> The IPv6 feature isn’t link-local addresses, it’s being able to specify the interface to bind to as part of the address specification. This lets you demand that your IPv6-based tool use your wired Ethernet connection, for example.
I don’t think a design goal of IPv6 was to enable users to demand which link the kernel uses or open up some rich new world of link local ip services. I think it’s more like “because IPv6 hosts assign everything an address all at once, there’s a new problem when two interfaces use the same link local addresses since we can’t guarantee uniqueness so we have to invent this stupid zone_id convention to work around poor protocol design and implementation”. Design goals are different than constraints.
Have hosts put a guid in its LL address and print that on the sticker next to the mac address… idk. Actually it’d be nice if we only did link-exclusive things at the link layer, eh?
To explain, IPv6 link local addresses are like using a MAC address to send packets. You wouldn’t ever host services on a LL address and things that do are doing it wrong. Every v6 router should advertise a ULA prefix to all downstream clients. If you want to connect to your router’s web UI you’d use its universal local address—not its link local—and avoid all of these problems. This is exactly why zones were deemed mistake and replaced by ULAs and this was 10 years ago… at least!
Having services be accessible on a link-local address and then advertising that service via mDNS is a completely legitimate use-case that works extremely well and is extremely common with Apple devices amongst others. The advantage being that it still works just the same even without a router handing out addresses or if you just connect two devices directly to each other.
Also what gives you the impression that zones were “deemed a mistake”? They may be awkward in URIs but they are very much not a mistake, they are a deliberate part of ensuring that each link has its own link-local subnet without any ambiguity. It solves the problem of what the operating system should do if you need to access a link-local address that shows up via more than one network interface, which is a very real problem with unscoped IPv4 link-local addresses.
Finally, ULAs don’t and were never intended to replace link-local addresses, they serve a different purpose entirely.
> Finally, ULAs don’t and were never intended to replace link-local addresses, they serve a different purpose entirely.
Right, but ULAs are the correct answer here because the purpose they serve is exactly the one the article is trying to hack around with link-local addresses. Like most "IPv6 is hard" articles, the main issue with this one is the author simply refusing to learn how IPv6 works or follow best practices.
ULAs are not hard to set up. You just need one device to broadcast Router Advertisements with the "A" flag set and router priority 0. That device may be the same one hosting the service!
> Also what gives you the impression that zones were “deemed a mistake”?
I disagree that zones are a mistake, but a good rule of thumb is that if you're trying to use zones and you're not writing system code, you're probably holding it wrong. Use IPv6 the right way and your life will be so much easier.
> Having services be accessible on a link-local address and then advertising that service via mDNS is a completely legitimate use-case that works extremely well and is extremely common with Apple devices amongst others.
Apple devices actually advertise services to hostnames via mDNS. Hostnames are then resolved to IP addresses, again via mDNS. While link-local address are populated in the host table, so are the routable addresses as well as the ULA-prefixed addresses (if your network uses ULAs).
Note you can also advertise a ULA prefix without the A flag. The advertisement tells other machines that the IP is on-link, and they can use their own GUA addresses to connect without needing a ULA address of their own.
You could also assign a single address (e.g. fd53::1/128) and advertise the corresponding prefix of fd53::1/128, so you don't even need a whole ULA prefix, just individual addresses. (This is sometimes useful if you use a router you can't configure and it's advertising a DNS server you don't want to use.)
When I say “zones” I’m referring to site-local addresses specifically which were deprecated and replaced by ULAs because zones in anything other than link local addresses were declared stupid and hard to implement. That may be where the confusion is coming from. I’m sorry I didn’t use specific language. I understand what we commonly call the “interface scope” is technically a “zone id”.
mDNS working on link-local means you can advertise your service over mDNS so no user ever types this shit into their address bar in the first place.
I still maintain that the interface leaking into the address is a bad thing from a design perspective even though I very much appreciate that everything works naturally on v6 LL addresses after applying this one small fix… no user should ever by typing a v6 LL into a browser, and probably every use case you can imagine that isn’t managing network link topology or NDP/bootstrap or running LL name resolution can be solved with ULAs or DNS.
Right. Nobody cares whether Musk won or lost (well maybe a few do). People actually following the case wanted to know whether OpenAI would be held in any way accountable for anything. And this “resolution” does not satisfy. Before Musk got involved, what happened at OpenAI was a BigProblem for many people.
I am absolutely certain that if Sam was suing xAI and the case got dismissed on a technicality people would be lined up with screeds about the injustice of the situation.
I think it would depend on the facts of the case. This one seemed a bit of a non case. Quote from a law expert in the FT which I thought good:
>the spectacle of these two multibillionaires fighting about power and money has distorted and obscured what the law is meant to care about here, which is the public interest
I did this too, but it happened almost 10 years ago when Google started locking down Android in the name of battery life. I saw the writing on the walls and said if Android is going to be just like iOS because we collectively can’t have nice things, then at least I’ll live out that sad reality on better hardware.
Your kids can’t buy alcohol though. If you want to unlock your phone and let your kids read smut then more power to you. Age gates do not and never will stop that. But I sure as hell don’t want companies selling porn to 5 yr olds.
Well they can just ban porn altogether, for everyone, and enforce it with jail time for everyone involved (from its creation to distribution); then most of the problems will be solved.
* it's a bit sarcastic, but tbh it isn't such a bad idea, considering the negative impact that porn has.
Zero knowledge in such a system requires a minimum of 3 independent parties. There are quite a few solutions out there, I think the most developed ones are online voting systems, because tracking and de duplication is essential.
The impossibly high bar they set "Perfect" at in order to make it the enemy of good, and fight against any progress being made to keep children out of adult spaces.
That being said, it's my personal opinion that I'd love to simply have my device store a token and send it to any site when requested. I'd then like those sites to give me toggles to remove all non-verified content - and therefore my internet experience could be sans-juvenile squeakers.
This sub thread really doesn’t add value to the discussion IMO and isn’t a fit for HN. The only likely outcome is a real human is attacked based on pure speculation. Let the mods decide if a user is breaking any policy regarding AI comment submissions. Litigating it here is cringe.
I would go even further and say AI witch hunts aren't productive, period. In this case where the person writing is ostensibly writing in a second language it's even more silly
it's not, but stupid people assume they own the copyright to ai induced code. So it still has to be said so the people who don't understand have a chance.
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