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Isn't i.nu a little narrower, at least?

We only use monospace fonts around these parts

I think there might be one or two other domains that have a host as well. But beating two letters is difficult.

I also own a four character domain too, but the domain part is a single Unicode character and HN seems to strip it from text here.

The punycode version is xn—x6h.ws

Ironically, something has autosubstituted an em dash "—" for your original double hyphens...

http://xn--x6h.ws

Recycling Symbol for Type-4 Plastics

Yep! I chose it as the domain’s total character length is 4 (when visible in a browser obviously, not in punycode form) and the recycling symbol felt appropriate for url shortening. I hosted it on Bitly (hence you see a Bitly landing page if the short url doesn’t exist).

I don’t use it as much anymore because of the previously mentioned Unicode filtering some sites use, like HN.