Slightly related, I have a bunch of domain names I don't necessarily need -- acquired in the same vein as in the article (jokes, failed/abandoned projects, ...) -- and would be interested in selling them somehow if possible. Is there any general advice for how one goes about this? Is it just parking pages and hoping someone stumbles across them? Or is there a more-specific marketplace or something of the like?
For selling domains uiu can list them on afternic or sedo. But if you don’t want to wait to sell, just list on nameliquidate, the Reverse auction for domains.
They probably aren't worth anything. Since all the new TLDs got added, seems most people would rather just pick a different tld than pay some inflated price for a used one.
One night a few months ago, after two large beers I imagined up a domain name that was SO PERFECT that I HAD TO BUY IT and swore that this time, unlike all the others, I was TOTALLY GOING TO DO SOMETHING WITH IT.
The next morning, looking for an excuse to not get out of bed, I actually followed through:
Your website adds an entry to the history on every keystroke. You might want to fix that (use window.history.replaceState instead of window.history.pushState).
On mobile, it completely breaks the back button. I had to swipe about 50 times and watch it letter by letter to get back here.
Secondly, what's the data source? I just tested 'segue' which counted as 1, which makes me think it's guessing instead of like, a word map. Just curious now.
It does a client-side guess based on vowels, and then hits the server for an authoritative version. The server has a word:syllables map I derived from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary.
In the "segue" case, it looks like the dictionary lists two pronounciations, one as 'seg', so it uses the lesser of the two. Not sure that pronounciation is valid, though.
Thanks to you and frosted-flakes, I pushed a fix for the back button issue - good catch, I appreciate it.
Tem years ago a friend and I arranged the FOSCON event, which was the free OSCON for people who couldn't afford that conference. O'Reilly was happy to collaborate with us by the way.
We had an event where DHH and a bunch of other cool people came out to support us.
As the MCs, we pretended to be the founders of a new company that was going to take on Twitter and Kevin Rose's new Pownce. We had slides between each presentation with awful marketing buzzwords and tried to appear as clueless as possible. We would ask people to quiet down and say things like "Listen, we paid a lot of money for this sponsorship..."
Omitting vowels was all the rage. We called our company:
Sqkwzr.com
(Can you believe that domain was free?)
The company took the concept of Twitter to a whole new level, where you could "tweet" out your farts and things like that automatically. We had a slide with each egress point labeled with hex addresses like 0xa55.
The tagline in the slides was: "every orifice has a story to tell."
Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu founder) was at OSCON that year and I approached him to see if he would attend and pretend he was an investor. I still have the email where he declined.
"krabouillator" likely comes from écrabouiller in French (colloquial/childish, to stomp and smash) that phonetically (and in young children) could be misheard or mispronounced as "krabouiller".
Excitedly bought pjg.com.au off the drop list. Because of the underline on the link, I assumed it was pig.com.au. Realised my mistake and made a list of companies with the initials PJG, pitched them, and sold the domain for 10x what I paid. Not worth the hassle all up! Looks like it's lapsed and been bought by a domainer since.
Huh, that’s the first time I’ve heard of a squatted .au domain in quite some years. For the most part people don’t try it because it’s against auDA rules. Even apart from the squatting rules, this particular registration is liable to cancelling because it doesn’t meet the eligibility criteria even before the even stricter rules that came in in April (though those don’t apply to this particular domain until they next renew it) because the domain name doesn’t match any business or trading name, or their line of business, or anything like that. In theory you could get this particular registration cancelled just by submitting a complaint to the registrar of record first, then to auDA if they don’t cancel it.
I've come across loads of squatted names over the years. I'm not familiar with the latest rules, but for a time you could just say that "pjg content site is a service provided by umbrellabrand pty ltd". What's the latest?
I did manage to get a domain cancelled the other week actually - renewed to an entity that had ceased renewing their ABN/ACN. Awkward process with the registrar though.
Squatting has always been against the rules and grounds for cancellation.
The latest changes are tightening the eligibility criteria. I won’t enumerate them, https://www.auda.org.au/policy/au-domain-administration-rule..., §2.4.4 (Eligibility and allocation criteria → com.au and net.au namespace) is pretty approachable. Under those rules (and again, pjg.com.au is currently tied to the legacy rules, not these ones), pjg.com.au fails to satisfy any condition in sub-paragraph 2.4.4(2).
I have chrismorgan.com.au, and my claim for eligibility is actually slightly tenuous; I haven’t registered any business name (something like $40/year if I recall correctly); 2.4.4(2)(a) I slightly surprisingly fail because it cares about legal names, and my first name is legally Christopher, not Chris, so it doesn’t match (they define the term “match”); and so my claim depends on 2.4.4(2)(b), that “chrismorgan” is an acronym of “Christopher James Morgan”—an unusual but linguistically valid interpretation of the word “acronym”, including their definition of it.
Of those two, ddp.com.au is squatted, but pbm.com.au isn’t, though there’s a fair chance of it failing the eligibility criteria or violating other auDA rules.
I’d be interested to see someone do a widespread squatting scan and submit a bunch of complaints and see what comes of it. But it’d take long enough that I’m not going to do it.
Years ago it was a very common tactic to buy up any three-letter domains you could get and find targets to pitch them to. I think the going rate was about $800. People would grab them off the drop list and have a pretty decent strike rate. In the case of PJG there were things like P* J* Graphics or P* J* Group.
Years ago, in my younger, I thought I was extremely funny days, I bought yomamashouse.com simply so I could own the email address of im@yomamashouse.com.
I was curious about tab.vs.space, and find vs.space is unregistered and a premium domain; pricing is high and seems peculiarly inconsistent. Here are the USD prices various registrars list:
• get.space says it’s $5,000 (actually NZD7,102.40 and I can’t find a currency switch) to register, and the same to renew.
• Namecheap says it’s $3,250 to register, and makes no comment on renewal.
• GoDaddy says it’s $3,300 to register (marked down from $6,500) and $6,500 to renew.
• Google Domains says it’s $5,400 per year. (But until I explicitly asked for USD it was telling me NZD6250, which is about USD4400, a rather significant difference.)
A couple of other registrars that I tried didn’t cope with vs.space because they seem to think it’s invalid and a third character is required: hover.com just shows search results with no message to explain why it ignored the exact match vs.space, and 101domain.com tells you it’s too short to be valid.
Many TLDs don't count (letter dash letter) as a premium/reserved domain like they do for other dictionary words or 2-3 character domains. Looks like v-s.space is claimed but for example z-s was just $9.99 a year
I used that trick when .dev was launched and snagged a-z.dev for all my future domain name needs
My home town is too small to have a zoo. I bought a domain that makes it look like there is, which makes me proud owner of the veterinarian@ email address. I also had a lot of fun taking a free design template and combine it with Creative Commons zoo animal photos.
There's an Italian podcast, Power Pizza, which also does a similar thing, but the domains have a silly/surreal vibe rather than an offensive one. Their website is called unpodcastveramentebellissimoguardaveloconsiglioproprio.com ("A really beautiful podcast, look, I warmly recommend it").
Other examples:
cheschifoesserenudo.online: "Being naked sucks", for merchandise such as T-Shirts, etc. (now offline)
datecideisoldi.com: "Give us money", their Patreon
nondatecideisoldi.com: "Don't give us money", same as above
I used to own hitlerballs.com, inspired by this comic.[0] Couldn't really find a use for it. Looks like the current owner is trying to sell it for a profit, lol.
> In Warhammer 40K, the Orks faction have a big robot called a Stompa, but in French it gets translated as ‘Krabouillator’ for some reason. The Stompa looks nothing like a crab, so nobody remembers why it got translated to ‘Krabouillator.’
Stompa is another way to spell stomper. krabouillator would have been obvious to any French speaking person as meaning ecrabouilleur, or one that stomp. A far cry from crab (or crabe if you are a French speaker).
Weird the author didn't try to even investigate that.
Various levels of efforts are made but non-English joke/punny domains rarely are taken. I can readily make pun URLs like https://nanka.enpitsu[.]de/kaite ("draw/something.withpencil") or https://kabeni.kaite[.]moe ("drawing.onawall.isdrawing") or http://okuruma[.]de/irashita ("visiting/by.car") for example. That "some reason" are probably often harder than native language speakers think and I guess domain businesses hasn't tapped enough of regional markets either.
For what is worth 'Krabouillator' most likely should evoke Ekrabouillator which would be an orcish spelling of écrabouillateur (not a real word either) which is someone who "écrabouille"/crush/stomp. Écrabouiller is a real verb.
So: To stomp > stompa and Écrabouiller -> Krabouillator.
Some trolls also do this for political reasons. https://antifa.com used to redirect to Biden’s website, as if he owned Antifa, but this is a troll. https://vamostovictory.com redirects to a website of Trump flailing his arms. Many others redirect to both sides of the aisle as political jokes.
172 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadThe next morning, looking for an excuse to not get out of bed, I actually followed through:
https://haikupotamus.com/
On mobile, it completely breaks the back button. I had to swipe about 50 times and watch it letter by letter to get back here.
Secondly, what's the data source? I just tested 'segue' which counted as 1, which makes me think it's guessing instead of like, a word map. Just curious now.
In the "segue" case, it looks like the dictionary lists two pronounciations, one as 'seg', so it uses the lesser of the two. Not sure that pronounciation is valid, though.
Thanks to you and frosted-flakes, I pushed a fix for the back button issue - good catch, I appreciate it.
But I got an offer I didn’t want to refuse and sold it…
We had an event where DHH and a bunch of other cool people came out to support us.
As the MCs, we pretended to be the founders of a new company that was going to take on Twitter and Kevin Rose's new Pownce. We had slides between each presentation with awful marketing buzzwords and tried to appear as clueless as possible. We would ask people to quiet down and say things like "Listen, we paid a lot of money for this sponsorship..."
Omitting vowels was all the rage. We called our company:
Sqkwzr.com
(Can you believe that domain was free?)
The company took the concept of Twitter to a whole new level, where you could "tweet" out your farts and things like that automatically. We had a slide with each egress point labeled with hex addresses like 0xa55.
The tagline in the slides was: "every orifice has a story to tell."
Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu founder) was at OSCON that year and I approached him to see if he would attend and pretend he was an investor. I still have the email where he declined.
I just found it amusing that you could interpret this in more than one way.
> We had an event where DHH and a bunch of other cool people came out to support us.
> We had an event where DHH and a bunch of other cool people came out to support us.
Editor, Atlas Shrugged, please.
Source: was 5
I did manage to get a domain cancelled the other week actually - renewed to an entity that had ceased renewing their ABN/ACN. Awkward process with the registrar though.
The latest changes are tightening the eligibility criteria. I won’t enumerate them, https://www.auda.org.au/policy/au-domain-administration-rule..., §2.4.4 (Eligibility and allocation criteria → com.au and net.au namespace) is pretty approachable. Under those rules (and again, pjg.com.au is currently tied to the legacy rules, not these ones), pjg.com.au fails to satisfy any condition in sub-paragraph 2.4.4(2).
I have chrismorgan.com.au, and my claim for eligibility is actually slightly tenuous; I haven’t registered any business name (something like $40/year if I recall correctly); 2.4.4(2)(a) I slightly surprisingly fail because it cares about legal names, and my first name is legally Christopher, not Chris, so it doesn’t match (they define the term “match”); and so my claim depends on 2.4.4(2)(b), that “chrismorgan” is an acronym of “Christopher James Morgan”—an unusual but linguistically valid interpretation of the word “acronym”, including their definition of it.
I just entered 3 random domains to test them and two were squatted.
http://ddp.com.au http://pbm.com.au
Of those two, ddp.com.au is squatted, but pbm.com.au isn’t, though there’s a fair chance of it failing the eligibility criteria or violating other auDA rules.
I’d be interested to see someone do a widespread squatting scan and submit a bunch of complaints and see what comes of it. But it’d take long enough that I’m not going to do it.
I let it expire.
• get.space says it’s $5,000 (actually NZD7,102.40 and I can’t find a currency switch) to register, and the same to renew.
• Namecheap says it’s $3,250 to register, and makes no comment on renewal.
• GoDaddy says it’s $3,300 to register (marked down from $6,500) and $6,500 to renew.
• Google Domains says it’s $5,400 per year. (But until I explicitly asked for USD it was telling me NZD6250, which is about USD4400, a rather significant difference.)
A couple of other registrars that I tried didn’t cope with vs.space because they seem to think it’s invalid and a third character is required: hover.com just shows search results with no message to explain why it ignored the exact match vs.space, and 101domain.com tells you it’s too short to be valid.
I used that trick when .dev was launched and snagged a-z.dev for all my future domain name needs
I think it’s a considerably shittier to charge a premium for <6-letter-dictionary-word>.dev however.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150801140916/http://hairwaytos...
some day… some day I will figure out the right joke for that page.
questionablecontent.net
boner.moe
fart.computer
dildo.pizza
ass.golf
mydickandballs.com
dong.zone
butt.church
sexual.fish
unionrobotics.net
69.bingo
poop.rodeo
boners.lol
piss.farm
swole.dog
burgerking.sex
powerful.dog
cum.energy
qc.bike
rectal.dentist
questionablecontent.horse
One of these things is not like the other....
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3481
The exact domain name is visible here:
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3500
Other examples:
cheschifoesserenudo.online: "Being naked sucks", for merchandise such as T-Shirts, etc. (now offline)
datecideisoldi.com: "Give us money", their Patreon
nondatecideisoldi.com: "Don't give us money", same as above
chewbac.ca
dromiceiomim.us
Hmm - Schlock Mercenary is supposed to be launching a new series too...
I can find no mention of this anywhere.
edit: He mentions more stories in the q & a here:
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/2020-there-will-be-an-...
https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1621
Weird, because there is no “.gas” TLD.
Stompa is another way to spell stomper. krabouillator would have been obvious to any French speaking person as meaning ecrabouilleur, or one that stomp. A far cry from crab (or crabe if you are a French speaker).
Weird the author didn't try to even investigate that.
So: To stomp > stompa and Écrabouiller -> Krabouillator.
For a few drunken minutes at least.
https://geethub.com/
A few...
fscking.com whoreanddecore.com inyourbumbum.com imgoingtofu*kyourmom.com limhoe.com limhos.net eatoutatyourmom.com
and