cjpearson (u/cjpearson)

cjpearson commented on Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo blog.mozilla.org/en/mozil... · Posted by u/recvonline

viraptor · 2 days ago

> You can't charge for it

They could try. I just keep hearing people who would pay for no extra features as long as it paid for actual Firefox development and not the random unrelated Mozilla projects. I would pay a subscription. But they don't let me.

cjpearson · 2 days ago

You can't effectively paywall it because not only is it open source, but there are many nearly equivalent competitors all of which are free. Any subscribers would essentially be donors.

There are people like yourself who would be happy to donate, but not nearly enough. Replacing MoCo's current revenue with donors would require donations at the level of Doctors without Borders, American Cancer Society, or the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Turning into one of the largest charities in America overnight simply isn't realistic. A drastic downsizing to subsist on donor revenue also isn't wise when Mozilla already has to compete with a smaller team. And "Ladybird does it" isn't a real argument until and unless it graduates from cool project to usable and competitive browser.

cjpearson commented on Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels grist.org/buildings/how-g... · Posted by u/bilsbie

jillesvangurp · 2 months ago

Germany did one simple thing (uncharacteristically) which is removing all the bureaucracy here. Just go ahead and do it. It's fine.

Cost in the article is cited at 550 euro. I just browsed amazon.de and you can buy complete plug and play kits here in Germany for as little as 239 euro. Most kits are priced between 300-350 euro. I did not see a many kits over 500.

I pay about 70 euro per month for electricity. If it saves 10% per month on my bill (7 euro), this would earn itself back within 3 years. At 5% it's 6 years. Not bad for something that costs next to nothing and is pretty much plug and play. You are not going to get very rich from this obviously. But it's kind of cool. Too bad my balcony faces east and is mostly covered by the shadow of other buildings. I can barely grow plants there.

cjpearson · 2 months ago

A big factor in the quick return (and maybe one reason for its popularity) is that Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. The ROI doesn't look as attractive in France, the US or Norway.

cjpearson commented on Awash in revisionist histories about Apple's web efforts, a look at the evidence infrequently.org/2025/09/... · Posted by u/freetonik

drcongo · 3 months ago

This site has a category called "Browser choice must matter" which is nothing but a series of articles slating Apple and Safari. Nothing about Chrome's desktop dominance or Google's abusive practices at all :thinking-face:.

cjpearson · 3 months ago

The author was for a long time a developer on Chrome and now works at Microsoft on Edge. I would not expect them to lead an anti-Chrome crusade.

cjpearson commented on A better future for JavaScript that won't happen drewdevault.com/2025/09/1... · Posted by u/warrenm

cjpearson · 3 months ago

> Perhaps Google and Mozilla, leaders in JavaScript standards and implementations, will start developing a real standard library for JavaScript, which makes micro-dependencies like left-pad a thing of the past.

It's not wrong, but this take is kind of tired and well out of date. For about a decade or so left-pad's functionality has been standard in all browsers or runtimes. Plenty of other micropackages have been obsoleted as well and the current zeitgeist is to avoid publishing or using any sort of micropackage.

"Zero dependencies" is now a top marketing term in the frontend world. Unfortunately, their removal is an ongoing process and it's taken way too long already to fully purge the ecosystem of these packages. However, it's not because the JavaScript community has never thought of this issue before. "Add more features to the JS standards and don't use is-number" is not a particularly new idea or valuable insight.

But beyond that, there were plenty of not-tiny packages impacted as well. Continuing to beat this dead horse may be fun, but it distracts from the actual issue here.

cjpearson commented on Why our website looks like an operating system posthog.com/blog/why-os... · Posted by u/bnc319

Tor3 · 3 months ago

I read an interview with a bunch of different young people. They all basically said "I just click 'yes' or 'accept' automatically". It sounded like they all believed that this was something they had to do in order to get to the content.

Bad implementation of the EU law indeed, as another comment said. It fails the purpose completely and just create more problems for nearly everyone.

cjpearson · 3 months ago

In many cases it is required to access the content. Courts have allowed "Consent or pay" for sites such as newspapers.

cjpearson commented on The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction jsomers.net/blog/the-mcph... · Posted by u/jsomers

wodenokoto · 4 months ago

> McPhee usually had one person at the center of each piece, so he would aim to spend a lot of time with that person … stay at their cottage for a season

Even back when every household received a morning paper I cannot fathom how a single article could command such a high pay.

cjpearson · 4 months ago

For a magazine like the New Yorker, there was money. You might be interested in Bryan Burrough's experience writing for Vanity Fair in the 90s and 2000s.

> For twenty-five years, I was contracted to produce three articles a year, long ones, typically ten thousand words. For this, my peak salary was $498,141. That’s not a misprint—$498,141, or more than $166,000 per story. Then, as now, $166,000 was a good advance for an entire book. Yes, I realized it was obscene. I took it with a grin.

https://yalereview.org/article/burrough-vanity-fair-graydon-...

cjpearson commented on It's the Housing, Stupid ofdollarsanddata.com/its-... · Posted by u/throw0101c

RugnirViking · 4 months ago

People don't say home ownership is important because it's an asset for retirement; if you sold it, you wouldn't have a home in retirement!

They say that because owning a home allows you to reduce your bills, but also more crucially and viscerally because owning a home allows you to be free and have a place that is truly yours to do with what you will. You can paint the walls, have a pet, host a party, knock down a wall and build an extension, do whatever you like to make your mark on it and the world. It's yours and if you will it, it always will be. It's a level of peace and security that's almost incomparible. There's a reason in most of history there was a distinction drawn between bonded peasants and freeholders.

cjpearson · 4 months ago

Those are perfectly good reasons and in the hypothetical world of housing affordability such utility should compensate for the depreciation. Similarly many people find value in owning a car despite the nearly guaranteed decline in value. Ideally neither would be viewed as a wealth-building tool.

cjpearson commented on It's the Housing, Stupid ofdollarsanddata.com/its-... · Posted by u/throw0101c

cjpearson · 4 months ago

There's a common view that home-ownership is important because a home is the most expensive asset most people will ever own and its increasing value is key to their comfortable retirement. But this view of a home as an appreciating asset is incompatible with increasing housing affordability.

There are definitely downsides to renting such as landlord issues or missing out on mortgage subsidies, but maybe a higher proportion of renters could lead to improvements in affordability. And if the well-off are renting as well, there's also more hope for better legal protections for renters.

cjpearson commented on Google suffers data breach in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks bleepingcomputer.com/news... · Posted by u/mikece

loeg · 4 months ago

> they even have their own bugtracker because every other option just wouldn't cut it

Of all the things to NIH, this is one of the most defensible -- lots of bugtracker options just aren't very good.

cjpearson · 4 months ago

I've generally not had an interest in working for one of the big tech companies, but the opportunity to escape JIRA is tempting.

cjpearson commented on Every champion needs a rival tombrady.com/posts/every-... · Posted by u/pbardea

lordnacho · 5 months ago

What I find interesting about American Football is that the QBs are considered rivals, despite never being on the pitch at the same time. Messi and Ronaldo actually appear on many images contesting the same ball, Peyton and Brady you'd struggle to find pictures other than the post-match handshake.

Why isn't the rivalry considered to be between the QB and someone on the defense? There's actually two matchups in an NFL game (plus specials but whatever), the two offense versus defense pairings. It's odd to make the rivalry about two guys who aren't directly tackling each other, when there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.

cjpearson · 5 months ago

It basically comes down to the face that the quarterback position has an outsized importance in the game and those players become the face of their franchises. They are often credited with wins and losses despite those being a team stat.

Some of the players do find this fan/media obsession strange. They may be asked about playing against QB X and reply that they're actually playing against the opposing defense.

There are rivalries between players who are on the field at the same time, but they're less prominent. Those between a wide receiver and cornerback are probably the most common. Throughout the game they are racing, pushing and deceiving each other and fighting over the ball and it can become heated.

However, it's also possible to have a competitive rivalry without directly facing each other on the field. In individual sports like golf this is the only way. But in other sports players can also compete with each other on some individual aspect. In baseball, the 1998 HR chase and Dimaggio brothers are some prominent examples. In Brady's case he had a strong desire to be number one. The threat of Peyton winning MVPs over him, having better statistics than him or Peyton's team winning over his was a strong motivator for Brady to protect his status.