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Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

Urbit is such a niche product that totally ignores the average consumer it's essentially dead on arrival.

They struggle to explain it to technical people. Imagine trying to explain this thing to your mother.

It's the fever dream of deeply technical types who have created a product so academic in nature that it's totally useless in practicality.

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There are many valid arguments against Urbit, but this one...

>They struggle to explain it to technical people. Imagine trying to explain this thing to your mother.

...doesn't hold up for me. My grandparents understand computers only in terms of what they can do for them, and the buttons they need to click to make that happen. If Urbit ever matures, there will be applications of similar functionality and similar complexity to what non-technical people currently use.

its an os, its social media without the middleman, its an identity, its many things. Sadly HN always seems to hate it whenever it get posted here.

Could you explain Urbit to your mother within a minute?

Is there any person you could explain it to in a minute?

“An operating system in a box that connects with others to provide (mostly in the future) the kind of networked services and apps you enjoy now, but with your data stored locally instead of on corporate servers”

Easier than explaining bitcoin, honestly. No warrants made to mom or others on usability or service availability

My mother fell asleep because I read that, it was that boring to non techies.

Hypothetical response: "An operating system? Is it better than Windows? What games does it have?"

I'm not convinced that's an appropriate term to use here, even as part of a simplified explanation.

"Have you ever had a software update break your computer or an app you used, or have you ever had a website you love disappear from the internet? Imagine if that could never happen again."

Maybe a better question is, "what does Urbit do? Like, specifically - and using either standard technical jargon, comparison to other products on the market.

Because at this point it just sounds like a techno-cult.

My best answer to this question is that it's an overly complex IRC with additional features and misleading marketing designed to swindle investors.

In fact, it's so obscure and bloated that the average IRC user wouldn't be able to understand it.

The average user has no hope.

I mean, just look at them trying to explain Urbit on Twitter. Meaningless abstract buzzwords and it still doesn't explain anything.

https://twitter.com/urbit/status/1184984759123922945

https://twitter.com/urbit/status/1255284955850125312

https://twitter.com/urbit/status/1253709910694432768

It reads like a cult.

Right now you can download urbit and message other people with an urbit planet if you know their id, and its peer to peer. you own the planet forever and you cannot be censored or have your data be sold to advertisers on social media platforms.

What is the difference compared to signal or other E2E encrypted SMS approaches?

That might have more to do with Urbit's founder rather than the technical merits of the project.

Good job making it sound like a cult.

That’s cool, I guess. I just don’t want all those things bundled up.

It seems clear to me that they have no interest in targeting average consumers at this point.

It's abundantly clear, and I'm not sure why people have a problem with that. Plenty of computing projects have required a long time before they become accessible to the common person as a packaged, supportable product.

Me not being able to explain Kubernetes to my mother hasn't stopped it from being a resoundingly successful project, and it's not clear to me why Urbit should be different.

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