V0ldek

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

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"?

people who want to get out have a very liquid way to get out, but they all need to squeeze through the same small hole.

liquid (...) but they all need to squeeze through the same small hole.

isn't that a literal description of illiquid?

FAANG came about because of “unexpected growth” in how those could “surprisingly” capture money

I don't know the origin, but I came to know the term itself from my time as a freshman Computer Science student, where "working at FAANG" was to be the highest career thing you could aspire to.

It was always extremely confusing, cause like, Amazon, Apple, Google - I get those, they actually have things they work on, I'm sure working on AWS or like the internals of Google Search has to be interesting for a CS person, but fucking Facebook? The fuck does Facebook do? What unsolved technical challenges lie in a message board? Same goes for Netflix.

as of all the various media providers like Netflix, netflix is often not considered that highly from what I can tell.

Well, it should not be considered that highly, but for some god damn reason they occupy a letter in FAANG since forever.

Probably only because if you remove the N the acronym stops being that cute.

lul

emojis are stupid

Really curious on what grounds, like is the entire idea of a pictogram stupid?

👤💰 ?

Kinda checks out? 2022 is around the time it became clear the admin was clueless about what makes SO actually a valuable research, and then genAI was the perfect spark to go full rot.

Joel's no longer associated with SO, though, right? He's not even a chairman at this point.

The fall from grace of StackOverflow is something both mesmerising and horrifying.

An invaluable repository of programming knowledge ground into dust as the last tokens of good will are cashed in for stinky money. It was a unique place, where self-moderation by the community actually worked to a large extent.

How the fuck did we get here? First the AI debacle, now this. Joel Spolsky always appeared as a reasonable guy, I wonder how much him stepping down is intertwined with SO making some of the worst possible calls in the past few years.

searches for who tf this is

Wikipedia:

Lol, this is the most passive-aggressive way of saying "known for absolutely nothing of value to anyone or anything" I've seen.