ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • Thoughts on Threads

    Thoughts on Threads

    in

    Threads Launched.

    My overall impression of threads 48hrs in are pretty “meh.”

    If anything, it’s proving just how mature of a product Twitter really is at this point. It’s missing simple things that we’ve taken for granted, like gif integration. It’s missing more substaintial things hashtags and a way to actually see posts from people who follow.

    Is it actually enshittified from the get-go!?

    All the “Twitter killer” micro-blogging apps popping off in the past 6 – 12 months lead me to agree with growing thought that we are at the end of an era.

    I’m getting strong deja vu of peak-MySpace when we had a bunch of bad choices (Friendster? Bebo? Orkut? Dogster? Facebook) and no real direction.

    I’m just not sure what era we are at the end of.

    Twitter invented a new type of web app, a new category of discourse; a sort of global “town square” and love it or hate it, Twitter (along with Reddit TBF) has been the catalyst of so so much social change.

    As I’ve said before, IMHO this is the main reason it’s hard to “kill” Twitter – even with a feature-complete clone – it’s more than the sum of its parts.

    I have no idea what’s next, but if we’re on a retro-internet tip, maybe blogging’s coming back.

    PS
    PSS

    Add another item to the lack-of-support tally.

    Threads does not support oembed. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.

  • I Need To Found A Town

    I Need To Found A Town

    in

    …if I want to be allowed to register the domain name neudorf.ca.

    I’ve always thought it would be cool to register a domain for my surname so that I could give my family @neudorf.ca email addresses and website subdomains. Or even just as a bit of nerd cred.

    Unfortunately, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority won’t let me.

    If you do a whois lookup on neudorf.ca you’ll see the following non-descriptive error message.

    I’ve actually been on a quest to figure out how to register neudorf.ca since before I registered ohryan.ca over 18 years ago. Back then, the error message was a bit more specific. It mentioned something to the effect of the domain name being reserved for a municipality.

    Sure enough, Neudorf is a village in Saskatchewan with a population of just under 300 and a nice looking community hall.

    It turns out that the CIRA has reserved all municipal names registered in the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base and only official of those municipalities are ever allowed to own the domain name. They’re not even allowed to transfer it, according to a conversation I had with @cira on Twitter.

    However in cases where the municipality shares a name with a major brand (ex. molson.ca, landmark.ca) the brand has been given the right to register the domain name. What gives?

    A close reading of the CIRA’s General Registration Rules indicates that there is one small exception to these rules, written consent from the CIRA.

    So this is what I am now pursuing, written consent. It seems like less work than founding a town.

    P.S.

    While I understand the the motivation for this policy is likely to avoid domain name squatting. It seems like a better policy would be to reserve the third-level domain name (i.e. neudorf.sk.ca) rather than give every tiny hamlet and village a reservation that’s difficult and annoying to register if you’re a legitimate party sharing the same.

    There must be hundreds of overlaps between surnames, even business names and small municipalities who will never ever bother to register a domain name.

  • Twitter Circles Security Incident

    in

    A couple of months ago I wrote a post promoting the use of Twitter’s Circles. It was one of my coping mechanisms for using current Twitter in its semi-broken state.

    Twitter Circles as LJ Friends List

    Then people started reporting that their private circle posts had were appearing in public timelines.

    They were right.

    Twitter sent out an email last week acknowledging what they call an “incident.” So that something…

    I feel bad if somebody followed my advice to use circles and then Twitter leaked something sensitive.

    Sorry.