Thanks Dang! I've become interested in alternative forms of Internet due to the recent .Org/ICANN news. Is it okay that I post these (also posted gnunet)? I'm learning a lot from people's comments.

I don't see a problem. If things get repetitive people will start complaining, but in the meantime these posts have been upvoted out of interest.

Weird post. I am running my own Urbit, happily learning FP and network concepts along the way. I’m not even a programmer or an engineer, so it can’t be that obscurantist, and it certainly isn’t vaporware.

I’m very interested to know how an operating system can be racist.

It’s a purely functional operating system, and it’s pretty neat. It’s also open-source. The author’s naughty blog posts play absolutely nothing into this.

How exactly is this racist

It's certainly hidden behind a layer of indirection where you first have to peel off 'how exactly is this anything at all' - a tricky and futile enough proposition. It's like a LaRouche movement for computer nerds, if you bend over backwards to be nice about it.

So what do you get when you peel off the layer of indirection?

I am curious about how an operating system project can be this political, but i'm reluctant to dig into it myself, because any time spent learning about Urbit is clearly absolutely wasted. But if you've already done that work, could you share your findings?

I just did!

You've given us your conclusion, but not your findings.

I'm somewhat uncertain of the precise distinction but we should focus on what we appear to agree on - any time spent learning about Urbit is absolutely wasted and thus, it does not belong on HN.

Kind of ironic to complain about indirection while not actually answering my question. Can't say this response has done much to help me understand how it's racist.

The dude who came up with it is a racist. He named bits of his proposed OS after an obscure racist. It's a level of indirection, but not a very complicated one to traverse, at least, not for the racist part.

>He named bits of his proposed OS after an obscure racist.

Who and what bits? I don't understand why you're being so stingy with information lol

Are you aware that this project is inherently political? (not just because of the founder's odious and divisive beliefs, but because the project is modeled after them).

Does this not break the guidelines?

Many HN submissions have political overlap. That doesn't make them off topic here, as long as their intellectually interesting aspect is stronger than their politically inflammatory aspect. I think that's probably fair to say about this submission.

If you want more explanation, I've written a lot about this in the past, such as at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....