Robert O'Callahan: My Linkedin Account Is Dead, And Why Is Google Being Stupid?
I tried to delete my Linkedin account a while back, but I still get a lot of "invitation to connect on Linkedin" emails. I plan to never connect to anyone on Linkedin ever again, so whoever wants to...
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Robert O'Callahan: Introducing Chaos Mode
Some test failures are hard to reproduce. This is often because code (either tests or implementation code) makes unwarranted assumptions about the environment, assumptions that are violated...
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Robert O'Callahan: Maokong
I've been in Taiwan for a week. Last Sunday, almost immediately after checking into the hotel I went with a number of Mozilla people to Maokong Gondala and did a short hike around Maokong itself, to...
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Robert O'Callahan: Taroko National Park
This weekend, in between the media and layout work weeks, I had time off so I thought I'd get out of Taipei and see a different part of Taiwan. On Alfredo's recommendation I decided to visit Taroko...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Mozilla And The Silicon Valley Cartel
This article, while overblown (e.g. I don't think "no cold calls" agreements are much of a problem), is an interesting read, especially the court exhibits attached at the end. One interesting fact is...
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Robert O'Callahan: Introducing rr
Bugs that reproduce intermittently are hard to debug with traditional techniques because single stepping, setting breakpoints, inspecting program state, etc, is all a waste of time if the program...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Conflict
I was standing in a long line of people waiting to get their passports checked before departing Auckland to the USA. A man pushed into the line ahead of me. People around me sighed and muttered, but...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Responsible Self-Censorship
People may be wondering why I, as one of the most notorious Christians at Mozilla, have been silent during the turmoil of recent days. It is simply because I haven't been able to think of anything to...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Mozilla Matters
How much does the world need Mozilla? A useful, if uncomfortable, thought experiment is to consider what the world would be like without Mozilla. Consider the world of Web standards. Microsoft doesn't...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Fighting Media Narratives
... is perhaps futile. A lot of what I have to say has already beensaid. Yet, in case it makes a difference: Almost all Mozilla staff supported keeping Brendan Eich as CEO, including many prominent...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Getting Back To Work
... is what we need now. So let me give a brief summary of what's happening with me work-wise. Last year I fully divested my direct reports. No more management work to do, yay! I think they probably...
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Robert O'Callahan: Milford Track
I took last week off to walk the Milford Track with some family members (plus a few days in Queenstown). The Milford Track is the most famous multi-day "Great Walk" in New Zealand and you have to book...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Against The "Internet Of Things"
I was lucky to be at the Berkeley "programming systems" retreat in Santa Cruz a couple of weeks ago. One topic that came up was programming in the world of the "Internet of Things" --- the anticipated...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Unnecessary Dichotomy
As the scope of the open Web has expanded we've run into many hard issues such as DRM, support for patented video codecs, and applications needing APIs that increase fingerprintability. These issues...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Implementing Scroll Animations Using Web Animations
It's fashionable for apps to perform fancy animations during scrolling. Some examples: Parallax scrollingSticky headers that scroll normally until they would scroll out of view and then stop moving...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Multiverses And Anthropic Reasoning
I liked this article summarizing the current state of science regarding multiverse theories. It's very clear and well-illustrated, and, as far as I know, accurate. This quote is particularly...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice
I know it's not the greatest marketing pitch, but it's the truth. Google is bent on establishing platform domination unlike anything we've ever seen, even from late-1990s Microsoft. Google controls...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Milestones On The Road To Christianity
Around the age of 20 I found myself struggling with some fairly deep philosophical questions. The most important was this: assuming (as I did) naturalism is true, then what should I do? It seemed clear...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: VMWare CPUID Conditional Branch Performance Counter Bug
This post will be uninteresting to almost everyone. I'm putting it out as a matter of record; maybe someone will find it useful.While getting rr working in VMWare guests, we ran into a tricky little...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: rr 2.0 Released
Thanks to the hard work of our contributors, rr 2.0 has been released. It has many improvements over our 1.0 release: gdb's checkpoint, restart and delete checkpoint commands are supported.These are...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Upcoming rr Talk
Currently I'm in the middle of a 3-week visit to North America. Last week I was at a Mozilla graphics-team work week in Toronto. This week I'm mostly on vacation, but I'm scheduled to give a talk at...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Back In New Zealand
I just finished a three-week stint in North America, mostly a family holiday but some work too. Some highlights: Visited friends in Vancouver. Did the Grouse Grind in just over an hour. Lovely...
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Robert O'Callahan: Pinnacles Tramp #2
During the weekend my children and I, plus some people from church and a friend, went tramping to the Pinnacles hut in Kauaeranga Valley in the Coromandel peninsula (near Thames, about two hours drive...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Are We Fast Yet? Yes We Are!
Spidermonkey has passed V8 on Octane performance on arewefastyet, and is now leading V8 and JSC on Octane, Sunspider and Kraken. Does this matter? Yes and no. On one hand, it's just a few JS...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Auckland Half Marathon --- Barefoot
I ran the Auckland half-marathon today, barefoot all the way. It went well; I slightly improved my time compared to last year when I wore Vibram foot-gloves. I didn't see any other barefoot runners...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: HTML5 Video Correctness Across Browsers
A paper presents some results of cross-browser testing of HTML5 video. This sort of work is very helpful since it draws attention away from browser vendor PR efforts and towards the sort of issues that...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Sci-Fi
I saw Interstellar today. I enjoyed it --- it was beautiful and thought-provoking --- but about an hour in, it just stops making sense. I don't just mean the physics is bad, though it is, but the...
View ArticleRobert O'Callahan: Relax, Scaling User Interfaces By Non-Integer Scale...
About seven years ago we implemented "full zoom" in Firefox 3. An old blog post gives some technical background to the architectural changes enabling that feature. When we first implemented it, I...
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