Wait really? I use a .us domain for personal stuff, that.. makes me want to reconsider.

Also .us domains don't have who is privacy.

Please don't keep us in suspense ... who is privacy?

They probably meant "whois privacy"[1] (without the space). Whois is basically a way to get information about a domain name (and many other stuff). Whois privacy just ensures that your address, name and other stuff is not public.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_privacy

They were probably joking when they asked that question.

Your reply doesn't seem sarcastic, so I take it you genuinely r/whoosh'ed (that's a reference to a subreddit about situations where someone is acting clueless).

I know ;) Some people still value an explanation though.

Realistically, I don't think HN is the place for those kinds of jokes, which are best kept for reddit/twitter.

Yeah I'm increasingly seeing these reddit-style low effort jokes on here, hopefully it's transient as folks acclimatize to the culture and customs here.

Yeah I found that out when I stupidly used my real contact info, and ended up getting spammed all to hell.

WHOIS privacy isn't a registry-level service. It's a registrar-level service.

It’s both. Some domains do not allow WHOIS privacy (.us is one of them), some have it built-in, while most don’t care and registrars can fill in with fake data.

> GoDaddy runs the root dns for .us

.us is not the “root DNS” and your misidentification is muddying the waters.

.us is a TLD (Top-Level Domain) and more specifically, a ccTLD (cc = ‘Country Code’).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.us

And the English Wikipedia says that its registrar is a subsidiary of GoDaddy named “Registry Services, LLC”.

The root DNS servers and registry are not run by GoDaddy or a subsidiary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server

They are operated by important entities. Not companies that release sexy commercials featuring Danica Patrick. I keep getting confused between GoDaddy and Carl’s, Jr.

I think its clear from context they mean the .us TLD, and not the root zone, since obviously it wouldn't make sense to talk about the root zone for .us.

Its also very reasonable to use the more well-known name of the parent company to describe sonething done by its subsidary.

“It’s not run by GoDaddy, but a subsidiary of GoDaddy!”

Way to be so pedantic you miss the forest for the trees.

.us is not a root name server. The root name servers are one more degree removed.

Hence 'for .us'. The trouble with this form of pedantic is that the nicer way to interpret the misunderstanding is that the pedant is ignorant either of language or the structure of dns.

"He runs the Internet routers for our company." -> "Your company doesn't run the Internet" -> wtf?

It was a clarification that GoDaddy's ability to fuck everything up isn't quite as broad as suggested.

It actually didn’t help at all. Read the part quoted again, OP specifically indicated .us, not “root zone”. The registrar for .us (GoDaddy) is in fact the “root dns for .us”

> The registrar for .us (GoDaddy) is in fact the “root dns for .us”

“root DNS” has a very specific meaning, and you’ve misused it again.

Root DNS means ‘.’ and only ‘.’ There is no other “root”. That’s why it’s called “root” to be unambiguous.

In fact, in recent history, the root name servers use their own domain for convenient forward DNS resolution: ‘root-servers.net’ GoDaddy doesn’t run this either... Surprise, surprise!

> Your company doesn't run the Internet

Yeah well as a fragment, the statement makes sense, more or less, because there’s no “term of art” being abused there in your reductio ad absurdum.

Indeed you can run your own private root DNS, if you don’t want to interact with the real Internet, but your private roots are different from your private/hidden/split-horizon TLD. Another thing GoDaddy isn’t running. Did you know that GoDaddy doesn’t run news.ycombinator.com? Not even a subsidiary!

GoDaddy doesn’t run any “root DNS”, and they never have: period, full stop. [Pun intended]

The whole point of a tree is that every node is the root of its subtree.

Exactly!

The original clarification was perfectly fine to and arguing about the correction is reply-all-unsubscribe line noise. There was confusion, it error corrected, move on.

Yet you chose to reply-all-unsubscribe line noise further. Maybe take your own advice and move on bro.

Necromancing an over two-day old thread to ask someone to move on is a bit rich lol.

Yet you still reply again! Guess you put zero value in your own advice, got it!

That's not what they said.

GoDaddy is the rot of us domains, besides being rotten culturally as well

I understood what you meant. I can understand why someone would want to clarify the terminology for those who don't know DNS well.