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2+title = "A brief update from urbit.org and Tlon"
3+date = 2021-04-01
4+description = "A brief update from urbit.org and Tlon for ~4.1.2021"
5+slug = "/updates/2021-04-01"
6+[extra]
7+author = ""
8+ship = "~wolref-podlex + ~roslet-tanner"
9++++
10+
11+Hello!
12+
13+Happy Spring from ~wolref-podlex and ~roslet-tanner. We’re here with a surprise joint Urbit-Tlon newsletter—we’ve been so busy producing content that we forgot to write about it. Plus, this is fun every now and then. Honestly, we have so much to talk about this month, we can’t cover it all without writing a book. Here are the highlights.
14+
15+1 - Events
16+
17+April is shaping up to be jam-packed with events. For starters, we’ve got three developer calls slated for April, all of which are on Thursdays at 9am PDT:
18+
19+4/1: Tyler Shuster (~radbur-sivmus) discussed Javascript apps on Urbit: https://www.meetup.com/urbit-sf/events/277261928/
20+
21+4/15: Raghu (~sovmep-ripsum) will talk about virtual desks, a key component of third-party software distribution, and the process of contributing to the Urbit kernel through our scholarships program.
22+
23+4/29: Edward Amsden (~ritpub-sipsyl) will be discussing and demoing his WebRTC work, which enables audio/video calls on Urbit.
24+
25+On April 27th, we’ll be launching our Bitcoin Wallet and preparing to roll it out to the network. This is the culmination of many months of collaboration between several members of our community and Tlon—we’re really excited (especially ~pindet-timmut). There might even be some cool swag, discounted hosting, and/or other giveaways. Regardless, you’re not going to want to miss it. RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/urbit-sf/events/276741426/
26+
27+We’re also excited to announce that our much anticipated Town Hall event, a virtual mini-conference, will be taking place on May 20th and will feature a keynote talk from our good friend Justin Murphy. Mark your calendars for now—more details to follow soon.
28+
29+2 - Content
30+
31+There’s been a ton of high-quality content produced lately. If you’re looking for something to watch, read, or listen to, here’s a roundup:
32+
33+~rovnys-ricfer has been recording an audio series about the design and rationale of Urbit called “Urbit from the Outside In.” Check them out here: https://twitter.com/rovnys/status/1371972157971050499
34+
35+~pindet-timmut and ~wolref-podlex appeared on Justin Murphy’s Other Life podcast—check them out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9lymudGV8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jbjSUKRyGM
36+
37+A question was posed on our mailing list titled: “what is this?” The team and community did not disappoint with their answers: https://groups.google.com/a/urbit.org/g/dev/c/bdlPPnaccMc
38+
39+Simon Kovacs (~bacbec-lormur) wrote a great post for our blog titled “After the Machine War”: https://urbit.org/blog/after-machine-war/
40+
41+~poldec-tonteg talked to the guys at The Stack. Check out the podcast here: https://thestack.link/episode-13-martian-futurism-with-poldec-tonteg/
42+
43+3 - Documentation refresh
44+
45+Our Docs team completed a large overhaul of our documentation last month, making the distinction between “Usage documentation” (https://urbit.org/using), or how to use your ship, and “Development documentation” (https://urbit.org/docs) much clearer.
46+
47+We’ve had some excellent contributions from the community to our documentation, most recently a comprehensive set of overviews, guides and examples documenting threads from ~tinnus-napbus: https://urbit.org/docs/userspace/threads/overview/
48+
49+We’re pretty proud of the work that’s gone into clarifying everything and are still working hard to make the docs more and more helpful. Feel free to send us your feedback if you have any!
50+
51+4 - Landscape news
52+
53+The community on Landscape is continuing to grow. Over 30 groups were published to the Directory in March alone, and these are just the public groups that someone decided to broadcast. We think that’s pretty exciting.
54+There’s a new Cincinnati-centric group (~padwet/queen-city-urbit), a sewing group that sounds incredible (~pinwyl-hasfeb/seamstress-mafia), and the first digital maker space on Urbit (~tidrel-tabpub/freeside-mars).
55+
56+Check out the Directory (~bollug-worlus/urbit-index) to discover public groups and, if you’d like help getting your community onto Landscape, let us know. We’re here to help!
57+
58+5 - Hosting
59+
60+Over at Tlon, we’ve been really busy onboarding new hosting customers. All of our current onboarding sessions are completely booked! If you’d like to learn more about how it works, send an email to support@tlon.io. If you’re ready to get on the list, sign up at https://tlon.io/
61+
62+6 - Team news
63+
64+We're happy to share that longtime hooner ~littel-wolfur has joined the Tlon engineering team. Welcome, ~littel-wolfur! Also, we’ve made it official with ~wolref-podlex and dropped the “Interim” from “Director of urbit.org” (probably due to the quality of these newsletters).
65+
66+If you’re interested in working with Tlon or urbit.org, feel free to get in touch.
67+
68+7 - Culture recs
69+
70+Finally, we’re going to leave you with some recommendations from the team:
71+
72+~fabled-faster released an insane new mix that melted my face in a good way: https://soundcloud.com/flowerstructure/fs-s-s-2021
73+
74+Our designer ~natnex-ronret curates a playlist website. Check it out: https://www.door.link
75+~datnut-pollen has been trying to understand how information processing evolves over time in evolutive systems. Here’s what he’s been reading:
76+
77+(i) Connectom https://connectom.substack.com/p/connectom-the-book It is about thermodynamic/statistical mechanical processes as the fundamental driver of the evolution of biological, ecological, and human systems.
78+(ii) Topological phases emerge in an ecological model: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.1.20210128a/full/ and Topology protects chiral edge currents in stochastic systems: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.02845 Topological protection for various dynamics is the main theme he reckons is missing from Connectom.
79+(iii) Homotopy theoretic and categorical models of neural information networks https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.15136 Topological techniques for understanding information processing in neural, metabolic, societal, and computational contexts.
80+
81+~simfur-ritwed recently re-read Pynchon's Vineland. It’s both a loom into the backwoods NorCal culture of the 80s and a typically Pynchonian fantasy about the dangers of media-saturated identity (quite prescient, turns out).
82+
83+In the wake of his recent trip to Brazil, ~wolref-podlex has been reading Os Sertões (the English version), the story of a war that took place at the end of the 19th century in the backlands (sertões) of Brazil, in which the Brazilian army brutally crushed the peaceful religious settlement of Canudos.
84+
85+Lately I (~roslet-tanner) have been getting back into Roy Ayers. This feels just right for spring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inPgcN_xF4w
86+
87+That’s it for now. We’ll be back with more news from Tlon and Urbit, respectively, in a few weeks. As always, let us know if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about next time.
88+
89+~wolref-podlex and ~roslet-tanner