.tip

Jun 14, 2026 · one of the small things

HEAD, when you only need to know it exists

Fetching a 20 MB file to check that it is there downloads 20 MB. HEAD returns the headers and nothing else.

curl -I https://cdn.example.com/build/app.js

Same status code, same Content-Length and ETag. A health check that uses GET on a heavy endpoint is wasting the server's time twice a minute.

http

~/tips/today — 2026-09-04

~cat tips/today

Session cookies: HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax

securityhttp

Three attributes, each closing a class of attack. HttpOnly keeps scripts from reading it. Secure keeps it off plain HTTP. SameSite=Lax stops it being sent on cross-site POSTs, which is most CSRF.

Set-Cookie: session=...; HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Lax; Path=/; Max-Age=1209600

Strict breaks arriving from an external link while logged in. Lax is the default worth keeping.

↵ open y yesterday l ls /tips

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