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I've been playing around with Urbit and it's pretty cool. - https://tlon.io https://tlon.io - https://urbit.org https://urbit.org It tends to get a lot of kn

I've been playing around with Urbit and it's pretty cool. - https://tlon.io https://tlon.io - https://urbit.org https://urbit.org It tends to get a lot of knee-jerk hate in HN comments, but I think it's a from first principles approach that could actually work. At a minimum it's a pretty cool/ambitious project and it's been fun to play with.

nmfisher 6y ago
First time I've ever come across this project, so bear with me. Is it really necessary to use the word "breach" in a big yellow banner at the top? The word "breach" is usually associated with some kind of security penetration, and might be scary to first-time users (like me). On further reading, it seems something more akin to a "desynchronization event requiring your attention", which is far more reassuring.
- icebergonfire 6y ago
  FWIW this is my first time coming across this project, and I had the same initial reaction.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Urbit is often about confusing naming and reinventing/redesigning meaning. I guess you have to accept it to really get into it?
  - moomin 6y ago
    Which is a brilliant way to exploit people’s sunk-cost bias.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Brilliant in the same way that cults are brilliant when they redefine a lot of meanings.
- reitanuki 6y ago
  It's like they're speaking a completely different language..
- fossuser 6y ago
  In this case it's basically just used to mean 'reset'. It should also hopefully be the last one required with all future changes able to be OTA updates (as most updates were previously to the breach). People love to argue about the names of things, but I don't think it really matters that much.
nobody9999 6y ago
>I've been playing around with Urbit and it's pretty cool. Thanks for the suggestion. I went and installed it and while it was booting (~10 minutes on a 2 core 4096MB VM), I poked around looking for more information and found some of the "knee-jerk hate in HN comments"[0] you mentioned, as well as a hit piece[1] on the founder/creator (whether the arguments therein are valid is something you need to decide for yourself) and a more positive take[2] on it as well. While it's certainly an interesting bit of design and coding, with a laudable goal (decentralization of human interactions online), the functional model has all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme, with everyone lower down paying rent to those higher up. Despite the decentralized/p2p nature of Urbit, it's inherently hierarchical and seemingly designed to extract rents from those lower down the pyramid. And since all the higher-up slots are already occupied, this seems more like Amway than a decentralized, egalitarian network. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope I am. Am I? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481 [1] http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/ http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/ [2] https://medium.com/digital-stimulation/about-urbit-part-1-ownership-1a352973a409 https://medium.com/digital-stimulation/about-urbit-part-1-ow...
- fossuser 6y ago
  I think you’re wrong, but I also understand your skepticism at first look (I asked similar questions). The reason for a small cost associated with permanent user IDs (planets) is to combat spam and encourage reputation building without requiring real names if users don’t want to. It’s a clever approach to this issue. One reason for the incentive to centralize on the existing net is to combat spam (since its zero cost to spin up millions of accounts to spam with, you need clever anti-spam which tends to cause centralized services to form). The nodes higher up just route traffic, they don’t own any user data or do anything else. Users can “escape” to any of them for a provider so the “stars” (infrastructure nodes basically) are incentivized to provide good routing service for users in order to keep them. The top of the hierarchy “galaxies” are basically governance nodes that allow changes to network policy based on a vote. If they became a problem stars could push back or jump off the network. If you start with trying to come up with an incentive based design for a new network model that empowers users, but can actually work I think you start to see why these ideas are interesting. On the existing net a lot of this stuff exists in an arguably worse form with less clarity (people route traffic, they also sell your traffic information, you have little control or choice over it). The existing net also incentivizes centralized applications that collect user data. p2p open protocols don’t solve a lot of these issues around spam or basic usability (they’re DOA if a regular user has to run their own server). Urbit’s design allows network updates to automatically get picked up across the entire network. Users control and own all of their data. It’s p2p by default and that complexity is invisible to users. It’s backwards compatible, runs on unix in a vm, but could run on its own custom hardware in the future. It could allow people to have their own computing environment where they can send things like photos directly to others without a middleman like FB. The design means that software that runs now should run in ten years. I think there’s a lot of potential, the tech is real (not vaporware), it’s open source, and you can play with it/talk to the community of people on it. I have no idea if it’ll achieve what they’re trying to do, but if anything were to succeed in this space I think it’d have to be something like Urbit. --- Re: The first article you linked, I find CY's politics/writing (from what I've read) to be contrarian and wrong in a similar to way to Peter Thiel's politics. That said, most people hold inconsistent views and people that think independently can be very wrong in one area and very correct in a different area (and people generally are wildly inconsistent in their views/accuracy about everything). Thiel is often contrarian and right about investing and building technology companies even though (I think) he's contrarian and wrong about politics. While it can be useful to keep someone's political beliefs in mind when evaluating something just to be aware of potential motivated reasoning, I don't think that should allow you to dismiss everything else out of hand. Someone can hold both really good ideas and really bad ideas at the same time - similarly someone can hold true and false beliefs simultaneously. When it comes to the author's example (Thiel and Palantir) - I find their framing to be misleading. If they're applying this kind of over-simplified analysis there then I expect they're applying it elsewhere. Their essay is mostly an example of their own cognitive bias - they already have a position and they are cherry picking evidence to support it. The reality is more complex and nuanced than what they suggest.

nmfisher 6y ago

First time I've ever come across this project, so bear with me. Is it really necessary to use the word "breach" in a big yellow banner at the top? The word "breach" is usually associated with some kind of security penetration, and might be scary to first-time users (like me). On further reading, it seems something more akin to a "desynchronization event requiring your attention", which is far more reassuring.

icebergonfire 6y ago
FWIW this is my first time coming across this project, and I had the same initial reaction.
viraptor 6y ago
Urbit is often about confusing naming and reinventing/redesigning meaning. I guess you have to accept it to really get into it?
- moomin 6y ago
  Which is a brilliant way to exploit people’s sunk-cost bias.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Brilliant in the same way that cults are brilliant when they redefine a lot of meanings.
reitanuki 6y ago
It's like they're speaking a completely different language..
fossuser 6y ago
In this case it's basically just used to mean 'reset'. It should also hopefully be the last one required with all future changes able to be OTA updates (as most updates were previously to the breach). People love to argue about the names of things, but I don't think it really matters that much.

nobody9999 6y ago

>I've been playing around with Urbit and it's pretty cool. Thanks for the suggestion. I went and installed it and while it was booting (~10 minutes on a 2 core 4096MB VM), I poked around looking for more information and found some of the "knee-jerk hate in HN comments"[0] you mentioned, as well as a hit piece[1] on the founder/creator (whether the arguments therein are valid is something you need to decide for yourself) and a more positive take[2] on it as well. While it's certainly an interesting bit of design and coding, with a laudable goal (decentralization of human interactions online), the functional model has all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme, with everyone lower down paying rent to those higher up. Despite the decentralized/p2p nature of Urbit, it's inherently hierarchical and seemingly designed to extract rents from those lower down the pyramid. And since all the higher-up slots are already occupied, this seems more like Amway than a decentralized, egalitarian network. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope I am. Am I? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21672481 [1] http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/ http://distributedweb.care/posts/who-owns-the-stars/ [2] https://medium.com/digital-stimulation/about-urbit-part-1-ownership-1a352973a409 https://medium.com/digital-stimulation/about-urbit-part-1-ow...

fossuser 6y ago
I think you’re wrong, but I also understand your skepticism at first look (I asked similar questions). The reason for a small cost associated with permanent user IDs (planets) is to combat spam and encourage reputation building without requiring real names if users don’t want to. It’s a clever approach to this issue. One reason for the incentive to centralize on the existing net is to combat spam (since its zero cost to spin up millions of accounts to spam with, you need clever anti-spam which tends to cause centralized services to form). The nodes higher up just route traffic, they don’t own any user data or do anything else. Users can “escape” to any of them for a provider so the “stars” (infrastructure nodes basically) are incentivized to provide good routing service for users in order to keep them. The top of the hierarchy “galaxies” are basically governance nodes that allow changes to network policy based on a vote. If they became a problem stars could push back or jump off the network. If you start with trying to come up with an incentive based design for a new network model that empowers users, but can actually work I think you start to see why these ideas are interesting. On the existing net a lot of this stuff exists in an arguably worse form with less clarity (people route traffic, they also sell your traffic information, you have little control or choice over it). The existing net also incentivizes centralized applications that collect user data. p2p open protocols don’t solve a lot of these issues around spam or basic usability (they’re DOA if a regular user has to run their own server). Urbit’s design allows network updates to automatically get picked up across the entire network. Users control and own all of their data. It’s p2p by default and that complexity is invisible to users. It’s backwards compatible, runs on unix in a vm, but could run on its own custom hardware in the future. It could allow people to have their own computing environment where they can send things like photos directly to others without a middleman like FB. The design means that software that runs now should run in ten years. I think there’s a lot of potential, the tech is real (not vaporware), it’s open source, and you can play with it/talk to the community of people on it. I have no idea if it’ll achieve what they’re trying to do, but if anything were to succeed in this space I think it’d have to be something like Urbit. --- Re: The first article you linked, I find CY's politics/writing (from what I've read) to be contrarian and wrong in a similar to way to Peter Thiel's politics. That said, most people hold inconsistent views and people that think independently can be very wrong in one area and very correct in a different area (and people generally are wildly inconsistent in their views/accuracy about everything). Thiel is often contrarian and right about investing and building technology companies even though (I think) he's contrarian and wrong about politics. While it can be useful to keep someone's political beliefs in mind when evaluating something just to be aware of potential motivated reasoning, I don't think that should allow you to dismiss everything else out of hand. Someone can hold both really good ideas and really bad ideas at the same time - similarly someone can hold true and false beliefs simultaneously. When it comes to the author's example (Thiel and Palantir) - I find their framing to be misleading. If they're applying this kind of over-simplified analysis there then I expect they're applying it elsewhere. Their essay is mostly an example of their own cognitive bias - they already have a position and they are cherry picking evidence to support it. The reality is more complex and nuanced than what they suggest.