Wireless mode, How realism killed realism and why we shouildn't care Options

[Emil Barr]

I dont need to use sights. I dont even need to use my eyes. I just sense things through the force.

[Remnar]

I dont need to use sights. I dont even need to use my eyes. I just sense things through the force.

I've seen many action heroes apparently with that skill considering their eyes are closed when the shoot...

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I've seen many action heroes apparently with that skill considering their eyes are closed when the shoot...

It is a tried and true technique for Action Heroes. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Epicedion]

Ok tape may have been a bad choice as a storage medium, but there would be some sort of backup of essential systems on either optical storage or hard drives that are then stored in a secure/shielded area for going back to if there was a problem.

Would you have everything? Probably not, like you said there is a huge amount out there, but certainly some form and level of back up for key components continues to be used.

There's something about the setting that precludes applying the standard idea of "backups" and it's pretty well always been that way. What that is exactly, I'm not sure, but I imagine that the risk vs cost ratio is balanced heavily toward "cost." Data loss in Shadowrun is almost totally unheard of outside of a total matrix crash, so backups for the sake of data loss prevention would be all cost vs minimal to no risk (and even in a total matrix crash, data loss is still actually pretty low, otherwise the SIN database would've been trashed even harder than it was those couple times).

Let's ignore the fact that you need to versioned many of your files in real life, and assume that a "file" in Shadowrun contains its own complete version history.

So the only reason to store backups is to protect against corporate shenanigans and runners.

This leads us to the following:

A host (or node, or whatever version we're looking at) is its own digital vault, with its own high (even deadly) security, its own entry points, and so on. A physical backup would require a physical structure with a physical vault with its own physical security.

If random data loss is out of the picture, is it more secure to house things in two locations, or just one location?

In the case of data theft, two locations is the less secure option (the cost of protecting a piece of data has to be paid twice). In the case of data destruction, two locations is the more secure option (if something happens to one, there's another to fall back on).

Honestly, I can't tell which one of these is better. Maybe it should be different based on the sensitivity of the information. Maybe some hosts should have mirror copies (though then you get back into the question of having to maintain double or triple security).

Personally I'm going to run under the assumption that intricate virtual and physical backups are largely impractical for (reasons).

Two points:

1) If you're running silent, you're not connected to the Matrix. That's what "running silent" means: no transmissions.

2) Been in many firefights, have you? 100 meters is just over 109 yards. At that range, what you have isn't a firefight so much as two groups of guys trying to suppress each other. Unless you have a sniper, 100m is beyond the effective engagement range for small arms.

1) "Running silent" essentially means "not automatically handshaking everything within 100m" -- you're still on the matrix, you're just not advertising. You can turn everything off, at which point you're simply offline.

2) Personally, I've never been in a firefight, nor in any military or police force, or had anything other than backyard training. But I've gone out many times to plink targets from 100 yards, and it's not especially difficult to shoot something like a clay pigeon or a soda can at that range if you're using a rifle. Handguns are slightly different, since there's more inherent randomness to the precise path along which rounds travel after exiting the barrel. Shorter barrel, lighter round, slower muzzle velocity -- all adds up to the handgun round ending up somewhere other than the exact aim point each time, exacerbated by distance.

[KarmaInferno]

Is this really a great example of why wireless is stupid? My baton has wireless so that I can potentially use a simple mental or voice command to extend the baton as opposed to using the ready weapon command?. Makes sense to me. Admittedly the way that is achieved could possible be more complicated than that (do I need a a direct link to the comlink, trodes to make this work?). We could have 15 rules and micro-managed cyber/device interactions to achieve this or we could just suspend disbelief and and say wireless on equals free action.

Just to clarify, you do realize the Wireless Bonus rules REQUIRE a full on Matrix connection to function, yes? Not merely a wireless link from trodes to device?


-k

[Epicedion]

Just to clarify, you do realize the Wireless Bonus rule REQUIRE a full on Matrix connection to function, yes? Not merely a wireless link from trodes to device?


-k

Sort of. Connection to the Matrix is part and parcel with having wireless active -- you don't get one without the other. Generally speaking, you can get "tortoise mode" benefits by plugging wires into everything and your skull, which approximates the Skinlink of SR4 in terms of security, but in this edition there's a penalty for operating that far below the radar. SR4 should've had its own non-wireless penalty, by introducing some balancing factor like a limit to the amount of devices you can have working together without wireless enabled.

Where the system needs to be cleaned up is around the edges -- ie, what happens when there's no Matrix around to connect to but nothing preventing your wireless from working. This is of course a really rare situation, since blocking the Matrix is more often than not a crappy way of securing something, since it hinders the day-to-day workers and security forces far more than the rare crack shadowrunner team.

[KCKitsune]

SR4 should've had its own non-wireless penalty, by introducing some balancing factor like a limit to the amount of devices you can have working together without wireless enabled.

If you're running more than 3 or 4 external devices on you PAN at the same time, you're really, IMO, running too many.

External Devices on PAN (commlink doesn't count because it is your PAN hub):

1. Primary gun
2. secondary gun (if you're a dual wielding gun slinger)
3. optical enhancement
4. audio enhancement

If I missed something in my list, please let me know.
Also a lot of this can be done away with by going cyber... it is cyberpunk you know.

[binarywraith]

Sort of. Connection to the Matrix is part and parcel with having wireless active -- you don't get one without the other. Generally speaking, you can get "tortoise mode" benefits by plugging wires into everything and your skull, which approximates the Skinlink of SR4 in terms of security, but in this edition there's a penalty for operating that far below the radar. SR4 should've had its own non-wireless penalty, by introducing some balancing factor like a limit to the amount of devices you can have working together without wireless enabled.

Or instead SR4 wasn't utterly retarded and understood that a direct wired fiber optic connection is never going to be slower than bouncing a radio signal out to a remote server and back. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotate.gif)

Also a lot of this can be done away with by going cyber... it is cyberpunk you know.

Yeah, except the bit where per SR5, even implanted systems don't communicate properly without wireless active.

Because somehow, cyberdocs got brain damaged and forgot how to run neural linkages.

[Epicedion]

Or instead SR4 wasn't utterly retarded and understood that a direct wired fiber optic connection is never going to be slower than bouncing a radio signal out to a remote server and back.

No, SR4 was utterly retarded and understood nothing. It introduced a system of wireless hacking with no give and take. Why even implement wireless hacking at all if you can't actually wirelessly hack anything of importance? It was basically just wired hacking with easier to get to jackpoints. And, I suppose, a harsh counter to already wireless rigging. Of course, it was combined with money-based hacking, where the daisy-chain of agent-run commlinks was vastly superior to the effort any individual could ever bring to bear.

Yeah, except the bit where per SR5, even implanted systems don't communicate properly without wireless active.

Because somehow, cyberdocs got brain damaged and forgot how to run neural linkages.

Sorry, but by asking for wireless you must necessarily take some the negative with the positive. You can't on one hand ask for wireless functionality while on the other hand deny the implications of such.

You could answer the new systems with a host of explanations, but the one consistent response y'all seem to be giving is just straight-up bitching. Frankly it's getting fucking tiring.

[binarywraith]

No, SR4 was utterly retarded and understood nothing. It introduced a system of wireless hacking with no give and take. Why even implement wireless hacking at all if you can't actually wirelessly hack anything of importance? It was basically just wired hacking with easier to get to jackpoints. And, I suppose, a harsh counter to already wireless rigging. Of course, it was combined with money-based hacking, where the daisy-chain of agent-run commlinks was vastly superior to the effort any individual could ever bring to bear.

Preaching to the choir here, but at the same time the above makes sense. Hacking is a threat. Megacorps, who build and design the Matrix infrastructure, have a vested interest in securing it. Perfect security is of course impossible because a perfectly secure system is one no one can log into at all, which isn't useful for doing work. Confining access to those places where valid users will need to access a system, however, allows useful work to be done while still keeping out the vast majority of possible hostiles.

Security 101 here, man.

Sorry, but by asking for wireless you must necessarily take some the negative with the positive. You can't on one hand ask for wireless functionality while on the other hand deny the implications of such.

You could answer the new systems with a host of explanations, but the one consistent response y'all seem to be giving is just straight-up bitching. Frankly it's getting fucking tiring.

My heart bleeds for your poor, tired self. My brain, on the other hand, bleeds because I'm trying to work around a set of rules written by devs not concerned with having an internally consistent system.

Good thing I never ashed for wireless, though. It is, frankly, idiotic beyond belief to expect that professional criminals whose main stock in trade is their anonymity would willingly use the gear as presented.

[Epicedion]

Preaching to the choir here, but at the same time the above makes sense. Hacking is a threat. Megacorps, who build and design the Matrix infrastructure, have a vested interest in securing it. Perfect security is of course impossible because a perfectly secure system is one no one can log into at all, which isn't useful for doing work. Confining access to those places where valid users will need to access a system, however, allows useful work to be done while still keeping out the vast majority of possible hostiles.

Security 101 here, man.

My largest issue with the SR4 Matrix was that no one in their right mind would ever connect anything to the wireless Matrix, with the rules as presented. You could have a Matrix site completely off-grid with no penalty, and require any hackers to be both on-site and physically plugged in. This pretty much ruined the whole concept of wireless anything, making it all confusing window-dressing to a badly-optimized system.

Further, and I can never stress this enough, the connection limits were pants-on-head. A conservative 1000 employees at a site would necessitate over 150 nodes -- and don't get me started on nexuses. Even the most remotely quasi-realistic Matrix security couldn't possibly cover the number of nodes an actual functional site would require to operate.

My heart bleeds for your poor, tired self. My brain, on the other hand, bleeds because I'm trying to work around a set of rules written by devs not concerned with having an internally consistent system.

Good thing I never ashed for wireless, though. It is, frankly, idiotic beyond belief to expect that professional criminals whose main stock in trade is their anonymity would willingly use the gear as presented.

Generally speaking, the gear rules work, so long as you don't buy into the idea that evil gear-smashing deckers are lurking around every Matrix street corner. Putting yourself out in the Wild West of the unhosted Matrix can be extremely painful or deadly. You can't reasonably expect that hackers are as common as they were in SR4, where the damage they could do was laughably minimal (and at the rough cost of 5 nuyen and a candy bar).

Going out into a street fight Matrix-guns-blazing might get you dumped, burnt, or killed, so you've got to expect anyone worth their salt to be a little reticent to engage in open-Matrix warfare willy-nilly. Security deckers will stick to their relatively safe hosts, and not go busting into the middle of firefights to break things. Matrix combat outside of hosts has to require some sort of major incentive, or at least some sort of guarantee that resistance will be a joke. Risking brain-burning dumpshock just so that a street samurai can't stack wired reflexes and reaction enhancers is pretty pants-on-head itself.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

Everytime I see something about how something in the new systems is idiotic and unrealistic because you would never wireless this for security reason that, I go to agree, and then remember wireless credit cards are a real thing people use now and think maybe the idiocy is realistic.

[binarywraith]

Everytime I see something about how something in the new systems is idiotic and unrealistic because you would never wireless this for security reason that, I go to agree, and then remember wireless credit cards are a real thing people use now and think maybe the idiocy is realistic.

Wireless credit cards are a reality... but RFID readers aren't omnipresent they way they are in SR. Even then, you might note that the more security conscious folks tend to keep chipped cards in shielded cases to avoid wardrivers with an RFID reader.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

They don't need to be omnipresent for the one in the crooks pocket he bought off ebay for $50 to steal your creditcard info. And keeping them in a sheilded case, whilst probably sensible, is not conducive to the premise of convieniance that the technology is sold to the average person on, where you just wave your purse/wallet by the scanner (Wave and Go), as you're not saving anytime taking it out and waving it by the scanner as opposed to taking it out and swiping it, so if you do have a shielded case, why do you even have a wireless card in the first place? It is no less ridiculous a situation than the things criticised in the rules, and I don't think anyone could make the case in good faith that most people aren't incredibly uneducated or lax about their electronic/online/wireless security.

That said I'm not now or was I ever trying to justify having rules systems be equally ridiculous. No one wants that, I would think. Like I said 'I go to agree' with those arguments and then remember how stupid reality can be. I was just pointing out a case of truth being stranger (or dumber) than fiction.

[Dolanar]

no one is suggesting that people in general aren't lax in their online security, we ARE suggesting that the specific group that these rules are written for (the majority of the shadowrunning community) are SUPPOSED to be extremely protective of all forms of security, we pay Decker's to erase our Matrix Footprint on an almost daily basis afterall.

Its like saying a Security Professional would intentionally leave his car door unlocked in a neighborhood known for GTA.

[Tanegar]

Sorry, but by asking for wireless you must necessarily take some the negative with the positive. You can't on one hand ask for wireless functionality while on the other hand deny the implications of such.

I don't recall anyone asking for wireless; and how, exactly, is the sudden, unexplained inability of previously hardwired gear to now use a hardwired connection implied by the existence of wireless networking?

[Emil Barr]

My largest issue with the SR4 Matrix was that no one in their right mind would ever connect anything to the wireless Matrix, with the rules as presented. You could have a Matrix site completely off-grid with no penalty, and require any hackers to be both on-site and physically plugged in. This pretty much ruined the whole concept of wireless anything, making it all confusing window-dressing to a badly-optimized system.

How is that any different from the way current things work? Theres no incentive for corps to make their networks wired now either, since most of the day to day functions outside of security have no wireless enhancements that we are aware of.

[kzt]

Right now, at an average large corp, the wireless is better protected than the wired network. Wireless access to the corp network requires a user name and password just about anywhere, while it is very unusual for the wired network to be configured like that. Unplug a printer or a desktop, steal their port and you are on the network. Probably won't still be true in 5-10 years, but it is now.

[Wounded Ronin]

Is this really a great example of why wireless is stupid? My baton has wireless so that I can potentially use a simple mental or voice command to extend the baton as opposed to using the ready weapon command?. Makes sense to me. Admittedly the way that is achieved could possible be more complicated than that (do I need a a direct link to the comlink, trodes to make this work?). We could have 15 rules and micro-managed cyber/device interactions to achieve this or we could just suspend disbelief and and say wireless on equals free action.

"It's Hammer Time"

*twhick*

Of course why would it need wireless connectivity instead of a simple speech recognition capability?

Hilarious to imagine putting electronics in a blunt trauma instrument. Maybe after beating in the nth head the waterproofing gets a bit compromised and the Seattle rains start to make the baton malfunction on account of the electronics.

There are actually colorful and amusing story implications to imagine that over engineered weapons have taken over the world. It's like HK took over the future of weapons manufacture.

[Wounded Ronin]

2) Been in many firefights, have you? 100 meters is just over 109 yards. At that range, what you have isn't a firefight so much as two groups of guys trying to suppress each other. Unless you have a sniper, 100m is beyond the effective engagement range for small arms.

Well I haven't been in a firefight, and I wasn't being suppressed, but it seemed pretty routine to me to be able to hit a plate at 100 meters with any rifle I owned...AR 15, WASR AK 47 (assembled from spare parts, was good up to yards meters or so for hitting the plates consistently), Mosin Nagant...

That's using iron sights including dinged up World War II iron sights on the Mosin.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

Question: It has occurred to me that "before" wireless, we still had radio trancievers and the like and I don't remember people being overly concerned about having their comms hacked and constantly being led into ambushes, though I'm pretty sure this was still an option for players. So what was the difference between then and now, and does a solution to these issues lie within?

[binarywraith]

Question: It has occurred to me that "before" wireless, we still had radio trancievers and the like and I don't remember people being overly concerned about having their comms hacked and constantly being led into ambushes, though I'm pretty sure this was still an option for players. So what was the difference between then and now, and does a solution to these issues lie within?

The concern isn't the hacking. The concern is being forced to leave things vulnerable to hacking.

'Before' wireless, we still used radio transceivers for communications... but any shadowrunning group worth hiring would buy a portable master unit and run their own encrypted comms rather than having them broadcast in the clear.

While you could make the comparison that they can do the same now by slaving their PAN to their commlink and that commlink to the Decker's Deck, it still is a matter of scale of consequences. If your radio security is compromised, the worst that the enemy can do is jam it or listen in and learn your plans.

If your cyberware's security is compromised, it can be bricked.

Period, full stop, end of story. In the case of things like Wired Reflexes, cybereyes, or the like, this has just effectively disabled the character if not killed him outright.

If the Matrix Condition Monitor of a device is completely
filled, the device ceases functioning. This is
called bricking a device. Devices that are bricked never
fail non-spectacularly. Smoke, sparks, pops, bangs, sizzles,
nasty smells, and occasionally even small fires are
common features of a device in the process of becoming
a brick. If you’re using your deck in VR when it gets
bricked, you are dumped from the Matrix and suffer
dumpshock (see p. 229). A bricked device is damaged
and useless until it is repaired (described in the next bit,
Repairing Matrix Damage).
If a device is bricked, it stops working: batteries
are drained, mechanical parts are fused or gummed
up with melted internals, and so on. That said, not all
devices are completely useless when bricked. A vibrosword
is still sharp, a roto-drone glides to the ground
on auto-gyro, a lock stays locked. The firing pin on an
assault rifle might not work, but its bayonet works just
fine for stabbing smug hackers. And you can’t exactly
brick a katana, ne? And don’t panic when your trickedout
combat bike gets bricked; it will ride again … if you
know a competent technician

That is the sum total of what SR5 says about bricking a device. There are no specifications as to what happens when hardware that replaces large parts of your nervous system is bricked, however from the bit that talks about bricked devices always failing spectacularly and in physically damaging (to the device) ways, there is no answer that is an acceptable risk.

The mere possibility of this is more than enough reason for no sensible runner to even leave a path open for it to happen.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

Bricking does indeed seem over the top, especially as the default result of matrix damage. Maybe if items instead got crashed and needed to be powercycled and bricking was BlackIC bogeyman territory that would make more sense. Something like that?

That said saying the most having your comms hacked would do is let the enemy learn your plans, that's a pretty big deal. You get ambushed and die. That's certainly a big consequence, regardless of how huge the benefit being able to communicate is (there's always the drilled, run silent, clockwork style op) compared to wireless bonuses, so likelyhood of occurance has to be a factor. So just how likely is getting bricked? I won't argue that currently risk of bricking versus wireless bonuses is a worthwhile trade-off, but "the mere possibilty" is not the threshold of safety shadowrunners operate on. It is dangerous work. So what is an acceptable risk/reward threshold? Should wireless bonuses be better?

And can someone please correct me if I'm wrong on the following.

1) Running Silent does not disable wireless bonuses. Could be wrong but wireless bonuses happen aslong as you maintain a connection, and running silent doesn't disable a connection, it just imposes a penaly on matrix actions, which I would think your wireless reflexes don't care about.

2) If a decker does notice silent running icons, this requires him to be looking and then succeed, he then has to randomly pick which one he's going to look at with a perception check.

3) Everyone should pack a dozen cheap devices, anything wireless, and put them on running silent to play shell games with enemy deckers?

4) Is running silent even suspicoius? In a world FULL of icons is it unreasonable plenty of people would activate it on a number of things just so their AR didn't get bombarded when they went into the kitchen in the morning?

[nspace]

I don't understand what is so hard about this.

Everything can be accessed from the matrix. A wireless bonus isn't required to hack the device. It is like this because that is just how everything is manufactured in 2075, right down the chips in batons and RFID tags on paper hats worn by Stuffershack employees. It is this way because the corps want it this way. Just like Google, Facebook, NSA, and everyone else with power want to see everything you do, even if only in aggregate. You can't just go down to the corner store and ask the clerk for the iPhone without all the corporate spyware on it. Apple doesn't care that it makes you vulnerable. Not even a little bit. Why on earth would they even give you the option to turn the spying off? If you want to talk about absurd, then the idea that you could just turn it off is the absurdity.

Wireless bonuses are just that, bonuses. They make noise rating relevant to more than just the hacker. The street samurai in the high noise zone now can't move as fast and his smartgun link isn't working as well.

Turning off devices look like a rule added by a group of authors throwing the same sort of hissy hit that players are throwing at the idea of a decker being able do something as effective as mages or combat monsters. Seriously, this is a game where a mage can just mindcontrol someone, a samurai can cut them in half with a monofilament whip, and we are talking about turning someone's legs off as being some sort of big deal? Just taking a deep breath and accepting the new decker reality will just make everything into a non-issue.


Also, with regards to the suggestion earlier in the thread that someone could program offline: No you can't. Well, technically you could, but I don't think there are very many jobs where you wouldn't get fired for it. It goes so far beyond mere documentation. The absolute biggest one is source control. Disabling your connection to source control would make you absurdly non-functional. You couldn't push or pull anything from the repository, you couldn't look at the file history to see who changed what and when. Libraries are not stored in the repository either, you specify them in dependency files and they are downloaded as needed. Furthermore, you WILL be using an issue tracking tool to coordinate what you are working on, and that issue tracking tool will be coordinating with your source control, so that when you commit changes related to a ticket in the issue tracking tool that you can see those changes from the issue in the issue tracking tool. You will also being making regular trips to places like Stackoverflow when you run into an issue to search for a discussion on the issue and to get leads on how to resolve it. Programing without being hooked up to "The Matrix" is already complete insanity or the programing is for something like a trivial Hello World application in CompSci 101.

Not only this, but surrounding the generation of the code, you likely have a Continuous Integration server running that is doing CI on all the repository pushes. Your code repository, library repository, and CI are likely in the cloud too. Not only that, when you deploy an application you likely deploy it using something like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Your application is likely persisting its object model to something like an Amazon RDS in the cloud. It is likely sending messages with something like Amazon SQS. It is likely using something like Amazon SWF to coordinate workflows. Etc etc etc.

Even people doing simple physical tasks are getting notifications on their phones telling them stuff like when a printing job is done.

The point being, we are already getting to the point where just turning it off is unthinkable insanity. In 2075, it is ludicrous to think that your toaster would be anything more than a brick without accessing god knows how many APIs for applications hosted elsewhere.

[Epicedion]

How is that any different from the way current things work? Theres no incentive for corps to make their networks wired now either, since most of the day to day functions outside of security have no wireless enhancements that we are aware of.

For starters, the Matrix in SR4 was a really anemic collection of broadcast hubs with dubious cross-connectivity, with each hub constructed out of the same off-the-rack quality commlink tech. This is vastly different from hosts.

That is the sum total of what SR5 says about bricking a device. There are no specifications as to what happens when hardware that replaces large parts of your nervous system is bricked, however from the bit that talks about bricked devices always failing spectacularly and in physically damaging (to the device) ways, there is no answer that is an acceptable risk.

The mere possibility of this is more than enough reason for no sensible runner to even leave a path open for it to happen.

SR5 says that the device stops working, meaning it no longer gives a mechanical benefit. The rules say nothing about people flopping around like fish, they say nothing about people taking damage from bricked cyberware.