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I don't know much at all about Urbit, but this doesn't seem like it was written in good faith tbh. The mention of security holes seems to be the only real seri

I don't know much at all about Urbit, but this doesn't seem like it was written in good faith tbh. The mention of security holes seems to be the only real serious critique. Hopefully some urbit people could address those, since claiming to be a secure personal VM and just exposing your data on disk to the cloud provider is crazy. Other than that, the author seems to be mostly making fun of urbit for being weird and alien, which is strange because its goal basically seems to be weird and alien. This is actually quite excellent. Computing needs fewer javascript frameworks and more truly weird and alien shit, with a healthy dose of NIH.

iudqnolq 5y ago
> Computing needs fewer javascript frameworks and more truly weird and alien shit, Which is why I found the point that they've implemented their UI in javascript interesting
- voldacar 5y ago
  Agreed. That does seem strange. I guess if you want a UI that just works and is flexible, most people will turn to a web browser
wejn 5y ago
And there I was, thinking that the first four paragraphs pretty much summed up the frame of mind with which it was written.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
It may not have been. The author of Urbit is Moldbug, who is... controversial. On the other hand, I just read the article, and none of it seems particularly bad faith. I vaguely remember something about Urbit using planets and galaxies as some kind of ownership metaphor, so I expected the article to go on at length about how strange this seems. But it seems to be focusing on the technical aspects of Urbit, and is pretty clinically detached.
- throwaway292893 5y ago
  Of course he's controversial, he thinks differently and he wrote his thoughts down. How dare he. Honestly in this age of this Marxism takeover, his thoughts aren't that crazy.
  - robmccoll 5y ago
    The guy appears to be sympathetic to white nationalist views, harbors racist ideas, and advocates for authoritarianism. That's a little far to write off as "thinks differently". Given that your account is "throwaway", I'm guessing you sense that there is something to be ashamed of or at least lost in social capital by defending him publicly?
    - NackerHughes 5y ago
      Of course he senses that, he thinks differently and he wrote his thoughts down. How dare he.
    - throwaway292893 5y ago
      Appears to be sympathetic to? Are there specific examples you take issue with, or is this from hearsay? This account is for political or controversial opinions and is not related to this discussion, no.
      - robmccoll 5y ago
        This post in which he declares that he isn't white nationalist https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist/ https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-no... is full of weird apologist asides and reads like "I'm not, or maybe I kind of am but not, but I can see why some people are, and other things are bad too, and maybe this isn't so bad". "So we see that, at present, in the real world of 2007, there is no coherent moral or practical reason to shun white nationalism." "I am just suggesting that there are many bad reasons not to be a white nationalist." Then he proceeds to explain that the white nationalist view of the world is silly because it has two sides and doesn't confirm to his five sided race war view. This post is a seriously bad take. Language and words have power and this is the kind that could reach people on the fringe and bring them into the fold. If you have read this thing, does it not give you pause?
wmf 5y ago
I'm not aware of any self-hosted apps that perform encryption at rest. Maybe Urbit should be held to a higher standard because it's an "OS" but then again it's not really.
yongjik 5y ago
On the contrary, I think the author spent a lot of effort to understand the underlying tech stack - honestly I can't understand why, but maybe they were exceptionally bored? This is the first time I learned that the underlying VM is single-threaded, for example.
- jlehman 5y ago
  Why would you think he spent a lot of effort? The second sentence literally says that he did not.
  - wejn 5y ago
    True. Just a couple of hours. On the other hand... is walltime the only criterion worth considering?
    - Turing_Machine 5y ago
      Well, would you consider someone who'd only spent a couple of hours of wall time on Unix to be an expert whose opinion was worthy of serious consideration? Not that I'm flogging Urbit -- or not flogging it, for that matter. I looked at it a while back and decided that I didn't understand it, and wouldn't understand it without spending far more time than I had available. However, that just renders my opinion on the topic useless.
      - wejn 5y ago
        Hmm, that's an interesting point. I would encourage them [= someone who only spent a couple of hours on Unix] to dig further... broader. Mostly by demonstrating that there are real world problems for which Unix is better suited than competition. IMO in Urbit -- there was not much more to explore after the few hours. Short of digging even further into the guts of it... and that was very unappealing. Other people here in the comments mentioned that there's no killer app for Urbit. So my intuition was probably correct [to stop digging].
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

iudqnolq 5y ago

> Computing needs fewer javascript frameworks and more truly weird and alien shit, Which is why I found the point that they've implemented their UI in javascript interesting

voldacar 5y ago
Agreed. That does seem strange. I guess if you want a UI that just works and is flexible, most people will turn to a web browser

wejn 5y ago

And there I was, thinking that the first four paragraphs pretty much summed up the frame of mind with which it was written.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

It may not have been. The author of Urbit is Moldbug, who is... controversial. On the other hand, I just read the article, and none of it seems particularly bad faith. I vaguely remember something about Urbit using planets and galaxies as some kind of ownership metaphor, so I expected the article to go on at length about how strange this seems. But it seems to be focusing on the technical aspects of Urbit, and is pretty clinically detached.

throwaway292893 5y ago
Of course he's controversial, he thinks differently and he wrote his thoughts down. How dare he. Honestly in this age of this Marxism takeover, his thoughts aren't that crazy.
- robmccoll 5y ago
  The guy appears to be sympathetic to white nationalist views, harbors racist ideas, and advocates for authoritarianism. That's a little far to write off as "thinks differently". Given that your account is "throwaway", I'm guessing you sense that there is something to be ashamed of or at least lost in social capital by defending him publicly?
  - NackerHughes 5y ago
    Of course he senses that, he thinks differently and he wrote his thoughts down. How dare he.
  - throwaway292893 5y ago
    Appears to be sympathetic to? Are there specific examples you take issue with, or is this from hearsay? This account is for political or controversial opinions and is not related to this discussion, no.
    - robmccoll 5y ago
      This post in which he declares that he isn't white nationalist https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-not-white-nationalist/ https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/11/why-i-am-no... is full of weird apologist asides and reads like "I'm not, or maybe I kind of am but not, but I can see why some people are, and other things are bad too, and maybe this isn't so bad". "So we see that, at present, in the real world of 2007, there is no coherent moral or practical reason to shun white nationalism." "I am just suggesting that there are many bad reasons not to be a white nationalist." Then he proceeds to explain that the white nationalist view of the world is silly because it has two sides and doesn't confirm to his five sided race war view. This post is a seriously bad take. Language and words have power and this is the kind that could reach people on the fringe and bring them into the fold. If you have read this thing, does it not give you pause?

wmf 5y ago

I'm not aware of any self-hosted apps that perform encryption at rest. Maybe Urbit should be held to a higher standard because it's an "OS" but then again it's not really.

yongjik 5y ago

On the contrary, I think the author spent a lot of effort to understand the underlying tech stack - honestly I can't understand why, but maybe they were exceptionally bored? This is the first time I learned that the underlying VM is single-threaded, for example.

jlehman 5y ago
Why would you think he spent a lot of effort? The second sentence literally says that he did not.
- wejn 5y ago
  True. Just a couple of hours. On the other hand... is walltime the only criterion worth considering?
  - Turing_Machine 5y ago
    Well, would you consider someone who'd only spent a couple of hours of wall time on Unix to be an expert whose opinion was worthy of serious consideration? Not that I'm flogging Urbit -- or not flogging it, for that matter. I looked at it a while back and decided that I didn't understand it, and wouldn't understand it without spending far more time than I had available. However, that just renders my opinion on the topic useless.
    - wejn 5y ago
      Hmm, that's an interesting point. I would encourage them [= someone who only spent a couple of hours on Unix] to dig further... broader. Mostly by demonstrating that there are real world problems for which Unix is better suited than competition. IMO in Urbit -- there was not much more to explore after the few hours. Short of digging even further into the guts of it... and that was very unappealing. Other people here in the comments mentioned that there's no killer app for Urbit. So my intuition was probably correct [to stop digging].
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]