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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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Is the internet still kept in Big Ben?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, unless Jen needs to borrow it for a presentation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m actually going to that conference! What’s the title of your talk? I’ll be sure to attend it!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Excellent. I'm on Stage 4 on the Thursday afternoon: "Brewing Tea Over The Internet".

Should be fun times, see you there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Are you by any chance, British?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Did the predilection for tea give me away?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I need an ELI5 for this I'm a stupid Gen Z

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I need one too and I'm a stupid Gen Y

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As a late millennial and a programmer, I've got you.

So when you request a web page, before anything else, the server gives you a 3 digit status code.

100s means you asked for metadata

200s mean it went ok

300s means you need to go somewhere else (like for login, or because we moved things around)

400s mean you messed up

500s mean I messed up

So this is in the 400s. Each specific code means something - you've probably seen 404, which means you asked for a page that isn't there. And maybe 405, which means you're not allowed to see this

418 means you asked for coffee, but I'm a teapot

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I can't say enough how amazing your explanation was. Im not a programmer but I have worked on websites (self taught) and I never knew this. Thank you!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What's the process for submitting RFCs? And how do they pick which joke RFC they'll publish? That's a meeting I'd like to be a fly on the wall of

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

For "real" RFCs that aren't Apr 1st jokes, there's an independent submissions track for the public to write Internet-Drafts and then submit them into the review process.

With the joke RFCs, they get emailed straight to the editor at least two weeks beforehand. I'm not privy to the selection meeting, but I expect it's fun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I've heard that the internet is a series of tubes.

Can you confirm?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I never understood the beef people had with that. The Internet is a series of tubes, of various widths and sizes, with inputs at random points in the stream.

Plumbing analogies are apt.

[–] [email protected] 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?

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Well there is really only one question...

Pineapple on Pizza?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, obviously. Where else should it be at if not my pizza?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Getting really tired of this meme

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Out.

Can't stand pineapple at the best of times, on pizza is another level of wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

You can unilaterally create another status code. What do you create?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I quite like the idea of HTTP 256 Binary Data Follows, which is just 200 OK but you asked for a non-text content type file.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Wasn't there a new HTTP action recently proposed for "This is a JSON RPC request that we've convinced ourselves is actually REST and we've been using POST and someone finally pointed out that that was stupid"?

Not a new status code but still vaguely amusing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A new RFC for IPv7. It's just IPv4 with an extra octet. Yes or no?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think the extra address space of IPv6 is the problem holding back its adoption, so "IPv4 with another octet" would likely run into the same issues.

Not that it's a bad idea, it's just an idea that's unlikely to catch on.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What would you say is holding IPv6 back?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The biggest problem IPv6 has is that IPv4 has been so hugely successful: gargantuan resources have been poured into getting the world connected on IPv4, and the routers/etc deployed in the field (especially in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and other places which got the Internet late) are built around version 4: data paths 32 bits wide, ASICs and firmware developed with 4-byte offsets, and so on.

It's a big effort, and more importantly an expensive effort, to move all that infrastructure over for what the end user perceives as no benefit: their websites load just the same as before.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Are you saying there’s no financial incentive at the individual level to upgrade?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Essentially. If the end user is being asked to make a financial outlay to get to the same things they did before, it's unlikely that will go down well.

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sheesh, some people have no sense of humour.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Personally I don't have any problems with it (if that was directed at me) - I've added 418 as "unhandled exception code" response to a bunch of applications, so I can easily differentiate whether my application is throwing an error, or whether it's some middleware gateway AWS io-thing

I was just curious what OP thought about it, since in the early days it wasn't uncommon to add goofs or easter-eggs into software, but nowadays not done so much... and apparently the "HTTP Working Group" doesn't like it either... So I was curious whether OP though in hindsight whether it should've been added or not

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

How can it be unhandled? It's right there in the song, just before the spout!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You'd have to catch up with Mr Masinter to get his opinion on adding error 418, I'm afraid; that piece of the business wasn't my work.

I'm happy it's there though: it may have sparked flamewars, but at this point what hasn't. It does bring somewhat of that sense of humanity to the whole enterprise of working on the Internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I remember when I learned about this, I was working on an absurdly large project on my own. I was lost in all the details and losing hope of ever finishing. I was working on the backend API when I learned of this and took the time to implement the 418 response. It felt silly and brought the fun back to the project.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I remember when I first learned of error 418 and it did really help me understand that the Internet as we know it was made and shaped by regular people with senses of humor. Helped make it seem a bit less daunting/intimidating to understand.

It reminds me of how the Network Port 666 is specifically reserved for doom, always love Easter eggs like that in officially used protocols.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I'm just finding out about this trivia now but I'm a big fan

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