[deleted]
Urbit
181–190 of 309 posts
Re: Urbit
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Obscurantist racist vapourware" feels like it ought to be a problem, especially if it deliberately tries to obscure these properties in seemingly direct contradiction of the curiosity mandate.
How exactly is this racist
It's certainly hidden behind a layer of indirection where you first have to peel off 'how exactly is this anything at all' - a tricky and futile enough proposition. It's like a LaRouche movement for computer nerds, if you bend over backwards to be nice about it.
Re: Urbit
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm on the left. I think Urbit is quite neat as a technology. Yarvin has very unusual political views, so I'm not sure where to put them, or if you'd consider this "sound-bite mudslinging" (if you do, please suggest a more palatable way of providing evidence:) He seems pro-monarchy: Was royalism a perfect system? It was not. But if we imagine a world in which the revolutions and civil wars of the last four centuries…
His views are all just hand wavey fascism. At no point does he make a tractable argument. As a counterpoint: take all countries today that have functioning (i.e. non-figurehead) monarchies and compare them with democratic, capitalist countries. You can use prosperity, GDP per capita, average literacy - whatever as a metric and monarchies will fail.
Untrue, or at least questionable claim. Monarchies are economically better-performing.
Eg. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/monarchies-good-...
Re: Urbit
#184The goal is noble, but Urbit is destined to become a case study in the dangers of isolation and obstinacy. This project has gone so deep into its own inner sanctum that they've lost tabs on wider reality. While the result may have glimmers of technical excellence for brave souls to excavate some day, the impact of the juxtaposition between latent expertise and overwhelming derangement is enough to scare away (literal…
Bollocks. Yarvin left Urbit nearly a year ago. https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/
Re: Urbit
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple doesn't have a One True Way -- they have a relatively-simple and relatively-uniform product line that represents their interpretation of human-computer interaction. They focused on building systems that everyone could use and love immediately, and it turns out that a lot of people appreciate that emphatic commitment to the human over the machine. Jobs insisted on elegance and simplicity throughout, creating pro…
We haven't lost him out of misfortune, as many other things he made horribly wrong and nobody talks about anymore, because, you know, survival bias, he also thought cancer could be cured with diets. He was man that even his daughter despise for being inhuman with his own flesh and blood, for denying she was her child for years. Having interacted with Apple users since 1984, the only common trait they have is exactly…
> The fact that the failure of Next is still told as a great success speaks volumes.
NeXT resulted in the web browser and the iPhone.
Re: Urbit
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure how you got your first assumption from the rest of your quotations. "[the Urbit] "senate" can do whatever they want to my data" No. The urbit senate can do nothing with your data. Your server holds your data. It is not distributed on the block chain. It is not mirrored by your peers. No one has any access to your data, except where you give them permission. Your final quote refers to the power the senate…
Wait, so how is it better than a trusty OpenBSD box?
Perhaps the idea is that updates provided by OpenBSD or another OS for example could be compromised or simply directed to an unpopular path, but in this way a "senate" of code reviewers with known biases provides a more democratic way of reviewing updates before publish.
Re: Urbit
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
His views are all just hand wavey fascism. At no point does he make a tractable argument. As a counterpoint: take all countries today that have functioning (i.e. non-figurehead) monarchies and compare them with democratic, capitalist countries. You can use prosperity, GDP per capita, average literacy - whatever as a metric and monarchies will fail.
Untrue, or at least questionable claim. Monarchies are economically better-performing. Eg. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/monarchies-good-...
They demonstrably do not. Look at any competitiveness index, or standard of living index, or anything measurable.
The article you’ve linked is banal. It talks about how monarchies are good at protecting established property rights. Duuuuuh. That’s their entire purpose.
Thinking that stability of property rights is equal to economic performance is moronic. So either you think that I am one or you are one.
Here’s a quick test you can do: look around you and count how many items around you are produced in the Kingdom of Lesotho? Or Kuwait? Or Madagascar? Or Bhutan?
Such post-industrial powerhouses of economy those must be.
Re: Urbit
#188The goal is noble, but Urbit is destined to become a case study in the dangers of isolation and obstinacy. This project has gone so deep into its own inner sanctum that they've lost tabs on wider reality. While the result may have glimmers of technical excellence for brave souls to excavate some day, the impact of the juxtaposition between latent expertise and overwhelming derangement is enough to scare away (literal…
My sense is that the project started in its inner sanctum and has been iterating gradually towards something that can be understood and used.
It actually can be explained simply:
Cross platform deployed VMs with their own primitives that also have the ability to network with each other via a custom protocol.
That's interesting and potentially very valuable.
Keep in mind this whole Hacker News and Ycombinator paradigm is effectively an outworking of the same process. Some savant Lisper with their own dialect making in a unique way that over time was re-coded and made more accessible.
Re: Urbit
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's certainly not "random" as you say - the subject is the founder of the project. The entire project is politically charged. The software was literally modeled after monarchy and fascism. IMO this doesn't belong on HN.
> The software was literally modeled after monarchy and fascism. Show me a software project modeled after liberal democracy.
I'd say unix generally. There's a slowly evolving set of laws (POSIX) made by broad consensus; people roughly follow the laws most of the time; and the whole thing just about works. Everyone agrees the whole thing is deeply flawed, but can't agree on a replacement.
Re: Urbit
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
How exactly is this racist
It's certainly hidden behind a layer of indirection where you first have to peel off 'how exactly is this anything at all' - a tricky and futile enough proposition. It's like a LaRouche movement for computer nerds, if you bend over backwards to be nice about it.
So what do you get when you peel off the layer of indirection?
I am curious about how an operating system project can be this political, but i'm reluctant to dig into it myself, because any time spent learning about Urbit is clearly absolutely wasted. But if you've already done that work, could you share your findings?