
.su - gyosifov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
======
wildylion
For me .su is a kind of historical curiousity. Not sure if I like it or not,
or if it should be phased out, but there are a bunch of Soviet Union related
sites in there too and sometimes these are pretty amusing (how about a site of
the CPSU?)

Also there's sudo.su :)

Source: am Russian.

~~~
skissane
> (how about a site of the CPSU?)

You are talking about [http://kpss.su](http://kpss.su) ?

~~~
Apofis
Предатели!

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rimliu
There was a joke at the time:

    
    
        В связи с геополитическими изменениями домен pos.su изменяется на pos.ru.
    

Which roughly sounds like "because of the geopolitical changes the domain
pos.su will become pos.ru". The joke is that pos.su and pos.ru in Russian
sound like "will pee" and "will poo" respecitively.

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tsukurimashou
still trying to get pant.su but it gets renewed every time despite serving
nothing publicly :<

~~~
taneq
I was disappointed to find that [http://kat.su/](http://kat.su/) has nothing
to do with curry.

~~~
Grue3
Well, katsu refers to a pork cutlet, which can be used with other dishes than
curry. Katsudon is a pork cutlet on top of donburi, for example.

~~~
taneq
Huh, well that's my new thing I've learned today. I only ever heard it in
conjunction with curry-type things (katsu chicken, which was always served
with curry, for instance).

~~~
uswjupiter
Katsu is just a japonization of the word Cuts. Chicken Katsu = Chicken Cuts

~~~
SECProto
Not quite. Katsu is from Cutlet. (cutlet -> カツレツ -> かつ).

~~~
reaperducer
Isn't a cutlet a small cut?

As in a small "cut of chicken" is a "chicken cutlet?"

~~~
djur
It's derived from French "côtelette", literally "little rib". It's
etymologically related to "coast", actually. It being spelled "cutlet" is
probably the result of a phonetic spelling of "côtelette" in English being
reanalyzed as "cut-let", though, since "a cut of meat" is itself a thing.

It originally referred to the same thing "chop" does today, a slice of meat
perpendicular to the spine, containing a single rib. Then it started referring
specifically to a boneless chop. Then it started being used to refer to any
thin slice of meat. And in a lot of the world it was introduced specifically
as a breaded and fried thin slice of meat. And that's how we got katsu, the
Japanese version of schnitzel.

Language is weird, isn't it?

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bsimpson
It had never occurred to me that the existence of the Internet and of East
Germany overlapped, and that East Germany would have a TLD.

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w8rbt
I hope we keep it. It matches the maps I have from 7th grade.

~~~
vasili111
I hope we will NOT keep it. It reminds me how my country was occupied and
annexed by Soviet Union.

~~~
johnmulaney
There are many things that remind people of bad things. That's not an
appropriate reason to remove them.

~~~
rabidrat
Can you imagine if there were a .nazi TLD? Would you think it appropriate to
discontinue its use, despite its historical significance?

~~~
johnisgood
That is not the point. There are a lot of things in the world that may remind
someone of something bad. Take a look at history books. Should we not keep
them either because they remind people of bad things? Of course we could use a
zillion other things besides "history books" or ".su", the point is the reason
behind not keeping or removing them.

~~~
rabidrat
"History books" have value in aggregating and presenting information with
historical context. TLDs are artifacts without context. A history book that
covered the 20th century and blandly mentioned that the Soviet Union was a
collection of communist states, without mentioning any other events or
context, would be similarly irrelevant, and should be relegated to the trash
heap. Same with the .su TLD. We should definitely keep the historical records
_that it existed_ , but there is no reason to continue its actual existence at
this point.

~~~
Z-T-T
Thousands of people own .su domains (I'm not one of them, FWIW). That's the
reason for its actual existence at this point.

~~~
gattilorenz
A few years ago a friend found binaries of GCC and gzip for Xenix on a .su
domain: [https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2010/03/20/gzip-for-
xenix...](https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2010/03/20/gzip-for-xenix/)

We were looking into Xenix as retrocomputing enthusiasts and we didn't have
any compiler, so _that_ had plenty of value for us.

------
cosmolev
Russian flag-carrier Aeroflot also has SU IATA code.

~~~
Z-T-T
And the hammer and sickle logo.

For Soviet-nostalgia buffs looking for a domain, although most obvious choices
like CCCP, KGB, Lenin, Stalin and even Gorbachev and _perestroika_ are
registered under .su, GLASNOST.SU is available.

~~~
brlewis
What about non-ASCII?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name)

~~~
Z-T-T
AFAIK IDNs are still possible under .su, but may depend on the registrar (non-
Russian resellers may not do it).

If you mean what Russian words are available under .su, probably most, for
example Ленин (Lenin) and Кремль (Kremlin), though КГБ (KGB), СССР (USSR),
Россия (Russia) are registered, as are single letters like А or Х that people
may like for a 'short' url.

Although the USSR collapsed not long after the creation of .su, it was briefly
in 'proper' use on the internet - unlike, say, .dd, intended for East Germany
- most notably via the ISP Demos, which famously used the name
_kremvax.demos.su_ as the name of its Usenet site, in reference to an early
internet hoax/April Fool's from 1984
([https://godfatherof.nl/kremvax.html](https://godfatherof.nl/kremvax.html)).

------
jon889
I wonder what happens to .co.uk if the UK dissolves, which seems more possible
than it should be after Brexit?

~~~
mike-cardwell
If Scotland leaves, I imagine we'll switch from "The United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland" to "The United Kingdom of Britain and Northern
Ireland", thus keeping the "uk". ".scot" already exists.

If Northern Ireland leaves, I guess the UK no longer exists, and we switch to
".gb". Could clone .uk at .gb for a while (ten years?) and give people time to
switch, but seems more likely Nominet would prefer to just charge people twice
for a .uk and a .gb.

If Scotland _and_ Northern Ireland leaves, that leaves us as just "Britain".
Maybe we create a new ".brit" (or whever the 2 char country code will be), and
give time for .uk to disappear again.

Wales wont leave.

[edit] I just saw emmelaich's comment that .gb already exists.

~~~
Symbiote
The three kingdoms which are united are the Kingdom of England, Scotland and
Ireland, the first two by the Acts of Union 1707 [1], and Ireland added by the
Acts of Union 1800 [2].

Wales is part of the Kingdom of England, under the "Laws in Wales Acts 1535
and 1542" [3].

Without Scotland, it becomes the United Kingdom of England and Northern
Ireland, leaving the Kingdom of Scotland. Scotland would be assigned an ISO
3166 code. SC, SO, ST, SL, SA, SN and SD are all taken. Perhaps they can have
"AB" for "Alba". The "GB" code would be unassigned.

Without Ireland, it becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Northern
Ireland presumably joins the Republic of Ireland in this case.

Without both, it becomes the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, etc.
England would then need an ISO code, "EN" is available.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1800](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1800)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_15...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_1542)

~~~
m-i-l
According to wikipedia [0] and UK government sources [1] there are 4 countries
in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: England,
Scotland, Wales (together forming Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. If
Scotland and Northern Ireland left the UK, it is conceivable therefore that
the United Kingdom would continue to exist but as the United Kingdom of
England and Wales.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom)

[1]
[https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20080909013512/ht...](https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20080909013512/http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page823)

~~~
thefringthing
Wales is a constituent country of the UK but not a kingdom.

------
jbeckham
Back in the late 90's and early 2000's, there were a set of hacking challenges
called the Zebulun Challenges hosted by the site CyberArmy. For the 7th or 8th
challenge (Lt. Kernel to Kernel), you had to find a proxy or have an rDNS for
your IP that resolved to a .su domain in order to proceed into the simulated
system you were trying to hack into.

~~~
dsl
Which isn't that hard. You just update your reverse DNS.

I assume for a later challenge they actually checked the forward DNS matched.
:)

~~~
jbeckham
In the late 90's with dial-up connections, most ISPs would not do this, hence
the search for .su proxies. Today, it is much easier when you can spin up a VM
in the cloud and control DNS entries.

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html5web
Russian Government owned Aeroflot Airlines still uses SU as a flight prefix.

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paulpauper
I wonder what the most exclusive tld is . probably .gov or .mil

~~~
mc32
Probably one of the corporate ones like .xyz, .amazon, .bananarepublic, etc.

~~~
adventured
I believe anyone can register the .xyz domains. They're typically on sale for
$0.99 on GoDaddy for the first year, so there seems to be a lot of junk,
volume registrations using it.

~~~
mc32
My bad, my main point is that likely the most restrictive would be one of the
corporate/private TLDs that are for internal use mainly. .xyz was a bad
example. Maybe better is .bananarepublic

~~~
CydeWeys
There's literally hundreds of new gTLDs like this that only have the one
required nic.tld on them and nothing else (because they haven't launched yet
and might never). My team runs a couple dozen of these.

For comparison's sake, we should probably restrict ourselves to legacy gTLDs,
ccTLDs, and open, launched new gTLDs.

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riffraff
I remember using a service to get a russian visa hosted on a .su domain. When
I found out what .su was, it felt pretty confusing :)

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octosphere
Anyone know of English words that we can use to make a 'domain hack'[0] out of
this?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack)

~~~
k__
.de.su would be THE otaku tld, lol

~~~
ThinkingGuy
My first thought is that this TLD would be great for Japanese-language domain
hacks, i.e., "i.ta.da.ki.ma.su" for a food- or cooking-related site.

(I just checked; sure enough someone's thought to register that one)

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tuxxy
If anyone is interested, registering a domain is $29.99/year and requires the
submission of an identity document (passport, driver's license, etc).

~~~
octosphere
Curious to know, but where can I buy one, and what registrars offer .su? Seems
entirely absent in my usual haunt where I go to get obscure TLDs:

[https://www.ovh.co.uk/domains/prices/](https://www.ovh.co.uk/domains/prices/)

There is however the following you can get on OVH which are similar:

    
    
        .sucks
        .supplies
        .supply
        .support
        .surgery

~~~
konart
Not sure about western registrars, but
[https://www.nic.ru/](https://www.nic.ru/) sells them for 590 roubles (~9.2$
|| 7.4£)

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jayess
This is kinda funny. I was able to get a .su domain earlier this year.

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RRRA
I have a domain there, been using it for years, where else do you find 3
letters domains

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Markoff
how about .cs for former Czechoslovakia, ema.cs usage case came first to my
mind

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lekz
Lisa Su needs to buy lisa.su

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Scoundreller
Oh. All this time I thought it was Sudan.

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taesu
how does a link like this gets to the front page of hn?

~~~
tyingq
It's interesting because it's still in use, even though the Soviet Union
doesn't exist. ICANN hasn't been successful in forcing the retirement.

Compare to the .cs TLD for Czechoslovakia which was phased out and replaced
with new TLDs.

~~~
kijin
I don't think ICANN should retire a domain namespace just because a political
entity that it used to represent no longer exists. Cool URIs don't change [1].

[1]
[https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html](https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html)

~~~
tyingq
I suppose it avoids awkward politics. It's not clear to me, at least, which
country would get to control the former Czechoslovakia TLD.

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djsumdog
Once upon a time I thought it would be funny to buy the .su domain for my
site, and on April Fools, have a link to it and a script that output all my
posts using the Cyrillic alphabet. I doubt I'll ever get around to it.

