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Antivehicular posted:Oh, hey, since we're back to Moldbug and CS, a question I meant to ask a while ago: what does Urbit even do? Not even "what does it theoretically do better than its competitors," just -- what does it do? If I were a dewy-eyed young DE wonk hungry to be the captain of my Urbit-boat, what would I use it for? Their about page is actually understandable. I'm surprised. https://urbit.org/posts/overview tl;dr it's a local cache of data from web services that's also tied to a p2p general purpose computer network that can host other services (intended to replace proprietary cloud services) built on top of a custom operating system that is backed by mathematics wankery and constructed by insane idealists. McGlockenshire has a new favorite as of 21:16 on Aug 9, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 21:11
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Lottery of Babylon posted:It is undoubtedly a case of chronic mendacity combined with terminal malice brought upon by a lifestyle of extreme witchcraft. I'm still mad that Extreme Witchcraft hasn't been approved as an Olympic event yet.
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Aug 9, 2016 21:16
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McGlockenshire posted:The only thing worse than libertarian software developers are those that preach for a meritocracy. Judging by merits is a fine idea on paper, but once you end up inviting Moldbug to a conference, you've lost all credibility. I only found this out recently, but when the word "meritocracy" was coined in the sixties it was actually a dystopian concept- the person who came up with it was arguing against rule by an intellectual elite.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:17
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McGlockenshire posted:Their about page is actually understandable. I'm surprised. ... Which apparently works exclusively through UDP. Hope you don't mind packet loss! For those who don't know, UDP is the "throw all the data down the fuckin' pipe and forget about it" protocol, and it's how streaming services work. They're built specifically to be able to survive the loss of some data in transit. Most of the internet works on the slightly slower but infinitely more secure "let me know if anything got lost in transit and I'll resend it" protocol of TCP/IP.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:20
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More simply it's just a machine designed so he can more easily find what anime porn he jacked it to the night before.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:28
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Urbit is essentially a machine that runs on idiotic combinations of buzzwords (for example, it uses "non-lambda combinators"; either you don't know what those two words mean and you're rolling your eyes, or you do know what they mean, and you're also rolling your eyes.) It's that special sort of Dark Enlightenment "I'm going to put two contradictory things next to each other and now you're MIND HACKED!" bullshit in mathematical form.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:35
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It exists to provide a model for how the internet can be run as a system of fiefs in a vassal-lord hierarchy. Like, seriously, that's the point.
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Aug 9, 2016 22:47
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Antivehicular posted:Oh, hey, since we're back to Moldbug and CS, a question I meant to ask a while ago: what does Urbit even do? Not even "what does it theoretically do better than its competitors," just -- what does it do? If I were a dewy-eyed young DE wonk hungry to be the captain of my Urbit-boat, what would I use it for? The important thing to understand is that the purpose of Urbit is orthogonal to what it actually does. Programming languages and environments are measured in a number of ways, but one good way is how much power they give their users. You can do anything you want with assembly, if you're clever enough, but nobody does that now. On Google's App Engine, the user has the power to scale to thousands of machines without thinking about it, and do distributed storage and computation for free. In Visual Studio you get autocompletion that borders on sentience, it basically writes the boilerplate for you, allowing you to focus on writing the good and clever parts. Python gives you insane levels of introspection available programmatically. On AWS you get a database system which scales relational databases well beyond where a normal person should be using them. Java gives you reflection and a clear inheritance model. Any tool a programmer can use should be measured by what it allows the programmer to do which would otherwise be hard. In that context, urbit is not useful. What it actually does, basically, is be a lovely virtual machine that runs a lovely operating system which can only run code written in a lovely programming language. It is not useful. It is about as hard to write code for urbit and use it as a platform as it is to write assembly directly, with the downside that all programmers are at least vaguely familiar with assembly, and no one is familiar with the urbit architecture. The idea that it has, though, the purpose of it, is to extend the idea of property rights onto the internet. You can own space in Urbit land the way you can own land in the real world. That doesn't correspond to real, meaningful economic activity or even any real value at all, but it appeals somewhat to the same people who like bitcoin. It's scarcity on the internet, where normally everything is infinitely reproducible.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:20
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McGlockenshire posted:The only thing worse than libertarian software developers are those that preach for a meritocracy. Judging by merits is a fine idea on paper, but once you end up inviting Moldbug to a conference, you've lost all credibility. LibreOffice used the word "meritocracy" a lot early on, but they were referring specifically to Sun and Oracle's "not invented here" and "not even if you sign the rights over to us" policy on contributions. They have stopped using the word though, because they are actually generally a nice bunch and understand that connotations can change quickly. Antivehicular posted:Oh, hey, since we're back to Moldbug and CS, a question I meant to ask a while ago: what does Urbit even do? Not even "what does it theoretically do better than its competitors," just -- what does it do? If I were a dewy-eyed young DE wonk hungry to be the captain of my Urbit-boat, what would I use it for? * It supplies a job for some coders who are more connected to consensus reality than Yarvin while Thiel's money lasts. * It supplies a rallying point for reactionaries who neither understand nor care about how it works to throw money around to support. * It provides unlimited lulz for anyone who knows anything about how computers and the engineering thereof actually work, not just functional programming geeks.
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Aug 9, 2016 23:33
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What kind of "space" does it let you own? Bandwidth, server space, some insane block chain thing?
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Aug 9, 2016 23:36
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Strom Cuzewon posted:What kind of "space" does it let you own? Bandwidth, server space, some insane block chain thing? I keep trying to find ways to translate what I remember of its bullshit ornate jargon and this is probably still not sufficient but: the basic unit is something like an account. In this system, there are a limited (but very, very large) number of accounts available. Each account is tied to an owner. All internet users must have an account to access the internet. These accounts function like property in that they can be transferred and sold. But this is looking at it from just the end-user perspective. See, not all accounts are created equally. Some operate like ISPs in that they create/authorize accounts. Now, there is room for a large number of functionally free accounts not granted by anyone, but with a hierarchy of value in accounts, these are not actually the most useful things in the world. Being tied to a higher-level account which chartered yours (for a price) gives it a degree of control over you, in that it can boot your account from accessing the internet through it. From there, you could theoretically join up with another ISP-like-account. This is like being evicted and seeking a new apartment I guess? Functionally, the effectively-free accounts are like sleeping in your car. Polite society will look down on you, many doors will be closed to you, etc. Actually using the internet requires that some higher-level account "authorizes" you. Oh yeah, and these ISP-like accounts are arranged in a hierarchy according to how many accounts they can charter, such that a few top-tier accounts can act as rent-seeking leeches on the chartering of most end-user accounts be demanding a cut of the lower-level accounts' business. Like I said, e-feudalism. eta: Earlier in the thread I had extracted some of the more relevant bits explaining the point. quote:Furthermore, there’s a clue here that the Bitcoin approach just isn’t getting. The limited subspace of short names, within the general space of 128-bit names, is essentially real estate. There is absolutely no reason, moral or practical, to give this real estate away for free to people whose only contribution is generating CO2 on their GPUs. Mining is not in any way a productive activity. quote:In Urbit’s naval terminology, ships above 64 bits are “submarines.” 64-bit ships are “yachts.” 32-bit, “destroyers.” 16-bit, “cruisers.” 8-bit, “carriers.” This also resembles a feudal hierarchy, so it comes with a feudal terminology. There are 256 imperial carriers, 65.280 royal cruisers, 4.294.901.760 rebel destroyers, uncounted scads of private yachts, and more or less infinitely many rogue submarines. quote:What’s neat about short names is that there’s a finite number of them. This is not a bug, but a feature. Essentially, to borrow the thinking of political scientist James Scott, a finite space is governable. An infinite space is ungovernable. GunnerJ has a new favorite as of 00:09 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 9, 2016 23:53
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So without a sovereign entity (one might even say a king  ) dismantling our current telecommunications system by force and making everyone use this one, how the hell would they get anyone to use it?And that's leaving aside the fact that if NRx King imposed this system it would cut off the country in question from the the internet the rest of the world are perfectly happy using, but they probably see that as a feature to keep out degenerate foreign influences.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:09
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Woolie Wool posted:So without a sovereign entity (one might even say a king Seemingly, so far, it's based on the incentive of a chance to virtue-signal one's allegiance to NRx ideology.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:14
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Tesseraction posted:More simply it's just a machine designed so he can more easily find what anime porn he jacked it to the night before. This is good for Urbit
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Aug 10, 2016 01:10
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GunnerJ posted:Seemingly, so far, it's based on the incentive of a chance to virtue-signal one's allegiance to NRx ideology. It seems to me that the forced hierarchy is antithetical to the philosophy of the GNU types that would otherwise make up a bunch of the target audience. Who the hell are his investors and what do they think they're getting out of it?
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Aug 10, 2016 01:12
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Somfin posted:... Which apparently works exclusively through UDP. Hope you don't mind packet loss! But then again, that's the product of competent people with realistic goals.
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Aug 10, 2016 01:35
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McGlockenshire posted:It seems to me that the forced hierarchy is antithetical to the philosophy of the GNU types that would otherwise make up a bunch of the target audience. Peter Thiel's desperate desire to rule the world (and eventually the Universe) as an immortal CEO-king is basically 90% of the driving force behind every stupid thing in this thread.
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Aug 10, 2016 06:25
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Parallel Paraplegic posted:but what if maybe games r art Hell, what if games are culture? The most controversial opinion.
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Aug 10, 2016 07:58
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Fututor Magnus posted:Hell, what if games are culture? The most controversial opinion. What if games can handle literary criticism just as well as films?
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Aug 10, 2016 08:06
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Somfin posted:What if games can handle literary criticism just as well as films? Bad because then I am literally forced to think about the media I consume.
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Aug 10, 2016 08:12
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I'm also into 'story doesn't matter, gameplay is what matters, repeat everything Tim Rogers wrote about game design ('most game writers have only read one book, LOTR',) but I'm not sure that puts me on the side of GamerGate scum. I have that view because I'm a liberal arts major. GG are more likely to take whatever bullshit story the game has ('Quiet breathes through her skin', everything about Far Cry 3) and treat it as reality instead of a thin skin around gameplay. Taking into account the superfluous nature of game stories and their unimportance in the process is actually taking games more seriously.
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Aug 10, 2016 08:52
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You can share certain opinions with [Internet Community Here] and still not be dragged kicking and screaming into their inky abyss. Like, it's really weird how quickly people are to say they're not actually a part of those people just because interests happen to align on a few things. Is common ground really that terrifying?
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Aug 10, 2016 09:14
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poptart_fairy posted:You can share certain opinions with [Internet Community Here] and still not be dragged kicking and screaming into their inky abyss. With shitheads and assholes? Yes.
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Aug 10, 2016 09:17
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Unless you're sharing the opinions that are shitheady and assholish, what's the problem?
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Aug 10, 2016 09:25
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poptart_fairy posted:Unless you're sharing the opinions that are shitheady and assholish, what's the problem? Is there something you'd like to make clear, PF? Or are you just gonna keep tiptoeing around the real issue?
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Aug 10, 2016 09:34
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I thought it was clear? I find the defensiveness over potentially sharing opinions with the wrong people kind of odd. I know it's PYF's gimmick to make literally everything about Gamergate, but in this case it applies to a lot of stuff on the forums. If a person dislikes Ghostbusters 2016 they have to clarify they're not an MRA, if they take issue with certain elements of a computer game they devote time to pointing out how they're not an SJW, etc etc. It seems to be recurring thing and I find it pretty self-fulfilling in a lot of cases; nobody would have made the connection if that person hadn't felt the need to bring it up themselves.
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Aug 10, 2016 09:47
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poptart_fairy posted:I thought it was clear? I find the defensiveness over potentially sharing opinions with the wrong people kind of odd. I know it's PYF's gimmick to make literally everything about Gamergate, but in this case it applies to a lot of stuff on the forums. If a person dislikes Ghostbusters 2016 they have to clarify they're not an MRA, if they take issue with certain elements of a computer game they devote time to pointing out how they're not an SJW, etc etc. It seems to be recurring thing and I find it pretty self-fulfilling in a lot of cases; nobody would have made the connection if that person hadn't felt the need to bring it up themselves. I wonder if this happened before the modern day. The earliest example I can think of is Tolkien being titanically, Hitler-beheadingly furious that the loving Krauts were making GBS threads up his life's study.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:23
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You know I've never heard anything specific about Tolkein's racism, just that he was generically Old Man Racist. I guess not having any pets called Niggerman lessened the focus he gets.  Avenging_Mikon posted:I wasn't talking about gamergate but in general. Do you really not see why people wouldn't want to be accidentally or tangentially associated with groups of people they find abhorrent? It's like Star Trek and pedophiles. Liking Star Trek doesn't make you a pedo but a lot of pedos like Star Trek. So if you like Star Trek, and your group has talked about pedophiles recently, you might be gunshy to say "I like Star Trek " without the disclaimer. Yes I know you were talking in general, goof, I was just commenting on PYF in general as well. I posted about Ken Levine and suddenly had someone shrieking I was an alt right gamergater.  But I dunno man, to me it'd be like saying you like Star Trek and then quickly - without prompting - saying how you're totally not a pedophile, unlike those other fans. It strikes me as a kinda weird thing to bring up unprovoked.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:29
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poptart_fairy posted:I thought it was clear? I find the defensiveness over potentially sharing opinions with the wrong people kind of odd. I know it's PYF's gimmick to make literally everything about Gamergate, but in this case it applies to a lot of stuff on the forums. If a person dislikes Ghostbusters 2016 they have to clarify they're not an MRA, if they take issue with certain elements of a computer game they devote time to pointing out how they're not an SJW, etc etc. It seems to be recurring thing and I find it pretty self-fulfilling in a lot of cases; nobody would have made the connection if that person hadn't felt the need to bring it up themselves. I wasn't talking about gamergate but in general. Do you really not see why people wouldn't want to be accidentally or tangentially associated with groups of people they find abhorrent? It's like Star Trek and pedophiles. Liking Star Trek doesn't make you a pedo but a lot of pedos like Star Trek. So if you like Star Trek, and your group has talked about pedophiles recently, you might be gunshy to say "I like Star Trek " without the disclaimer. To bring that to SA, there's always talk of GG, MRAs, SJWs, et al somewhere on the board.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:29
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poptart_fairy posted:You know I've never heard anything specific about Tolkein's racism, just that he was generically Old Man Racist. I guess not having any pets called Niggerman lessened the focus he gets. He wasn't saying that Tolkien was racist. He's saying that Tolkien was upset that his passion, study of ancient European languages/peoples/mythology, was being used by literal Nazis.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:34
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Ah, that makes a little more sense then. Saw "loving Krauts" and assumed Tolkein had something against the germans. Which, uh, wouldn't be too surprising now that I think about it.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:35
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He didn't care for the Nazis. Like, at all.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:44
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Tolkein could be a little racist, but it was a mild racism that he wasn't terribly comfortable with rather than Howard or Lovecraft's howling fanaticism, and to counterbalance it, he was known to write stuff like this.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:49
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People often consider him racist because the portrayal of the orcs in general and especially the Uruk-Hai could be likened to tribal Africans. I don't think there's much to the claim but I've never really cared enough about proving if a dead man was racist or not. Generally I'm more interested in his love of linguistics and languages.
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Aug 10, 2016 10:58
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Terrible Opinions posted:He wasn't saying that Tolkien was racist. He's saying that Tolkien was upset that his passion, study of ancient European languages/peoples/mythology, was being used by literal Nazis.
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Aug 10, 2016 11:07
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/09/why-did-fox-news-welcome-date-rape-apologist-mike-cernovich.html?via=twitter_page https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/763048812415823872 https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/234452349790322690 https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/695757135578181632 https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/751532050876805120 poptart_fairy posted:You can share certain opinions with [Internet Community Here] and still not be dragged kicking and screaming into their inky abyss. poptart_fairy posted:Unless you're sharing the opinions that are shitheady and assholish, what's the problem? poptart_fairy posted:I find the defensiveness over potentially sharing opinions with the wrong people kind of odd. The better litmus test were the people who instantly went, "SLAVERY WAS LIKE A BILLION YEARS AGO, GAWD!" when he explicitly and categorically demolished that argument in that piece. Assepoester has a new favorite as of 12:52 on Aug 10, 2016 |
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Aug 10, 2016 12:50
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Somfin posted:What if games can handle literary criticism just as well as films? Either I've been living on a different planet or filmmakers don't take criticism well at all, to the point that they make their fans whine like little assholes for them
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Aug 10, 2016 13:02
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poptart_fairy posted:You know I've never heard anything specific about Tolkein's racism, just that he was generically Old Man Racist. I guess not having any pets called Niggerman lessened the focus he gets. He was mostly "oblivious white dude in the 30s" racist. The orcs are the big example, but the other one is the dwarves. He explicitly said he based them on Jews: a strong and hard-working people stripped of their homeland and dreaming of its return, etc. And then he was worried about making them flawless and said "hmm, what might be a stereotypical Jewish flaw to give them" and made them greedy as hell, to the point where the "losing their homeland" thing was a direct result of it. Twerkteam Pizza posted:Either I've been living on a different planet or filmmakers don't take criticism well at all, to the point that they make their fans whine like little assholes for them It varies wildly from filmmaker to filmmaker. You have outliers who want to beat up their critics like Uwe Boll, or turn their responses into a kind of performance art like Harmony Korine. The ones that gather fans to defend their film-honor are usually the ones doing nerd stuff. The majority of filmmakers, especially the better / more interesting directors, don't really engage with the kinds of criticism you're talking about. But nobody talks about the people who don't respond, so they get ignored. And Somfin was referring to "literary criticism," which is a hugely different thing than "reviews." If you actually tried to do literary criticism on a major release game, the people who made it would just look at you like you were a weird alien. Kojima excluded probably.
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Aug 10, 2016 13:42
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Tesseraction posted:People often consider him racist because the portrayal of the orcs in general and especially the Uruk-Hai could be likened to tribal Africans. I don't think there's much to the claim but I've never really cared enough about proving if a dead man was racist or not. Generally I'm more interested in his love of linguistics and languages. There's occasional dodgy imagery with the Easterlings and the Orcs, but it never felt deliberate to me - there's the bit where Sam finds the dead Easterling ""It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."
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Aug 10, 2016 13:45
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Twerkteam Pizza posted:Either I've been living on a different planet or filmmakers don't take criticism well at all, to the point that they make their fans whine like little assholes for them You're confusing literary criticism with just criticism
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