Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/10/large-horse-is-silly-fun-with-subdomains.html
…
3 Likes
There are limits 
We can’t connect to the server at very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.very.large.horse.
6 Likes
Neighsayers!
21 Likes
Kinda annoying to have to click on the “Continue to HTTP Site” every single time because it’s not https, since I have the https only mode enabled.
5 Likes
I’m more upset than I should be that hitting the “-” button from the start doesn’t take you to small.horse.
ETA: Apparently that domain is taken up by an MLP image… Such a waste.
EATA: Tiny.horse isn’t taken, though! Someone let the creator know!
EOATA: Little.horse doesn’t seem to be for sale, but maybe if you’ve got a lot of disposable income…
4 Likes
femto.horse
2 Likes
You mean someone’s going to have to pony up for it?
You need to nag them until they do.
9 Likes
This is more nerdy but has been around for a while.
$ traceroute -m 50 bad.horse
. . .
22 bad.horse (162.252.205.130) 83.591 ms 83.657 ms 83.278 ms
23 bad.horse (162.252.205.131) 81.632 ms 81.602 ms 87.411 ms
24 bad.horse (162.252.205.132) 87.423 ms 84.988 ms 93.429 ms
25 bad.horse (162.252.205.133) 97.077 ms 89.453 ms 97.036 ms
26 he.rides.across.the.nation (162.252.205.134) 97.027 ms 102.130 ms 102.101 ms
27 the.thoroughbred.of.sin (162.252.205.135) 102.154 ms 108.439 ms 108.413 ms
28 he.got.the.application (162.252.205.136) 113.343 ms 113.318 ms 104.443 ms
29 that.you.just.sent.in (162.252.205.137) 110.211 ms 118.777 ms 109.453 ms
30 it.needs.evaluation (162.252.205.138) 114.548 ms 114.519 ms 121.066 ms
31 so.let.the.games.begin (162.252.205.139) 128.375 ms 121.127 ms 122.017 ms
32 a.heinous.crime (162.252.205.140) 131.966 ms 127.031 ms 126.998 ms
33 a.show.of.force (162.252.205.141) 130.043 ms 129.831 ms 137.601 ms
34 a.murder.would.be.nice.of.course (162.252.205.142) 134.482 ms 141.417 ms 140.961 ms
35 bad.horse (162.252.205.143) 140.975 ms 140.917 ms 148.432 ms
36 bad.horse (162.252.205.144) 151.835 ms 147.159 ms 152.343 ms
37 bad.horse (162.252.205.145) 152.361 ms 152.207 ms 151.917 ms
38 he-s.bad (162.252.205.146) 156.090 ms 163.152 ms 161.913 ms
39 the.evil.league.of.evil (162.252.205.147) 162.196 ms 168.365 ms 168.349 ms
40 is.watching.so.beware (162.252.205.148) 167.346 ms 172.288 ms 167.007 ms
41 the.grade.that.you.receive (162.252.205.149) 178.131 ms 172.197 ms 177.625 ms
42 will.be.your.last.we.swear (162.252.205.150) 181.019 ms 183.439 ms 182.044 ms
43 so.make.the.bad.horse.gleeful (162.252.205.151) 182.086 ms 182.061 ms 182.022 ms
44 or.he-ll.make.you.his.mare (162.252.205.152) 191.474 ms 191.442 ms 187.042 ms
45 o_o (162.252.205.153) 191.480 ms 191.414 ms 191.402 ms
46 you-re.saddled.up (162.252.205.154) 197.371 ms 203.281 ms 197.333 ms
47 there-s.no.recourse (162.252.205.155) 208.704 ms 208.660 ms 208.624 ms
48 it-s.hi-ho.silver (162.252.205.156) 207.007 ms 204.515 ms 213.450 ms
49 signed.bad.horse (162.252.205.157) 213.271 ms 207.305 ms 213.367 ms
If you don’t have access to a command-line version of traceroute, you can also look at it with this web doodad:
Enter “-m 50 bad.horse” into the box. It defaults to 30 hops which cuts the output short, but to my surprise apparently it just appends the input to a “traceroute” command line so you can use the standard option to set the maximum hop count.
14 Likes
A one trick pony.
7 Likes
I like the part where the horse got bigger.
4 Likes
And some nerdery about that limit - that domain name has just a smidge over the 255 bytes that is the maximum (and you need at least a null byte at the end as well - IIRC the longest domain name is 253 bytes but I can’t remember why, potentially the implied “.” for the root as well?).
4 Likes
That comes from RFC1034, chapter 3.1, last but one paragraph:
To simplify implementations, the total number of octets that represent a domain name (i.e., the sum of all label octets and label lengths) is limited to 255.
Since a domain name (including TLDs) for DNS records includes at least one label (length+content) and a zero length label as end marker, we have the 253 character limit.
Dots are not included, they are just label separators for human convenience.
4 Likes
Well, now I have the song stuck in my head
2 Likes
Thank you very much - I thoroughly appreciate the RFC pointer! My brain can now relax 
2 Likes
But you can count all the characters, including dots, in the human-readable form of the domain name with a trailing dot and it will have the same number of octets as the binary form of the domain name used in DNS request/reply records, since each label length is encoded as a single octet preceding the label characters, with the maximum length of a label being 63 octets.
(edited to add: unless you are looking at a domain name containing Unicode characters encoded in labels which is an extension to the original DNS standard.)
That way the count will be missing one octet: the name is always terminated by a zero-length label, represented by just its length octet, set to zero.
Yes, multioctet character encoding complicates the matter further…
Well, you know what they say, the two hardest things in computer science is counting.
3 Likes
Why not replace it with another?
Because as soon as I saw large.horse , I immediately checked to see if someone had registered my.lovely.horse. And yes, they have.
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