Urbit is now in open developer beta
urbit.org
Urbit is now in open developer beta
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Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#2This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical.
If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a problem. If you can, why doesn't your homepage reflect that? Show me! I don't want to scroll through another website with 16 point font.
We all love the Unix philosophy and puppies, too.
Please take this as the constructive criticism it is.
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#3[deleted]
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#4This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…
I agree. What it really needs is an 'example' page, or a walkthrough of how/what you'd use it for.
I just spent 10 minutes reading the docs and I'm not sure I get it. Is it like Owncloud? disapora*? ITTT? Is it an interface to mirror all my content from other social media sites, and interact with them? You say I can use it to authenticate with sites - is it an OpenID provider? Something something blockchain? All of the above?
This page explains a little bit [1], but a walkthrough or video or screenshots or something would help immensely
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#5This might be the most revolutionary technology in the world, but I really have no idea because your landing page is full of the vaguest most utopian promises. You might say, well, you should go read the "technical docs", but have read about so many hyped techonologies that came to nothing at this point that I am incredibly skeptical. If you can't tell me what you are doing in a single paragraph, then you've got a pr…
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Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#6Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal.
That sounds a bit scary!
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#7Urbit is a republic. Its government has one task: promoting, preserving and protecting Urbit. It may take any legal action which advances this goal. That sounds a bit scary!
Given the CTO's views it's a lot more scary.
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#8I'm very confused.
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#9I want to like this, but I feel like they are trying to solve too many things at once. Which is just another kind of problem. New CLI, new language...
Re: Urbit is now in open developer beta
#10Urbit is purposefully obfuscated. If you don't believe me, just take a look at the docs:
https://urbit.org/docs/hoon/advanced/
There is no reason to gensym all of your concepts like this. It is different just for the purpose of being different: apparently you can't sell people on a "revolutionary technology" without appearing to be extremely different.
Nock is also not a good virtual machine. Recognizing blessed sequences of bytecode and replacing them with opaque blobs of code is not a valid approach to optimization. No one can actually run a pure Nock VM, so what is the point of having Nock in the first place?
Someone else on HN gave the best summary of Urbit I've seen yet: an elaborate cup and ball game, meant to give the impression of innovation and technical excellence.