if there are two things humans seem to
love doing
it's separating ourselves and
categorizing basically everything
into neat little boxes these two factors
came together neatly
to create our concept of countries and
countries very often have names
that may or may not be a bit too long to
type out over and over again
which has created the need for two
letter country codes
however what exactly are they used for
and how important can these seemingly
benign things
be to their countries no seriously i
promise this will be interesting
this video was sponsored by hover so
first off
why are these codes so important who
decides them
how were they created and what are they
used for aside from website domains and
the occasional european license plate
well these domains are part of something
known as iso 31661
alpha 2 which is part of iso 3166
a specification developed by the
international organization for
standardization
for the purpose of representing
different countries
as might have been implied there are
actually multiple parts
to this regulation iso 3166-1
defines codes for countries independent
territories and is itself divided into
three parts
alpha two for two letter codes alpha
three for three letter codes
and numeric being three digit codes
allowing people using other writing
systems
to use these codes without having to
switch over to the latin script
the next two are actually really simple
iso 3166-2
defines the codes used for sub-regions
like states or provinces
and iso 3166-3 basically just stores old
codes used for countries that don't
exist anymore
there's also a handy little table of all
676 possible 2-letter combinations as
well as which combinations are currently
occupied
by countries former countries and
sufficiently autonomous territories
which is very handy indeed because oh
look dot zg is still available
and yes even first level subdivisions
get their own codes
albeit on a different list like or for
oregon
bw for bottom vip and back or even nsw
for new south wales
in total there are well over 5 000
assigned codes
mostly due to all the subdivisions out
there which is even greater than the
population
of devon island canada iso 3166
was first put forth in 1974 though this
version only used the letter codes
with the numeric codes added in 1981 and
gradually expanding from there
it was first managed by the deutsches
institut phenomenon or
german institute for standardization
though it was later moved to the iso's
offices in geneva
being run by the iso these codes are
recognized worldwide
to avoid confusion between the countries
wanting to call this place germany
and those wanting to call it something
like alimony and are also used in
machine readable passports
and even an international bank transfers
especially
if you've ever had to write out an ebon
or international bank account number
however as humans tend to deal with
randomly assigned symbolism that means
basically nothing at first glance
these codes can have a big impact on the
countries that hold them
with some getting insanely lucky in the
modern internet-based market
of course i absolutely cannot make a
video about internet tlds
without of course mentioning tuvalu
tuvalu is a
tiny island nation in the middle of the
pacific
with a population of barely 11 000
people
which itself might not exist in the next
few decades due to rising sea levels
tuvalu doesn't have exactly all that
strong of an industrial sector on the
world stage
minus of course their ample fishing
waters but in the era of people
registering these domains for their
websites
tuvalu got extremely lucky since their
two letter code
is tv and therefore their internet tld
is dot tv an invaluable domain for
websites from twitch.tv
to canoebus.tv however does that make
these websites technically
too balawin many other countries and
territories have also gotten some of
this luck
with the federated states of micronesia
having dot fm
of radio and podcast fame and the
british indian ocean territory
having dot io of online game theme
so does that make all the websites with
domains ending in these codes to follow
in or micronesian or
british indian ocean territory in
well while these extensions are intended
for use by websites based in these
territories
in practice it doesn't always have to be
like that for example
while you generally have to move to oman
to get a om domain
many other domains are available for
public use
and in fact some like tv are actually
registered with the dot tv corporation
part of verisign which markets the oh so
valuable domain
in agreement with the tuvaluan
government there are even more examples
than just those three as well
like mauritiuses.mu
armenias.am montenegros.me
and drcongos.cd using these domain
endings for other purposes wholly
unrelated to the country in question
or even for wordplay such as
hypothetically canoe.is
or soliloque.uy or upnat.om
or even real examples that actually
exist like goog.gl or youtube.be
or itun.es are all things referred to
as domain hacks given that these domains
are
and can be incredibly useful for these
companies
even though my youtube channel is about
as icelandic as youtube itself
is belgian so that's the gist
of iso 3166 admittedly while it can
definitely have an effect on the world
stage
not even getting into what territories
are recognized as countries by the iso
there's not all that much to say about
it i mean some people 45 years ago sat
down and listed all the countries and
territories
assigned the two letter codes that best
fit each of them and that was kind of
it not so much the controversy or
division as things like new
international borders or things like
that
and when you think about it that's kind
of a good thing
a chaotic world is certainly fun to
watch in fiction but when it comes to
people actually wanting to just
live their own lives sometimes
international government things being
boring
can be nice so after that
interesting moral you might be wondering
why i'm suddenly talking about two
letter country codes
well first it's interesting but also
this week's video was made in
collaboration with hover
hover is a service where you can reserve
whatever domain you want for basically
whatever you're working on online
hover is incredibly easy to use and
provides you with all sorts of options
for example long before they even
reached out to me i reserved the domains
canoebus.com
and canoebus.tv partially to help out
tuvalu as best i can
but you don't have to settle for those
regular nerd domains you can also get
dot tech dot eu
dot
online.enterprises.camera.london.pizza.productions
or even punto football plus more than
400 other extensions
hover makes it incredibly easy to
connect your domains with your websites
and they have award-winning customer
service should you ever get confused
but even if you don't have a website and
don't plan on making one but still want
to somewhat professional web presence
for only a little bit extra you can also
connect any domain you've purchased with
hover
to a brand new email address that will
forward messages to your old and
possibly cringely named email
for instance if you wanted to email me
for business purposes a couple years ago
you would have had to go through
canoebus productionsoficial at gmail.com
which became a big pan of the ass or i
guess more accurately painted the
fingers
to write down but now if you want to
send me an email
you can send it to contact canoebus.tv
which is better in pretty much every way
possible except maybe for the fact that
it isn't free
but hover offers incredibly affordable
domains
with no catch whatsoever and if those
prices still aren't cheap enough for you
you can go to the register domain below
to get 10 percent off your order
and help support the channel thank you
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