L(O*62).ONG: Make your URL longer

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A novelty web service that lengthens URLs instead of shortening them is drawing praise as a playful piece of web art, along with curiosity about its technical underpinnings. Commenters explore challenges around HTTPS certificates for ultra-long domain names, the .ong TLD’s NGO-oriented eligibility rules, and the binary encoding of target URLs into strings of “O” and “o.” Others raise practical concerns, including the extra warning click on Hacker News, potential abuse for spam or phishing, and minor usability issues like requiring an explicit protocol in the input.

Concept & Overall Reception

  • Service intentionally “lengthens” URLs, encoding targets into long strings of O/o.
  • Many commenters find it hilarious, clever, and aesthetically pleasing; framed as “silly web” / art.
  • Others see it as pointless or “dumb but lovable,” with little practical value beyond fun or QA stress‑testing.

How It Works (Encoding & Limits)

  • Implementation encodes the original URL as binary, then maps bits to O and o in the path.
  • GitHub source is referenced for serialization/deserialization logic.
  • People note URL length limits are effectively in the kilobytes; recursion can produce ~20KB URLs that browsers or HN may reject.
  • Discussion notes that subdomains could be used to increase length, but paths already allow very long URLs.

Certificates, Domains, and HTTPS

  • Author explains hitting limits: max 63 characters per domain label, and a 64‑character limit for certificate commonName.
  • Several hosting/CDN providers initially couldn’t issue Let’s Encrypt certs because they insisted on CN matching the full long hostname.
  • Others clarify CN is deprecated for server identity; subjectAltName (SAN) is the modern mechanism and doesn’t share the same length issue.
  • Updated information notes Let’s Encrypt now supports certs without CN; some providers still require CN unnecessarily.

.ong TLD and Eligibility

  • Debate on whether .ong is restricted to NGOs and if this site qualifies.
  • One side: policy requires public‑interest mission, structured organization, and “NGO‑like” status; a joke URL service seems non‑compliant.
  • Other side: requirements are vague and easy to satisfy; even small or frivolous groups with bylaws might qualify.
  • Clarified that purchase can happen before verification; audits may later revoke non‑compliant domains. Exact enforcement is unclear.

Abuse, Security, and Censorship Concerns

  • Multiple commenters warn it will be abused for spam/phishing, similar to URL shorteners.
  • Detailed account of a previous URL lengthener being used in spam campaigns via URL fragments (#...), which servers don’t see.
  • Recommendation: strip or neutralize fragments via client‑side redirect to reduce abuse.
  • Others argue any infrastructure (roads, postal mail) is abused; tech shouldn’t be uniquely blamed.
  • Some ask whether, being operated from China, the service is censored; thread does not resolve this.

Usability & UX Feedback

  • Many users are confused that the input requires a protocol (http:// or https://); suggestions to prefill or label this.
  • HN adds an interstitial warning for very long URLs, which some say pushes this firmly into “joke” territory.
  • Minor discussion of protocol detection and support for non‑HTTP schemes.

Related Projects & Nostalgia

  • Comparisons to defunct HugeURL and other novelty/“shady URL” generators.
  • Mention of similarly “breaking” long email addresses and domains used historically for testing form and validation robustness.