So yeah, 2^32 planets (minus 65536 stars (minus 256 galaxies)) and each planet has a plot of "land" that is 2^32 wide to allocate moons out of. What happens if we run out of planets? Then people will start living on moons, simple. Or comets (the remaining 64 bits in the 128-bit address space are for comets, which are not comparable to land or homesteads.)
tptacek> [T]he founders ideological views are also infused into the system.... [T]he most available first-class address in the system is in a 32 bit address space.
chc4> As for ideological views: there are 4 million planets. They are, essentially, houses, but each one of those planets can also issue 2^16 "moons", which can themselves be their own people. I don't know the reasoning behind why 2^32....
njarboe> 4,294,967,296 is the number of planets which is a much more than 4 million.
I read 'njarboe's comment as a correction of chc4's use of "4 million". 4,294,967,296 is 2^32 (rounded to 4 billion), which 'chc4 mentions here as well saying 4 billion another comment.
If I've missed something, please do correct me. I just think 'chc4 meant to type "4 billion" given the their other correct use of 2^32 in the same comment and 4 billion elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15300641), and 'njarboe's misinterpreted 'chc4 as misunderstanding, rather than fat-fingering. I'm not saying anything about the choice of 2^32. If you read that as otherwise, how can I improve my writing to make that clearer? Was there a particular phrase that you found easy to misinterpret? Something that made you think I was saying anything more than that? Do you think 'chc4 meant "4 million" and not "4 billion"? Are there actually only effectively 4 million (not billion) planets? As for my interest in continuing this thread, it's not that care about the discussion topic, but rather whether I'm communicating (reading and writing) effectively.
> The most available first-class address in the system is in a 32 bit address space.
The most available address is a comet. What is the meaning of a "first-class" address? They are all addresses, the motivation of the founders and the concept of a first-class Urbit address is what I take issue with. There is currently very little that you can't do with one of the 0::(64bit) addressed comets, except for "spawning child addresses." The other differences are all theoretical solutions to problems (spam) that we Urbit users in great part just don't have yet, so the idea of a first-class address is basically theoretical too. Having a planet is more like having a /24 if you want to draw parallels to IPv4, but... not really a valid comparison.
Comets are the most available addresses. There are 2^64 of them and it only costs a few CPU cycles to generate you a private key. They have no subordinate "child" addresses. Otherwise they are first-class citizens and you can have as many of them as you want. Go ahead and take your share of that pool of 1.8446744e+19 addresses.
I don't know who would pay $10 for a planet. I know they don't want you to get more than one, in case they need to impose spam controls on these "lower 64" free addresses. I know lots of people have paid for stars, but I don't personally know anyone who didn't get their planet for free at this time.
(Disclosure: I own a galaxy, I don't sell planets, and I did not pay any amount of money for my galaxy. I was in the right place at the right time, and I helped test early releases. I am skeptical that it has the same value as the galaxies that are still held by the founders (it is priceless to me,) but they are active contributors and there is a good reason to give them money if you want to see Urbit development continue.)
There is no such value to be extracted by paying ~del's discount planet shack for stars or planets. I am hardly even a casual hoon programmer.
