this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Let's get the AMAs kicked off on Lemmy, shall we.

Almost ten years ago now, I wrote RFC 7168, "Hypertext Coffeepot Control Protocol for Tea Efflux Appliances" which extends HTCPCP to handle tea brewing. Both Coffeepot Control Protocol and the tea-brewing extension are joke Internet Standards, and were released on Apr 1st (1998 and 2014). You may be familiar with HTTP error 418, "I'm a teapot"; this comes from the 1998 standard.

I'm giving a talk on the history of HTTP and HTCPCP at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress in Berlin later this month, and I need an FAQ section; AMA about the Internet and HTTP. Let's try this out!

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[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I have no questions, but I want to let people here know that there are two excellent websites related to this: http.cat and http.dog, for looking up HTTP status codes.

For an example, if http.cat/418 doesn't brighten your day, I don't think there's much that can.

[–] pacjo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I love this. Thank you so much.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

You're welcome! I try to share this with people whenever I can, hoping that it makes someone's day better. It certainly gives me a lot of joy when I can respond to something with a relevant http cat, though the few people I do it to might be getting a little annoyed.

[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Congratulations on creating such a cool piece of Internet arcana!

What do you think the silliest/most useless response status code is aside from 418?

Were there any codes you wish had been included that haven't been for some reason?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I always rather enjoyed the double entendre of "420 Enhance Your Calm", which was an unofficial response from Twitter's original API before "429 Too Many Requests" was standardized.

But I can't think of any codes which aren't already in there, that I'd use; there are a bunch that don't see much use, like "410 Gone", so the list could do with trimming down if anything.

[–] Erk@cdda.social 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I had been an advocate of getting just an ordinary person to do the first Lemmy ama but apparently we've got an absolute legend.

Have you ever had a favourite reference to your joke come up?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I did go to a conference once where they were handing out laptop stickers, and in the pack was a 418 teapot.

Of course, a week after I stuck that to my machine, it died. Telling the laptop it was a teapot didn't agree with it, I guess.

[–] Deebster@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thank you for fixing a critical flaw in the original RFC.

What did you think about the Save 418 Movement? Were you involved in it in any way?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My endorsement is at the bottom of that page, in fact. I wasn't an active campaigner, but a word in favor was the least I could do.

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[–] PetrichorBias@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Was it hard to get this standardized back in the good ol' days?

Do you think it would be as easy to do it now? If not, what challenges and hurdles would a RFC have to overcome?

The last thing I know that was pretty "significant" is the GNU Terry Pratchett header (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett#Death) and that was a community effort.

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

There are joke RFCs almost every year, so it's not unprecedented to add to the standards. This year, one of the additions was a Death Flag to TCP, to indicate when a connection is about to terminate. The RFC Editors are very approachable when it comes to the Apr 1st RFCs: a "real" standard would need to be drafted by someone actually in the field, but the Apr 1st's are open to public submissions as long as you're willing to redraft/edit in accordance with the documentation standards.

It's worth noting that the Clacks header is an unofficial campaign, and hasn't been standardised; the 'Pedia states that some 84,000 sites return X-Clacks-Overhead, and my own is one.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not a question, but we use 418 in production! We have a nginx router that routes pages based on its path to either old frontend or new frontend. I wanted some easy way to handle the routing (and to not repeat myself), so I set the new frontend as a handler for 418 error and then just return 418 in the nginx for any page I want on new UI. I chose 418 because the others could be actually used by the old frontend and it could get all weird.

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is actually a good use of 418 in production, and one I've come across before: if you need to perform some custom handling and throwing a HTTP error is the only sensible way to do it, 418 is always available.

Unless your server really is a coffeepot, which is ...unlikely.

Getting more likely with each passing year.

[–] skiba@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Well there is really only one question...

Pineapple on Pizza?

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[–] Fenzik@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

What’s the most impactful 418-related incident you’ve witnessed? I remember a few years ago npm went down and was returning 418 which spawned jokes and chaos across the web

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The incident you mention is probably the most impactful, but there's also the time the Russian military blocked IPs outside Russia by returning 418 instead of the more logical 403.

[–] Maiznieks@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I know russian a bit and jargon for russian word "teapot" is also commonly used as "dummy" or "novice". 418 for foreigners might have been on purpose there which brings Your April's fool joke to a nation wide level :)

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[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What's your take on the fediverse frontier?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think it's excellent out here. I was stuck on Reddit for the longest time, and this recent debacle has pushed me to explore the networks at the edge; this feels a lot more like the Internet of old. The analogy of email is apt, I think, with the accounts on multiple servers and the interplay between.

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You awaken my nostalgia, curiosity and sense of adventure when you say "explore the networks at the edge". Are there any other networks than lemmy / mastodon that you would suggest checking out?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Internet Relay Chat's been one of those things that's always felt out on the edge. I've been on EFnet since perhaps '03, and it's a lot quieter than it was...

With people moving en masse away from the centralized sites and their Firebase-implemented chats, we may see a pick up in traffic on the IRC networks, which would be good to see.

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[–] binwiederhier@discuss.ntfy.sh 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Thank you for contributing to the magic of the old school internet.

My question: How does one get to write an RFC? Do you have to become part of a certain group, or just be known in certain circles, or do you just start writing and then submit it somewhere? If I had a great idea that I think should become an RFC, what is the process to make this a reality?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

For Apr 1st RFCs in particular, the process is that you write your document in conformance to the RFC Editor's Style Guide and email it to the editor directly. If you have a not-a-joke standard that you'd like to be considered, that'll go through as an Internet Draft first, and then there are stages of review.

I haven't been through the latter, but the editors are very approachable over email; I had no issues submitting my RFC for review and revision.

[–] deepdivedylan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Was RFC 7168 written with Captain Picard's tea Earl Gray, hot in mind? If not, are follow up modifications planned?

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

So replicators are kind of a special case: they can make anything already fully prepared, without the need for a brewing command to be sent. It's possible that by the 24th century, there's a compatibility layer between Replicator Intermediate Language and HTCPCP, but I'll leave that to future generations to establish.

[–] fidodo@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

We're there any early internet standards you were super bullish on at the time that didn't get picked up? In retrospect, if it had been adopted do you think it would have had the impact you were hoping for

[–] Two9A@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

That's a tough one: most standards are codified as such because they're already seeing wide use. The major example of one that's been worked the other way around is IPv6: it's been a standard for a very long time, and still doesn't seem to be seeing adoption.

Of course, I wouldn't say I was bullish on IPv6. 32 bits is enough for anyone, right.

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What's the funniest legitimate non-joke standardization detail you've come across?

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[–] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

What a fun AMA topic lol. I dont have a question, I'm just glad youre here, spreading the good gospel of your goofy internet standard

[–] Klaboesterbeer@feddit.nl 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Are you by any chance, British?

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

What a British thing to ask. Very apt sir, very apt.

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[–] cheeseblintzes@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I don't have any questions but holy shit this is so cool.

[–] RonSijm@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

Do you regret adding it, or with the knowledge you have today, would you still add the 418?

Since a bunch of languages have not implemented it, or/and has long discussions about it:

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/15650
https://github.com/golang/go/issues/21326
https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/14644
https://github.com/psf/requests/issues/4238
https://github.com/aspnet/HttpAbstractions/issues/915

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