CircleID

The website is 12 years old and explained here - https://circleid.com/posts/20120713_silly_bing John Levine is a known name in IT. Probably best know on HN as the author of "UNIX For Dummies"

This article and accompanying videos are interesting in that regard: https://www.circleid.com/posts/20191230_starlink_simulation_low_latenc… It suggests they could be lower latency than a great-circle path ground fiber without the satellite interlinks.

Obligatory responses to tptacek's article: - http://blog.easydns.org/2015/08/06/for-dnssec/ - http://www.circleid.com/posts/20150318_is_dnssec_worth_the_effort/ Collectively thousands of words have been written on this topic within HN - and there are stark divisions between those who oppose DNSSEC and those who believe DNSSEC is a helpful and useful method of adding a layer of security to the Internet. We don't agree. We won't agree. Meanwhile, those of us who want to see DNSSEC more widely deployed applaud this move by CloudFlare because it both makes deployment simpler for many people and also advances the usage of stronger crypto (ECDSA) within DNSSEC. This is great news!

This is quite a contentious topic, one of the best writeups is at http://www.circleid.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_controversy_over_th… I argue/am on the side of the "Internet" coming into existence in 1983 as that's when ARPANET switched to TCP/IP and therefore represented anything like what the Internet is today. The Web is not the Internet, however.

I follow this space and am currently doing some research into the renewal/transition of the IANA contract. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-trans… For a good start read this and the linked PDF: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20140426_the_illusion_of_internet_govern… TLDR; The DNS industry has an oversized representation in ICANN. ICANN makes a ton of money, and no one really seems to care. You can read the actual contract ICANN has with the government(NTIA) here: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/sf_26_pg_1-2-final_awa… Mueller is someone who regularly criticizes ICANN. I don't always agree with him, but I think he's right on with this one. http://www.internetgovernance.org/2014/04/16/icann-anything-that-doesn…

Create a whitelist. The follow model remains, which eliminates spam. You only see updates from people you follow, and only mutual followers can correspond using direct messages If it wasn't 4am I'd spend time explaining why this is the most poorly considered article I've read all day. Instead I offer a quote: > The reason that e-mail is uniquely useful is that you can exchange mail with people you don't already know. The reason that spam exists is that you can exchange mail with people you don't already know. -- John Levine ( http://www.circleid.com/posts/replacing_smtp/ )

That's Mind+Machines, and yes, it's a mega-landgrab. That guy has been going on and on for years about how amazing this will be and how everyone wants it. I cite: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090923_61_businesses_tell_icann_new_to… It's a joke of a post of everyone who stands to make a pile of money saying there is community support for this.

Dozens (maybe hundreds) of lawyers and bureaucrats have spend about five years arguing about new gTLDs. It's been meticulously documented (i.e. deadly boring) at places like http://www.circleid.com/

Domain name industry https://circleid.com/

This is a great idea and caused me to go down a rabbit hole of learning what it would take to actually register a new gTLD. Short version: The ICANN would need to do a new round of gTLD registrations. This is unannounced but rumored to begin some time this year. Then, a corporation would need to apply for the gTLD string. This application cost $185,000, non-refundable, in 2012 [1]. Smart money is a steeper fee. Next, they would actually need to be approved for the gTLD. This requires a company with enough funding to pass the ICANN's audit, and enough technical chops to maintain name servers with enough bandwidth and availability to serve the traffic generated by the new gTLD [2]. There is also a criminal background check and anti-cybersquatting check [3]. Finally, they would have to win in a contention process that involves any other registrar applying for the same string. This may be settled by an auction [4]. The buzz around the 2012 process is that it was generally a waste of time and money - many of the gTLDs far underperformed expectations by the registrars. Further, many of the corporate-owned gTLDs are unused (such as the 76! owned by Amazon)[5]. There were a few winners - the ICANN themselves made a hefty sum of money - some $212 million left over in 2020 [6]. Some other companies figured out the right way to "game" the contention process and intentionally lose the auction for the string [7]. Finally, a company named "Donuts, Inc", won some 270 gTLDs under…

We don't need to guess on this one. One of ISOC members who helped seal this greasy deal wrote a whole thinkpiece last year justifying it: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191127_why_i_voted_to_sell_org/ The short version is that guaranteed annual recurring revenue is great, but a billion dollars all at once is a lot of money, and could be used for all kinds of things. Not in the article: because it would be Ethos who'd later raise prices on .org (had the plan gone through), the ISOC would have some deniability of not having been the direct infractor. It'd be a win/win: Ethos would still profit despite the high price tag, and ISOC would get a huge windfall while keeping its hands only a little grimy (not dirty, but not clean). And if the piece's reasoning seemed sound to you, I'd call attention in particular to these sentences: > Ethos has said that their plan is to "live within the spirit of historic practice," that is, to manage prices roughly as PIR would have under the stewardship of the Internet Society. If they impose the maximum 10% price increase plan for ten years, the price will be around $26 per year — still quite affordable. Compare them to what the EFF wrote, and you'll see that notably absent from Richard's article is how the 10% increase cap is only active for the first eight years (not even 10 as stated). After that, Ethos was free to raise prices as much as they liked. Somehow, Richard mistakenly forgot to include this rather important detail.

I think a number of US news sites (e.g. LA Times) still block EU traffic. Furthermore, GDPR has caused a massive decrease in the number of newly registered domains that are successfully recognized as spam: > Prior to the implementation of GDPR, security researchers were able to identify and block 1.8 million newly registered malicious domains in October of 2017 alone. Fast forward to February of 2019 and that number drops to less than 160,000.[0] And it has caused a major annoyance for the general public, who mindlessly consent to almost every "consent" prompt they are given.[1] Companies are also at the mercy of their regional government when it comes to compliance. A company in Greece was fined 150,000 euros, not because the law made it illegal to process data in the way they did, but because the reason they provided for processing was the "wrong" one.[2] > PWC asked its employees for permission to process their personal data when it should have used a different legal basis (combination of contract, legal obligations and legitimate interest). [(2)] In effect, their effort to follow the law made them break the law, even though their actions were legal under Article 6, Section 1 of the GDPR.[3] This flies in the face of the EU's language in 2018, where they suggested that companies attempt to follow the "spirit of the law" rather than to worry about dotting i's and crossing t's. Oddly enough, regulators seem to be pleased with this outcome of seemingly arbitrary…

It is worth reading the article this posted one is in response to. (http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180225_humming_an_open_internet_demise… It has the kind of inflammatory institutional chauvinism one usually expects from bureaucrats defending their turf and moralizing their powers, but it's important to understand the outcomes the people like them are aiming for. Additionally, ignoring for a moment the usual appeals for intelligence and law enforcement, the coalition of interests the author is referencing includes those interested in enforcing "societal norms," and "support for persons with disabilities." The first means censorship and those people never seem to go away. But the second has nothing to do with transport layer encryption and appears to be a dogwhistle offering tacit institutional support to political agitators who want to get onside with adding surveillance levers to the internet. The article could reasonably be interpreted as a threat that if TLS 1.3 is adopted and imposes further costs on pervasive surveillance apparatuses, they will co-operate to further balkanize the internet.

SOPA would require sites to be blocked at the DNS level. This is not so different from how the Great Firewall of China is actually implemented. See this, for example, for how it works: http://viewdns.info/research/dns-cache-poisoning-in-the-peoples-republ… And here's what kind of harm that can cause: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20120107_afilias_says_no_to_sopa/ While they promise to block "only" pirate sites, they'll soon find that the blocks are ridiculously unworkable until they block all the sites that allow you to bypass them. I don't know whether or not they'll do this, but I strongly suspect they will, because it's the choice every other country who has ever set up a blacklist has made. I've yet to see one where they didn't abuse it, either, for political reasons. This will drag all sorts of non-pirate sites into the fray and hobble the services, such as VPNs, which can be offered to the public.

we did it, boys! despite the smoothbrain naysayers: https://circleid.com/posts/20190529_digging_into_ipv6_traffic_to_googl… finally, the end of the dark tunnel of NAT is in sight, and the internet will be free once more

The situation was more complicated than that, there was pressure from the US gov (itar) and desire not escalate the situation at the time. Now that the geopolitical situation has changed and funding concerns mostly alleviated, there are 200k terminals in use in Ukraine. https://circleid.com/posts/starlink-in-ukraine-what-three-years-of-war…

Earlier pieces on IP address trends: * https://circleid.com/posts/20230207-the-ipv4-price-inversion * https://blog.apnic.net/2021/12/16/opinion-ipv4-address-markets/

https://circleid.com/posts/chat-control-proposal-advances-despite-risi… https://fightchatcontrol.eu/ https://european-pirateparty.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-exemp…

I don't think GP meant static addressing but literally, how many ask for IPv4 service? None, because you just provide it; it's an unstated expectation. Now apply that to IPv6 and you can see the point that (I think) GP is making. Side note: The claim it is not widely used doesn't track. How many people use Google or Facebook? More than half of that traffic is over IPv6. https://circleid.com/posts/ipv6-usage-in-the-u.s-surpasses-50-but-lags…

You mean like an SRV record? https://circleid.com/posts/whois_server_address_registry/

> Adoption will come when businesses are required to have IPv6 to make money, or conversely will lose money when they lack IPv6. Well IPv4 is currently going for US$ 40/IP: * https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales * https://ipv4marketgroup.com/ipv4-pricing/ It actually peaked at over $50 for a while: * https://circleid.com/posts/20230207-the-ipv4-price-inversion If you want to spin up (or expand) as an ISP or a cloud provider there's CapEx associated with getting IPv4 addresses (or if you're a 'regular' business that wants to multi-home with multiple ISPs). I don't see how that can continue indefinitely give the finite 2^32 addresses available.

In the old days (up to ~2018) you could always contact people on the internet. Now you cannot contact people. That's bad. It's like the switch from knowing and being able to talk your neighbors to not knowing and not talking to your neighbors. Like the switch from a small town to a megacity. And you're completely wrong about GDPR. It is the primary, if not exclusive, reason most registrars in most regions have removed WHOIS information. ref: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registration-data-specs-en https://circleid.com/posts/20210119-whois-record-redaction-and-gdpr-wh…

Much worse than that: cancels were unauthenticated. Anyone could cancel anything, and it was up to individual NNTP servers to decide whether to respect it or not. Usually they had some level of whitelisting to prevent total anarchy, but it was definitely a problem. NNTP was a true decentralized system, and people trying to build decentralized social media and discussion platforms really should learn from all the problems it never managed to solve. https://circleid.com/posts/20191125_the_early_history_of_usenet_part_v… See also the Russ Allbery spam rant https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/rant.html

> Unfortunately you cannot simply HODL IPv4 because authorities can come over and take you blocks back if they are not used. You can lease addresses: * https://circleid.com/posts/20210608-leasing-vs-buying-ipv4-addresses The addresses get allocated to Company A which then turns around and allows Company B to use them for a monthly fee and they become routable/pingable. If someone doesn't have enough in their CapEx budget to buy a block then they can put it into their OpEx.

Yes, for a moment I thought Google acquired .web from Verisign. Latest News on .web [1] >after a ~5 year legal dispute. Is it finally "settled"? It seems some are suggesting Afilias will continue to sue. [1] https://circleid.com/posts/20211228-irp-panel-sanctions-afilias-clears…

MSN Messenger was censoring some words, if I remember correctly like "Summer Jam" and "papaz". I was unable to find those words but I have found a related news article https://circleid.com/posts/07080616_msn_messenger_censor_info_domains/ Since Facebook was partially bought by Microsoft I believe Messenger is continuation of MSN Messsanger. I abandon such applications without hesitation.

Using integer multiples are the obvious, but not only choice. If you look at this visualization you see a higher density coverage over Europe and parts of North America. That’s what let’s them roll out early as the gaps at the equator eventually get filled in. http://www.circleid.com/images/uploads/12233d.jpg It’s also a significant cost saving measure, though a lot of time is wasted in the band over the Southern Hemisphere it’s still a net win due to global population density from Europe, North America, and Asia. Note, the actual effect is more pronounced as lines of longitude vary their width. But I couldn’t find a better projection.

SpaceX initially planned to have 5 laser links per satellite but settled with 4. That's 4 separate lasers maintaining contact with 4 neighboring satellites. The two in front and back are nearly stationary. The sides are constant moving though. http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190906_inter_satellite_laser_link_upda…

I've talked to our resident backbone engineer about that about a year ago, and he said that larger blocks transfer for a lower value per IP, on average. I was surprised by that, but he showed me data that supported that. Update: I just found http://www.circleid.com/posts/20180731_the_ipv4_market_2018_mid_year_r… which says > As we head into the last half of 2018, small blocks are selling for just over $18/number, mid-blocks are in the $15-$18/number range, and large blocks have surpassed the $20/number threshold so it seems there's a bit of an U shape, where mid-sized blocks have the lowest price per address.

As of late 2019, there were about 3,6×10⁹ domain names registered it seems[11]. Taking "ycombinator.com" and keeping just the 11 ycombinator letters, and supposing you would allow only the 26 letters of alphabet, that's about 3.6×10¹⁶. That is 7 order of magnitude bellow the number of registered entries. The only scarcity here is the manufactured one. http://www.circleid.com/posts/20190829_verisign_q2_2019_industry_brief…