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How does this tighten the lock in?



>there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com"

Can you link to a site where these two are different?


Many orgs do this.

For example, with Active Directory, the DNS A record for your foo.com domain must resolve to your domain controllers. Your www.foo.com will resolve to a separate non-domain controller web server.

I think a lot of the commenters here are thinking solely in terms of commercial web services such as twitter.com and such, but there's so much more to the wider landscape.


Thinking about it that way gives me conflicted feelings. Much as I hate what Google has done here I also feel like any organization stupid enough to use their public domain name for their Active Directory domain name deserves every little pain they receive for it.


You lack the compassion that comes with experience.

My $dayjob has our AD root domain the same as our public root domain. Because we implemented AD in the year 2000, and this was Microsoft’s recommendation for domain naming way back then.

And if you use Exchange, you can’t rename your AD domain, you have to rebuild your forest and migrate piecemeal. So we’re stuck with it.

The practice of using Corp.example.com did not evolve until many years after Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 were in the wild.

So we run http redirectors on each of our domain controllers to send traffic to www.


This one is kind of a "religious" topic for me, I guess. I'm sorry that it is, but it makes me exceedingly defensive.

I trained on Active Directory (AD) with a group of veteran sysadmins in 1999. I don't have access to the "Microsoft Official Curriculum" book from my class in '99 (long-since thrown away), but I have a distinct memory of a lively conversation in class re: the pitfalls of using a public domain name as an AD domain name (or, worse yet, a Forest Root domain name) during the class. It was very evident to our group of veteran sysadmins that using a public domain name in AD would create silly make-work scenarios (like installing IIS on every DC just to run redirect visitors to "www.example.com"-- just as you describe, albeit IIS didn't natively support sending redirects at the time).

I'd go further and suggest that anybody with a modicum of familiarity with DNS knows having multiple roots-of-authority for a single domain name is a bad idea. Microsoft not supporting split-horizon in their DNS server (like BIND does with 'views') compounded the difficulties with such a scenario in an all-Windows environment.

I certainly wouldn't argue that Microsoft has given exclusively good recommendations for AD domain names in the past (evidence ".local" in Windows Small Business Server), but I am reasonably certain that their documentation always suggested that using a subdomain of a public domain name was a supported and workable option.

I started deploying AD in 2000. I've deployed roughly 50 forests in different enterprises, and I've never used a public domain name as an AD domain name. I've domain-renamed all my subsequently-acquired Customers for whom it was an option (which it was, so long as they had not yet installed Exchange 2007), and have been rebuilding the Forests of Customers who made the wrong decision in the past, where it makes economical sense.


Microsoft has provided mechanisms for split-horizon DNS service since Server 2003. views are not the only way of providing split-horizon DNS service.

* http://jdebp.info./FGA/dns-split-horizon.html#SeparateConten...


Windows 2000 didn't support stub zones, however. At the time that Active Directory was new there wasn't a good way to do split-horizon DNS with the Windows DNS server.

As an aside: I really enjoy your writing about using SRV lookups. It makes me sad that SRV records aren't being as much as they could / should be.


I don’t know anything about AD, so this might be a stupid question: can you not just run a web server on the same host as the AD server or port forward all HTTP traffic to a different server?


A domain controller on the internal network might not be the right place to run a copy of the public-facing content HTTP server (which might be in a datacentre, or even managed and run by an outside party, and might not be served by IIS). Then there are considerations of firewalling rules, browser rules, anti-virus rules, and even DNS rules for machines on the internal network that access a public WWW site that DNS lookups map into non-public IP addresses. (To prevent certain forms of external attacks, system administrators have taken in recent years to preventing this very scenario from working by filtering DNS results.)

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-split-horizon-common-server-names.h...

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-ms-dcs-overwrite-domain-name.html

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/dns-use-domain-names-that-you-own.html


From the two comments above, it sounds like yes, some people who named their AD the same as their root DNS zone now have to run Http forwarders.

And the other comment mentioned that this was a known issue 20 years ago because the old versions of IIS did not support redirecting.


We beat this to death on Serverfault.com 9 years ago, so I'll spare all the rehashing here: https://serverfault.com/questions/76715/windows-active-direc...

Having a disjoint DNS namespace (and the needless make-work that it creates) is the issue, more than running HTTP servers on all your DCs to do redirects. There is absolutely no practical advantage to running an Active Directory domain with a public DNS name. It's all downside. It has always been all downside, and anybody who had any experience with DNS could see that all the way back in the beta and RC releases of the product in 1999 and 2000.


From one of the comments there:

http://www.pool.ntp.org vs http://pool.ntp.org

One takes you to the website about the project, the other goes to a random ntp server.


OK, which one of you hooligans runs this NTP server[1] that plays some loud obnoxious dubstep track?

[1]: https://i.imgur.com/cEukhNu.jpg


Those go to the same place for me


Not me.

http://www.pool.ntp.org/ redirects me to https://www.ntppool.org/en/.

http://pool.ntp.org/ takes me to an "It works!" default Apache 2 page for an Ubuntu installation. As the comment in the issue describes, http://pool.ntp.org/ takes you to a random ntp server.

If you want another example, try google.com using Google's own DNS:

  PS U:\> nslookup - 8.8.8.8
  Default Server:  google-public-dns-a.google.com
  Address:  8.8.8.8
  
  > google.com
  Server:  google-public-dns-a.google.com
  Address:  8.8.8.8
  
  Non-authoritative answer:
  Name:    google.com
  Addresses:  2607:f8b0:4009:810::200e
            172.217.8.206
  
  > www.google.com
  Server:  google-public-dns-a.google.com
  Address:  8.8.8.8
  
  Non-authoritative answer:
  Name:    forcesafesearch.google.com
  Addresses:  216.239.38.120
            216.239.38.120
  Aliases:  www.google.com
Even if you ultimately end up at the same site through redirects, you're clearly not going to the same site initially.


>http://pool.ntp.org/ takes me to an "It works!" default Apache 2 page for an Ubuntu installation. As the comment in the issue describes, http://pool.ntp.org/ takes you to a random ntp server.

Either way, the ask was for a difference in www.example.com vs example.com. Not a difference in www.pool.example.com vs pool.example.com. In the latter case, the different subdomains will still be shown (AFAIK).

>Even if you ultimately end up at the same site through redirects, you're clearly not going to the same site initially.

Which is nothing that an end user is going to care about and doesn't provide an example to the asked question.


>In the latter case, the different subdomains will still be shown (AFAIK).

http://www.pool.example.com displays as http://pool.example.com

Here's a gif: https://vgy.me/61I0DA.gif

For fun I'm going to set up a www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www record.

http://www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.example.com shows as example.com

E: I'll add it to my certs later but I did it: https://www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.www.aish...

E2: http://www.example.www.example.org shows up as example.example.org - this is fun.


Re: E2 (http://www.example.www.example.org === example.example.org)

I just found the same thing. How exactly is this a feature? What an insane decision.


That is absolutely insane and someone should be fired and shamed for this. I didn't like just trimming a pure www. but trimming any www. in the hostname is just dumb behaviour.

How would I differentiate between loadbalancer1.www.intranet and loadbalancer1.intranet? THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME.


Wow. You could do some pretty amazing spoofing with the www.com domain, then.


Some small subset of pool servers run an HTTP server that redirects you to www. Not all of them. You just got lucky.


That's exactly right. www.pool.ntp.org is the project site. pool.ntp.org is for getting an NTP server. Which one you get will depend on your location and random chance. That server will run NTP, but what it happens to run on port 80, if anything, is up to the operator of the server.


I must be lucky too, as I got the same result from both.


They definitely do not for me (ios).


See the issue.

http://www.pool.ntp.org/ http://pool.ntp.org/

https://www.citibank.com.sg/ https://citibank.com.sg/

Plus, this actually removes any www part of the domain.

So subdomain.www.example.com shows as subdomain.example.com

Why even open that can of worms?


A) Consider any sharing platforms where unrelated bodies coexist with distinct subdomains under a common root domain (e.g., Blogspot, Tumbler, etc) While "www" is probably a reserved name and mostly not of practical concern, "m" may be a practical issue.

B) Consider subdomains for test-purpose like "www.test.www.example.com" (now displayed as "test.example.com", which is actually not even the root of the specific subdomain).

C) Users unsure, if they are on the full-featured or a reduced mobile site, when "m" is hidden.

D) I may actually want to have a service agnostic default host at the root and subdomains for dedicated servers (like "www", "ftp", "mail", "stun", "voip", etc). Maybe this one just returns a short text message by design, if accessed on port 80. Not every domain is just about the WWW. (Edit: While we may assume that such a server would forward in practice, this may be assuming too much.)


>> there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com"

> Can you link to a site where these two are different?

There are 3rd level domains where everyone can register "www.{TLD}". E.g., .com.kg, .net.kg, .org.kg. Look at the www.com.kg. It's also available as www.www.com.kg. Or www.org.kg that's in fact www.www.org.kg. If you display just the last part (com.kg, org.kg), does that mean that you're viewing the root website? Nope, that doesn't. That means that chrome is fucked up.


Someone mentioned www.citibank.com.sg vs citibank.com.sg in the issue.

One of my school's websites: I can't remember what it was and this was before I understood what the difference is, but www worked much better than without iirc.

This also applies to m.*, so literally any web-app with a mobile version.


Consider the different types of records you need to add for those examples if your web host is Heroku or some other cloud provider:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/custom-domains


I don't remember the site offhand, but I was going to one recently where example.com didn't even work, it was some weird error page -- you had to use www.example.com. If it comes to me, I'll post it.


I've seen this behaviour, and the reverse. Can't remember examples, but it does happen.


This is what Chrome's update is trying to fix. Developers are confuser when setting up dns if they should have www or not have www or only have www...


Not really fixing it thou because they just strip the www part from the name. If the developer does not setup www.domain.com and the user goes there chrome will not “fix” anything.

I haven’t tested it but it will most likely show up as domain.com in the address bar and will result in an error show to the customer.

If chrome wants to strip www as it’s essentially the same domain.com they can submit an RFC and not just decide for everyone. Honestly I hope they start making more stupid decisions like this so ppl move to Firefox so we have more competition.


> If the developer does not setup www.domain.com and the user goes there chrome will not “fix” anything

Yup, that's on the developers. Hopefully this fix will make it so that it will be easier to setup DNS with just one domain instead of 2. Props to Chrome.


Read the source link. A concrete example (Citibank) is given.


www.pool.ntp.org pool.ntp.org


for ages, my former high school's website did not respond to requests that omitted the www. subdomain :/


Many companies have their marketing site at www. and they're app at at, say, app. e.g. https://www.netlify.com/ vs https://app.netlify.com/


That's www vs app, not www vs lack-of.


Ah. Thanks for clarifying that.


app. subdomains are not hidden


>Tesla suck around and made electric cars cool and economically viable while the industry had it's backs turned

This isn't really accurate. Nissan and GM both had electric cars 20 years ago. And Tesla loses billions of dollars every year so they've hardly proven anything to be economically viable. The reason electric cars are coming now is because battery technology has gotten to the point of them being viable cars albeit with a slightly premium cost.


Plus you have to look at the total operating cost. Electric cars need basically no maintenance while ICEs you have oil changes and brake changes plus a more complicated engine.


>They have absolutely changed the direction of television in pretty much all respects, from release cycle, to delivery to even marketing.

A lot of this is the classic play of using investor money to buy users. Netflix has been burning billions because they don't charge enough for the content they provide. That problem is getting worse as the streaming market becomes more of a primary distribution channel driving the cost of streaming rights up. We've already seen that happen as Netflix catalog shrinks despite all of their original programming.

Basically, Netflix's product is getting steadily worse while their costs are going through the roof.


This is a rare case where the insurance company is entirely blameless. According to the article, they paid much more than what experts say is reasonable for the care provided.


>Many games are draft wins, i.e. a >90% chance of winning solely due to the heroes you've picked.

Can you explain?


Each team of five picks the hero’s they will play the game with. This is like an extra complicated game of rock-paper-scissors. At the end of the picking, one teams composition may be be so setup to exploit the weakness of the other, that the actual 30-40 minute game is almost pointless.


You pick back and forth though, right? How does one screw up the draft so badly as to have only 10% chance of winning?


Not mentioned was each team gets to ban out 5 heroes as well.

This is a bigger factor in my opinion. Each team alternates two bans, then two picks, then there is another round of two alternating bans followed by two picks and finally a single ban and pick round for the 5th hero.

Various in-meta heroes are usually "first pick/ban worthy" which means they tend to get picked or banned in the first phase and tend to shape the rest of the draft as teams will build the core of their strategy around the first phase heroes or around countering oppositions first phase heroes.

Another strategy is to avoid "showing your hand" during first phase by first picking strong but generic heroes that can fit into many potential lineups to keep opponent guessing. This leads to a lot of mind games where even commentators don't know what role the hero is going to be played in until the culminating 5th pick when the draft comes together.

Some teams are very good at specific strategies or have certain players exceptionally skilled at individual heroes which necessitate certain first phase bans against them lest they have an advantage.

For instance If a team is known for having a player good at the hero "Wisp" it will often force out a first phase Wisp ban from opponents because it is the kind of hero that when played well can be absolute nightmare to play against.

In some ways I find the draft mini game to be just as interesting as the main game especially in the longer tournaments where you can see new metagames emerging as captains adjust their pick strategies.


There are so many drafting combinations that it's not quite obvious it's a bad idea until you hit the 3 minute mark.

Take OpenAI game 3 as an example. The first two games, OpenAI wiped the floor with the humans and taunted them that they had a >90% chance of winning. The third game, OpenAI was saying the bots had an >80% chance of losing by 5min. The sole difference was the draft.


Amazon Whole Foods delivery is the worst offender in this area. You finish your order and on the confirmation screen they add a tiny little line item for a preselected 10% tip. Suddenly your "free" delivery is now $15.


Whole Foods allowed Amazon to move into grocery delivery much quicker and bigger than they would have otherwise. That purchase made a lot of sense because even though Whole Foods is brick and mortar it extended Amazon's online offerings.

This is more of a head scratcher. The only thing I can think of is adding 1/2 tickets a month to Prime benefits. I suppose it also makes them more competitive in buying/producing content because they can get part of the theater sales.


Not an exam but:

>An event in Dantzig's life became the origin of a famous story in 1939, while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the two problems were a homework assignment and wrote them down. According to Dantzig, the problems "seemed to be a little harder than usual", but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for the two problems, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue.[4][7]

>Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who was eager to tell him that the homework problems he had solved were two of the most famous unsolved problems in statistics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig


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