Urbit: a personal cloud computer - <AUTHOR> http://doc.urbit.org/ <comment><USER3> I read partway through and began to worry that maybe old age has finally caught up to me at 25.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of the story of Project Xanadu? (A great read[1], if you have an hour to spare.)

Especially this part: > Shapiro also discovered that the group had been working together so long it had developed a kind of private slang. It took months to comprehend what the programmers were talking about. Most of them were book lovers and trivia mongers who enjoyed developing a metaphor based on obscure sources and extending it via even more unlikely combinations. For instance, the object in the Xanadu system that resembled a file was called a bert, after Bertrand Russell. With files called bert, there had to be something called an ernie, and so in the Xanadu publishing system, an ernie was the unit of information for which users would be billed. To understand the details of Xanadu, Shapiro had to learn not only the names for things, but also the history of how those names had come to be.

[1] [http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu_pr.html)

<comment><USER5> I resemble this remark. We're making progress more than twice as fast than Xanadu!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's probably the second time that I come across Urbit and found it attention worthy, but... _how hard would it be to explain at least some of the concepts in plain English and with some nice intuitive drawings /schemas on the side, really?_

I mean, this [http://doc.urbit.org/doc/hoon/tut/1/](http://doc.urbit.org/doc/hoon/tut/1/) is supposed to be a "tutorial" but it's definitely not what anyone else would call a "tutorial". It's more like a "philosophical introduction" to a PhD paper, which would be ok if labeled as such. A tutorial should be about "how do I do X using Y, without bothering to really understand Y" because this is what a tutorial is about, a "mostly wrong" "mental shortcut" that you take in order to gain some kind of "feel for how something works" before actually delving deeper and reading up on the theory.

<comment><USER7> This is solid and thoughtful feedback. Thanks.

Our documentation has advanced since this was posted. I'd be interested to talk more out of band, but can't find your email. If you're up for it I'm galen at tlon.io.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't say we were expecting this, but it's nice to see that people are still interested in what we're working on. Thanks!

What we're brewing in the lab has diverged quite a bit from what's publicly available. Even these docs are quite out of date.

If you're interested in keeping up with what we're doing: either sign up at [http://urbit.org](http://urbit.org) or send me an email, galen at tlon.io.

<comment><USER8> From the article:

"It's definitely air travel. It's not exactly flying."

This phrase has an Alan Kay-ish quality, and was enough to pique my interest. Anyone seriously trying to execute on a project that addresses this concern seems worth following. Who knows, you might even succeed :)

<comment><USER9> i thought that was interesting too.

i find it an interesting exercise to explain to non-technical folks that i have several virtual computers running in the cloud. .. looks on their faces says it all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't decide if it's a science fiction novel written in code form, a programming environment, a game, a radical creative take on computing and networking ... Whatever it is, it's genius.

</comment><comment><USER11> I know enough to be interested. Not enough to know if its nonsense.

Although, I read this:

"A pier is an Urbit virtual machine that hosts one or more Urbit identities, or ships. When you run bin/vere -c, it automatically creates a 128-bit ship, or submarine. Your name (a hash of a randomly-generated public key) will look something like:

~machec-binnev-dordeb-sogduc--dosmul-sarrum-faplec-nidted,...

and I laughed. A lot.

</comment><comment><USER12> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6438320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6438320)

I've been watching this since it's started. It has some magical atmosphere around it and you never now whether it's serious or not; whether it's a real technical project or some kind of artistic performance.

I think I have a destroyer somewhere.

<comment><USER13> Lots of negativity in the previous discussion. Did the page used to be phrased in a combative way or something?

<comment><USER14> Earlier versions of the site featured a larger quantity of Moldbug's baroque, trollish prose style. Plus there was an extended argument about language design, due to the author being present in the thread.

Frankly, I'm disappointed. It used to be clearly the personal work of a lunatic. Now it feels more like a quirky open source project.

<comment><USER15> What's a quirky open source project, if not the communal work of collected lunatics?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is nock designed to run untrusted, potentially hostile code with guaranteed identical results on all platforms?

I'm looking for a virtual machine (or NaCl-like sandbox) which does this.

Edit: To anyone who downvoted me, could you please let me know why?

<comment><USER5> Yes - although actually achieving this result in practice (and efficiently) takes a lot of doing right.

<comment><USER16> Thanks. How close are you to achieving that?

<comment><USER5> Nock works perfectly, of course, but it's poorly optimized. The various "jets" (optimized implementations) in our runtime haven't been adequately tested and there are probably a few corner cases, errors, etc, where the behavior doesn't match. Even the new Nock runtime (I just rewrote more or less the whole interpreter) is probably a little too bound to Urbit specifically.

But the system has been self-hosting for quite some time, and there's certainly no doubt that the general approach works...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is fun stuff. Reading around a bit I found this:

"While nowhere near the simplest such automaton known, and certainly not of any theoretical interest, Nock is so stupid that if you gzip the spec, it's only 374 bytes. Nock's only arithmetic operation is increment. So decrement is an O(n), operation; add is O(m * n)... "

Don't they mean 'subtraction' rather than 'add'?

edit: This is so fascinating, it has me totally enthralled. Think smalltalk meets lisp meets some wild eyed programmer who knows _just_ how to appeal to the general frustration most programmers should have (do they?) about the state of our art.

Best post on HN in a long time, very curious how this one will turn out in the long term. May all your ships come in ;)

edit2:

Digging around a bit more: Peter Thiel and a bunch of others have apparently invested in this through a vehicle called 'Tion', [https://angel.co/tlon](https://angel.co/tlon) (the Thiel reference is that Thiel backed John Burnham, who is co-founder in Tion).

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure on the specifics here, but I'd have thought that subtraction would be O(n). To perform n - m on a simple register machine with only increment, you just count from m up to n (and count from 0 up to n, outputting 0 if you reach n, since subtraction is partial).

EDIT: It seems they are going for a naive implementation where subtract just repeatedly calls decrement, so yes, that's going to be O(m*n).

<comment><USER19> It depends on what the n means in O(n). If n means anything other than "the number of digits of x" (i.e., n = log(x)), then this is absurdly slow.

<comment><USER18> The n is just n: it's the number you are subtracting from. Of course, it's impractically slow, but I believe it's just example code in a opening tutorial for the Nock language.

<comment><USER20> You are both right. Nock is not meant to be fast.

There are only 10 operators in Nock, and when you get to the last one, you see there's a space for a "hint" to the compiler. This is how Nock becomes fast in Hoon. You start with an extremely slow, naive implementation, and then you write something called a "jet" which is proven (I think usually a weak proof is considered sufficient, like by fuzzing) to be semantically equivalent to the nock that it replaces. Then you do your best to make sure you use that exact expression anywhere you mean that, and don't reinvent it again later.

Jets are currently written in C, since the vere platform is written in C. Learning how they work and how to write them is on my bucket list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The choice of 0 for true and 1 for false is _wrong:_ On the Curry-Howard correspondence (and above) a type corresponds to a false sentence when it is not inhabited, like 0, and to a true sentence when it is. The Curry-Howard correspondence is fundamental, and so that is the. correct way to go, absent evidence in the other direction. I don't know whether Nock is a better foundation for a programming language than the Lambda Calculus, but it is at least as elegant—I'm glad someone is seeing where it leads I'm a fan of internet freedom, which often requires anonymity, and so I have my doubts about an OS that preserves exerything as a feature of the design.

<comment><USER22> Aside from the zero/one thing, if I'm understanding this right, Nock is based on the SKI combinator calculus, where the combinators are

S: λxyz.xz(yz)

K: λxy.x

I: λx.x

From there, you can express anything from the lambda calculus, and vice-versa. So I think it's reasonable to say that Nock is just a machine-friendly way of expressing the lambda calculus.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't say it's _based on_ SKI - just relatively similar. There are a lot of ways to skin this cat.

SKI is obviously a lot simpler mathematically, but I wouldn't want to try to use it as a compiler target...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I definitely was thinking about something _like this_ , but not exactly _this_. I mean, yeah, the only way to save ourselves from damnation is to finally announce "enough of 70's!" and rewrite everything from scratch, so the idea is dear to me, but that actual implementation of the idea is… maybe "weird" is the right word. I'll continue reading, but I already have a feeling that after I'll get myself completely familiar with it, I will hope it will _not_ succeed.

<comment><USER17> I hope it will succeed but that it won't be the only thing that will succeed and that some will take inspiration from it to build something even better. Challenging the status quo as such is a useful property and showing that you can in fact reboot is useful as well.

That said, the more I read about it (a couple of hours so far) the more I'm thinking it will not succeed because of some of the weirder philosophical decisions that have already been cast in stone.

It's basically a variation on the 'landgrab' theme. Think bitcoin or the domain name system with half the space grabbed up by the ruling corporation, with an arbitrary 'ingroup' and a very large 'outgroup'.

You'd think that by now the whole point the web rammed home with its unbridled success is that open is better but I guess the mobile walled gardens have whetted the appetite of future wannabe corporate overlords.

Anyway, I still wish them best of luck, that's an economic move on my part, it costs nothing and I suspect they are self limiting enough that it will not achieve the world domination they are dreaming of. See also: the singularity.

<comment><USER5> I prefer to think of it as: you can be "free as in beer" or "free as in speech," but not both. Sith Lord Zuck has set you free as in beer, but not in speech. Urbit will set you free as in speech, but not as in beer.

The difference is simply that while there are a limited number of Urbit identities (or at least memorable identities, ie, 32-bit "destroyers") in the world, and therefore they can't possibly be made free as in beer, _neither I nor my evil minions_ have any practical power over a destroyer once we create it.

Moreover, if you genuinely think of any individual or organization involved with Urbit as evil, there are plenty of independent carrier-holders you can get a destroyer from. (~del, for instance, will ship destroyers when we do, I think. He's some guy in Rochester whom I don't know from Adam. So, we'll let him serve the first 16 million people who want to escape from our evil dictatorship.)

Yes, by default the normal way to get onto Urbit will feel like the normal way to get onto Facebook. However, even if you are initially issued and hosted by us, you can move your image at any time to any other host, or to your own machine. Currently there's no way to stop using your issuing carrier for network services, such as firewall hole punching, but this is obviously a 1.0 feature. By design, there is no sort of leverage you can't escape from.

So Urbit strikes a sort of balance between governed and ungoverned networks. The limited address space will hopefully make it economically impractical to abuse the network for profit - a spammer is always a Sybil attacker. But as a destroyer you are not ruled by any master you can't easily escape from. The only thing you can't escape is your own reputation. Which you shouldn't be able to escape from.

We should probably highlight this difference a little more in the doc...

<comment><USER20> The random guy from Rochester here (~del)

I will hock destroyers, although I don't know if I can sell them, for reasons I can't go into. Also offering Yachts, to anyone who thinks that a destroyer is just too militaristic.

I can also confirm, don't know Curtis from Adam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It seems like a work of genius, but it may be many years before an artificial intelligence can fully interpret its unique significance.

In fact it reminds me about a massive book on cellular automation that I once picked up, which went to incredible length in interpreting the potential of dynamic patterns in 2D space. It was a monument to extreme intellectual rigour and dedication, if nothing else. If only I could remember the title.

<comment><USER24> Was it "A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram?

<comment><USER3> That's the one. Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's made to confuse and mystify. The Borges quote from ' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' gives it away.

Really well done, though!

</comment><comment><USER26> For some reason I feel like I'm reading a Jorge Luis Borges story.

<comment><USER27> It's probably the Jorge Luis Borges quote on the setup page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I found this video helpful in understanding the project: [http://vimeo.com/75312418](http://vimeo.com/75312418)

<comment><USER29> 128-bit submarine vs 32-bit destroyer reminded me of IPv6 vs IPv4.

<comment><USER30> Its fairly distinct. A destroyer is like owning a bunch of submarines, in a way. This is the one point where the model kind of breaks this layer, though.

Basically, it can't run out of address space because of the abundance of subs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Code on Github: [https://github.com/urbit/urbit](https://github.com/urbit/urbit)

This seems crazy ambitious on its own, and add to it that it's public domain. Very curious where this will be headed.

<comment><USER23> Could you please explain what being "public domain" adds to it?

<comment><USER29> It enables use (personal and especially corporate) with as little licensing fretting as possible.

<comment><USER32> Except that some jurisdictions in the world don't have the concept of public domain, so, in those places, this code is legally in a very weird place. It's much better (IMO) to assert copyright, and then release under the most permissive license possible.

<comment><USER5> Yes, some people have made this criticism. We'll be thinking about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This video does a good job explaining Urbit: [https://vimeo.com/75312418](https://vimeo.com/75312418)

</comment><comment><USER34> When I read through the urbit git page and it finally clicked to me what this is and what it could mean, I literally said out loud in my room "Oh, that's really fucking cool."

<comment><USER35> For those of us who it hasn't clicked for, could you lend us a hand?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Docs: [http://doc.urbit.org/doc/](http://doc.urbit.org/doc/)

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting distribution of contributors [1]. Usually what I see on most projects is one or two guys contributing the most of the code since the start of the repository, with minor contributors coming and going. These contributors chart seem to show different guys taking the helm at different points on time though.

1: [https://github.com/urbit/urbit/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/graphs/contributors)

<comment><USER38> Not quite. It looks like urbit has imported the histories of multiple other projects.

LibUV: [https://github.com/joyent/libuv/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/graphs/contributors) Re2: [https://code.google.com/p/re2/source/list](https://code.google.com/p/re2/source/list)

<comment><USER7> Hm. Not sure how that happened. We have had a number of different contributors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm just wondering if it will run on TempleOS.

<comment><USER5> TempleOS is a _competitor_ , not a partner. Privately, between you and me - _that guy is going down_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can someone explain what is going on? Is this a new OS built from the ground up with it's own technologies ?

<comment><USER41> At present it's a bunch of programs that run on UNIX systems. I guess the Hoon interpreter is a C program that uses readline, talks to the network over sockets and the like. But everything on top is quite self-contained and in principle one might remove the layers underneath.

But I'm not sure that's necessarily the aim. As I understand the project's aims (and I'm not involved, I just read all the docs a few months back), it's more important that the Internet of the future is not a tangled mess of technologies that are insecure on different layers. Then it doesn't matter so what OS people's local machines are running.

I hope the essay at the URL below is still relevant, it seems to describe the aims rather well. "The result: Martian code, as we know it today. Not enormous and horrible - tiny and diamond-perfect."

[http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional- prog...](http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming- from.html)

<comment><USER42> > [http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional- > prog...](http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/urbit-functional- > programming-from.html)

My brain did not enjoy any wall of text that much since I read the bitcoin whitepaper. Now I want to learn more and be up to date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> more interesting reading here:

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief- int...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief-introduction- to-urbit.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Urbit is a weird thing that feels like it comes from a parallel universe of computing. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around it at first, but it has some neat ideas.

I like this article which introduces it:

 _Urbit is perhaps how you 'd do computing in a post-singularity world, where computational speed and bandwidth are infinite, and what's valuable is security, trust, creativity, and collaboration. It's essentially a combination of a programming language, OS, virtual machine, social network, and digital identity platform._

[http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief- int...](http://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2013/12/a-brief-introduction- to-urbit.html)

<comment><USER44> _" Despite messages between ships being encrypted, the founders state that they've purposely designed the network to make it as easy as possible for governments to regulate and control. It's not entirely clear why this is supposed to be a good thing."_

<comment><USER45> My take on that is that this design choice arrises from the anti-democratic authoritarian sentiments which (at least one of) the developers apparently hold. At least they have repeatedly expressed these sorts of sentiments in their rather long winded blog(s).

<comment><USER20> Have you considered that democracy is not actually immune to authority, and it's really a reflection of this, rather than a window into the designs of one crazy person? (hi Curtis)

Maybe every system that comes along and says "impossible to be subverted by centralized governments" in reality is just saying "come and try to stop me, Federales". Do you think that is that what we all should be doing instead?

<comment><USER45> Actually, I have. I understand that there is complex tension between fundamental human rights (like freedom of expression, freedom of association, & privacy) and realities of the intrusion & abridgment of these rights carried out by various state security agencies and corporations.

I agree that any project which claims "impossible to be subverted by centralized governments" is just saying "come and try to stop me, Federales". Moreover, I feel that such claims are extremely difficult to substantiate (and so not particularly credible) and for the most part made by groups I'm not really motivated to associate myself with.

Speaking in a very general sense (having kept up with the news & goings on related to technology, privacy, corporate activities, and state security activities for the past few decades); it's my opinion that this tension is not only not in an ethically defensible or sustainable state, it's not in the state that most of the people in the western capitalist nations believe & expect it is.

So I find assertions like: "Despite messages between ships being encrypted, the founders state that they've purposely designed the network to make it as easy as possible for governments to regulate and control. It's not entirely clear why this is supposed to be a good thing." to be similarly worthy of skepticism and disconcerting as the "impossible to be subverted by centralized governments" claims. My feeling is that this statement translates fairly directly into "all user data is available to any corporate entity or state security agency for any purpose" and that this includes purposes like backchannel monetization through data aggregation and industrial scale warrantless surveillance & data collection.

It's pretty obvious to me that you are pretty invested in this project and I've only spent a few hours perusing the various docs, repositories, and blogs. So I'm fairly hesitant to make any sweeping statements or claims of certainty. So, with those qualifications in mind, my conclusion after my perusal is that this architectural design choice is unlikely to be a reflection of some sort of pragmatic policy coming from a non-ideological position of social responsibility that's striving to minimize any intrusion & abridgment of rights while still allowing for the realistic needs of businesses and state security agencies.

Frankly spoken, I personally find a number of the abstract concepts and architectural design choices in Urbit project to be fascinating and compelling. I've spent far too much time dredging around the information that is currently publicly available... Time I honestly can't afford. So it's really disappointing to me to find that there is a pervasive toxicity which is deeply intertwined with the project. My conclusion is that this toxicity makes the project broadly unusable (seriously) & and possibly even unfixable.

Elsewhere in this thread I saw someone claim that there were big things coming in a few months. If this is accurate I look forward to it. Perhaps there will be changes and new developments which will demonstrate my current assessment inaccurate. Honestly, that would make me pretty happy... but from what I've seen so far, I suspect that's really, really unlikely.

<comment><USER46> > My feeling is that this statement translates fairly directly into "all user > data is available to any corporate entity or state security agency for any > purpose"

Speaking as a semi-informed bystander who's been following Urbit for a while now, it certainly seems like one of the problems it's trying to solve is the typical notion of "user data" as something controlled by third parties. Eg [1]:

> Where is Joe's financial data in mint.com? In, well, mint.com. Suppose Joe > wants to move his financial data to taxbrain.com? Suppose Joe decides he > doesn't like taxbrain.com, and wants to go back to mint.com? With all his > data perfectly intact? [...] Imagine the restfulness of 2020 Joe when he > finds that he can have just one computer in the sky, and he is the one who > controls all its data and all of its code.

[1]: [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2011/10/persona...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2011/10/personal-cloud-computing-in-2020-or- not.html)

That said, the current implementation has been explicitly called out (in past incarnations of the docs, at least) as not-remotely-trustworthy with sensitive private data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The project is based on a fundamental insincerity, which makes me suspicious. All material about Urbit makes a big point of their minimal spec, again so in the linked piece: "The spec fits on a T-shirt and gzips to 340 bytes."

What do people expect when they read a thing like that? I don't know about you, bit I'd expect that I could ignore the obfuscated strangeness of their higher level languages etc and just implement stuff to that minimal spec.

So you expect you can do that. But you can't. That minimal spec might as well not exist; you can't just read it and go on to implement, say, a programming language on top of Urbit.

"But you can!" you might object. Try it. Read nothing but that spec and implement, say, a tiny BASIC on top of it. Compile some simple programs. Run them. Now, what happens? Nothing, for now. But look, my processor core is heating up. Something must be happening! Just wait. Wait. Wait. No, still nothing. Wait some more. Just a few years, maybe? No, still nothing (except heat). Etc.

So no, that elegant spec doesn't give you anything but a way to heat your computing cabinet.

Realizing this, I put Urbit in the "suspicious, may be a con" bin. Hasn't escaped from there, yet.

<comment><USER48> > The project is based on a fundamental insincerity, which makes me > suspicious. All material about Urbit makes a big point of their minimal > spec, again so in the linked piece: "The spec fits on a T-shirt and gzips to > 340 bytes."

Last I read something like this (I don't know if it was about Urbit or something else), it turned out that there was no IO included in that spec. So, useless for any real-world purpose, and as you said, insincere.

<comment><USER20> The IO are events, and the events come from unix (for example: signals, files and sockets).

Urbit is not meant to replace Unix. "They call us, we don't call them" is the fundamental precept in play here. I assure you there is I/O in Urbit, the vanes include an HTTP server, a Hoon-interpreting shell which accepts keyboard input from a terminal, and a UDP layer for facilitating ship-to-ship communications. All of that is written in Hoon, which compiles into Nock.

<comment><USER49> > Urbit is not meant to replace Unix.

But I thought that was the long-term master plan. Isn't the whole point to extricate ourselves from eternal dependence on C and Unix ecosystem?

<comment><USER20> Some long term plans are crazier than others. I would like to have a machine that runs nock directly on the bare metal, but that doesn't mean it fits into the current architecture.

So far to my knowledge everyone running Urbit is doing so on a Unix system of one flavor or another. The point of "they call us, we don't call them" is not that Urbit never calls into Unix, it's that the set of reasons to reach out to Unix for one of the existing OS facilities is limited, restricted from the list growing any longer than absolutely necessary.

If your persisting disk filesystem evaporates from under you in the middle of operation, maybe Urbit can be prepared to deal with this, but as long as you have it there, might as well use it to allow the user to muck around with your internal representations in a way that is already familiar.

One of the problems Urbit doesn't currently seek to tackle is "a new text editor." Surely this is for the best, not because "a new text editor" is not an interesting problem, but for reasons that I think are already obvious to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> This gives me a weird _Daemon_ vibe.

</comment><comment> vezzy-fnord Urbit is to computing what Thelema is to spirituality.

<comment><USER51> You have no idea.

[http://mnemnion.github.io/blog/2013/12/19/commentary-on- ax/](http://mnemnion.github.io/blog/2013/12/19/commentary-on-ax/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is it for real? Finally a computational machine based on hyperoperations I can use.

</comment><comment><USER53> Is this free software? I don't see a license in the Github repository.

<comment><USER54> Oh the author's blog[0], he states that all his code is in the public domain.

[0] [http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/moron-lab-goals- princ...](http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/moron-lab-goals-principles- rules.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> MENCUIS MODLBUG IS OUR DEAR LEADER, lol

</comment><comment><USER56> Don't really get what this is technically, but conceptually I do understand it and would love to back a company like this. Technologies like this could kill Microsoft (Windows) and many others.

<comment><USER57> Why would this be any better? Then this is the big company that screws things up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This guy should have been a comedy writer, not (and?) a programmer. I found this whilst backtracking: [http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/moron-lab- goals-princ...](http://moronlab.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/moron-lab-goals- principles-rules.html)

<comment><USER58> "Comedy writer" isn't quite how I'd describe it, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned that Urbit is run by the guy who writes/wrote under Mencius Moldbug, who is perhaps one of the more controversial people to achieve internet fandom. If you read through all the archives on his site and have no opinion (probably somewhere in the "I hate him" or "I find this reasonably convincing" statistical clusters), then your sense of outrage has been diminished, I would say.

[http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/)

Note: I myself am unconvinced by his writings, and find him to be just another ironic instance of the ironic nature of American culture, eager to avoid the appearance of naivete by abandoning all hopes that are fragile. Do with that what you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> That description sounds like [http://MaidSafe.net](http://MaidSafe.net), which is rapidly approaching launch.

<comment><USER60> This seems super interesting. One of the people behind it is David Irvine [1], who apparently "was Designer / Project Manager of one of the World's largest private networks (Saudi Aramco, over $300M)." [2]

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond- bi...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond-bitcoin- crypto-ownership-companies-hope-youre-ready-to-decentralize-everything-on-the- internet/)

[2] [https://github.com/maidsafe/MaidSafe/wiki/unpublished_papers...](https://github.com/maidsafe/MaidSafe/wiki/unpublished_papers/SelfAuthentication.pdf?raw=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Is there an EAP for "Urbit in Action?"

</comment><comment><USER9> i loved everything i read on that page ...especially the part about it being not good formanyting but screwin around!

BTW - re Hoon ...a reference to the sea faring settlers in Brin's uplift series?

</comment><comment><USER62> This is like if Douglas Adams and Greg Egan did pair coding. Super interesting.

</comment><comment><USER63> It is so purposely obfuscated it has to be a troll.

</comment><comment><USER64> Seems fun, because I didn't understand everything while skimming the website.

>We use so many of these ASCII glyphs that we like to be able to read them out loud. A language is meant to be said.

That's a very weird idea there. A painting is a form of language, but can a painting be said?

<comment><USER65> > A painting is a form of language, but can a painting be said?

I suppose if you use a very broad definition of language, that might be true, but in the sense of natural languages, paintings are not generally a form of language. They may be a form of symbolic expression, but that doesn't make them a language.

<comment><USER64> A programming language is not a natural language. The quote refers to Hoon specifically.

<comment><USER66> The programming languages you're familiar with don't consider themselves to be similar to natural languages. This one apparently does, and why not? Why do we even use the word "language" to refer to our computer UIs when we balk at mundane language phenomena like context-sensitivity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> So, is it back? Launched again?

<comment><USER68> Not as such, [http://urbit.org](http://urbit.org) stands. If people still want to explore unofficially, github is their oyster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Stop wasting my time...

</comment><comment><USER70> Was this written by a program?

<comment><USER71> Uber-hackers of the future will write code for nanobots that cause them to self-assemble in to an android, the android will then write a program that generates a system like this that describes a new programming paradigm.

Or, something.

This reminds me of the Newton-Liebniz debate on creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Are there a lot of women using Urbit or something?

<comment><USER73> I always find the forceful use of female gender pronouns to be very odd. If you are conscious of and disagree with the general use of male gender pronouns, wouldn't you wan't to push the use of gender neutral pronouns?

Personally, I'd rather see the use of some of the new made up neutral pronouns than thinking swapping male to female pronouns is a viable long-term solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is either a very elaborate joke or the future of computing.

<comment><USER61> They had me going in the Nock spec until "We should note that in Nock and Hoon, 0 (pronounced "yes") is true, and 1 ("no") is false. Why? It's fresh, it's different, it's new. And it's annoying. And it keeps you on your toes. And it's also just intuitively right."

<comment><USER75> Here's one possible intuition:

There is one ground truth, origin, fixed point like the North Star: zero. There are an infinite number of possible falsehoods: all nonzero numbers. But Urbit chooses 1 as the canonical false.

<comment><USER76> And this is close to the reason why you often see zero used a "success" in languages like C: There are many possible error values.

So it's not very original at all.

<comment><USER5> That's correct. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> the only bad things seems that everyone is dependent from a server run by one company. why is there a need for this kind of registry? wouldn't be a distributed system better for this?

<comment><USER20> Man, I just wrote you a big long explanation of how you can update your filesystem even if your parent ship is gone, with shell command examples, but then my battery died before I had a chance to post it, and I'm totally not rewriting it now because I'm sure you don't care that much, and the real punchline is all of this information is about to be obsolete anyway.

The long and the short is, there are carriers (I have one), who are enumerated in the source code (like by public keys) and they are not dependant on each other, except for the sake of being able to route to child ships. So if ~zod is down, and everyone depends on ~zod, the network is indeed hosed. Everyone with active links can continue talking to each other, but nobody new can find anyone, and nobody can find anyone new. Every ship depends on a carrier for routing.

By convention, every time you launch from your pier, you get a new random port number and any ship that was looking for you at your old address needs to hear about your new address from a higher-up ship.

So it is distributed, but finitely distributed. There are only 256 carriers allowed, and they are the only ships that are really independent. Though there has been talk about fleshing out how ships can be separable from their "sein" domain, or parent ships, currently almost everyone is from the same lineage and thus depends on the same pair of servers for pretty much everything regarding the network.

This "centralized" design is indeed a core feature of the network, and it even relies on DNS to be bootstrapped, another centralized system. Now, can you show me a decentralized system that doesn't need any of that? I don't know exactly how magnet links or tor, or freenet work, but I am skeptical that they are honestly less centralized than this when it comes to bootstrapping.

<comment><USER20> Follow-up: As I suspected, regarding magnet links

> The first time a client joints the DHT network it generates a random 160-bit > ID from the same space as infohashes, and then bootstraps its connection to > the DHT network using hard-coded addresses of clients controlled by the > client developer.

This sounds really quite like the process of creating a submarine, and reaching out to the carrier ~zod. The fact that the init process is hardcoded to trust ~zod doesn't change that you can really init your ship's filesystem from any other ship, provided you can reach it.

Carriers are all found through the existing DNS infrastructure. Other ships are able to be reached "in-band" by asking a carrier for an introduction. Without this seed or hardcoded list (or by conducting a brute-force search), or some kind of broadcast mechanism, bootstrapping a distributed network is not actually possible.

<comment><USER77> Thank you very much for your long explanation. I really do care because I really like the idea of this. (Even I don't understand everything for now)

The question is: Why is my pier not trying to reach any of the available carriers then but only ~zod?

<comment><USER20> Your submarine "needs" ~zod to be found by anyone because:

       try=> ->-<
       ... (your submarine)
       try=> (sein ->-<)
       ~zod

... ~zod is your parent ship. Without him, you simply have no forwarding address.

If your batz wizardry is sufficient and ~zod is not there (both of these are things that we are not counting on being true when you run Urbit for the first time) you will still get the same result in your terminal, you can reach out and contact other carriers and their friends, even without ~zod. They just can't find you. And you need to find another way to bootstrap your clay (filesystem) if you care about having local clay.

Think about the difficulty of coordinating multiple stakeholders, compared to the ease of explaining the "benevolent dictator" model that most of computing is really based on today. If the only thing that ~zod needs to do is point submarines at one another and facilitate the existence of other signing ships under his domain, that's very easy. Doing those things without ~zod's cooperation will require some further thought and more explanation.

I am a carrier owner (~del) and I count on ~zod to make it easy for new subs to find me. It's very convenient this way. But, anyone who knows how to type:

       :~del/main=/bin/hi ~dalnel

... can also reach out to my carrier and run "hi" (become mmy neighbor) to find ~dalnel with my help, and exchange keys with him (~dalnel is the cruiser, like ~zod's ~doznec).

~zod never needs to get involved. There is, however, no magic under the hood. My carrier ~del works exactly the same way, except he is not preferred in the same way by the submarine client implementation.

<comment><USER78> What about something inspired by SFS (see section 2.4 and 3.7 in this IPFS paper)? [http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf](http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf)

<comment><USER20> I will check it out. I was indeed hoping someone who knows the answer will come along and say "haven't you heard about this..."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> "More specifically, Urbit is a personal cloud computer. Right now, the cloud computers we use run OSes designed for minicomputers in the '70s. An ordinary user can no more drive a Linux box in the cloud than fly an A320. So she has to sit in coach class as a row in someone else's database. It's definitely air travel. It's not exactly flying."

I doubt very much that the average person wants to either fly their own airplane or manage their own cloud computers, no matter how simple you try to make either of them.

<comment><USER80> _I doubt very much that the average person wants to…fly their own airplane_

You don't think the average person would want to fly their own airplane if it were as easy as driving a car?

<comment><USER79> What's so easy about driving a car? Over 30,000 people die per year in the United States due to automobile accidents. And that's after requiring every driver get a license, and teaching basic driving skills as part of our high school system. Driving a car isn't all that easy, and we're terrible at it. There's a reason that Google is inventing self-driving cars, not personal airplanes.

And the amount of possible simplicity is constrained by the problem you're trying to solve -- you can't manage to make a plane as simple as driving a car, because the car only has to navigate in two dimensions while the plane has to navigate in three. If a car stops, the car's just sitting there, whereas if a plane stops gravity is going to pull you down in a likely to be fatal incident. You can't make a plane as simple to use as a car without changing it into something other than a plane.

<comment><USER81> I suggest the car / airplane analogy was already strained before we got here.

Driving a car _is_ easy, as evinced by the large numbers of people that are capable of it. Whether driving a car successfully (ie. without dying) is easy is obviously a matter for debate. With 0.000015% failing in this severe way, it might be argued that driving a car and dying is not particularly common, and could (no disrespect to the people involved) be thought of as a rounding error.

We have no evidence that Google isn't trying to invent self-driving or personal airplanes.

Try suddenly stopping your car on the autobahn, and see how tranquil the 'just sitting there' experience is.

Anyway, perhaps we are all missing the underlying point - an overly complicated solution (to an otherwise straightforward problem) has been the received wisdom for decades, and a re-think from fundamentals is almost definitely worth the effort.

<comment><USER79> "Anyway, perhaps we are all missing the underlying point - an overly complicated solution (to an otherwise straightforward problem) has been the received wisdom for decades, and a re-think from fundamentals is almost definitely worth the effort."

I don't know that the solution is overly complicated or that the problem is straightforward. Think of every human being as their own little Y Combinator startup -- everybody is their own little Me, Inc. Or Me, LLC. Whatever. Most people follow SOME version of "outsource everything that isn't a core competency." Like, it varies a lot from person to person -- some people go to McDonalds, some people are making their own meals from ingredients picked up at the local farmer's market, but very few people (not even most farmers) are fully self-sufficient farm-to-table for most of their meals.

So as a result of this, most people don't think of their computer in terms of it being a computer. And that's the most obviously computer computer they interact with! There's all sorts of even more abstracted away computers they deal with -- smartphones, cloud computers, etc. Most people don't care about computers, and don't in and of themselves want computers. They want to do things like "write a document," "share some family pictures with friends and relatives," "play a video game," so on and so forth. For those people, not only don't they CARE about HOW the computer is accomplishing those things, they get very upset whenever they see the wizard behind the curtain. They want all of those things abstracted away from them. From the point of the view of the most typical use case, trying to make computers easier to use by making sure the specification fits on a t-shirt seems to be rather besides the point.

<comment><USER81> Sure, I entirely agree that there's a large spectrum of user types (or people) out there.

You used the phrase 'most people' three times there to describe a quite likely common user type for off-the-shelf consumables. I am quietly confident the guys working on this are not targeting 'most people'. Or if they are, they are quite candid about it not being ready for them yet.

<comment><USER79> The analogy that kicked this all off:

"An ordinary user can no more drive a Linux box in the cloud than fly an A320."

Maybe they aren't targeting most people, but if not, why are they talking about the ordinary user?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Oh, Urbit! Where to begin?...

First of all, this is staggeringly brilliant. You should pay attention to it in the coming months. I am not sure if it's destined to be the future, but I sure as hell hope it is.

I had the privilege of interning at Tlon, the company working on Urbit's development, this summer. It owns most of the namespace (Personal cloud computer IP addresses, essentially.) and is where the architect of the system works full-time. They are funded, well enough, by VCs you know of. Urbit is not really launched yet though - We spent the summer doing a lot of work getting the network, file system, protocols, and application layer in "Industrial grade" shape, and I believe more of that is happening this fall.

Because the system is still unlaunched and the docs are being retooled, I imagine these pages are discombobulating. That's... expected. Urbit has a lot of odd ideas that take time to appreciate. However, if you do take the time to understand the motivation behind the design of everything from Hoon's appearance to the network protocol replacement for TCP to the vision for future social networks, you'll find some of the best and most complete computer science research done in decades in networks, systems, and functional programming. The essential idea is not an outlandish one - We need a new basis of computing and networking to build digital identities with, and 1970s system software is not up to the task.

It's unfortunate that ambition and a sense of humor can be misinterpreted as a joke today. For now, you'll just have to take my word for it [1] that these guys are deadly serious and have the technical chops to back up their ambition. Future documentation and applications built on the OS should soon make that more immediately evident.

[1] Or start reading the tutorials!

<comment><USER83> [https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/arvo/ames...](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/arvo/ames.hoon#L470)

There are hundreds of lines of noise. This makes perl and forth look absurdly readable. What on earth do the directory and file names mean?

I dunno how familiar people on HN are but the original author of urbit is Mencius Moldbug, a neoreactionary blogger. His style of writing is absurdly obfuscated and purposely impenetrable if containing some interesting ideas. The exact same thing is true of urbit. Interesting ideas but obfuscated the point of utter inaccessibility.

Here's sort of the wider group of blogs he philosophically aligns with:

[http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/d/d5/Scharlachs- visualizing...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/images/d/d5/Scharlachs-visualizing- neoreaction.png)

His views are likely unpopular around here but I am a fan of a bunch of those other blogs, and I've tried to dive into Moldbug's blog Unqualified Reservations a few times. It's kind of insane—the guy is clearly very intelligent—yet writes in his own discursive style that is absolutely opaque.

<comment><USER84> He does have really odd political views. I know HN shouldn't be about politics, but this was a really interesting read:

[http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing- machiavellis/](http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/)

It looks like he thinks that the benevolent-dictator-for-life model is how countries should be run. And Peter Thiel seems to agree with him.

<comment><USER85> They even seem to have a subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkEnlightenment/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkEnlightenment/)

The whole "ideology" is basically just fascism and institutional racism dressed up as something else. Despicable. I would never use any software from some Hitler-reboot type of person. Don't empower and feed such people. They are usually narcissistic megalomaniacs who think they are fit to rule and tyrannize others.

<comment><USER80> Before accusing someone of being a "Hitler-reboot type of person", perhaps you should, you know, actually _read_ what they have to say about Hitler. For example:

 _Since most people are neither historians nor philosophers, the fact that Hitler was on the extreme Right, and this Reaction is also on the extreme Right, raises some natural concerns. Again: the only way to face these concerns is to (a) provide a complete engineering explanation of Hitler, and (b) include an effective anti-Hitler device in our design._

—Mencius Moldbug, [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/gentle-...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html)

In other words, an explicit design goal is to _avoid_ Hitler-like outcomes (because, duh). Thus, the accusation that he's a "Hitler-reboot type of person" reflects either simple ignorance—which you can fix by doing a little reading—or outright mendacity—for which, I'm afraid, there may be no cure.

<comment><USER85> I mean look, I understand what the philosophy is about, and I think it would never work in the real world. We've learned time and again that entrusting a lot of executive power to one person is a horrible idea - <USER2> exploitable and subject to corruption.

Looks almost like a product of a deranged autistic mind. I have no interest in such asinine "philosophies".

<comment><USER86> > I have no interest in such asinine "philosophies".

I bet no one does .. the real issue is how to decide on what is "asinine". After all, why are your views and beliefs any more valid than any one else's?

<comment><USER85> Normally I'd just tell you that I don't subscribe to moral and philosophical relativism, but for the sake of this discussion, I will oblige in explaining further.

First off, what is the definition of valid and correct? What is the metric that makes a certain belief more "valid" than some other belief? Well, over the millennia, we humans have arrived to certain definitions of what's good and what's bad in the context of preserving life, civilization, society and liberty. In that sense, things that harm those concepts can be defined as bad and those that further those goals are good. History has shown, time and again, that empowering one person with a lot of executive power inevitably leads to tyranny, oppression, genocide, slavery and other completely horrible things that we seem to have been able to get rid of (more or less).

So when someone rejects thousands of years of historical evidence as to what happens with such regimes and where they eventually lead, and proposes instating one again, I can only call it either asinine (if the author is well- intentioned) or evil (if they simply want power over others).

In more practical terms, liberty, self-determination and self-ownership are sacrosanct to a lot of people. In order to take those things away, you will need a lot of people, guns and body bags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I really like the foundations of this, but I like design - how could I start building a UX interface for this?

<comment><USER20> Spoiler: there is already/about to be a new interface you haven't seen yet.

Do you mean the webshell, or the templating markup language? There is something you might want to look at called "Sail"

Having trouble finding you a link, but there are some mentions about it here:

[https://github.com/urbit/urbit/search?utf8=✓&q=sail](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/search?utf8=✓&q=sail)

Ah..

[https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/pub/...](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/urb/zod/main/pub/src/doc/sail- moveme.md)

<comment><USER87> and how long till Urbit can render marl marx and mane? aka how long till I can make a UX using web technologies that runs on Urbit?

<comment><USER20> All of that stuff works now. If you're asking how long until it's supported, I'm not an employee of Tlon, so don't ask me. I can tell you that most of this stuff is still very slow, even if it works.

Check out the demo app, you can click a button and increment a number on the page, and it generates an event that gets reflected out (through some like AJAX) through the server, back out to as many subscribers as are currently viewing the page in their javascript-supporting browsers, happens almost instantly.

I have to apologize I have no short instructions to get you to this demo, it exists but I'm sure it may still rust more before it becomes a priority to build things based on it. I'm not sure if you're meant to be impressed by this demo, but there's also twitter API client you can use to tweet which is more obviously useful if not quite as whiz-bang.

<comment><USER87> Wait, woah. Really? How? Where? Any links that will point me in a direction towards that demo app? Or even what it is named? How do I get started?

<comment><USER20> Yeah, man. Fire up a pier and visit:

[http://localhost:8080/geg/demo](http://localhost:8080/geg/demo)

You'll find the code in your pier/ship/main/app/demo/core.hook

To reset the counter (wipe the app state), at your command-line, do:

       :wipe %demo

I just tested it, I can see that it still works, but like I said none of this is guaranteed to go on working. It's all very alpha.

This is called a %gall app. It's always running because the %gall vane runs the main/app/ apps in the background without intervention, like radio/core.hook that runs the server for the :chat app. See you in :chat maybe, if you have questions about how this works you will certainly be welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> So let me get this straight. This project is going to define

1\. A new computing model, similar to how combinators work.

2\. A programming language which produces expressions involving these combinators.

3\. An operating system built on the above.

4\. A cloud computing environment built on the above.

Sorry, but while interesting, this sounds a little too ambitious, even by HN standards :)

<comment><USER75> Here's an idea: maybe anyone accusing someone else of being "too ambitious" should share one of their own projects that demonstrates exactly the right level of ambition.

<comment><USER89> So in your opinion _nothing_ is ever too ambitious? Or is it just that no one should every be allowed to utter the words "too ambitious?"

<comment><USER75> No, some projects can be too ambitious, including even recklessly or dangerously ambitious. But I'd rather hear that judgement from someone with a reputation for appropriate, successful ambitiousness, and with some supporting reasoning.

The grandparent comment comes from a pseudonym linked to no evaluable projects. It offers a costless, totally-generic pooh-poohing of a real project as "too ambitious". But that project is _actually shipping code that works_ , with 126 contributors, many with a known history of contributions in related spheres.

Against that, the comment even uses an appeal to "HN standards"! As if, we should all be discounting this sort of stuff, on its face.

I'd prefer "HN standards" encourage such ambition, backed with code – not casually mock it with a ascii-smiley.

<comment><USER89> > But that project is actually shipping code that works

I get that this is more than just vaporware, but getting past the vaporware stage doesn't necessarily prove that something isn't too ambitious. When something is attempting to enact a paradigm shift, the final goal is adoption/usage, not just a working/functional product.

<comment><USER75> You seem to be using "too ambitious" as a synonym for "unlikely to succeed". But that's something different.

"Too ambitious" implies someone _shouldn 't even be trying for this goal_. That's a corrosive attitude, and I'd like it kept-in-check by a requirement that sources of such negativity show their reasoning/experience/work.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rdd.me: Readability's New URL Shortener - <AUTHOR> http://newsgrange.com/rdd-me-a-new-url-shortener-with-built-in-readability/

<comment><USER2> Well, somebody has to say it: URL shorteners are so 2010.

Now it's mostly cleaning up after failed shorteners.</comment>


Gluten Intolerance May Not Exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/rosspomeroy/2014/05/15/non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity-may-not-exist/

<comment><AUTHOR> Linkbaity title (this is specifically about non-celiac gluten intolerance), but the referenced study appears to contain some pretty serious science.

</comment><comment><USER2> 37 subjects... serious science indeed...

<comment><USER3> It's nutritional science. Long studies with not that much money means fewer subjects. It's better than nothing, I guess.</comment></comment>


Tech's High Barrier to Entry for the Underprivileged - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@GRardB/techs-high-barrier-to-entry-for-the-underprivileged-da254356547d

<comment><USER2> It seems to me like many of the problems here _shouldn 't_ necessarily be addressed by specially-targeted programs run by the tech industry. That will just make things more fragmented for people like Maurice who might want to be, for instance, mechanical engineers instead of programmers.

It seems like the _genuine_ ways to address this would be:

* _Some_ kind of telecom/internet access becomes a social right, provided universally. The easiest _actual_ ways to do this are municipal public libraries, open libraries at community colleges, and municipal wifi.

* Transit and mobility subsidies for the poor, or possibly just for _everyone_. It simply shouldn't happen at all that someone lives mere miles away, in the same city, from hackathons and other educational/career-building activities and yet can't afford the trip. I also can't count the number of poorer people I've met who simply have fewer chances in life because they were born in a rural area and cannot afford to move until there is a signed-and-sealed job offer with relocation provided.

* Trades training and job counseling as part of the public education system. Because _duh_.

Making even the most basic infrastructure and opportunities for-profit has resulted in a "You must be _this_ well-off to enter" barrier for things that we _like to believe_ are normal and universal. We should make them _actually_ universal.

</comment><comment><USER3> What happens when you compare this barrier to that of another career?

Even after reading the article, I still think programming has the fewest artificial barriers of any other professional job. Of course, there is still a mountain of shit that poor people need to climb- but once Maurice can functionally write code, he can find a job that pays WAY more than other entry level work. College would further his career, but isn't a requirement.

Do you think someone could get a white collar finance job just because they were able to figure out some trading vernacular on McDonalds WiFi? Or what about a career in HR? No way. Those have all the same barriers as a tech job, while requiring more institutional accreditation and social proof.

<comment><USER4> Obviously tech is more of a meritocracy than other industries, but I think this article is meant to be a critique of the often-told narrative that the tech industry is a pure meritocracy where everything is fair and even and perfect. Just because tech is doing better than other industries doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.

<comment><USER3> That isn't really saying anything then, is it? Every form of employment requires people have transportation, and a way to clean their clothes, communicate etc. Those are societal obstacles to employment, not tech's barrier to employment.

The barriers applicable to a certain form of employment have to be unique to that form of employment, like the prerequisite of a college degree or institutional certification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to the pew research center, Median net worth for American Households was as follows in 2013: Whites: $141,900 Blacks: $11,000 Hispanics: $13,700

So if you care about the lack of diversity in race in the industry, a good place to start is addressing the underprivileged.</comment>


DIY facial recognition for porn sparks concern - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kxny7/diy-facial-recognition-for-porn-weibo <comment><USER2> The case of revenge-porn aside, public things are public, and making things public comes with consequences. If you are relying on the current lack of human ingenuity in connecting that public data together, you're going to be disappointed.

<comment><USER3> > If you are relying on the current lack of human ingenuity in connecting that > public data together, you're going to be disappointed.

I'm not saying that you're wrong here. However, the effect that you're describing leads directly to a dystopian world that few people would actually want to be living in, and the only thing that an individual could do about it is to withdraw from society entirely, including never going out in public.

There has to be some way of preventing that.

<comment> Joe-Z No, what he is describing should directly lead to people carefully considering what they share online. I remember 15 years ago everybody knew that, now it's "oh, I get internet points for sharing every bar/restaurant/venue I go to?! let's do that!" (this was in reference to foursquare, apparently they are not a thing anymore?)

Not posting your porn online because you're afraid someone will find out surely isn't a dystopian future.

<comment><USER4> Foursquare has been licensing their data to Microsoft for millions at a time: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/foursquare- cuts-15m-deal-w...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/foursquare- cuts-15m-deal-with-microsoft-to-power-location-and-context-for-windows-and- mobile/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If having a partner that did porn doesn't bother you, this changes nothing. On the other hand, if it does bother the person, then it enables him/her to rightfully discriminate who will be his/her partner for life.

Least I checked society still accept people to choose by their own discretion who they date.

</comment><comment><USER6> >His reasoning for making this program, he wrote, is "to have the right to know on both sides of the marriage." After public outcry, he later claimed his intention was to allow women, with or without their fiancées, to check if they are on porn sites and to send a copyright takedown request.

This was going to happen one way or the other regardless; I don't understand why it's so important for the author to spin his reasoning for making it.

<comment><USER7> The author of the tweet (and supposed ident system) or the author of the article?

I think if the latter - there was no "spin", just reporting.

But if the former - then I'd say it's because the author knows they are in the wrong, but likely doesn't care until it starts to look bad for them, thus the duplicitous pivot.

<comment><USER8> The author of the system is completely in the right. People deserve to know who they are dealing with interpersonal matters, especially when it deal with matters of public record. Not everyone is completely gungho on feckless hedonism you know?</comment></comment></comment>


Best intro to c#/.net/wpf book? - <AUTHOR>

It's usually pretty easy to determine what the best intro book is on any given topic with some googling around, buy I'm having trouble finding a review of what c# books are out there.
Would anyone care to recommend a book (or many books) to a complete beginner when it comes to c#/.net/wpf?  I'm interested in the language and the platform and the clr in general.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> I've read two books on WPF I can't really recommend them since I didn't think they were worth the money, but really the most useful thing is to just work through and extend the samples. <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/ms771449.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER3> If you've programmed before I'd recommend C# in a Nutshell, you get a solid overview of C# and .Net at a quick pace and its a good reference when you are done. WPF Unleashed is highly recommended for WPF (I haven't read it, I've just heard good things), Application = Code + Markup is also a very good book for WPF.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't have much experience of .net but as an introduction to a language series there is no series of books better designed than Head First. Here's their C# book:

<http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfcsharp/></comment>


A treatise on the art of flying by mechanical means (1814) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/stream/treatiseonartoff00walk#page/n6/mode/1up <comment><USER2> The early 19th century is an interesting period technologically.

For context, 1814 was thirty two years after the first manned balloon flight. That's as long as from today to the release of the Macintosh. The steam engine had been around for about a century and commercial steamships were already in operation.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is. I've been covering some histories of the period.

There's James Burke's _Connections_ and _The Day the Universe Changed_ , which cover technology and philosophy generally, but focus a great deal on the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.

More recently, there is Vaclav Smil's _Energy in World History_ (1994), and Manfred Weissenbacher's _Sources of Power_ (2009). Both look at history through the lens of energy sources. Weissenbacher divides history into five eras: 1) Hunter-gatherers, 2) Agriculture, 3) Coal, 4) Oil, and 5) Post-oil. The first three comprise one volume, the 4th is most of the 2nd. History in many regards begins with oil.

It's useful to realise just how primitive steam power was at the time. Savery's pistonless suction pump deliverd 750 watts. Newcomen's 1712 engine, 3.75 kW. The power stroke wasn't from the pressurised steam, but the vacuum of condensation. Watt's engine operated similarly but more efficiently with an external condenser, delivered 20 kW, about 5x the output of typical waterwheels and 3x the output of a median windmill of the time. Both water and wind competed with steam for much the first half of the 19th century.

Watt's patent, granted in 1769, was extended for 25 years by the Steam Engine Act of 1775, which had the effect of _stalling_ further development of steam technology by a quarter century. Weissenbacher dates the start of the Industrial Revolution to 1800 on that basis -- it's when Watt's patents expired and true innovation could begin: smaller engines, high-pressure engines, and mobile engines, all of which Watt opposed and quashed whilst he had the power to.

Watt had produced about 500 engines by 1800, which if 20 kW each, meant that the total steam capacity of England was about 10 MW. That's the electricity usage of about 8,000 present US homes.

You're a bit optimistic with steamships -- yes, there were some early boats (Fitch, Rumsey) on the Delaware and Potomac rivers (1791, 1802), but Robert Fulton's _Clermont_ was only established in 1807, and his Mississippi river boats began the same year this flying car treatise was published, in 1814. So this was pretty much in the thick of all that.

Crossings of the Atlantic under steam didn't occur until 1833, and a westward crossing not until 1838. Things really were just starting to take off.

The latter half of the 19th century, and particularly from about 1875 onward, is when things really exploded. Vaclav Smil considers the single decade of the 1880s as the most transformative of all history.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree.

I think our perception of technology's pace during the early 19th century versus the late 19th century is partially a result of the speed at which news moved rather than the pace at which change occurred. The telegraph and photograph in the first half of the 19th century created better documentation of change in the second half. The George's Washington and III could have flown in a balloon and ridden upriver in a steam powered vessel.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to disagree with you on the pace of change. That's what Smil and Weissenbacher both cover in detail.

1800 - 1849 saw:

* Watt's patent expire, allowing larger, smaller, higher-pressure, and mobile steam engines.

* Steam applied to transport on rail and ships.

* Rail still suffered from metalurgical limits. Wrought or cast-iron rails tend to split and shatter. Bessemmer steel came in the 1860s. Build-out of US railroads really only happened in the 2nd half of the 19th century, though England had a pretty extensive system.

* Telegraph and kerosene lamps. Note that with the telegraph, news _did_ move at the speed of light, for the first time.

* The first steamships. Atlantic crossings under steam were only starting to be standard by 1850.

* Early photography.

But from 1850 to 1899, you had: Bessemer steel, petroleum, the telephone, phonograph, bicycle (cheap transport for people that didn't need oats), automobile, elevator, electric lights, kinescope, automobile, steam turbine, radio-telegraph, coal-tar chemistry, first plastics, electric generators, electric motors, indoor plumbing, sewage systems (in large cities), antisceptics, anesthetics.

It was a combination of refinement of elments of the coal age -- better chemistry _of_ coal, and _with_ coal (coal-tar, plastics, steelmaking), better energy systems (ever more efficient steam engines, turbines), plus capabilities brought about through petroleum.

There's really no doubt that the 2nd half of the 19th century saw accelerating change, a pace that continued through the first quarter or half of the 20th century, then slowed. Computers and information are the notable exception.

Smill, Weissenbacher, Robert Gordon, and a whole bunch of others cover the period. It's fascinating.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DIY Positive Pressure Suit - <AUTHOR> http://civilpedia.org/p/?pid=336&t=p&h=Positive+Pressure+Suit <comment><USER2> There are two major problems that I see:

\- Source of clean air: HEPA filter will get contaminated and needs to be changed. UV sterilization might do it, but bulky and power intensive. Otherwise carry your own gases -- extremely technical, likely to asphyxiate yourself.

\- As soon as you go I to a red zone the exterior of the suit is contaminated. Basically you need a disposable suit/gown outside the positive pressure suit.

Only other issue is that this is bonkers. Stay at home, wash your hands, wear a face shield when out to prevent touching your face if need be.

<comment><USER3> Unless you are in a room with 20 infected people the filter won't matter that much.

A few layers of cotton is usually enough to filter 95%> of all 0.3 micron particles this is because the filtration is based on the fact that the thickness of the filter is orders of magnitude larger than the size of the particles so the size individual holes at any given layer don't matter that much.

That said the majority of the benefit from this suit wouldn't come from air filtering but from the fact that you won't get contaminated droplets on your face and you won't be able to touch your face with your hands after touching contaminated surfaces.

<comment> Engineering-MD Do you have a source for this?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine- an...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/disaster-medicine-and-public- health-preparedness/article/testing-the-efficacy-of-homemade-masks-would-they- protect-in-an-influenza-pandemic/0921A05A69A9419C862FA2F35F819D55)

<comment><USER5> I think that study is testing the opposite what what this suit provides -- it's not testing protection of the wearer, but testing whether or not the mask protects others:

 _The median-fit factor of the homemade masks was one-half that of the surgical masks. Both masks significantly reduced the number of microorganisms expelled by volunteers, although the surgical mask was 3 times more effective in blocking transmission than the homemade mask._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One time I biked to work (~5 miles) on a summer day (80+ F) wearing nothing but underpants and a PPE suit from childrens' hospital Boston. The only thing exposed to air was my face.

When I got to work, I was swimming in my own sweat. I remember taking it off and draining buckets of sweat out of the 'sock parts'.

If this thing is air tight, I expect it would work about the same. That little blower wont be enough to cool you down on a warm day and you will be enjoying a sweat bath.

<comment><USER7> What was the reason behind the strange cycling attire, if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER8> In some sports this is kind-of normal procedure to reach a weight class before a major competition. You go into a sauna or do sports in air-tight clothes and lose a few kg of water. After getting weighted and assigned a weight class you drink lots of water again

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Oh ffs were not dealing with the andromeda strain here.

If you need to go outside and you'll be in occasional contact with other people gloves and a face shield will do.

If you'll be in constant contact with other people or in situations where air circulation will be limited e.g. public transport or small offices then a respirator / face conforming mask needs to be added.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder whether hospitals could use something like this. Pipe in air from outside to the helmets of healthcare workers. Everyone needs to be tethered, which is pretty annoying, but maybe doable?

Maybe you could make one out of a snorkel mask (like one of the dodgy full- face ones: [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07BP6CTBQ/](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07BP6CTBQ/)) and a vacuum cleaner?

<comment><USER10> In the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain, the biological containment lab has these cool suits which have a tunnel you crawl through to get into the suit. The suit never leaves the containment chamber. I keep thinking back to that design, and wondering if that's the future of COVID hospitals. Something like that wouldn't be that hard to mass produce at all.

<comment><USER11> They also had a laser that burned off the top layer of your skin lol

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't miss the rest of that site. Mad genius.

[https://civilpedia.org/p/?pid=101&t=p&h=Basics+of+IEC+Fusion](https://civilpedia.org/p/?pid=101&t=p&h=Basics+of+IEC+Fusion)

or this

[https://civilpedia.org/p/?pid=30&t=p&h=Laser+Microscope](https://civilpedia.org/p/?pid=30&t=p&h=Laser+Microscope)

I've never seen _that_ before...

<comment><USER13> The "laser microscope" only goes halfway. You can deconvolve the diffraction pattern and get a fully volumetric image! Resolution is an issue. One setup, if your target is not moving, is to aim the projection at a desktop scanner.

<comment><USER12> OMG that would be awesome, can you elaborate a little?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, the filtration on this is a hepa filter. It's a cool way to still get infected

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand this comment. I don't know if this suit will really offer protection, but I don't see the problem with the choice of filter.

A HEPA filter has a stricter rating than the N95 masks that healthcare workers use.

"HEPA, which stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air, is a designation used to describe filters that are able to trap 99.97 percent of particles that are 0.3 microns"

N95: Removes 95% of all particles that are at least 0.3 microns in diameter

<comment><USER15> The nominal rating is stricter, but is the certification process that the claims of the nominal rating are actually met as strict?

There's what it says it does, and the probability that it actually does what it says it does. Those are two different considerations.

<comment><USER5> That's a different argument -- whether or not the HEPA filter really is a HEPA filter.

<comment><USER16> And whether the seal around the HEPA filter that the HEPA filter is put inside is airtight.

E.g. I've seen some vacuum cleaners which have HEPA filters reviewed as a bit useless at filtering because the particles flow through small gaps around the filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just roll with a T Rex suit, have the fan in the tail with an embedded pipe that shoots air past a uvc light.

</comment><comment><USER18> Please don't wear this while sleeping - it's missing some safety features, and you can kill yourself by re-breathing air, without even realizing it.

<comment><USER19> I took a nap in it. It's all good. You can't overpressure it if you want to (that's what the lower valve is for).

<comment><USER18> What would happen if the motor died? Would you still get fresh air? You are risking your life sleeping in this.

<comment><USER19> Part of why I used a blower rather than another type of pump is that you can still breathe in. You have to force the air through with your chest, which is tiring, but there's no danger. the idea is that you go out and get the blower replaced, at that point

<comment><USER18> You should add a second one-way value. Because with the open tube you are breathing back in the same air you are exhaling.

Try it: Turn off the motor, and take shallow breaths, see how much air you get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A simpler version may just be a helmet that drowns your face in HEPA-filtered air (so just positive pressure around your face / head)

<comment><USER3> It's called a powered respirator they'll cost around $200-250 for the ones that just offer more comfort than full/half mask respirators to $500 that also offer chemical/hardcover protection to $1000> for special uses like welding/smelting work.

<comment><USER21> And, they're great! They keep you cool, then keep particles out, and they don't need to seal so tight.

Source: have used one for welding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Makes me think of this:

[https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1315](https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1315)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

Now, how much if I wanted to buy one? :)

<comment><USER19> I spent about $60 for the parts overall.

The idea was to use parts that are still available easily, although I worry about the scuba masks for it.

Our other builds are at [https://robots- everywhere.com/re_wiki/pub/web/Cookbook.SaltM...](https://robots- everywhere.com/re_wiki/pub/web/Cookbook.SaltMask.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hi, I made this, if you have questions ask away!

<comment><USER24> If you had an expanded budget and were going to make some design changes for longer-term wear, or more versatility/durability, what would they be? How close to Quarian envirosuits can we get, exactly?

<comment><USER19> If I had an expanded budget I'd get something designed for this purpose. This was a bit of a McGyvering for hospitals that ran out of regular PPE suits.

If I was to change anything, I'd have more air go between the two layers, for comfort. Or use a less noisy air source than an air bed blower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it legal to wear these things in public? I feel like someone would definitely call the cops on you out of fear.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would it be illegal?

<comment><USER26> Some places it is illegal to cover your face. (Banks, Government Buildings, etc...) I would probably put a "Hi my name is BLANK" sticker on my shirt to kinda offset that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm betting he wore that thing for less than an hour total. In air conditioning.

<comment><USER19> I wore that one just to take the picture. I wore the test article one for 10 hours including a 4 hour nap. I don't have air conditioning in my home.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hold Name Contests - <AUTHOR> http://www.namecontests.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a web app for holding name contests. It has lots of customization options, including logos and photos, Facebook and Twitter integration, custom rules. Participants can submit and discuss entries and vote for their favorites, contests can have multiple phases and voting rounds. Think Doodle for finding the right name. Please post feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> I really like it. I even might see an usefulness for websites/domain names. The UI is really nice and it's very easy to navigate. Good job.

EDIT: I just noticed you have another platform for domain name contests. Still nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm thinking of adding a domain checking feature when submitting entries, and perhaps alternative name suggestions when the domain is taken.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Collaborative multiplayer game where you mine Monero to progress - <AUTHOR> https://tombs.io/ <comment><USER2> Clicked on this as I saw "game" and "Monero" together and played around for a short bit. Some quick reflections:

\- I didn't really realize it was real time with other players. Was a bit confused in the beginning with what was happening. Perhaps my own character code be colour coded differently to make it somewhat clearer?

\- Tried clicking on some of the chat buttons (I have 0 coins), but then I just get a popup saying "Something went wrong". Reproducible.

Fun with some things happening in this area though! Do you have any plans for how to take this further?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback!

I definintely agree that it's very confusing for new players. There's a lot I can do to improve the onboarding and making your own character different is a great idea.

Regarding "Something went wrong" I presume it's because you have Adblock installed, which blocks Coinhive (the JS library/service I use for the actual mining). I should probably add some kind of notification about whitelisting the site if you want to be able to mine.

Regarding taking it further I have a lot of ideas and this was just an experiment where I wanted to explore the concept of using cryptocurrency mining as a monetization method. Browser mining gets a lot of justified heat with rogue sites running the miner without notifiying users. I do however believe there's good potential of it being used as a legitimate way of microfunding, as long as it's user-initiated and the user is perfectly aware of what the mining entails.

Thanks again!

<comment><USER2> I do run an adblocker by default yes, but unfortunately I'm still seeing the same error with it disabled for the game.

Yes, absolutely. I work in related fields and I think it is crucial (and exciting!) with these kinds of experiments. Trial and error, to see what works and what doesn't. Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This game is based on a Ludum Dare entry I did a couple of years back where you dig deeper and deeper into an ever-expanding pyramid together with strangers. It's basically a social experiment.

Apart from monetization, the miner helps combat the problem I had with bots in the original LD entry.

The backend is 100% Firebase + Google Cloud Functions.

Let me know what you think!</comment>


Why Startups Fail and Why We Should've Too - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupforless.org/2007/09/why-startups-fail-and-why-we-shouldve-too-by-denny-k-miu.html <comment><USER2> I am wondering how much credibility positions from Gartner is given in the startup community overall. They seem to be pretty risk-adverse, and not necessarily forward-thinking.

<comment><USER3> They are not what they used to be. In the 2000's, during the telecom bubble, they were basically god. In 2003, they were still somewhat credible among the VC's. Today, I am guessing that they are basically irrelevant.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple link shortener with built in ;) URL builder - <AUTHOR> https://www.livechatinc.com/url-shortener/?utm_source=news.ycombinator.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=shortener-news-ycombinator <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all!

Please tell me what you think about our link shortener.

We made it to make link shortening easier - it has built-in URL builder, so you can easily create her links for your GA stats. You can also check how many ppl clicked on your links.</comment>


Inside a data broker profiting from Your personal data (infographic) - <AUTHOR> https://safeshepherd.com/beenverified

<comment><USER2> It's unfortunate with all the tracking and data-mining going on that once information enters the public sphere, it's there to stay forever. Why can't we DMCA our own private information?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually a GENIUS suggestion. Too bad Congress is in the RIAA's pocket, not the public's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, a form prompting for personal information after 4,783,500 pixels explaining why it's a terrible idea to type the same type of thing into some other website? I burst out laughing!

Hope this infographic pays off for them.</comment>


Sunday Times sends DMCA takedown notice to First Look over image of frontpage - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2101948-news-uk-dmca-notification-first-look-productions.html

<comment><USER2> What's really sick about this takedown notice is that the Intercept article is almost perfect example of fair use. It's a form of comment and criticism, as well as news reporting. All protected by the fair use doctrine.

The lawyer who filed this DMCA takedown notes that "under penalty of perjury" they have a good faith belief that this violates their copyright.

As the saying goes, this lawyer is either as dumb as a box of rocks, or lying through her teeth. (She's lying.) I would hope a court would find she perjured herself (as well as obviously find this as a abuse of the DMCA), but I doubt that's going to happen.

<comment><USER3> _(This is not legal advice, just a comment.)_

No, the "under penalty of perjury" bit in the DMCA is that they own the copyright in the content they're saying they own. (I believe this is undisputed; they do in fact own the typesetting of their front page.)

Whether the links actually point to copies of the content alleged, or whether the content if republished would be an infringement of copyright in that context, are entirely separate questions (and there are no repercussions for being wrong, even deliberately, which is one of the really bad things about the DMCA, especially in a world where robots auto-file takedowns based on dud search terms).

They do not seem to have misrepresented their clients' interests, although this §512(c) takedown is clearly filed in bad faith: because yes, this kind of meta-reporting, commentary on news stories, _is_ absolutely classic fair use - and there's the story they're reporting on, right there on the right. I believe it would be perfectly legal over here, too - in fact, the BBC actually routinely republish the front pages of every major UK newspaper every day for comment and criticism, both on the TV and on their website - [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers) \- and they neither seek, nor need, permission. This low-res image of the front page represents what the paper was reporting as a snapshot in time as a matter of history. It obviously doesn't replace the paper: it doesn't even contain all of the story in question. It is quite clearly not an actionable infringement of copyright.

One would think that Ms Chisese would have given her client certain advice about the serious potential negative impact of spitefully trying to restrict news reporting via copyright takedowns: aka the "Streisand effect"? You would think they'd know about that. Still, I don't see an "on instructions" in there. Oh well. I'm sure the Intercept will respond as I would expect them to. (Edit: Sure enough - [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/610451356122509312](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/610451356122509312) )</comment></comment>


P2P Youtube: Chrome extension to get videos faster via BitTorrent - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mndoohjdoechinpkfbkolflbonciahfo <comment><USER2> HTTP on most residential networks has a higher priority than P2P.

Combined with the fact that Google use the Google Global Cache (GGC) service inside ISP networks, I don't see how this would be any faster on todays internet.

Cool idea and concept, but don't see it helping.

<comment><USER3> Wasn't Google working on some P2P protocol for Chrome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would this extension need to access "your data on all websites"?

<comment><USER3> Probably because it can't say "your data only from Youtube".</comment></comment>


Obfuscation has a grand history – could it give us more freedom online? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/24/obfuscation-users-guide-for-privacy-and-protest-online-surveillance <comment><USER2> The concept itself is something I have certainly considered.

The reality of it may be that there are just too many possible vectors to cover and they might not work as intended especially if scaled up. There's really no guarantee you will appear as noise to any sufficiently advanced algorithm and even as noise you will be run through algorithms shaped and molded by the behavior as everyone else which could backfire horrifically.</comment>