4 ms·

All I see is ocean and stone images. Please if you are reading this, hire a marketing firm. I am sure you have worked hard on this but I can't understand what y

All I see is ocean and stone images. Please if you are reading this, hire a marketing firm. I am sure you have worked hard on this but I can't understand what your product is. How can that be that you want to be the last computer but most can't even understand first thing about it.

mkl 7y ago
Agreed (though there are some trees and abstract art too). It seems like a parody or a scam, but some people here are talking about it as if it's real? What is real? It certainly doesn't seem to be a computer like it claims to be. There is no hardware (right?). "No one else can look at it without your permission, it can never show you ads.": These are only possible if it has no visual display or interface at all, or if it's so limited as to be useless. "Your Urbit is a simple, durable computer ... Your Urbit isn’t a physical device: it lives in the cloud or your laptop.": Contradictory claims. "Your Urbit is a permanent, private archive.": Until your laptop or server hard disk dies.
- sincerely 7y ago
  >"No one else can look at it without your permission, it can never show you ads.": These are only possible if it has no visual display or interface at all, or if it's so limited as to be useless. I think this is in contrast to Windows being the most popular OS in the world, an OS which does show you ads.
chippy 7y ago
> most can't even understand it That is the point, they want it like that! The crazy idea is that only those who have devoted significant time can understand it and should use it (and I suspect that it plays into some kind of non egalitarian idea about how society should be structured with only elite brainy people on top).
- Akababa 7y ago
  Reminds me more of the cult-like Scientology with their "thetans" and whatnot.
- matildepark 7y ago
  It's not deliberate, just a bit of an ongoing challenge. We've historically been very engineering-focused while honing the system; poking our heads out into the world, we now have to describe it. The problem, I think, is that there's a lot of inference gaps to clear in terms of how people understand computers and how they understand the internet that we simply dispose of. A lot of the project is an attempt to re-architect the entire stack to resist the flaws of the modern internet — everything we take for granted as 'the way it is,' from the annoyances all the way to the downright evil. High level, start with the Wikipedia entry. [1] Then peek through some higher-level, overview docs. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbit [2] https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/ https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/
  - cryptozeus 7y ago
    Instead of us doing the work of going through Wikipedia links and your docs, you can explain this by one simple diagram or video. Unless your goal is to be mysterious, I cannot understand how can a company go through all this trouble of creating something, building a website and can’t get the message across even to the HN community.
    - matildepark 7y ago
      I agree. I think this feedback is super valuable.

mkl 7y ago

Agreed (though there are some trees and abstract art too). It seems like a parody or a scam, but some people here are talking about it as if it's real? What is real? It certainly doesn't seem to be a computer like it claims to be. There is no hardware (right?). "No one else can look at it without your permission, it can never show you ads.": These are only possible if it has no visual display or interface at all, or if it's so limited as to be useless. "Your Urbit is a simple, durable computer ... Your Urbit isn’t a physical device: it lives in the cloud or your laptop.": Contradictory claims. "Your Urbit is a permanent, private archive.": Until your laptop or server hard disk dies.

sincerely 7y ago
>"No one else can look at it without your permission, it can never show you ads.": These are only possible if it has no visual display or interface at all, or if it's so limited as to be useless. I think this is in contrast to Windows being the most popular OS in the world, an OS which does show you ads.

chippy 7y ago

> most can't even understand it That is the point, they want it like that! The crazy idea is that only those who have devoted significant time can understand it and should use it (and I suspect that it plays into some kind of non egalitarian idea about how society should be structured with only elite brainy people on top).

Akababa 7y ago
Reminds me more of the cult-like Scientology with their "thetans" and whatnot.
matildepark 7y ago
It's not deliberate, just a bit of an ongoing challenge. We've historically been very engineering-focused while honing the system; poking our heads out into the world, we now have to describe it. The problem, I think, is that there's a lot of inference gaps to clear in terms of how people understand computers and how they understand the internet that we simply dispose of. A lot of the project is an attempt to re-architect the entire stack to resist the flaws of the modern internet — everything we take for granted as 'the way it is,' from the annoyances all the way to the downright evil. High level, start with the Wikipedia entry. [1] Then peek through some higher-level, overview docs. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbit [2] https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/ https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/
- cryptozeus 7y ago
  Instead of us doing the work of going through Wikipedia links and your docs, you can explain this by one simple diagram or video. Unless your goal is to be mysterious, I cannot understand how can a company go through all this trouble of creating something, building a website and can’t get the message across even to the HN community.
  - matildepark 7y ago
    I agree. I think this feedback is super valuable.