3 ms·

We should have an "Explain Urbit" competition. I haven't looked at it in years, but when I read about it, my initial version was something like: "Think of abst

We should have an "Explain Urbit" competition. I haven't looked at it in years, but when I read about it, my initial version was something like: "Think of abstracting an OS into a namespace, which uses a crypto layer to instantiate verifiable versions of itself - and then you write programs for it in a functional DSL, which do the stuff you do in a browser today, but with the benefit of a kernel of security proofs, strong anonymity, and federation." Then 5 Whys: - a.0 To re-establish the any-to-any principles of the internet as trustworthy federations. - a.1 Because the current OS ecosystem is still an artifact of the very problems the internet was designed to solve. - a.2 Because politics and messy human stuff. - a.3 Because (the author believes) governments have become parasites that are killing their host. - a.4 Because the people with the outlier intelligence necessary to form a just society are captured and cannot find one another or do not have sufficient tools to organize themselves. If you read the websites, it's more like if a Rick and Morty fan BBS met Skynet at a cypherpunks key ceremony, and that would probably suffice for most use cases.

pgt 7y ago
Hmm, point "a.3 Because governments have become parasites that are killing their host," resonates with truth, but not all of the truth. We must be in a local maxima (minima?) at the moment - I don't believe we've found the best political system. I will think on this government-as-parasite idea, some more.
- vageli 7y ago
  If that idea interests you, you may also find it worthwhile to consider the more general case of ideologies. Ideologies are parasite-like and replicate, seek hosts, defend themselves against other ideologies, etc. Ideologies often have less-palatable ideas lumped together with generally-agreeable ideas to aid in defensibility, express identity (through group membership) and so much more. I take governments to be expressions of particular (or collections of) ideologies.
  - agravier 7y ago
    Cool stuff. Ideologies mutate a bit, in particular when then change host. After a while, their current form may differ greatly from their original phenotype.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  a.3 was an attempt to summarize the terabytes of text generated by people within a few degrees of the project in a pithy statement - about which somebody else has said they "did for words what bitcoin did for electricity." It's a bunch of rhetorical logic fractals. In short, avoid.
  - yasp 7y ago
    This is a reply to both you and OP, but I don't see what Urbit has to do with any government, its inventor's political opinions notwithstanding.
    - geofft 7y ago
      Urbit may not have much to do with any specific government but it absolutely has a lot to do with governance and society in general. If you do not believe there are fundamental flaws in not only the reality of the internet / online services but the structure of the system in which they grew, Urbit is not worthwhile for you. If you do believe there are flaws, but you disagree about what the flaws are and how to solve then, Urbit may even be counterproductive. Here are the first words of the intro on Urbit's home page: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ > We think the internet can’t be saved. The way things are going, MEGACORP will always control our apps and services because we can no longer run them ourselves. > The only way out of this mess is with a completely new platform that’s owned and controlled by its users. A little later: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/interface/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/interface/ > One way to imagine Urbit is as the Western answer to WeChat: a seamless, multi-purpose, vastly extensible social network, but without the surveillance. And from their "Beliefs and Principles" page: https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-and-principles/ https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-and-principles/ > The ability of the engineering community to govern itself through republican forms is not an abstract theory; it's a proven fact. > Urbit should never fall under any kind of central control. All transitions in galaxy ownership should divide positions, not unite them. Galaxy and star ownership should also be separated. It is harmful for a single entity to hold both galaxies and stars. > Urbit has zero tolerance for abuse, nor does it facilitate censorship. Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don't want to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to see. If you are happy with the role of governments and corporations in Western society and the resulting online landscape, it's not clear you need Urbit. It's fine, but it's overhead. If you're happy with the role of governments and corporations in China, for instance, if you like WeChat and how it works and why it works, Urbit is actively useless to you. And you can oppose China (or even Western governments) and find Urbit useless too: if you believe the problem is with the holders of power but not the very concept that people can hold that much power, or you are skeptical of mechanisms to prevent people from holding that much power - perhaps because you fear covert power and collusion, or because you fear that tools that inhibit the accumulation of power are more likely to harm the powerless than the somewhat-powerful - Urbit doesn't present you with solutions that help you. I think it's entirely fair to say that beliefs about governments are absolutely a part of why Urbit was created and why it continues to get development interest from people besides the creator.
qznc 7y ago
An Urbit is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, isn't it?
- agumonkey 7y ago
  usually OSes are modeled or encoded as co-things .. but I'm not a haskeller so wait and see.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  I think it's a fixed point in the lattice of operational systems.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mundo 7y ago
Here's my attempt: if a smartphone is a thing that's designed to facilitate the development of secure, robust, powerful client-side software, Urbit is the server-side equivalent. It is (or, aspires to be) the thing in which you can write the server side of a client/server application, and have it be as easy to use as an ios app. To see what I mean, imagine trying to do a simple client/server use case, e.g. 'I want to share this picture with Grandma', for urbit users. It would be pretty trivial - all of the hard parts (e.g. determining whether the person requesting the file is the person I intended to share it with) are handled by Urbit, in the same way that a smartphone handles screen orientation and touch events for the client software. So, the vision is that the sort of people who currently have a cloud vm or a linux box in their basement to host a website/email server/game server/etc, would run those things inside urbit to take advantage of its security (it aspires to be literally uncrackable) and builtin functionality (auth, exactly-once messaging, etc). Obviously, the main problem is that AFAIK none of those apps have been written yet...
- mundo 7y ago
  > Obviously, the main problem is that AFAIK none of those apps have been written yet... edit - other than the thing being launched today, which actually looks pretty cool. Time to install it again and see if I can dig up any working urbit ids...
Pmop 7y ago
System designed from scratch so there can't be anything like Facebook hoarding your data or Google tracking everything you do, because they just can't be built. I know it doesn't explains what Urbit actually is but, it provides an overview of the tip of the iceberg for those with some technical background, while highlighting some of the features of the architecture that common people can easily understand.
pcr910303 7y ago
Some useful links: The ‘Urbit for Normies’ post[0] and the HN discussion[1] (which unfortunately predominantly talks about the ‘normie’ in the title). A Twitter thread[2] which tries to explain what Urbit is is mentioned in the HN discussion. I personally explain it like this: People can interact with anyone on the urbit network, just like currently anyone ‘can’ setup an email server on my own computer and interact with anyone other on the email network. The difference is that Urbit IDs have a price — so one can’t make a thousand email addresses and spam everyone, and that Urbit’s protocol is based on executable code — which means one can execute Nock(something like WASM) to get the data, not just plain text (like the web). [0]: https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/ https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858154 [2]: https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609 https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609

pgt 7y ago

Hmm, point "a.3 Because governments have become parasites that are killing their host," resonates with truth, but not all of the truth. We must be in a local maxima (minima?) at the moment - I don't believe we've found the best political system. I will think on this government-as-parasite idea, some more.

vageli 7y ago
If that idea interests you, you may also find it worthwhile to consider the more general case of ideologies. Ideologies are parasite-like and replicate, seek hosts, defend themselves against other ideologies, etc. Ideologies often have less-palatable ideas lumped together with generally-agreeable ideas to aid in defensibility, express identity (through group membership) and so much more. I take governments to be expressions of particular (or collections of) ideologies.
- agravier 7y ago
  Cool stuff. Ideologies mutate a bit, in particular when then change host. After a while, their current form may differ greatly from their original phenotype.
motohagiography 7y ago
a.3 was an attempt to summarize the terabytes of text generated by people within a few degrees of the project in a pithy statement - about which somebody else has said they "did for words what bitcoin did for electricity." It's a bunch of rhetorical logic fractals. In short, avoid.
- yasp 7y ago
  This is a reply to both you and OP, but I don't see what Urbit has to do with any government, its inventor's political opinions notwithstanding.
  - geofft 7y ago
    Urbit may not have much to do with any specific government but it absolutely has a lot to do with governance and society in general. If you do not believe there are fundamental flaws in not only the reality of the internet / online services but the structure of the system in which they grew, Urbit is not worthwhile for you. If you do believe there are flaws, but you disagree about what the flaws are and how to solve then, Urbit may even be counterproductive. Here are the first words of the intro on Urbit's home page: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ > We think the internet can’t be saved. The way things are going, MEGACORP will always control our apps and services because we can no longer run them ourselves. > The only way out of this mess is with a completely new platform that’s owned and controlled by its users. A little later: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/interface/ https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/interface/ > One way to imagine Urbit is as the Western answer to WeChat: a seamless, multi-purpose, vastly extensible social network, but without the surveillance. And from their "Beliefs and Principles" page: https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-and-principles/ https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-and-principles/ > The ability of the engineering community to govern itself through republican forms is not an abstract theory; it's a proven fact. > Urbit should never fall under any kind of central control. All transitions in galaxy ownership should divide positions, not unite them. Galaxy and star ownership should also be separated. It is harmful for a single entity to hold both galaxies and stars. > Urbit has zero tolerance for abuse, nor does it facilitate censorship. Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don't want to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to see. If you are happy with the role of governments and corporations in Western society and the resulting online landscape, it's not clear you need Urbit. It's fine, but it's overhead. If you're happy with the role of governments and corporations in China, for instance, if you like WeChat and how it works and why it works, Urbit is actively useless to you. And you can oppose China (or even Western governments) and find Urbit useless too: if you believe the problem is with the holders of power but not the very concept that people can hold that much power, or you are skeptical of mechanisms to prevent people from holding that much power - perhaps because you fear covert power and collusion, or because you fear that tools that inhibit the accumulation of power are more likely to harm the powerless than the somewhat-powerful - Urbit doesn't present you with solutions that help you. I think it's entirely fair to say that beliefs about governments are absolutely a part of why Urbit was created and why it continues to get development interest from people besides the creator.

qznc 7y ago

An Urbit is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, isn't it?

agumonkey 7y ago
usually OSes are modeled or encoded as co-things .. but I'm not a haskeller so wait and see.
lonelappde 7y ago
I think it's a fixed point in the lattice of operational systems.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mundo 7y ago

Here's my attempt: if a smartphone is a thing that's designed to facilitate the development of secure, robust, powerful client-side software, Urbit is the server-side equivalent. It is (or, aspires to be) the thing in which you can write the server side of a client/server application, and have it be as easy to use as an ios app. To see what I mean, imagine trying to do a simple client/server use case, e.g. 'I want to share this picture with Grandma', for urbit users. It would be pretty trivial - all of the hard parts (e.g. determining whether the person requesting the file is the person I intended to share it with) are handled by Urbit, in the same way that a smartphone handles screen orientation and touch events for the client software. So, the vision is that the sort of people who currently have a cloud vm or a linux box in their basement to host a website/email server/game server/etc, would run those things inside urbit to take advantage of its security (it aspires to be literally uncrackable) and builtin functionality (auth, exactly-once messaging, etc). Obviously, the main problem is that AFAIK none of those apps have been written yet...

mundo 7y ago
> Obviously, the main problem is that AFAIK none of those apps have been written yet... edit - other than the thing being launched today, which actually looks pretty cool. Time to install it again and see if I can dig up any working urbit ids...

Pmop 7y ago

System designed from scratch so there can't be anything like Facebook hoarding your data or Google tracking everything you do, because they just can't be built. I know it doesn't explains what Urbit actually is but, it provides an overview of the tip of the iceberg for those with some technical background, while highlighting some of the features of the architecture that common people can easily understand.

pcr910303 7y ago

Some useful links: The ‘Urbit for Normies’ post[0] and the HN discussion[1] (which unfortunately predominantly talks about the ‘normie’ in the title). A Twitter thread[2] which tries to explain what Urbit is is mentioned in the HN discussion. I personally explain it like this: People can interact with anyone on the urbit network, just like currently anyone ‘can’ setup an email server on my own computer and interact with anyone other on the email network. The difference is that Urbit IDs have a price — so one can’t make a thousand email addresses and spam everyone, and that Urbit’s protocol is based on executable code — which means one can execute Nock(something like WASM) to get the data, not just plain text (like the web). [0]: https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/ https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858154 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22858154 [2]: https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609 https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609