Smash Notes

Back to Making DNSimple (Changelog Interviews #637), with Anthony Eden.

How Did Let's Encrypt Turn Certificates Into a Click?

On the show, Let's Encrypt solved one of the biggest gaps in the internet security space and changed the world of the internet. The certificate authority made it too easy to say no. Integrating issuance into web tooling makes the work a click of a button.

The button click replaces downloading a client, running it yourself, and scheduling renewals. The big pain with Let's Encrypt is the 90-day renewal, so a renewal process still has to keep running. People had to run the client on remote machines before the infrastructure was in place. The infrastructure is there now.

On the show, the success story is that Let's Encrypt came into existence and has done a good job of stewarding the certificate authority. The stewardship has been fantastic to see.

Transcript

Making DNSimple (Changelog Interviews #637) ·

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More from this episode

  1. How Did DNSimple End Up Half a Registrar?On the show, domain registration at DNSimple is now mostly equal to operational DNS.
  2. How Did No Outside Money Let DNSimple Win Big Companies?On the show, DNSimple has never grown a ton aside from the very early days.
  3. How Did a Language Model Never Run the Rails Test?On the show, a weekend try to get a language model to run the test on a fresh Rails project failed.
  4. How Did a Forgotten Domain Make DNSimple Demand Proof?DNSimple requires a person to prove they actually have the rights before a domain that used to be with DNSimple comes back into DNSimple.
  5. How Did Tailscale and Raycast Make Cineplex Login Easy?On the show, Tailscale installed on everything replaced a memorized home address with a network-friendly name that search can reach.
  6. Why Won't DNSimple Start Generative Domain-list Search?DNSimple is small enough that the company has not applied machine learning to all the data coming through. The generative part is not so interesting.
  7. Why Are Name Availability Checks So Hard for DNSimple?The hard part of suggesting domain names is not coming up with words to string together and suggest.
  8. Why Do Attacked Registries Get Paid While Registrars Innovate?On the show, the domain business is lopsided. Innovation happens at the edges, at the registrars, and the money gets sent to the core, at the registries.
  9. How Did DNSimple Grow Slowly With Costly Domain Keywords?On the show, DNSimple stays in business and continues slow growth by focusing on positioning and how the team uses words.

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