I asked this as a comment on my previous post, but I still have some questions. 1: If ML stands for Mali and they’re not from Mali, then why would they represent a foreign country? 2: Since it’s not Mali, what does the ML stand for? If it’s a pair of letters, it represents a country or stands for two words. Machine Learning? McCartney Lennon? Mega Lemmy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ml
It’s Mali. Period.
Just because someone registers a domain to host a website from Mali doesn’t mean they represent Mali. Tonga sells domains to anyone with the .to extension, which are used by many torrent sites because Tonga doesn’t care much about respecting piracy laws elsewhere.
You’re reading way too much into it.
I’ve always hated that about DNS, I think it should have been more governed. For example with .gov, well .gov from the first point.
.govshouldn’t be anything really except for like UN or something. It shouldn’t imply US..us.gov, or Australiaau.gov.ohio.us.govakron.ohio.us.govtreasurer@akron.ohio.us.gov.instead we have crazy domains like
akronohio.gov. I mean, just the wild west of domains out here. It could have been so organized, peopleGiven my username, I was naturally very surprised as I read through your example. (Totally agree btw, but that would make too much sense)
Wait really? I swear I didn’t read your username I just randomly picked Akron!
Wild! So devilstrip is what people from Akron call the grass between the road and the sidewalk.
Never knew! That’s so so weird and funny!
Why isn’t there another domain that they could have used so it doesn’t look like they’re from Mali?
Price.
The more common the tld (.com and .net for example are often double the price of many others) the more expensive it is to keep that domain registered.
Why is it top level if it’s so rare?
Top level as in it’s the top/beginning of the domain. (reading right to left separated by periods)
Domains have different parts: subdomain.rootzonedomain.topleveldomain
So using the example: google.com
Google owns the ‘google’ portion of the domain, called the root zone domain. They pay VeriSign Global Registry Services (the owner of the ‘com’ top level domain) to keep the fully qualified domain name ‘google.com’ registered to google inc. Google can then add anything they want to the beginning of the domain such as keep.google.com. These are called sub-domains. They could be part of and used by the company itself or even rented out by google the same way google pays VeriSign for their ‘com’ registration.
For example: No-ip is a service that will freely rent subdomains of their no-ip.com domain, mainly so you can easily reach your self-hosted services without needing to remember your home IP. You could host lemmy.no-ip.com if you wanted to.
The owners of sought after tlds like ‘com’ and ‘net’ set the prices higher than some others as there is more demand. Because of this many self-hosters amd smaller companies just use cheaper tlds like ‘ml’. The extra cost isn’t really worth it.
Great explanation. Thank you.
there is no “rarity” with domain names. They are simply for sale. You can go buy any domain you want if it’s not taken (and unless it’s .gov or .mil, I believe those are restricted)
Why do you care? What does it matter? Who gives a shit?
If I’m asking, then it must mean that I am expressing interest in the topic, am I not?
I do.
Mind if I ask why? I don’t like their political views, but this seems like a non-issue to me unless I’m not understanding something. They’ve never made any claims about living in Mali, and it’s a popular and accepted trend of using domains that are convenient and cheap no matter their location. The only exceptions I believe are .gov and .edu.
Because it’s representing a foreign country. I have a better grasp of it now, but I didn’t understand why they did that.