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I'm no expert, this stuff is definitely over my head, but here's my attempt to understand it: Let say you want a computer in the cloud. Today you probably do th

I'm no expert, this stuff is definitely over my head, but here's my attempt to understand it: Let say you want a computer in the cloud. Today you probably do that by paying someone like Linode for something like a VPS. But under that model, Linode still has a ton of control over your computer in the cloud. With Urbit, it's distributed, so you aren't renting access to your cloud computer from some entity that has more control over it than you do.

wmf 7y ago
Urbit isn't that distributed since your planet is running on one VPS. (As an aside, the whole "$PROVIDER is going to hack into my VM" thing is pretty overblown. The cloud has existed for over 10 years and the worst that happens is the provider deletes all your data and you restore from backup onto a different provider. You do have a backup that isn't on the same provider, right?)
- robenkleene 7y ago
  Cool thanks, in what sense is it distributed then?
  - wmf 7y ago
    Everybody having their own VPS is far more distributed than Facebook/Twitter/Slack but it's less distributed than some of the social blockchain systems. They have some good commentary on this point: https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-urbit/#gov https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-urbit/#gov
    - robenkleene 7y ago
      Got it, so the social features are distributed (like Mastadon/Email are), but the OS install itself is not distributed?
- pdonis 7y ago
  What VPS? Do you have to provide it yourself? Or is it assigned to you and managed by someone else? (I see a note in the article about "in the future, free hosting", but I'm not sure what that means.)
  - wmf 7y ago
    Yeah, you provide it yourself.
- sneak 7y ago
  Walmart demands or strongly encourages that their suppliers not run on AWS, and Amazon is being investigated for spying on FBA data to enrich their own business. Other AWS competitors like B&H don’t host there out of fear of data safety and business continuity. The worry is not that your provider will hack you, the worry is that your provider will silently steal your trade secrets. Cryptographic keys that control identity and money are good distilled examples of this.
  - wmf 7y ago
    There's still no evidence that Amazon has ever done this. AFAIK potential customers are more concerned that AWS will use utilization metadata as a proxy for their customers' financials, like Facebook was using Onavo traffic data to decide which startups to buy and which to clone.

wmf 7y ago

Urbit isn't that distributed since your planet is running on one VPS. (As an aside, the whole "$PROVIDER is going to hack into my VM" thing is pretty overblown. The cloud has existed for over 10 years and the worst that happens is the provider deletes all your data and you restore from backup onto a different provider. You do have a backup that isn't on the same provider, right?)

robenkleene 7y ago
Cool thanks, in what sense is it distributed then?
- wmf 7y ago
  Everybody having their own VPS is far more distributed than Facebook/Twitter/Slack but it's less distributed than some of the social blockchain systems. They have some good commentary on this point: https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-urbit/#gov https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-urbit/#gov
  - robenkleene 7y ago
    Got it, so the social features are distributed (like Mastadon/Email are), but the OS install itself is not distributed?
pdonis 7y ago
What VPS? Do you have to provide it yourself? Or is it assigned to you and managed by someone else? (I see a note in the article about "in the future, free hosting", but I'm not sure what that means.)
- wmf 7y ago
  Yeah, you provide it yourself.
sneak 7y ago
Walmart demands or strongly encourages that their suppliers not run on AWS, and Amazon is being investigated for spying on FBA data to enrich their own business. Other AWS competitors like B&H don’t host there out of fear of data safety and business continuity. The worry is not that your provider will hack you, the worry is that your provider will silently steal your trade secrets. Cryptographic keys that control identity and money are good distilled examples of this.
- wmf 7y ago
  There's still no evidence that Amazon has ever done this. AFAIK potential customers are more concerned that AWS will use utilization metadata as a proxy for their customers' financials, like Facebook was using Onavo traffic data to decide which startups to buy and which to clone.