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Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

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Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#91

Post by Barrin92 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #57
captainmuon wrote: post #41

The only good thing about Urbit are the Jorge Luis Borges references. Fun fact, the creator of Urbit, Curtis Yarvin, is a far-right blogger with some pretty crazy ideas: http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin > Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American far-right blogger. Yarvin and his ideas are often associated…

What were the political views of the people who wrote my current OS? My current browser? The channels on my chip that the electrons flow? The drive of the server that stores this comment? Can you truly be woke if a bigot designed your RAM?

the difference is that unlike RAM or some other random technology Urbit is quite explicitly a sort of socio-economic experiment. The 'digital homesteading', the liege-like relationship between owners of "stars/galaxies" etc individuals and people in their respective domains, the scarcity and deflationary aspect of it, it's very much a 1:1 software version of the political views of the original creator. The things that differentiate Urbit are all in the mechanisms of governance that users of the system take part in. So rather than thinking of it as a 'technology' it is much more like a political experiment.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#92

Post by golemotron »

api wrote: post #46
jlehman wrote: post #13

Reminds me of this essay: http://paulgraham.com/newideas.html

There's a lot of survivorship bias in that kind of thinking. They called Galileo mad, but they also called simultaneous five dimensional time cube guy mad.

His name is Gene Ray.. His name is Gene Ray.. His name is Gene Ray..

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#93

Post by sneak »

Note that contributing to this ecosystem as a user or developer is likely to enrich the founder of Urbit, Curtis Yarvin, who despite having resigned his position with the company, likely retains equity in the company and valuable/scarce assets in the network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin#Views_on_race

This is not a warning for or against, but it's always best to participate (if indeed you do) with eyes open.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#94

Post by tyui44 »

k2enemy wrote: post #88
_peeley wrote: post #31

I also did a deep dive on Urbit a few months back (shameless plug: https://blog.janissary.xyz/posts/urbit ), and I really agree with the author for the most part. Definitely the most concerning part of Urbit, for me at least, is the obscurantism of Hoon. Much like the author says, it's totally incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't read through every bit of the (lacking imo) documentation. Even a domain-specific langu…

Yes, exactly this. I've tried so many times to engage with Urbit but at every turn things seem intentionally inscrutable. I have a star that I've wanted to sell several times, but each time I give up after several hours of unsuccessfully trying to understand the bridge/ethereum documentation. It ends up seeming more like an art project than a new technology.

log into bridge w/metamask or whatever you use -> click on your star's name -> click 'id' in the menu that appears -> click 'transfer point' in the id menu -> input the ethereum address you want to send the star to and click 'generate and sign transaction'. did you really spend several hours trying to figure that out lmao

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#95

Post by Turing_Machine »

wejn wrote: post #33
jlehman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think he spent a lot of effort? The second sentence literally says that he did not.

True. Just a couple of hours. On the other hand... is walltime the only criterion worth considering?

Well, would you consider someone who'd only spent a couple of hours of wall time on Unix to be an expert whose opinion was worthy of serious consideration?

Not that I'm flogging Urbit -- or not flogging it, for that matter. I looked at it a while back and decided that I didn't understand it, and wouldn't understand it without spending far more time than I had available. However, that just renders my opinion on the topic useless.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#96

Post by tadfisher »

tern wrote: post #36

If you're interested in an articulation of what's exciting about Urbit from one of the core devs, this recent launch event hosted a great conversation: https://youtu.be/_aRnfacZPto?t=3224 (run-time 1hr and a good deal of it is about Urbit+Bitcoin specifically). One thing I've enjoyed and learned a lot from while participating in blockchain and Urbit communities is the sheer difference in valance of conversations, fro…

I think we focus too much on the technology and too little on providing real value. The value of blockchain networks is trustless distributed consensus, but a blockchain is one possible means to provide that value, and current implementations have undesirable tradeoffs and externalities. Urbit is a means to provide ubiquitous network-native computing, but it's a pretty terrible environment to use and live in.

Focus on the value proposition and these paradigm shifts could actually happen and benefit mankind.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#97

Post by hderms »

deegles wrote: post #83

For those that are curious to try Urbit, you can boot a free identity called a comet in just a few minutes: https://urbit.org/getting-started/ Once you have it running, go to http://localhost:80 to use the web interface (Landscape). The Urbit Community group is the most active. Just hit "Join Group" the main page and enter "~bitbet-bolbel/urbit-community"

What do people commonly discuss on it?

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#98

Post by anon_d »

sneak wrote: post #93

Note that contributing to this ecosystem as a user or developer is likely to enrich the founder of Urbit, Curtis Yarvin, who despite having resigned his position with the company, likely retains equity in the company and valuable/scarce assets in the network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin#Views_on_race This is not a warning for or against, but it's always best…

We should encourage people to express dissenting views.

The idea that we should do anything in our power to avoid good outcomes for someone that expressed ideas that we don't agree with is worse than hateful and evil: it's stupid and self-destructive.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#99

Post by samatman »

geofft wrote: post #80
fvdessen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I wouldn't say "nobody can ban you" [...] And the obvious end state is for a setup like Mastodon It is indeed quite similar to mastodon in the sense that other instances can ban you. The difference is that in mastodon your identity is usually located on an instance, and if that instance bans you, you lose your identity. In Urbit every identity has its own instance so your personal contact list will still be abl…

First off, I'm talking about the case where Mastodon instances collectively ban an instance , not a user. It's pretty easy to set up your own Mastodon instance, and in turn, norms and mechanisms have arisen for coordinated banning of instances with unwanted behavior. Second, if you choose to keep your keys on a third-party service, then that third-party service can ban you.

This is a big part of the point of urbit: there is no difference between an instance and a user.

If a star or galaxy wants to refuse to route to a planet, they can. A planet can then look for another star or galaxy which will route packets for them.

Also, if a planet ends up on another planet's personal banlist, that's it: the identities are durable and immutable, no amount of moving around will evade the ban. The annoying user has to either buy a new planet or make a comet.

It remains to be tried at scale, but urbit was carefully designed to solve some of the problems Curtis encountered with Usenet, back at the dawn of time. It might work, we'll see.

Re: Urbit: The good, the bad, and the insane

#100

Post by sneak »

anon_d wrote: post #98
sneak wrote: post #93

Note that contributing to this ecosystem as a user or developer is likely to enrich the founder of Urbit, Curtis Yarvin, who despite having resigned his position with the company, likely retains equity in the company and valuable/scarce assets in the network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin#Views_on_race This is not a warning for or against, but it's always best…

We should encourage people to express dissenting views. The idea that we should do anything in our power to avoid good outcomes for someone that expressed ideas that we don't agree with is worse than hateful and evil: it's stupid and self-destructive.

I do not think it is stupid nor self destructive to avoid enriching people who believe certain humans are more suited to being slaves than others, no. There is diversity of ideas and dissenting views, and he's free to blog about them, but I am also free to go work on other projects/communities that don't enrich landowners who I find morally repugnant.

Not wishing to contribute work to directly financially enrich racists and segregationists is very different from thinking that they should be silenced.

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