X-Clacks-Overhead

https://hleb.dev/post/x-clacks-overhead/

by hleb_dev • 7 months ago

125 45 7 months ago

stevekemp• 7 months ago

Looks like the site uses the deprecated "Report-To:" header in responses too, something I've never seen before and had to lookup.

hoppp• 7 months ago

I am all for goofy headers. Its especially fun when randomly stumbling into it.

kotaKat• 7 months ago

I was poking at the AT&T U-Verse outage reporting endpoint and caught "X-Employment".

Sadly no additional challenge other than "If you are reading this, please consider a technology job at AT&T www.att.jobs".

NewJazz3• 7 months ago

Eww why would they buy a .jobs domain what a joke.

atemerev• 7 months ago

The most important HTTP header (though clacks is a packet routing system, not an application-level streaming protocol)

kijin• 7 months ago

Well, there's no reason we couldn't have clacks-over-HTTP(-over-DNS)?(-over-avian-carrier)?, is there?

falcor842• 7 months ago

Of course, the good old CLOACA protocol (CLacks Over Avian CArrier), with the HTTP and DNS tunneling being OPTIONAL.

wiml• 7 months ago

True, perhaps it should be added as an IP option field or TCP option...

danaris• 7 months ago

GNU Terry Pratchett

"A man never truly dies until the his name is no longer spoken."

xena• 7 months ago

Whenever you load my blog, it randomly sends back a name from my configuration's clackset: https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/ff8627975e5f6718fff33051d11a.... I hate that the list is so long but over time it will only grow longer.

dylanh• 7 months ago

Thank you for putting Matt trout there.

tapete1• 7 months ago

Damn. I was not aware that Kevin Mitnick has passed away.

dejj2• 7 months ago

Does “saying the name lest he be forgotten” classify as Cargo Cult?

falcor842• 7 months ago

Why would it? Cargo Cutlting is when you believe that doing something symbolic will have a tangible effect on the world (e.g. bring you cargo from the sky), but this is just intended to be symbolic.

dejj2• 7 months ago

I was curious, and you’re right. It would be Cargo Culting then, if we believed the ritual actually had an effect on Pratchett in the afterlife.

rcarmo2• 7 months ago

I had that header set back when I ran my blog on my own HTTP server. Probably should spend some Cloudflare worker cycles to put it back now that it’s purely static…

NewJazz3• 7 months ago

You don't need cloudflare workers for that. The blog post mentioned how to add it. And there are other options as well.

rcarmo2• 7 months ago

I have a fully static site. And the backing storage doesn’t let me set custom headers

thrtythreeforty• 7 months ago

There's a list of sites broadcasting X-Clacks-Overhead: https://xclacksoverhead.org/listing/the-signal

madeofpalk• 7 months ago

FYI - no need to prefix your custom header with X- !

Historically, designers and implementers of application protocols have often distinguished between standardized and unstandardized parameters by prefixing the names of unstandardized parameters with the string "X-" or similar constructs. In practice, that convention causes more problems than it solves. Therefore, this document deprecates the convention for newly defined parameters with textual (as opposed to numerical) names in application protocols.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6648

nubg• 7 months ago

What supposed problems does it cause in practice?

Bratmon2• 7 months ago

If a nonstandard X header becomes widely used and then adopted as the standard, there is a surprisingly lengthy and difficult transition period to the new name.

Both clients and servers have to support both the X name and the regular name for decades, and servers have to deal with questions like "What if both are present but different?"

wowczarek• 7 months ago

I have been guilty of adding a custom header to all of my emails: "Yo-Momma: Fat". For years. In a professional setting. Nobody noticed.

akoboldfrying• 7 months ago

Discovering this at work one day would have brought a smile to my face!

Perhaps there's a whole new joke format here.

Long-Face-Reason: horse

maxmcd• 7 months ago

Is this possibly an intentional reference to GNU Linux, or unrelated?

shadowgovt• 7 months ago

Quite intentional.

kingsfoil2• 7 months ago

Within the book itself the clacks system has its own technical protocol which is briefly touched upon. The "overhead" is essentially packet or request metadata.

From the LSpace wiki, GNU is a metadata that means:

    G: Send the message onto the next Clacks Tower.
    N: Do not log the message.
    U: At the end of the line, return the message.

And yes, it is almost certainly a reference to GNU as in "GNU's Not Unix". =)

https://wiki.lspace.org/GNU_Terry_Pratchett

TRiG_Ireland• 7 months ago

It's Terry Pratchett, so of course it's an intentional reference.

nindalf2• 7 months ago

I miss Terry Pratchett. Just a good guy, writing joyful books. None of that "gritty realism" here. There's only about 40 books by him, so I read 2 a year. By the time I get to 40, I figure I would have forgotten the first few and I can start again.

My blog has had this header since the day he died.

ninalanyon2• 7 months ago

The Night Watch seems pretty gritty to me. And Small Gods. And Vimes' escape from the werewolves in The Fifth Elephant.

nindalf2• 7 months ago

Night Watch is my favourite book of his, as it turns out. He is capable of exploring serious themes while still maintaining some whimsy. That's why I love him so much.

sandermvanvliet• 7 months ago

stackoverflow.com and all stack exchange sites also include X-Clacks-Overhead in the response thanks to yours truly

regularfry• 7 months ago

I think strictly speaking any node on the network which receives the header should forward it on. So if your browser ever sees it, it should use it for all HTTP requests from that point. And if a server ever receives it, it should pass it to all clients.

gclawes• 7 months ago

There are Chrome and Firefox extensions to indicate the presence of the header.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clacks-overhead-gnu...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/x-clacks-over...

kingsfoil2• 7 months ago

A while back I wrote a tiny piece of Phoenix middleware to add the GNU message for an arbitrary name to phoenix applications:

https://github.com/alex0112/ex_clacks_overhead

I haven't touched it in years, so it's possible that it no longer works. But maybe this post is a kick in the pants for me to go test it again.

Thanks for keeping it in the overhead. GNU Terry Pratchett.

"A man's not dead while his name is still spoken"

achillean• 7 months ago

Honeypots are advertising that header as well nowadays:

https://www.shodan.io/search/report?query=x-clacks-overhead

Most of the non-honeypot results are for the Gargoyle Router Management interface exposed by Korea Telecom:

https://www.shodan.io/search/report?query=x-clacks-overhead+...

The results have increased significantly over time:

https://trends.shodan.io/search?query=x-clacks-overhead

satvikpendem• 7 months ago

But sometimes small, unnecessary things are exactly what make the internet better.

Or, worse? I don't think this is the point you're wanting to make but it's not always the case that it's better.

X-Clacks-Overhead

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