this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Out of curiosity, other than fmhy.ml, lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad.ml, what other Lemmy instances were using .ml domains? Also, how are the latter two still running but fmhy.ml isn't?
edit: This has triggered a chain of comments I wasn't expecting. I'd appreciate it if someone can answer on a technical level. Is the latter two using a different registrar or name server which is why it still works for them?
Why are so many instances using .ml anyway?
AFAIK, lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml use it because the ml can also stand for "Marxist-Leninist", and the two primary maintainers of Lemmy are Marxist-Leninists . Not sure about the others though.
It can also definitely stand for Machine Learning which is the first thing that comes to my mind
Yes but lemmy has nothing to do with Machine Learning.
That's not true at all. ML was used as an idiological choice as it's the only free TLD you can get and you should not have to pay for a domain name as per Lemmy's creators ideology.
That’s not true. There are a few other free TLDs. I think five total?
I think it's because ML is a popular shorthand for 'Marxist-Leninist' since they mostly seem to be communist servers
I'm guessing because it's sort of an alliteration on lemmy?
Theyre tankies, thats why.
I know a ton about DNS and its technical functionality, not necessarily the regulations guiding registrars, but the technician in me says your TTL (how long other servers wait until asking where xyz.ml points to) hasn’t expired, maybe? Perhaps the government administration process simply hasn’t executed any action against those particular registrars yet?
I never liked TLDs that are from random islands or less than stable countries and there are so many great TLDs available now, I simply don’t see the reason to use such obscure TLDs just for the marketing factor.
Thanks for answering. I figured it was a registrar thing. How bad do you think the situation will be for other .ml domains?
I'm guessing fmhy.ml was using Freenom but lemmy.ml and lemmy.ml were using a different domain registrar, hence the situation right now.
Yeah, not a good situation.
The main story I found seems to indicate that many government communications have been misdirected due to the typo of .ml instead of the intended .mil - reserved for the US military. 🤦♂️ There has been an entrepreneur that holds the contract to manage Mali’s country domain and that’s expiring Monday (24th?). I’m assuming the government is not renewing the contract and will instead be taking over the domains and any related data. He has been collecting some of that data and warning the US government about the issue to no avail…for 10 years.
ICANN is the body responsible for the gTLD initiative, which gives you names like .social and .world. They are an American non-profit with a multinational committee, handling nearly all of the databases that store our Internet address records, etc., you can be relatively assured that your domain won’t be messed with.
The instances really have no option here than to test out moving their systems to an alternative domain and “bench test” their migration to discover a path that works or a least come to the conclusion to start all over.
Holy shit this is actually kind of a huge story
Totally understandable incompetence from the military.
I think I only have a few original pages from my service. Most just disappear.
Lmao if the US military gets phished by a domain typo they deserve it.
I remember reading somewhere that Tuvalu gets like 10% of their entire yearly income from Twitch.
I now pronounce Twitch as Twitch dot Tuvalu, but I get weird "huh?"s when I say it like that.
You can see all but posts and comments won't be on their server until back online that are a few it went down. So I can visit my communities like https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/artwork that I mod. I can see it but nothing will happen until it comes back online. That's what understand at least.