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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

What the hell is this

Urbit is a decentralized personal server platform based on functional programming in a peer-to-peer network.

Am I having a stroke? What does "functional programming in a network" even mean? Does it mean anything? Do you torrent lambdas?

You wouldn't download a closure

The Urbit software stack consists of a set of programming languages ("Hoon," a high-level functional programming language, and "Nock," its low-level compiled language)

Weird ass names aside (Hoon sounds like a slur or is it just me?), they built two languages? Also what does "its" refer to here, Urbit's? From context it's as if Nock was Hoon's language, but that doesn't make semantical sense.

Also editorial note, just say "a pair" if there are two, not "a set"...

a single-function operating system built on those languages ("Arvo"); a runtime implementation of that operating system ("Vere"),

What. A "single-function operating system" doesn't even mean anything. Do they mean a unikernel? That at least is an actual term. And then what's that other thing? A "runtime implementation of an OS"? What's Arvo if it's not implemented or doesn't run, a fucking abstract painting of an OS?

And again, why do you need two languages to build this, it really seems you can have one? You're designing them from scratch anyway specifically to build this OS, why not make one proper language? Linus Torvalds barely had one and he managed.

public key infrastructure, built on the Ethereum blockchain ("Azimuth"), for each Urbit instance to participate in a decentralized network; and the decentralized network itself, an encrypted, peer-to-peer protocol.

What are we doing here.

The 128-bit Urbit identity space consists of 256 "galaxies", 65,280 "stars" (255 for each galaxy), and 4,294,901,760 "planets" (65,535 for each star) and comets under those.

What does any of this mean. Is it also a metaverse attempt? What the fuck is a planet in a network dude, would you call 123.73.41.0 more of an asteroid or a planetoid?

And now for a shot:

In 2022, the main software in an Urbit installation was a "bare-bones" text-based message board.

And chaser:

Tlon, the company founded by Yarvin to build Urbit, has received seed funding from various investors since its inception, most notably Peter Thiel, whose Founders Fund, with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz invested $1.1 million.

So they built an artificially complex architecture, to the point where half of its description sounds made up, took the most complex kinds software engineering projects (a programming language and an OS), did them twice for good measure, slapped on a blockchain to be cool and hip I guess, for absolutely no fucking reason whatsoever. They didn't have a use-case that would warrant any of this engineering effort, all they wanted was a message board, a problem we have solved in the fucking 90s (? Maybe earlier?).

But it's good enough for the Lich King and Egg Boi to give them a million fucking dollars. God I hope at least they boughy some quality drugs with that money or else this was a giant waste of resources.

Conclusion: the Wikipedia article on Urbit is absolute garbage. I feel like I know less about what the fuck this thing is after I read it. Can anyone tell me why any of this? Why did they do this? Why do they need a custom OS? Who hurt them so bad they came up with such shitty names for everything? Would you nock a hoon or is that too vere?

EDIT: Bonus question, how is this pronounced? Instinctively I read the U as in "uranium", but the article writes "an Urbit", so it's a short U like in "full"?

[-] dgerard@awful.systems 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

lol i basically wrote that article

i'm sorry, i was describing something that is garbage

the short description is "lisp machines but networked, for nazis, and they don't fucking work"

i've always pronounced it ER-bit

[-] V0ldek@awful.systems 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

lol i basically wrote that article

Oops

To me it looked like someone wrote some babble about the architecture and then a Responsible Adult came in and added the thinly veiled sneers of "all they built is a text board, Yarvin is a certified idiot, none of this works"

I might read the primary source on this tomorrow if I hate myself hard enough, I am fascinated by why you need two languages and two OS things to run a nazi chatroom, sounds like some absolute pinnacle of human lack of thought

EDIT: I guess the actual concept might be so insane that there's no way to write an article about it that makes sense and doesn't use expletives

[-] CliftonR@wandering.shop 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

@V0ldek @dgerard

Yeah, there's a number of people here who actually met Yarvin before he

  1. became a complete asshole, you can not even imagine,
  2. became a proud fascist and *monarchist*, and
  3. lost his mind.

Many of us also have SW experience and have tried to look into Urbit and all came to the same conclusion - it all seems to be based on both giving stupid names to existing concepts, and blindly doing the opposite of whatever anybody has done before without regard to reason.

[-] CliftonR@wandering.shop 9 points 3 months ago

@V0ldek @dgerard

IIRC, a trivial but telling example of the latter is that for whatever reason, Yarvin decided that in all languages and code for all things Urbit, the boolean value true should be represented in binary form as 0, and false should be represented as non-zero.

Now it's fundamentally *arbitrary* whether 0 represents false or true, but deliberately making it the opposite of virtually every modern language implementation seems a perfect recipe for introducing unnecessary bugs.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 6 points 3 months ago

Bourne shell inspiring yet another language!

[-] CliftonR@wandering.shop 7 points 3 months ago

@bitofhope

Yeah, that was the only motivation I could think of. And even there it doesn't mean true/false, it means "no errors" and that only sometimes.

[-] cstross@wandering.shop 8 points 3 months ago

@CliftonR @V0ldek @dgerard No, Curtis was a weirdo as far back as the early-to-mid-90s when I knew him

[-] Orc@chaosfem.tw 7 points 3 months ago

@cstross @CliftonR @V0ldek @dgerard Weird, yes, but not (visibly) such a nasty royalist as he has become.

As I've said before, he's the worst t.b character arc ever.

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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
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