"News" in Hacker News doesn't necessarily mean everything is new that comes up. Everyone might not know what you know, so sometimes it's interesting enough to end up on the front page.

Google's server handles the octal case if it's provided directly. Not sure if this is an explicit code path or if the server handles all IP forms.

Try this:

  curl -v -H "Host: 010.010.010.010" https://8.8.8.8

Trying to do the same with other websites doesn't seem to work.

Google’s server doesn’t handle that as a special case; it redirects any host other than dns.google to dns.google. These give the same result:

    curl -v -H "Host: 010.010.010.010" https://8.8.8.8
    curl -v -H "Host: 222.222.222.222" https://8.8.8.8
    curl -v -H "Host: example.com" https://8.8.8.8

Not sure what you mean about other websites, it works fine on Apache and Nginx, e.g. on my server:

    curl -kiH Host:1348764566 https://1348764566

(-k flag needed because I didn't get a valid cert for this variant of the IP. One could also specify the fingerprint but let's keep the demo simple.)

It'll give you a 404 because of the unknown vhost, but it would also do that if you access it using the 'normal' dotted decimal notation: http://80.100.131.150

I used to detect this number actually and it would give you a small easter egg, but nobody triggered it and nowadays Firefox doesn't send it as a host header anymore when you specify the IP as such so I didn't check how to port that over to my new web server stack.

They probably don't even look at the host header. You can set any host header and it works.

Edge (and I presume Chromium) interprets a https://010.010.010.010 URL as https://8.8.8.8

You can check it by hovering over the link

It’s a funny IP address meant to hopefully make you think Google is cool now.

And why on earth would anyone want to use google's DNS.

Have you used malicious ISP DNS resolution?!

Not every ISP has malicious DNS resolution. For many people outside the US, their ISP DNS server is a superior option to Google DNS.

Possibly, but not in Australia. Among other things our government has a secret blacklist it forces ISPs to implement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...

The usual reasons are given - protecting children and preventing other illegal activity, which is all well and good and commendable in theory. However there have been instances where the filter has been used to silence opposing political opinions, as well as prevent access to materials on subjective moral grounds (ie "hardcore" pornography, online gambling, discussion of suicides, etc) where the government has decided Aussies shouldn't do that sort of thing, which seems a bit puritanical and mildly thought police-y.

It's not like we're in an "actual dictatorship", by and large the representative democracy trundles along as best these things do, and the life and freedoms we enjoy in Australia make us incredibly privileged compared to much of the world. But this whole online censorship and thought policing our government seems fond of is something I disagree with. In addition to banning certain forms of speech and text, they're now pushing through an act that sets the stage for de-anonymising all users online with a government-issued "Digital ID", the next step presumably being making it illegal to provide and use anonymous web services in Australia. That has broad implications for things like Reporters Without Borders, corporate and government whistleblowers, etc.

Coupled with a historical record of every blocked or "suspect" DNS attempt, and these trends paint a dire picture for individuals who may have legitimate interests or even just curiosity about something like "how are drugs made." Handing this information to the federal government seems risky to me because I don't know what they're going to decide to make illegal to read and write about in the future. Our government has talked seriously about banning encryption many times over the years, and are currently at war against social media, so who knows what they'll do.

That doesn't mean I agree that people should get away with heinous acts or organised crime, but it's why I personally avoid using my ISP's DNS resolution in Australia. I don't exactly trust Google either, but I'd rather they deal with my DNS lookup than our technophobe government.

Sorry for the long rant, probably could have just left it at my first sentence, but it all touches on the one subject in Australian politics that really rubs me the wrong way, and most people I talk to here are of the mind "if you're not doing something wrong, there's nothing to worry about." Just, gah!