codl 🚲you know that "xn--" prefix for internationalised domain names?
til that the "n" was picked at random by feeding some stock market numbers into a hash function
cmon yall, you're telling me if you worked for the IANA you *wouldn't* set up weird little algorithmic pachinko games like this? be real
In seriousness, I was linked this in the context of nothing-up-my-sleeve numbers so I suspect the reason for this charade was to make sure that no one was influencing the choice for nefarious reasons. But I'm not sure how anyone could possibly benefit from the idna prefix being xb-- instead of xn-- or whatever
sirius xm out there getting free advertisement on every idn
we coulda had some good emoticons as the idna prefix
Dee 
@codl Honestly, I imagine they just asked the person who came up with the whole punycode algorithm to come up with a way to select the prefix and they were like "oh, I know a simple and straightforward way!"
Wolf480pl
GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)