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I'll try. First, what it is: Urbit is a virtual machine OS for server-side applications. If you imagine a future in which it is common for non-technical peopl

I'll try. First, what it is: Urbit is a virtual machine OS for server-side applications. If you imagine a future in which it is common for non-technical people to rent cloud server space on which to host server-side applications (say, a small blog, a mastodon node, a minecraft server, etc), Urbit aspires to be a good platform on which to host them. Second, why it's so weird: it aspires to be "done" someday, as in no new features to add, no bugs left, just stable forever (sometimes called Kelvin versioning). It's design makes no sense unless you understand this; the bespoke languages it's written in are designed to be too simple to have any unexpected behaviors (as opposed to being designed for ease of use or performance). Third, you can't understand it without being aware that the founder got #cancelled for his (unrelated to urbit) right-wing blogging, so most of the responses in this thread will be from people who really dislike that guy and dismiss urbit as a result.

weakfish 4y ago
Writing “right wing blogging” leaves out the key part of being “unapologetically racist”
judofyr 4y ago
> It's design makes no sense unless you understand this; the bespoke languages it's written in are designed to be too simple to have any unexpected behaviors (as opposed to being designed for ease of use or performance) I don’t buy this. Why does “no unexpected behavior” require the amount of obfuscation which they have in Urbit? I’ve been trying to pick it up a few times and I’m constantly struggling to understand how it behaves.
- ineptech 4y ago
  > I don’t buy this. I'm not selling it, just explaining it. More info here: https://urbit.org/blog/toward-a-frozen-operating-system https://urbit.org/blog/toward-a-frozen-operating-system
- hocwyn 4y ago
  What exactly do you see as obfuscated?
troutwine 4y ago
> This, you can't understand it without being aware that the founder got #cancelled for his (unrelated to urbit) right-wing blogging, so most of the responses in this thread will be from people who really dislike that guy and dismiss urbit as a result. I think you can, although I admit a lot of the discussion here is likely to focus on Yarvin himself. That is, there is a good argument that Urbit reflects Yarvin's politics in itself and as these politics are, clearly, broadly distasteful it's entirely reasonably that someone opposed to Right Libertarianism and ignorant of Yarvin would find Urbit undesirable on its own merits.
- ineptech 4y ago
  shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I don't like Yarvin either, but I do want a product that meets this use case. At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    Yep, a fresh start with no association to the founder, and ditching the obfuscations that are not useful while keeping the best ideas, would be interesting.
  - themikesanto 4y ago
    I've been following Urbit for years, and honestly I still don't see the use case. It seems like its intended use case is to be a network where you can't disseminate your data across the network unless the "lord" that issued you your address space allows you to do so.
    - tern 4y ago
      The same is true of Facebook, Google, Twitter and your ISP. The difference with Urbit is you can switch providers if you're censored, or reciprocally if you want a censored experience, you can virtually move to somewhere with a blocklist.
dmitriid 4y ago
The VM and language for it are designed in an intentionally obscure ways so that "normies wouldn't get in", apparently :) https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1502278405391331332 https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1502278405391331332
- jlehman 4y ago
  The views of an employee who left the company years ago and has been completely uninvolved since should hardly be treated as canon.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    is the same true for true for gates on microsoft or jobs on apple? in some parts of the world germans still get a negative reaction because of their countries history. it's unfair, but unfortunately showing that those influences in urbit are gone or were not even there in the first place, is going to be a long and hard battle. it's similar to the problem blockchain has today. for no fault of the technology on its own, blockchain is tainted by the massive amount of scams in the space. and as urbit also uses a blockchain too it now actually has two problems. i appreciate you joining this discussion, but think about what you end up doing here. you spend energy defending the project against arguments that have nothing to do with its technology. energy that you probably would rather spend elsewhere. but the reality is that you are likely going to have these arguments for the foreseeable future with many that might otherwise join the project. and if you hide those issues you will be accused of doing that instead. germany is doing a lot of selfcriticism in order to atone for its history and it's making an effort to welcome immigrants, and yet there are people who don't believe their intentions as well as there are some germans who still reject immigrants. it is going to take a few more generations for germany to overcome this, as it is going to take a few decades for the blockchain to overcome its reputation as a scam. likewise urbit will require some effort to get rid of this ball and chains. i do wish you success, and i sincerely hope that these non technical problems won't be an achilles heel that bring the project down
sanderjd 4y ago
He is very broadly shunned not for "right-wing blogging", but for being a white supremacist. This is how society is supposed to work; people get to choose who they associate with, and no good person chooses to associate with white supremacists.

weakfish 4y ago

Writing “right wing blogging” leaves out the key part of being “unapologetically racist”

judofyr 4y ago

> It's design makes no sense unless you understand this; the bespoke languages it's written in are designed to be too simple to have any unexpected behaviors (as opposed to being designed for ease of use or performance) I don’t buy this. Why does “no unexpected behavior” require the amount of obfuscation which they have in Urbit? I’ve been trying to pick it up a few times and I’m constantly struggling to understand how it behaves.

ineptech 4y ago
> I don’t buy this. I'm not selling it, just explaining it. More info here: https://urbit.org/blog/toward-a-frozen-operating-system https://urbit.org/blog/toward-a-frozen-operating-system
hocwyn 4y ago
What exactly do you see as obfuscated?

troutwine 4y ago

> This, you can't understand it without being aware that the founder got #cancelled for his (unrelated to urbit) right-wing blogging, so most of the responses in this thread will be from people who really dislike that guy and dismiss urbit as a result. I think you can, although I admit a lot of the discussion here is likely to focus on Yarvin himself. That is, there is a good argument that Urbit reflects Yarvin's politics in itself and as these politics are, clearly, broadly distasteful it's entirely reasonably that someone opposed to Right Libertarianism and ignorant of Yarvin would find Urbit undesirable on its own merits.

ineptech 4y ago
shrug there are giant for-profit corporations relying on software written by Richard Stallman. I don't think the intentions of the founder matter much. I don't like Yarvin either, but I do want a product that meets this use case. At this point I wish someone would clone urbit, since the hatred for the founder seems to mean it'll never get traction no matter what it does or how it works.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Yep, a fresh start with no association to the founder, and ditching the obfuscations that are not useful while keeping the best ideas, would be interesting.
- themikesanto 4y ago
  I've been following Urbit for years, and honestly I still don't see the use case. It seems like its intended use case is to be a network where you can't disseminate your data across the network unless the "lord" that issued you your address space allows you to do so.
  - tern 4y ago
    The same is true of Facebook, Google, Twitter and your ISP. The difference with Urbit is you can switch providers if you're censored, or reciprocally if you want a censored experience, you can virtually move to somewhere with a blocklist.

dmitriid 4y ago

The VM and language for it are designed in an intentionally obscure ways so that "normies wouldn't get in", apparently :) https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1502278405391331332 https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1502278405391331332

jlehman 4y ago
The views of an employee who left the company years ago and has been completely uninvolved since should hardly be treated as canon.
- em-bee 4y ago
  is the same true for true for gates on microsoft or jobs on apple? in some parts of the world germans still get a negative reaction because of their countries history. it's unfair, but unfortunately showing that those influences in urbit are gone or were not even there in the first place, is going to be a long and hard battle. it's similar to the problem blockchain has today. for no fault of the technology on its own, blockchain is tainted by the massive amount of scams in the space. and as urbit also uses a blockchain too it now actually has two problems. i appreciate you joining this discussion, but think about what you end up doing here. you spend energy defending the project against arguments that have nothing to do with its technology. energy that you probably would rather spend elsewhere. but the reality is that you are likely going to have these arguments for the foreseeable future with many that might otherwise join the project. and if you hide those issues you will be accused of doing that instead. germany is doing a lot of selfcriticism in order to atone for its history and it's making an effort to welcome immigrants, and yet there are people who don't believe their intentions as well as there are some germans who still reject immigrants. it is going to take a few more generations for germany to overcome this, as it is going to take a few decades for the blockchain to overcome its reputation as a scam. likewise urbit will require some effort to get rid of this ball and chains. i do wish you success, and i sincerely hope that these non technical problems won't be an achilles heel that bring the project down

sanderjd 4y ago

He is very broadly shunned not for "right-wing blogging", but for being a white supremacist. This is how society is supposed to work; people get to choose who they associate with, and no good person chooses to associate with white supremacists.