[HN Gopher] X-Clacks-Overhead
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X-Clacks-Overhead
Author : weinzierl
Score : 188 points
Date : 2025-07-02 07:14 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (xclacksoverhead.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (xclacksoverhead.org)
| cyberpunk wrote:
| mozilla.org doesn't do it anymore: < HTTP/2 301
| < server: nginx < date: Sat, 05 Jul 2025 13:36:11 GMT
| < content-type: text/html < content-length: 162 <
| location: https://www.mozilla.org/ < strict-transport-
| security: max-age=60; includeSubDomains < x-backend-
| server: TS < cache-control: max-age=3600 < via:
| 1.1 google < alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000,h3-29=":443";
| ma=2592000
|
| Edit: Nope. I was wrong, if you follow that 301 it does:
|
| < x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett
| MrGilbert wrote:
| It's been a while I heard about X-Clacks-Overhead. I added it to
| my own page to commemorate everyone I lost along the way. After
| reworking my site from a custom blog engine to plain web, I
| forgot to re-add the custom headers. Thanks for the reminder
| today!
|
| There are also browser extensions, which show when a website
| broadcasts the "X-Clacks-Overhead" - header.
| kawsper wrote:
| I added it to all the sites at my old workplace when I was
| there after a discussion on HN.
|
| One day I noticed that it disappeared, but then it returned, so
| someone on the inside cared and brought it back, that made me
| smile :)
| xg15 wrote:
| Read Going Postal as a teen and absolutely loved it. But from
| today's perspective, I don't think this header as a general way
| of mourning is a good idea.
|
| It took two very specific bits from the Discworld lore (the
| Clacks overhead and GNU) and made it in a general ritual of
| mourning. But not every techie is a Discworld fan, and the
| obscurity of the name would draw more attention to the Discworld
| lore than to the people being mourned.
|
| The idea of sending a header to remember a tech person is a great
| one, but I think the name should be something neutral, or
| something that has some relation to the person and not a random
| fantasy reference.
|
| (Reminds me a bit how the Berlin Pirate Party used to have a
| "Pony Time" paragraph in its charter, that members could use to
| request joint My Little Pony watching sessions on congresses. [1]
|
| Seemed like a good idea at that time as Bronies were a new thing
| and there was a lot of overlap with Pirate Party members. But
| seems pretty cringeful looking back from today, and also a tad
| disrespectful towards those who tried to do real political work
| within that party. Disclaimer: Only got to know about that from
| the outside, so if their own stance on that is different, I take
| it back)
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=joyV8SqeN6k
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| > The idea of sending a header to remember a tech person is a
| great one, but I think the name should be something neutral, or
| something that has some relation to the person and not a random
| fantasy reference.
|
| You made me laugh - this has 'old man shakes fist at cloud'
| vibes, which is concerning as it seems we are about the same
| age!
|
| If you wanted to add a header `X-In-Memorium` to any site that
| you control, go ahead. If anyone adds `X-Clacks-Overhead` to
| their site, its not going to affect you.
|
| The My Little Pony thing seems, from an outsiders quick look,
| like it does meaningfully affect other people.
| xg15 wrote:
| Hah, yeah agreed, it's really like ranting about the shapes
| of gravestones a bit.
| bombcar wrote:
| As an old favorite song of mine reminds me, "gravestones
| cheer the living, dear; they're no use to the dead."
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| obviously the difference is between the artistic merit of MLP
| and discworld.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I tried making "real" clacks
| https://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/2025/03/12/gnu-terry-prachet...
|
| I need more time and motivation to make a full network though.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| That is really quite a cool project and write-up.
| (I used to administer a laser link. go on, ask me why they
| aren't very popular) I spent a lot of time working out
| how to create low powered laser transducer, capable of working
| on something battery powered.
|
| This is my favourite part; very real.
|
| I think you're right; I suspect Terry would have been tickled
| by the header, but if there were any physical world
| implementations I think he would have been overjoyed. One of my
| favourite Terry stories is of him making his sword, which feels
| similar.
| kurisufag wrote:
| for a while I thought I might go to one of those uniquely nerdy
| colleges where they let you fuck around with dorm
| infrastructure.
|
| i back-of-napkin'd a whole packet-over-laser relay system based
| conceptually on the clacks that'd give every room/station its
| own serial-interfacible (up|down) link. you could link
| buildings out of windows and stuff. horribly impractical and
| prohibitively expensive, but the kind of thing that could only
| happen in a university on-campus environment.
| xena wrote:
| My website returns a random person in a list for every X-Clacks-
| Overhead response header:
| https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/877872b4d7db92b602683ecb4e99...
|
| I figured this was one of the best ways to do it. That way I'm
| letting people that were significant to me live on forever, one
| random HTTP response header at a time. $ curl
| https://xeiaso.net --head | grep clacks x-clacks-overhead:
| GNU Satoru Iwata
| WJW wrote:
| Love this idea. Maybe I'll make a gem or something to make
| enabling that easier.
| xena wrote:
| The code is pretty trivial but in case it helps:
| https://github.com/Xe/site/blob/main/internal/clackset.go
| skowalak wrote:
| Seeing Kris Nova in that list hit hard. It is a beautiful idea,
| thank you Xe.
| podlp wrote:
| I saw this header recently while profiling headers from feature
| phones. I think Opera Mini or another browser might've injected
| this header, which is odd because it's meant to reduce bandwidth
| and sending it with each request goes against that
| atemerev wrote:
| This is obviously the most important HTTP header, but HTTP is
| application-level, and clacks is a packet routing system.
|
| Perhaps something like IPv6's Hop-by-Hop Options can be used to
| pass names with every packet?
|
| Or, even better, we can use LoRa repeaters for something close to
| the actual clacks network.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Someone drafted a RFC some years ago, for Clacks-over-HTTP:
|
| https://github.com/clacks-overhead/clacks-protocol
| masfuerte wrote:
| > In Terry Pratchett's science-fantasy Discworld series, "The
| Clacks" is a network infrastructure of Semaphore Towers, that
| operate in a similar fashion to telegraph - named "Clacks"
| because of the clicking sound the system makes as signals send.
|
| Surely named "Clacks" because of the _clacking_ sound the system
| makes.
| rfmoz wrote:
| The Clacks is a copy of an optical telegraph system that was
| used in Sweden
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Niclas_Edelcrantz
|
| Also UK used a system close to that. And a lot of countries
| along Europe developed their networks with different signaling
| devices.
| rhet0rica wrote:
| Sorry; it's more likely they were named in tribute to the
| Chappe telegraph towers of France.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappe_telegraph
|
| The stations were more elaborate and there is even a recorded
| instance of a secret signal being passed on illicitly:
|
| https://blog.franceinfo.fr/deja-vu/2017/10/10/le-piratage-
| du...
| rfmoz wrote:
| A good related book written by Gerard Holzmann and Bjorn
| Pehrson:
|
| The early history of data networks
| https://archive.org/details/earlyhistoryofda0000holz
| pdpi wrote:
| The thing that struck me about "GNU John Dearheart" was how it
| feels like it _really_ deeply captures hacker culture, like
| Pterry wasn't just referencing the culture, but that he really
| got it. Which is remarkable, because he gave me that impression
| about many, many topics. Such a loss.
| bombcar wrote:
| Terry _loved_ his characters in a way that 's hard to express -
| unless they were pure evil (and he had a few) he did his best
| to understand their motivations in such a way that he came to
| portray them sympathetically.
|
| This is most noticeable in his caricatures that became
| characters that became badasses over multiple novels; the Watch
| has a few of these, but there are others.
| pdpi wrote:
| Yup. Vimes going full-on berserker mode while screaming
| "Where is my cow?" should, by all rights, be extremely silly.
| Instead, it sent shivers down my spine.
| riffraff wrote:
| When clacks got introduced, the description of people who just
| enjoyed being there and spending time on coding messages and
| talking to unknown remote people.. well, it felt like early
| internet, fidonet, perhaps AM radio amateurs.
|
| It really seemed like Pratchett knew something of this niche
| cultures, way more than I expected.
| marviel wrote:
| I'm almost to this one in my read through! I'm excited to get to
| the "information age" arc
| offbyone wrote:
| If you happen to nominate or vote on the Hugo Awards, you may
| have seen this turn up.
| gardnr wrote:
| I try to add this to every project I work on.
| Animats wrote:
| _" We're obligated to inform you that this site uses cookies to
| do things like maintain your session and deliver personalised
| content. We also use third-party services from partners such as
| Google, who may also place cookies on your computer. Without
| cookies this site cannot function correctly. Please allow cookies
| from this website, otherwise features may not work."_
|
| Amusingly, that's not true. The only cookie they send is Google
| Analytics, which has zero value to the user. The site works fine
| with it blocked.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| Absolutely. It is a disrespectful, shameful lie by the authors
| of the site.
| echelon wrote:
| No it's not. It's dealing with the red tape of EU cookie
| legislation.
|
| Do you want to know how many human years my last company had
| to devote to regulation? We could have built a hundred
| startups with all that effort.
|
| I'm not saying GDPR right to be forgotten and data
| dump/portability isn't important, but it comes with a steep
| cost that everyone pays everywhere. So much time and money
| was spent on it. Easily billions of dollars.
|
| And the cookie stuff? How useful has that been?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Have you _read_ the EU cookie legislation? It actually
| _requires_ you to not lie to users about what your cookies
| are for. Whatever the reason for a message like this, you
| can 't blame EU legislation.
|
| ePrivacy and GDPR compliance are cheap. Trying to rules-
| lawyer them to keep illegal business models going, while
| dodging regulatory scrutiny, is expensive.
| echelon wrote:
| > ePrivacy and GDPR compliance are cheap.
|
| Try running a business that has to maintain GDPR
| compliance _and_ KYC / AML / FINRA compliance. That is
| _not_ cheap.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| GDPR article 6.1(c) has you covered: no additional costs
| are incurred, if you're doing things properly. Did you
| have a _specific_ issue complying with this legislation?
| lxgr wrote:
| I love the idea! But to be true to the original, shouldn't the
| message be self-propagating?
|
| > [...] header that can be transmitted from server to server
| [...]
|
| How so? In HTTP, there's always one client and one server. Am I
| missing some way to make this sticky or self-propagating, e.g.
| browsers or other clients that will cache received headers and
| then send them to other servers?
| riffraff wrote:
| There isn't, it's just the people in the loop who can make it
| self propagating. But then, so did they in the original clacks.
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(page generated 2025-07-05 23:00 UTC)