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What Urbit is

urbit.org

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Re: What Urbit is

#141

Post by ksrm »

5F36B5F62640 wrote: post #102
zardgiv wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Controversial" is the pinnacle of weasel words. How do you feel about his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves, and do you think that his views would make people from those ethnic groups feel welcome in your community?

The comments that I have seen from him on that topic (and it should be noted that I have only read a small part of his comments so this may not be representative of his thoughts on these matters) implied that those groups were better slaves because they were more resilient or stronger, so were able to better survive slavery than less resilient or weaker groups. I don't see why that would make people from those groups…

Do you seriously not see how someone discussing how good a slave you would make is (at the very least) 'unwelcoming'?

Re: What Urbit is

#142

Post by zardgiv »

lhnz wrote: post #139
cwyers wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there are a great fewer purely technical decisions in the world of software than some people around here seem to believe, and people's beliefs, worldviews, experiences and identities matter. They matter a lot. And to the extent that software is, as they say, "eating the world," the kinds of people who are writing software and the kinds of people that aren't has a profound impact on our society. If you look at…

Unfortunately grandiose ideas like Urbit only seem to come from and get executed by minds like Curtis'. You can't have one without the other. If people want to a clean state restart of the world of computing without an infestation of corporations they'll be against attempts to shun him.

[Citation needed]

Re: What Urbit is

#143

Post by profeta »

urbit wrote: post #77
placeybordeaux wrote: post #31

All of these comments seem to be saying that this is so well written. I still have no idea what it is actually trying to accomplish. Is it a decentralized storage/compute platform? Why are they calling it an OS? Why does it only reference existing technology to say it isn't that? None of the links are working for me either.

Sorry, the server was struggling for a moment. We fixed it. It's an OS admittedly in the metaphorical sense -- the same sense that your browser is an OS. That is, a platform that runs higher-level programs. Urbit doesn't run on bare metal, though it could, in the same sense that your browser could. In fact, one way of describing Urbit is "the browser for the server side." In the same way that your browser replaces a…

so it is a place that will centralize all my credentials so it can fetch and parse my mail, IMs, stock trades, files, etc to then inter-process that to my liking and possible talk to a client on my phone or such?

why a chain of specialized posix programs would fail for that?

Re: What Urbit is

#144

Post by yarvin9 »

kefka wrote: post #28

I was looking into this, as I have connections to the devs via our hackerspace. After research, I steered away, and hard. 1. Newbies trying to grok the platform are mocked mercilessly. Publicly over reddit and twitter. 2. The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. 3. It uses "Hoon" to program, which…

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake.

#2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to be a communist, but perhaps it doth protest too much if you go all the way to "avowed communist."

#3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp, and (b) Hoon is a typed language. "Only dedicated people would learn it" sounds like an interesting marketing tactic which must involve some kind of strong reverse psychology. Frankly, I have enough trouble with basic forward psychology.

#4 would be perfectly true, except that the company owns less than half of the Urbit namespace. The rest has been distributed across about 50 more or less random individuals.

(I think I know the hackerspace you mean -- Bloomington? A bunch of them drove to LambdaConf and interned. Incredibly smart, nice and wonderful young people, needless to say. I'd hang out with them all the time if I lived there.)

Re: What Urbit is

#145

Post by lhnz »

zardgiv wrote: post #142
lhnz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately grandiose ideas like Urbit only seem to come from and get executed by minds like Curtis'. You can't have one without the other. If people want to a clean state restart of the world of computing without an infestation of corporations they'll be against attempts to shun him.

[Citation needed]

Classic example is Linux and Torvalds.

But I was referring to the fact that nobody else is solving this specific problem. You either stay happy with your collection of walled gardens or you wait to see if he can unbreak the internet.

In fact in this case, the work goes ahead anyway. Perhaps you end up using it in ten years, or perhaps you don't. But neither of us gain anything from this argument at the present time.

Re: What Urbit is

#146

Post by lisper »

yarvin9 wrote: post #144
kefka wrote: post #28

I was looking into this, as I have connections to the devs via our hackerspace. After research, I steered away, and hard. 1. Newbies trying to grok the platform are mocked mercilessly. Publicly over reddit and twitter. 2. The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. 3. It uses "Hoon" to program, which…

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake. #2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to…

> #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp

It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of.

I have never understood, and still don't understand, why you choose to wear your ignorance with such pride.

BTW:

> Hoon is a typed language

So is Lisp.

Re: What Urbit is

#147

Post by Avshalom »

urbit wrote: post #77
placeybordeaux wrote: post #31

All of these comments seem to be saying that this is so well written. I still have no idea what it is actually trying to accomplish. Is it a decentralized storage/compute platform? Why are they calling it an OS? Why does it only reference existing technology to say it isn't that? None of the links are working for me either.

Sorry, the server was struggling for a moment. We fixed it. It's an OS admittedly in the metaphorical sense -- the same sense that your browser is an OS. That is, a platform that runs higher-level programs. Urbit doesn't run on bare metal, though it could, in the same sense that your browser could. In fact, one way of describing Urbit is "the browser for the server side." In the same way that your browser replaces a…

So it's an OS in the sense that the JVM is an OS.

Re: What Urbit is

#148

Post by mcphage »

zorpner wrote: post #85
Karunamon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean aside from the project under discussion? Why are his personal views even relevant here?

Because they're so repugnant that they make reasonable people question why anyone would be willing to tolerate, let alone defend him. He's freely declared himself so reprehensible that it impairs his ability to lead any project because it will inevitably attract this type of discussion. If you'd prefer this not to be the case, please outline what restrictions on free speech you'd like emplaced so that people would no…

> He's freely declared himself so reprehensible that it impairs his ability to lead any project because it will inevitably attract this type of discussion.

He's incapable of leading a project because you're unwilling to control yourself?

Re: What Urbit is

#149

Post by urbit »

profeta wrote: post #143
urbit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, the server was struggling for a moment. We fixed it. It's an OS admittedly in the metaphorical sense -- the same sense that your browser is an OS. That is, a platform that runs higher-level programs. Urbit doesn't run on bare metal, though it could, in the same sense that your browser could. In fact, one way of describing Urbit is "the browser for the server side." In the same way that your browser replaces a…

so it is a place that will centralize all my credentials so it can fetch and parse my mail, IMs, stock trades, files, etc to then inter-process that to my liking and possible talk to a client on my phone or such? why a chain of specialized posix programs would fail for that?

Yes, Urbit is (or at least is designed to become) a personal server which solves this problem among others.

One: a chain of specialized Posix programs would work for that. You would have to be someone who can manage a chain of specialized Posix programs, though.

Two: serving as a general-purpose stateful HTTP client is a subset of what Urbit does, though an important subset. It's also a server on a public network.

The second problem can also be solved with Posix programs, but it pretty much seals the requirement for a trained professional. It is possible to imagine a high-usability personal Linux (Sandstorm, for instance), but not really a high-usability general-purpose Internet server (at least if it implements social apps via decentralized protocols).

(In fact, it's not even clear that trained professionals are comfortable with decentralized protocols -- see under, Google doesn't even want your XMPP traffic, etc.)

Urbit may or may not be the perfect solution, but I think it's clear that if ordinary humans are going to have their own personal servers, they're going to need some kind of new system software.

Re: What Urbit is

#150

Post by kaid »

kefka wrote: post #60
mundo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would demonstrate a lot about the HN community if we could get through an entire Urbit post without it devolving in to yet another debate on Curtis Yarvin's (incredibly lengthy, vague and contradictory, and entirely irrelevant) views on race.

Its the whole of collections of views he is public about. We talk a great deal of "Good Fit" and the like when working on projects with others, or working for someone. This is a case where he would work better with his own kind: racists, sexists, and bigots. Like attracts like.

So you come here only to insult? or are you advocating thoughtcrime? nazi german and ussr and their thoughtcrime days had long gone, hope you aren't in any effort to bring them back.
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