3 ms·

What the h is Urbit? What’s the use of it? No not the use as in tickling the fancy of tinkerers and technically enthused ones - but a general use case for “norm

What the h is Urbit? What’s the use of it? No not the use as in tickling the fancy of tinkerers and technically enthused ones - but a general use case for “normal” people like there is - Facebook, BitTorrent, Tor, Google, Amazon, Reddit. This shit keeps popping up here. The last time I went down that rabbit-hole, on one sub path I was finally led to some websites where some kind of names/handles were being sold for the normal USD (not some make believe money). Now there could have been free ways to explore it but, iirc, it felt either inadequate or temporary. I wasn’t technically interested in it from a tinker’s perspective but from an end user’s perspective. So that way it was anyway making less and less sense. What it actually seemed to me, and I maybe completely wrong, it’s kind of thing like people selling land on moon, or an imaginary moon and apparently there enough number of people who like that kind of thing.

_aavaa_ 5y ago
> What’s the use of it? No not the use as in tickling the fancy of tinkerers and technically enthused ones - but a general use case for “normal” people like there is - Facebook, BitTorrent, Tor, Google, Amazon, Reddit. As I understand it, the idea is that it combines 3 things: an OS, a p2p network, and an identity. All three work in service towards the single goal of: providing a means through which people can take control and ownership of their digital life. Not control in the sense of “I’m no longer addicted to Facebook” but control in the sense of “I talk with the people I want in the means that I want without needing to worry about the corporation who’s software I’m using cutting me off on a whim.” The OS is there since what is currently available is deemed too complex, and will only ever get more complex. So regular people won’t ever run their own servers. The p2p network is there to allow people to talk and work together without needing to go through another company. The identity is there to tie everything you do across different parts of the network together under a single. They’re sold as NFTs with a finite supply as their counter measure to Sybil attacks.

_aavaa_ 5y ago

> What’s the use of it? No not the use as in tickling the fancy of tinkerers and technically enthused ones - but a general use case for “normal” people like there is - Facebook, BitTorrent, Tor, Google, Amazon, Reddit. As I understand it, the idea is that it combines 3 things: an OS, a p2p network, and an identity. All three work in service towards the single goal of: providing a means through which people can take control and ownership of their digital life. Not control in the sense of “I’m no longer addicted to Facebook” but control in the sense of “I talk with the people I want in the means that I want without needing to worry about the corporation who’s software I’m using cutting me off on a whim.” The OS is there since what is currently available is deemed too complex, and will only ever get more complex. So regular people won’t ever run their own servers. The p2p network is there to allow people to talk and work together without needing to go through another company. The identity is there to tie everything you do across different parts of the network together under a single. They’re sold as NFTs with a finite supply as their counter measure to Sybil attacks.