> - bandwidth : ... More generally, if Urbit got even moderate adoption, the hosted-server companies would fall over themselves supporting it.
I am highly skeptical -- the Wordpress has pretty high adoption, and it is useful for "non-techy Mom", but there are very few companies which support wordpress integration, and if they do, it is at a much higher price (bluehost: $3/mo regular hosting, $20/mo wordpress hosting)
> - mail : ... full-fledged identities on the Urbit network cost a couple of bucks, and it is assumed that anyone who spammed from one would get blackholed before they recouped the investment.
This blackhole mechanism is very much like spam problem, so it has all the usual questions: Is it going to be managed by someone? Does identity get un-blackholed after some time with no spam? Can you pay $$$ to make this process faster? Can someone blackhole whole galaxy? What if your computer gets malware which spams other users on your behalf?
I am not asking for immediate answers to these questions, I just wanted to point that having "federated identity" will not fully solve spam problem.
> - viruses : Urbit is designed to be essentially impervious to malware. ... In a worst-case scenario (say, your whole urbit got bitlocker'd), recovering would require you to a) get your hosting provider to restore from a backup, ...
That's not the worst case scenario. The worst-case scenario is bitlocker reaches in your urbit (via whatever mechanism you use) and encrypts all the your data there, slowly over time (so your backup is corrupted, too) and starting with least-recently accessed files first, to minimize chance of early detection.
Looks like in this situation, your only hope is that your hosting provider kept your backups, and this is not guaranteed at all. So basically not much better than existing self-hosting systems.
Note: I have not actually checked, but I suspect that Urbit may keep all the previous versions of the files around. This will help against bitlockers, but:
(1) Is there a mechanism to permanently remove data, say because you accidentally uploaded 25GB blue-ray movie? If yes, this is what bitlocker will use.
(2) Are you sure that every user will have different urbit credentials and admin credentials to the hosting provider? Because if not, then bitlocker will ssh into your hosted machine and damage the files directly.
(3) There are other things other than bitlockers. Malware will use your account to send SPAM, use your webserver to sell illegal drugs, use your CPU to mine bitcoins, and generally make a botnet out of your urbit.
I am highly skeptical -- the Wordpress has pretty high adoption, and it is useful for "non-techy Mom", but there are very few companies which support wordpress integration, and if they do, it is at a much higher price (bluehost: $3/mo regular hosting, $20/mo wordpress hosting)
> - mail : ... full-fledged identities on the Urbit network cost a couple of bucks, and it is assumed that anyone who spammed from one would get blackholed before they recouped the investment.
This blackhole mechanism is very much like spam problem, so it has all the usual questions: Is it going to be managed by someone? Does identity get un-blackholed after some time with no spam? Can you pay $$$ to make this process faster? Can someone blackhole whole galaxy? What if your computer gets malware which spams other users on your behalf?
I am not asking for immediate answers to these questions, I just wanted to point that having "federated identity" will not fully solve spam problem.
> - viruses : Urbit is designed to be essentially impervious to malware. ... In a worst-case scenario (say, your whole urbit got bitlocker'd), recovering would require you to a) get your hosting provider to restore from a backup, ...
That's not the worst case scenario. The worst-case scenario is bitlocker reaches in your urbit (via whatever mechanism you use) and encrypts all the your data there, slowly over time (so your backup is corrupted, too) and starting with least-recently accessed files first, to minimize chance of early detection.
Looks like in this situation, your only hope is that your hosting provider kept your backups, and this is not guaranteed at all. So basically not much better than existing self-hosting systems.
Note: I have not actually checked, but I suspect that Urbit may keep all the previous versions of the files around. This will help against bitlockers, but:
(1) Is there a mechanism to permanently remove data, say because you accidentally uploaded 25GB blue-ray movie? If yes, this is what bitlocker will use.
(2) Are you sure that every user will have different urbit credentials and admin credentials to the hosting provider? Because if not, then bitlocker will ssh into your hosted machine and damage the files directly.
(3) There are other things other than bitlockers. Malware will use your account to send SPAM, use your webserver to sell illegal drugs, use your CPU to mine bitcoins, and generally make a botnet out of your urbit.