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Urbit is now in open developer beta

urbit.org

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Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#21

Post by daxorid »

notthemessiah wrote: post #15
panic wrote: post #6

Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!

Just wait until you read the political views of those who are developing of which Urbit is an instantiation. It's a political philosophy designed to appeal to the Silicon Valley elite who want to imagine themselves as kings: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement Unqualified Reservations + Bitcoin = URBit

Even Vox is less biased than Rational Wiki on the topic. Much better overview: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#23

Post by stronglikedan »

jcrites wrote: post #19
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…

I don't disagree with your criticism. I read through the Urbut whitepaper [1] a while ago, and there's some meat and novel ideas there. As far as a concise description, here's my attempt, followed by some content from the whitepaper. The key idea that distinguishes Urbit is its focus on deterministic computing. Urbit is a computing environment, like a virtual machine, with the distinction that the entire computationa…

> while (if I recall correctly) decoupling it from the underlying physical machine it's running on

> Urbit is a new clean-slate, full-stack server. It's implemented on top of the old platform, but it's a sealed sandbox like the browser.[0]

It appears that you do indeed recall directly.

Also, thank you. The two quotes from your comment, plus your sentence following, do describe it in a nice single paragraph. Granted, I do have to research most of the technologies in the stack, admittedly.

[0] https://urbit.org/#learn

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#24

Post by mjfl »

tree_of_item wrote: post #10

Urbit is purposefully obfuscated. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the docs: https://urbit.org/docs/hoon/advanced/ There is no reason to gensym all of your concepts like this. It is different just for the purpose of being different: apparently you can't sell people on a "revolutionary technology" without appearing to be extremely different. Nock is also not a good virtual machine. Recognizing blessed sequ…

link for earlier thread, interesting because creators responded:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10435757

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#25

Post by jmspring »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…

Honestly, it seems to fit the current hype around being mysterious, disruptive, etc.

That they can't describe what they are doing in plain english is downright silly.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#27

Post by hodwik2 »

gaze wrote: post #11
panic wrote: post #6

Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!

I think if people read Curtis's writing under Mencius Moldbug, nobody would touch urbit with a ten foot pole. He believes that white people are genetically endowed with a higher IQ than black people. Why are people giving him money? This is why we can't have nice things.

I do not believe IQ is heritable -- racially, or otherwise. Full stop.

Intelligence is, by my estimation, entirely a function of nurture, not nature. Those exceptions are in situations where it is lacking due to handicap.

Which is to say, everyone's brain has the same chance at brilliance (barring fetal alcohol syndrome, neglect, etc.) if they are not intellectually handicapped, and are provided the same child-rearing and temperament.

But, if you believed IQ to be heritable, as many of you do, it would seem a fair guess that it would be distributed unequally among races, as is height, hormone levels, muscularity, and so on.

I don't believe this, as I don't believe IQ is heritable, but I don't see how one could possibly buy into the heritability of IQ while vehemently denying that it could be spread unevenly among races. You guys, to me, all seem to be grappling with two wildly incompatible ideas -- that race can't effect intelligence, and that intelligence is heritable.

You'll need to choose which it is.

I'm happy, even having read his (wrong) ideas on IQ, to entertain Urbit because he seems no more wrong than the rest of you. Cheers.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#28

Post by sumitgt »

Wow, before I read the HN comments, I felt really dumb for not understanding a word of what that page meant.

I thought it was one of those strange things all the cool kids are into these days whose appeal I cannot understand or explain.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#29

Post by jmspring »

gaze wrote: post #11
panic wrote: post #6

Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!

I think if people read Curtis's writing under Mencius Moldbug, nobody would touch urbit with a ten foot pole. He believes that white people are genetically endowed with a higher IQ than black people. Why are people giving him money? This is why we can't have nice things.

Ah ha! I forgot an earlier comment of mine where one's political views shouldn't impact conference attendance.

In this case, when talking about a project, the specific nature, obfuscation, and seemingly random need to make things harder to understand than they should be, my opinion on the project is the opposite of my views on a speaking engagement.

Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta

#30

Post by sigusr1 »

gaze wrote: post #11
panic wrote: post #6

Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!

I think if people read Curtis's writing under Mencius Moldbug, nobody would touch urbit with a ten foot pole. He believes that white people are genetically endowed with a higher IQ than black people. Why are people giving him money? This is why we can't have nice things.

Is your assumption that IQ isn't heritable, or that genes don't vary with populations along racial lines, or what?
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