Civilisational HTTP Error Codes

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There’s no substitute for thinking ahead. Who can say when we might need these HTTP error codes for civilisational errors:

Civilisational HTTP Error Codes

To be truly useful, HTTP error codes need to take into account possible future issues. We therefore propose the 8xx range of codes for errors pertaining to the civilisation in which the server is operating. Inspired by https://github.com/joho/7XX-rfc. Forks and pull requests encouraged!

  • 80x ‘Temporary’ failures (but I’d wait a while before re-requesting):

  • 801 BLACKOUT

  • 802 NUCLEAR WINTER

  • 803 GULF STREAM ERROR […]

We can but hope that one day there will be a need to deploy code 831.

[Via Extenuating Circumstances]

Comfort food for readers of a certain age

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Readers a decade or so younger than me may not recognise this beloved trio, but trust me: my generation spent much of the 1970s regarding content like this as sufficient justification for the TV License Fee all by itself, if ever we gave that topic much thought. 1 The presence of the BBC was immensely reassuring, no matter that some of our friends, for some strange reason, owed their allegiance to Magpie.

Before the smartphone

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Coming soon (with any luck) to a screen near you: General Magic, A Documentary Feature:

Judging by the trailer, John Sculley is not going to come out of this smelling of roses.

General Magic, the upcoming documentary, is a tale of how great vision and epic failure can change the world. The film features members of the original Mac team along with the creators of the iPhone, Android and eBay.

These designers, engineers and entrepreneurs saw the future decades before it happened. General Magic captures the spirit of those of us who dare to dream big and the life-changing consequences when we fail, fail again, fail better, and ultimately succeed.

I realise it’s not going to be showing up in my local multiplex: I’ll settle for it eventually turning up somewhere I can (legally) pay for it, download it and watch it.

[Via Cake, via Extenuating Circumstances]

Memories

Not one but two announcements that remind me how long I’ve been playing round with this internet thing and how times have changed:

I left Demon Internet years ago once it became clear that their new owners were much more interested in selling comprehensive telecoms packages that running an ISP, and last time Suck was being updated I was reading the site using Windows 95. but never mind: both the ‘zine and the ISP helped to show me what the internet was good for. It’s sad to to see them both disappear from the internet.

Best Films of 2018

David Ehrlich’s latest annual medley of imagery from The 25 Best Films Of 2018 demonstrates once more that there’s plenty of good work out there every year, it’s just a question of how hard you have to look to find it.

By virtue of this list being published towards the end of the calendar year, there’s invariably a bunch of the films on Ehrlich’s list that either haven’t opened in the UK yet or that I didn’t catch during their relatively brief release window outside London. Some I know I’ll not get to see any time soon because I refuse to fork out £10 a month to every streaming service out there, but a list like this at least focuses my attention on what might be worth making some effort to track down.

[Via kottke.org]

“What do you mean you’re not willing to electrocute your cat? It’s a cat! It would do the same to you in an instant!”

John Scalzi shares a story of an encounter with Automated Customer Service in the not too distant future:

Thank you for calling the customer service line of Vacuubot, purveyors of America’s finest automated vacuum cleaners! In order to more efficiently handle call volume, we rely on automated responses. To continue in English, press one. Para Espanol o prima dos. […]

That Purge Mode is a doozy!

[Via Metafilter]