Namebase is not part of the "traditional" DNS and names are not available on normal ISP nameservers, so people can't use it unless they switch to using the blockchain "namebase" DNS.
Namebase is a marketplace atop of the Handshake protocol. Puma Browser supports it natively, as well as NextDNS. If you really want your own TLD (or even to have your own name as a TLD), Namebase is the way to go (for now).
Maybe I should've added this information to my initial comment, I seem to have angered some folks.
Namebase is one in a long series of amateur projects (AlterNIC, OpenNIC, Namecoin...) which have aimed to create their own DNS roots.
Every single one of them has the exact same problem: the purpose of a domain name system is to agree upon naming. Alternate roots break that model, and any attempt to use them seriously immediately runs into massive interoperability problems (e.g. cannot send/receive email, cannot obtain SSL certificates, etc).
I haven't examined why others have failed so I have no rebuke on how "this time it's different."
However, I can speak to your last points.
Email sending between addresses utlizing Handshake domains has been demonstrated. I am unable to find any tweets but here's a video explaining how to do it[0]. Concerning security certificates, this is possibly via DANE rather than a centralized authority like LetsEncrypt. There is a tutorial[1] for that as well.
Regarding name collisions, Handshake's purpose isn't to replace legacy DNS, but to build atop it. It is for this reason that the Alexa top sites aren't available for bidding on Namebase. Again, I haven't looked at the amateur projects you've listed but it's possibly Handshake's focus is a key distinction.
> Email sending between addresses utlizing Handshake domains has been demonstrated.
Which fails to solve the problem of being able to interoperate with normal people on normal email servers.
> Concerning security certificates, this is possibly via DANE
DANE is dead. Nothing supports it, and there are no meaningful plans for that to change. Given that DNSSEC is still often dependent on RSA-1024 for security, it's not clear that DANE would even provide an adequate level of security.
> It is for this reason that the Alexa top sites aren't available for bidding on Namebase.
This is a bizarre assertion, given that Handshake is selling access to what are effectively TLDs, not domain names. A more believable explanation is simply that Handshake was attempting to avoid selling trademarked names associated with companies that would object to this.
There are still active domains on it so it can't die unless someone somehow forcefully expropriates those domains from their owners (and seeing as how the Soviet Union no longer exists I think it'd only fall to ICANN to do that). I think it'll just continue living on as a zombie forever.
I'm surprised it doesn't enjoy some currency as something analogous to .eu for the CIS or former-Soviet countries in general.
There are probably a lot of firms that serve many of these countries, and having a single unified presence at foo.su is probably more efficient than registering foo.ru, foo.ua, foo.kz, foo.lv, etc.
But I'm sure somebody somewhere is going to be celebrating.
America's hawkish (neo)conservatives continue to celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union. "Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr beat the USSR!" (Maybe that is an oversimplification of the truth, but it sounds good to their ears.) In 2091, there is likely to exist some intellectual successor/descendant to that school of thought, eager to mark that centenary.
What do the Russian Orthodox think? They went from an authoritarian regime which officially opposed the Russian Orthodox Church to a (still rather authoritarian, but arguably somewhat less so) regime which wants to be publicly seen currying favour with it. I'm sure some of them view that as an improvement. If that's what some of them think, why wouldn't they celebrate in 2091?
What about the countries which gained their independence through the downfall of the Soviet Union? I think many people in many of those countries will be celebrating the centenary of their independence.
The day Soviet tanks left our country in 90s is still celebrated with fireworks. And Velvet Revolution Day is the biggest annual celebration, literally most of the country celebrates, with special events (photos, movies
theatre...) everywhere that try to describe how bad it used to be.
Naturally some Finns seems to have registered kos.su (kossu is Finnish slang for the Koskenkorva vodka), even seems to have functioned as an url-shorterner for a while. :)
The first ones were definitely funny, and the format was popularized as part of a successful stand-up comedy routine by Yakov Smirnoff, although he wasn't the first to use it.[0]
Because the template can be filled with a wide variety of specific nouns and verbs, it has become a bit of a snowclone[1] or a meme in its own right[2], like the "Xzibit Yo Dawg" meme[3].
It's one of those things, I think, where the individual jokes aren't meant to be funny but rather the fact that they're all terrible yet people keep telling them is the real joke. Similar to Chuck Norris jokes.
As for the foreign language part, it's probably meant to lean into stereotypes about Russian English speakers to emphasize the "trashiness" of the joke. You could have an ethical discussion about that.
The original jokes (by Soviet emigre to the US, comedian Yakov Smirnoff) were clever (e.g. "In America, you can always find a party. In Soviet Russia, Party always finds you!"). But many copies of these jokes just do the word reversal without the wordplay.
- American guy goes to the dentist and says "do it fast!"
- German guy goes to the dentist and says "do it well!"
- Norwegian guy goes to the dentist and says "does it hurt?"
It is a thing in some cultures. Norwegians poke fun at the Swedes (and ourselves), Englishmen make jokes about the Irish and probably the other way around too.
I hope we can agree that it is OK also in the future. I don't want the world to be too dull.
Someone linked you to the Wikipedia article, and I just want to quote this bit of it:
> and the inverted Soviet form something menacing or dysfunctional, satirizing life under a communist dictatorship
A proper use of the "In Soviet Russia" meme isn't just reversing the words to make it sound like "Russian"; it' supposed to also suddenly construct a sentence that implies something dystopian. (And ideally, somewhat humorously, usually contextually so.)
I think the right ones are generally only at "sensible chuckle" level — you're not going to die laughing usually. I don't think the one above really fits the template though.
Funny is definitely subjective. I can see how you might not find this funny given your personal sensitivities. Also there may be cultural differences at play or you may have a different view of communist or totalitarian states than people in the West.
This is true not only for jokes but for pretty much every good idea. More often these are just a reference to something that is (was) funny, like movie reference or quote.
I don't know why you think this references language structure (see next point).
OP may have been clever (or not), but in my reply I sought to assert the canonical form where you take 'A <verb> B' and write 'In Soviet Russia B <verb> A'.
I had thought that maybe this type of a joke plays on the fact that russian allows for flexibility in the sentence structure, which if you were to translate word for word, would yield the joke.
- .an was the Netherlands Antilles, now replaced by its constituents .cw, .sx and .bq
- .tp was East Timor, now renamed Timor Leste (.tl)
There are plenty more not listed here though, including .su (Soviet Union) and .yu (Yugoslavia).