> This looks a lot like when the U.S. & Israel were running dry on interceptors last year, and made a deal with the Iranians to pretend to blow up Fordow in exchange for ceasing hostilities.
Do you have a citation for this? (Genuinely curious)
When we first created Domainr (then domai.nr, now domainr.com) back in 2008, we needed a list of “zones under which domain registrations were somehow possible.” E.g. not just the root zone list from IANA, but all the .co., .edu., .net., etc. variants. We found what we could from Wikipedia, and used Mturk to find the rest from registry websites, etc.
It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t need to be. We essentially needed a “good enough to start with” dataset that we could refine going forward. It got the job done.
> As of 28 January 2025, the Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) will be the definitive source for delivering generic top-level domain name (gTLD) registration information in place of sunsetted WHOIS services. RDAP offers several advantages over WHOIS including support for internationalization, secure access to data, authoritative service discovery, and the ability to provide differentiated access to registration data. RDAP was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Not only are there wholesale per-domain fees for registries (which tend to increase every few years), and the small ICANN fee for gTLDs, domains also have high customer support overhead that can’t easily be automated away like the LE cert process.
Also keep in mind that domains are a “source of truth” unlike certs, which rely on the domains for verification.
I'm going through this process currently (getting estimates from local HVAC contractors, SF Bay Area), and their general guidance so far is to get a Hybrid electric + gas heat pump config.
The electric heat pump alone isn't sufficient compared with gas, and the "add-on" you get to add more heat to the heating output is like a space heater, thus very expensive month to month.