
Urbit OS 1 - pcr910303
https://urbit.org/blog/introducing-os1/
======
xkapastel
Nock and Hoon are intentionally obscure. There is no good reason for either of
them to be the way they are. Until they come to grips with this, Urbit is
somewhere in between an art project and a pyramid scheme.

Here is a legible alternative to Nock's vision of a "minimalist combinator
VM": [http://tunes.org/~iepos/joy.html](http://tunes.org/~iepos/joy.html)

    
    
            [A] a = A
            [A] b = [[A]]
        [A] [B] c = [A B]
            [A] d = [A] [A]
            [A] e =
        [A] [B] f = [B] [A]
    

There you go, "Maxwell's equations of software", without the obscurantist
nonsense.

~~~
westoncb
Just out of curiosity, have you verified in some way that your alternative is
legitimate? (Like maybe there are some contexts you haven't considered where
other aspects of Nock are necessary.)

If so, are you sure the Urbit folks just didn't happen to discover this
simpler/clearer way of doing it? Or do they have some motivation for making it
obscure?

~~~
Lewton
It's intentionally obscure, I believe the stated reason was that moldbug only
wanted people to use Urbit who have buy-in in the form of having spent/wasted
a significant amount of time and effort

~~~
pavlov
In this aspect and many others, Urbit is reminiscent of Scientology.

~~~
bitwize
Or the Gurdjieff movement, which (also like Urbit) is full of completely made
up terms and concepts like "organ kundabuffer", "being-partkdolg-duty" and
"the sacred Rascooarno", which the faithful just sort of accept and don't
really explain except in their own terms, or with reference to other bits of
Gurdjieff's impenetrable prose. When confronted, Gurdjieffites usually resort
to the sort of tactics displayed upthread, if they're feeling charitable:
"Have you considered that you are simply, in your somnambulent ignorance,
criticizing that which you do not understand because your sleep prevents you
from understanding? Come talk to me after you've spent 20 or 30 years in the
Work and have something to criticize." In short, to criticize the system you
must first embrace the system in its totality, only then will you understand
it well enough to level legitimate criticism.

If they're not feeling charitable, they might declare you an Eternal-
Hasnamuss-Individual and tell you your destiny is to become food for the moon.
But at least they won't sue you or send private investigators after you (I
think), so that's nice.

~~~
carapace
I think you've been hanging out with the wrong "Gurdjieffites".

At least some of those terms are pretty easy to figure out.

"organ kundabuffer" was a specific organ that excreted some kind of drug (in
Gurdjieff's pre-history.)

"being-partkdolg-duty" is the task and operation of remembering oneself.

"the sacred Rascooarno" is death of the physical body.

...and so on.

~~~
bitwize
> "organ kundabuffer" was a specific organ that excreted some kind of drug (in
> Gurdjieff's pre-history.)

So basically you have to be on board with his sci-fi extended universe in
order to grasp the cause behind the central tenet of the Fourth Way: that man
is asleep.

> "being-partkdolg-duty" is the task and operation of remembering oneself.

Defining one Gurdjieffism in terms of another Gurdjieffism. Nice. "Remembering
oneself" is, roughly, what Hackernews knows as mindfulness, but seems to
involve a lot more following Gurdjieff (or one of his disciples, or his
disciples' disciples, there must be an unbroken chain to the Master you see)
around, scrubbing his floors and latrines, and doing his silly dances. Giving
him your money also seemed to help.

> "the sacred Rascooarno" is death of the physical body.

So why does Gurdjieff say "the sacred Rascooarno" and not "death"? Because the
Gurdjieffian concept of death is alien to anyone outside the Work. As you say,
Rascooarno is the death of the physical, _planetary_ body, but a person (or
"three-brained being"), in the course of their life, has or develops other,
"finer" bodies made up of even smaller particles than the matter which makes
up their planetary body, like the body-kesdjan, which is often equated to the
astral body but isn't really. One might say, in other religions, that a person
has a soul. But for Gurdjieff even this is wrong: it's more like a person has
the _potential_ for a soul. Thanks to -- you guessed it -- the maleficent
consequences of the organ Kundabuffer, a soul can only be attained through 20
or 30 years or so in the Work... do you see where I'm going with this?

Anyway, if you had a true friend in the Work, that friend would rebuke you for
doing what Gurdjieff specifically enjoined his followers not to do: attempt to
interpret his works to outsiders, lest you transmit wrong information and
cause those outsiders to be crystallized in the wrong hydrogens.

~~~
carapace
> So basically you have to be on board with his sci-fi extended universe in
> order to grasp the cause behind the central tenet of the Fourth Way: that
> man is asleep.

Yes and no. His opus "All and Everything" is comprised of three volumes. The
first "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" (itself divided into three volumes)
is the part that is couched as a kind of autobiographical reminiscences of an
alien, Beelzebub, to his grandson on the occasion of his pardon and reprieve
from exile to Mars. It's allegory. That book is designed to affect the mind of
the reader, it's a machine or program, not a book _per se_.

> Defining one Gurdjieffism in terms of another Gurdjieffism. Nice.

Don't be pissy.

> "Remembering oneself" is, roughly, what Hackernews knows as mindfulness, but
> seems to involve a lot more

"Remembering oneself" is literal. As literal as words can be. There was no
concept of mindfulness in the West at the time. Buddhism was alien and barely
known.

> following Gurdjieff

He discouraged followers.

> (or one of his disciples, or his disciples' disciples, there must be an
> unbroken chain to the Master you see)

The Fourth Way is not a lineage school. There may be people out there who try
to make something like that out of it, I don't know. I don't hang out with
them. The "Eneagram" craze was an example of a kind of degenerate cargo-cult
residue of Gurdjieff's effect. But I don't think you should blame him for what
people do with his work after he died.

> around, scrubbing his floors and latrines,

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Are you upset that he didn't clean the
toilets personally at his dance school?

> and doing his silly dances.

Have you seen them? They are not silly.

> Giving him your money also seemed to help.

He could extract money from people seemingly at will (have you read the story
of the time he nearly initiated an orgy?) He also spent lots of money, time,
and effort feeding and taking care of elderly people during the war. In Paris
if I recall correctly.

> So why does Gurdjieff say "the sacred Rascooarno" and not "death"?

To distinguish it from the current concept of death, which is very different.
the sacred Rascooarno is a natural _molting_ of the physical body, like a kind
of second birth, and life carries on in the second and third being bodies. Our
deaths, however, are merely the wearing out of a machine. Not having "coated"
higher being-bodies into our physical body by the process of "being-partkdolg-
duty" we "die like dogs", leaving nothing.

> But for Gurdjieff ... it's more like a person has the potential for a soul.

Exactly! Everyone says "There's a soul" or "There's no such thing" and
Gurdjieff comes along and says "You have to make one sucker!"

It's the first new thing under the sun, eh?

> Thanks to -- you guessed it -- the maleficent consequences of the organ
> Kundabuffer,

You lost me...

> a soul can only be attained through 20 or 30 years or so in the Work...

No, you "coat" a "second being-body" and then you "coat" a "third being-body"
and then you molt ("the sacred Rascooarno") and leave the Earth to go live in
space with cool aliens that like you, or something.

These higher being bodies are like holograms that you use to store human-style
experience in the next world. They're like emulators for your old software,
eh?

> do you see where I'm going with this?

Yeah, but why? You obviously know a lot of this stuff but seem really
unimpressed. Is it so wrong that _I_ got a lot out of G.I. Gurdjieff without
becoming some sort of esoteric edgelord weanie?

I know there are a lot of knobs and fools out there. The "enneagram" craze
proves that. But there's also something else there. (Or maybe I'm just crazy.
I still haven't quite decided yet.)

> Anyway, if you had a true friend in the Work,

I don't.

> that friend would rebuke you for doing what Gurdjieff specifically enjoined
> his followers not to do

Well, fuck em' Gurdjieff didn't appoint a successor, so I'll say what I like
to whom I please.

> attempt to interpret his works to outsiders, lest you transmit wrong
> information and cause those outsiders to be crystallized in the wrong
> hydrogens.

Yeah, this is almost certainly "pearls before swine" but whatever, I'm bored
and lonely.

"What was that about hats?"

------
motohagiography
We should have an "Explain Urbit" competition. I haven't looked at it in
years, but when I read about it, my initial version was something like:

"Think of abstracting an OS into a namespace, which uses a crypto layer to
instantiate verifiable versions of itself - and then you write programs for it
in a functional DSL, which do the stuff you do in a browser today, but with
the benefit of a kernel of security proofs, strong anonymity, and federation."

Then 5 Whys:

\- a.0 To re-establish the any-to-any principles of the internet as
trustworthy federations.

\- a.1 Because the current OS ecosystem is still an artifact of the very
problems the internet was designed to solve.

\- a.2 Because politics and messy human stuff.

\- a.3 Because (the author believes) governments have become parasites that
are killing their host.

\- a.4 Because the people with the outlier intelligence necessary to form a
just society are captured and cannot find one another or do not have
sufficient tools to organize themselves.

If you read the websites, it's more like if a Rick and Morty fan BBS met
Skynet at a cypherpunks key ceremony, and that would probably suffice for most
use cases.

~~~
pgt
Hmm, point "a.3 Because governments have become parasites that are killing
their host," resonates with truth, but not all of the truth. We must be in a
local maxima (minima?) at the moment - I don't believe we've found the best
political system. I will think on this government-as-parasite idea, some more.

~~~
motohagiography
a.3 was an attempt to summarize the terabytes of text generated by people
within a few degrees of the project in a pithy statement - about which
somebody else has said they "did for words what bitcoin did for electricity."
It's a bunch of rhetorical logic fractals.

In short, avoid.

~~~
yasp
This is a reply to both you and OP, but I don't see what Urbit has to do with
any government, its inventor's political opinions notwithstanding.

~~~
geofft
Urbit may not have much to do with any specific government but it absolutely
has a lot to do with governance and society in general. If you do not believe
there are fundamental flaws in not only the reality of the internet / online
services but the structure of the system in which they grew, Urbit is not
worthwhile for you. If you do believe there are flaws, but you disagree about
what the flaws are and how to solve then, Urbit may even be counterproductive.

Here are the first words of the intro on Urbit's home page:
[https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/](https://urbit.org/understanding-
urbit/)

> _We think the internet can’t be saved. The way things are going, MEGACORP
> will always control our apps and services because we can no longer run them
> ourselves._

> _The only way out of this mess is with a completely new platform that’s
> owned and controlled by its users._

A little later: [https://urbit.org/understanding-
urbit/interface/](https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/interface/)

> _One way to imagine Urbit is as the Western answer to WeChat: a seamless,
> multi-purpose, vastly extensible social network, but without the
> surveillance._

And from their "Beliefs and Principles" page: [https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-
and-principles/](https://urbit.org/blog/beliefs-and-principles/)

> _The ability of the engineering community to govern itself through
> republican forms is not an abstract theory; it 's a proven fact._

> _Urbit should never fall under any kind of central control. All transitions
> in galaxy ownership should divide positions, not unite them. Galaxy and star
> ownership should also be separated. It is harmful for a single entity to
> hold both galaxies and stars._

> _Urbit has zero tolerance for abuse, nor does it facilitate censorship.
> Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don 't want
> to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to
> see._

If you are happy with the role of governments and corporations in Western
society and the resulting online landscape, it's not clear you need Urbit.
It's fine, but it's overhead. If you're happy with the role of governments and
corporations _in China_ , for instance, if you like WeChat and how it works
and why it works, Urbit is actively useless to you.

And you can oppose China (or even Western governments) and find Urbit useless
too: if you believe the problem is with the holders of power but not the very
concept that people can hold that much power, or you are skeptical of
mechanisms to prevent people from holding that much power - perhaps because
you fear covert power and collusion, or because you fear that tools that
inhibit the accumulation of power are more likely to harm the powerless than
the somewhat-powerful - Urbit doesn't present you with solutions that help
you.

I think it's entirely fair to say that beliefs about governments are
absolutely a part of why Urbit was created and why it continues to get
development interest from people besides the creator.

------
rkobeissi
I searched "Urbit" in the HN archives. The old discussion is still relevant
for a project as long-term as this, and the more recent you get the more Urbit
is misunderstood or attacked simply for being different.

Years on from the first announcements this hugely ambitious project is finally
showing real-world practical application that is already superior to the
alternatives in some dimensions, and with great potential for growth. If
you're sleeping on this it's like sleeping on the Bitcoin whitepaper. The
dimensions for the future of computing are being hashed out in front of you.

A congratulations to everyone involved.

~~~
phnofive
Could you explain what Urbit’s main goals or purposes are?

I feel like, for Bitcoin, the intent and outcome might not be perfectly
aligned, but I get what it was for and how it is used.

~~~
GuiA
The main goal of the people working on Urbit, as with most ventures, is to
make money.

They make money by selling you an identifier that gives you access to their
network for ~$10-$20. They have 2^32 identifiers so they expect to make a lot
of money.

Keep in mind that this identifier doesn't mean you "own" or "control" much, as
it is folded under a parent identifier of which there are only 2^8, all
controlled by the original Urbit creators/their associates.

The rest is a semi-interesting mix of distributed systems + crypto ideas as
other commenters have tried to summarize; there are other, less
indecipherable, projects with similar ideas.

~~~
omnimus
Could you name some similar projects? Do you mean something like blockstack or
dfinity?

~~~
aarpmcgee
holochain

------
dpc_pw
Congratulations. One of my main critiques of Urbit was that I've been waiting
years for something more widely usable and it seems that finally things are
turning around.

There's a lot of very shallow and superficial negative opinions about Urbit,
while it's one of the most interesting projects being developed online, IMO.

I do have my own set of criticism (see: [https://dpc.pw/pragrammatic-critique-
of-urbit](https://dpc.pw/pragrammatic-critique-of-urbit)), but overlay I hope
it will be successful.

~~~
Err_Eek
I don't know man, I tried to use it two weeks ago and I couldn't even get the
chat to work. Neither could I try out their functional programming language.

------
crocodiletears
Lots of people, including myself are quite confused by exactly what Urbit is.
It seems like most people familiar with it have internalized its conventions
to such a degree, that they can only describe it in the most broad and
unspecific of strokes.

I'll take a stab at it, as someone who just spent five minutes skimming its
description of its address space, and trying to parse people's varying
descriptions of the project.

I'd love it if someone more familiar with the project could tell me how off-
base I am.

\- Urbit is a virtual computing platform in-which all devices (ships) are
members of federated network.

\- The federated network is hierarchically organized in such a manner that
anyone can join, and receive a unique 128-bit address, but you're incentivized
to join as a child of a node on the next level up the hierarchy (in-which case
the first 64 bits will be your address, and the next 64 bits are your parent's
address).

\- your address is cryptographically signed by the parent, which serves as a
reputational voucher. Your parent node also serves as a package manager for
your vm(?).

\- This system allows network nodes to ostracize branches of the network of
ill-repute, in order to incentivize parents to 'disown' bad actors, as well as
good clients to transfer to parents that don't vouch for bad actors.

\- your vm is just that. A sandboxed computing environment in-which to
exectute arbitrary code/applications either pulled from your parent node, or
exchanged between you and your peers, as well as a mechanism to store and
cryptographically sign data data you've generated/data that others have
generated which you've cached.

~~~
mgn01
It wants to be secure personal server that anyone and their mother can setup
and use. I have hard time understanding how people have hard time
understanding this. It's not that "complex" guys.

~~~
crocodiletears
It's mostly a component of how deliberately obtuse the terminology behind it
was early on (with no clear explanation), and how smarmy the early adopters
are/were about describing it early on. I knew a guy who was big into it back
in 2013. He refused to describe it as anything other than 'everything you
could ever want computing to be'. Ask for specifics, and he'd just use the
project's own terminology and act like you were stupid if you wanted
clarification.

Personal server doesn't really do the project justice, because it does nothing
to differentiate it in someone's mind from spinning up a vm on digitalocean
with no specific intent. It will make more sense once the platform actually
has software you can point to, but it'll still need more explanation to
justify its existence.

~~~
mgn01
While both are personal servers, I think Urbit is (and can be) a lot more
friendly to average person than telling Average Joe to setup a vm in
digitalocean and then through some magic make it communicate with your
friends.

~~~
crocodiletears
Which is kind of my point. The layman isn't going to get the meaning of
'personal server', but the term itself is too broad for the technically
proficient.

Like describing ios as 'windows on a phone'. The interaction models are
completely different, and so to are softwares that most people would want to
use on or is even available for it.

Nothing about Urbit as I understand it is fundamentally alien to most
developers save its nomenclature, and the way it's architected. But without
that base of knowledge, the advantages and limitations of its model - and by
extension its applications, are hard to wrap your head around.

------
openasocket
I tried to understand how Hoon and Nock work once and got completely lost.
They happily claim that their definition of Nock is super simple and Turing
Complete, and I'm used to dealing with some really abstract things, but I
simply can't deduce it. Their definition of Nock contains a couple of
different combinators. They start out really simple: one to increment, one to
tell if something is a list or an atom, one for equality. Then comes this one:

    
    
        /[1 a]            a
        /[2 a b]          a
        /[3 a b]          b
        /[(a + a) b]      /[2 /[a b]]
        /[(a + a + 1) b]  /[3 /[a b]]
    

And then I'm completely lost. What on earth does this combinator do? Every
time I try tracing it with an example list it quickly goes into infinite
recursion.

~~~
minitech
Did you come from the Nock 4K thing seen in
[https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/nock/definition/](https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/nock/definition/)
but without the rest of the stuff on that page? It’s explained in words there:

> / (slot) is a tree addressing operator. The root of the tree is 1; the left
> child of any node n is 2n; the right child is 2n+1. /[x y] is the subtree of
> y at address x.

> For instance, /[1 [531 25 99]] is [531 25 99]; /[2 [531 25 99]] is 531; /[3
> [531 25 99]] is [25 99]; /[6 [531 25 99]] is 25; /[12 [531 25 99]] crashes.

(edit: there’s also more at
[https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/nock/explanation/.](https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/nock/explanation/.))

------
newx
Suggestion to the leads of this project: make the product objective/statement
clearer.

Maybe I'm not the target demographic for this but I was met with a wall of
text and couldn't make much of it all. It seems exciting and also complex, at
least for me, but selecting the right words can go a long way.

I know that I can search the archives and this current thread to get more
context but this might not be the case of whoever gets directly to the
introduction page.

Feel free to contact me should you want to review those texts. I'd gladly try
to give you my humble help.

~~~
centimeter
> make the product objective/statement clearer.

They intentionally make Urbit obscure, for reasons explained in the UR post
introducing the idea 2011. It basically has to do with keeping out people who
are a net drain on a new software project (software entryists, "developer
evangelists", etc.).

~~~
Aeolun
If their goal is to never gain enough momentum to make this more than a toy
project, then that makes sense.

Personally it annoys the fuck out of me.

------
jv22222
[https://urbit.org/faq/](https://urbit.org/faq/)

> Urbit started back in 2002 as Curtis Yarvin’s personal project. Curtis
> developed the original prototype for Urbit and, separately, wrote a blog on
> history and politics under the pen name ‘Mencius Moldbug’.

> In early 2019, Curtis left the Urbit project and gave all of his voting
> interest (both as address space and voting shares in the company) back to
> Tlon. He retains a non-voting, minority interest in both the address space
> and the company — but is not involved in the day-to-day development or
> operations.

> Curtis laid the foundation for Urbit by delivering its first prototype but,
> since 2013, it has been refined and almost entirely rewritten by a community
> of developers. No one working on Urbit today had anything to do with
> Curtis’s writing. For the most part, we couldn’t be less interested in it.

Thought this was interesting.

------
lachlan-sneff
I think the many of the ideas behind Urbit are exciting, but I don’t think
it’s putting itself in a good position. It’s just too weird. If it used
WebAssembly instead of some small, functional bytecode, you’d lose some beauty
perhaps, but it’d be much more palatable.

~~~
dpc_pw
Hoon does have some very nice security / usability things, that a plain WASM
doesn't: every function call is pretty much a sandbox, everything is
serializable and sandboxable (so you can eg. exchange code around safely),
great reflexivity/inspectability, etc.

It looks weird, and names are weird (which IMO is unnecessary), but the
underlying mechanisms are actually not that difficult to grasp.

~~~
lachlan-sneff
Yeah, I wish wasm had more support for pure programming. Of course, state can
be constrained, but it's pretty heavyweight.

------
rakoo
We might not fully understand what Urbit is, but we can't say they don't have
some attractive design, from the layout of the article to the screenshots
themselves

~~~
core-questions
Building a new aesthetic resonates deeply with the kind of people interested
in this project

~~~
rakoo
That's very odd for a project that goes down all the way to defining a
"bytecode" and re-implements everything on top of it.

Kudos to you for doing it though. Do you have resources on design guidelines
defining your project ?

------
unknownkadath
So suppose Urbit is genuinely useful. What is to stop someone from forking it,
stripping out the obscurantism, writing friendly documentation, then
redistributing galaxies/etc in a different way?

I don't see the moat.

~~~
canjobear
It would take a complete rewrite. Urbit is written entirely in an
idiosyncratic programming language stack that compiles to an idiosyncratic
combinator language.

------
andrewrothman
I have mixed feelings on urbit. I think it's a really interesting idea, but
it's implementation is too obscure and complex. I do, however, sympathize with
their goal and appreciate the UI design of this new web app.

I struggle to see the practical benefit of urbit versus something like
sandstorm.io, although I don't think that project is perfect either. With
WebAssembly getting its footing, it's hard for me to justify a future platform
that requires code to be written in a specific language.

What if we had a federated computing platform that ran code via WebAssembly,
stored data wherever the user would like including an option for IPFS, and
managed identity via OAuth / SSL certificate authorities / private/public
keys? It could be interacted with via a web portal, and apps could be provided
APIs to interact with other apps and the rest of the system.

I can see something like that being built to fulfill similar goals (as I
understand them... I could be wrong) but using existing tech: HTTP3, TLS,
IPFS, WebAssembly

------
oldgun
If I understand correctly, Urbit is a new OS kernel and application layer,
with a new weird FP language on a weird VM. Its first app is a crypto ID
system.

Am I wrong or am I wrong?

~~~
lachlan-sneff
It's not an actual "kernel". It's an application that hides all hardware
specifics from applications that run inside it. Or something like that, I have
no idea.

~~~
samatman
It's an actual kernel the same way a virtual machine is an actual machine.

To unpack that: a virtual machine could be a real machine, it just happens to
instead by a software-hosted emulation thereof. There's a hardware JVM in your
SIM card, for an example.

arvo (the kernel) is the same deal: there's nothing stopping someone from
implementing the syscalls it uses (used to be seven of them IIRC), writing
some drivers, and running it on bare metal.

But that's a lot of work, and the Unix-hosted virtual kernel works well
enough. The whole thing may be fairly compared with inferno, which is a hosted
plan9 which runs on a VM.

------
lykahb
How different is it from Dat or Solid? They promise decentralized environment
and control over data too and are less obscure.

~~~
wmf
Dat and Solid only cover data storage while Urbit also provides a VM to
execute apps.

------
ipnon
I'm actually quite excited by the curiosity/comprehension ratio regarding
Urbit. Those who don't understand it dismiss it entirely.

------
jeremyt
Galaxy holder here. AMA.

It's very disappointing to see all of the knee-jerk reactions about urbit
here.

I bought my galaxy from Tlon a couple of years ago before Curtis left the
project. I don't know Curtis, only met him once for a brief lunch. I used to
browse his blog, and honestly found it thought-provoking but ultimately wrong.
To say that I don't share his political and philosophical views would be an
understatement.

And yet, I find that the structure of the Urbit network means that it doesn't
matter. I have my galaxy and I can do what I want with it, which will
definitely at times not be what Tlon wants me to do with it, and if you are a
planet or a star under my galaxy and you don't like it you can move to
another. There are 255 other galaxies and 64,999 other stars.

I don't understand the criticism of this being digital feudalism. I mean, if
you want to call a planet a "peasant", and you want to say that stars and
galaxies are some sort of feudal lord, then okay, but specifically what do you
mean? As opposed to Facebook, or Google, as a galaxy owner I don't have your
data, can't look at your traffic, and can't monetize your personal
information. I can't spam you. The only thing I can do is block you, and in
five minutes you can switch over to another galaxy. As long as there is one
independent galaxy out of 256, then every person on the network can switch
over to that galaxy. There's no monopoly power here unless you own all 256
galaxies, which would basically amount to a failure of the whole system and
frankly I don't see how that could happen. I'm not selling mine.

There is also a lot of criticism about selling address space. Well, of course
there are 4 billion addresses, and at $10 a piece, that's a lot of money some
day if the network succeeds. But if the network succeeds, we are talking about
a new Internet, and I think $40 billion is modest. It's also important to be
clear that for everyone who bought address space already, we certainly didn't
pay $10 per address, so Tlon isn't laughing all the way to the bank. And as a
galaxy holder, I'm figuring that planet prices go down and maybe go as low as
five dollars each or free as a loss leader. The money will be made in
providing hosting and value added services on top of the network, and what
exactly is wrong with that? Right now, OS1 has a built-in blog application, a
chat application, a slack clone, and a reddit clone. Short on features, sure,
but if all of that isn't worth a one time fee of $5, then I would argue you're
just being a stubborn polemicist.

I'm also a critic of the tendency to be obscure. Curtis' trollishness, without
a doubt comes out in the programming language. Again, I don't really care. I
don't know Hoon. Maybe i'll learn it at some point. Hoon school classes are
constantly full. People will learn it. For those who don't want to, there will
be APIs, so that I can write in my native language. That's totally possible,
and the whole thing is open source.

Finally, the whole "I can't figure out how to use it argument" is not unique
to Urbit. Yes, the documentation needs to be improved. Yes the sign-up process
needs to be improved. That is priority #1 from the team. But really, how easy
is linux to use? In my opinion, not. I've been a mediocre developer for 10
years, and I still can't maintain my own box. I set up a server 10 years ago,
and I went to set up that same server, with the same software today, and
running the same commands doesn't give me the same thing. All new versions,
with all new dependencies, some of them conflict. I break out in cold sweats
every time I have to do a security update or upgrade, afraid that everything
is going to break. The only thing to do is learn the new magic phrases to make
the box do exactly what I want it to do. For me Linux is totally opaque,
obscure, and I've given up on understanding it.

I am assured by the team, and I believe them, that we will have easy, non
technical installation and hosting by the end of the year.

And that's why i'm excited about Urbit. It's an IOS and app store that I own
and control 100%. It's a VPS that (soon) will just work, that maintains
itself, that keeps my data under my control. It's a merciful exit from this
horrible, dare I say it, feudalistic system in which the lords of FB, Google,
and the like own and use (abuse) my data as they please.

So, I get it if you have impressions of the project based on how it was two or
five years ago, but you are mistaken. The core developers on Urbit are some of
the hardest working, competent, and idealistic people i've ever met. It's a
joy to be involved, which is not what I can say about a lot of projects.

The thing I love most about Urbit is it's not blowing $1 billion on marketing,
or trying to be the cool thing on the block. Ever since I've been involved,
they have quietly kept their head down and shipped. Even against all of the
hate, and I have a lot of respect for that. Go watch the launch event for OS1
and watch one of the core developers talking about how badly he wants to build
the best e-reader ever, and tell me that the passion isn't contagious.

~~~
mundo
Thanks for writing this. All of the stuff about urbit being a cult or a scam
that comes up every time it's discussed here seems orthogonal to what actual
urbit enthusiasts care about, which is just that it performs a use case we
actually want. All I want is the "you can share a file with someone you know
without dealing with a social media corporation or being a part-time sysadmin"
part.

------
justinmk
urbit "why":

> Each user runs their own node completely independently. Everyone using Urbit
> OS owns their own identity and data. ... over an encrypted and authenticated
> network.

Interesting note about OS 1 in particular:

> One really critical thing about OS 1 is the pattern of ‘groups sharing
> modules’. This pattern makes it perfectly clear how a virtual computer can
> outcompete a bunch of different services. ... quickly outruns the messy,
> disconnected world we’re currently stuck in.

------
type02
I've been told what Urbit is about 10 times now and I still don't fully get
it.

~~~
ianbicking
After reading a few articles I felt like I finally figured out what Urbit was
and wrote down my sense in a Tweet thread:
[https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609](https://twitter.com/ianbicking/status/1249862161758916609)

In summary: Urbit is a functional/deterministic VM. That's mostly it. It runs
a bytecode called Nock. The only language that really compiles to Nock is a
weird language called Hoon. Because the VM is functional and deterministic, it
is (in theory) also portable – you pick up the (ever-evolving) VM image and
move it somewhere else, and it should act the same. Since the VM may move
around there's also an identity/networking layer so you can talk to the VM
wherever it is.

Right now Urbit is a program called u3 (runs on Linux or whatever) that runs
Nock programs. OS 1 is such a program that does a couple things. It's unclear
to me if they've really built an OS or just a library of routines that can be
used to build a single multipurpose application.

The most direct article I found was "Review of Urbit":
[https://medium.com/@noahruderman/review-of-
urbit-e7cc4c35f14...](https://medium.com/@noahruderman/review-of-
urbit-e7cc4c35f149)

Urbit's own "Common Objections to Urbit" was helpful, in a methinks-he-doth-
protest-too-much sort of way: [https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-
urbit/](https://urbit.org/blog/common-objections-to-urbit/)

And that article pointed me to "Houyhnhnms vs Martians" which was helpful
though also as weird as Urbit:
[http://ngnghm.github.io/blog/2016/06/11/chapter-10-houyhnhnm...](http://ngnghm.github.io/blog/2016/06/11/chapter-10-houyhnhnms-
vs-martians/)

While some people say Urbit is feudalistic, I tend to agree more with those
that call it simply obscurantist. More occult than fascist.

~~~
faizshah
That "Review of Urbit" is the best post I've read on it, thanks for sharing.

------
urbitthrow235
Question for the Urbit devs (when they get done celebrating and come in here
to answer the questions, and sigh in dismay at the inevitable Nth round of hn-
yarvin's-bashing):

In theory, it should be really easy to write a social media app in Urbit. I
mean, that's kind of what it's designed for, right, to make it easy and secure
to do the sorts of server-side use cases that we currently off-load to
Facebook and Twitter and such?

So, where is it? I don't mean a legit FB/IG/TW/etc challenger, I just mean a
toy proof of concept in which I can 'add' an urbit identity, 'share' a piece
of text, and they would see it in their feed.

I know the easy answer is, "Why don't you write one?" Well, I'm a mediocre
programmer and I already have a side project. This isn't me demanding that
open source software be written for me; this is me asking, if the PoC social
media site for urbit doesn't exist yet, does that mean that it's harder to
make than a superficial understanding of the project would suggest?

~~~
lukebuehler
> In theory, it should be really easy to write a social media app in Urbit.

Did you read the post? Have you looked at OS1? This is literally what OS1 is;
it allows you to create groups which share notes, links, and chats. You get
notifications in the dashboard if anything happens in any of the groups you
are part of.

------
Aloha
See, I'd love to play around with urbit, but having to buy cryptocurrency to
buy something of dubious value for too much money seems, absurd.

I'm still interested in trying it, but I see no easy entry, which makes me
question its value as a federated network.

~~~
lukebuehler
Install urbit. Boot a comet (free). Join the chat groups. Ask for a planet
(free). While not certain, in my experience, if Tlon people see interest,
they’ll send you a planet. Or maybe just write to their support, they are
super responsive.

------
amelius
Technical overview:

[https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/concepts/technical-
overview...](https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/concepts/technical-overview/)

------
rrdharan
What I don't understand is, if they want to make the dissociation with Yarvin
more clear, why not just change the name of the project?

I have the same question about ReiserFS.

I feel like it boils down to the fact that they know a bunch of their user or
developer base would be angered by such a move, and that same portion are the
folks the rest of the world would consider toxic, and so they just kind of
ignore the question.

~~~
sneak
I don’t participate because whether he left or not, there has been no
statement about whether or not he’s still a shareholder.

The success of Urbit could still be enriching its racist founder sitting on a
founder-sized set of tokens or equity, even if he never worked there.

I’d much rather just participate in other projects.

EDIT:

...as of last I looked, there had been no statement. I’d still simply rather
involve myself in other projects and communities, as it sounds like he would
still benefit from the growth of the system, and I don’t think I’d get along
with his compatriots that are still working there.

I try not to work on things where doing a good job means that someone who
wants my friends to not have human rights makes more money for their cause.

~~~
mundo
1) There aren't shares to own. He owns some urbit identities, which will be
worth real money IFF urbit is ever actually popular, which doesn't seem very
likely at the moment.

2) You're calling a real live human being racist. Are you sure you know him
well enough to stand behind an accusation like that? Or are you relaying
third-hand opinions about his blog? I'm not a fan of his, but the blog posts
that launched the #cancelyarvin effort seemed pretty innocuous to me.

~~~
samatman
Staying well clear of 2), but to address 1): Tlon is an ordinary corporation
and I would be flabbergasted if cgy didn't retain shares in a corporation he
founded.

Then there's address space, and my understanding is that he gave up control of
his galaxies, which doesn't say anything about the stars and planets that were
in them.

With a little spelunking in the old codebase, and inspection of the Azimuth
contract, someone interested in the question could no doubt answer it with
reasonable confidence.

~~~
mundo
Oh, I'd forgotten about Tlon. Well, I looked it up, and what he claims to
retain is "a few thousand stars" and a "non-voting minority in tlon". I guess
the latter could be valuable monetarily (in some hypothetical future in which
urbit is successful, anyway).

from: [https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-
farewell/](https://urbit.org/blog/a-founders-farewell/)

------
trianglem
I’ve been following Moldbug for a while and his extreme bigotry means this is
something that should never succeed. Thankfully, urbit isn’t doing that all by
themselves

------
calvinmorrison
So it's a slack like chat that runs in a VM in my browser? Sorry I read thier
homepage and dont get it

~~~
jdhopeunique
Except this chat seems has a unique(feudalistic maybe?) update system:

[https://urbit.org/using/operations/stars-and-
galaxies/](https://urbit.org/using/operations/stars-and-galaxies/)

Updates are passed down from galaxy to star to planet. Star owners can modify
those updates to push custom software to planet VMs.

------
indymike
I'm intrigued... but have no idea how to get an ID without dropping $30USD...

~~~
yasp
opensea.io has them for under $5

------
pmlnr
Personal definition for Urbit: Confucianism in a made up software terminology.

~~~
lidHanteyk
As a Confucian and legalist (among other philosophical positions), there is
one obvious gaping flaw in this classification: Urbit is obscurantist, while
Confucius would have preferred that Urbit clearly define its terminology and
goals [0], and that if it were truly an open project, that it would not try to
divide people into groups based on allocation of private property, but instead
unite them through common social visions and spaces [1].

Although, to be quite frank, I think that Urbit and its followers are usurping
the name of philosophers like Mencius [2] when they try to play themselves off
as Confucians or legalists. They are clearly neoreactionaries [3] and range
from feudalism and monarchism to neo-fascism in their expressions of belief.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment)

~~~
pmlnr
Thank you for this comment. I need to broaden my readings.

------
philsnow
> Urbit address space has value, which means the distribution of address space
> has tax implications. You should speak with your tax advisor about these
> implications.

oh to be a fly on that wall..

------
stagas
It's an art project.

------
0xy
Urbit is such a niche product that totally ignores the average consumer it's
essentially dead on arrival.

They struggle to explain it to technical people. Imagine trying to explain
this thing to your mother.

It's the fever dream of deeply technical types who have created a product so
academic in nature that it's totally useless in practicality.

~~~
arcadeparade
its an os, its social media without the middleman, its an identity, its many
things. Sadly HN always seems to hate it whenever it get posted here.

~~~
0xy
Could you explain Urbit to your mother within a minute?

~~~
jraines
“An operating system in a box that connects with others to provide (mostly in
the future) the kind of networked services and apps you enjoy now, but with
your data stored locally instead of on corporate servers”

Easier than explaining bitcoin, honestly. No warrants made to mom or others on
usability or service availability

~~~
duskwuff
Hypothetical response: "An operating system? Is it better than Windows? What
games does it have?"

I'm not convinced that's an appropriate term to use here, even as part of a
simplified explanation.

------
lidHanteyk
As soon as the protocol is stable enough, if it is useful, it will be reverse-
engineered and reimplemented in more-legible source code. From this, I can
deduce that Urbit is not yet useful.

~~~
tylershuster
Just because it’s illegible does not mean it is suboptimal. It purposely
breaks with existing conventions because it does things in a way not current
code does.

~~~
lidHanteyk
Here [0] is but one example of Urbit's suboptimality: Their encoding into C is
insecure, and they have no interest in changing it.

Writing a new operating system is hard. Taking lots of questionable paths,
like writing "jet" templates [1] that call directly into existing C libraries,
or defining a brand-new Boolean type that doesn't behave like standard
Booleans, is not the right way to build confidence in any kind of quality, let
alone optimality.

Also, as a word-choice note, "optimal" means "best". Urbit is _clearly_ not
the best operating system, because there is clearly no metric by which to
measure it against other OSs. It doesn't support the same sorts of hardware or
APIs or processes or other common components of our craft. "optimal" is a
terrible word to use around greenfield projects and nebulous designs; reserve
it for when you can _prove_ that your approach truly is the best one.

[0]
[https://github.com/urbit/urbit/issues/752](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/issues/752)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_metaprogramming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_metaprogramming)

~~~
strbean
That issue is pretty hilarious, and reveals a lot about Urbit. This topic on
HN is my first exposure to the project, and I was on the fence about the
(seemingly much debated) 'is this satire?' question. This ticket pushed me
over to the 'yes' side.

Of course there is the 'loobean' schtick, but the best part is them sneaking
in three-valued logic as a trojan horse, where the third state is "NO". They
evens steer the reader towards the obvious footgun:

> You should ignore the numeric values and use comparisons against c3y and c3n
> for everything.

So I should say

    
    
        if (bluebeanValue == TRUE) { ... }
    

and

    
    
        if (bluebeanValue == FALSE) { ... }
    

Making any value outside the expected range mean "NO to any boolean test".

------
GuiA
It’s a scam.

They have 2^32 “planets” (a UUID that you can use to interact with the Urbit
network), that they are each trying to sell for ~$10-$20 on a cute “exchange”:
[https://urbit.live/](https://urbit.live/)

(Of course you don’t really own anything when buying a planet because someone
else owns the “star” and the “galaxy” and you can’t buy those unless you’re
friends with them)

They even have a nice pyramid diagram for their not-pyramid-scheme:

[https://media.urbit.org/site/posts/essays/value-of-
address-s...](https://media.urbit.org/site/posts/essays/value-of-address-
space-pt2a.svg)

~~~
kemenaran
It looks like so, yes.

Though, after digging in the doc, turns out there may be a way to create
temporary free ids to try out Urbit:
[https://urbit.org/using/operations/creating-a-
comet/](https://urbit.org/using/operations/creating-a-comet/)

~~~
GuiA
The first hit is always free :)

