Did You Know TLDs Can Be Websites?

You've probably registered a domain with Route53 or another popular registrar. You pick something like seanboult.dev, spin up a web server, configure your A record, attach a TLS cert, and boom - it's live.

Well, in the past, before the AI boom, there once was a web server on .ai and it made its way to Hacker News. This was a cool relic that always intrigued me. Here is a snapshot from the Wayback Machine.

Well now you're like, wait - I can't go to http://ai today? No, sadly at some point the A record was removed and the web server was shut down. Don't worry though, at the time of writing this I found another one.

The Discovery

Well without further ado, here it is: https://uz. Seems the TLS cert does not match the common name so you'll have to force your way in... But then you're in!

How It Works

So how does this work? Well, the same way you can add an A record to the apex of your domain (such as example.com), a registry operator can add DNS records directly to the apex of a Top-Level Domain zone, such as .uz in this case.

Call to Action

Would love to know if you find more like this - leave a reply if you do. If we ever did one on .aws what would you like to see there 🤔?

As always, happy happy coding 😉!

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Top comments (2):

• TIL
• Yeah I was shook when I saw it posted on Hacker News a several years ago. Obviously it extends more than just the web. My ambitious goal is to have email sean@aws one day and watch zero providers support it.