WP-A: A New URL Shortener

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> On Tuesday 15 March 2016 19:55:52 Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 16, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn
>> > And as for second-level domains, consider for example “t.c” instead
>> > of “twitter.com” as part of the short URI.
>> That'll work only for the ones that you code in specifically, and
>> that's only shortening your URL by 8 characters. A typical URL needing
>> shortening is over 80 characters - maybe several hundred. You need to
>> cut that down to a manageable length. That fundamentally cannot be
>> reversed without readding information.
> 
> And I submit that putting someone in charge of the drives organization,
> and the database on that drive that the url has to dig thru, can make a
> huge difference in the length of the resultant url.

Maybe it’s just the late/early hour, but you’ve just lost me.
Please elaborate.
 
>> >>> And with the exception of Twitter-ish sites that place a limit on
>> >>> message length, there really is *no need* for shorter URIs
>> >>> nowadays.  (HTTP) clients and servers are capable of processing
>> >>> really long ones [1]; electronic communications media and related
>> >>> software, too [2].  And data storage space as well as data
>> >>> transmission has become exceptionally inexpensive.  A few less
>> >>> bytes there do not count.
> 
> They may not count for that much in terms of what the user pays for
> bandwidth, but see below.  And some users are probably still paying for
> their internet access by the minute in some locales.

So they should loathe more the overhead measured in *kibibytes* and delay 
measured in *seconds* caused by additional HTTP requests due to redirection 
from “short URLs” than the few more *bytes* in longer, original URLs, yes?
 
-- 
PointedEars

Twitter: @PointedEars2
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