Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly should I be looking for that warrants a frontpage of HN for this link ?

Official support for WebSockets and SPDY in nginx is big news. WebSocket support especially, as previously it was impossible to do long-polling / WebSocket type work in nginx without resorting to unreliable 3rd party modules.

Websocket support is big deal.

Hellloooooo, websockets. A nice reverse proxy to Node will be so welcome.

I am more excited about ETags support than SPDY & Websockets. Etags (when used correctly) are extremely handy.

Please elaborate...

There's a great example/explanation on the Facebook Developer blog:

https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/627/

Basically, it's Last-Modified on steroids.

In the link that you mentioned, ETags are produced and handled by application. There are no special needs in web-server support.

Right... I was assuming that the OP wanted to know what ETags are, rather than their specific implementation in nginx.

Etags are useful for static assets as well.

Can't wait! But until then...

Has anyone been using nginx <1.3 to proxy WebSockets using the TCP proxy module (nginx_tcp_proxy_module)? Anyone know from experience if it's a workable solution?

Not if you want to use port 80 for your websockets and http on the same server. We are using haproxy to support both Node and nginx on port 80.

I've been using it for 1.0.x and it works.

Looking forward to websocket reverse proxying in 1.3

I always found any information coming from the nginx website a bit too laconic. Am I the only one?

WebSocket support is welcome.

Now you mention it, yes. Don't forget that English isn't the core developers' native language though.