Stefan Eissing

curl maintainer, protocol droid, likes to code.

"Nobody has any idea what is actually going on."

web: https://eissing.org
github: https://github.com/icing
pixelfed: https://pixey.org/icing

Last Notes

2026-03-11 07:35:36 UTC

#curl 8.19.0, released today, has my reimplementation of rate limits for up- and downloads. They work the same for all network protocols and HTTP versions, and per URL, even on shared connections.
Meaning you can mix different limits (including unlimited) on the same HTTP/2 connection.
(This was not a goal as such, mainly a side effect of doing things properly. „Technical Credit“ I would call it. 😌)
https://eissing.org/icing/posts/curl-rate-limits/

2025-05-07 14:43:16 UTC

The main problem with hiring a dedicated security researcher for the curl project is that we have no room for a 3rd helipad on the curl super-yacht.
Maybe we need to accelerate our plans for the project's aircraft carrier. The Anti-AI missile system still has some teething problems, though.💁🏻‍♂️

2025-04-28 13:22:57 UTC

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Thank the higher being, not everyone has a power grid as reliable as the US.😌

2025-02-27 08:26:25 UTC

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if only we had the technology to capture commands and their output in something other than mp4!

2025-02-14 08:18:32 UTC

Do you realize:
someone listening to you, rolling up their sleeves and fixing things
is a really rare occurance, outside open source, once you are through puberty?💁🏻‍♂️

2025-02-06 11:55:35 UTC

Honored to be part of the first Sovereign Tech Fellowship program. This will support a good chunk of my work on curl and Apache during this year.
It's great to see a government realising the need to support the infrastructure so many rely on, business as well as individuals.
https://www.sovereign.tech/news/meet-the-sovereign-tech-fellows

2025-02-02 09:27:10 UTC

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But is the memory safe?

2025-01-27 15:59:27 UTC

Reading about 8bit floats, a topic that has never come up in my work - yet. Interesting..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minifloat

2024-12-26 07:50:49 UTC

On my „Keep It Simple“ aversion:
POSIX time, generally described as „Seconds since 1970-01-01“ is not really that. Time is a very messy thing by itself (you need magic to make GPS work) and dates do not make it easier.
The POSIX EPOCH *makes* something very complex seemingly simple to use. It‘s a good design with careful tradeoffs by very smart people.
Time cannot be *kept simple*.
https://aphyr.com/posts/378-seconds-since-the-epoch

2024-11-20 11:55:19 UTC

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must be the flu!

2024-10-27 08:52:19 UTC

If you read books, buy the paper versions.
Those you can share with friends, store for decades and reread again whenever you feel like it.
The really cherished ones, worth for centuries to come…get them as clay tablets. Anything else seems overly optimistic.😌

2024-08-28 10:25:44 UTC

Why are there no DOG 6 and 8 cables?
All our social networks only use CATs. I think this explains a lot.🤨

2024-08-13 07:22:36 UTC

Pupils right now: „I could not do my homework because there was a Massive DDoS attack!“🥸

2024-06-26 07:34:47 UTC

„Why, oh why, isn‘t there more QUIC use?“ ask people on the QUIC mailing list.
It‘s impossible to answer. Some people probably don‘t care. Some would use it if they could (thanks, OpenSSL, not). For some, they already hit their sweet spot. Some are already using it near 100% (Facebook, controlling servers and clients).
In the curl project, our goal to give you good options to use all protocols, with defaults merely for usability reasons.
You will then select what is best for you.

2024-05-28 08:23:29 UTC

Sometimes we forget what a marvel 'git' really is. Just did
git show <commit-id>
and it pulled out a curl change from 16 years ago in the fraction of a second.
Hat off to its makers and maintainers!