While an OS may hide extensions, not everything does. Notably, gmail shows the file extension for attachments.
See: people calling any animated image a gif, even though many are apng or webp
See also: “Why does the Save icon look like that?” Most computer users these days have never in their life seen a floppy drive, but they still recognize it as the save icon.
I've seen my aging father change settings on a new computer to turn on showing file extensions on Windows, because he and a lot of older users were on the cutting edge of computing back when knowing the file extension was useful for choosing how to open it.
Sure, I'm acutely aware that there are stupid users out there; I've worked I.T. But there is also a whole spectrum of computer users with varying levels of computer proficiency out there, who us "computer people" don't see because they're not the ones who necessarily need help or cause problems. You can't necessarily extrapolate a visible minority of incompetent computer users to make statements about the entire population.
I don't necessarily have an opinion on whether that's enough justification to get rid of the .zip TLD. I'm just tired of the anti-user sentiment I'm hearing here.
Man, you're lucky. My aging father doesn't know how to change the inputs on his TV. And he doesn't understand why "our Internet is down" implies "the TV will not work" when the TV is clearly working, because it's telling him that it "can't connect."
as you point out, a .exe hiding behind a .zip is a problem caused by hiding extensions. and if we still lived in the 16bit DOS/Windows world, btw, MICROSOFT.COM would be a super problematic thing to click "especially-whether" the "extension" is shown or not (in 16 bit MSDOS, .COM is just as much a .EXE as .EXE is)
I'm just writing to extend your thought to the hiding of http:// and also www.
That's what introduces these problems, not a .ZIP tld, and I suspect/know it's the same people with this same type of thinking (whackamole problem solving) who think hiding http:// is a good idea (thereby causing the problem) and then suggest to fix any problems with more regulatory agencies to control what TLDs get created, what words we're allowed to use where, etc. (thereby causing new problems)
I'm not saying computer people "know better" and therefore invent systems that are tolerable to normies, I'm just saying I can't stand when normies are in charge of things that matter to me.
Indeed, a bunch of system binaries are themselves like that for historical reasons - CHCP.COM, FORMAT.COM, MORE.COM etc - because they originally had such names long ago in DOS, and someone somewhere might have a batch file that includes the extension.
And DOS got them from CP/M before it.
Which is a bit ironic since there was a time where browsers would routinely open popups in new windows, upon which it was immediately misused by ads, upon which browsers implemented counter measures. We're just in the next iteration of this.
A responsible OS should help educate and empower their users. Windows just want them to stay where they are, use Office and only install programs from their official store.
It's worse than phishing, because it could be a legitimate email from someone you trust.
(Overall, I mostly agree that the issues are ultimately somewhat minimal... but this is a situation where there's absolutely no upside and only downside.)
So the question is: is there another convincing reason for allowing this TLD on an internet level?
And what would you think about a .pdf or .docx TLD?
Or why even require a fixed extension given that it's a recursive system anyway.
1. Local DNS resolution. Bare (non-gTLD) DNS names are common in business networks, and although the expansion of the existing gTLD set complicates that, opening it wide can have unintended resolution impacts for these networks.
2. Browsers enforce security boundaries based on the origin of a site, and doing this is complex due to things like .co.uk. A naive implementation would grant all .co.uk domains into a single origin. The problem comes into play when looking at local DNS names. Without a known gTLD on the end of the DNS name, the browser assumes the root of the origin is the hostname itself. That is, given a locally resolvable http://bar and a locally resolvable http://foo.bar, both sites can communicate without restriction with respect to the Same Origin Policy. If we were to make gTLDs arbitrary, we'd have to break that behavior which could break a lot of intranet applications.
> Windows has hidden file extensions by default now for decades.
Thankfully this is easy to turn off. I hate it, and it makes me mad for a few seconds each time I get a new machine/OS install.
perhaps i am getting mussed up by the definition of "non-technical people" but i've worked directly with many, many non-technical people over many years who definitely knew what a zip file was and what it was for. they might not all have necessarily known how to _create_ a zip file, and sure i had to coach/train a few here and there who legitimately didn't have a clue, but i think if you're talking about anyone who has used a computer for a large-ish piece of their work (whether it is "technical" work or not) in the last 10 years or so, the chance of them having more than no clue about what a zip file is, is higher than you think it is.
i can think of multiple instances each of accountants, graphics/media/designer folks, scriptwriters, admin/executive assistants, chauffeurs, playwrights, stagehands, light/rope riggers, costume designers/tailors, HR folks, security guards, painters, writers etc who have had to deal with .zips.
would a 20-years-exp industrial lathe engineer/specialist know what to do with a zip? maybe? maybe not? depends if they like to mess around with computers after hours or does their company distribute work orders via email? if so, maybe they've dealt with a zip.
if a "non-technical person" is someone who doesn't use a computer very much, then yeah, i'm with you. i personally wouldn't consider a junior graphic designer to be "technical" but i'd bet you all the money in my wallet that 95/100 of junior graphic designers know what to do with a .zip file.
BTW everything else you said, i 100% agree.
A user doesn't navigate through the file system to a folder where they've saved a bunch of notes in discrete text files of some format or another, they start up a notekeeping app and use its interface to open their notes. Where are these notes saved? That is either hard to find in the bowels of the settings of the app, or entirely hidden and they're saved in a database accessible only to that specific app.
Or worse, on some disk “in the cloud" rented by the app maker, subject to subscription fees and the stability of the company.
The cycle of grumpy old men will go on, gen Z will fondly remember the tech of their day and think that later gens are lazy/too trusting for letting AGI manage their lives.
Those who are old enough to remember when files had extensions might know. Those who work with a file system daily know. In both cases we are talking about extreme minorities now.
I would make a weaker claim than "doesn't know what it is", there are probably a lot of people there who at one point have seen "files.zip" in gmail and then downloaded it and double clicked it to expand it or such, but I don't think any of them are going to be confused by URLs with .zip domains.
I'm actually curious about the intended distribution of this website - it's header is "If you clicked on this domain by mistake" but... I clicked on it very intentionally from an HN link, so didn't expect a file attachment at all; not sure what the scenario is where something could look like a file but actually be a link? E.g. if it's on a malicious website you could easily trick users with "Download stuff.zip" link text that actually points to "bobsmalware.com" or whatever, which works just as well for anyone loosely familiar with .zip files but not sophisticated enough to not trust the text vs the actual link pointer. Just like the original comment from `SimonPStevens says.
[0] grew up on mobile, not on desktop/laptop
[1] medical, physical therapy, landscaping, painting, mechanical, etc
Recently, she asked me to put a set of documents into a folder (She meant a compressed file) because some page required it
I have always found it fascinating, considering she has worked with Office products for the last ~20 years
For example, I recently learned you can't name a file CON. Try it. Somehow over all those decades, I've never tried to do this until Tom Scott made a video about it:
Think of your 80 year old granny, or the guy down the road who’s never owned a computer.
Maybe you don’t have many in your circle but they are everywhere.
Are you kidding? That guy has to convert his files to binary, put them on a USB drive, carry them to SunOS server, plug them in, and type something in a command line to send the binary over Serial to his CNC machine.
Industrial equipment isn't EOL at 30 years, it's "lightly used." You'd be floored at how much "ancient" tech knowledge is required to operate it.
Most non-technical people in the 40+ age range that I know are well aware what .zip was and still is.
Please don't consider your circle of peers in their 20s as a representative sample of society.
> Windows has hidden file extensions by default now for decades.
It amazes me that they won't stop doing this. The security problems around it are enormous, not to mention that it causes a lot of confusion that isn't easily resolved by non-technical people.
Though, I think the solution here is for apps to stop doing that.
And hopefully they are told that they might be risky.
Most non-technical people I know wouldn't have a clue what a .zip was. Windows has hidden file extensions by default now for decades. And having a phishing link in an email that says something.zip but links to somethingelse.com is a basic scammer 101 level technique. Why would it matter if the .zip was a real part of the URL or not.
Don't get me wrong, I dislike all of the generic TLDs, and the registration process behind them. But of all the points to argue on them, this seems like the weakest and least relevant.