Moldbug's Urbit.
Mencius Moldbug's Urbit system appears to be public! Take the time to read his introductory materials - you will not regret it. Any regular reader of this site will probably take some interest in Urbit.
While I disagree with many of Moldbug's fundamental design decisions, I believe that his is the first modern ab initio redesign of computing which has made it even as far as the "rigged demo" stage. Let's congratulate him, and learn from his work! All of which, I should note, he generously placed in the public domain.
Mr. Moldbug will be giving a public demo of his work in San Francisco, on Sept. 25. If any of my readers are able to attend, I would enjoy hearing their impressions.
I wish I could follow this conversation more closely, but I'm not competent in the field and it would take ages to get me anywhere close. There are many times I've wished I'd stayed somewhere in STEM. Oh well, words make a good living.
Would you be willing and able to translate the "why" of Urbit to us lower orders?
Dear Handle,
You might find some answers in Moldbug's talk.
Yours,
-Stanislav
So internet died and also bitcoin shall die: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ca/2013/01/how-bitcoin-dies.html
Are we all dead also, lol? Is this fantasy?
Dear Vexare,
Regardless of whether it was originally built for this purpose, Bitcoin (like TOR) makes a mighty fine honeypot for trapping careless, unimaginative, or merely dumb troublemakers of all stripes.
But if you aren't careless, unimaginative, or dumb - or perhaps you aren't a troublemaker - Bitcoin is potentially fun and useful.
At this point - barring a 'Great Firewall of China' scenario - the protocol lives, but in principle trading BTC for USD could still be made rather difficult by your friendly local police state. As for why this has not yet happened, consider the honeypot hypothesis.
What better way to tempt sinners than to help them imagine themselves 'anonymous' without any serious effort on their part?
Yours,
-Stanislav
Wait a sec, so it's confirmed that Mr. Curtis Yarvin is the same man as the political writer Mencius Moldbug? That's unreal. I am impressed.
I am having a difficult time buying Mr. Curtis Yarvin's defense for why Hoon must be an obfuscated, APL-like language instead of just having something like Scheme. What do you think of this Stan?
Dear Dennis,
Moldbug/CY dropped very clear clues regarding his identity long ago.
Hoon isn't the least bit obfuscated; but Moldbug is a believer in the Larry Wall school of language design (use, re-use, and abuse every little squiggle on the keyboard before resorting to keywords.)
Yours,
-Stanislav
I got my destroyers, now I'm trying to learn Hoon. I wish Mr. Yarvin would issue a tutorial so I could Learn Me a Hoon. I'm not really sure why he thinks that the language should be really useful for C programmers, while also being totally mysterious about how it actually works...
Dear Dave,
Real documentation is slowly appearing. Give it time.
Personally, I'm not a vigorous fan of the Urbit design. I even tried to talk some sense into CY back in 2010 - to no avail.
But I do have some grudging respect for a fellow OS crackpot who actually makes it to the finish line.
Yours,
-Stanislav
# I believe that his is the first modern ab initio redesign of computing
Whoa, not so fast partner. Where do you get this idea from? That this Urbit crap even qualifies as a redesign of computing AT ALL, let alone from scratch?
Mind you, I've only read about two pages' worth of that crap. Because it is tedious and excruciating. But what I've read is vacuous, pretentious, tedious and other -ious.
It was all some crap about how you have CONS cells like in LISP or you have integers like in Smalltalk. And I couldn't help but stop right there and ask where you get the idea that any of this shit is new?
And another thing ... Mencius Moldbug. That name sounded awfully familiar. And the pretentious fucking tripe he was writing, just the PRETENSE and TONE of it sounded awfully familiar.
And that's because it is. http://www.moreright.net/neoreactionary-glossary/
He's a fucking Nazi wannabe. He's a fucking ARISTOCRAT. Why do you waste your time on the writings of someone who is provably mentally retarded?
Do you seriously believe that any kind of worthwhile innovation, idea or product can be developed by someone too mentally retarded to be able to weigh costs against benefits? Someone incapable of thinking in terms of principles or ideas? Someone who looks to the past for inspiration? Someone who consistently tries to have his cake and eat it too? Because they're too stupid to detect the logical contradiction?
You're not just wasting your own time. You're wasting the time of everyone you recommend that pretentious worthless trash to. 😐
It might be appreciated if you gave arguments, rather than pointing and sputtering.
[...] [...]