to close it properly? Nowhere.
Anyone can quote an RFC. Implementation in C is hard. And the C source is authoritative. Not an RFC that doesn't include any implementation details.
Call me back when you've implemented a server in c. (not any chickenshit scripting language).
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @04:35AM (5 children)
Since I've already passed your last hurdle. I'll address your point. The RFCs are the authoritative source, short of market capture. The whole reason for the RFC is so that the networked systems use the same rules and speak the same language. If you are trying to write a server and your response does not follow the RFC, then the client won't properly understand you. Likewise, if you have a client send a non-complaint request, the server won't follow it either. Best case scenario is that they guess correctly (e.g. see various handling of "ICY 200 OK" responses), worst case you get garbage or a cryptic socket error when they disconnect on you.
And, by the way, implementation-specific socket options have nothing to do with that common language. You can implement a server, even an HTTP one, just fine without either SO_KEEPALIVE or SO_LINGER. You can't do it without following the protocols. The way you imagine it is that recipes should include instructions on what buttons to push to turn on your oven. But, I'll check the man page [debian.org] anyway. OH what is that? The synopsis says the slash at the start of the absolute path is optional. And no mention of your SERVICE.DOMAIN.TLD domain name setup either. And some of that BNF looks familiar. It is almost like they copied it from the RFC.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday December 18 2019, @02:04AM (4 children)
There is NO requirement that everyone on the net "speak the same language." Or have you forgotten AlterNIC? Great idea that temporarily broke the monopoly on domain names. We really should bring it back.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @08:27AM (3 children)
AlterNIC was speaking the same language. They were an alternate root, but they still used the same DNS protocol as the other roots, including the Network Information Center. It literally wouldn't have worked off the shelf and been an even larger failure if it hadn't done so.
Fact of the matter is that if the server/clients/peers don't speak the same language in the form of common standards, then they cannot communicate with each other reliably. For example, if you send, "/favicon.ico\r\n" to a web server or "GET /images/logo.png HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n" to a gopher server, they won't understand you and give you garbage, if anything. And, as I mentioned, if not for market capture making you the de facto standard, the RFCs are as close as you'll get to that common baseline for most web related things that don't have standards elsewhere.
Besides, your just salty that your precious man pages proved you wrong because you didn't bother to look it up.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @06:33PM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19 2019, @08:14PM (1 child)
I'm not sure what you are saying. Are you claiming that HTTP is the only protocol that runs over TCP/IP (which is actually two different protocols that can be used independently) or UDP? If so, I've got news for you [wikipedia.org].
If you are instead saying that the transport network layer doesn't really care what is carried in it in the designated place on a higher layer protocol as long as it conforms to the requirements of its own layer standard. Then yes, that is what they are designed to do, but that doesn't mean that you can arbitrarily provide all data and not meet the requirements at your level. And that doesn't mean that servers working at the application layer will magically read your mind when you don't follow the common standards for that particular protocol.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday December 19 2019, @08:42PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by Mike on Monday December 16 2019, @06:01PM
I was trying to stay out of this thread, but I'm appalled enough at the following statement that I just can't help myself.
The RFC's are the specification for the protocol. Your server is the implementation. The MAN page for the server is a description of how that server works. The specification (i.e. RFC's) is authoritative. In general, when the implementation doesn't match the specification, the implementation is at fault. (occasionally, an implementation will find a problem with a specification. Then the RFC's needs to be updated/changed. Because the specification is authoritative!)
FWIW, I haven't written any web servers. But I have created multiple implementations of multiple protocols as defined by multiple RFC's. They were mostly in C or C++, so your specs are at least partially met ).
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday December 16 2019, @01:05AM (1 child)
This syntax is incorrect. It is insufficient for hosts identified by bracketed raw ipv6 address (and port) instead of a hostname.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @03:43AM
I was trying to keep it simple by not putting everything, but here is the whole thing, including the updating language of 3986:
URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
hier-part = "//" authority path-abempty / path-absolute / path-rootless / path-empty
URI-reference = URI / relative-ref
absolute-URI = scheme ":" hier-part [ "?" query ]
relative-ref = relative-part [ "?" query ] [ "#" fragment ]
relative-part = "//" authority path-abempty / path-absolute / path-noscheme / path-empty
scheme = ALPHA *( ALPHA / DIGIT / "+" / "-" / "." )
authority = [ userinfo "@" ] host [ ":" port ]
userinfo = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" )
host = IP-literal / IPv4address / reg-name
port = *DIGIT
IP-literal = "[" ( IPv6address / IPvFuture ) "]"
IPvFuture = "v" 1*HEXDIG "." 1*( unreserved / sub-delims / ":" )
IPv6address = 6( h16 ":" ) ls32 / "::" 5( h16 ":" ) ls32 / [ h16 ] "::" 4( h16 ":" ) ls32 / [ *1( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 3( h16 ":" ) ls32 / [ *2( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" 2( h16 ":" ) ls32 / [ *3(
h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16 ":" ls32 / [ *4( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" ls32 / [ *5( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::" h16 / [ *6( h16 ":" ) h16 ] "::"
h16 = 1*4HEXDIG
ls32 = ( h16 ":" h16 ) / IPv4address
IPv4address = dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet "." dec-octet
dec-octet = DIGIT ; 0-9 / %x31-39 DIGIT ; 10-99 / "1" 2DIGIT ; 100-199 / "2" %x30-34 DIGIT ; 200-249 / "25" %x30-35 ; 250-255
reg-name = *( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims )
path = path-abempty ; begins with "/" or is empty
/ path-absolute ; begins with "/" but not "//"
/ path-noscheme ; begins with a non-colon segment
/ path-rootless ; begins with a segment
/ path-empty ; zero characters
path-abempty = *( "/" segment )
path-absolute = "/" [ segment-nz *( "/" segment ) ]
path-noscheme = segment-nz-nc *( "/" segment )
path-rootless = segment-nz *( "/" segment )
path-empty = 0
segment = *pchar
segment-nz = 1*pchar
segment-nz-nc = 1*( unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / "@" ) ; non-zero-length segment without any colon ":"
pchar = unreserved / pct-encoded / sub-delims / ":" / "@"
query = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
fragment = *( pchar / "/" / "?" )
pct-encoded = "%" HEXDIG HEXDIG
unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "." / "_" / "~"
reserved = gen-delims / sub-delims
gen-delims = ":" / "/" / "?" / "#" / "[" / "]" / "@"
sub-delims = "!" / "$" / "&" / "'" / "(" / ")" / "*" / "+" / "," / ";" / "="
Still no SERVER.WHATEVER syntax and no requirement for a slash at the beginning of the path.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Monday December 16 2019, @12:13AM (1 child)
Just as most people don't know about the trailing dot in a domain name:
"jazz.fm." tells the DNS not to go looking for a jazz.fm.topoi.pooq.com, for example.
(topoi.pooq.com is my search space for local entities. I'm currently posting this from midwinter.topoi.pooq.com, which I can refer to as just midwinter)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @10:42AM
I've used this to bypass some restrictions too... :)
For example: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=35121 [soylentnews.org] is blocked by the proxy but https://soylentnews.org./comments.pl?sid=35121 [soylentnews.org.] sometimes isn't.
I think some webservers don't like that though...
Similar for email addresses etc.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday December 16 2019, @03:51AM
> The url scheme is divided into PROTO (protocol, ex http, https, ftp), SERVICE (www, ftp, etc), DOMAIN (soylentnews, etc) and TLD (top-level domain, such as ORG, COM, EDU, NET, etc).
Factually incorrect. URLs contain the protocol, host, and path (and a few other parts). URL does not specify what format a hostname should have. It can even be an IP address.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 16 2019, @12:05PM
Back then, Slashdot had all kinds of crazy predictions about what Google was going to do, each viable to outdo the others in awesomeness. Now, Google is corrupting the basis of web browsing to make a buck. How the mighty have fallen.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Revek on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:33PM (2 children)
Deciding for everyone what is relevant.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Monday December 16 2019, @08:35AM
Deciding for everyone what is relevant.
Or deciding for everyone that they must run some specific software:
Lock-in is the opposite of freedom and deciding for others is a prerequisite for lock-in, of any type. Maybe it is time for the GPLv4.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Monday December 16 2019, @03:09PM
yeah I disagree with them.
the 'trivial' aspect of an FQDN is supposed to, you know, be the host name.
The server. so what if they farmed it and a standard name of WWW was used? They trivialized the entire world wide web in doing this.
Sounds to me like its a move more to keep traffic in their ecosystem. Dumb it down and make it hard to figure out what is talking to where and it becomes that much harder to... do whatever it is a user would want to do that involves choice and preferences.
Hiding that info makes it harder to block as well; maybe they are going to start using a bunch of random names for different services and it all looks quite alarming to see alkjdalsd.google.com instead www.google.com. I mean, you know you're in trouble most of the time when a browser redirects to some shady sounding site in the url bar.
I guess the real test is to see if only www is hidden or if all the domain prefixes are hidden as well.
I still prefer to see the protocol info at the head of the URL I am connecting to, but maybe that is because I want to know what my PC is doing.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @07:47PM (1 child)
Just say no:
https://notochrome.org/ [notochrome.org]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday December 16 2019, @02:38AM
Linux desktop users can't broadcast on Twitch without Chrome, as Chrome is the only browser that has an extension for the Authy 2FA service that Twitch requires before issuing a stream key, and the stand-alone Authy app for Windows does not work in Wine.
Or is it better to buy a copy of Windows to run in a VM than to use Chrome?
Or could you recommend a viable alternative to Twitch?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Sunday December 15 2019, @08:01PM
Just thinking some more about this, is there some reason that https://www.soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] does not redirect to https://soylentnews.org/ [soylentnews.org] ?
At least on my thing-a-majig I'm not logged in if I go to the first URL, but I am if I go to the second. At least in this case, hitting the "login" button will helpfully redirect to the second url. I've run in to login problems on other sites where a web search will land me on page that starts with a different subdomain. Without being able to see the subdomain, that would be extra confusing. The one I am thinking of even had a bunch of other misconfigured subdomains for the same server that randomly came up in searches.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 15 2019, @10:38PM
So I panicked for a minute there. Chrome is hiding what? Then I looked in all my urlbars and http and www are there when requested. That's what I get for using ungoogled chromium instead of the default bloatware.
(Score: 1) by paul_engr on Monday December 16 2019, @04:29PM (2 children)
This is an issue, and a forced "solution" to a legitimate source of problems.
I cam think of several poorly configured domains which won't resolve at "http://blah.com" and you need to go to "http://www.blah.com"
Google needs to stop obsessing with this kind of shit and read their forums for the legitimate usability issues with many of their products, for which there are ample questions/complaints being raised and unanswered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @06:54PM
But reading forums isn't fun. Developing an AI that can play go and later, maybe, read the forums for you sounds more fun. Then someone can do it on their 10% time and the company won't have to budget for it! I'm sure that AI will be able to understand the freeform problem reports in the forums and find the winning moves real soon now... any minute... Okay, maybe a few more...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:26AM
I've already had to deal with this internally. Confusing users is never a good idea. Who do they think they are?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 16 2019, @05:44PM (1 child)
Not even last week, I encountered a site where not including the www just didn't work. Was like the server wasn't there.
Caught me off guard when I wrote the link down based on what was in the address bar and sent it to a friend.
We spent a good couple minutes wondering why it didn't work until I realized that the www mattered for the site.
Really, mucking about with what's shown in the address bar to pretty it up is generally a bad idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 17 2019, @06:18AM
This is the answer. The end. Don't screw with the contents if the urlbar.