[HN Gopher] Every .gov Domain
___________________________________________________________________
Every .gov Domain
Author : KoftaBob
Score : 272 points
Date : 2025-02-21 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (flatgithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (flatgithub.com)
| edent wrote:
| The equivalent for the UK is
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/list-of-gov-uk-do...
|
| (I helped open that up when I was there.)
| numinix wrote:
| The parish council websites seem to have a lot of freedom to
| run their own standards. Lots of WP and shall we say
| 'nostalgic' web design!
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Given how many parish councils are just a bunch of biddies,
| be thankful they even have websites.
| croisillon wrote:
| TIL a new word!
| markx2 wrote:
| Having served on a parish council there can certainly be a
| technology challenge for some.
|
| There are services which will do the work -
| https://cuttlefish.com/local-councils/ -
| https://www.parishcouncil.net - are two of many. These have
| their drawbacks, may not provide exportable data so locking
| the council in. Some will allow direct access, some require
| that any new content be sent to them and they upload it.
|
| Some councils will own their domain name, some will not.
| Then there is the email issue and many will use a gmail /
| hotmail address.
|
| Cost, especially these days, is also a factor.
|
| I don't see it as a bad thing to have so much variety
| though.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Our local parish council don't have SPF, DKIM or DMARC set
| up so every single meeting is just a back and forth of
| "well I didn't receive that e-mail"
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Our local parish spent literally years arguing about
| removing a dog poo bin from a park
| biofox wrote:
| Critical infrastructure projects require proper due
| diligence.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| something something Chesterton's fence
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Let's hope they don't want to paint the bike shed!
| rsynnott wrote:
| There are over 10,000 of them, many absolutely tiny.
| toyg wrote:
| One thing that British local government definitely is NOT, is
| consistent. 500 years of continuous monarchic rule means the
| backbone of the State is a rickety Rube Goldberg machine,
| riddled with absurdities and obsolete entities that change
| every few miles. What you mention is the tip of an iceberg as
| big as Greenland, where every other town or region is
| administered in fundamentally different ways for no
| particularly good reason beyond "that's how it's always
| been".
|
| For all their centralist instincts, the Westminster classes
| fundamentally don't care about how the provinces go about
| their business, as long as they keep paying into London and
| act adequately subservient whenever the Southern classes come
| knocking. So we have to live with constitutional aberrations
| like Cornwall and Lancaster.
| chirau wrote:
| How do you guys go about doing this? Is there some techy/reverse
| engineering way or you manually asking each department which
| domains they have?
| TechRemarker wrote:
| Did you open the link? The the very top says Data Source:
| https://manage.get.gov/api/v1/get-report/current-full. Public
| API provides them all, this is just a website to more easily
| view that data.
| rayhaanj wrote:
| You can download a list from here too:
| https://github.com/cisagov/dotgov-data/blob/main/current-ful...
| chippiewill wrote:
| Even if there weren't official records, you'd probably be able
| to get a list of most of them out of the certificate
| transparency logs (Obviously that would just miss out the non-
| https enabled ones - less of those these days).
| MediumOwl wrote:
| There are also Whois DB services, that will provide you with
| all domains on a given TLD.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| It's probably the non SSL ones that nefarious actors would
| find really interesting in the list, as who knows what else
| is up with them.
|
| I suspect the non ssl ones aren't holding anything
| particularly useful at this stage though.
| astura wrote:
| This info is provided by the registrar
|
| https://get.gov/about/data/
| tephra wrote:
| There are a variety of ways!
|
| Some TLDs gives you open access to just query the DNS and do an
| AXFR (download the whole zone), for example the .se and .nu
| ccTLDs (which I happen to work for the foundation managing
| those): dig @zonedata.iis.se se AXFR > se.zone.txt
|
| For some zones you could use NSEC traversal
| https://linux.die.net/man/1/walker
|
| For the new gTLDs (.app, .dev, .xyz, etc, etc) there is the
| Centralized Zone Data Service provided by icann:
| https://czds.icann.org/home where you can request access to
| zones.
| chirau wrote:
| I would want to do .gov.zw
|
| How would I know if they have open access?
| TZubiri wrote:
| So there's the possibility of some .gov TLDs being missed,
| like secret CIA stuff. Or the guy that commented on here that
| he uses a custom .gov for his home servers.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| The custom .gov for his home servers doesn't exist except
| in his home network. You can put absolutely any domain in
| your home network that you want.
| TZubiri wrote:
| And the TLD .gov doesn't exist except on the internet.
| Similarly if there's a .gov in some CIA intranet, does it
| exist or not exist? That's a metaphysical question
| a12k wrote:
| They're all listed in a csv at cisa, or at least a lot of them.
|
| https://github.com/cisagov/dotgov-data
| pratio wrote:
| For those like me who want know how the page was built. It's
| using https://githubnext.com/projects/flat-data/. You can cycle
| through commits and files. Love it.
|
| Example of another such pages: https://flatgithub.com/the-
| pudding/data?filename=boybands%2F...
|
| It felt a bit like datasette and no wonder it's the inspiration
| as well
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| I struggled for some time how to maintain data in repository.
| Initially stored them in a JSON files (1k per file). This,
| eventually, became tedious.
|
| In the end I just redistribute SQLite file now with the data.
| It is easier for the "user" to use ready database than a set of
| files.
|
| https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
| beklein wrote:
| If you are only interested in the neat table UI check:
| https://github.com/githubocto/flat-ui
| YPPH wrote:
| US government domains seem a little over the place. I'm surprised
| by the number of courts and counties that have random .org and
| .com domains. In Australia, it follows a pretty strict structure:
| Federal: entity.gov.au State: entity.wa.gov.au (example for State
| of Western Australia) Local: entity.stirling.wa.gov.au (example
| for a local government in Western Australia),
|
| So, for example, the Federal Court is fedcourt.gov.au as it's
| federal.
|
| Strange how the US has such a mishmash.
| dave881 wrote:
| I assume that this is the result of a few quirks here in the US
|
| - Lots of things came online in the US before ccTLDs were
| common, and are still rare for US based orgs
|
| - US states have quite a bit of freedom in how they communicate
| with their citizens.
|
| - US states vary greatly in services provided and population
| (from ~600,000 up to ~40M)
| Operyl wrote:
| It's not terribly difficult to get a gov domain, it's just much
| easier to do an ordinary one. Smaller towns and cities
| outsource to cheap WYSIWYG type builders that also include a
| domain so it's really simple to just go that route too.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It can get quite unprofessional at that level. There was a
| small suburb in our metro whose .com domain was an insult
| against the core city. I'm sure they thought it was funny but
| eventually it did get changed to the town and state name.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Wait until you see the situation in Germany. Everything uses
| just a normal .de domain, no special TLD for government
| institutions at all.
| 9dev wrote:
| It's awful, really. Some domain names are so awfully chosen,
| they sound like scams. Take the government program for
| financial support to students, called BAfoG. Here's a bunch
| of domains related to that: * bafoeg.de
| * bafoeg-digital.de * bafoegonline.bva.bund.de
|
| Or, the worst one in my opinion: the German federal ID card
| has an integrated RFID chip that requires a PIN to unlock.
| You can use that chip to authenticate against a few
| government services online, which rely on the PIN as proof of
| identity. The PIN can be reset using a OTP sent via snail
| mail.
|
| Q: where you you think can you order that letter?
| a) Bundesdruckerei.de b) personalausweisportal.de
| c) pin-ruecksetzbrief-bestellen.de d) bmi.bund.de?
|
| A: yes. It's c. Seriously.
| bombcar wrote:
| Healthcare billing in the USA has gone this way. You're
| going to see emails from my-doctor-billing.com directing
| you to hospital-pay-site.biz _and they 're all totally
| legitimate_.
|
| It's nuts.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| That's the genius of having states, counties, cities, towns and
| villages that are almost entirely decentralized. When an evil
| force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole
| country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single
| tiny village is organized. Complete disorganization and
| inefficiency as a defense against tyrrany. (or, well, at least,
| slowing it down)
| rvnx wrote:
| In that world, we should store that in a blockchain for more
| efficiency, rather than a csv file.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The whole point is for it to be disorganized and flexible.
| A blockchain is way too organized and rigid
| adolph wrote:
| otoh, a blockchain is also immutable unless you take out
| the entire thing, you can't just alter previous
| transactions without invalidating subsequent ones
| mannyv wrote:
| You can't access the blockchain when the power + internet
| are gone.
| adolph wrote:
| Very true, and also true for the compared technology,
| csv. In a larger sense, the two are complementary and
| wouldn't be mutually exclusive.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > When an evil force takes over the government and wants to
| rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows
| how a single tiny village is organized.
|
| As we're seeing _right now_ this isn 't true. Everyone is
| afraid because the current federal executive doesn't give a
| flying f..k about norms, including telling people "comply
| with what DOGE wants or get fired" or drawing up lists of
| "Government Gangsters" [1]. And so, everyone is bending over
| in fear of getting in the crosshairs, getting government
| spending contracts cut, getting fired, getting death threats
| like Fauci, or getting extorted to buy ads on Twitter [2].
|
| Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts
| that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces
| unit in smaller countries?
|
| [1] https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-
| iden...
|
| [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-
| yaccarino-x-...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts
| that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces
| unit in smaller countries?
|
| They won the election?
| Retric wrote:
| Gun nut and republicans have overlap but aren't the same
| group.
|
| Quite a few are really into Libertarian values and hate
| Republican stances on a wide range of issues.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Quite a few are really into Libertarian values and hate
| Republican stances on a wide range of issues.
|
| Mostly abortion and to a lesser extent the "war on
| drugs". The rest is seeing especially Musk's _blatant_
| self-dealings [1] and teardown of "big gubmint" as
| something _laudable_.
|
| "So This is How Liberty Dies, With Thunderous Applause"
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43127819
| Retric wrote:
| There's far more fundamental disagreement between the
| parties than that.
|
| Libertarians strongly oppose government intervention in
| the economy like farm subsidies or specific tax cuts for
| specific industries. The Reputation party says it
| believes in free markets, but it doesn't act that way.
|
| The gap between Republican stated goals and actual
| policies is really stark. I think it mostly works because
| so few people dig into the details, but some people get
| really disillusioned.
| foobarian wrote:
| Luckily they are not the only ones with guns.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Probably out celebrating the shrinking of government, which
| is one of their core desires, if not their top desire.
| brookst wrote:
| ...while uploading their ID's to government mandated
| databases in order to watch the trans porn they want to
| completely outlaw, in the same of small government?
|
| Nah, they just dropped the pretense. Small government was
| always code for "leave me alone and make _those people_
| suffer."
| massysett wrote:
| > As we're seeing right now this isn't true.
|
| It's absolutely true. My county and state government has
| not changed. My kid goes to the public school, which has
| not changed. Indeed some of my state officials are suing
| the federal government.
|
| State and local governments provide many services of
| enormous importance: schools, police, fire, roads. The
| President is not ruling all of that.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem isn't who provides it, it's where the funding
| comes from.
|
| If the local school is 90% funded by local taxes, they
| can ignore the state and federal government for quite
| awhile.
|
| But if it's only 10% funded directly by local taxes, and
| the rest (even if coming from the locality!) is funneled
| through the state and/or federal government, then they
| can be squeezed on the money side.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > State and local governments provide many services of
| enormous importance: schools, police, fire, roads. The
| President is not ruling all of that.
|
| A lot of that hinges closely on cooperation with the
| feds, and the Trump admin has repeatedly said they will
| go and target "sanctuary cities" - so much for states
| rights.
|
| In doubt, the federal government will pull off another
| drinking ban - the age for drinking is 21 because the
| federal government threatened to retract highway funding
| many decades ago, and that was explicitly ruled to be
| constitutional [1].
|
| Do not think _even for a single second_ that you are safe
| from the impact of the Trump admin even if you live in a
| deep blue city in a deep blue state.
|
| In doubt, your daughter might not be able to access plan
| B any more (or your son stuck paying child support)
| because, of course, that one is on the target list as
| well, or your trans kid might not receive the care they
| need because the federal government plans to ban that as
| well, and if it's just by banning federally active
| insurances from covering the cost for such treatment. Or
| if you're Black and your kid needs to take ADHD meds? Say
| goodbye to your kid [2].
|
| You all are anything but safe, but by the time you
| realize it because it starts finally affecting you and
| your loved ones, _it will be too late_. Take that warning
| from a German and heed it because we actually lived
| through that and learn about the time of 1933-45 and the
| years leading up to it in school!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinki
| ng_Age_...
|
| [2] https://wordinblack.com/2025/02/rfk-jr-black-kids-
| adhd-drugs...
| cjs_ac wrote:
| I swear 'defence against tyranny' is the justification for
| every ridiculous thing the US does.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| Have you been following US politics lately? Right now there
| is an election denier in a cabinet position. It's partially
| a good thing that elections are controlled by states as
| some protection.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| That just proves my point. All that obsessing about
| preventing tyrants, and you still end up with one. Maybe
| if, as a culture, you spent less time poring over quotes
| from eighteenth-century political thinkers to divine the
| best possible theoretical form of government, and more
| time solving concrete problems faced by real-world
| people, this wouldn't have happened.
|
| The Westminster system is looking very 'worse is better'
| at the moment.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Are you proposing we create a government position for
| Musk and promote him into it so he can officially have no
| power? I think I'm on board.
|
| How does it work, does one have to consent to become king
| or can we just sort of make it happen?
| JustExAWS wrote:
| The majority of the people in the US want the current
| situation. Between the fear of the country becoming
| minority-majority,losing "traditional American values",
| and protecting pets from being eaten by Haitians, they
| see Trump/Musk as their last hope.
|
| Admittedly, it didn't help that the DNC re-enacted
| "Weekend at Bernie's" with Biden for two years.
| saulpw wrote:
| No, a _plurality of people voted for_ the current
| situation. Not a majority of people, not a majority of
| voters (many of whom didn 't vote, or weren't able to
| vote), and not even a majority of people who voted
| (49.8%, and no you can't round up).
|
| Also, voting for slate of candidates on one day in the
| middle of a billion-dollar multi-year misinformation
| campaign, does not equal "want the current situation". I
| agree that an egregious number of people are actively
| cheering for the current chaos, but let's not give them
| more psychic power than the institutional power they are
| already wielding.
| palmotea wrote:
| > The Westminster system is looking very 'worse is
| better' at the moment.
|
| The same one that _just today_ got Apple to remove E2E
| encryption from iCloud, so it could get backdoor access
| to people 's data?
|
| I beg to differ. Centralization is bad. IIRC, it's what's
| enabling Musk to do so much damage so quickly, and the UK
| has more of it.
| xienze wrote:
| > Right now there is an electric denier in a cabinet
| position.
|
| There's a whole lot more than one. Remember that when
| Republicans win, the results aren't "denied" but the
| Democrats sure do cast a whoooole lot of doubt on the
| proceedings (i.e., "well yes they won but voter
| suppression, I'm just saying...", "well yes they won but
| Russian Facebook propaganda, I'm just saying...", "well
| yes they won, but hanging chads, I'm just saying...").
|
| I'd say "election denial" comes in degrees...
| JustExAWS wrote:
| Newt Gingrich outright chastised the Republican governor
| of GA for making voting more convenient in minority
| neighborhoods was going to increase the chance of
| Democrats winning. He said the quiet part out loud.
|
| Not to mention that in Texas, student IDs issued by
| public colleges aren't legal IDs to vote. But gun permits
| are.
|
| Of course there is Russian interference on social media.
| Not that I think it makes a difference.
|
| Complaining about any of those things though and saying
| that's why Trump won is crazy looking at the numbers. He
| won fair and square. Both of those things can be true.
| xienze wrote:
| > Not to mention that in Texas, student IDs issued by
| public colleges aren't legal IDs to vote. But gun permits
| are.
|
| I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume one of
| those IDs can be obtained by non-citizens and the other
| can't, not sure what your point is here.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Yeah... and it's largely worked. That's the reason it's
| employed in the first place.
| sybercecurity wrote:
| The .gov TLD was only for the Federal government in the past,
| it was opened up later to state/local governments. By then,
| some had already had <something>.<state>.us, or some other TLD.
| Most probably thought it was too troublesome to migrate over.
| That and the fees were more than any other gTLD (though not
| now).
| xattt wrote:
| Canadian domain names in the 90s also followed this
| newsgroup-like syntax: <website>.<city>.<province>.ca
|
| At least one site (transit.toronto.on.ca) still has an active
| domain in that format, even though it's not operationally-
| related by the City of Toronto.
|
| It's quaint that folks wanted to root their web presence in
| their physical world.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| Like ouac.on.ca.
| xattt wrote:
| Tangential: toronto.edu redirects to U of T.
|
| Major early 1990s vibes and the woody smell of the
| graduate computer labs.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| Hopefully I get to go to Toronto lol.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I work with US state governments a lot. Departments treasure
| their .com domains because they can actually get updates to the
| zone file without having to go through months (literally) of
| repeated requests to get something added to the .<state>.gov/us
| domain. If a department or agency has to reach outside to the
| state IT department for anything the timeline doubles or
| triples. It's a real problem.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| I used to do lots of consulting work for various departments
| and agencies in the state I was in at the time. The biggest
| issue was that the state IT department wanted everything
| centralized, running on only department servers, using a
| single platform chosen by them (Vignette StoryServer). Most
| agencies found that to be too restrictive, especially since
| at the time Vignette only used TCL.
|
| Even worse was the IT department's insistence that agencies
| sign a 99 year contract for cost sharing, the amount of which
| would never be known in advance since it would only be
| calculated quarterly based on all expenses the state IT
| department incurred hosting state agencies.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| Same for the enterprise (non-tech I assume) world. When I was
| on the business side, we treasured any compute we could get
| that was not tied to corporate IT. Going through them would
| turn a 1 day fix into a 2 week endeavor. Product development
| would go from 1 month to 6 or more.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| Yes. I remember the delight of deploying my first server
| with a credit card. The previous one had taken 6 weeks and
| $100,000 out of our department budget. Such a godsend.
| bombcar wrote:
| You've found out a huge reason cloud took off so hard. Lots
| of it is shadow-IT.
|
| Nobody except a few universities actually uses subdomains
| as they should be, where you actually delegate the
| subdomain to the business unit using it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I tried to access gettysburg.edu the other day and was
| greeted by a stupid redirect page (with a meta refresh
| tag) insisting on use of www rather than just issuing the
| redirect immediately.
|
| The reality is they're stuck in 1995 and won't make
| rational changes.
| belorn wrote:
| Do you mean that all .gov domains are handled by the same dns
| service provider? I can understand if the TLD registry is a
| pain to deal with when it comes to changing information at
| the top, but zones files? The whole design of dns have
| delegation as a central feature so that the registry do not
| need to do everything.
| duxup wrote:
| I can understand some local government official "I don't know
| how to validate things to get a gov ... but I do know how to
| register a domain" and it's .com.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Then they should use this amazing tool we have that contains
| damn near the entirety of accumulated knowledge of Humanity
| called The Internet.
|
| You don't even have to search any longer. You can literally
| ask a conversational AI, like this...
|
| How would a local government official obtain a domain name
| with .gov for their governmental office?
|
| ChatGPT said:
|
| A local government official can obtain a .gov domain for
| their governmental office by following these steps:
|
| 1. Verify Eligibility .gov domains are restricted to U.S.
| government entities, including federal, state, local, tribal,
| and territorial governments. Local government agencies, such
| as city or county offices, are eligible. 2. Choose a Domain
| Name The domain name should clearly reflect the governmental
| entity (e.g., cityname.gov or countyname.gov). Avoid
| abbreviations or acronyms unless commonly recognized. 3.
| Obtain Authorization The request must be authorized by the
| highest-ranking official of the government entity (e.g.,
| mayor, county administrator). They will need to submit a
| letter verifying the legitimacy of the request. 4. Submit an
| Application Visit domains.dotgov.gov to apply. Create an
| account and complete the application form. Upload the signed
| authorization letter. 5. Await Review and Approval The
| Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
| reviews all applications. If approved, the domain is
| registered, and the office will receive account credentials.
| 6. Configure DNS and Website Once the domain is active,
| configure DNS settings. Set up email services and website
| hosting as needed. 7. Maintain Compliance Ensure the domain
| is actively used for government purposes. Keep contact
| information updated to prevent domain suspension. There is no
| cost for registering a .gov domain as of April 2021, since it
| is funded by the federal government.
|
| There is literally no excuse for not knowing what to do in
| the year 2025.
| andelink wrote:
| Not the best instructions given. I'd erase it all and
| simply say: Go to https://get.gov/domains and hit the
| "Start a domain request" button.
| arscan wrote:
| URLs are a part of the UX of websites. The domain often
| represents the first interaction between the user and the site.
| Domains that follow a strict hierarchical structure that aligns
| to some real-world hierarchy may not be the best first
| interaction with the user, or at least not in the opinion of
| those that are creating the site.
|
| So, I think it's natural for site owners to want this freedom.
| Then it comes down to whether there should be constraints
| forced on them or not by policy for some greater good. In the
| US, generally, central planning on this type of stuff isn't
| really part of the culture.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| Oh I thought you were going the exact opposite direction with
| that reasoning. A hierarchical url is good because it
| immediately establishes trust and provenance. Currently I
| never know whether I'm dealing with a for profit entity
| pretending to be governmental, or actual government.
|
| But maybe _that_ is part of the culture?
| arscan wrote:
| To technical people, sure. I don't think the average person
| knows about provenance rules of subdomains though and how
| it's useful... it's more just a bunch of symbols they don't
| care about.
|
| And we understand the threats here... a very real problem
| is someone forgetting to renew one of these .org or .com
| domains (maybe the person that maintains it retired) and a
| malicious actor grabs it after expiration, stands up a
| scraped copy, and uses it to collect parking ticket
| payments or whatever.
|
| I was actually thinking a bit more about the diversity of
| domain names under .gov, though I realize now that the
| parent comment I replied to was about .org and .coms. I
| think you get a bit of those provenance assurances if they
| are under .gov, as a practical matter it's harder for
| malicious actors to own one of those than one under other
| tlds. And then instead of forcing a strict taxonomy that is
| mostly for the benefit of the infrastructure maintainers
| (very enterprise software), there is freedom to use a name
| that makes the most sense for the target user.
| cbozeman wrote:
| No, people need to learn how the Internet is organized and
| named. It's the same as learning the Dewey Decimal system so
| you can navigate your local library.
|
| It should be taught in school exactly the same way. It's more
| important in the year 2025 to know that, than it is the Dewey
| Decimal system, which is still taught in a majority of
| schools for some reason.
|
| People should know what it means to be connected to a .gov,
| .com, .org, .edu, .net, .mil site, etc. I know we have a lot
| of new TLDs, but knowing the originals should be a bare
| minimum. This isn't rocket science, hell, most of these
| domains are almost self-explanatory even as three letter
| codes.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Nobody knows the Dewey Decimal system, they know
| subject/author/title hierarchy at best, and even then given
| the ambiguity in subjects they often resort to the
| computers or librarians to search the catalogue and get
| directions.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| My county government started w/ a "co.Name.oh.us" domain name
| back in the late 90s. People in the government hated it. The
| complaint I heard most frequently was that the public couldn't
| get it right-- too many dots.
|
| I was a fan of the ".co.name.oh.us" naming because it made
| logical sense. I could easily find any County website in the
| state. My intuition now is that anything logical (or, perhaps,
| just anything I like) will be hated by the public. >sigh<
|
| The county moved to "NameCountyOhio.gov". It's 5 characters
| longer than the old domain name but isn't hated. The public
| still gets it wrong often, expecting it to be
| "NameCountyOH.gov".
|
| Edit:
|
| Okay, so I got this totally wrong. Chalk it up to poor memory
| for stuff 20+ years ago.
|
| There's RFC 1480, first of all:
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1480
|
| The old County domain was "co.name.oh.us". I completely forgot
| the hierarchy was flipped for localities, with the locality
| being the higher level domain and the designation for type of
| locality (city, county, etc) being second.
|
| For K-12 school districts, libraries, colleges, and others, the
| hierarchy comes first (like "name.lib.oh.us").
| abtinf wrote:
| [countyname].co.[stateabbr].[ctld] is injecting ontological
| metadata into the data, which is bizarre.
|
| Would be better to just get rid of the "co" layer.
| abtinf wrote:
| Actually I just looked at the original post, which
| indicates that both oh.gov and ohio.gov exist. Ohio.gov
| actually works.
|
| So countyname.ohio.gov would be perfect.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The city of Medina Ohio, Medina County Ohio, and the
| Medina City School District have entered the chat.
| abtinf wrote:
| County: medina.ohio.gov
|
| City: medina.medina.ohio.gov
|
| From brief googling, the school district is subordinate
| to the county, not the city, despite its name.
|
| medinacityschools.medina.ohio.gov
|
| Or
|
| cityschools.medina.ohio.gov
|
| Or
|
| mcc.medina.ohio.gov
|
| Or
|
| bees.medina.ohio.gov
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > medina.medina.ohio.gov
|
| I love this so much.
|
| It makes me sad that Buffalo, NY is in Erie County. That
| could have been great.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| What would you do for the City and County of San
| Francisco? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco
|
| Do they get two separate websites?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| There are separate hierarchies for cities (".ci.oh.us",
| school districts (".k12.oh.us"), public libraries
| (".lib.oh.us"), and probably others I'm not aware of. It
| seems like there could be name collisions between those
| different entities that would necessitate the additional
| layer.
|
| Edit:
|
| Per my parent comment I screwed this up and misremembered
| the hierarchies. The locality name comes first for
| localities, so you'd be looking at things like:
|
| ci.medina.oh.us - City of Medina
|
| co.medina.oh.us - County of Medina
|
| medina.k12.oh.us - The Medina City School District
|
| medina.lib.oh.us - The Medina County District Library
| abtinf wrote:
| So far as I am aware, every US state is split into
| counties, and most entities (cities, districts, etc)
| exist within counties.
|
| Maybe there should be a "falsehoods programmers believe
| about government structure" article, but I can think of
| very few exceptions.
|
| "cleveland.cuyahoga.ohio.gov" seems like a logically
| guessable domain.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Oh, I agree. It's logically guessable and the right
| hierarchy. It'd also never fly. >smile<
|
| > So far as I am aware, every US state is split into
| counties...
|
| re: falsehoods - Alaska has no counties. Louisiana has
| "Parishes". Connecticut and Rhode Island have counties
| but no county governments. Also, see Townships.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I'm always a little bit angry that New York calls
| Townships Towns.
| abtinf wrote:
| > Connecticut and Rhode Island have counties but no
| county governments
|
| This breaks my brain.
| bombcar wrote:
| And even where everything seems the same on paper,
| different states can handle things wildly differently.
|
| Some the counties run almost everything except where a
| large city is, some the county does almost nothing, and
| everything is tied to whatever the biggest town is.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| All of these are tiny exceptions compared to the vast
| number of counties within US States. However, reality is
| made of exceptions! All things considered, it is
| interesting and important to have local exceptions in a
| nation IMHO.
| 201984 wrote:
| Virginia is another edge case here, where cities aren't
| part of counties and are directly under the state. If you
| look at a map, you'll see holes in a bunch of counties
| where the cities are, e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/List_of_cities_and_counties_...
| saalweachter wrote:
| New York spans five counties, which lack county
| governments, instead having borough governments
| subordinate to the city government.
|
| Washington, DC is a city which is in neither a state nor
| a county.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._municipaliti
| es_... has a hundred or so cities that span counties.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| it turns out, cities are among the least well-defined
| geographical features in local government of the USA.
| There are many odd and unusual arrangements at the city
| level. The US Census maintains a collection of more
| clearly defined entities.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| You can't get rid of the "co". It's needed for
| disambiguation.
|
| For example, here in Texas, the City of Dallas is located
| in Dallas County, but they are separate things. If you want
| to pay a parking ticket that you got in the City of Dallas,
| you need to go to the city's web site. If you want to pay
| your property taxes, you need to go to the county's web
| site.
|
| Also, the City of Austin is located in Travis County. There
| is an Austin County, but it's 100 miles (160 km) away. The
| only connection is that they are both named for Stephen F.
| Austin.
| belorn wrote:
| Looking at the list I wold assume that the majority of those
| are not the "primary" domain, and indeed if I click around
| randomly, most of them redirect to somewhere else.
| Mixtape wrote:
| Just my $0.02 as a net/sysadmin for a small municipality in the
| US:
|
| A big part of why we haven't been able/bothered to migrate to a
| proper .gov domain boils down to the amount of technical debt
| we'd need to pay back in the process of doing so. _Everything_
| that we do uses our non-.gov domain, namely our Office 365
| connectors. On top of that, end users ' day-to-day
| communications with the public make use of the existing domain.
| Modifying that in any capacity could prove disruptive to
| ongoing communications and potentially render them liable for
| dropping the ball somewhere. Not to mention that every single
| internet account ever created by staff using the current domain
| would need to be migrated or risk being lost forever.
|
| Additionally, we're a small team. Only myself and one other
| individual would really have the technical knowledge to migrate
| our infrastructure. The opportunity cost involved would be
| massive. There are grants available to help us with this, but
| obtaining/using those can get complicated at times.
|
| Ultimately, the pros just don't outweigh the cons enough to
| make a huge difference. From a purely academic angle, should we
| have a .gov TLD? Absolutely. In practice though, the residents
| and staff are familiar enough with the current one to render it
| a non-issue. The average non-technical user doesn't "see"
| "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the
| concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize
| "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.
| massysett wrote:
| > They just memorize "[municipality_website]" and move on
| with their day.
|
| I haven't even done that much, I couldn't tell you offhand
| the URL for my county government. I always just search in
| Google, which takes me right to the page I need (roads, solid
| waste, library, etc.)
| cbozeman wrote:
| > The average non-technical user doesn't "see"
| "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the
| concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize
| "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.
|
| You've just highlighted the problem. This is something every
| single human being in America should know, and arguably
| almost the entire world.
|
| This falls directly under the rubric of Basic Computing
| Knowledge > Basic Internet Knowledge.
|
| Every single time I see someone searching for "microsoft" or
| "apple" I immediately stop them and tell them, "You've
| already done most of the work. Microsoft and Apple are
| commercial entities. Add .com at the end, which is what .com
| means. Commercial. You're adding extra work for yourself."
|
| Yes, a few people pop off at the mouth at which point I
| remind them ignorance is of a thing is easily remedied with a
| little give-a-damn, and saves everyone time and money.
|
| Talk about a fucking miserable failure of education. I'm 44.
| I expected the generation 20 years younger than me to be
| impossibly skilled with computers to the point that I
| wouldn't hope to even match them, much less surpass them.
| Instead what we got was a world where we dumbed every goddamn
| thing down so even the most drooling moron can utilize it.
|
| It's pretty disappointing, to put it mildly.
| pests wrote:
| I think your view on the world might be a little skewed.
| Every human in the world needs to know how domain names
| work? What?
| prmoustache wrote:
| > The average non-technical user doesn't "see"
| "[municipality].[state].gov". They aren't familiar with the
| concept of a domain hierarchy at all. They just memorize
| "[municipality_website]" and move on with their day.
|
| That mean they can easily be redirected to a phishing
| website.
| fencepost wrote:
| You say there _are_ grants available, but given the current
| environment actually relying on those seems risky - even if
| you were actually to get the money up front it seems like it
| might get clawed back.
| plorg wrote:
| My state has a telecommunications network that was responsible
| for bringing the Internet to schools and libraries in the 90s.
| As a result many of these institutions were assigned domain
| names under ia.us, which the network controls on behalf of the
| state. The state government gets the state.ia.us subdomain,
| libraries got their own second-level subdomain under lib.ia.us,
| schools under k12.ia.us (private schools under another level
| pvt.k12.ia.us, although their website now lists that as
| pvtk12.ia.us; my elementary school domain of the first form
| still resolves), community colleges cc.ia.us and so on. I
| didn't know better at the time and assumed the whole US was
| organized that way. In any case no one liked having
| johnd@excelsior.pvt.k12.ia.us as their email address so most of
| the schools bought a second .net or .org domain.
|
| I know my high school moved off the ICN T1 service in the early
| 2000s, but it looks like the domain records are still
| maintained, as the old address still resolves correctly.
|
| Edit: see EvanAnderson below I didn't realize this was
| ~formalized as an RFC and actually was relatively standard
| across states, I assume for the same reasons very few public
| entities were using these hierarchal addresses as their primary
| by the time I really got online in the mid 2000s.
| kube-system wrote:
| It isn't really that strange, it mirrors how decentralized and
| fragmented government in the US actually is.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It makes it pretty difficult to tell whether your parking
| ticket is a phishing attempt.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That hierarchy exists for US states. It just is rarely employed
| because politicians and administrators don't know how the
| Internet works and insist on vanity domains that can't be
| easily discerned from scammers.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Give it a week and see how many of them are taken down in the
| name of "efficiency"
| psd1 wrote:
| The moment .gov is opened to the public, I'm squatting as many
| domains as I can grab. Fill your boots! It's raining marks!
| askl wrote:
| And with your X.gov premium subscription you will get your
| blue checkmark and are recognized as a real government
| entity.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I use a jokey ".gov" domain for some of my home IT stuff. I
| always said wistfully that I'd never actually be able to get
| that domain name. There's a glimmer of hope now that I
| actually will be able to (albeit I expect my family and I
| will be sent to a re-education / extermination camp before
| that happens).
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| it's a good thing to spring clean, just like it's generally a
| good choice to change life habits and lose weight. humans get
| lazy or preoccupied and need to alter the "normal" state they
| get into that could be unhealthy or not as productive.the
| government is ran by humans as well, it's no surprise that it's
| gotten shoddy in some areas and some shuffling and fear has
| been injected to correct this in government operations and
| spending.
|
| it won't all be fair or kosher for sure and some of the layoffs
| were already stated as mistakes publicly and jobs offered back
| to some(though not very many surprisingly). with that being
| said, i hope even you see a surprising amount of what has been
| uncovered is clearly bad?
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I'm not sure what parts you're referring to as "clearly bad"
| because so far I haven't seen any examples of that. What
| actually seems "clearly bad" is the random stripping of
| funding with little to no research into the knock-on effects.
|
| The only example I've seen that is potentially is a good move
| is removing the penny from circulation, but of course that
| has its own pros and cons.
| powerfulusers wrote:
| i guess elon can't run companies and detect inefficiencies,
| voters should trust this anon internet user instead!
| kweingar wrote:
| Elon breaks almost every promise he makes and has
| constantly been proven wrong on the claims he's made in
| the past month. It astounds me that someone not connected
| to him would trust him at all
| ChrisRR wrote:
| I'm not american, I just genuinely haven't seen any
| clearly beneficial moves yet
|
| PS. Your green username gives you away
| tombert wrote:
| Does he actually run companies?
|
| This is a genuine question; he's the CEO of Tesla,
| SpaceX, xAI, Boring Company, the CTO of Twitter, and the
| owner of several more companies.
|
| If he's running five or more companies, _and_ trying to
| run a government department, how involved can he actually
| be with running any individual one? They can't all be
| full time jobs.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I've heard rumors that at least one of his companies has
| team whose job is to distract him.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't been a fan of his since he called the cave
| divers pedophiles for not using his stupid submarine, but
| I at least thought he actually did stuff.
|
| But with the recent case where he bragged about being in
| the top 20 Diablo players in the world, only to find out
| that he paid people to level his character up for him,
| makes me think that maybe he doesn't actually _do_
| anything. I mean, he 's bragging and lying about
| something that _does not matter_.
|
| No one really cares if the CEO of your spaceship or car
| company or brain-implant company is good at video games.
| If it turned out that everyone saw he was bad at Diablo,
| approximately nothing changes (and potentially people
| like him even more if he's a good sport about it and
| laughs it off!), and yet he felt it was important to
| construct a lie around this so he could brag.
|
| If he's going to brag about a completely insignificant
| false accomplishment, why should I assume that he's going
| to tell the truth for stuff that people would actually
| care about? At this point, I'm erring on the side of
| "Musk doesn't do anything outside of providing initial
| funding".
|
| Maybe I'm wrong, that's certainly possible, but he really
| killed a lot of his credibility.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| well, im a tech bro american living in miami, from poor
| alabama to a bigger-city life and mid-income from basically
| working in IT infrastructure and datacenter operations.
| i've worked my way into some kinda something and worth
| basically through savings and working a lot of hours and
| also now operating in a leadership role for a $20B
| privately owned company. i myself know first hand wasteful
| spending and putting in minimal effort would have never
| afforded me where i have gotten today. i lived with
| roommates, bad neighborhoods in altanta, birmingham, all to
| save money and get by and build myself up to where i needed
| to be. so my 1st hand experience or anecdotes will highly
| sway my own viewpoints, so im saying all of this to say i
| will not be without bias when it comes to accountability
| and wastefulness.
|
| now with that all being said, when i see contracts like
| this:
|
| "Telephone Based Mindfulness Training to reduce blood
| pressure in black-women" $2million(https://www.usaspending.
| gov/award/CONT_AWD_47PH0825C0001_474...)
|
| "South Sudan Gender Aware Sustainanable Water and
| Sanitation": $40Million (https://www.usaspending.gov/award/
| CONT_AWD_72066821C00009_72...)
|
| State Department Spending on Social Media Influencers:$4M
| (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-
| REP...)
|
| Just some random example of currently killed or going to be
| killed contracts....I feel like all I had to do is have
| friends in government to basically just suck money off of
| the people while adding nothing back to society as a result
| of it. There are hundreds to many thousands of discovered
| "projects" and funds with these type of numbers. This is a
| plague in my viewpoint and does nothing to benefit society
| and move the needle, which engineers so pride themselves in
| doing...
| kweingar wrote:
| I'm confused, I thought we were talking about laying off
| federal employees. Now we're talking about contracts?
| xyst wrote:
| yeah man, you got yourself out of the salt mines of
| Alabama. So time to pull up the ladder, right?
|
| > "Telephone Based Mindfulness Training to reduce blood
| pressure in black-women" $2million(https://www.usaspendin
| g.gov/award/CONT_AWD_47PH0825C0001_474...)
|
| The link you provided indicates funds were for repair to
| some bridge at port of entry in TX - "YSLETA, LAND PORT
| OF ENTRY PAVEMENT REPLACEMENT REPAIRS PROJECT, EL PASO,
| TX AWARD WAS MADE WITH LOW EMBODIED CARBON FUNDING"
|
| > "South Sudan Gender Aware Sustainanable Water and
| Sanitation": $40Million (https://www.usaspending.gov/awar
| d/CONT_AWD_72066821C00009_72...)
|
| "tech bro American" doesn't want clean water for people
| in Sudan and promotion of basic hygiene practices.
|
| https://dt-global.com/projects/afia-wash/
|
| > State Department Spending on Social Media
| Influencers:$4M (https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/FESTIVUS-REP...)
|
| There's so much wrong with this source material. It is so
| biased.
|
| All of these "killed" contracts you deem as wasteful yet
| turn a blind eye to the _billions_ that public companies
| pour into stock buybacks. Minimal investment back into
| the company. This only helps _rich_ cunts and foreign
| investors.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Why can't both points be true at the same time?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Because one of the points is false. A priori, you're
| right: there _could_ be hideous waste in this area. There
| probably is, even. But you haven 't provided examples of
| it, and there's no real reason to assume that the wasted
| effort would be obvious at a glance.
| airstrike wrote:
| Stock buybacks aren't inherently evil or immoral. They
| are just like issuing dividends, no difference, and are
| the reason companies exist: to return value to their
| equity holders for the equity risk they bear.
|
| They could be a sign of a lack of better projects for the
| company to invest in.
|
| There's likely something to be said about tying stock buy
| backs to more stock options for employees, but it'd have
| to be voluntary rather than regulated.
|
| There's definitely something to be said about CEO
| compensation relative to worker wages. But that's a civil
| society discussion, not a government regulation one.
|
| And finally capital gains taxes being lower than income
| taxes is morally reprehensible, but this one will take
| quite a bit of work to undo without destroying the US
| economy due to capital flight out of the country once the
| law changes
| neuronet wrote:
| There is waste in every org, but what they are doing is
| the equivalent of deleting files that contain the word
| "diversity" in them instead of going through and actually
| reading the files. Because that would take time and
| patience. It's a low-brow sledgehammer approach and is
| hurting people inside and outside the organizations in
| government. E.g., people handling nuclear safety. It's
| not just throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it is
| throwing babies, adults, scalding hot bathwater out onto
| the people that it was supposed to help.
|
| These tech-bro-americans with very little experience with
| science, biotech, helping other people, international
| relations, understanding of how institutional knowledge
| works, or grant funding cycles and NIH works, are
| dismantling key infrastructure. It's worse than dumb it's
| much more terrifying.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I don't know about the mindfulness thing. But If at least
| want to hear about it before cancelling it. The others
| though are positive to me.
|
| Water and sanitation are a HUGE issue in developing
| countries. It's a main disease vector. It's also very
| common in many places that women have to practically
| sneak out of the village at night to go to the bathroom
| (some field) and get raped. Given anything I've heard
| about South Sudan I'd need surprised if these issues
| didn't exist there.
|
| Third one is a positive surprise. Propaganda is clearly
| of increased importance in this century and we must fight
| the fight.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| That's the interesting part about their comment, is that
| they've instantly assumed that these are pointless
| contracts based on name alone.
|
| Without looking into it you can't just assume that
| mindfulness training doesn't have a proven clinical
| effect on blood pressure, and if it does then it's a good
| use of money. Preventative healthcare is still healthcare
| jampekka wrote:
| Helping destitute people get water and sanitation seems
| like giving to society. It's very typical and likely very
| effective foreign aid. Probably it got picked here
| because of "Gender Aware", as if sanitation having
| gender-related issues is somehow weird.
|
| Your link to the blood pressure reduction project is
| linking to something totally else, but in general such
| approaches seem to have some scientific backing.
| Improving public health seems like benefiting the
| society.
|
| I wonder how many engineers really benefit society with
| their work, and how many even actively harm it.
|
| https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10
| .11...
| adolph wrote:
| To the degree that those contracts represent something
| farcical, they are a symptom of an upstream problem in
| decision-making. Is that upstream problem something that
| can be addressed? Or is the amount of error [0] within an
| a margin whereupon eliminating it costs more than dealing
| with it?
|
| 0. https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-
| of-fra...
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Blood pressure reduction and water and sanitation both
| sound like genuine issues though (I don't know what the
| social media one is about so I couldn't comment.
|
| Do you actually know that those are pointless contracts
| or are you just making assumptions based on the titles?
| fionaellie wrote:
| Sometimes viewing the world through your own lens is
| harmful, as you've learned here from the thoughtful
| replies to your comments. If you haven't traveled to
| places like South Sudan, haven't been black, and have no
| real understanding of the psychology of propaganda, then
| your responses are reactive and uninformed. It's a less-
| well-understood version of the "deleting" of USAID -- a
| tiny financial impact even there, but immense human
| suffering and loss of trust as a result. It's the lack of
| understanding of the average citizen that has resulted in
| this emotional, baseless movement we are witnessing.
| pavlov wrote:
| Let's imagine a Fortune 50 corporation wants to improve
| efficiency and audit its books for fraud.
|
| Should they:
|
| 1) Hire professional auditors and business consultants to
| perform the undoubtedly massive review;
|
| 2) Ask the CEO of one of their suppliers to do the review as
| a fun side gig, let the CEO bring in a tiny team of teenage
| whiz kids, and give them full god mode access to the
| company's books and databases and HR systems so they can fire
| anyone at will and ask questions later?
|
| The approach chosen by America's chief executive is
| bafflingly #2.
|
| It's worth noting that Trump has no experience managing a
| large corporation. All his businesses are partnerships with
| very few employees. He has no competence for this kind of
| thing, so he's delegating everything to Musk who is the
| proverbial fox in the hen house, shutting down regulators who
| affect his own businesses.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Being on HN and someone posting a pro-consulting firm post
| is...rich...
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Yes. Many times hiring experts is 100% the correct
| approach. Getting a rando with next to no experience or
| knowledge of the product to spend an hour looking before
| making sweeping changes isn't
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Both options are a consulting firm, one just has
| experience and expertise, the other is DOGE.
| notpushkin wrote:
| To be honest, I'd choose the door #2 anytime.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Trump has no experience managing a large corporation_
|
| And the little experience he has is of repeated
| bankruptcies and dodgy dealings, saved only by his
| political adventures (which now bankroll his Mar A Lago
| resort with public money).
| belorn wrote:
| The wast majority of those domains are either redirects or do
| not resolve at all, which is what I got when randomly testing
| them. I would expect that many of them are also be parked at
| dns service companies.
|
| They could apply some efficiency but it would be terrible in
| term of cost savings. There doesn't seem to be a registration
| costs (at least not that I can find). DNS service companies
| might take a $0-50 fee per year per domain? It is a very small
| number in a very large budget for a government entity.
| trallnag wrote:
| Are there government domains in the USA that don't live under
| ".gov" or ".mil" top-level domains? In Germany it is all over the
| place. For example the official website for federal elections is
| "bundeswahlleiter.de" and "bundeswahlleiterin.de" depending on
| whether the election manager is male or female.
| astura wrote:
| Yes, plenty, even for the federal government. There's nothing
| that compels government entities to use .gov.
|
| A few I can think of:
|
| https://www.usps.com/
|
| https://www.goarmy.com/
| notfed wrote:
| "Trust" is a pretty compelling reason.
| psd1 wrote:
| If DNS were invented by German speakers, then requests would
| have a field for noun case...
| TZubiri wrote:
| Now you have me wondering how the cyclades protocol is
| different from IP. Presumably the protocol rejects malformed
| packets even if they would be still parseable, and they would
| additionally berate them in the reply code.
| croisillon wrote:
| they could have solved this with a Nigerian tld
| bundeswahlleitu.ng and then shared it with the other German
| speaking countries :)
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| bundeswahlleitung.de would be fine
| sethaurus wrote:
| There's a quite comprehensive list of them here:
|
| https://github.com/GSA/govt-urls
| pknerd wrote:
| The title should mention that it is for the US only.
| mbb70 wrote:
| The United States owns and operates the `.gov` domain, US only
| is implied.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| No one else uses the gov TLD. Gov.xx maybe, but that's a
| different TLD.
| k4rli wrote:
| classic us defaultism. "the government" and no specifying
| needed
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| This is a predominantly US site, run by a US business.
| There's other nationalities on here, which is great, but it's
| going to be US-centric.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Feel free to take it up with ICANN.
| kube-system wrote:
| At the time .gov was defined, the entire DNS system was a US
| military project on the ARPA-Internet. It was neither global
| nor publicly accessible at the time.
| whalesalad wrote:
| well we literally invented the internet, so...
| xyst wrote:
| Wild that there hasn't been some sort of standardization yet.
|
| Current:
|
| - http://albanycountywy.gov
|
| - http://albanyga.gov
|
| - http://albanyla.gov
|
| - http://albanyny.gov
|
| - http://albanyoregon.gov
|
| Proposed:
|
| {name}.{county|city|parish...}.{2 letter state abbreviation}.gov
|
| - albany.county.wy.gov
|
| - albany.city.ga.gov
|
| - albany.city.ny.gov
|
| - albany.city.or.gov
|
| Then can easily distinguish between local, regional, state, and
| federal resources.
|
| Local resource:
|
| - parksandrec.albany.city.ga.gov
|
| Regional resource:
|
| - cad.albany.county.wy.gov
|
| State resource:
|
| - senate.ny.gov
|
| Federal resource:
|
| - fbi.gov
|
| - nsa.gov
|
| As a citizen, would make it very easy to find what you are
| looking for. Plus the added benefit of trust with .gov. Reduces
| the risk of our vulnerable citizens (elderly) getting phished.
| acc_297 wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| xaldir wrote:
| Hard to standardize after decades of use. Each of these are
| well known to the public, referenced everywhere. Changing this
| would be painful and the benefice is not evident.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Why can't those sites just use a 301 or 308 and just change
| material going forward
| mattl wrote:
| Email, non-web content, 30 years of usage..
| duped wrote:
| What do you do about Springfield Township(1) and Springfield
| Township(2)?
|
| (1)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Township,_Burlingt...
|
| (2)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Township,_Union_Co...
|
| Point being that government is messy and exists to cover _all_
| cases, not the common case.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Them having their own nearly random URLs that doesn't
| differentiate them is not a better solution.
| duped wrote:
| I don't think they're "nearly random", they're just
| inconsistent. And it's a better solution because it works
| today and doesn't require a central authority to manage
| (and when you're talking about the tens of thousands of
| distinct government bodies in the country that central
| management overhead is the thing to optimize)
| kube-system wrote:
| If the problem is inconsistency, and you want to fix that,
| you'd need to propose a solution that can be consistent,
| otherwise you still have the same problem.
| mattl wrote:
| springfield.burlington.nj.us and springfield.union.nj.us
| something like that
|
| Note that Burlington County already has
|
| http://co.burlington.nj.us/
| arionhardison wrote:
| I took a shot at standardizing just a health domain:
| <city>.<state/district>.<country>.medicare.dev. example:
| Medicaid.dev -> https://marina-del-rey.ca.us.medicaid.dev/
|
| Medicare diff so - https://samhsa.medicare.dev/
| - https://phm.medicare.dev/ - ...
| TZubiri wrote:
| I can tell you don't work in the government because you are
| surprised at the notion of a federated state lacking unity.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ok but .. no.. humans fight to the death over authority.. there
| is a tension between expansion and structural consistency..
| physics has concepts of entropy! .. creative assertion: a
| growing system will never be completely in sync with itself.
|
| Reading the other comments, you can see how much influence
| "engineering" and "orthogonal design" actually have.. not much.
|
| Perfect librarianship of living entities has benefits, but
| overall seems unrealistic IMHO.
| amanda99 wrote:
| Here is an interesting diff:
|
| https://github.com/cisagov/dotgov-data/compare/57e66bcb0fccc...
| beams_of_light wrote:
| dei.gov redirects to waste.gov. It's a PHP site with only a
| password entry form.
| ffgh wrote:
| WordPress nevertheless.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| whitehouse.gov is also WordPress
| LorenDB wrote:
| I was quite confused why the government would create an entire
| site telling people to stop consuming manga. I mean, I personally
| don't care for manga/anime stuff, but really?
|
| Turns out it's just a website for Quitman, GA.
| https://quitmanga.gov
| weberer wrote:
| We know at least one New Hampshire politician really wasn't a
| fan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickolas_Levasseur
| layer8 wrote:
| They are lucky it isn't quitmaga.gov.
| rcpt wrote:
| Hopefully there's a Dem leader in Georgia who will jump in on
| the map changing game for this domain
| Slump wrote:
| This brought out an audible chuckle from me. Definitely
| stealing this and sharing this site with a few co-workers who
| are heavily into manga/anime. Thanks for the laugh.
| xmichael909 wrote:
| Yup, I've already given credit to DOGE and Musk for their
| amazing costs saving. Can you believe what DOGE found, the
| government has a website dedicated to getting people to Quit
| watching Manga! Look at this insanity, Musk is just
| incredible. https://www.quitmanga.gov
| rcpt wrote:
| You really can't use sarcasm around that topic. There seems
| to be no limit to what their supporters will fall for.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > You really can't use sarcasm around that topic.
|
| I have often wondered why that is. Why is the sarcasm bit
| turned off for most conservatives? Similarly their humor
| bit is quite off as well. There aren't many successful
| conservative comedians either.
| adolph wrote:
| The Pen Island Effect [0] is so strong I read the comment to
| mean that the writer was happy it was not the whole of
| government but a only particular town in Georgia was against
| Japanese comic books.
|
| Some days I wonder if DNS was a colossal mistake. I have plenty
| of room for remembering numbers now that phones are dead.
| (Ignoring the ever looming never quite here ipv6.)
|
| 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14343390
| LorenDB wrote:
| > The Pen Island Effect [0] is so strong I read the comment
| to mean that the writer was happy it was not the whole of
| government but a only particular town in Georgia was against
| Japanese comic books.
|
| LOL, no. Like I said, I personally don't care for manga/anime
| but I have nothing against others enjoying it.
| adolph wrote:
| My apologies, I didn't mean to claim you supported the town
| of Quitman's online jeremiad, but an appreciation that the
| effort was limited to one municipality.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| My favorite is handynasty.net which is a great schezuan place
| here in philadelphia and totally not Handy Nasty.net
| brookst wrote:
| The ultimate remains that great pre-Stack Exchange site,
| expertsexchange.com. They had to rebrand to add hyphens.
| sparky_z wrote:
| My favorite (maybe apocryphal) has always been the
| Italian division of PowerGen.
|
| powergenitalia.com
| miki123211 wrote:
| There was also childrenswear, therapist, speedofart,
| molestation, cumstore, lesbocages, teacherstalking, and a
| few others I no longer remember.
| toyg wrote:
| _> Pen Island Effect_
|
| In my days it was referred to as expertsexchange...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Someone needs some pocket cash I guess.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| xD.gov
| 38 wrote:
| groan
| switch007 wrote:
| If only DNS could be namespaced..., eg quitman.ga.gov
|
| Only a marginal improvement though
| dpedu wrote:
| Isn't delegating a zone pretty much the same concept in DNS?
| Or am I missing sarcasm here?
| switch007 wrote:
| Yeah was sarcasm as it seems to be a really obvious thing
| to do.
|
| We do it in the UK with <councilname>.gov.uk
|
| (Not sure if it's actual delegation or just A records
| though)
| nativeit wrote:
| We also do it in the US, although I feel like it was more
| common 20-years ago than it is now. For example, here in
| North Carolina, local school systems are typically
| "https://[county name]schools.k12.nc.us"
| miki123211 wrote:
| You still have the "email can't get to Essex or Sussex"
| problem though.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Sarcasm.
|
| People get confused (particularly in the US) if they are
| always used to x.y.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I like fully qualifying domain names (like x.y. in your
| example) and it's funny how many sites break when you do
| this
| jjmarr wrote:
| It is. As an example:
|
| https://sos.ga.gov/
|
| In practice, people get confused by that.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I first thought it was quitmaga.gov
|
| As an insider revolt against Musk's shenanigans. lol
| Eikon wrote:
| Seems like this is missing quite a few :)
| https://www.merklemap.com/search?query=*.gov&page=0
|
| Exported to use the same viewer as the other list:
|
| https://flatgithub.com/barre/all_dot_gov_domains?filename=al...
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| The list in your link includes all the subdomains, so I can't
| really tell if it's more complete than OP's list.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Many of those URLs could use subdomains, especially the state
| level ones.
| m-hodges wrote:
| For a few years I've been operating the EveryDotGov bot; formerly
| on Twitter, formerly on Mastodon, now on BlueSky:
| https://bsky.app/profile/everydotgov.bsky.social
| mattl wrote:
| Why did you stop posting on Mastodon?
| m-hodges wrote:
| botsin.space shut down.
| Arubis wrote:
| Probably worthwhile to start piping the contents of these into a
| private archive.
| TZubiri wrote:
| archive.org should already have this
| ajaygeorge91 wrote:
| where is doge.gov
| irs wrote:
| Is there a similar source for .edu ?
| whalesalad wrote:
| I have the zonefile for .education but not .edu =(
| jeffmc wrote:
| Interesting list. I geocoded the data and created an interactive
| searchable map of the sites -
| https://ramadda.org/repository/a/dotgov
| atxlurker wrote:
| This is far from an exhaustive list of the .gov domain. Perhaps
| it is only the ones managed at the Top level. For instance,
| Texas.gov is listed here, but none of the subdomains are. For
| example gov.texas.gov, house.texas.gov, senate.texas.gov,
| comptroller.texas.gov, etc...
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(page generated 2025-02-21 23:00 UTC)