The Urbit Thread - Why you shuold use Urbit, and so should your mom

[Overly Serious]

That's a desperate rationalization. It's not like MS Windows being proprietary keeps it from being used by ransom ware. Paying for a walled garden just means your paying and you're blocked in by walls. In this garden your safety is not guaranteed and some learn that the hard way.

The software isn't paid. The membership is. You're confusing the two.

 

[Shoggoth]

The software isn't paid. The membership is. You're confusing the two.

This has more in common with paying for OSS support than for proprietary software.
You're not even paying for membership. You can be a comet for free. What you're paying for is the baseline level of trust among other members and for a verifiable identity and communication.
They're also working on reducing the cost of gas back to normal levels so planets will be reasonable again.
It makes no sense to complain about it. All of us have paid more for less.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

That's if you happen to know. Other than the horrorshow that is hoon, this all looks pretty nice. It's certainly a good idea.

Take it back hoon is beautifully psychotic

Also is there a way to mess around with hoon without having to set up urbit? Like a godbolt for hoon or something of the like

 

[Green Banana]

Take it back hoon is beautifully psychotic
View attachment 2280111


Also is there a way to mess around with hoon without having to set up urbit? Like a godbolt for hoon or something of the like

you've gotta run a fakezod

urbit -F zod

, since the urbit binary is the nock VM. Just think of it as a smalltalk image: you can also set it up as a language server for your text editor

 

[Shoggoth]

you've gotta run a fakezod

urbit -F zod

, since the urbit binary is the nock VM. Just think of it as a smalltalk image: you can also set it up as a language server for your text editor

Not even a Zod, you can just a comet, doesn't really matter.

 

[Shoggoth]

Some Urbit memes for your. I really like the MEMRI ones

 

[Overly Serious]

Some Urbit memes for your. I really like the MEMRI ones
View attachment 2290143View attachment 2290145View attachment 2290148View attachment 2290150View attachment 2290159View attachment 2290160View attachment 2290161View attachment 2290162View attachment 2290166View attachment 2290167

Great. Now do some funny ones.

 

[Shoggoth]

Great. Now do some funny ones.

I find the MEMRI ones hilarious. Maybe you need to be calmer to enjoy them?

 

[419]

I find the MEMRI ones hilarious. Maybe you need to be calmer to enjoy them?

"Sensible chuckle" at best. I quite liked the Democratic Club one, though.

 

[for]

Just host shit on Tor/I2P, like a normal person.

Yeah every normal person I know hosts on TOR/12P

I have been giving urbit a test run with a comet using the app "Port". Easy as to jump on and give it a go. Seems pretty comfy and everyone on there is pretty friendly. A friend of mine is using TLON's hosting and he said it was completely painless to onboard which I would expect for a paid hosting service. Anyone here willing to share their @p?

 

[Shoggoth]

Anyone here willing to share their @p?

Nah, not before I have a collection of planets, that would pretty much burn one of them.
Otherwise I'm glad to hear you're having a good experience with it.
I'm not sure most users even need paid hosting, you can run your ship and minio on a RPi. Tlon offers DNS resolution for ships, so you'll just be able to serve your own ship from your home wherever you are.

 

[for]

Nah, not before I have a collection of planets, that would pretty much burn one of them.
Otherwise I'm glad to hear you're having a good experience with it.
I'm not sure most users even need paid hosting, you can run your ship and minio on a RPi. Tlon offers DNS resolution for ships, so you'll just be able to serve your own ship from your home wherever you are.

Any decent guides for doing this?

 

[Shoggoth]

Any decent guides for doing this?

The getting started guide is pretty good.
Besides: https://botter-nidnul.github.io/Steps_to_Urbit_on_Raspberry_Pi.html
This dude also wrote a ton of guides, just got a big award for his work: https://subject.network/

 

[Right To Bear Blarms]

The technology sounds neat but what do you do on it?
Is it a chat thing or are people paying $300 for a planet to have access to a weather app?

 

[Shoggoth]

The technology sounds neat but what do you do on it?
Is it a chat thing or are people paying $300 for a planet to have access to a weather app?

There are three aspects to it: what's available now, what's coming-soon and what's in the far future.
Currently you have:

• Chat application
• Publishing application (like blogs)
• Index application (think like HN, you just share a link to something)
• Bitcoin wallet
• Bit more "hidden" applications:
  • Chess
  • Torrent tracker
  • Urtweet

Currently, a planet costs 0.025 ETH, or you can be nice to someone and they'll just give it to you, but it's not that expensive.

One of the important aspects planned for the future is app distribution over Urbit itself, i.e. some sort of app store. When it becomes convenient to anyone to distribute their code using Urbit as a platform you can expect an explosion of services. Mobile app should be coming soon. Already has a shiny desktop client.

In the far future I have no idea what to expect. It's only limited by what people will come up with

The important bit to remember about all this is you're self hosting all of it. You're not someone's client, you can't be banned, only you can lose your data.

Why get on the network now, instead of later or ever?
First, to talk to Spandrell if you wan to.
Second, there are interesting people doing interesting things there. Usually more technically competent and not big on obeying the Global American Empire. The network is small enough that it's easy to reach and communicate some of the more competent individuals, at the moment. You have investors, entrepreneurs, all sorts of go-getters. Why not make connections with competent people outside the watchful eye of HR?
Third, there's always the option Urbit gets big and incredibly successful. There are advantages to getting on early. Decide if they're worth it

 

[Overly Serious]

So I finally found time to have a bit more of a read-up on Urbit, Hoon and it's various parts and what a "vane" is, and so forth.

I don't know how, but it hadn't quite sunk in that this is designed as a literal Operating System. I was still thinking of it as more of a protocol. I have to actually run it up and play around with it more but it's substantially more complex than I'd expected.

I still greatly like the idea of (a) self-hosting / owning your own content and (b) a small cost to participate which reduces bots and scammers. But I'm not quite sure how you'd build a popular network on this for the non-technical crowd.

 

[Shoggoth]

So I finally found time to have a bit more of a read-up on Urbit, Hoon and it's various parts and what a "vane" is, and so forth.

I don't know how, but it hadn't quite sunk in that this is designed as a literal Operating System. I was still thinking of it as more of a protocol. I have to actually run it up and play around with it more but it's substantially more complex than I'd expected.

I still greatly like the idea of (a) self-hosting / owning your own content and (b) a small cost to participate which reduces bots and scammers. But I'm not quite sure how you'd build a popular network on this for the non-technical crowd.

Maybe I didn't clarify that, "Urbit is a clean slate OS for the 21st century". It does everything. God help it.
How you'd build a non technical network? Alternatively, what are the barriers?
In short:
desktop client working on windows (already works on mac and linux)
UrbitLFS or basic minio integration ootb
First activation is annoying because boomers can't into ethereum and it's expensive now.
All those things are being worked on.

There's fucking Urtweet now.
You should also look at the grants page to get a feel of what people are working on.
Specifically, there's a lot of work being done at the moment on messaging and making it more accessible.
It's going to be an amazing year.

 

[ant0n]

Urbit has twitter, imageboards, and other apps native now. They are speed running the internet. Its beautiful to see.

 

[for]

I listened to Curtis Yarvin's interview on Tim Dillon's podcast the other day. I found it interesting that he was encouraging people to stay off Urbit. I am not up to date on him or the Urbit community so I have no idea if he's doing that just to protect the quality of Urbit (like he fawns over UseNet) or if he genuinely thinks it's gay and lame

 

[TheSkoomer]

Urbit has twitter, imageboards, and other apps native now.

So does Tor, but with anonymity, and for free.

I have no idea if he's doing that just to protect the quality of Urbit (like he fawns over UseNet) or if he genuinely thinks it's gay and lame

It wants to be Tor, but with no anonymity (doesn't enforce multiple hops to anonymize user IP addresses) and you have to (((pay))) to use it. So I'm assuming the latter.