<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: cjpearson</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cjpearson</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 05:11:30 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=cjpearson" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "What it means for an API to be RESTful"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Many years ago as a young developer I read Fielding's dissertation, Fowler's writings on the Richardson Maturity Model and even a book (don't remember the title) on the topic. Then I spent the next dozen years creating, reading, updating and deleting JSON APIs.<p>Problem Details (RFC 9457) are useful and have made an occasional appearance, but actual hypermedia driven APIs with custom media types seem to be non-existent outside of example blog posts. It's much more common to instead see APIs overload lesser-used HTTP status codes with their own domain-specific meanings. But if I'm being honest, this sort of protocol crime almost never caused an actual problem in practice.<p>The advocacy for "true REST" is missing a compelling argument and useful example of why it would actually be an improvement. Despite its prominence, for over 20 years almost nobody has used this approach. Why is that?<p>I do still have an aesthetic appreciation for "true REST", but in practice I find the fact that nobody uses it to be mainly useful in ending bikeshedding discussions. Once you understand your API isn't RESTful to begin with, there's no longer any point in arguing if 411 or 412 is the more RESTful status code to use when a user attempts to order a product without specifying a quantity. (Spoiler: neither is correct) You simply send a 400 with Problem Details and call it a day. Ironically, this indifference may make your API just a little bit more RESTful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:15:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110354</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110354</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110354</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "The whole premise of checking for human writing is daft"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The author's case is not helped by fighting a strawman argument and backing it up with atypical examples of AI usage.<p>Those who favor human writing are looking for writing where the words are the product of a human mind rather than an LLM. The requirement for every character to be the product of a finger pressing a key is not something I've seen. Alternative input methods doesn't make a writing non-human. Spellcheck and probably even some amount of auto-complete are also generally considered to be fine. Anyone checking for keystrokes is using it as a proxy for human creation, not valuing the physical motion itself.<p>The pro-AI example is a writer spending hours tweaking a single AI output then later re-arranging and rewriting the piece before publishing. While this would probably still set off some AI-detectors, it does at least include some human effort. Presumably this effort will not be appreciated and readers will assume that the poster simply copied the response directly from their LLM of choice. It may seem a bit unfair to ignore the human effort in revising, but it's a reasonable assumption to make because almost nobody is using LLMs in this way.<p>Perhaps there's a reasonable amount of LLM use which would be considered a writing aid rather than a writing replacement, but the vast majority are simply mass producing slop so I sympathize with those who favor a blanket ban as a response.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:52:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049208</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049208</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49049208</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Your example is an interesting one, as the Reagan administration is a broad topic with many books covering just a small slice. If you are solely interested in the foreign policy of Reagan, you could find books on Iran-Contra, SDI, Grenada, the American response to the Soviet-Afghan war, the Reykjavik Summit etc.<p>Wikipedia is a great resource and I use it a lot, but it is far from a complete solution for topics with any depth. If I read an article on a president, I'll get a brief overview of their administration as well as a few interesting facts and could probably answer a jeopardy question about them, but I would not claim a strong understanding.<p>I will agree that not every bit of information can be found in a book, but the ability to comprehend book-level arguments and ideas is critical. They are a necessary, but not sufficient component of learning.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 08:26:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842644</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842644</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842644</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "It seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Energy is more difficult to gauge, but the average American has over 5 hours of leisure time daily. When there was more of a time crunch in the past, Americans read more.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:48:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48832716</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48832716</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48832716</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In 2021, Russia was the source of 52% of Germany's gas. Following the expansion of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 imports from Russia quickly dropped. The biggest suppliers of gas to Germany last year were Norway, Netherlands and Belgium. LNG from the United States and other countries has increased to 10% which is not nearly enough to replace the Russian imports. The phaseout was accomplished by drastically reducing overall gas usage.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2023/20230105_RueckblickGas2022.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...</a>
[1] <a href="https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2026/20260112_GAS.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilung...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 11:50:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120698</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120698</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48120698</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "John Ternus to become Apple CEO"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This comes off as a quite dismissive and incurious take. Are you quite sure that of the ~500 million consumers who bought a pair, nobody considered utility and it was simply a fashion choice? Or is it more likely that some consumers judge the utility differently from you?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:05:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845483</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845483</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47845483</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The linked post on Take Take Take is interesting. Magnus Carlsen created a chess.com competitor and eventually sold it to chess.com and became a sponsor. While working as a sponsor he then created a new chess.com competitor.<p>I'm a Lichess patron and happy to see them get support, but I do feel a bit bad for chess.com in this case. Magnus is such a big figure in chess that organizations like FIDE and chess.com feel they have no choice but to accommodate his whims, but that doesn't come with any guarantees. I hope Lichess does not find themselves in a poor position if Magnus decides to "alter the deal".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:26:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704972</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704972</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47704972</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "“Your frustration is the product”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Unfortunately, this does not save you. The NYT has a paywall and still has this terrible experience, which caused me to unsubscribe. I remain subscribed to The Atlantic because while it still relies on advertising, the print version is at least readable.<p>The March 2026 issue has 12 ads across 109 pages including the back cover. Ads do not appear within an article. I even sometimes read the ads, because many are about new book releases. I opened the cover story (just one article!) of this issue within the mobile app and encountered 38 advertisements. The ads take up nearly half the screen and there is almost always one visible. These 38 instances were just the same four ads repeated many, many times.<p>This is just one issue of one publication, but it's representative of the broader problem the author discusses. I want to support good journalism and am willing to pay for good writers and articles but strategies that are so frustrating and disrespectful to the reader make it difficult.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:45:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441399</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441399</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47441399</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Do not mistake a resilient global economy for populist success"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It makes sense if you're looking at it from the perspective of a European investor. e.g. You start with 1000 EUR, convert and buy into an S&P500 fund, wait a year, sell and convert back to EUR.<p>Celsius and Fahrenheit doesn't work as an analogy because the rate does not change over time as it does with currencies.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:20:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551296</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551296</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46551296</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:24:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294702</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294702</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46294702</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2025 07:23:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45488548</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45488548</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45488548</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Awash in revisionist histories about Apple's web efforts, a look at the evidence"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Sep 2025 14:18:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347377</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347377</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347377</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "A better future for JavaScript that won't happen"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> 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.<p>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.<p>"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.<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Sep 2025 16:23:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291579</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291579</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45291579</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Why our website looks like an operating system"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In many cases it is required to access the content. Courts have allowed "Consent or pay" for sites such as newspapers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 12 Sep 2025 07:28:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219598</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219598</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45219598</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.<p>> 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.<p><a href="https://yalereview.org/article/burrough-vanity-fair-graydon-carter" rel="nofollow">https://yalereview.org/article/burrough-vanity-fair-graydon-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2025 15:05:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027603</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45027603</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "It's the Housing, Stupid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2025 13:14:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44940238</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44940238</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44940238</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "It's the Housing, Stupid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2025 12:46:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939977</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939977</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44939977</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Google suffers data breach in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've generally not had an interest in working for one of the big tech companies, but the opportunity to escape JIRA is tempting.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 Aug 2025 17:14:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44814780</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44814780</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44814780</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Every champion needs a rival"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2025 19:35:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738608</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738608</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44738608</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by cjpearson in "Most RESTful APIs aren't really RESTful"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Soon, hopefully, QUERY will save us all. In the meantime, simply using POST is fine.<p>I've also seen solutions where you POST the filter config, then reference the returned filter ID in the GET request, but that often seems like overkill even if it adds some benefits.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2025 15:43:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44511456</link><dc:creator>cjpearson</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44511456</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44511456</guid></item></channel></rss>