5 ms·

How is the new Urbit stuff, since you mention it? Is it usable for a casual but interested user?

fossuser 6y ago
Depends on how 'casual', it's definitely usable and works - but there's still some effort required to figure things out. I've found the docs are generally pretty good and the community is helpful so if you're interested in playing with it it's worth it.
- omnimus 6y ago
  What is Urbit for? I mean i never understood whats it's real use. From what i've read i imagine it as some new stack that replaces networking and servers but then i found out that you have to buy namespaces that are finite? Why?
  - dpc_pw 6y ago
    So when you blacklist a troll, they can't just create a new account for free.
    - hahahahahka 6y ago
      sounds perfect for state sponsored troll armies, who have way more money/btc/eth than any of us.
      - setr 6y ago
        That's true for anything where difficulty is measured by a continuous function -- that is, everything is easiest for a state sponsored anything, good or bad, unless it can't be done at all. You're really just saying states have more resources than individuals... which is true almost by definition (they aggregate individuals within their realm)
        ace_of_spades 6y ago
        But the underlying point of the comment still stands. Just making account creation more costly doesn‘t stop spam... it just makes it more expensive. Same for all other legal activities which are then also more expensive. Thus, it‘s not a perfect solution (if at all).
        infogulch 6y ago
        > making account creation more costly doesn‘t stop spam... it just makes it more expensive But that's the only thing that has ever been effective against spam. Spam exists because the marginal cost of spamming is 0. This puts a floor on the marginal cost of spamming; if it costs at least this much to spam, then only spammers that make back that much will exist, which eliminates most spammers.
        hahahahahka 6y ago
        not true. in a truly organic network, where you actually know the graph back to you, it is very difficult for a state actor. ironically, facebook is in a position that is perfect for this, and they go out of their way to not see it. ...I guess because being able to block content based on dislikes by your immediate friends would make it too hard to expose you to all the sponsored posts.
        setr 6y ago
        In that case.. it's difficult for anyone. It's still not any better for a state actor versus anyone else -- you've just upped the difficulty so high that it even includes state actors. That is, (I believe) it is not possible to construct a nefarious deed that is harder for a state actor than an individual to execute. It is only possible to construct scenarios that are hard enough that both state actors and individuals cannot execute it. A state can do anything a group can do, and a group can do anything an individual can do. They're supersets of one-another, in terms of capability and resource. There is no "sounds perfect for a state-sponsored" anything -- everything is perfect for a state-sponsored entity, unless it cannot be done at all (because who has greater capability than a state? Other than a coalition of states, or even further, galactic nation-states) >not true. in a truly organic network, where you actually know the graph back to you, it is very difficult for a state actor. An entity with sufficient resources & time can probably defeat this -- the main thing is to generate more "accounts" or whatever; need proof of id? Sufficiently good counterfeits. need DNA proof? rob of a morgue. users police themselves? make sufficiently "attractive"/fake accounts and add randomly until you get added by enough people, and then their friends, and then spam until you get blocked and do it again); and hide them sufficiently well, faster than the governing entity(ies) can identify and remove them. Sounds perfect for my galactic nation-state.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    I actually don't think it's that hard to grasp, but people often don't explain it very clearly. It's a from the ground up design for a serverless p2p 'overlay' operating system. Overlay just means that you run an Urbit VM on top of a mac/linux OS and people can write applications for your Urbit VM. Your Urbit VM communicates with other Urbit VMs in such a way that the application design is p2p by default so the complexity of this is hidden from the user. This means in the future someone can start up their urbit node (which will just look like another application) and use the apps in it without needing any central servers. Right now the main app in their release is chat, they also have a link aggregator app too. The reason for the finite user IDs is because the founder believed that one reason for service centralization on the existing internet was the spam problem. When IDs are free people can make tons of them and spam others, complex algorithms via centralized services are required to fight this which leads to a client/server model and a handful of enormous corporations powering the services. When you have a small cost on the ID you make it economically infeasible to spam people, you also make it easier to stop IDs from abusing the network (and other people). It’s also a way to incentivize people to run infrastructure nodes in the network. The other interesting details are that it's written in its own functional language on top of its own functional like assembly. This has benefits around correctness that I don't totally understand - but the idea is if you were to redesign a modern computing system from first principles taking everything learned over the last 50 years how would you do it? Regular users are never going to run their own linux servers to host their own applications on the modern internet, but regular users might use an application that is p2p by default and does the things they want. This leads to a better decentralized model at the application level that is not ad supported. Ultimately it's out of the box private servers that you can run locally and easily share data between securely, without the need for a centralized company in the middle. The project makes me think of Alan Kay when he talks about big ideas and 'having the chops' to implement them. It's crazy to throw away most of modern computing and build a functional OS from scratch in a radical kind of way, it's crazy for the product to have made progress since something like 2002 (picked up a lot when they got funding more recently) rather than fizzling out or being vaporware. I'm amazed that they have real software shipping that works, but they do. It's a project driven by a clear vision of how computing can be better than it is, which I think is an exciting thing.
    - 6y ago
voltagex_ 6y ago
Looks like it's still relying on Ethereum, which IMO is irresponsible from a climate change / energy use point of view.
- drdeca 6y ago
  Do you think that ethereum won’t move to PoS soon? (I haven’t looked into the design, can’t comment on whether the construction seems sound to me)
  - Legogris 6y ago
    In short: PoS migration of Ethereum is in progress and will happen in stages. "Stage 0", which doesn't have any practical effects for smart contracts, is expected Soon (tm) (a few months probably). It'll most likely be a couple of years until the transition is done so that smart contracts like Urbit can/will run under PoS.
  - Groxx 6y ago
    Ethereum has been moving to PoS soon for a couple years. It's still the intent, but PoS is effectively still unsolved. It's not just "can it decide blocks", it needs to have the right balance of incentives to be self-sustaining, or it destroys itself.
    - ddrdrck_ 6y ago
      What makes you say that PoS is "unsolved " ? Did you hear about Cosmos for example ? Their mainnet is running for more than one year without any issue.

Depends on how 'casual', it's definitely usable and works - but there's still some effort required to figure things out. I've found the docs are generally pretty good and the community is helpful so if you're interested in playing with it it's worth it.

omnimus 6y ago
What is Urbit for? I mean i never understood whats it's real use. From what i've read i imagine it as some new stack that replaces networking and servers but then i found out that you have to buy namespaces that are finite? Why?
- dpc_pw 6y ago
  So when you blacklist a troll, they can't just create a new account for free.
  - hahahahahka 6y ago
    sounds perfect for state sponsored troll armies, who have way more money/btc/eth than any of us.
    - setr 6y ago
      That's true for anything where difficulty is measured by a continuous function -- that is, everything is easiest for a state sponsored anything, good or bad, unless it can't be done at all. You're really just saying states have more resources than individuals... which is true almost by definition (they aggregate individuals within their realm)
      - ace_of_spades 6y ago
        But the underlying point of the comment still stands. Just making account creation more costly doesn‘t stop spam... it just makes it more expensive. Same for all other legal activities which are then also more expensive. Thus, it‘s not a perfect solution (if at all).
        infogulch 6y ago
        > making account creation more costly doesn‘t stop spam... it just makes it more expensive But that's the only thing that has ever been effective against spam. Spam exists because the marginal cost of spamming is 0. This puts a floor on the marginal cost of spamming; if it costs at least this much to spam, then only spammers that make back that much will exist, which eliminates most spammers.
      - hahahahahka 6y ago
        not true. in a truly organic network, where you actually know the graph back to you, it is very difficult for a state actor. ironically, facebook is in a position that is perfect for this, and they go out of their way to not see it. ...I guess because being able to block content based on dislikes by your immediate friends would make it too hard to expose you to all the sponsored posts.
        setr 6y ago
        In that case.. it's difficult for anyone. It's still not any better for a state actor versus anyone else -- you've just upped the difficulty so high that it even includes state actors. That is, (I believe) it is not possible to construct a nefarious deed that is harder for a state actor than an individual to execute. It is only possible to construct scenarios that are hard enough that both state actors and individuals cannot execute it. A state can do anything a group can do, and a group can do anything an individual can do. They're supersets of one-another, in terms of capability and resource. There is no "sounds perfect for a state-sponsored" anything -- everything is perfect for a state-sponsored entity, unless it cannot be done at all (because who has greater capability than a state? Other than a coalition of states, or even further, galactic nation-states) >not true. in a truly organic network, where you actually know the graph back to you, it is very difficult for a state actor. An entity with sufficient resources & time can probably defeat this -- the main thing is to generate more "accounts" or whatever; need proof of id? Sufficiently good counterfeits. need DNA proof? rob of a morgue. users police themselves? make sufficiently "attractive"/fake accounts and add randomly until you get added by enough people, and then their friends, and then spam until you get blocked and do it again); and hide them sufficiently well, faster than the governing entity(ies) can identify and remove them. Sounds perfect for my galactic nation-state.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I actually don't think it's that hard to grasp, but people often don't explain it very clearly. It's a from the ground up design for a serverless p2p 'overlay' operating system. Overlay just means that you run an Urbit VM on top of a mac/linux OS and people can write applications for your Urbit VM. Your Urbit VM communicates with other Urbit VMs in such a way that the application design is p2p by default so the complexity of this is hidden from the user. This means in the future someone can start up their urbit node (which will just look like another application) and use the apps in it without needing any central servers. Right now the main app in their release is chat, they also have a link aggregator app too. The reason for the finite user IDs is because the founder believed that one reason for service centralization on the existing internet was the spam problem. When IDs are free people can make tons of them and spam others, complex algorithms via centralized services are required to fight this which leads to a client/server model and a handful of enormous corporations powering the services. When you have a small cost on the ID you make it economically infeasible to spam people, you also make it easier to stop IDs from abusing the network (and other people). It’s also a way to incentivize people to run infrastructure nodes in the network. The other interesting details are that it's written in its own functional language on top of its own functional like assembly. This has benefits around correctness that I don't totally understand - but the idea is if you were to redesign a modern computing system from first principles taking everything learned over the last 50 years how would you do it? Regular users are never going to run their own linux servers to host their own applications on the modern internet, but regular users might use an application that is p2p by default and does the things they want. This leads to a better decentralized model at the application level that is not ad supported. Ultimately it's out of the box private servers that you can run locally and easily share data between securely, without the need for a centralized company in the middle. The project makes me think of Alan Kay when he talks about big ideas and 'having the chops' to implement them. It's crazy to throw away most of modern computing and build a functional OS from scratch in a radical kind of way, it's crazy for the product to have made progress since something like 2002 (picked up a lot when they got funding more recently) rather than fizzling out or being vaporware. I'm amazed that they have real software shipping that works, but they do. It's a project driven by a clear vision of how computing can be better than it is, which I think is an exciting thing.
  - 6y ago

voltagex_ 6y ago

Looks like it's still relying on Ethereum, which IMO is irresponsible from a climate change / energy use point of view.

drdeca 6y ago
Do you think that ethereum won’t move to PoS soon? (I haven’t looked into the design, can’t comment on whether the construction seems sound to me)
- Legogris 6y ago
  In short: PoS migration of Ethereum is in progress and will happen in stages. "Stage 0", which doesn't have any practical effects for smart contracts, is expected Soon (tm) (a few months probably). It'll most likely be a couple of years until the transition is done so that smart contracts like Urbit can/will run under PoS.
- Groxx 6y ago
  Ethereum has been moving to PoS soon for a couple years. It's still the intent, but PoS is effectively still unsolved. It's not just "can it decide blocks", it needs to have the right balance of incentives to be self-sustaining, or it destroys itself.
  - ddrdrck_ 6y ago
    What makes you say that PoS is "unsolved " ? Did you hear about Cosmos for example ? Their mainnet is running for more than one year without any issue.