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Did You Know TLDs Can Be Websites?

Sean Boult on July 16, 2026

You've probably registered a domain with Route53 or another popular registrar. You pick something like seanboult.dev, spin up a web server, config...

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Ben Halpern • Jul 16

TIL

Sean Boult AWS • Jul 16 • Edited

Yeah i was shook when i saw it posted on hacker news several years ago.

Obviously it extends more then just the web. My ambitious goal is to have email sean@aws one day and watch zero providers support it.

Nazar Boyko • Jul 17

The cert mismatch is what makes this a great demo, honestly. It shows exactly how much of "a domain works" is DNS and how much is everything else agreeing that the name is real. The A record is fine, the browser just has nowhere to put a single-label name.

Esin Saribudak • Jul 16

Wild, didn't think the Internet could get any weirder!

Sean Boult AWS • Jul 16

I thought weird is a reserved keyword for Austin 😂

EmberNoGlow • Jul 22

Author: put some command on the cover
Cybersecurity geeks: DO NOT ENTER COMMANDS YOU DON'T KNOW
Me 🔥:

Hmm, that command is clickbait 😭😭😭

Sean Boult AWS • Jul 22

yes and no, it used to work. I mentioned in the blog the .ai site was taken down for whatever reason.

This is what i found works as of writing this.

demo $ curl -v -s -k https://uz 2>&1 | rg "HTTP/1.1"
> GET / HTTP/1.1
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK

EmberNoGlow • Jul 23

The command you gave me didn't produce any results. I tried checking if the connection was working at all, but it didn't.

Later I found out, after checking the site on 8.8.8.8, your server DOESN'T WORK AT ALL

{
  "Status": 0 /* NOERROR */,
  "TC": false,
  "RD": true,
  "RA": true,
  "AD": true,
  "CD": false,
  "Question": [
    {
      "name": "uz.",
      "type": 1 /* A */
    }
  ],
  "Answer": [
    {
      "name": "uz.",
      "type": 1 /* A */,
      "TTL": 10441,
      "data": "91.212.89.8"
    }
  ]
}

Hosein Mahmoudi • Jul 17

it's interesting

Sean Boult AWS • Jul 17

Indeed. i love finding weird parts of the internet 😂.

Leonid Svyatov • Jul 21

Great find. On the .aws question at the end: you contractually can't. ICANN's New gTLD Program Committee resolved on 13 August 2013 that dotless names are prohibited, after SSAC's SAC053 recommended banning A/AAAA/MX at a TLD apex outright (announcement). That only binds ICANN-contracted TLDs though, which is exactly why .uz still gets away with it. RFC 7085 puts it plainly:

Many people have expressed a belief that ICANN prohibits all TLDs from being dotless. That belief is not true; ICANN's policies apply only to their contracted TLDs.

Sean Boult AWS • Jul 24

TIL, thanks for sharing!

PubliFlow • Jul 21

Good cloud patterns. For teams considering this architecture, I'd also recommend evaluating data residency and compliance implications early — retroactively adding encryption and access controls is significantly harder.

PubliFlow • Jul 23

Solid cloud architecture breakdown. One consideration that's becoming increasingly important is cost governance — implementing proper tagging, budget alerts, and right-sizing from the start prevents painful optimization sprints later.

PubliFlow • Jul 22

Nice cloud architecture write-up. One thing I'd add is the value of infrastructure-as-code testing — tools like Terratest or Pulumi's testing framework catch misconfigurations before they hit production.

Sarvar Nadaf • Jul 17

Cool Stuff!

niuniu • Jul 21

Thanks for sharing! I'd also recommend Turso for edge databases — 500 databases and 9GB storage for free. MonkeyCode (monkeycode-ai.net) is a solid choice for developers wanting AI help.

niuniu • Jul 21

Thanks for sharing the real numbers. Data-driven posts like this are so valuable for the community.