So they registered the domain "www" just like they could have registered "google" or "lol".<p>You can access Google by typing:<p>- google.com (domain name)<p>- www.google.com (subdomain)<p>The same for the domain in question:<p>- www.ai (domain name)<p>- www.www.ai (subdomain)<p>~~The reason why typing ".ai" or "ai", etc. In your browser works is in IMO due to the internals of the browser that automatically adds a www in front of the domain if it can't resolve it because historically so many websites run on <a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.example.com</a> and neglect to setup <a href="http://example.com~~" rel="nofollow">http://example.com~~</a><p>Edit: as pointed by another comment (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690379" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690379</a>) there are actually TLDs with A records which is the case here.<p>So to take my example from above: The registry responsible for the AI TLD set up a website on the domain name "www.ai" but neglected to set it up on the subdomain "www.www.ai"
Instead, they set it up on the TLD "ai" which is indeed very unusual.
If you are now just learning that .ai domains are available, I'll save you some time, samur.ai is taken.<p>Unfortunately it appears a link farmer has it rather than a cool hacker.
To all who can't replicate it: Clicking a link, copy/pasting the URL, and typing it from the keyboard all behave differently. Make sure that you manually type<p><pre><code> http://ai/
</code></pre>
into the location bar (do not use https). Also try with and without the trailing slash.
I've been maintaining a list here for a few years: <a href="https://captnemo.in/tld-a-record/" rel="nofollow">https://captnemo.in/tld-a-record/</a><p>(Automatically updated, but Travis broke this a while ago). There's some older diffs on my blog[1] if you search for "A Record")<p>[1]: <a href="https://captnemo.in/archive.html" rel="nofollow">https://captnemo.in/archive.html</a>
"Server Not found" for any of:<p>- <a href="https://ai/" rel="nofollow">https://ai/</a><p>- <a href="https://www.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ai/</a><p>- <a href="http://ai/" rel="nofollow">http://ai/</a><p>- <a href="http://ai" rel="nofollow">http://ai</a>.<p>- <a href="http://ai" rel="nofollow">http://ai</a><p>and <a href="http://.ai/" rel="nofollow">http://.ai/</a> gets redirected to a search engine searchfor ".ai" by firefox.<p>But <a href="http://www.ai/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ai/</a> works for some reason.
If I remove "www" as per title, ie. if I type ".ai" or "<a href="https://.ai" rel="nofollow">https://.ai</a>" it doesn't work. What am I missing?
Interestingly, most WHOIS services fail to resolve this domain, and show alternative such as ai.com. Its like going off the marauders map :)<p>The page informs us it is registered in Anguilla.
Only <a href="http://ai" rel="nofollow">http://ai</a> (with or without trailing dot) did not work for me using DuckDuckGo browser on Android phone.
Okay..WTF? <a href="http://ai" rel="nofollow">http://ai</a>. Didn’t work on Chrome Mac but it works in Safari for iOS. Is this a bug or how the hell is this possible? It’s flipping everything I thought I knew about domains upside down.