<div dir="ltr"><i>That</i> is a second grad-level thesis:  persistence of technologies whose rationales have long since vanished.  URL shortening has been, for some years, cargo culting, at best.  As Tom documents, it's now hazardous cargo culting.  There are plenty of other examples of widely-employed cultural elements that only can be understood as historical vestiges--almost anything under "telco pricing" qualifies.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 11:49 AM Esther Schindler <<a href="mailto:esther@bitranch.com">esther@bitranch.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>Are they still a thing? </div><div><br></div><div>I used to use them because they provided some level of tracking click throughs. That went away.</div><div><br></div><div>I also used to use them back when Twitter counted all the characters in a URL as part of its 140. That went away too.</div><div><br></div><div>I’m not sure when/why anyone wants to use these any more… even before the security vulnerabilites. </div><br><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Oct 8, 2018, at 9:04 AM, Tom Henderson <<a href="mailto:thenderson@extremelabs.com" target="_blank">thenderson@extremelabs.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="m_1264330481493519464Apple-interchange-newline"><div><span style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;float:none;display:inline!important">I can give you a long list of<span class="m_1264330481493519464Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://ow.ly/" style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank">ow.ly</a><span style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;float:none;display:inline!important"><span class="m_1264330481493519464Apple-converted-space"> </span>shortened URLs that will give you a malware dose the size of Cincinnati.</span><br style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"><br style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"><span style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;float:none;display:inline!important">ONE SINGLE MISTYPED character will send a user into plain hell.</span><br style="font-family:GoudyOldStyleT-Regular;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"></div></blockquote></div><br></div>-- <br>
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