Yes, but you have to admit that the existence of these SLDs (like co.uk) is always going to be a point of confusion for anyone with a basic knowledge of how the domain hierarchy _usually_ works.
Needing to be familiar with all the special cases (like the VERY special case of x.y.name which I previously knew nothing about) kind of ruins everything and introduces yet more security risk.
> but you have to admit that the existence of these SLDs (like co.uk)
I'm sorry, what ? Admit ? Confusion ?
In the case of .co.uk it has been around since 1996. HN is a technical forum, most people here should be well aware it is a serious SLD. I honestly can't believe it even needs clarifying.
Hell, if you use AWS Route 53 you'll see they use co.uk as one of their nameserver suffixes[1].
I'm not referring to the HN audience; I mean the larger evergreen cohort of people in the world who are still building their mental model of how the web works. They will each eventually be doomed to the same misconceptions because it's a system full of inconsistencies and special cases.
Yup. The original statement was dangerous FUD which should be urgently corrected.