pius's comments | WingNews

pius | 17 years ago | on: "Ruby isn't slow. If anyone tells you PHP is faster than Ruby, tell them: 'Benchmark it.'"

"Next was comparing Merb against other ruby options. Returning directly from the Merb router kills everything, but there aren’t many scenarios you could use that. Sinatra is just slightly faster than returning from the Merb controller, which both outperform Rails by a 3-4x. Rails itself still kills CakePHP."

pius | 17 years ago | on: "Ruby isn't slow. If anyone tells you PHP is faster than Ruby, tell them: 'Benchmark it.'"

The headline is a quotation from Yehuda Katz's MerbCamp closing keynote. See the summary of the keynote here at the bottom of this link:

http://rubypond.com/articles/2008/10/12/merbcamp---day-2/

pius | 17 years ago | on: How do I get in shape? Excercise Hack for Entrepreneurs

To be fair, Crossfit's a lot more than "strength training."

pius | 17 years ago | on: How do I get in shape? Excercise Hack for Entrepreneurs

Lifting is very useful because it actually increases your basal metabolism for many, many hours after your workout (as opposed to most aerobic exercises, whose metabolism boosting effects peter out in about an hour). In the long term, that benefit only compounds due to the increased muscle mass you gain.

If keeping your body in an enhanced calorie burning state even while you're sedentary isn't an exercise hack, I don't know what is. ;)

pius | 17 years ago | on: "The hard part is figuring out the fewest features that could accomplish your goals."

The actual quotation is "The hard part is to figure out the fewest possible features that could possibly accomplish your company's goals."

pius | 17 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why does nobody want to talk about Zeitgeist?

I don't know what you're talking about. Could you provide a link to the thread?

pius | 17 years ago | on: GNewSense — GNU's completely free version of Ubuntu (no proprietary binary blobs)

You're right, I wish I could correct the headline.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Ditching the Semantic Web

hehe, good question :P

pius | 17 years ago | on: Ditching the Semantic Web

there isn't one.

That's about as true for mashups as it is for the semantic web; in both cases, there is not an "official" trust model used across the web, though it's obviously possible for semantic web providers to do what every other API provider does and simply use their reputation. For example, what makes you trust the data you get from any API at all, if not for the provider's reputation? I do agree that there should be a more uniform approach in order to get wide usage of the technology beyond the enterprise, academia, and medicine.

This apparent lack of an official trust model won't be the case for long with POWDER [1] on the horizon. POWDER is on its way to becoming a ratified W3C standard and it makes steps to address the idea of a "web of trust." Who knows what kind of traction this will get in the near term, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-powder-primer-20080815

pius | 17 years ago | on: Ditching the Semantic Web

no mechanism that allows or even requires content authors to create their own metadata will ever take off.

That's (mostly) true if there's no trust model. Once you insert some sort of trust or authorization model, this problem gets mitigated pretty quickly. The most obvious counterexample to your point is the rich ecosystem of API-based mashups. Mashups exist as integration points for multiple content sources where content authors provide their own metadata.

While there's a lot of talk these days about the idea of "semantic search engines," most practical uses of the semantic web are actually just souped up mashups -- solutions to integration problems combined with some lightweight AI.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Google brought back oldest available index for their 10th birthday

haha.

You know, I didn't appreciate the magnitude of what they did until trying out your suggestion. I didn't realize that they'd literally gone back to the old search index . . . I thought it was just a superficial change.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Google brought back oldest available index for their 10th birthday

Impressive . . . they decided to forgo search driven ad revenue for the day.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Why Stallman is wrong when he calls cloud computing stupid

Stallman is to Open Source what Ralph Nader is to Liberals

What Ralph Nader is to "Liberals" is a pariah at this point.

pius | 17 years ago | on: How To Become An Open-Source Contractor

Excellent article.

pius | 17 years ago

The title's not deceptive ... it's the title of the page.

Either way, the answer to questions of the form "Can #{framework.name} scale?" is pretty much always yes. That's kind of the point of this page and all others like it.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Guess who's not coming to dinner; Roger Ebert with a terrific analysis of John McCain

Impressive rebuttal. There's been too much meta-commenting going on lately.

[/irony]

pius | 17 years ago | on: Google backs gay marriage

It's not my job to decide which of the different views on a topic I cover is "correct" or "right."

Right, but it's also not your job to draw false dichotomies and go out of your way to imply moral equivalence just so you can slather a patina of "fairness" over your work.

Even the best (especially the best?) journalists have to editorialize, whether they come to grips with that fact or not. The alternative would be to present an infinity of viewpoints on every topic one covers in any piece one writes. At some point one has to exercise discretion on what gets included and what doesn't, on what gets covered in detail and what doesn't. I don't think it's right or realistic to try to abdicate that part of one's journalistic responsibility.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Poll YC: Mandatory Replies.

It sounds good in principle but in practice I think it'd add a lot of noise to threads.

pius | 17 years ago | on: An Automat is a fast food restaurant where foods and drink are served by vending machines.

I was inspired by this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=316820

Plus, I think it's a cool, old idea that could inspire some new business ideas. Obviously some people found it interesting . . . they upmodded it.

pius | 17 years ago | on: Ask HN: What would you do with your life if you solved the money problem?

I share the opinion that a lot of things that should be automated are not. For instance - fast food. If fast food places are going to exist, I do not think that they should be part of what some people have to do to keep a roof over their (and their kids) heads, and food in their stomachs. They are repetitive, soul-sucking jobs that don't require a human.

For an old school baby step towards this idea, see this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=317028 where people are wondering why the hell I thought to submit the article. :)