The Taliban Stole My Domain

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So Notion had to scramble and and get that fixed. And then who art artsy?art.s that that that domain name is gonna go away. And I I because I couldn't renew it, and I knew that it was gonna expire at some point. And I had about 3 months left, but couple days ago, Dev is really expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

that time ran up, and Notion hadn't got everything in order. A lot of their APIs were still pointing towards the old they they were doing forwarding, but a lot of their APIs were still DNS resolving to dot SEO.

Because they said because And, like, a single word dot something that is very short is is doable, and it it seemed kinda cool. However, what what happened in Notion's case was Somalia said, hey.

I recently learned that, Dot ski. What's what is just is that for skiing? That's not a country, is it? It is literally just for skiing. Yes. There you go. So Yep. I was, like, wondering,

and you have, like, a year, a year and a half to to sort of get off this.

and they had they got pulled. And, what's to stop the people? that is out there. And if you're sort of, like, looking for get Scott ski, and now we're gonna go start selling dot ski domain names.

gov dot s o. You know? They they only wanna be able to do three level domain names. But in the case of Notion, they said, hey. Like, only Somalian companies can use dot s o, So, like, if somebody's, like, trying to sell you something, I think, like obviously, .com is is probably the best, but a lot of those are are totally gone. You don't see a whole lot of people doing and, like, their domain names are are very affordable. But if you want a 3 letter one, the price goes up a lot. Lots of domain Node. Just do that. You Node, that dev is expensive.

using the domain names anymore. And then also sometimes what they do is they just go, like, you can't have a second level domain Node, then you you you can still, like, redirect. Like, imagine you had to remember the IP address of your your server.

y Wes was Syria,

So so when they had pulled the domain name, Notion went black, which is very scary.

We don't want anybody outside of Somalia scary that Afghanistan the country, in Afghanistan. And they said, if you have anything important on it, yeah, I've So some pretty interesting ones there.

And at some point, controls they wouldn't do business with Afghanistan.

Wow.

the intricacies there beyond Yeah. Just a few Intercompany

and you can pay with crypto.

I just don't know like these new there's millions of new domain names which are Scott country level domain names. They're Scott, So The whole point of a domain name is that if your server's IP address changes,

additions. You know? But you never, like, think about,

if it's worth it or if they will even do it. Because I just tried to buy it online, and it says pending, pending, pending, pending, and that it hasn't gone through yet. So I don't even know if it's gonna gonna go through or not, but I thought that was kinda interesting. Yeah. That's all all very wild to me. Yeah. Yeah. I always just looked at fun domains as kind of cute, fun little like a Node dot s o. They only want to have, like, notion Scott got taken But they're they're just like custom ones like limo and.

that it made a huge

Alright.

It helped me find some slow queries where I was actually doing the wrong style of query,

syntax.

gave me confidence that when I shipped our Redis caching,

and it really just,

we became part of SENTRY. Now

shout out to Sanity for that. They've been an awesome partner for Syntax, and this show is presented by Sentry at century.i0forward/

we get to use and work with the product that we like so much. Sanity is the perfect way to track all of your errors and exceptions. Not only that, but it really helped us identify some key performance metric stuff on our site on syntax.fm.

And it's gonna be a really wild story. And you know what? Sometimes my code gets a little wild. When my code gets wild, I reach for Sentry. Why? Well, because Sentry helps me find my bugs. And that sounds like an ad, but, hey. We both use SENTRY long before, I wanted to get I had a company a long time ago, like

And more importantly, and they got theirs pulled as well. And, like, I can't seem to find any information about why React dot accountants,

meaning that if they want to, they can take the domain back from you, which a lot of people were really surprised to hear that, oh, yeah. Country it's it's not some, like, GoDaddy or something like that that has control of of the Internet. It's every single country that has their own TLD So we're gonna first And I got an email probably about a year ago from Ghani being like, hey. Like, heads up.

that country dotaf t l d is Afghanistan.

controls what websites are allowed to be under that TLD. And if they do not like Bos dot a f, they are able to take it out of that zone file, and you are out of luck.

Ski. Ski. Obviously. Yeah. My don't my domain is Tolinski,

hey. You Node, the moment you put anything like that online, somebody's gonna try to snatch it. Yeah. Those ones are are really good.

Mhmm.

Yeah.

which one of the syntax listeners came up with and luckily

React dot clothing, $50.

they told me about it because,

something that is available, then you can grab it. Like, let let's see. Let's see what's available for React.

I I just wanna I this website, I want my name JS is the best because

it was a React application where you

I have a Scott I o that I use for my domain name shortener. I still own Wes Dot Tech. I think

it will give you a list of absolutely every single possibility And they have a Twitter account that says, our website is down because of lack of knowledge of technology.

told me to go buy it before,

when Dot Tech used to sponsor this podcast and I Wes, like, hey. So their their company But on the flip side, you also have, have some, like, like, cautionary tales about, like you should think about what you're doing. You might think that your domain name is hilarious, This means that any service connected with this domain, such as websites or email addresses, will cease working shortly. So meaning that, What's to stop somebody from just

Expire.

React dot

they didn't reply at all. You know? I've I I contacted, like, a couple times, and just just nothing. So Mhmm. I was like, alright. Well, like, the the time is gonna come someday,

contact us, I got an email probably about a year ago from Gandhi. Gandhi is who I registered the domain name with. They do a lot of if you choose one of these funny domain names and I I often wonder, like, are the people that own Scott limo, I think that we could change it to $10,000

network information center, fuse.

I got an email, and we'll throw it up on the video right now. It just says, Bos AF has been suspended in the registry and will no longer be included in the zone file generation.

.net, .org, biz.

these Scott,

these, $159.

I forget the reason why, but there Wes some, like, controversy around it as well.

which is Yeah. I thought that was was really, really interesting. So I am trying to go through a process with another registrar that will And just to be considered to apply for these custom TLDs. Like, if you want if we wanna Scott syntax, we would have to apply for it. And then the the businesses go into business saying, alright. We're gonna but you should think about, or start making other arrangements. So I was like, oh, contact you. Maybe they have something like backdoor or something like I can keep the the domain Node. And to get an SSL certificate for it because, anymore these days, to get money to a country but it is certainly a possibility.

that's where I went last year for my vacation. Oh, really? Anguilla. Yeah. There's a on my Instagram, on one of my stories, there's photos of my wife and I hanging out in Anguilla. And you know what? That's a a very awesome little island. So,

shout out to Anguilla. If they're getting cash from the Scott a I, I gotta love that for them.

it might be funny. It might might be cool, but, also, sometimes you you gotta think, like, are these countries going to pull it? to to get an SSL certificate for it.

So I had to use,

I've I've I've told the story on the show. When I initially got it, I was unable my domain name out of their zone file, and it's no longer going to resolve

which was Cloudflare, an American company.

of sanctions between due to the Taliban taking over, everything else was taken.

Let's Encrypt the people that control the dotaf domain name have taken and others didn't. There's certainly lots of domain names still up and running.

who was offering the SSL certificate, that TLD,

odd domain names that you might not be able to get anywhere else. And generally, the way it works is that they they have a business in each of these countries, and they sort of just proxy register it for you. That's that's how you're able to get some of these domain names when it's restricted to people of the country.

Right? And I had I've had it for, I don't know, probably 6 or 7 years, and I used it to sell my stickers on because it's it's funny. It's short. I thought it was a a good domain name. And saying, alright. You know, dot ski domain names? $10,000 what could happen if your domain name goes missing or is revoked. So I owned And,

and a $150,000 tell the story because I think it's kinda interesting. Yeah. And and second, that you're not allowed to send money to. You know? It's I have the same thing with to anything.

The Taliban.

Bos dotaf, We've lost all contact Absolve? What's the word there? Listen up.

I see some of these don't buy whatever domains. They could take it. I think, oh, yeah. That's not going to happen to me.

I I knew it was a joke. And, obviously, I should have known better, but I thought I would use this chance to sort of say, hey. This could happen to you too. So think twice before you register that funny domain name.

that's sad, but, What are some of the fun ones? Scott limo.accountant.

That's the 1st thought that goes through my brain. So it's really helpful to,

that was the first thing that I think about every single time that

at the end there because

Yeah. You know Node? It's funny because I'm I'm glad you said that

have this experience from somebody, you know, somebody I talk to every day. So There you go. Alright. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Catch you later. Peace. Peace.

Yeah. They they do. They they either run it themselves or they have a another service sort of run on behalf of them. In in in the case of of Afghanistan, they ran their own. They have a Gmail address and a phone number on their website.

And when you buy something like that from a country, does that country themselves

but cat was Catalonia.

country specific, like cat.cat, Wes domain.

get

Yeah. Like that, that is the registration fee?

on Node Limo.

There's all kinds. There's millions and millions of them out there, and I was thinking with the, not the whole point. One of the points of a domain name is your server IP address changes, AI is Anguilla, which

are they gonna jack it? Or are they gonna say, alright. There's there's a couple of businesses unless it actually is, like, a a not for profit. They'll maybe throw it on a .org.

Yeah. That's domain names. I'm just I wanna end off. What are the best TLDs? What do you think the best TLDs are?

And I looked into it, and the answer to that is nothing, which is kind of I don't know if you remember. A couple Yarn ago, Notion went totally black, and it's because Notion was running at Notion dotso, Somalia. What what was SO? Like, why would they pick SO out of everything?

a year, and they're gonna just pay it because it's too much of a pain to to move away from it or their SEO is worth too much. So kinda scary in that regard as well. And, obviously, I don't know if that will will totally happen, order pizzas. Right? And, I wanted to show people what we're building, so I threw it on react dot pizza. I don't think I own that anymore, though. I I let it I let it absolve is pretty interesting. Apparently, they're making bank on, I let it expire.

are they gonna register it on my behalf,

a year.

These these are businesses that paid like, obviously, And,

ski.

all those people say I can't find a way to reregister it or had to renew it because Yeah. And what else is there? Like, TV and IO? People a while ago, people were like, don't register I o domain names because of

people who wanna take my courses from Iran as they have a hard time trying to buy my courses because of sanctions and limitations on their credit cards.

So when you purchase a domain 2012, called Folded Cat Creative was my company, And the logo was a little origami cat. It was actually super cute. And, I really wanted to buy folded Scott cat,

So I was kinda kinda out of luck.

ours generic .netor.org it's it's a hard thing

at the same time, I was like, did anyone else get their their Node man name? And Scott sent me a link to this mastodon and since queer dotaf, But,

it wasn't Certainly check out I Want My Name, but that's the story of the Taliban taking my domain name.

mission critical for me. It's I'm selling stickers on it. I can find another domain name for it. It's kind of annoying because I have links pointing to it and and whatnot, but, Sanity also happened to Notion.

Luckily,

What a wild way to start an episode.

Welcome to Syntax.

On this Monday, hasty treat. We're gonna be talking all about how the Taliban took impact on the loading times of each of our pages. So, everybody registering AI domain names. And then in Hey. What? Scott TV. Yeah? Sorry. Let me interrupt there. If you wanna see Anguilla,