Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Urbit: a personal cloud computer

doc.urbit.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 281 posts

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#91

Post by Adlai »

djur wrote: post #77
canjobear wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of negativity in the previous discussion. Did the page used to be phrased in a combative way or something?

Earlier versions of the site featured a larger quantity of Moldbug's baroque, trollish prose style. Plus there was an extended argument about language design, due to the author being present in the thread. Frankly, I'm disappointed. It used to be clearly the personal work of a lunatic. Now it feels more like a quirky open source project.

What's a quirky open source project, if not the communal work of collected lunatics?

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#92

Post by Adlai »

krick wrote: post #80
gfodor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had me going in the Nock spec until "We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right."

I absolutely understand your reaction, but, believe me or not, I remember myself wondering as a child why it is opposite. That time it seemed to me completely intuitive and natural that 1 should be "false" and 0 — "true". However, years later I was introduced to boolean algebra, where 1 should be true and 0 — false, if we want multiplication to be "and" and addition "or". And it feels right, because intersection of t…

Why is set intersection intuitively multiplication?

My expectation is that a set multiplication would give me a new set consisting of all pairs consisting of a single element from each set.

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#93

Post by djeikyb »

cwyers wrote: post #67
lexcorvus wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt very much that the average person wants to…fly their own airplane You don't think the average person would want to fly their own airplane if it were as easy as driving a car?

What's so easy about driving a car? Over 30,000 people die per year in the United States due to automobile accidents. And that's after requiring every driver get a license, and teaching basic driving skills as part of our high school system. Driving a car isn't all that easy, and we're terrible at it. There's a reason that Google is inventing self-driving cars, not personal airplanes. And the amount of possible simpl…

Is it common these days to have a drivers ed class in high school? My city's (pop ~1/2mm) high schools didn't, circa 2003ish.

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#94

Post by krick »

Adlai wrote: post #92
krick wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely understand your reaction, but, believe me or not, I remember myself wondering as a child why it is opposite. That time it seemed to me completely intuitive and natural that 1 should be "false" and 0 — "true". However, years later I was introduced to boolean algebra, where 1 should be true and 0 — false, if we want multiplication to be "and" and addition "or". And it feels right, because intersection of t…

Why is set intersection intuitively multiplication? My expectation is that a set multiplication would give me a new set consisting of all pairs consisting of a single element from each set.

Compare to probability. Probability of element being in one set AND another distinct set is multiplication of two probabilities (which are, in reality, actually defined by sets).

"Pairs" (and, respectively, cartesian product) is a bit more complex, and not so much related to boolean algebra deduction concept.

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#95

Post by macu »

It seems like a work of genius, but it may be many years before an artificial intelligence can fully interpret its unique significance.

In fact it reminds me about a massive book on cellular automation that I once picked up, which went to incredible length in interpreting the potential of dynamic patterns in 2D space. It was a monument to extreme intellectual rigour and dedication, if nothing else. If only I could remember the title.

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#96

Post by zenlikethat »

macu wrote: post #95

It seems like a work of genius, but it may be many years before an artificial intelligence can fully interpret its unique significance. In fact it reminds me about a massive book on cellular automation that I once picked up, which went to incredible length in interpreting the potential of dynamic patterns in 2D space. It was a monument to extreme intellectual rigour and dedication, if nothing else. If only I could re…

Was it "A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram?

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#97

Post by tunesmith »

macu wrote: post #95

It seems like a work of genius, but it may be many years before an artificial intelligence can fully interpret its unique significance. In fact it reminds me about a massive book on cellular automation that I once picked up, which went to incredible length in interpreting the potential of dynamic patterns in 2D space. It was a monument to extreme intellectual rigour and dedication, if nothing else. If only I could re…

Sounds like Wolfram's New Kind Of Science.

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#98

Post by [deleted] »

hawkice wrote: post #42
sjclemmy wrote: post #34

This guy should have been a comedy writer, not (and?) a programmer. I found this whilst backtracking: http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/moron-lab-goals-princ...

"Comedy writer" isn't quite how I'd describe it, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Urbit is run by the guy who writes/wrote under Mencius Moldbug, who is perhaps one of the more controversial people to achieve internet fandom. If you read through all the archives on his site and have no opinion (probably somewhere in the "I hate him" or "I find this reasonably convincing" statistical clusters), then your se…

[deleted]

Re: Urbit: a personal cloud computer

#100

Post by macu »

zenlikethat wrote: post #96
macu wrote: post #95

It seems like a work of genius, but it may be many years before an artificial intelligence can fully interpret its unique significance. In fact it reminds me about a massive book on cellular automation that I once picked up, which went to incredible length in interpreting the potential of dynamic patterns in 2D space. It was a monument to extreme intellectual rigour and dedication, if nothing else. If only I could re…

Was it "A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram?

That's the one. Thank you
Post reply on HN