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So if I buy my "last computer" from Urbit a "senate" made up of people who paid them money early on can do whatever they want to my data --- ahem "upgrade the l

So if I buy my "last computer" from Urbit a "senate" made up of people who paid them money early on can do whatever they want to my data --- ahem "upgrade the logic" --- without my having any say? I'm not sure if I want some ChromeOS-analogue with automatic updates from the Reddit/4Chan --- ahem early cryptocurrency adopter --- hive mind. > We want everyone to own their own identity and wallet. One way to do this would be to build a MEGACORP or a Centralized Naming Authority of Urbit. But we prefer decentralized, collectively owned systems. So that’s what we built. Let’s look briefly at the basic mechanics of Urbit ID. > Urbit IDs are distributed by a sponsorship tree. At the top of the tree are 2^8 (256) galaxies. Each galaxy issues 2^8 stars, making a total of 2^16 (65K). Stars then each can issue 2^16 planets, making for 2^32 (~4B). As you might expect, each planet issues 2^32 moons. > Second, Urbit IDs are distributed by a sponsorship tree. Each sponsor issues a fixed number of addresses. Since there are lots of sponsors, there are lots of ways to get an Urbit ID — not just one central authority. > Urbit IDs need a sponsor even after they’re issued, but you can always change sponsors and sponsors can always reject children. This means bad actors can be banned and abusive sponsors can be ignored. We think this strikes a nice balance between accountability and freedom. > Finally, galaxies (the top of the sponsorship tree) form a senate that can upgrade the logic of the Urbit ID system by majority vote. We think Urbit ID should last for quite a long time, but if it ever needs to be changed, the galaxies can facilitate upgrades. Code may be law, but ultimately we acknowledge that human judgment can’t be factored out.

iudqnolq 7y ago
I think this is by design. Prior to the current stellar analogy the founder described this using terms from feudalism. > In one design sketch for Urbit, Yarvin made the link between monarchies and the platform more explicit, classifying users as “Lords,” “Dukes,” and “Earls.” The design behind the titles, he writes, “is standard Lockean libertarian homesteading theory.” At the end of the sketch, Yarvin indicates that he’s reserved a special title for himself: “The prince (because he spent 8 years working on this project, without being paid), has reserved 32 duchies for his exclusive personal benefit."The founder is an alt-right philosopher that believes we should replace democracy with a corporate structure in which some residents in a country are shareholders and have voting rights. https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-mencius-moldbug-urbit-curtis-yarvin-tlon https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-menciu...
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  Why exactly would one need to subordinate one's self to such bizarre ideologically machinery just to run a device-independent OS? I could run space on the cloud somewhere and log into my server from whatever local system? It's kind of a 1990s model but still.
  - bronzejaguar 7y ago
    You don’t, and the article is outdated and “titles” no longer exist.
    - iudqnolq 7y ago
      The words changed from feudal to stellar. The concept is the same.
      - yebyen 7y ago
        One of the core concepts of Urbit's naming schemes' origin and systemic ethos is that by naming a thing (or by reusing an existing name for a perhaps closely related thing) you confine and constrain the newly created thing in ways you may not have anticipated. Why for example in Urbit terms you may have "gates" and not functions, "battery" and "payload" instead of methods and objects, or functions and parameters, because these things do not work exactly like the familiar constructs from your well-known languages that you're perhaps already familiar with. It would then also be tempting to make them work more like the things they are being called like, or "anthropomorphize" them into those things, for lack of a better word, giving them traits which they don't innately have in spite of being part of a perfectly workable functional system. There is also certainly a difference in concept between an aircraft carrier and a galaxy (although both may invoke imagery of energetic nuclear processes powering them, it's hard to argue they are the same or even similar), or differences between a destroyer and a planet, submarine and comet, although it's true that the addressing math hasn't changed, ... I think you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument that IPv4 and IPv6 are feudally inspired, and they both use very similar maths to pieces of Urbit that we're talking about.
miss_haru 7y ago
I'm not sure how you got your first assumption from the rest of your quotations. "[the Urbit] "senate" can do whatever they want to my data" No. The urbit senate can do nothing with your data. Your server holds your data. It is not distributed on the block chain. It is not mirrored by your peers. No one has any access to your data, except where you give them permission. Your final quote refers to the power the senate of galaxies has to manage the address space. (currently limited to 4b personal nodes. If scarcity becomes problem, galaxies can vote to increase availability.)
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  You're right. I misinterpreted. People can buy power, but not of the more serious kind I thought initially. Thanks for the correction.
  - miss_haru 7y ago
    My pleasure. fwiw, I don't blame you for your misunderstanding. The project is quite young and not quite stable/mature enough for the faint of heart. Having said that, the water's fine for swimming. :)
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  My rough reading of an Urbit document describing the senate [senate] is that the senate has more power than that. For example, the senate can vote on textual proposals and code-based proposes. However, I'm not well-versed enough in Urbitspeak to conclusively state what this document actually says. Can you help me understand it? [senate]: https://urbit.org/community/governance/ https://urbit.org/community/governance/
- jevgeni 7y ago
  Wait, so how is it better than a trusty OpenBSD box?
  - OceanSunfish 7y ago
    Perhaps the idea is that updates provided by OpenBSD or another OS for example could be compromised or simply directed to an unpopular path, but in this way a "senate" of code reviewers with known biases provides a more democratic way of reviewing updates before publish.

iudqnolq 7y ago

I think this is by design. Prior to the current stellar analogy the founder described this using terms from feudalism. > In one design sketch for Urbit, Yarvin made the link between monarchies and the platform more explicit, classifying users as “Lords,” “Dukes,” and “Earls.” The design behind the titles, he writes, “is standard Lockean libertarian homesteading theory.” At the end of the sketch, Yarvin indicates that he’s reserved a special title for himself: “The prince (because he spent 8 years working on this project, without being paid), has reserved 32 duchies for his exclusive personal benefit."The founder is an alt-right philosopher that believes we should replace democracy with a corporate structure in which some residents in a country are shareholders and have voting rights. https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-mencius-moldbug-urbit-curtis-yarvin-tlon https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14671978/alt-right-menciu...

joe_the_user 7y ago
Why exactly would one need to subordinate one's self to such bizarre ideologically machinery just to run a device-independent OS? I could run space on the cloud somewhere and log into my server from whatever local system? It's kind of a 1990s model but still.
- bronzejaguar 7y ago
  You don’t, and the article is outdated and “titles” no longer exist.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    The words changed from feudal to stellar. The concept is the same.
    - yebyen 7y ago
      One of the core concepts of Urbit's naming schemes' origin and systemic ethos is that by naming a thing (or by reusing an existing name for a perhaps closely related thing) you confine and constrain the newly created thing in ways you may not have anticipated. Why for example in Urbit terms you may have "gates" and not functions, "battery" and "payload" instead of methods and objects, or functions and parameters, because these things do not work exactly like the familiar constructs from your well-known languages that you're perhaps already familiar with. It would then also be tempting to make them work more like the things they are being called like, or "anthropomorphize" them into those things, for lack of a better word, giving them traits which they don't innately have in spite of being part of a perfectly workable functional system. There is also certainly a difference in concept between an aircraft carrier and a galaxy (although both may invoke imagery of energetic nuclear processes powering them, it's hard to argue they are the same or even similar), or differences between a destroyer and a planet, submarine and comet, although it's true that the addressing math hasn't changed, ... I think you'd be hard-pressed to make an argument that IPv4 and IPv6 are feudally inspired, and they both use very similar maths to pieces of Urbit that we're talking about.

miss_haru 7y ago

I'm not sure how you got your first assumption from the rest of your quotations. "[the Urbit] "senate" can do whatever they want to my data" No. The urbit senate can do nothing with your data. Your server holds your data. It is not distributed on the block chain. It is not mirrored by your peers. No one has any access to your data, except where you give them permission. Your final quote refers to the power the senate of galaxies has to manage the address space. (currently limited to 4b personal nodes. If scarcity becomes problem, galaxies can vote to increase availability.)

iudqnolq 7y ago
You're right. I misinterpreted. People can buy power, but not of the more serious kind I thought initially. Thanks for the correction.
- miss_haru 7y ago
  My pleasure. fwiw, I don't blame you for your misunderstanding. The project is quite young and not quite stable/mature enough for the faint of heart. Having said that, the water's fine for swimming. :)
iudqnolq 7y ago
My rough reading of an Urbit document describing the senate [senate] is that the senate has more power than that. For example, the senate can vote on textual proposals and code-based proposes. However, I'm not well-versed enough in Urbitspeak to conclusively state what this document actually says. Can you help me understand it? [senate]: https://urbit.org/community/governance/ https://urbit.org/community/governance/
jevgeni 7y ago
Wait, so how is it better than a trusty OpenBSD box?
- OceanSunfish 7y ago
  Perhaps the idea is that updates provided by OpenBSD or another OS for example could be compromised or simply directed to an unpopular path, but in this way a "senate" of code reviewers with known biases provides a more democratic way of reviewing updates before publish.