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Zappos Headers

mfli.net

60 pointsnatgordon26 comments

"Emphasis mine."

Heh... How exactly could the emphasis not be his? Last I checked the HTTP protocol didn't have any provision for emphasizing headers, so it couldn't have been the server that added the emphasis. ;-)

Reddit amuses me:

   200 OK
   Connection: close
   Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:56:19 GMT
   Server: '; DROP TABLE servertypes; --

Well, that worked.

"Breaking news: Paul Graham quits YCombinator, joins Zappos as a developer"?

If you'd like to join in the header-sniffing fun, here's a bookmarklet that will show a site's HTTP headers in a popup: http://pastebin.com/pTDun3GT

Just for curiosity's sake, it would be interesting to have an estimate on how many extra gigabytes have been sent over time with these headers.

Or how many hires have come from this

The 2 header lines are 163 bytes (including /r/n). Quantcast (probably very wrong, but the best estimate I can find) says they get 277K visits per day. Not sure what their pages/visits are, but it's that times 43GB/day.

I think you mean 43MB/Day, not GB.

Damn, you're right! Stupid orders of magnitude...

You didn't take gzipping in account. Taking it in account, it's 105 bytes.

You can't gzip headers, only content

Headers are how the clients know to gzip the content.

You think http libs and web servers figure out whether or not something is gzipped by guessing? :)

Although it's not guilty of this particular idiocy, IE does like to override MIME types by content- or extension-based guesses. So it would, sadly, not be that surprising.

Also, the X-Core-Value number changes with each request (appears random).

  1. Deliver WOW Through Service
  2. Embrace and Drive Change
  3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
  4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
  5. Pursue Growth and Learning
  6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
  7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
  8. Do More With Less
  9. Be Passionate and Determined
  10. Be Humble

Just for fun I've tried a script over the Alexa top 1M sites...

Strangest thing:

  www.vg.no

  X-VG-WebServer: leon
  X-VG-WebCache: dexter
  X-Rick-Would-Never: Know the Rules, and So Do I
  X-VG-Korken: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcj8CnD5188

Raanan.com (one of the Automattic staff) has a similar header - check out his X-hacker header:

"X-hacker: If you're reading this, you should visit automattic.com/jobs and apply to join the fun, mention this header."

http://hurl.it/hurls/bf52ecc89d75c83ee8a68171bd624992607e162...

That's generally on sites hosted by wordpress.com (TechCrunch and others).

Normally I would only look at the headers if there was a problem with the request.

I just had a phone interview with Zappos. I mentioned this. Thanks.

It was an interesting recruiting idea, but it's out there now.

only people that care are stil their target, mission achieved.

Nice way to cut out the headhunters!

Zappos Head[hunt]ers

This is just awesome.

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