Urbit - Weird ass hierarchical distributed computing framework with aspects of cultishness. Some sort of combined bytecode vm and networked server process, that is only allowed to participate in the network if your access is blessed by someone further up the hierarchy. It is riddled with jargon, has its own languages nock (the bytecode) and hoon (a higher level) which use their own sorts of conventions and their own terms to talk about them. In a sort of scientology-ish kinda way, the jargon appears to be explicitly designed to separate the in-group from others.

The whole thing was originated by a man (Curtis Yarvin) with some very questionable political views, and even though he isn't directly involved in the project any more, he seems to have baked some of them into his design of the system.

It has been around for about 13 years and is one of those "we're going to change everything!" projects that never really gets off the ground, but has a tranche of true believers.

At this point it's probably something to be filed in the same sort of mental folder as TempleOS, though with less religion and more authoritarianism.

From a quick read, 'Plunder' appears to be an attempt to use similar ideas to make a slightly more functional system. As such I'd regard it as a little like FreeZone scientology - a splinter group who can see the issue with the church, but still believe in the fundamental model for whatever reason.

Also you need to buy a thing kinda like a domain name using Etherium? Or something? There was some noise on HN whenever Urbit did cryptocurrency things and had started an ICO or NFT sale of those things at the height of recent cryptocurrency moment.

It’s a system that’s explicitly designed to be really hard to understand and use. Why would that get adopted? How will that succeed?

The heavily layered jargon extracts a commitment from true believers and creates a boundary between those who “get it” and the rest of the world who hasn’t seen the light. It’s not so much a platform to use, but one to proselytize.

In this it’s closely related to Scientology and cryptocurrency. Urbit is a distributed computing platform in the same sense as Scientology is a mental health program, or Bitcoin is electronic peer-to-peer payments. Sure, there’s technically someone using it for that, but for most people the value is in the social belief system.

I signed up when it was new. It used to be you got a 'ship' which was a 12 char string that was essentially your IP/DNS/identity. Then later they changed it to 'planets' and you had to re-register again.

Then they moved it all to Ethereum in 2018 but I had stopped giving a shit so I don't know what happened after that.

I should also note they did an auction of address space prior to Ethereum, seemed like they were trying to get in on the crypto grifts. It's all completely incomprehensible to me even though I used it for a good year or so lol

They ironically ended up moving off Ethereum with their L2 bundler, at least in the eyes of users, since it was too expensive and too slow lol.

I think you are spot on the money with your assessment. Describing his political views as questionable is putting it lightly. I read through some of his writings many years back when trying to understand the neoreactionary movement. His essays are largely creative writing exercises, which typically meander about the subject at hand. Some of that may have been to deflect criticism for his actual views. Eventually, he said the quiet part out loud:

> It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff.

His projects should probably be viewed through the lens of what he is trying to accomplish more generally.

Providing context is helpful, but putting lens on reader isn't IMO. Should ReiserFS always be viewed through the lens of it's creator's crime?

1. It probably always will be

2. AFAICT some of Yarvin’s ideology, particularly Neo-feudalism, is explicitly baked into Urbit’s design.

> Should ReiserFS always be viewed through the lens of it's creator's crime?

The Linux community has broadly decided that the answer to that question is yes. No corporate Linuxes would touch it any more, and it is even scheduled for removal from the kernel.

Without the context of his writings, Urbit does not make any sense at all. It's wholly impractical technology to anyone outside of his segregationist cult.

My (relatively unbiased and informed) summary of what urbit is from the last time it came up is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124343

As someone who thinks urbit would solve an important use case but is too hopelessly weighed down by the stench of its founder to go anywhere, a good fork seems is a reason for optimism, so best of luck Plunder team!

Look, it's not complicated. You just reconfabulate the ankh every time a toot re-frazzles. Then after that, the version version re-increments every time you re-orchestrate.

If you can't get this, I don't see how you're even here on HN, honestly.

They’re trying to make a frozen computer spec that will run any program written at any time on any spec compliant implementation of the computer. The programs, state, and user data are all the same thing (like how the Catholic god is “father, son, and Holy Ghost” in one) and is just a big string of bytecode and natural numbers. The computer applies a function to the state over and over again, saving the result.

Urbit: Networked Lisp machines, gratuitously obfuscated, marketed to neoreactionaries.