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App School Live

developers.urbit.org

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Re: App School Live

#11

Post by gaze »

gonehome wrote: post #7

For those that haven’t checked it out the ideas behind urbit are really interesting, it’s the first attempt I’ve seen to get us out of the local maximum of centralized web services we’re trapped in where success is among the potential outcomes (most attempts are destined to fail because they don’t tackle the underlying issues from first principles). I think it could really work and I’m convinced urbit or something li…

It's in no way interesting. It's a bunch of old, bad ideas duct taped together and renamed with nonsense words to both obfuscate what they're doing and establish an in-group language just as cults do.

Re: App School Live

#12

Post by gonehome »

julianeon wrote: post #10
lisper wrote: post #4

Just in case you're wondering whether Urbit is worth looking into, let me save you the trouble: no. Just, no. Urbit is a cult. All of its artifacts are deliberately obfuscated in order to instill a sense of community into those who climb the learning curve. It has no actual technical merit whatsoever. Here is a clue: > We’re running a cohort class of App School to teach you how to terraform Mars. No, you are not goin…

Thanks for your input. I was looking for a comment from someone who had tried it out and reached a verdict. To people who disagree and think it’s useful: I’m willing to listen - in fact I came here looking for your comments. Please post a link to a useful service of app that Urbit provides now, that’s what many of us are waiting to see.

The main application currently in use is groups which is similar to IRC. There are a few other small applications: chess, canvas - pixel art, pals - friends list, studio - which lets you run a hosted blog to the regular web and send emails when you post something new, but really chat is the main thing in use currently.

With regard to “cult” - every new thing has jargon (tech is particularly bad at it: grep, sed, awk, grok etc etc) - Martian computing comes from an old blog post linked below about the idea that if you started from scratch with a modern understanding of computing what could you build. Basically if you found software from an ancient civilization on mars that still worked - how might it have been designed to guarantee that?

I often see people on HN lament the old web of irc and nerds talking in good faith, about interesting topics, building personal sites, getting to know each other etc. That culture is alive and well on urbit.

Re: App School Live

#13

Post by arthyn »

lisper wrote: post #8
NealEDavis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pun on a longstanding joke of Urbit as Martian technology; it has nothing to do with the planet Mars.

OK, but that doesn't actually refute my central point, that Urbit is a cult. One of the hallmarks of cults is that they invent a private language that helps identify the in-group. Obviously I am not part of the in-group. Scientology is famous for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_terminology

there's a difference between cults and culture, both tend to generate their own language

Re: App School Live

#14

Post by gaze »

NealEDavis wrote: post #6
lisper wrote: post #4

Just in case you're wondering whether Urbit is worth looking into, let me save you the trouble: no. Just, no. Urbit is a cult. All of its artifacts are deliberately obfuscated in order to instill a sense of community into those who climb the learning curve. It has no actual technical merit whatsoever. Here is a clue: > We’re running a cohort class of App School to teach you how to terraform Mars. No, you are not goin…

It's a pun on a longstanding joke of Urbit as Martian technology; it has nothing to do with the planet Mars.

Oh great a bad in-group joke on a page used to onboard new people. Who is this even for? How is anyone supposed to know what they actually mean

Re: App School Live

#15

Post by cowtools »

gonehome wrote: post #7

For those that haven’t checked it out the ideas behind urbit are really interesting, it’s the first attempt I’ve seen to get us out of the local maximum of centralized web services we’re trapped in where success is among the potential outcomes (most attempts are destined to fail because they don’t tackle the underlying issues from first principles). I think it could really work and I’m convinced urbit or something li…

I've looked into it and it sounds like a ton of pretentious crap. How is this any better than IPFS, I2P, tor onion services, or Gnunet?

It's nice that it helped introduce you to linux though.

You make a few good points about usability, but I don't think the internet was designed to be a distributed network from the get-go. https://secushare.org/broken-internet

Re: App School Live

#17

Post by gonehome »

cowtools wrote: post #15
gonehome wrote: post #7

For those that haven’t checked it out the ideas behind urbit are really interesting, it’s the first attempt I’ve seen to get us out of the local maximum of centralized web services we’re trapped in where success is among the potential outcomes (most attempts are destined to fail because they don’t tackle the underlying issues from first principles). I think it could really work and I’m convinced urbit or something li…

I've looked into it and it sounds like a ton of pretentious crap. How is this any better than IPFS, I2P, tor onion services, or Gnunet? It's nice that it helped introduce you to linux though. You make a few good points about usability, but I don't think the internet was designed to be a distributed network from the get-go. https://secushare.org/broken-internet

It didn’t help introduce me to Linux - I used Linux for 15yrs before I heard about urbit.

I was disappointed that Linux would never be able to solve the incentive problems that lead to centralized companies handling that complexity.

Urbit’s approach actually could.

The reasons those other attempts are basically DOA outside of a tiny technical niche is they don’t go deep enough into the stack, they don’t tackle the issue with identity which is a core problem when it comes to handling spam and moderation. They don’t tackle administrative complexity and dependencies which is a core issue in making the system simple to run.

To really fix these things you have to think about why they always fail and design something to fix those incentive issues. Those problems start earlier up the stack - Linux will never be able to do it (imo) even if you tack on the identity layer.

Re: App School Live

#18

Post by lisper »

arthyn wrote: post #13
lisper wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but that doesn't actually refute my central point, that Urbit is a cult. One of the hallmarks of cults is that they invent a private language that helps identify the in-group. Obviously I am not part of the in-group. Scientology is famous for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_terminology

there's a difference between cults and culture, both tend to generate their own language

That's true, but I stand by my characterization of Urbit as a cult rather than a culture because Urbit's terminology is intentionally misleading. Urbit is deliberately obfuscated down to its very core. And the reason for this is that it is designed to produce an in-group that is separated from the out-group.

The founder of Urbit, Curtus Yarvin, is an extreme hard-core right-wing liberatarian. Go read up about him:

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

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

I'm not even sure that Curtis would object to my characterization of Urbit as a cult. He and I are not exactly on speaking terms any more, as you might imagine, but he is just enough of an iconoclast that he might actually agree with me on this.

Re: App School Live

#19

Post by 0x732202 »

lisper wrote: post #4

Just in case you're wondering whether Urbit is worth looking into, let me save you the trouble: no. Just, no. Urbit is a cult. All of its artifacts are deliberately obfuscated in order to instill a sense of community into those who climb the learning curve. It has no actual technical merit whatsoever. Here is a clue: > We’re running a cohort class of App School to teach you how to terraform Mars. No, you are not goin…

Who's wasting time? I've memorized a number of text passages using one user's app for cloze completion. I've kept track of names and faces of users I've met IRL using the pals app. I've had an uncountable number of awesome and fulfilling conversations with other users of the platform, and no, I don't feel like I am in a cult because I can leave for weeks at a time and return at my leisure.

It's called "calm computing" for a reason - the technology serves your peace of mind, not some corporation's ad revenue.

Re: App School Live

#20

Post by cowtools »

gonehome wrote: post #17
cowtools wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've looked into it and it sounds like a ton of pretentious crap. How is this any better than IPFS, I2P, tor onion services, or Gnunet? It's nice that it helped introduce you to linux though. You make a few good points about usability, but I don't think the internet was designed to be a distributed network from the get-go. https://secushare.org/broken-internet

It didn’t help introduce me to Linux - I used Linux for 15yrs before I heard about urbit. I was disappointed that Linux would never be able to solve the incentive problems that lead to centralized companies handling that complexity. Urbit’s approach actually could. The reasons those other attempts are basically DOA outside of a tiny technical niche is they don’t go deep enough into the stack, they don’t tackle the is…

GNUnet is a pretty comprehensive solution that does address these things, albeit it is a work in progress. Their solution to the identity problem is a pretty ingenious petname system called GNS. Their solution to incentive issues is a cryptographic micropayment system called GNU Taler. I think you can pretty easily solve the problems "up the stack" if you make the systems transport-layer agnostic like GNUnet/IPFS has done, and like Tor/I2P are currently doing.

I think Linux's identity solution (if you consider it a solution) is GPG and PKI.

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