Trilema is the blog of Mircea Popescu, covering Bitcoin, cryptography, factored RSA keys, and sharply opinionated commentary on software and the crypto industry.
HN commenters link it for his Bitcoin block size views, the MPEX and Cardano designs, and in discussions after reports of his death.
Urbit has no shortage of true believers who will insist that, in practice, Hoon -- and Urbit's alarmingly weird verbiage in general -- is very easy and pleasant to use and not at all strange, despite it being as penetrable to hackers outside the project as, say, the rantings of a Sea Org member. In fact I think a major portion of the purpose of the project is to produce a vanguard of true believers who buy into the whole vision thing, and then go spread try-it-you'll-like-it propaganda on sites like this to recruit yet more true believers, etc.
As evidence I submit that a gentleman put up a significant bounty to implement a simple game in Urbit[0]. There were no takers.
When you consider chunks of Urbit's completely reinvented network space are for sale for real cash money, it gives you a glimpse as to the rest of the project's purpose.
Urbit is the brainchild of a blogger who is prone to lead his readers on lengthy circumlocutions only to tie them up into conclusions about political systems -- if indeed they be conclusions at all -- which are not only old ideas but some of them really bad ideas which humans have tried before and proven to be really bad. While the ideas underpinning Urbit may not align with Moldbug's politics -- Urbit's design and rationale follows his methodology. The funny weird names not only for symbols but for common OS concepts like files, network endpoints, and closures, are a part of an elaborate cup-and-ball game intended to convince the unwary…
Possibly some people have been exposed to mircea through hearing about his insane quotes such as:
The most you can do, after having been educated/raped, is picking the what and the how for other, later, virgins.
http://trilema.com/2014/patriarchy-is-a-thing-because-nobody-likes-living-in-a-world-populated-by-little-girls/
Or they have read his Guide To Beating Women blog post:
http://trilema.com/2011/cum-se-bate-femeia/
Or perhaps they have read how his site for betting with bitcoin screwed someone over for about $7,000 in bitcoin:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339544.0
>What? Who?
Mircea Popescu, He is the original guy who started promoting the idea that it was a mistake to raise the block size unless some incentive to run a full node was added to the system. I don't think he actually supports segwit either, he thinks soft forks are crap. He is the original voice in opposition to block size increases though and many people listen to him.
http://trilema.com/
A lot of people disagree with your characterization of how lightening networks will play out. Since they don't really exist in real world usage yet hard to prove one way or the other.
If accurate - and it's rather likely [1] - then the world has lost someone who was quite interesting.
Weird [2], controversial, completely unpalatable to some and hated by many, but most definitely interesting [3]
RIP Mircea, if you are indeed dead, you were certainly not boring [4]
[1] http://thewhet.net/2021/06/goodnight-sweet-master/
[2] http://trilema.com/
[3] https://archive.md/9AvNW
[4] https://archive.md/wip/cJNKb
Meanwhile, on the original post, the author is acting like HN was tampering with the ranking of the article because it started doing poorly after people realized that a real key wasn't factored:
> "Update II : Amusingly enough, it seems Hacker News hand-diddled their story list to remove this discussion. Way to go Ydumbinator crew!" [0]
[0]: http://trilema.com/2015/full-disclosure-4096-rsa-key-in-the-strongset-factored/
You can always sacrifice speed for security. I like this design which was used to manage bitcoin: http://trilema.com/2013/mpex-tech-stuff/. Blockchain is a way of creating distributed ledgers. The rest is ideology. If you are making a publicly accessible API you can chose how to implement it. Regulations were applied to digital cash but given more run room with crypto.