[hn_urbit_thr123]

100% urbit. The idea behind it (briefly: "personal server", an easy-to-use, no-frills place for an end-user to run server-side use cases like storing important files, hosting a blog, etc that's portable between cloud hosts and designed for long-term stability over performance) is a good one. Implementing it as a novel VM with built-in identity and crypto makes sense. It includes some genuinely hard/useful features, like exactly-once messaging between nodes. Kelvin versioning (counting down towards "done" rather than counting up as features are added) is a great idea for software that serves infrastructural purposes. Charging a one-time fee for cryptographic identities is an elegant way to make a de facto reputation network that disincentivizes malicious actors, and is also that rarest of beasts, a non-dumb reason to use a distributed ledger.

It had so much going for it, but it was DOA from launch for two reasons: first, the implementation is so bizarre that the kernel documentation is frequently mistaken for an elaborate joke, and second the founder's racist blog went viral at virtually the same time as the public launch. It's not technically failed I guess as it's still being developed and does work, but a network without a network effect can only go so far.

I honestly think the "personal server" idea would be incredibly useful, and it would also be very profitable (not the software itself, but for cloud providers) if every suburban family rented a $15/mo VPS. I post about it here from time to time in the hopes that someone will fork it or re-implement what is basically a great idea, but in a non-ridiculous way and without #cancelled taint of the founder. Bezos, if you're reading this, please put a small team on it just to see if it goes somewhere, I'll be your first customer.

[ForHackernews]

This is the first time anyone's ever explained Urbit in an even vaguely comprehensible way. It always seemed like a ridiculous, grandiose exercise in ideology-first development to me, similar to the eye-scanner crypto orb.

"Oh, a distributed platform for small scale server apps," sounds like a valuable but not earth-shattering idea.

[hn_urbit_thr123]

Like most platforms, it's valuable IFF a lot of people build on it. But the fact that I can make an on-topic, constructive and informative comment about it and still get downvoted tells you everything you need to know about how likely that is.

[ForHackernews]

I think tech people often forget how important the human component is. Nobody wants to build their sandcastle in your sandbox if you're too weird or too much of an asshole.

[the_common_man]

Have you tried something like cloudron or yunohost?

[hn_urbit_thr123]

Sorry if I was unclear, it's a hard thing to summarize, but the useful part of it is in being a platform for app development, not just the fact that it hosts stuff. "End user server-side apps" isn't really a thing that exists, because current server-side applications e.g. wordpress have to run on a variety of stacks, have to reinvent user authentication, etc. Another way to put it would be that urbit is a platform on which to run build server-side apps in the same sense that Android is a platform for client-side apps.

It does work tolerably well, people are building stuff on it, but I think it's too widely-hated to build a network effect. (Source: search for urbit on HN and click on literally any thread)