8 ms·

From the PuTTY FAQ: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-domain https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#... Woul

From the PuTTY FAQ: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-domain https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#... Would you like me to register you a nicer domain name? No, thank you. Even if you can find one (most of them seem to have been registered already, by people who didn't ask whether we actually wanted it before they applied), we're happy with the PuTTY web site being exactly where it is. It's not hard to find (just type ‘putty’ into google.com and we're the first link returned), and we don't believe the administrative hassle of moving the site would be worth the benefit. I wonder if they changed their mind because Google ceased to be a reliable way to find them.

account42 1y ago
Also a weird choice to go with a nuTLD which may or may not price gouge them in the future leaving them with the choice to either pay up or potentially have someone malicious taking over tons of inbound links.
ahmedfromtunis 1y ago
The first link I get when I searched for "putty" was `putty.org` which, according to the footer: "The PuTTY project or its authors have never owned this domain, registered it, or purchased it." Nevertheless, I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy. Also, these days, after decades of habit building and a rise in awareness about scam-related stuff, I think people expect to see the name of the project early on in the URL, not in 7th position as it is currently.
- swah 1y ago
  My first 3 matches are https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.ht..., https://www.putty.org/ https://www.putty.org/ and https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
  - JdeBP 1y ago
    putty.org's page ranking used to be higher. * https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115027646348662282 https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115027646348662282 I suspect that the recent kerfuffle motivated people to finally clean out bogus hyperlinks that casually listed putty.org as the download site, which would have been contributing to inflated page rank up to that point. I found one on a wiki and fixed it, myself, and I'm sure that I was not the only person who went looking.
    - whizzter 1y ago
      It's not inconceivable that some Googlers reads here or otherwise and took note to punish that site.
      - reader9274 1y ago
        Hmm why punish that site?
        whizzter 1y ago
        Because it's affiliated with _another_ ssh client and there seems to have been various levels of shadyness over time, see previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328
  - pandemic_region 1y ago
    Assuming he owns the green end.org.uk domain, why not letting people land on putty.greenend.org.uk ?
    - JdeBP 1y ago
      Your assumption is false, so the question is without proper foundation. GreenEnd's Chiark is owned by Ian Jackson. Simon Tatham is a user on the system, with a home directory. One of a list of such users, including Rachel Coleman and Matthew Garrett.
- sambull 1y ago
  > I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy. That's pretty much all of the AI industry and clients.
  - nicce 1y ago
    Pretty much how the whole world works and why ads are multi-trillion dollar business.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  Google.com > putty > I'm feeling lucky > https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
- herf 1y ago
  Google right now lists the title of putty.org as "PuTTY", even though right now this text is only in the footer. Up until August I guess it provided a download link, but the title was not "PuTTY".
- nelox 1y ago
  I can sell you some AdWords to solve it.
rezonant 1y ago
Unfortunately the person who owns putty.org started to use it to spread misinformation about vaccines and the pandemic, as you can see on the site today. This recently [1][2] got a lot of attention on the web and here on HN, along with a post on Mastodon from the author [3] I imagine trying to disincentivize this and provide another shorter more official looking link is the hope here. [1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_controversy/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_cont... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265 [3] https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/114846017785770922 https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/114846017785770922
- shermand89 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - perching_aix 1y ago
    Yes misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Yeadon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Yeadon
- teaearlgraycold 1y ago
  > Since 2020 I have been speaking out against the fraudulent pandemic and the intentionally dangerous injections and my experience has been to have been censored and smeared. If you have not heard of me before, that's the reason. One weird trick to make your insignificance seem significant!
  - 1970-01-01 1y ago
    Hilarious how putty.org hasn't been updated, and still has a FINAL WARNING video on the landing page. Extrapolated to the present time, all of us vaccinated individuals are now suffering the big consequences. Too bad all nutjobs aren't so easy to disprove by simply taking a single large breath. :)
- falleng0d 1y ago
hammock 1y ago
I barely know what SSH keys are, but last week when I was asked to provide one for an stfp site at work they said create a pair using putty. Well I googled putty and found a couple different .org domains, one who which said it was legit but not official, and another which said it was official but looked wildly out of date. Neither one I could find a download for Mac that worked. The one I tried gave a scary “we no longer allow putty sudo access as it’s dangerous” and when I googled this error I could find no explanation to assuage me. And since I wanted to make sure what I was doing was legit, I searched for alternatives. Eventually I discovered I could use command line in mac to generate the keys I needed. But first I installed Xcode then ran the command (I used chatgpt to tell me exactly how to get the type and length I needed). It was easy. Side note, the whole culture of downloading random software and using it with just a single line in a terminal is always sketchy to me too. But I’m not a coder so I’m not used to it.
- ok_computer 1y ago
  If you hadn’t discovered this already with you mac CLI commands, OpenSSH from OpenSSL ‘ssh-keygen’ command is a good way to create SSH keys in ClI and ships in many OSes or is a lightweight download. The OpenSSL website name is unambiguous, which is a benefit. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-gith...
  - wolf550e 1y ago
    OpenSSH and OpenSSL are completely unrelated projects.
    - ok_computer 1y ago
      Independent projects but not unrelated since there was a historical dependency from OpenSSH to OpenSSL. https://serverfault.com/questions/780476/generating-ssh-keys-with-openssl-or-ssh-keygen https://serverfault.com/questions/780476/generating-ssh-keys... My knowledge was a bit outdated by about a decade.
whoamii 1y ago
Should’ve used a goo.gl short link. ;)
zapzupnz 1y ago
It seems almost hostile to users. Why should I need to use some third party tool to find your thing? If you're paying for a domain anyway, pay for a meaningful one. … Well, I guess that's what they've done. Surely nobody could ever have been this naïve, though; it's not as though Google massaging results into unusable mess is anything new.
- kelnos 1y ago
  > Why should I need to use some third party tool to find your thing? How else would you find it? By typing domain name guesses into your address bar until you hit the right one? How would you be sure you've hit the right one and not a scammer/squatter? This is not a particularly easy problem to solve, and I agree that relying on Google to accurately and safely deliver you to the correct web site isn't great either, but I think we'd be much worse off without search engines.
jbaber 1y ago
My decades long habit has been to search for "chiark putty". Never fails :)
- account42 1y ago
  That trick requires you to already know the correct website though.

account42 1y ago

Also a weird choice to go with a nuTLD which may or may not price gouge them in the future leaving them with the choice to either pay up or potentially have someone malicious taking over tons of inbound links.

ahmedfromtunis 1y ago

The first link I get when I searched for "putty" was `putty.org` which, according to the footer: "The PuTTY project or its authors have never owned this domain, registered it, or purchased it." Nevertheless, I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy. Also, these days, after decades of habit building and a rise in awareness about scam-related stuff, I think people expect to see the name of the project early on in the URL, not in 7th position as it is currently.

swah 1y ago
My first 3 matches are https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.ht..., https://www.putty.org/ https://www.putty.org/ and https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
- JdeBP 1y ago
  putty.org's page ranking used to be higher. * https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115027646348662282 https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/115027646348662282 I suspect that the recent kerfuffle motivated people to finally clean out bogus hyperlinks that casually listed putty.org as the download site, which would have been contributing to inflated page rank up to that point. I found one on a wiki and fixed it, myself, and I'm sure that I was not the only person who went looking.
  - whizzter 1y ago
    It's not inconceivable that some Googlers reads here or otherwise and took note to punish that site.
    - reader9274 1y ago
      Hmm why punish that site?
      - whizzter 1y ago
        Because it's affiliated with _another_ ssh client and there seems to have been various levels of shadyness over time, see previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44558328
- pandemic_region 1y ago
  Assuming he owns the green end.org.uk domain, why not letting people land on putty.greenend.org.uk ?
  - JdeBP 1y ago
    Your assumption is false, so the question is without proper foundation. GreenEnd's Chiark is owned by Ian Jackson. Simon Tatham is a user on the system, with a home directory. One of a list of such users, including Rachel Coleman and Matthew Garrett.
sambull 1y ago
> I can't consider relying on probabilistic algorithms controlled by 3rd parties to be a wise strategy. That's pretty much all of the AI industry and clients.
- nicce 1y ago
  Pretty much how the whole world works and why ads are multi-trillion dollar business.
1970-01-01 1y ago
Google.com > putty > I'm feeling lucky > https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
herf 1y ago
Google right now lists the title of putty.org as "PuTTY", even though right now this text is only in the footer. Up until August I guess it provided a download link, but the title was not "PuTTY".
nelox 1y ago
I can sell you some AdWords to solve it.

rezonant 1y ago

Unfortunately the person who owns putty.org started to use it to spread misinformation about vaccines and the pandemic, as you can see on the site today. This recently [1][2] got a lot of attention on the web and here on HN, along with a post on Mastodon from the author [3] I imagine trying to disincentivize this and provide another shorter more official looking link is the hope here. [1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_controversy/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/17/puttyorg_website_cont... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44579265 [3] https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/114846017785770922 https://hachyderm.io/@simontatham/114846017785770922

shermand89 1y ago
[flagged]
- perching_aix 1y ago
  Yes misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Yeadon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Yeadon
teaearlgraycold 1y ago
> Since 2020 I have been speaking out against the fraudulent pandemic and the intentionally dangerous injections and my experience has been to have been censored and smeared. If you have not heard of me before, that's the reason. One weird trick to make your insignificance seem significant!
- 1970-01-01 1y ago
  Hilarious how putty.org hasn't been updated, and still has a FINAL WARNING video on the landing page. Extrapolated to the present time, all of us vaccinated individuals are now suffering the big consequences. Too bad all nutjobs aren't so easy to disprove by simply taking a single large breath. :)
falleng0d 1y ago

hammock 1y ago

I barely know what SSH keys are, but last week when I was asked to provide one for an stfp site at work they said create a pair using putty. Well I googled putty and found a couple different .org domains, one who which said it was legit but not official, and another which said it was official but looked wildly out of date. Neither one I could find a download for Mac that worked. The one I tried gave a scary “we no longer allow putty sudo access as it’s dangerous” and when I googled this error I could find no explanation to assuage me. And since I wanted to make sure what I was doing was legit, I searched for alternatives. Eventually I discovered I could use command line in mac to generate the keys I needed. But first I installed Xcode then ran the command (I used chatgpt to tell me exactly how to get the type and length I needed). It was easy. Side note, the whole culture of downloading random software and using it with just a single line in a terminal is always sketchy to me too. But I’m not a coder so I’m not used to it.

ok_computer 1y ago
If you hadn’t discovered this already with you mac CLI commands, OpenSSH from OpenSSL ‘ssh-keygen’ command is a good way to create SSH keys in ClI and ships in many OSes or is a lightweight download. The OpenSSL website name is unambiguous, which is a benefit. https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh/generating-a-new-ssh-key-and-adding-it-to-the-ssh-agent https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-gith...
- wolf550e 1y ago
  OpenSSH and OpenSSL are completely unrelated projects.
  - ok_computer 1y ago
    Independent projects but not unrelated since there was a historical dependency from OpenSSH to OpenSSL. https://serverfault.com/questions/780476/generating-ssh-keys-with-openssl-or-ssh-keygen https://serverfault.com/questions/780476/generating-ssh-keys... My knowledge was a bit outdated by about a decade.

whoamii 1y ago

Should’ve used a goo.gl short link. ;)

zapzupnz 1y ago

It seems almost hostile to users. Why should I need to use some third party tool to find your thing? If you're paying for a domain anyway, pay for a meaningful one. … Well, I guess that's what they've done. Surely nobody could ever have been this naïve, though; it's not as though Google massaging results into unusable mess is anything new.

kelnos 1y ago
> Why should I need to use some third party tool to find your thing? How else would you find it? By typing domain name guesses into your address bar until you hit the right one? How would you be sure you've hit the right one and not a scammer/squatter? This is not a particularly easy problem to solve, and I agree that relying on Google to accurately and safely deliver you to the correct web site isn't great either, but I think we'd be much worse off without search engines.

jbaber 1y ago

My decades long habit has been to search for "chiark putty". Never fails :)

account42 1y ago
That trick requires you to already know the correct website though.