
Non-Libyan URL Shortener - pitdesi
http://gadaf.fi/index.php
======
soult
While it is a funny play on all those .ly domains and the fact that vb.ly got
seized by the Libyan government, it is my opinion that yet another URL
shortener is a stupid way of protest.

Let me explain: I work with the Urlteam, a group of people that saves
shorturl->longurl mappings for a bunch of shorteners. The typical life cycle
of small shorteners is this:

\- URL shortener opens, gets some praise for weird feature that bit.ly doesn't
have.

\- People actually don't care about feature and continue to use bit.ly.

\- Spammers discover the shortener and abuse it.

\- Owner closes the shortener because he can't deal with the spam.

All that remains are some non-functional links.

~~~
zackattack
How do spammers successfully abuse shorteners?

~~~
tlrobinson
I don't know what the parent commenter had in mind, but perhaps bad spam
filters don't follow redirects and bad link filters don't filter certain TLDs?

~~~
vog
Why would a link filter want to filter whole TLDs? Shouldn't this be based at
least on the domain name rather than discriminating whole countries by
blocking their TLDs?

~~~
tlrobinson
I don't know. I could imagine really stupid spam filters looking for strings
matching /http:\/\/.*\\.(com|net|org)/ or something. Of course that's no one
else's fault but the filter.

------
Xk
You should block me from redirecting a link to itself.

<http://gadaf.fi/5j>

And probably block cycles too.

~~~
staktrace
Isn't that impossible? You can redirect to a page (under your control) that
redirects to itself, if your goal is to get the user stuck in a redirect loop.
Until their browser decides enough is enough, that is.

~~~
wahnfrieden
You can have the service test the link for redirects (using HEAD requests),
and have a max depth to be safe. Then if a URL occurs twice, or the max depth
is reached, mark as invalid.

------
InclinedPlane
Or just use j.mp, it's the same as bit.ly just without the dependence on the
Libya TLD.

~~~
RyanKearney
And it's shorter! Although I've started using goo.gl since they offer similar
analytic data on your shortlinks and, well, it's powered by Google's
infrastructure.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Oh, nice! I didn't know that google's shortener had been launched for general
use (it used to be google reader specific).

------
ares2012
Both funny and poignant. It is interesting to consider how many popular web
services use .ly domain names and are hence tied to Libya (albeit far
removed).

------
thushan
I tip my hat to the genius who came up with this.

~~~
gaius
He's nothing compared to the genius behind <http://arseh.at/>

------
Locke1689
One minor problem being that it takes the "short" out of "URL shortener."

Decent for making a point, but those characters are a precious commodity on
Twitter.

------
jschuur
Slightly unrelated, but given the current sanctions, you can't renew a .ly
domain name right now as a US business, correct? Bit.ly's domain name expires
early next year, last time I checked.

~~~
dmor
do you have a source? i have some .ly domains to renew and have been
considering what to do with them

~~~
jschuur
I'll confess, I hadn't looked into my assumption further until now. Details of
the US sanctions against Libya can be found here (look for the Executive Order
13566 PDF):

[http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/p...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/pages/libya.aspx)

The .ly registrar Libyan Spider has been fairly communicative and open with
its customers. Their CEO Hadi Naser says they are a 'private company run by
ordinary citizens that have no affiliation with the government' and that
'purchasing the .ly domains supports Libyan citizens, not the government'. A
10 percent fee goes to a nongovernmental organization in Libya that mantains
the .ly network:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/ly-registrar-our-servers-
have...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ly-registrar-our-servers-haver-been-
shut-down-2011-4) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-libyan-
con...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-libyan-connection-
behind-ly-url-shorteners/2011/04/11/AFCo8xjD_story.html)

There was some prior disruption of service when Softlayer, their ISP outside
of Libya raised some sanction related concerns, but that appears to have been
resolved later:

<http://libyanspider.com/m/announcements.php?id=20>

------
RobIsIT
Why not host your own?

I've been using Yourls (<http://yourls.org/>) for a while now. It works very
well. I bought a short domain, installed Yourls in under 5 min and have been
happily using it ever since. It even works with Tweetdeck to auto shorten
URL's and has a couple of bookmarklets to make things easy. It's locked down
for private / non-spammer use and is under my full control.

~~~
NameNickHN
> Why not host your own?

I second that. Here is an alternative to yourls.org.

<http://www.gentlesource.com/short-url-script/>

------
sjs382
I know this is kind of a joke, kind of a way to bring publicity to whats
happening in Lybia, but if the bit.ly domain disappears you can always just
rewrite "bit.ly" to "j.mp" and the short URLs will keep working.

Then again, this presumes that the _company_ is still running (which we can't
really put a ton of faith in), which is why i use <http://isshort.com>
(shameless plug) to find publisher-provided short URLs where possible.

------
5l
Hate to nit pick but isn't it Gaddafi, or Qaddafi?

Edit: So it is, although the correct spelling is already taken.

~~~
leftnode
[http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/09/how-many-
dif...](http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/09/how-many-different-
ways-can-you-spell-gaddafi.html) or any of those! :)

~~~
pluies
And the corresponding regexp ;)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5365283/regular-
expressio...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5365283/regular-expression-
to-search-for-gadaffi)

------
westicle
I was simultaneously impressed by the clean, informative presentation and
horrified by the assault of grammatical errors.

May I suggest having a native english-speaker review your copy? Otherwise nice
site.

------
d0m
I think it should add <http://> if it's missing.. I wasn't sure what wasn't
working at first when trying www.google.com.

Also, I find gadaf.fi really hard to remember.

~~~
blackguardx
Just pick up a newspaper any day for the next few months and the name is bound
to be in there.

------
guynamedloren
I tried 5 different URLS, then I realized that it only works if you include
http or https.

------
iuguy
While it's a great pun, it's not exactly short, though is it?

------
ballard
Dictators don't just come out with their own line of cars anymore.
<http://goo.gl/PqQTK>

------
yaix
Cool idea! Best URL shortener name of the year.

------
rkon
Now, if only we could stop getting our tv from Tuvalu. Stop reliance on
foreign domains! America needs Internet independence!

/palin rhetoric

------
hendavid
First post!

~~~
random42
You are being downvoted, because your comment does not add anything worthwhile
to the discuss/topic.

Kindly read the the community guidelines at
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

You may also find <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html> by Paul Graham
useful.

~~~
burgerbrain
He crated that account about a minute before making that post, and likely
never had any intention of using it again. (Or in other words, don't worry
about it, and let moderation do its thing ;)

~~~
random42
May be so. However, Because of the fact that he is a newbie in the community,
and not a spammer/troll, I'd like to give him the benefit of doubt.

Having a barrage of downvotes, just because you dint know the rules when you
are new, without any explanation is not helpful (and slightly unfair and
discouraging).

~~~
burgerbrain
Fair enough, but as I recall HN barrages you with the rules as you join.

~~~
random42
Oh.. I remember the opposite actually. (No mention of guidelines), when you
join.

------
csomar
I don't consider this a nice move. I actually hate it. It's like Gaddafi is
going to stand longer than that and that we should only boycott him. We ought
better supporting the rebellion or the people who are under the fire.

\-- Misrata (24 April):
[http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.101501680318019...](http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150168031801915.297670.349930726914)

