10 ms·

Reading anything from them always reminds me of TempleOS. There are some hilarious gems if you skim it, like "Urbit is highly intolerant of computation error, f

Reading anything from them always reminds me of TempleOS. There are some hilarious gems if you skim it, like "Urbit is highly intolerant of computation error, for obvious reasons, and should be run in an EMP shielded data center on ECC memory."

MichaelAza 11y ago
I always think of TempleOS as well. Both project maintainers have created some impressive and/or interesting technology that is hindered by inflated self importance and being different for the sake of being different. Another common point - HN has a soft spot for both and upvotes most content related to these projects.
- yarvin9 11y ago
  It'd be interesting to hear a more detailed description of what you'd classify as "different for the sake of being different." There's certainly plenty of code in this world that's the same for the sake of being the same. It's not terribly interesting to use CGA graphics for the sake of being different. On the other hand, I do wonder whether my children will grow up learning 1970s programming for the sake of being the same.
  - deegles 11y ago
    One example is that they flipped the meaning of 0 and 1 in their new language. >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.
    - pcmonk 11y ago
      This is exactly the way it's used in shell scripting, and honestly, it's more useful that way for us because it makes booleans default to true instead of false. If we're going to redo everything, we may as well do it right this time.
      - minitech 11y ago
        > This is exactly the way it's used in shell scripting You say that like it’s a good thing.
    - yarvin9 11y ago
      I'll give you that one! It's an old mistake and not very costly in practice, but the intuitive rightness isn't worth the pain in the butt. But the pain in the butt also isn't painful enough to match the difficulty of fixing it. I actually got this bad idea from Unix: !strcmp(), etc. It's certainly easier to overload error codes into a 0=true scheme, although Urbit doesn't actually do that.
      - david-given 11y ago
        "It's an old mistake and not very costly in practice, but the intuitive rightness isn't worth the pain in the butt." Why is it intuitively right?
        melloclello 11y ago
        "a string can be slack in many ways, but taut in only one" 0 is true, everything else is false. At least that's my intuition.
        emmelaich 11y ago
        Huh! Pretty similar to my comparison to Tolstoy's quote on happy and unhappy families. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10282933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10282933
  - MichaelAza 11y ago
    Well, as I see it, the design of Hoon is definetly different for the sake of being different, syntax wise and considering the pronounciation guide. Using new terminology where existing terminology will suffice (off the to of my head, twig and span) is different for the sake of being different.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  They're both run by unpleasant individuals who like to post their opinions about black people on the internet, the main difference is Mencius Moldbug uses fancier words.
  - mcantelon 11y ago
    Their opinions about things unrelated to technology are, of course, highly relevant to their technological insight.
    - colanderman 11y ago
      Meh, I prefer not to work with bigots. Good to know this fact; I was considering getting involved.
      - oldmanjay 11y ago
        I'm curious. Did you do some research into what was meant, or did the phrase "post opinions about black people" carry some hidden meaning I am not equipped to detect? There's a heavy implication, of course, but you mentioned a fact. I'm wondering what fact you reference.
        colanderman 11y ago
        2nd hit on Google is an interesting article from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/curtis_yarvin_booted_from_strange_loop_it_s_a_big_big_problem.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/cur... His opinion on colonialism in South Africa is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it": http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2008/11/07/on-its-stomach/comment-page-1/#comment-5944 http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2008/11/07/on-its-sto... Here's a nice post of his where he literally all but claims to be a white nationalist: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-a... He might have interesting software engineering ideas, but I'm not interested in ever working with him.
- dustingetz 11y ago
  > being different for the sake of being different Urbit has brilliant technical insight into perhaps the hardest problem our industry currently faces: why does everything always turn into a big ball of mud? Urbit may turn out to be incredibly important. Parent comment is unjustified, uninformed, poor tone and ad hominem.
  - MichaelAza 11y ago
    On the contrary, I'm quite interested and impressed by the technical quality of the project. I'm pointing out that throwing all first principles out of the window, even when its clearly unnecessary (renaming the ASCII characters) makes it harder to approach for no good reason.
    - dustingetz 11y ago
      Sorry, it looks like I read your comment uncharitably.
yarvin9 11y ago
TempleOS is definitely more of a religious experience. They're also way ahead of us in CGA graphics. I think pretty much anything but the most fly-by-night data centers use parity memory, but I'm always concerned by the failure to spend a couple extra bucks on chicken wire for EMP shielding. The Carrington event actually did happen.
- thesnider 11y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure of that -- none of Google's clusters use ECC, for instance.
  - miah_ 11y ago
    Really? "This paper studied the incidence and characteristics of DRAM errors in a large fleet of commodity servers. Our study is based on data collected over more than 2 years and covers DIMMs of multiple vendors, generations, technolo- gies, and capacities. All DIMMs were equipped with error correcting logic (ECC) to correct at least single bit errors" from conclusion 1. "The conclusion we draw is that error correcting codes are crucial for reducing the large number of memory errors to a manageable number of uncorrectable errors. In fact, we found that platforms with more powerful error codes (chip- kill versus SECDED) were able to reduce uncorrectable er- ror rates by a factor of 4–10 over the less powerful codes." DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study : http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html
agumonkey 11y ago
Urbit confuses me to frightening levels. Psychedelic substances levels. Kudos to them.
tptacek 11y ago
It's too bad, really, because someone should do a serious general-purpose overlay network project, and it's clear that Urbit isn't it.
- yarvin9 11y ago
  You're probably capable of something more interesting than a "middlebrow dismissal..."
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I think Urbit spends a lot of time framing overlay networks in obscurantist and obfuscatory terms, tightly coupling the simple, useful idea of layering a more flexible network on top of restrictive IPv4 networks with less useful ideas like a series of new programming environments with their own ASCII pronunciation guide. I'm not sure what I gave was a middlebrow dismissal; it was just terse. I find Urbit unserious. I think that's unfortunate, because someone should do a serious, pragmatic overlay network.
    - yarvin9 11y ago
      We'll call it a terse highbrow dismissal, then. My terse highbrow dismissal: separating the programming environment from the protocol results in serious, pragmatic problems. For instance: protocols specified in English, in which messages are validated by hand and not by a type system.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        The notion that Urbit believes it can solve all the problems, rather than tackling a single important problem, is one of the things that makes it unserious to me. The inflexibility of the Internet service model is a serious problem. Poor formal methods for verifying protocols is a serious (albeit not lucrative) problem. Programming languages that make it difficult to express correct programs: serious problem. It is not clear to me how the solution to all three of those problems is the same startup.

MichaelAza 11y ago

I always think of TempleOS as well. Both project maintainers have created some impressive and/or interesting technology that is hindered by inflated self importance and being different for the sake of being different. Another common point - HN has a soft spot for both and upvotes most content related to these projects.

yarvin9 11y ago
It'd be interesting to hear a more detailed description of what you'd classify as "different for the sake of being different." There's certainly plenty of code in this world that's the same for the sake of being the same. It's not terribly interesting to use CGA graphics for the sake of being different. On the other hand, I do wonder whether my children will grow up learning 1970s programming for the sake of being the same.
- deegles 11y ago
  One example is that they flipped the meaning of 0 and 1 in their new language. >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.
  - pcmonk 11y ago
    This is exactly the way it's used in shell scripting, and honestly, it's more useful that way for us because it makes booleans default to true instead of false. If we're going to redo everything, we may as well do it right this time.
    - minitech 11y ago
      > This is exactly the way it's used in shell scripting You say that like it’s a good thing.
  - yarvin9 11y ago
    I'll give you that one! It's an old mistake and not very costly in practice, but the intuitive rightness isn't worth the pain in the butt. But the pain in the butt also isn't painful enough to match the difficulty of fixing it. I actually got this bad idea from Unix: !strcmp(), etc. It's certainly easier to overload error codes into a 0=true scheme, although Urbit doesn't actually do that.
    - david-given 11y ago
      "It's an old mistake and not very costly in practice, but the intuitive rightness isn't worth the pain in the butt." Why is it intuitively right?
      - melloclello 11y ago
        "a string can be slack in many ways, but taut in only one" 0 is true, everything else is false. At least that's my intuition.
        emmelaich 11y ago
        Huh! Pretty similar to my comparison to Tolstoy's quote on happy and unhappy families. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10282933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10282933
- MichaelAza 11y ago
  Well, as I see it, the design of Hoon is definetly different for the sake of being different, syntax wise and considering the pronounciation guide. Using new terminology where existing terminology will suffice (off the to of my head, twig and span) is different for the sake of being different.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
They're both run by unpleasant individuals who like to post their opinions about black people on the internet, the main difference is Mencius Moldbug uses fancier words.
- mcantelon 11y ago
  Their opinions about things unrelated to technology are, of course, highly relevant to their technological insight.
  - colanderman 11y ago
    Meh, I prefer not to work with bigots. Good to know this fact; I was considering getting involved.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      I'm curious. Did you do some research into what was meant, or did the phrase "post opinions about black people" carry some hidden meaning I am not equipped to detect? There's a heavy implication, of course, but you mentioned a fact. I'm wondering what fact you reference.
      - colanderman 11y ago
        2nd hit on Google is an interesting article from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/curtis_yarvin_booted_from_strange_loop_it_s_a_big_big_problem.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/cur... His opinion on colonialism in South Africa is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it": http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2008/11/07/on-its-stomach/comment-page-1/#comment-5944 http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/blog/2008/11/07/on-its-sto... Here's a nice post of his where he literally all but claims to be a white nationalist: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-a... He might have interesting software engineering ideas, but I'm not interested in ever working with him.
dustingetz 11y ago
> being different for the sake of being different Urbit has brilliant technical insight into perhaps the hardest problem our industry currently faces: why does everything always turn into a big ball of mud? Urbit may turn out to be incredibly important. Parent comment is unjustified, uninformed, poor tone and ad hominem.
- MichaelAza 11y ago
  On the contrary, I'm quite interested and impressed by the technical quality of the project. I'm pointing out that throwing all first principles out of the window, even when its clearly unnecessary (renaming the ASCII characters) makes it harder to approach for no good reason.
  - dustingetz 11y ago
    Sorry, it looks like I read your comment uncharitably.

yarvin9 11y ago

TempleOS is definitely more of a religious experience. They're also way ahead of us in CGA graphics. I think pretty much anything but the most fly-by-night data centers use parity memory, but I'm always concerned by the failure to spend a couple extra bucks on chicken wire for EMP shielding. The Carrington event actually did happen.

thesnider 11y ago
I wouldn't be so sure of that -- none of Google's clusters use ECC, for instance.
- miah_ 11y ago
  Really? "This paper studied the incidence and characteristics of DRAM errors in a large fleet of commodity servers. Our study is based on data collected over more than 2 years and covers DIMMs of multiple vendors, generations, technolo- gies, and capacities. All DIMMs were equipped with error correcting logic (ECC) to correct at least single bit errors" from conclusion 1. "The conclusion we draw is that error correcting codes are crucial for reducing the large number of memory errors to a manageable number of uncorrectable errors. In fact, we found that platforms with more powerful error codes (chip- kill versus SECDED) were able to reduce uncorrectable er- ror rates by a factor of 4–10 over the less powerful codes." DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study : http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html http://research.google.com/pubs/pub35162.html

agumonkey 11y ago

Urbit confuses me to frightening levels. Psychedelic substances levels. Kudos to them.

tptacek 11y ago

It's too bad, really, because someone should do a serious general-purpose overlay network project, and it's clear that Urbit isn't it.

yarvin9 11y ago
You're probably capable of something more interesting than a "middlebrow dismissal..."
- tptacek 11y ago
  I think Urbit spends a lot of time framing overlay networks in obscurantist and obfuscatory terms, tightly coupling the simple, useful idea of layering a more flexible network on top of restrictive IPv4 networks with less useful ideas like a series of new programming environments with their own ASCII pronunciation guide. I'm not sure what I gave was a middlebrow dismissal; it was just terse. I find Urbit unserious. I think that's unfortunate, because someone should do a serious, pragmatic overlay network.
  - yarvin9 11y ago
    We'll call it a terse highbrow dismissal, then. My terse highbrow dismissal: separating the programming environment from the protocol results in serious, pragmatic problems. For instance: protocols specified in English, in which messages are validated by hand and not by a type system.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      The notion that Urbit believes it can solve all the problems, rather than tackling a single important problem, is one of the things that makes it unserious to me. The inflexibility of the Internet service model is a serious problem. Poor formal methods for verifying protocols is a serious (albeit not lucrative) problem. Programming languages that make it difficult to express correct programs: serious problem. It is not clear to me how the solution to all three of those problems is the same startup.