[PufPufPuf]

And there's also .local for mDNS on local network!

I've also come across projects using a public DNS record that points to 127.0.0.1 (something like localtest.me?). IMO that's way worse than using .localhost since you're trusting some rando not to change the DNS records and exfiltrate your meant-to-be-local traffic.

[ButlerianJihad]

I did not mention .local, because it is covered in the linked articles: a special-use TLD, reserved for a certain purpose. It has often happened that LAN admins try to name something under ".local" and configure a zone for it in their BIND server. But this is incorrect, because ".local" is already managed by the zeroconf/mDNS protocols. It is a special case; and that is what ".internal" seeks to rectify, by giving y'all a TLD that can be truly internal and truly a zone under DNS server control, whatever that looks like for you.

As for 127.0.0.0/8 in the public DNS: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/HowNotToDo...

As for localnet and localhost in general:

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/LocalhostI...

https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/LocalhostSurpri...

".vibe" is not a TLD. It is not a registered TLD; it is not a reserved name. It isn't a domain at all. Go ahead, do a WHOIS lookup. Anyone who attempts to use such gibberish, even in documentation, deserves to be rudely surprised, someday in the future.

[andrewaylett]

I've used[0] `.local` to achieve something like this, by advertising service endpoints over mDNS.

Exposing random services to your local network is exactly what mDNS is for, I always thought it was a shame more dev tooling didn't do that.

[0]: https://github.com/andrewaylett/mod_bonjour is a fork of Apple's mod_bonjour, very much unloved of late I'm afraid.