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Why is 418 the particular target? Just because of RFC2324? > IANA should also typographically distinguish “Unassigned” and “Reserved” in the registry descripti

Why is 418 the particular target? Just because of RFC2324? > IANA should also typographically distinguish “Unassigned” and “Reserved” in the registry descriptions, to prevent confusion. This I can get onboard with. Honestly, I've never seen a 418 easter egg, but I'd think it would be an HTTP spec violation if it didn't at least conform to the higher level 4xx definition (Client Error) :)

cyphar 9y ago
It's a response to this story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14987460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14987460), where a contributor has been going to many different projects and attempting to remove language support for the 418 error code. EDIT: Ah, so it's the same person. In which case it's more of a continuation, and I anticipate that the intention is to make implementations that allow 418 non-compliant.
- endgame 9y ago
  Note that the "contributor" (Mark Nottingham) is also the author of the document in OP, and deserves a lot of credit for taking this approach. Given that his area of work is HTTP standards, I think he initially started removing 418 to tidy up and make things compliant and isn't just some bore who hates fun. Now he's managed to make everyone happy in a standards-compliant way.
  - awirth 9y ago
    For those that may not know, Mark is also co-chair of the HTTP Working Group on the IETF[1]. [1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/charter/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/charter/
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    It's weird though. The origin spec is specifically a discrete protocol called HTCPCP, not HTTP, so it has nothing to do with HTTP standards. They can do whatever they want with 418 in HTTP.
    - geofft 9y ago
      They can, but they believe in rough consensus and working code and in being conservative in what they do and liberal in what they accept from others. It's clear that a lot of real-world HTTP implementations are using HTTP 418 to mean I'm A Teapot, whether or not they should, and that reassigning it would cause practical difficulties.
      - peterwwillis 9y ago
        That's not clear to me. Nobody relies on the feature, it's a tiny piece of code, only some vendors support it, and it's not even part of the spec. (It also can't be reassigned because it was never assigned to begin with) If they like 418, they can add it to the spec. But this idea that it's been "consumed" is weird. It's like saying <blink> was "consumed" in HTML because two browsers used to support it. It was just an unofficial feature of popular vendor software, and is now officially disavowed. Basically what we're saying is we're not going to implement 418 in the spec, but at the same time, we're not going to let anyone use it?
        JoshTriplett 9y ago
        > It's like saying <blink> was "consumed" in HTML because two browsers used to support it. Which is accurate. Reintroducing a tag named "blink" into HTML to mean something other than "blinking text" would be a really bad idea for compatibility reasons.
        peterwwillis 9y ago
        So we're trying to avoid breaking the internet by committing to people expecting an error when they're talking to a teapot? So that past implementations of clients connecting to teapots won't break? Like I say, we could also just add it to the spec... But that would be ridiculous, because why would you support telling someone you were a teapot in an HTTP protocol, when the feature is only useful in a protocol for brewing coffee? That would be like taking a programming language's syntax for assigning data objects and turning it into it's own standard for a text file format. Maybe a time traveler set this whole thing up 19 years ago just to troll people on standards boards.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    It was interesting reading the threads on /r/webdev about this whole debacle. The threads were full of people saying that he's an arsehole with too much time on his hands who must hate fun. Nobody actually stopped to read the guys bio and realise that he's more than qualified to be bringing up these issues. It doesn't help that the guy who made save418.com is literally 14 (which seems to be about the average age of /r/webdev).
    - mystrman111 9y ago
      The /r/webdev thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6stdcj/http_error_code_418_im_a_teapot_is_about_to_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6stdcj/http_error_c...) remained quite respectful actually, afaik there were no real hostile remarks directed towards Mark Nottingham within it. In fact, it's ironic - the very comment I'm replying to is probably more distasteful and antagonistic than anything that could be found in the Reddit thread.
      - LukeShu 9y ago
        Often reddit threads read more respectful after-the-fact; the less respectful comments either get downvoted enough that they aren't displayed unless you look for them, or are moderated away. Often they are much harsher early in the thread. I'm not sure if that ways the case here, but it is common enough that I wouldn't doubt it.
        mystrman111 9y ago
        When comments are removed by mods on Reddit, they're replaced with the text "[REMOVED]", which doesn't appear once in the referenced thread (insults would not be removed in the first place though, they break no /r/webdev rules). And you can scroll to the bottom of the thread to see all the downvoted comments, none of which are are condescending towards Mark. So no, that isn't the case here.
        pwdisswordfish 9y ago
- habitue 9y ago
  The contributor trying to remove 418 and the author of this RFC are the same person (Mark Nottingham[1]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nottingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nottingham
  - ramses0 9y ago
    ...and seems aware that this is simply "tidying up" as opposed to someone from the "No-Fun League"... see the working title: draft-nottingham-thanks-larry-00
    - LukeShu 9y ago
      For context: "Larry" is the author of the April Fools' RFC that introduced 418.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dsr_ 9y ago
Because: 1st: RFC2324 mentioned it and 2nd: too many people then implemented it.
lccarrasco 9y ago
An example of an existing easter egg (for reference): https://www.google.com/teapot https://www.google.com/teapot
- LambdaComplex 9y ago
  I was worried that page would actually return a 200 OK response, but curl confirmed it actually returns a 418 code
- manojlds 9y ago
  Is there a scenario where people end up there?
  - shurcooL 9y ago
    Probably when it's linked to, for fun, like above.
  - Benjammer 9y ago
    Yes, ^this^ one.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  It looks as if the teapot is responsive to my phone's gyros. I would've thought it would need special permission for that. What a terribly clever Easter egg.
  - HappyTypist 9y ago
    Nope. Actually, there was a paper published recently on using a phone's gyro / accelerometer (through the HTML5 APIs) in order to keylog users; because the API is precise enough for you to detect subtle motion of the phone as you press on the software keyboard. Apparently in some mobile browsers, you can continue to poll the API even when your tab is not on focus.
    - HatchedLake721 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Izmaki 9y ago
It is implemented as a valid HTTP code in the java Spring framework for everyone to support. That's how I learned about it first.
- x7467 9y ago
  Same with the standard Go http package (https://golang.org/src/net/http/status.go?s=2540:2600 https://golang.org/src/net/http/status.go?s=2540:2600).
  - ericfrederich 9y ago
    https://github.com/requests/requests/blob/3c5ecfc9f5f6fd29536a45f8c9f1b54ef637df44/requests/status_codes.py#L55 https://github.com/requests/requests/blob/3c5ecfc9f5f6fd2953...
masklinn 9y ago
> Why is 418 the particular target? Because Mark Nottingham (co-chair of the HTTP WG) first tried to get libraries/stdlibs to remove support for 418 (as part of builtins, since it's not a formally standardised code, he had no issue with application-specific support, everyone is free to return whatever status codes they wish) and faced some pushback, he switched to the alternate tack of getting it into a standard.

cyphar 9y ago

It's a response to this story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14987460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14987460), where a contributor has been going to many different projects and attempting to remove language support for the 418 error code. EDIT: Ah, so it's the same person. In which case it's more of a continuation, and I anticipate that the intention is to make implementations that allow 418 non-compliant.

endgame 9y ago
Note that the "contributor" (Mark Nottingham) is also the author of the document in OP, and deserves a lot of credit for taking this approach. Given that his area of work is HTTP standards, I think he initially started removing 418 to tidy up and make things compliant and isn't just some bore who hates fun. Now he's managed to make everyone happy in a standards-compliant way.
- awirth 9y ago
  For those that may not know, Mark is also co-chair of the HTTP Working Group on the IETF[1]. [1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/charter/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/charter/
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  It's weird though. The origin spec is specifically a discrete protocol called HTCPCP, not HTTP, so it has nothing to do with HTTP standards. They can do whatever they want with 418 in HTTP.
  - geofft 9y ago
    They can, but they believe in rough consensus and working code and in being conservative in what they do and liberal in what they accept from others. It's clear that a lot of real-world HTTP implementations are using HTTP 418 to mean I'm A Teapot, whether or not they should, and that reassigning it would cause practical difficulties.
    - peterwwillis 9y ago
      That's not clear to me. Nobody relies on the feature, it's a tiny piece of code, only some vendors support it, and it's not even part of the spec. (It also can't be reassigned because it was never assigned to begin with) If they like 418, they can add it to the spec. But this idea that it's been "consumed" is weird. It's like saying <blink> was "consumed" in HTML because two browsers used to support it. It was just an unofficial feature of popular vendor software, and is now officially disavowed. Basically what we're saying is we're not going to implement 418 in the spec, but at the same time, we're not going to let anyone use it?
      - JoshTriplett 9y ago
        > It's like saying <blink> was "consumed" in HTML because two browsers used to support it. Which is accurate. Reintroducing a tag named "blink" into HTML to mean something other than "blinking text" would be a really bad idea for compatibility reasons.
        peterwwillis 9y ago
        So we're trying to avoid breaking the internet by committing to people expecting an error when they're talking to a teapot? So that past implementations of clients connecting to teapots won't break? Like I say, we could also just add it to the spec... But that would be ridiculous, because why would you support telling someone you were a teapot in an HTTP protocol, when the feature is only useful in a protocol for brewing coffee? That would be like taking a programming language's syntax for assigning data objects and turning it into it's own standard for a text file format. Maybe a time traveler set this whole thing up 19 years ago just to troll people on standards boards.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  It was interesting reading the threads on /r/webdev about this whole debacle. The threads were full of people saying that he's an arsehole with too much time on his hands who must hate fun. Nobody actually stopped to read the guys bio and realise that he's more than qualified to be bringing up these issues. It doesn't help that the guy who made save418.com is literally 14 (which seems to be about the average age of /r/webdev).
  - mystrman111 9y ago
    The /r/webdev thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6stdcj/http_error_code_418_im_a_teapot_is_about_to_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/6stdcj/http_error_c...) remained quite respectful actually, afaik there were no real hostile remarks directed towards Mark Nottingham within it. In fact, it's ironic - the very comment I'm replying to is probably more distasteful and antagonistic than anything that could be found in the Reddit thread.
    - LukeShu 9y ago
      Often reddit threads read more respectful after-the-fact; the less respectful comments either get downvoted enough that they aren't displayed unless you look for them, or are moderated away. Often they are much harsher early in the thread. I'm not sure if that ways the case here, but it is common enough that I wouldn't doubt it.
      - mystrman111 9y ago
        When comments are removed by mods on Reddit, they're replaced with the text "[REMOVED]", which doesn't appear once in the referenced thread (insults would not be removed in the first place though, they break no /r/webdev rules). And you can scroll to the bottom of the thread to see all the downvoted comments, none of which are are condescending towards Mark. So no, that isn't the case here.
        pwdisswordfish 9y ago
habitue 9y ago
The contributor trying to remove 418 and the author of this RFC are the same person (Mark Nottingham[1]) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nottingham https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Nottingham
- ramses0 9y ago
  ...and seems aware that this is simply "tidying up" as opposed to someone from the "No-Fun League"... see the working title: draft-nottingham-thanks-larry-00
  - LukeShu 9y ago
    For context: "Larry" is the author of the April Fools' RFC that introduced 418.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dsr_ 9y ago

Because: 1st: RFC2324 mentioned it and 2nd: too many people then implemented it.

lccarrasco 9y ago

An example of an existing easter egg (for reference): https://www.google.com/teapot https://www.google.com/teapot

LambdaComplex 9y ago
I was worried that page would actually return a 200 OK response, but curl confirmed it actually returns a 418 code
manojlds 9y ago
Is there a scenario where people end up there?
- shurcooL 9y ago
  Probably when it's linked to, for fun, like above.
- Benjammer 9y ago
  Yes, ^this^ one.
wyldfire 9y ago
It looks as if the teapot is responsive to my phone's gyros. I would've thought it would need special permission for that. What a terribly clever Easter egg.
- HappyTypist 9y ago
  Nope. Actually, there was a paper published recently on using a phone's gyro / accelerometer (through the HTML5 APIs) in order to keylog users; because the API is precise enough for you to detect subtle motion of the phone as you press on the software keyboard. Apparently in some mobile browsers, you can continue to poll the API even when your tab is not on focus.
  - HatchedLake721 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Izmaki 9y ago

It is implemented as a valid HTTP code in the java Spring framework for everyone to support. That's how I learned about it first.

x7467 9y ago
Same with the standard Go http package (https://golang.org/src/net/http/status.go?s=2540:2600 https://golang.org/src/net/http/status.go?s=2540:2600).
- ericfrederich 9y ago
  https://github.com/requests/requests/blob/3c5ecfc9f5f6fd29536a45f8c9f1b54ef637df44/requests/status_codes.py#L55 https://github.com/requests/requests/blob/3c5ecfc9f5f6fd2953...

masklinn 9y ago

> Why is 418 the particular target? Because Mark Nottingham (co-chair of the HTTP WG) first tried to get libraries/stdlibs to remove support for 418 (as part of builtins, since it's not a formally standardised code, he had no issue with application-specific support, everyone is free to return whatever status codes they wish) and faced some pushback, he switched to the alternate tack of getting it into a standard.