5 ms·

Disclaimer: I work on Urbit full-time. There are some good write-ups on the technical decisions here: https://urbit.org/blog/precepts https://urbit.org/blog/p

Disclaimer: I work on Urbit full-time. There are some good write-ups on the technical decisions here: https://urbit.org/blog/precepts https://urbit.org/blog/precepts https://urbit.org/blog/precepts-discussion https://urbit.org/blog/precepts-discussion Funnily enough, most of the "mystique" isn't really intentional. It's that the inevitable "muh Curtis" arguments that always show up have discouraged many of the team from bothering to engage in explaining the project (here moreso than anywhere else) and instead focus on building the thing. Summarization: Urbit is a reaction to Unix-driven software complexity that dominates modern software development. The thesis is that cascading complexity cannot be solved without a complete rewrite of the computing stack, and that goes all the way back to the operating system. Here's an even better summarization: https://twitter.com/pcmonk/status/1201298411011629063 https://twitter.com/pcmonk/status/1201298411011629063 Alternative summarization: the internet, being built on a hodgepodge stack of tooling that wasn't made for people to communicate the way that they actually do now, has major incidental flaws. Urbit is a completely rebuilt computing stack that better maps to what we want to do with networked computers. That involves things like, but not limited to baking a non-fungible, valuable identity into the networking layer. This is another good summarization, although the sections after "Urbit ID" are out of date: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit

tptacek 4y ago
When you write things like "muh Curtis", you engage in those arguments yourself. If you want to keep the conversation focused on the technology you're working on, do that; I agree, it's the more relevant thing for HN to talk about. People who have problems with the founder of this project are not crazy randos. Keeping HN conversations on-topic takes work, from everyone. Beyond that, your comment doesn't say much. Computing and networking as it exists today, you say, is bad. Urbit is a ground-up rethink of all of it. OK, but there are 10th graders with the same idea (just as there were when I was a 10th grader). What makes Urbit worth taking more seriously than those ideas?
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  > People who have problems with the founder of this project are not crazy randos. The founder divested himself of the project yet the current top comment doesn't want to touch Urbit as if it is cursed by his ghost. It's these same sorts of comments that drag down all discourse because they prohibit any other state than negative. It's these same comments that pollute any healthy attempt at discourse around crypto here with the Evil Eye that just pushes any one with a different idea to the HN hivemind out. > What makes Urbit worth taking more seriously than those ideas? This is explained, in technical and philosophical depth in the links provided you.
- jlehman 4y ago
  Ideas are cheap, and Urbit isn't just an idea any longer. It's a working system that's been built by dozens of people over the years, and it's only picking up steam. In Ron Garrett's words: > The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism. Looks like he and his ilk are just wrong and having a hard time believing that. It's alive because an increasing number of people want it to be, and no amount of theorizing can deny the reality of actual growth — which, in case everyone forgot, is what the OP is showing.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    I agree that urbit has far outlasted all of the nay-sayers in a technical sense. People have been saying "this is some elaborate joke" for years, but the project has made steady progress and really is pretty usable now. It does what it says on the side of the tin, that's quite an achievement. But, whatever its technical merits, do you think it can ever get to a point where it reached enough users to be useful (in the "chicken and egg problem" sense that platforms need a critical mass of users to be useful platforms), given the millstone around its neck? Do threads like this (where detailed, technical explanations get downvoted to oblivion, and "I heard Yarvin is racist" is the top comment) make you want to throw in the towel?
    - jlehman 4y ago
      It has enough users to be useful now, which number in the thousands. It's also not a service that anyone maintains on behalf of others, so there's no one that needs to have a critical mass for it to be useful. Nearly everyone running Urbit is self-hosting locally or on some VPS somewhere, and they can do that indefinitely even if no more code was ever pushed. If this kind of stuff made anyone want to throw in the towel Urbit wouldn't be a thing anymore. There's only a millstone around its neck on HN, but HN is gradually becoming more and more irrelevant. To our base and the people finding us, "I don't think about you at all" reflects their sentiment for HN conversations and the tenor of conversation that happens here. I'm just here because someone told me (from within Urbit) that this post went up, it's Friday and I don't have as many meetings, and I couldn't resist myself. You seem fine though, so boot a comet and hit me up on the network if you want a planet or something to keep the conversation going.
weare138 4y ago
>Summarization: Urbit is a reaction to Unix-driven software complexity that dominates modern software development. I keep reading explanations about Urbit along these lines but what's perplexing about this explanation is Urbit does nothing to achieve this goal. Regardless of the fact that Urbit is referred to as an operation system it still isn't one. It relies on a conventional OS, often UNIX family OS's like Linux to run. Urbit just layers a new even more complicated software and networking stack on top of the 'Unix-driven software complexity' that still underpins Urbit. Urbit does nothing to address these problems, it just makes them worse. Urbit's underlying software stack (Nock, Hoon, etc.) is just bizarre and non-nonsensical. For example, this gem from the docs: "A loobean is a Nock boolean - Nock, for mysterious reasons, uses 0 as true (always say "yes") and 1 as false (always say "no")." Wat? Why?!? And it doesn't end there. Urbit is littered with these WTF design choices and terminology. No one in their right mind is going to build professional software solutions on a platform like this. You might as well just be developing software in something like Brainfuck.

tptacek 4y ago

When you write things like "muh Curtis", you engage in those arguments yourself. If you want to keep the conversation focused on the technology you're working on, do that; I agree, it's the more relevant thing for HN to talk about. People who have problems with the founder of this project are not crazy randos. Keeping HN conversations on-topic takes work, from everyone. Beyond that, your comment doesn't say much. Computing and networking as it exists today, you say, is bad. Urbit is a ground-up rethink of all of it. OK, but there are 10th graders with the same idea (just as there were when I was a 10th grader). What makes Urbit worth taking more seriously than those ideas?

emptysongglass 4y ago
> People who have problems with the founder of this project are not crazy randos. The founder divested himself of the project yet the current top comment doesn't want to touch Urbit as if it is cursed by his ghost. It's these same sorts of comments that drag down all discourse because they prohibit any other state than negative. It's these same comments that pollute any healthy attempt at discourse around crypto here with the Evil Eye that just pushes any one with a different idea to the HN hivemind out. > What makes Urbit worth taking more seriously than those ideas? This is explained, in technical and philosophical depth in the links provided you.
jlehman 4y ago
Ideas are cheap, and Urbit isn't just an idea any longer. It's a working system that's been built by dozens of people over the years, and it's only picking up steam. In Ron Garrett's words: > The mere fact that Urbit is still a thing, that it has not yet collapsed under the weight of its own intentionally induced baggage, is worrisome to me. Something is keeping that project alive, and it's not technical merit. I don't see a lot of viable options other than some kind of fanaticism. Looks like he and his ilk are just wrong and having a hard time believing that. It's alive because an increasing number of people want it to be, and no amount of theorizing can deny the reality of actual growth — which, in case everyone forgot, is what the OP is showing.
- ineptech 4y ago
  I agree that urbit has far outlasted all of the nay-sayers in a technical sense. People have been saying "this is some elaborate joke" for years, but the project has made steady progress and really is pretty usable now. It does what it says on the side of the tin, that's quite an achievement. But, whatever its technical merits, do you think it can ever get to a point where it reached enough users to be useful (in the "chicken and egg problem" sense that platforms need a critical mass of users to be useful platforms), given the millstone around its neck? Do threads like this (where detailed, technical explanations get downvoted to oblivion, and "I heard Yarvin is racist" is the top comment) make you want to throw in the towel?
  - jlehman 4y ago
    It has enough users to be useful now, which number in the thousands. It's also not a service that anyone maintains on behalf of others, so there's no one that needs to have a critical mass for it to be useful. Nearly everyone running Urbit is self-hosting locally or on some VPS somewhere, and they can do that indefinitely even if no more code was ever pushed. If this kind of stuff made anyone want to throw in the towel Urbit wouldn't be a thing anymore. There's only a millstone around its neck on HN, but HN is gradually becoming more and more irrelevant. To our base and the people finding us, "I don't think about you at all" reflects their sentiment for HN conversations and the tenor of conversation that happens here. I'm just here because someone told me (from within Urbit) that this post went up, it's Friday and I don't have as many meetings, and I couldn't resist myself. You seem fine though, so boot a comet and hit me up on the network if you want a planet or something to keep the conversation going.

weare138 4y ago

>Summarization: Urbit is a reaction to Unix-driven software complexity that dominates modern software development. I keep reading explanations about Urbit along these lines but what's perplexing about this explanation is Urbit does nothing to achieve this goal. Regardless of the fact that Urbit is referred to as an operation system it still isn't one. It relies on a conventional OS, often UNIX family OS's like Linux to run. Urbit just layers a new even more complicated software and networking stack on top of the 'Unix-driven software complexity' that still underpins Urbit. Urbit does nothing to address these problems, it just makes them worse. Urbit's underlying software stack (Nock, Hoon, etc.) is just bizarre and non-nonsensical. For example, this gem from the docs: "A loobean is a Nock boolean - Nock, for mysterious reasons, uses 0 as true (always say "yes") and 1 as false (always say "no")." Wat? Why?!? And it doesn't end there. Urbit is littered with these WTF design choices and terminology. No one in their right mind is going to build professional software solutions on a platform like this. You might as well just be developing software in something like Brainfuck.