2014 STGOD OOC Commentary Thread 1

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Unfortunately, due to the amount of time I have left today I REALLY SHOULDN'T participate heavily in all these goings-on much further tonight, or for that matter until some time tomorrow afternoon. I kind of suspect events will outrun me, but please be advised that realistically...

Dr. Mahogany is still around and is still sincerely trying to make his proposal workable. I may be able to provide OOC commentary, or even a one or two-paragraph post.

Hey, the last time we had a "BIG CONFERENCE", it went on for over a week, with raging acrimony, and people were just ITCHING to touch the BIG RED NUKE LAUNCH button.

[madd0ct0r]

need some help for future posts.

What is the size of container ships? in realworld Panamax artificially constrains it, and even then there's a few titans. Can I just graph the historical sizes and project it forward?

-need to figure out height, draught and width - this is for the rail bridge over the river in Champa, but the river runs up Hakistan's and Umeria's border to the hinterland, so it's an important potential shipping route.

[Beowulf]

Panamax mostly constrains transport from Europe to western USA, and from Asia to eastern USA, IIRC. Europe to Asia is Suez, and eastern to western USA is mostly rail (though not entirely). Panamax only constrained ships for a bit, and then they continued to balloon in size. See Maersk Triple-E class. Pretty sure we don't have any similar constraints, as most routes have plenty of open water. The only really conceivable stretch that could cause similar constraints is the straits between N and S America, which could have shallow channels, and hence limit water draft, similar to the Strait of Malacca.

If you're worried about river bridges though, the river's depth is probably going to be a bigger determinant for that than any other factor. I mean, you could dredge it out... But then you may also have to worry about how straight the river is, and how wide your dredged out channel is. Even if your river is capable of handling ocean traffic, they might transfer the cargo onto smaller cargo ships for the journey upriver.

[Siege]

I'm using existing sizes as benchmarks. SANDEX operates container ships that are much larger than Panamax (similar to the Triple E class Beo mentioned) but those are used on the UOCSR - North America and San Dorado - Rheinland - North America routes, which are what I imagine shift the largest numbers of TEUs (for our products anyway). I suppose there could be large ore carriers coming and going from Hakistan, but those wouldn't go up the river unless the main Hakistani port is behind this bridge. Any ULCCs in the region probably take their cargo in offshore anyway, and certainly don't go up rivers.

I'd say sticking with New Panamax should suffice.

[TimothyC]

Just enough truth to weave a narrative around.

No comment on how accurate the it is.

[Force Lord]

I don't do many posts, but when I do, I try to make it count.

Now there's some Granadian fail right there.

[Simon_Jester]

Will you be able to stick around in the aftermath of this? Because if anyone else wants to interact with you about it...

[Force Lord]

Will you be able to stick around in the aftermath of this? Because if anyone else wants to interact with you about it...

Oh I'll be watching.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I don't do many posts, but when I do, I try to make it count.

Now there's some Granadian fail right there.

You know, it'd be nice if you do a proper build up before giving us the big bang. I mean, throwing spanners of this sort only leaves a "WTF" reaction.

[Siege]

I'll echo that sentiment. It's an awkward case of 'tell don't show'. Is this a single attack? A coup? An open revolt? If the latter, by whom? Whose side is the army on? The police? What is even happening?

I could write something about docked SANDEX ships coming under attack from gunmen but I don't know what the balls is going on so it's exceedingly difficult to formulate a coherent response.

[Force Lord]

I'll try and get some build-up to this when I can, hopefully before the week ends.

[LaCroix]

Did you just have the AI hack itself into a mobile phone connection? I love it...

[Eternal_Freedom]

King Alex is informed of the mess in Granadia. Several Embassy staff are missing.

Force Lord, you can play that however you like, if you don't want a mess, they can simply be delayed in reporting in. If not, well, we can have a little fun

Also: AI's? Oh dear. To quote the Admiral from The Hunt for Red October: "This will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."

[Force Lord]

King Alex is informed of the mess in Granadia. Several Embassy staff are missing.

Force Lord, you can play that however you like, if you don't want a mess, they can simply be delayed in reporting in. If not, well, we can have a little fun

Also: AI's? Oh dear. To quote the Admiral from The Hunt for Red October: "This will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."

I'll see if I can do something with it, I'm currently trying to write up a post for the story thread.

[Siege]

Did you just have the AI hack itself into a mobile phone connection? I love it...

A mobile phone or another wireless system, yeah . The AI uses the electronic emissions of its server stacks to reverse Van Eck phreak its way out of the box and into Coldstream Delta's networks. No real idea if that's technically feasible but I'm quite enamored with the idea so there .

EDIT: Also I say we move on to the next day of the conference on Saturday so madd0ct0r and I can at least get our joint post up. That should leave Force Lord time to get something written and also leaves plenty of time for those who want that Olympus Has Fallen plotline to go down to get their stories together.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm cool with that, although I'm working Saturday so won't be around to respond to posts until about 1800 GMT.

[LaCroix]

A mobile phone or another wireless system, yeah . The AI uses the electronic emissions of its server stacks to reverse Van Eck phreak its way out of the box and into Coldstream Delta's networks. No real idea if that's technically feasible but I'm quite enamored with the idea so there .

With a AI able to learn and such a hardware to play with? everything is possible.
Sending via using the server stack itself as a short range frequency generator? With enough power and sufficient processing speed? Maybe. Recieving by analysing the pattern of radiowaves interacting with hardware? maybe.

But it can be done much easier - Cellulars operate on the 800, 900, 1800/1900 bands.

With IEEE 802.11ah, you are using 900Mhz and only need to change protocol to hook into, and IEEE 802.11y is using 3.6 Ghz, which would be a second harmonic to 1.8Gz, which should enable an AI to at least recieve data from this frequency after some software tricks to improve gain and reduce noise. So if there's a Wifi chip somewhere in the boxed network (some onboard chip of a server, or a laptop of a researcher), the AI probably could hack into it and use it to get into cellular network.

But once it can do that - it's literally only seconds away from realizing it could either hack such a connection and upload, or simply move itself out of the box - Gigabyte by Gigabyte - piggybacking in an iPhone...

[Simon_Jester]

Well, assuming for the sake of argument that the AI hasn't already blown out into the greater world to screw everyone (in which case I'm going to lodge a complaint; if we're going to have an AI hard takeoff I want at least enough notice to set up a Butlerian Jihad), we can reasonably assume that the same people who decided to put their AI in a box incorporated SOME reasonably effectual level of containment and screening to prevent wireless signals from casually taking over devices outside the box.

Also, hi LaCroix! Did you want to join us?

EDIT: Decided to go "to heck with it" and put up what I had on the Umerians' strategy session so we have something in the thread about the actual plan they're proposing and how it would work, so that people have something to debate for/against.

Basically the idea is that this is mainly a deliberative body, so you could (for instance) have all the San Doradan megacorps send representatives to one subcommittee that in turn chooses a smaller number of voting representative to the main council.

That allows large groups of affiliated interests to be represented collectively, settling any internal disputes among themselves, without causing the total size of the council to get inflated beyond reason. Or resulting in absurdities like every SSR of the Soviet Union getting its own seat in the UN.

[Siege]

Pentex and Coldstream Delta aren't so incompetent that they wouldn't notice 200+ servers worth of code escaping through their networks. But there's leakage. In our digital age it's exceedingly difficult to completely stop electromagnetic signals from propagating. Considering the environment C-D probably weren't able to implement a full Faraday cage and even if they did maybe you'd run into problems with optical emanations. And then you're off to the races, hence why the dude running the program voices his concern. Emission security is a high art, and it's exceedingly unlikely that humans would stay ahead of 'digital life' for very long.

EDIT: Also, if I may add a note, Shinn, having your dudes coolly respond every time that they haven't got a stake and aren't invested may sound perfectly awesome, but it also means you never have a stake in anything, anywhere. Which means you're placing yourself offside. Which presumably isn't where you want to be in a game about joint storytelling. Just sayin'.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

EDIT: Also, if I may add a note, Shinn, having your dudes coolly respond every time that they haven't got a stake and aren't invested may sound perfectly awesome, but it also means you never have a stake in anything, anywhere. Which means you're placing yourself offside. Which presumably isn't where you want to be in a game about joint storytelling. Just sayin'.

They do have an investment, however limited it may be. Cuba still has diplomatic interests in the United States and still occupies its old embassy in Washington with its own diplomatic staff, even if they're technically attached to the Swiss Embassy.

How many people here other than Orion have embassies in Granadia? Who'd be interested in being the protecting power for Fuso's interests in Granadia? If the situation goes further south, there's another plot hook.

[LaCroix]

Well, assuming for the sake of argument that the AI hasn't already blown out into the greater world to screw everyone (in which case I'm going to lodge a complaint; if we're going to have an AI hard takeoff I want at least enough notice to set up a Butlerian Jihad), we can reasonably assume that the same people who decided to put their AI in a box incorporated SOME reasonably effectual level of containment and screening to prevent wireless signals from casually taking over devices outside the box.

Also, hi LaCroix! Did you want to join us?

The problem with method 2 is - while they are screening transmissions that go out, they might not notice that the AI is putting parts of itself into Cellphones, and riding out "piggybacked". That means it could transfer 5-10GB of data per person out of the box per day (assuming average memory use of users and one visit to the facility per day). Add a subroutine that makes the phone upload these AI parts into a cloud account, where it is reassembled, the AI would be slowly cloning itself out of the box.

People might only notice if they were to check their data usage - and if they got flatrates, they might not bother with that.

I'd like to, but right now, I've got no idea where to start, what to start as, and no plot to add. Yet.

[Simon_Jester]

If you think of a country, we'd love to have you.

As to the other- I suspect that given the level of basic... awareness that the scientists are showing*, the AI might well be able to get a respectable amount of data out before anyone notices ("hey, we think it's phreaking your cell phone, check your data use"). But without access to the outside world, that data, even if there's quite a bit of it, probably won't change much in and of itself.

If nothing else, the AI's lack of detailed information on the outside world would prevent it from doing anything especially nasty; it'd have to read a great deal of outside information and parse it before it could do that.

*(they're actually being way more intense about containment than IRL artificial intelligence researchers, or that's what I say based on the ones whose words I've read)

[LaCroix]

Dunno, what plots on the card are still left?

I doubt an AI would need any noticeable time to gather enough information on the outside world - it obviously knows english, and so it can read the technical documentation inside the box. If it knows about mobile phones and how to get onto them, it probably has knowledge of http and everything else, already. Once it gets a connection to the outside, it would be trivial to stumble over google, and then wikipedia. since the AI can process that information as fast as the data can be transmitted, it would only take days, at most, to have absorbed the fundamentals and more of how the world looks like. The moment it has figured out how to get on phones is the moment I would switch on the tesla coils stategically distributed within the server farm...

[Siege]

Looking at the map, every 'numbered' country is an NPC and practically all of them can be taken up and converted with very little trouble. There's also several abandoned player nations: Dreisgrond, Versahinveld, Arcadia and Isla Aurum come to mind. Apelia and Komradistan may also qualify.

You could make up pretty much whatever you like and we can rename the nation and retcon your existence into the game in an entertaining fashion.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I'm still around actually.

Just operating on extremely limited time.