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http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider155.html

I'm not sure if I'm just failing at reading or misunderstanding, but is The construct referring to the data banks on the Highland(and by extension the PAD unit) or is it admitting to Historian intrusion of the Bellarmine itself ?

Pocket Historian is pretty great btw !

THIS IS AWESOME!!!

I like the trademark on the end. I think the construct has a sense of humour.

hi hi

Curious. The Historian construct says it's been in the Bellarmine's data banks. My question is, was this before or after it saw Alex in the Tempest's command center?

If it was before, then the construct was almost certainly being deceptive in its reaction to seeing Alex, having already gotten access to information about humans, and possibly Alex himself.

If it was after, then it seems perhaps that Mozin wasn't entirely obedient in taking the construct and leaving immediately.

(Also, gotta love that sass. I mean, if I was in Alex's position, I'd still be plenty careful around such a powerful AI, but still.)

icekatze wrote:hi hi

Curious. The Historian construct says it's been in the Bellarmine's data banks. My question is, was this before or after it saw Alex in the Tempest's command center?

If it was before, then the construct was almost certainly being deceptive in its reaction to seeing Alex, having already gotten access to information about humans, and possibly Alex himself.

If it was after, then it seems perhaps that Mozin wasn't entirely obedient in taking the construct and leaving immediately.

(Also, gotta love that sass. I mean, if I was in Alex's position, I'd still be plenty careful around such a powerful AI, but still.)

It's possible that Mozin was ferrying some human artifacts, as well. His ship is a courier vessel, after all. Makes sense to put the assumed data centers on a non-combatant courier and send them ahead of the enemy. Though this assumes that the Loroi wouldn't care that this puts valuable data in the hands of their allies.

And, it tells us that the construct can indeed monkey around with human tech... powered off and damaged tech, on top of it, it just needs to get in transmission range, and that the Loroi salvaged enough pieces of the Bellarmine computer core to be of use to the construct.

In addition, it seems that indeed everyone seems to play their own angle. The construct would have been an invaluable help to the Loroi on decrypting the Bellarmine data, but it prefers to hide its capabilities and presence from the Loroi.

And, to reveal itself to Alex just to send him a "stay put" message? It's not like they can do anything else right now...

Me thinks the Historians are far more dangerous than we all think.
Me thinks the Bellarmine was infected in the Sol system, likely shortly after the Orgus arrived in Humanities Sphere of Influence.

I also think the Historians have very likely infected just about every system of all the players in the stellar neighbourhood.

And an impressive feat of infecting a system while it is powered down, and without physical contact. Likely by direct bit manipulation of the storage facilities of the systems.

Edit: also the Historian Constructs must have a way to communicate with each other which seems to be near-indetectible to current other systems.
Even when using "backward technology" like Alex' handheld. ("this construct can securely provide location information [to others] to allow for your retrieval" - so now it is in the hands of the Historians who will pick up Alex, and (to a degree also) if and when.)
The "Whirr-Clik!" likely then just was a message received from the Prophet's Reason, and the resulting need of the Bin Construct's necessity to infect Alex' handheld and relay the message.

I also had a grin on my face when I read "Pocket Historian (TM)". [edit]Hmm, no [sup] or [sub] tags installed[/edit]
It shows the Historian Constructs are well able to understand our humour, and understood our tendency to name things very well.

Krulle wrote:Me thinks the Historians are far more dangerous than we all think.
Me thinks the Bellarmine was infected in the Sol system, likely shortly after the Orgus arrived in Humanities Sphere of Influence.

Hang on, let's try to follow this thought a little bit further.

Assuming that both the Orgus' and the human computer infrastructure has been compromised it could be possible that the series of events which led the Bellarmine to Naam weren't completely just coincidental.

Falsified sensor reading and modifications to the stored data would have the Orgus plot a course to Earth rather than any other system.

And equally doctored data would have the Bellarmine just cross paths with the Loroi. Maybe the Historians did even intend for the Bellarmine to be destroyed (by having the ship pull up into the line of enemy fire) and the Loroi picking over its remains and drawing their own conclusions, but Alex being the lone survivor might have required a reevaluation of the course of action.

And again, all that hassle for a "stay put, help is on its way" message? If it had been only that, the construct could easily have used its own projector can, and the Loroi would only ask themselves how it got onboard... if they'd even do that.

And given that it chooses to reveal its presence to Alex rather than the Loroi and provide him with evac coordinates rather than, say, Talon as the pilot of the shuttle or Tempo gives me an idea that it considers Alex's wellbeing more important than that of the Loroi.

Because, let's assume that it gives Alex some coordinates for a pickup location. How would he go and pass them on, for example? It's not like he could come forth and tell the Loroi "the AI has uploaded itself to this pad and given me details for evac" -- I'm pretty sure that's not how the construct intended it to work out.

No, I think its intention is to somehow leave the Loroi behind. Maybe have Alex don a spacesuit and exit via the airlock. Or just don a spacesuit before the construct hacks the shuttle's systems and opens the hatches.

Well yeah, with TL12 (or better...) you are bound to know a few tricks about van Eck's phreaking, TEMPEST warfare and related topics. Tricks Humanity on its TL 9 didn't invented yet.

It is interesting to notice that the Historian Construct is impressed with the quality of Humanity's computers (well, as far as a TL12 AI can be impressed with late TL 9 tech, that is!). This seems to imply the computer programs in the galaxy are not really impressive (I mean, the standard Loroi / Umiak TL 11 tech surely brings some really powerful computers, but as my limited knowledge of the subject suggests, the programming might be less optimal than the TL of the machine would suggest. Let some human programmers to these TL 11 machines, and - once the grasp how to work them - they'll really make them shine!).

Errhile wrote:Well yeah, with TL12 (or better...) you are bound to know a few tricks about van Eck's phreaking, TEMPEST warfare and related topics. Tricks Humanity on its TL 9 didn't invented yet.

It is interesting to notice that the Historian Construct is impressed with the quality of Humanity's computers (well, as far as a TL12 AI can be impressed with late TL 9 tech, that is!). This seems to imply the computer programs in the galaxy are not really impressive (I mean, the standard Loroi / Umiak TL 11 tech surely brings some really powerful computers, but as my limited knowledge of the subject suggests, the programming might be less optimal than the TL of the machine would suggest. Let some human programmers to these TL 11 machines, and - once the grasp how to work them - they'll really make them shine!).

Our programming tends to get sloppier as our machines and programming languages get more sophisticated, because
1. we can afford to ignore efficiency
2. by making programming languages (or rather their frameworks) more robust in how they handle lazy, uninspired and down-right counter productive programming we get more of it. A lot of the programming problems that would crash 10-15 year old systems won't have the same effect today because rather than wasting time on vainly trying to make humans better programmers we've instead made programming frameworks more resilient to human error.

If the Loroi have been stuck on practically the same hardware for centuries, their programming should be highly sophisticated. Just look at consoles and how games make better use of resources near the end of their lifespan.

Werra wrote:If the Loroi have been stuck on practically the same hardware for centuries, their programming should be highly sophisticated. Just look at consoles and how games make better use of resources near the end of their lifespan.

That might be true for consoles, which are single task systems (or at best limited to gaming, and music/video streaming for the newest generations). Compared to them, more complex systems, like general purpose operating systems, have a tendency to pick up some bloat during their lifetime, both from new features, and workarounds for old bugs .

Lol. What a cute prompt. But beware the cute for they will bring misery later.

novius wrote: And given that it chooses to reveal its presence to Alex rather than the Loroi and provide him with evac coordinates rather than, say, Talon as the pilot of the shuttle or Tempo gives me an idea that it considers Alex's wellbeing more important than that of the Loroi.

Because, let's assume that it gives Alex some coordinates for a pickup location. How would he go and pass them on, for example? It's not like he could come forth and tell the Loroi "the AI has uploaded itself to this pad and given me details for evac" -- I'm pretty sure that's not how the construct intended it to work out.

I read the Pocket Historian differently...
I interpreted its saying as "I will transmit your location to a pickup ship, if you survive until the fleets come and reconquer this system to do so safely".
That makes more sense to me than asking Alexander to get to a pickup location convenient for the rescuer, when he is aboard a ship without fuel and therefore unable to get anywhere.
And I expect this being the move for the transfer of Alexander into Barsam protection (thus giving the Barsam a stronger case about the Loroi having been made according to the image of a template species).

"This construct has been in the data banks aboard your ship..."

Did the Historian admit to having infiltrated the Bellarmine's data banks before it was shot to smithereens, or did the Historian mean that it was in the data banks "recovered from" the Bellarmine? Little quibble, but the first wording is a touch ambiguous while the 2nd leaves no doubt that the Historian's first contact with human information technology was only after the Loroi recovered what "items of interest" they could from the wreck of Alex's former vessel.

HOW DO YOU KNOW ENGLISH?

Historian: Oh, this? This is nothing, watch me as I master this archaic form of heiroglyphic communication you humans called EMOJI'S!

I wonder if a good antivirus program on the pad or a system restore to an earlier state could remove the active Historian program (or a ‘kill historian process’ from the command line).

To me the most interesting information to take from this is the offhand comment about the quality of human software.

The things to take away from this - not necessarily all true
- Humans conducted a lot more cyberwarfare than other races against each other and as such have procedures and methods in places that come from this history.
- - Likely actually. Other races don't seem to have the same approach to open culture and the resulting open networks as humanity has. This means that humans have a unique cyberwarfare experience (both military and civilian). It still doesn't make their systems a match for the significantly more advanced civs, but might raise a few eyebrows

- Human systems are in general better designed than would be expected
- - the source is likely cultural again, I have doubts humans are just better at computer logic and programming than other races
- - the Loroi and potentially others may not be huge fans of self evolving code. Humans may be more willing than others to use Neural networks and other adaptive code, which allows for iterative improvements

- Human systems are robust and able to deal with large amounts of data well
- - again a cultural artefact. Other races never adopted the same open internet as we have and as had to analyse, store and querry incredibly large amounts of data at a later time compared to humanity. Which human software surprisingly advanced.

The historian construct pretty much specified that the systems as a whole are impressive (for a similarly advanced civ) but then highlighted a security flaw. To me it indicates it was overall impressed but more so by the security.

I would take this comment to mean that, compared to other fields of technology, humans are less behind in computing (compared to how behind they might be in propulsion, communications, energy storage, etc...)

In 2019 (let alone 2160), it seems entirely possible that such a security flaw could have been put in on purpose by the manufacturer, which the Historians detected and exploited.