Top all-time · #579
Cal Paterson
Personal blog · calpaterson.com · on HN as calpatersonprogrammingaiwriting
Cal Paterson's personal blog at calpaterson.com covers programming, ai and writing. Since 2019, 104 different Hacker News readers have linked it 153 times, most often “Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up (2020) 400%”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers mostly link this blog for its Mozilla post comparing the CEO's pay with Firefox's market share decline. Posts on bank Python, async Python benchmarks and bicycle theft are also cited.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called thought-provoking, eye-opening and a must-read; one says it convinced them async Python isn't faster.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Cal Paterson's website. Contact details, CV and articles.
Most-linked posts?
- Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up (2020) 400%35 people · 41 mentions · first linked 2021-04-01
- An oral history of Bank Python31 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2021-11-04
- Async Python is not faster (2020)7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2021-01-05
- Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2020-09-23
- The Amazon Premium5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-12-12
- Async Python is not faster4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-06-12
- Threat modelling case study: bicycles3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-11-30
- Applying Mypy to real-world projects3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-02-05
- The industry structure of LLM makers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-26
- The argument against clearing the database between tests (2020)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-04-14
What Hacker News says?
That is shocking if true, but doesn't seem to be? AMD's Lisa Su was the highest-paid CEO of a company in the S&P 500 last year. Su earned a total of $58.5 million in 2019 [0] Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's top executive, was paid $2.4m in 2018 [1] [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/tech/lisa-su-amd-highest-... [1] http://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up”Submitted Firefox usage is down despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up as a story · 1624 points
HN discussionI'm no expert, just reading web pages: Apparently Firefox market share dropped from 30% to 3.46 over the same time her income went from 500 k to 4 million. An old write up: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “I've started using Firefox and can never go back to Chrome”Submitted An oral history of Bank Python as a story · 864 points
HN discussion> for some reason This isn't a mystery. Mozilla accept donations. It isn't an ordinary for-profit corporation. Yes, they separate Mozilla Corporation from Mozilla Foundation, but the point stands. If Mozilla are going to claim to make browsers, apps, code and tools that put people before profit , [0] they should expect backlash when they lay off engineers while continuing to overpay their leadership, despite continu…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Servo’s new home”Submitted We were promised Strong AI, but instead we got metadata analysis as a story · 592 points
HN discussionThe title chart from this article caught on like wildfire a few years ago: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html "Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%".
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla names new CEO as it pivots to data privacy”Submitted S3 is files, but not a filesystem as a story · 571 points
HN discussionThey charge considerably more http://calpaterson.com/amazon-premium.html And they have a lot of lock-in too.
Comment linking /amazon-premium.html
on “DigitalOcean is laying off staff”Submitted Async Python is not faster as a story · 472 points
HN discussionIt is especially true for projects like Firefox which have access to massive funding since these attract the sort of people who consider those funds 'wasted' because they can be used to do so much for 'the common good'. Mitchell Baker - the utterly incompetent CEO - considered Firefox an afterthought because what the world needed was more NGO activism and what she needed was 400% more money for herself [1]. Wikipedi…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO”Submitted It looks like a product but is secretly a subscription as a story · 463 points
HN discussionI saw a thought-provoking post that similarly compared LLM makers to the airlines: https://calpaterson.com/porter.html
Comment linking /porter.html
on “OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor”Submitted The Amazon Premium as a story · 370 points
HN discussion>See: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html but it's on wikipedia too. See how the last year on that graph is 2018? Baker became interim CEO when Chris Beard stepped down in December 2019, officially hired around April of 2020. It also never reaches $3m. Additionally, look at the ~2015-2018 revenue. That is when Mozilla was with Yahoo and making ~$500 million a year as opposes to the ~$300 million now. That is when t…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter? as a story · 195 points
HN discussion> The amount the execs negotiated is reflected in their salary No it isn't - salary is salary, and these deals existed when the Mozilla CEO was not paid as much. By her own admission, at one point Baker just went "fuck it, other CEOs get paid multiples, why not me?", so now she brings home $3m per year, with the whole exec structure likely benefiting in similar fashion (because why only the CEO?). See: https://calpa…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted Agent memory as a file format as a story · 191 points
HN discussionHuh, information in https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html are, delicately speaking, disturbing. One thing surprised me as well: "Firefox barely exists on phones, with a market share of less than half a percent. This is baffling given that mobile Firefox has a rare feature for a mobile browser: it's able to install extensions and so can block ads." Yes, indeed, FF is pretty great on the phone, it looks like someone fa…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted No general method to detect fraud as a story · 186 points
HN discussion> world-class leaders ‶Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%″ -- https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted The Troublesome Active Record Pattern as a story · 168 points
HN discussionWord class leaders? https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html I'd rather have people that care about the cause in charge of these NGOs.
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted The industry structure of LLM makers as a story · 159 points
HN discussion> Why not just tell it like it is. Given the massive salaries and bonuses paid out to upper management[0], I think their problem would be not sounding like that dril tweet about budgeting[1]. After the massive layoffs and cuts to vital web platform projects this move just feels consistent in their move from their old "quirky nerd charity" image to a new, more corporate one. I'm not saying that this is a good thing.…
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted There aren't that many uses for blockchains as a story · 139 points
HN discussionAs a Firefox user, and after having donated to the foundation, I was outraged by reading this. https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html If they need money, they already know where to find it without polluting the experience with ads.
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Mozilla to put ads in Firefox address bar suggestions”Submitted Staying Out of TTL Hell as a story · 134 points
HN discussion>to the point where the thought has struck me more than once if the current CEO of Mozilla is in the pocket of Google No need to wonder. Mozilla gets $450M per year from Google [0], and the Mozilla Chair gets a large chunk [1]: [0]: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo... [1]: https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html
Comment linking /mozilla.html
on “Brave Search replaces Google as default search engine in the Brave browser”Submitted Applying Mypy to real-world projects as a story · 127 points
HN discussion
