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Urbit crowdsale is now live

sale.urbit.org

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Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#31

Post by azeirah »

dogma1138 wrote: post #22

"Datalife streams", Stars and planets... This sounds more like Scientology than a product... I really don't understand all these things about "building a new internet", especially when they are building it on top of the existing one. If the existing internet is so broken what the hell would Urbit do to fix it?

Just from watching the video, they're not exactly saying the existing internet is broken, they're confusing terms. They're claiming the web is broken (that is, tim berners lee's http web), the hardware-internet-network is fantastic (that is, all cables, routers, everything but the software layers). For some reason, they also claim to dislike tcp/ip.

All I can gather from their video is that they're trying the internet again with a different approach (built-in encryption, tools to far more easily build decentralized applications, your data is yours, and a point about API stuff that I don't quite grasp yet.)

Their goal is to be a self-governing digital republic, whatever that might mean.

As the guy says in the end, it's not up to them what urbit will become, it's up to us (the people who develop for urbit).

That's how I understood their video

Soooo... I'm not too sure why building (arguably?) better tools would result in a "better" internet. Additionally, I'm not too sure what the advantages are for end-users for decentralized applications.

So to conclude, it's up to the developers to find valid use-cases for urbit. Just like how it's up to developers to find valid use-cases for ethereum. Decentralized toolchains (like ethereum, other blockchain-things and urbit) are in their infancy, nobody really knows if they'll sprout useful use-cases or not.

Tl;DR Experimentation and uncertainty

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#32

Post by dogma1138 »

azeirah wrote: post #31
dogma1138 wrote: post #22

"Datalife streams", Stars and planets... This sounds more like Scientology than a product... I really don't understand all these things about "building a new internet", especially when they are building it on top of the existing one. If the existing internet is so broken what the hell would Urbit do to fix it?

Just from watching the video, they're not exactly saying the existing internet is broken, they're confusing terms. They're claiming the web is broken (that is, tim berners lee's http web), the hardware-internet-network is fantastic (that is, all cables, routers, everything but the software layers). For some reason, they also claim to dislike tcp/ip. All I can gather from their video is that they're trying the interne…

From watching their video i couldn't understand anything it was utter techno babel.

From reading the whitepaper it seemed like they were building a distributed network where everything is somewhat abstracted.

I thought Ethereum was silly and pointless but I at least somewhat understood what it tried to be, this is like literally something that looks to me that came off https://www.reddit.com/r/VXJunkies/

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#34

Post by callahad »

the_common_man wrote: post #18

Am I the only one skeptical in thinking that they didn't really sell 200 stars worth 200 USD each and they are making this up?

I have a few planets from back in 2013, and I bought a star today as a way of thanking ~zod, et al. for the three years of intellectual amusement I've derived from watching Urbit as it developed. So at least one of those sales is legitimate.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#35

Post by dang »

networked wrote: post #20
daxorid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No delete link, unfortunately.

You can email hn@ycombinator.com, then. Speaking from my experience, dang does a great job responding to user email. Edit: It looks like the story has been [flagged].

Yes, users flagged it. Normally that would also kill the story (i.e. close it to new comments and hide it from users who don't have 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile), but once there are enough comments, the software presumes there's an ongoing discussion and spares it.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#36

Post by hodwik2 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #32
azeirah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from watching the video, they're not exactly saying the existing internet is broken, they're confusing terms. They're claiming the web is broken (that is, tim berners lee's http web), the hardware-internet-network is fantastic (that is, all cables, routers, everything but the software layers). For some reason, they also claim to dislike tcp/ip. All I can gather from their video is that they're trying the interne…

From watching their video i couldn't understand anything it was utter techno babel. From reading the whitepaper it seemed like they were building a distributed network where everything is somewhat abstracted. I thought Ethereum was silly and pointless but I at least somewhat understood what it tried to be, this is like literally something that looks to me that came off https://www.reddit.com/r/VXJunkies/

Granted, I may not understand it at all, I only really started reading about it a few hours ago, but here it goes:

It's a decentralized internet, where your computer is the server, and it communicates directly with other computers by calling directly to their addresses.

As a result, e.g. your facebook data is stored on your computer, and other facebook users call your computer for posts.

Because the data is stored locally, and called through relatively universal APIs, any app can be written to call and display from those APIs, combine them, and let them inform each-other in any way you desire.

You can put your facebook in your reddit in your gmail.

That all runs inside a VM which ties your data to your address, so your identity (real or pseudonym) is singular, and uniform across all apps. This creates a real cost to ugly behavior, like spamming or trolling, as addresses are too limited to burn through willy-nilly.

Apps running on that VM are coded in a rather confusing functional language. Lots of people think he made it that confusing to stop newbs from writing for it.

I bought a star.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#37

Post by dogma1138 »

hodwik2 wrote: post #36
dogma1138 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From watching their video i couldn't understand anything it was utter techno babel. From reading the whitepaper it seemed like they were building a distributed network where everything is somewhat abstracted. I thought Ethereum was silly and pointless but I at least somewhat understood what it tried to be, this is like literally something that looks to me that came off https://www.reddit.com/r/VXJunkies/

Granted, I may not understand it at all, I only really started reading about it a few hours ago, but here it goes: It's a decentralized internet, where your computer is the server, and it communicates directly with other computers by calling directly to their addresses. As a result, e.g. your facebook data is stored on your computer, and other facebook users call your computer for posts. Because the data is stored lo…

It's a "decentralized" world wide web then. The internet is already decentralized and since you need the internet for Urbit to work let's stop calling it "the internet" anything.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#38

Post by callahad »

mangeletti wrote: post #21
the_common_man wrote: post #18

Am I the only one skeptical in thinking that they didn't really sell 200 stars worth 200 USD each and they are making this up?

You're absolutely not the only one. And, now the number sold is up to 340... Edit: Make that 361 (2 min later). Edit: Make that 421 (9 min later). Edit: Make that 471 (11 min later)

Looks like it completely sold out some time between 18:30 and 18:45 PDT, roughly three hours after your comment.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#39

Post by hodwik »

dogma1138 wrote: post #37
hodwik2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, I may not understand it at all, I only really started reading about it a few hours ago, but here it goes: It's a decentralized internet, where your computer is the server, and it communicates directly with other computers by calling directly to their addresses. As a result, e.g. your facebook data is stored on your computer, and other facebook users call your computer for posts. Because the data is stored lo…

It's a "decentralized" world wide web then. The internet is already decentralized and since you need the internet for Urbit to work let's stop calling it "the internet" anything.

You'll have to take that up with the public at large. We use "internet" to refer to the world wide web. Try to sell someone a computer that has "the internet", but won't do tcp/IP, you'll get punched.

As for the infrastructure, that's a rather more esoteric concern. It needs a distinguishing term.

Re: Urbit crowdsale is now live

#40

Post by daxorid »

dang wrote: post #35
networked wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can email hn@ycombinator.com, then. Speaking from my experience, dang does a great job responding to user email. Edit: It looks like the story has been [flagged].

Yes, users flagged it. Normally that would also kill the story (i.e. close it to new comments and hide it from users who don't have 'showdead' set to 'yes' in their profile), but once there are enough comments, the software presumes there's an ongoing discussion and spares it.

Thanka dang. I'm curious if the HN software has flagging ring detection in the same way it has voting ring detection.
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