Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum • Hacker News Board

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#11

Post by QAPereo » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:38 AM UTC

to3m wrote: post #3

StavrosK wrote: post #2

Is this meant to be understandable by people? Am I missing some context?

You can get started, sort of, from the white paper: https://urbit.org/posts/ (TL;DR: "Urbit also invents a lot of alien technical jargon. We admit that this is annoying. Abstractly, it’s part of the clean-slate program: words smuggle in a lot of assumptions." - to which all I can say myself is: qupnux.)

I think you need to demonstrate some truly massive and revolutionary value before you ask people to learn your new language, otherwise you really just come off like a cult.

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#12

Post by otoburb » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:45 AM UTC

fra wrote: post #9

It's not clear to me what this means for folks who bought urbit stars earlier.

It seems that if you bought a star earlier then Tlon will "[...] write [Ethereum smart-] contracts that help galaxies and stars distribute their stars and planets" such that the "[...] star owner configures the planet sale contract with two parameters: the price in ether of a planet, and the number of planets available."

Basically, star owners will be handed a mechanism to run their own mini-ICO, where planets represent ICO tokens.

Why would you want to buy a planet from star owner X? I presume the answer lies somewhere in the statement: "Galaxies and stars are network infrastructure. Regular users have planets."

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#13

Post by bitwize » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:48 AM UTC

fra wrote: post #9

It's not clear to me what this means for folks who bought urbit stars earlier.

It means they're hosed.

Urbit is on about the same level as the next Zoë Quinn game in terms of hype-to-actual-value-delivered ratio.

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#14

Post by aeontech » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 1:49 AM UTC

Every time I read something about Urbit I am reminded of the Lewis Padgett short sci-fi story, "Mimsy Were The Borogroves" [0], [1] describing children discovering alien future toys, and subsequently via use of those toys learning to manipulate reality in incomprehensible ways.

I still have not been able to figure out if there's actually something that amazing about Urbit, or if behind the obfuscated terminology there's nothing, and I am reluctant to commit to the time required to find out for myself. It doesn't help that people who spend time in that land seem to all forget how to speak about it except in the terms of Urbit, unable to translate it for laypeople. I suppose that's true about any highly technical subject though.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimsy_Were_the_Borogoves

[1]: https://books.google.com/books?id=yPVbDv5DqkoC&lpg=PA181&dq=...

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#15

Post by equalunique » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:00 AM UTC

I think that the modified Etherium browser they propose will help a great deal towards visualizing / seeing the Urbit network "in action."

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#16

Post by natrius » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:01 AM UTC

to3m wrote: post #3

StavrosK wrote: post #2

Is this meant to be understandable by people? Am I missing some context?

You can get started, sort of, from the white paper: https://urbit.org/posts/ (TL;DR: "Urbit also invents a lot of alien technical jargon. We admit that this is annoying. Abstractly, it’s part of the clean-slate program: words smuggle in a lot of assumptions." - to which all I can say myself is: qupnux.)

I think the obfuscation is an elaborate hazing ritual that makes it optimal to cooperate with the existing community rather than defect and launch your own competing "land" registry.

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#17

Post by oh_sigh » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:06 AM UTC

How does Urbit team feel about Richard from Silicon Valley(the show) seemingly getting his idea to "invent a new internet" from Urbit?

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#18

Post by bitwize » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

QAPereo wrote: post #11

to3m wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get started, sort of, from the white paper: https://urbit.org/posts/ (TL;DR: "Urbit also invents a lot of alien technical jargon. We admit that this is annoying. Abstractly, it’s part of the clean-slate program: words smuggle in a lot of assumptions." - to which all I can say myself is: qupnux.)

I think you need to demonstrate some truly massive and revolutionary value before you ask people to learn your new language, otherwise you really just come off like a cult.

You just haven't realized the truth: that Unix and the internet have failed us massively and need to be completely reinvented from scratch by wise and benevolent engineers who have our interest at heart.

Curtis, in his eminent brilliance, was the first of us to realize this, and so became the first of these wise and benevolent engineers, forging a bright path for other open-minded people to follow.

Now come, let's get you changed into this robe and learning these chants. :)

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#19

Post by flatline » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:13 AM UTC

QAPereo wrote: post #11

to3m wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get started, sort of, from the white paper: https://urbit.org/posts/ (TL;DR: "Urbit also invents a lot of alien technical jargon. We admit that this is annoying. Abstractly, it’s part of the clean-slate program: words smuggle in a lot of assumptions." - to which all I can say myself is: qupnux.)

I think you need to demonstrate some truly massive and revolutionary value before you ask people to learn your new language, otherwise you really just come off like a cult.

Exactly. One of the primary MOs of a cult is to hijack people's language and replace it with their own. It is a means of thought control, a method of creating a sense of belonging, and a way to make cult members feel superior about their "knowledge". Onecoin has become an outright prosperity cult in Asia. I see shades of the same everywhere in crypto.

Re: Bootstrapping Urbit from Ethereum

#20

Post by bitwize » Thu, Sep 21, 2017, 2:15 AM UTC

AlexCoventry wrote: post #10

hossbeast wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was waiting for the "you can use Urbit to do X". No idea what it's for. There was a bit about real estate transactions .. then alot about space.

I think this is the closest it gets: "Your Urbit instance is your personal server. Your urbit should eventually contain and manage your whole digital life. You may compute at home or in the cloud, based on your security/privacy tradeoff, but Urbit's formal semantics makes ships trivial to migrate. You'll never be locked in to one computing provider."

Somebody put up cash on the barrelhead, a bounty for the Urbit developers and hypemen to develop an actual app -- a simple strip-poker game -- in Urbit.

There were no takers.

The question of "but what can you actually do with it?" went unanswered by Urbit's own promoters, even when they were incentivized with real cash money to come up with an answer.