I agree, and this reminds me: I really wish there was better URL (and DNS) literacy amongst the mainstream 'digitally literate'. It would help reduce risk of phishing attacks, allow people to observe and control state meaningful to their experience (e.g. knowing what the '?t=_' does in youtube), trimming of personal info like tracking params (e.g. utm_) before sharing, understanding https/padlock doesn't mean trusted. Etc. Generally, even the most internet-savvy age group, are vastly ill-equipped.

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weikju 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Generally, even the most internet-savvy age group, are vastly ill-equipped.

It’s a losing battle when even the tools (web browsers hiding URLs by default, heck even Firefox on iOS does it now!) and companies (making posters with nothing more than QR codes or search terms) are what they’re up against….

	▲	Lord-Jobo 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		And with commercial software like Outlook being so ubiquitous and absolutely HORRENDOUS with url obfuscation, formatting, “in network” contacts, and seemingly random spam filtering. Our company does phishing tests like most, and their checklist of suspicious behavior is 1 to 1 useless. Every item on the list is either 1: something that our company actually does with its real emails or 2: useless because outlook sucks a huge wang. So I basically never open emails and report almost everything I get. I’m sure the IT department enjoys the 80% false report rate.

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noctune 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It doesn't help that URLs are badly designed. It's a mix of left- and rightmost significant notation, so the most significant part is in the middle of the URL and hard to spot for someone non-technical.

Really we should be going to com.ycombinator.news/item?id=45789474 instead.

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jaza 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

That's how it was in the good ol Usenet days! Eg alt.tv.simpsons. Not sure how URLs ended up being the other way round.

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arielcostas 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I disagree. We write left to right, so it makes sense when the URL is essentially two parts ("external" and "internal" in regards to "place on the network", "location on the server") they are written left to right and then separated in the middle.

Plus it would make using autocomplete way harder, since I can write "news.y" and get already suggested this site, or "red" and get reddit. If you were to change that, you'd need to type _at least_ "com.yc" to maybe get HN, unless you create your own shortcuts.

Conveniently enough, my browser displays the URL omitting the protocol (assuming HTTPS) and only shows host and port in black, and path+query+fragment

	▲	int_19h 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		But the domain name is not written "left to right", is the problem. As far as autocomplete goes, what you're describing is a behavior of one particular implementation. If URLs looked differently, autocomplete would behave differently as well. I'm also reminded of https://xkcd.com/1172/

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thrance 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Damn, now I want something we'll never have.

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4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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