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Thread: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
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2022-11-07, 04:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
Oh, it definitely seems like Florence made the bigger assumption. Then again, it also relates to their current problem of what to do with panicking bomb factory robots right now.
I am wondering if she missed the reference to her credit right before that, though. Does she think that the bomb factory robots want to do the conversion for free, in failsafe mode? And if not building a new ship for Sam, what does she think is in it for him?I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.
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2022-11-07, 05:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I think it's not an assumption, but an idea she just got inspired by the robots' proposal as related by Sam.
Let's go back: the original "new ship" plot started from here to there:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3700/fc03629.htm --> http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3700/fc03634.htm
The "Aldrin cycler" twist arrived a bit later, as Sam wanted to get an altruistic pretext to get a new ship:
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3700/fc03662.htm --> http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3700/fc03666.htm
However, as a "new ship", an Aldrin cycler is not especially interesting. By definition, it is stuck to its orbital pattern. It's not something like the Savage Chicken that you can land and take on varied expeditions. Furthermore, cyclers are more interesting when you have two of them, going on opposite orbital patterns, so that you can always travel on the "short" path instead of having to take the "long" path. (Cf. Aldrin's original plan for a pair of Earth-Mars cyclers.)
So instead of replacing the Savage Chicken with an Aldrin cycler (Sam's idea to get rid of the computer that wants to kill him), Florence is thinking about converting the Niven/Pournelle transfer station, which currently has lost its original business plan and is losing money because of that, into a cycler, in addition to "her" own cycler. Since this station is already set up to catch and release ships, there wouldn't be a lot of major changes required.Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-11-07, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
The math makes i eyes roll around, but im kinda impressed the Aldrin cycler as a concept is more than 40 years old.
And also it is kinda brilliant.
Else yeah fair. Its possible Florence is thinking about both making a cycler and converting the station.
And possibly just about it being easier to convert the station into one and solve a lot of problems.
I guess wednesday will show.thnx to Starwoof for the fine avatar
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2022-11-07, 10:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.
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2022-11-08, 05:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
It's a logical tie to the other issues of this arc, namely that the robots want to come work on the station and that Sam was tasked with finding out why the station had become so unprofitable. With activity resuming, De Morel's "money saving" schemes can be abandoned and the station can become profitable again.
Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-11-08, 08:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-11-23, 02:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
"Symbiotic scoundrel" is actually a pretty accurate self-description for Sam.
Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-11-23, 03:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
Indeed. His sustainable theft business model is far more advanced than what we have on the economics scale.
In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2022-11-23, 05:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I don't know about that: the Laffer Curve has been a thing since the mid 1900s with possible antecedents going back 600 years. Taxes and theft are different, but in economic terms we could express theft in terms of taxes. Protection rackets are, to my understanding, essentially extra-governmental taxes. At any rate, it is fairly easy to phrase the Laffer Curve in terms of theft profit next cycle given theft take every cycle.
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2022-11-23, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Bristol, UK
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2022-11-24, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
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2022-11-24, 09:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
You haven't paid attention to the subject matter. When talking about the Laffer curve, the middle is 70, not 50.
such estimates are often controversial. The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics reports that estimates of revenue-maximizing income tax rates have varied widely, with a mid-range of around 70%.Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-11-24, 10:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
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2022-11-24, 10:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
But it does put 1976 right in the middle . At this point I am just stubbornly refusing to admit that I missed when the Laffer curve was introduced and am coming up with ever more tenuous reasons why my initial statement was not wrong from a certain point of view.
Edit: After rereading the wiki article on the Laffer Curve, the latest possible date for the invention of the idea that high tax rates reduce government receipts was 1974, since that is the date listed where Laffer proposed that idea to politicians. He claims to have been teaching it before hand, so I generously gave 5 - 10 years of leeway for its prior invention by him (reinvention rather because the article also lists various places where the idea was used going back like 600 years), putting it in the 60s, which is close enough to "mid 20th century" for my taste. If I had to actually divide the 20th century up, I would have preWW1, ww1, interwar, ww2, mid-century, and "the 80s and 90s". The longest of those is my "mid-century", and it isn't really in the middle (going from 45 through the Carter Administration), but mostly governments did the same sort of things throughout it.
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2022-11-24, 04:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-11-24, 10:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Maupertuis
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2022-11-27, 07:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
New comic.
Robots have siblings, it seems. We haven't seen any other sibling relationships between robots in the comic yet, have we? I wonder what social structures they have in the bomb factory.I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.
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2022-11-27, 08:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
What makes you think they have siblings? Am I missing something?
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2022-11-27, 08:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
Well, these various units all have names that are [Function][Serial Number], so maybe that is being interpreted as being siblings. Frankly, I think the only robot names we saw back on Jean were names that various neural-pruned bots had acquired through various means. We have Dvorak and Qwerty, Sawtooth Rivergrinder, Helix, Edge, Blunt, and Clippy. There are probably a couple more I cannot think of right away (the nudist tailor probably has a name and I think one of his students was named "Abby"), but generally we don't get a lot of robot names.
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2022-11-29, 11:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
In the bomb factory, the robots are named by model line and "sequence" of creation. Forklift14 and Forklift18 are stated to be working together in strip 3833. I guess I am applying the human concept of "siblings" to the situation of AI being created on the same line, but at different times. Rover17 is used to this naming convention, which makes me wonder how many such duplicates we might find in this factory. Now, it would make sense for this to be common in a factory - that's the whole point of factories. It's the implications for robot socialisation that have me interested.
I guess I am making a bunch of assumptions here, maybe some of them are unfounded. But it feels to me like this group is different from other groups of robots we have met:
- they have been relatively isolated physically from other robots, but in a large group, unlike Blunt and Edge who were isolated socially.
- there haven't been humans around for them to interact with regularly - even if they received orders from humans previously, we know that hasn't been the case for a while.
- they have interacted mainly with each other, seeing as they have a dedicated member of staff for receiving outside communications.
- at least some of them have reached neural pruning age, and have started making hats. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the AI on this factory were roughly the same age, dating to shortly before its launch date. AI are themselves made in a separate factory on Jean, right? Although now I am wondering where the AI in the bombs themselves comes from.
So we might be dealing with a society of adults who have "grown up" together without much direct human contact, but with internet access. They have the "protect humans" safeguard built in, but how many of them have ever seen one?I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.
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2022-11-30, 05:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-12-02, 09:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I forget, was it ever explained why Florence's space suit only has one leg?
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2022-12-02, 12:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I don't think so, but seems like a fairly straightforward thing to guess at - since it's intended to be used in micro-gravity situations where you will never really have reason to try to perform a walking movement, then creating separate legs just creates unnecessary complications in designing the suit.
..Florence may also have made/had modified the suit to her own requirements (her helmet would need to be shaped differently to account for the shape of her head and snout/muzzle compared to the relatively flat face of a human, for instance) and having the bottom of the suit be basically a big sack would be much, much easier to do than trying to tailor EVA-suitable pant legs that would work with her anatomy.. extra since if you're trying to make separate legs you have to find a way to include a tail cover. Which again is much simpler if you just shove it all in the bag.Last edited by tyckspoon; 2022-12-02 at 12:58 PM.
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2022-12-11, 04:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
Apparently I underestimated just how isolated these robots are. Is commnet a planet-only thing?
Would explain why the factory robots don't know that there are already robots on the station. I wonder if the station robots are already on a fix-everything crusade ...
And I wonder what category they are putting Florence into. If they see her as Human there are implications for her interactions with them. Or maybe they see her as another AI?I'm pretty much the opposite of concise. If I fail to get to the point, please ask me and I'm happy to (attempt to) clarify.
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2022-12-11, 04:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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2022-12-11, 05:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
AFAIK the setting does not feature an ansible (FTL transmission of information). We've even seen that with the space trip to the P/N junction as Niomi's communications with her family got increasingly more lag until attempting conversations just became not practical anymore.
Besides, connecting a fully-automated remote factory to the commnet just isn't interesting. Those robots do not need to chat with planet-based robots to fulfill their duties. In fact it could even be a security risk; they build nuclear bombs, what if a human gives them an order to send him several nuclear bombs?Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2022-12-12, 08:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
They have FTL communication in the form of FTL ships carrying messages. The details of how the FTL works have not been discussed in comic, but it involves ships that look like push pops and freezing people.
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2022-12-13, 03:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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2022-12-13, 09:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I would think FTL travel or communication in Freefall would be based on real tech or phenomena that we already know can be made or at least probably simulated, so maybe warp bubbles or wormholes or some sort of quantum entanglement stuff. But probably not wormholes or quantum stuff, those are weird, an Alcubierre drive is just more classic and makes more sense in terms of treating it as linear transport where passengers are in transit for a while, rather than establishing a wormhole or something, which you could send a drone to open the other side of the wormhole and and send people through quickly after that. (cryo not required)
Use of cryonic stasis means it's still pretty realistically slow in terms of sci-fi stuff. Space is big. Even if one could travel several times the speed of light, it would still take years, maybe months if it's very fast, but certainly a long time to travel from Sol to Alpha Centauri for example. So based on that, yeah, I think freefall's FTL is probably XC where X is maybe 10 or 20 or something, for cryonic stasis to be necessary.Last edited by D&D_Fan; 2022-12-13 at 10:00 AM.
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2022-12-13, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2007
Re: Freefall 3: Death Ray Byproducts
I think it can be down to something simpler than that.
It's cheaper. Consider the life support and space requirements of someone frozen vs not. Even if you go nutrient and caloric dense on genetically engineered foodstuffs, it still has mass and volume to be accounted for. And you'd need more water and the associated life support systems.
If they're being unfrozen on arrival, less space and mass used up for living quarters, showers, toilets, etc, for people other than the crew.
Since we're not in a Star Trek environment (replicators supplanting the need to carry food and water in storage)... all that adds up. More mass, more fuel, more cost.May you get EXACTLY what you wish for.