[X] My Assistant

[Sengir]

That is not how technology works, unless we assume some alien intelligence build it according to some logic we are not capable of understanding.

My point was that hypothetically assuming Google had such alien tech, nobody would notice as long as that alien tech works with the same inputs and outputs the regular tech which did the job before. A more mundane example: I currently do development in a project which works with a good dozen of backend services. We have extensive documentation on how to talk to those services and how they will talk to us, but we neither know how those services work internally nor do we need to know anything about it for our work.

The moral of the story: Building upon the Foundation would be a stupid decision, but one only a small cabal needs to be aware of, not something everybody working with the matrix needs to accept...until it leaks.

[Sturmlied]

Well, a self-modifying intelligent system that develops faster than its change can be tracked could be regarded an alien intelligence.

The way I understand it the Foundation developed without being monitored by the corporations. They discovered it and thought, hey why not built on that. I guess there is the alternative it is an emergent phenomenon of the new matrix coding/technology and was discovered afterwards. But since it seems you have to "grow" all hosts from the Foundation, they had to be aware of it from the beginning, after all that's a basic feature.

The matrix is still based on technology made by humans and as I mentioned a lot in this thread, therefore there is an understanding of the underlying principals of the system.
It needs to run on something and that something is build by humans. So there is some level of understanding

Here we also come back to the point that it is unimaginable stupid to build the system that basically runs the world and that has brought the world to is knees two times before on a construct that defies logic as we know it and nobody understands.

My point was that hypothetically assuming Google had such alien tech, nobody would notice as long as that alien tech works with the same inputs and outputs the regular tech which did the job before. A more mundane example: I currently do development in a project which works with a good dozen of backend services. We have extensive documentation on how to talk to those services and how they will talk to us, but we neither know how those services work internally nor do we need to know anything about it for our work.

The moral of the story: Building upon the Foundation would be a stupid decision, but one only a small cabal needs to be aware of, not something everybody working with the matrix needs to accept...until it leaks.

I am not saying that everyone working with the matrix needs to know how everything works. My point is that because "our" society build it on the basis of technology that someone understands that there are people who know exactly how it works. My use of "we" in this context is the (meta)human species not an individual.

In this regard you are correct it is not important for most people to know how "something" the work with functions to the smallest detail. Most people only need to know how to work with this "something".
This is ok as long as everything works as intended but if something goes wrong than there needs to be someone who knows how this "something" works in order to fix it.

As mentioned above I agree that building the matrix on the foundation is a very stupid idea and this cabal would be the corporations and they are not stupid.

Also it is clear that it is the worst hidden secret in the sixth world that nobody knows how that stuff really works.

[lokii]

The matrix is still based on technology made by humans and as I mentioned a lot in this thread, therefore there is an understanding of the underlying principals of the system.
It needs to run on something and that something is build by humans. So there is some level of understanding

Well, the self-modification could extend to custom hardware. There is (quantum) logic gate production that's either fully automated or has a production chain that can be co-opted. The self-modifying system can come up with its own designs and use existing production capabilities, logistics and maintenance routines to spread them without people actually knowing how they work and what they do. This could go as far as a different technological base. It's what happened with Deus and nanotechnology.

So for obscure hardware: Digital intelligences of all kinds could have modified the matrix, as well as plain old people. Maybe someone cut corners and reconnected Jormungand modified system instead of replacing them. In addition there is the technobiome dimension, computing done on biological "hardware" wirelessly connected to the matrix, and thus potentially not even on the radar.

But even with unmodified and fully accounted for hardware, if you have a complex software with no interfaces for monitoring, that uses strong encryption and runs highly distributed, the only way for you to understand it, might be to shut the system down and dissect it. And I think the implication is in the case of the Foundation that would mean shutting down the whole matrix.

Of course none of this means, that the underlying technology or code can in principle not be understood by metahumanity, but it's certainly conceivable that self-modifying systems hidden away in a layered and often deliberately obfuscated network infrastructure could produce something hard to fathom.

[binarywraith]

Yes it is technically impossible but imho highly unlikely that this would happen by accident. Technology is to a very high degree predictable. Parts can fail but they don't suddenly start to do something completely different from what they where designed for unless it is designed to evolve.

But would we know if one of the components understand was in fact replaced with something that works the same from a black box perspective (just looking at inputs and outputs), but whose internal workings are absolutely unfathomable? Let's say Google has some kind of magic box in their basement, which computes their Page Rank algorithm super effectively, but if you open up that box all you see is gray gel and a few cables going seemingly nowhere.


That is basically what I would imagine the foundation like: The interaction with the rest of the matrix is specified, but how it does its thing is not. Of course the story for the general public is not "we have no idea, something emergent" but something involving proprietary trade secrets, need to know, and security through obscurity.

At the end of the day, some poor asshole in a work shirt still has to replace failed HDDs, even if they're on optical chip instead of spinning platters. No matter what magical bullshit they want to write in, the Matrix is still grounded in the hardware layer, and figuring out what causes the Foundation to exist is as simple as cutting network connections until you break the mesh.

Frankly, I find it doesn't pass the plausibility sniff test, because something that requires that much system resources to exist should be making any number of sysadmins bitch to each other about systems not performing to spec. No matter how big the corp is, the hardware budget isn't infinite, so all that 'missing' power is going to get tracked down.

Remember, no matter how enamored you are of The Cloud, it's just someone else's computer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mantis]

Remember, no matter how enamored you are of The Cloud, it's just someone else's computer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This right here is something I think whoever wrote up the new Matrix fluff forgot. Cloud = someone else's computer. I guess maybe they just hoped the rest of didn't know that either.

[JanessaVR]

This right here is something I think whoever wrote up the new Matrix fluff forgot. Cloud = someone else's computer. I guess maybe they just hoped the rest of didn't know that either.

Maybe they should just come out and admit "Ok, ok, the Matrix is just a big magical construct. When we said magic and technology don't mix...well, we lied. See ya!"

Perhaps all the deaths in the previous two Crashes were a massive blood sacrifice to create the Foundation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[KCKitsune]

Remember, no matter how enamored you are of The Cloud, it's just someone else's computer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yep... hence the reason I have my own NAS (with 8 TB of storage) at home, and a 200 GB microSD chip in my phone and take-to-work laptop. I don't trust other people with MY data.


OK, quick question for everyone... how much storage space does a commlink/cyberdeck have? Was that ever defined? Also how much space does a datachip have?

[SpellBinder]

Remember, no matter how enamored you are of The Cloud, it's just someone else's computer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

This right here is something I think whoever wrote up the new Matrix fluff forgot. Cloud = someone else's computer. I guess maybe they just hoped the rest of didn't know that either.

Years ago, when I used to do outsourced tech support over the phone, I had a manager try explaining to me how the new call queue was going to work (for handling two or more different contracts at once) by starting off with, "The call comes from this magic cloud..." She even had a grease board and was drawing a diagram for a visual aid, and started off by drawing a cloud with magic lighting and such. Right off I knew she was full of it in the technical area.

Even now, when I hear about "the cloud" I'm imagining a server room filled with banks of storage drives and air conditioners, as opposed to the data floating up in the stratosphere somewhere.

And in answer to the storage question, IIRC the old "megapulse" data unit was roughly 350MB of current volume (one CD = 2MP). Now, there's no real defined limit as it's all a plot device (like carrying weight).

[binarywraith]

Yep... hence the reason I have my own NAS (with 8 TB of storage) at home, and a 200 GB microSD chip in my phone and take-to-work laptop. I don't trust other people with MY data.


OK, quick question for everyone... how much storage space does a commlink/cyberdeck have? Was that ever defined? Also how much space does a datachip have?

A number of megapulses, with the actual data content of a megapulse in bits best defined as 'whatever seems plot relevant'.

This right here is something I think whoever wrote up the new Matrix fluff forgot. Cloud = someone else's computer. I guess maybe they just hoped the rest of didn't know that either.Years ago, when I used to do outsourced tech support over the phone, I had a manager try explaining to me how the new call queue was going to work (for handling two or more different contracts at once) by starting off with, "The call comes from this magic cloud..." She even had a grease board and was drawing a diagram for a visual aid, and started off by drawing a cloud with magic lighting and such. Right off I knew she was full of it in the technical area.

Even now, when I hear about "the cloud" I'm imagining a server room filled with banks of storage drives and air conditioners, as opposed to the data floating up in the stratosphere somewhere.

And in answer to the storage question, IIRC the old "megapulse" data unit was roughly 350MB of current volume (one CD = 2MP). Now, there's no real defined limit as it's all a plot device (like carrying weight).

At one point in my career I worked for pre-Google-buyout Youtube's hosting company. Let me tell you, the internet loses a lot of its glamour when you spend 10 hours a day swapping faulty hardware that's hosting someone's cat videos. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Honestly, I saw a Reddit quote the other day that pretty well covers it :

"The Matrix of Shadowrun is effectively designed by someone who is confused about how computers work and assumes that everyone else must be as well. As a result, networks, databases, and wireless communication are mysterious and poorly understood. In the real world monitoring the local network for traffic that looks like smartgun calculations is trivial. In the world of Shadowrun you need a decker explicitly watching for devices sending that data. Where the data comes from, what processes it, and how it's transmitted is all a bit nebulous and confusing... TL;DR. The Shadowrun Matrix is a magical construct created by the collective unconscious of everyone who "is computer illiterate.""

[Mantis]

Honestly, I saw a Reddit quote the other day that pretty well covers it :

"The Matrix of Shadowrun is effectively designed by someone who is confused about how computers work and assumes that everyone else must be as well. As a result, networks, databases, and wireless communication are mysterious and poorly understood. In the real world monitoring the local network for traffic that looks like smartgun calculations is trivial. In the world of Shadowrun you need a decker explicitly watching for devices sending that data. Where the data comes from, what processes it, and how it's transmitted is all a bit nebulous and confusing... TL;DR. The Shadowrun Matrix is a magical construct created by the collective unconscious of everyone who "is computer illiterate.""

Perfect.

[KCKitsune]

A number of megapulses, with the actual data content of a megapulse in bits best defined as 'whatever seems plot relevant'.

Yeah, I remember that. I was hoping someone knew something a little more concrete.

In the real world monitoring the local network for traffic that looks like smartgun calculations is trivial.

I never understood why you needed specialized gear to run a smartgun. I mean you can fit the HW/SW in your damn EYES... and a some of that is just the ability to display the data and to communicate with the gun. If you've got a cyber commlink/deck, you should be able to run it just like another app. Hell, with the amount of computing power in a commlink (even the SR5 version), I can see that as just another app that you run. The interface would be projected into your field of view via DNI.

*************************************

Off Topic: If you have the cybernetic commlink/cyberdeck and you want to upgrade, is it just pulling the old 'link/deck "chip" and inserting a new one, or is it a lot more involved?

[SpellBinder]

Tried bopping around in the old SR3 core rule book, and found pocket sectaries (SR5's commlinks without a cold SIM) had a storage capacity of 100MP. Optical chips (described as being "thin memory storage devices, about 2 x 3 x 1 cm.") apparently had no limit beyond cost, at a rate of 2MP per 1¥. The old cyberdecks had a range based on the quality of the deck. A Fairlight Excalibur (top end in the SR3 book) had 3000MP of "RAM" and 5000MP of storage. Custom cyberdecks could exceed this, from what I found in the Matrix book.

Considering how computers actually evolved over the last thirty years, I can kinda understand why SR4 and SR5 effectively threw all this out the window.

[lokii]

Again I liked the matrix mystery when it was confined to hidden corners, recesses of the network, or even -- in the case of the arcology -- a dark tower overtaken by an evil force. I also think its existence was justified by the same conditions that allow shadowrunners to exist. Competing extraterritorial jurisdictions balkanised the network leading to weak oversight. The cold war between the corporations meant a lot of secrecy: shell companies, hidden specifications and tech implementations, black budget accounts, forgotten or scrapped systems. UV pockets for strange beings to develop in the matrix.

Cloud: Though maintenance of the matrix infrastructure is probably much more automated. Less wage slaves switching hard drives, more maintenance rigger directing drones.

[Sengir]

I am not saying that everyone working with the matrix needs to know how everything works. My point is that because "our" society build it on the basis of technology that someone understands that there are people who know exactly how it works. My use of "we" in this context is the (meta)human species not an individual.

Of course, our stuff was built by someone on purpose, and there is no other sapient species around which could build something we don't understand. SR is a bit different, and that's assuming the Foundation was built at all and isn't an emergent phenomenon (which would also ruin binarywraith's plan of "dissecting" it) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

As mentioned above I agree that building the matrix on the foundation is a very stupid idea and this cabal would be the corporations and they are not stupid.

Corporations can be extremely stupid, and even more greedy. So the question would be what the corps were promised in return for agreeing to that plan, "catching hackers" obviously does not suffice...

Remember, no matter how enamored you are of The Cloud, it's just someone else's computer. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Slight correction: Somebody else's data center, running virtual machines which float freely around the actual hardware to maximize resource utilization or seamlessly bridge hardware defects. The cloud metaphor is not bad, even on the infrastructure level, as long as you keep in mind that it's a metaphor...

[binarywraith]

Slight correction: Somebody else's data center, running virtual machines which float freely around the actual hardware to maximize resource utilization or seamlessly bridge hardware defects. The cloud metaphor is not bad, even on the infrastructure level, as long as you keep in mind that it's a metaphor...

It's terrible as a metaphor. An administrator of a cloud infrastructure cluster can tell you down to the machine and drive within a cluster where a particular program is running from, because hardware addressing is still required to manipulate data. All the cloud services do is use virtualization to make that addressing transparent for the end user, and treat multiple machines in the cluster (or multiple clusters scattered around datacenters, although that's woefully inefficient for most applications due to capping at the speed of the network) as a single logical machine.

The only 'gaps' for some emergent phenomenon to run on are those invented by a writer who does not know enough about computer systems to understand what he's writing, and thus considers them black boxes that could be doing anything without anyone the wiser.

[lokii]

I think you take too little account of automation of matrix maintenance in combination with the obscurity of the network resulting from corporate secrecy. I mean shadowrunning shouldn't be possible with the kind of mass surveillance systems we are building up today and that the Sixth World supposedly also has. Apart from just ignoring the real effects of such an environment, the solution seems to be bad computer security, so that deckers can constantly sabotage the surveillance systems and thus data retention on their team. System administrators hardly seem to take note of this. So why shouldn't some entity commandeer network infrastructure or steal cycles all over the matrix.

What I would concede though with building up GOD as a central authority which controls the whole matrix (rather than squabbling with individual corporations over jurisdiction) the whole setup that eases suspension of disbelief--at least for me--has been weakened considerably.

[binarywraith]

If anything, the automation should make it easier for something like the Foundation to be noticed. A single jacked in maintenance rigger can literally experience the state of the hardware as physical sensations, so massive load on systems that aren't being used by anything would be even more obvious.

Not to mention the simple accounting questions. "Ichinase-san, why is your datacenter drawing six megawatts and running a cooling bill of two hundred thousand nuyen? We do not have any projects assigned to it."

[sk8bcn]

Sometimes, I Wonder CGL have a testing group and if they ask precise questions about the game-logic.

[KCKitsune]

Sometimes, I Wonder CGL have a testing group and if they ask precise questions about the game-logic.

Is this a trick question?

/sarc

[Sengir]

It's terrible as a metaphor. An administrator of a cloud infrastructure cluster can tell you down to the machine and drive within a cluster where a particular program is running from, because hardware addressing is still required to manipulate data.

Sure the admin can go down to the nitty-gritty, but (usually) there is no need for it...which is basically "the cloud" in one sentence: It provides stuff as a service if your use case does not care about the underlying details.

If anything, the automation should make it easier for something like the Foundation to be noticed. A single jacked in maintenance rigger can literally experience the state of the hardware as physical sensations, so massive load on systems that aren't being used by anything would be even more obvious.

GOD wouldn't say "nothing to be seen here, citizen", because there obviously has to be something hosts are running on. All the stuff the Foundation is running on could simply be explained as the metal the hosts are running on, or the matrix equivalent of root servers.

[Trillinon]

The SR5 Matrix, at the level presented in the core rulebook, makes a fair amount of sense. It's abstract, but contains personas, devices, and hosts, the latter of which are a form of distributed network. Authentication through marks is a fun idea, but needs a little more depth to explain how the system would work at scale.

But Data Trails goes off the rails. I enjoy a little mytical matrix stuff. Being a magical world, I can accept a global mesh network developing some mystical elements. But I can't for a moment accept the idea that Hosts are grown from the Foundation in a process that nobody understands. Or that Hosts keep an archive in this Foundation.

What I could accept is that Resonance and Dissonance each have their own meta-plane-like existence alongside the matrix. In the Resonance Realms, everything connected to the matrix has an expression, and where everything that once was on the matrix has an echo, thus letting you get at archived or deleted data. But these realms aren't the Matrix. Their some other kind of manifestation born of and drawing from the Matrix.

[JanessaVR]

What I could accept is that Resonance and Dissonance each have their own meta-plane-like existence alongside the matrix. In the Resonance Realms, everything connected to the matrix has an expression, and where everything that once was on the matrix has an echo, thus letting you get at archived or deleted data. But these realms aren't the Matrix. Their some other kind of manifestation born of and drawing from the Matrix.

This is essentially what we've done, and explicitly defined technomancers as a type of mage as well.

[binarywraith]

Yeah, I just excise all that shit and treat Data Trails as written by a hippie neo-pagan trying to assign mysticism to a technology they understand so little that it might as well be magic.

Part of what I -like- about Shadowrun is the hard contrast between magic and science, so blurring that because the writers don't understand how computer networking works isn't my jam.

[Jaid]

Sometimes, I Wonder CGL have a testing group and if they ask precise questions about the game-logic.

have testing group: yes. they have playtesters and proofreaders, in addition to a number of freelancers who freely volunteer their time to provide feedback, last i heard.

actually listen to those people and act on their feedback? they're not so good about that. which makes you wonder why they have them in the first place. it's like they heard that you need those people if you want to produce a good quality RPG, but have no idea *why* you're supposed to need them.

[Mantis]

have testing group: yes. they have playtesters and proofreaders, in addition to a number of freelancers who freely volunteer their time to provide feedback, last i heard.

actually listen to those people and act on their feedback? they're not so good about that. which makes you wonder why they have them in the first place. it's like they heard that you need those people if you want to produce a good quality RPG, but have no idea *why* you're supposed to need them.

See, this sort of thing makes me really frustrated. On the one hand, it's nice to know that these steps are taken. The rules are play tested. Feed back is gathered. This should all lead to a better product. But on the other hand, it seems all that effort is just tossed out the window.

I mean if the published product is the result of proofing and play testing and still so awful in so many places then it looks like the play testers and proofers are incompetent. But you're saying you do the job and it just gets ignored. Is the SR line at Catalyst really such a petty dictatorship that feedback that doesn't toe the party line gets turfed? What's more important here, a good product or someone's ego? It really just boggles the mind.