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My crew and I are still struggling with the backup idea ...

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Sat, 2012-12-22 18:44

Skelshy

My crew and I are still struggling with the backup idea ...

they are on a mission and they have 3:40 minutes left until orbital bombardment hits. That got them thinking what they would really loose. We all were wondering how frequent backups would be given you had backup insurance, and if there was any specific cost to each backup? Can the individual trigger a backup? Can they backup themselves to safety seconds before destruction? It seems with unlimited storage and bandwidth, the answer might be you can do them at any time, as long as you're meshed? Earlier I thought death is just property damage and one of the few ways to get to you really is to drive you insance. If some joker resleeves you in a low pain tolerance morph for torture (or in a fancy VR like in Altered Carbon) what do you really have to lose? Just find a pre-insane backup and you're good to go. They'd have to hack your backup or infect you with something nasty but not deadly and slow acting so you'll have to trade off life experience and or a fresh restore. What are sensible limits? Have to do backup in person in a lab? Thanks S.

Sat, 2012-12-22 21:32

Undocking

You are confusing uploading

You are confusing uploading and backups. Uploading is the process of backing-up a character and having a backup means that the character has his/her brain on file with the company/organization the backup insurance was bought. Backup Insurance is very specific, and outlined from pages 268-270 in core. The character decides how often he/she backs-up. My current character backs-up once every 2 weeks, before a gatecrash, and after a gatecrash. Some characters may backup daily or monthly (Firewall sentinels should backup more often then the usual folk). The Backup Insurance does not cover new morphs, it just insures that your consciousness is resleeved if you die or don't contact them once every six months. If you die, and people know you did/have proof, then the company will take that as evidence of your death and resleeve you. Uploading yourself and beaming in 3 minutes is an issue, since they need an ego-bridge on hand. If they have one, then: Synths can upload instantly, Pods take 5 minutes and Biomorphs take 10 minutes. Now, synths, pods or biomorphs with cyberbrains can evacuate them as infomorphs in 1 Action Turn. They could then farcast themselves out. Anyone with an emergency farcaster can just beam out. @limits Criminals would much rather create an alpha fork and preform psychosurgery instead of messing around with sleeving a captured ego. In the cases of torture, it is because someone wants information or is a sick fuck. Death is a way to drive a character insane, and sleeving someone then driving them mental with torture would work, but as you said: you could just revert to an older backup. But then again, that old backup could have gone 'missing' or the character does not want to forget something that happened since the last backup. But truly killing someone involves destroying their morph and stack then finding their backups and erasing them. The best thing to do is keep a backup/alpha fork in the coffee machine without anyone knowing.

Sun, 2012-12-23 16:36

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Rez is what you loose. When a

Rez is what you loose. When a character backs up the player should archive that character sheet. Couple of adventures ago I had one of my space-truckers "hard reboot" from backup because he caught a nasty addiction and is afraid of psycho surgery. Lost about 16 rez points. Often you don't really loose that much when you start from backup because you can lifelog all your memories and replay them as XP when you wake up as the previous version of you.

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Mon, 2012-12-24 02:06

Skelshy

Thanks for the thoughtful

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. What I don't get is why does it take nanobots and 10 minutes to upload when everyone has a perfectly digitized copy in their cortical stack already? And why does uploading take 10 minutes when clearly the cortical stack can take a copy every second (as per rulebook, 86400 times a day)?

Mon, 2012-12-24 05:18

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

cortical stacks are not invincible

They have a certain breaking point themselves, and then, you need a hard reboot, like OTP said It might even provide a plot hook unto into itself One that Richard Morgan himself used in Altered Carbon:

Spoiler: Highlight to view

An oligarch gets killed and his stack is destroyed the law enforcement files it as suicide attempt and close the case, so after his resleeving, he calls on the players to investigate who killed him and why.

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Mon, 2012-12-24 10:35

Undocking

Skelshy wrote:

Skelshy wrote:
What I don't get is why does it take nanobots and 10 minutes to upload when everyone has a perfectly digitized copy in their cortical stack already? And why does uploading take 10 minutes when clearly the cortical stack can take a copy every second (as per rulebook, 86400 times a day)?

The cortical stack is problematic because it only holds the most recent backup, cannot be farcasted, only records information, and is stuck wherever you die. There are cases where you don't want to backup to your most recent state (exsurgent), you cannot extract yourself from the cortical stack, your cortical stack is not available because you died on the other side of a Gate no one is going back to in quite a while or in Sol or was taken by a Headhunter or on the surface of Venus or inside of Zombieland aut cetera.

Mon, 2012-12-24 17:33

Lorsa

Yes, but I think he means why

Yes, but I think he means why does it take 10 minutes to upload an ego when the cortical stack holds all information you need? Can't you simply copy that if what you want is to create a current backup? Why would it take 10 minutes?

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Mon, 2012-12-24 20:08

GreyBrother GreyBrother's picture

The same reason you can

The same reason you can basically instantly send big files around your LAN but it takes some time once you upload something off-site :)

Tue, 2012-12-25 13:59

fafromnice fafromnice's picture

I think my coffee machine is

I think my coffee machine is trying to say something to me after an orbital bombardement good luck finding de cortical stack and it's why you need an emergency farcaster implant

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What do you mean a butterfly cause this ? How a butterfly can cause an enviromental system overload on the other side of a 10 000 egos habitat ?

Fri, 2012-12-28 21:30

#10

Maskin

Why Upload if you have a Cortical Stack

As far as I can tell Cortical Stacks makes uploading using an ego-bridge only necessary for those that lack stacks (note that synthmorphs don't need an ego-bridge regardless as it is just an instant copy action). I think this is an oversight, unless I'm missing something and my current thinking is that cortical stacks are a bit too awesome with their backing up every second a perfect copy of the ego, when a clinical upload takes 10 minutes. It is stated in the gear section for Cortical Stacks that they do not have external or wireless access for security and must be surgically removed. Perhaps this is why ego bridges are used, i.e. to avoid damaging the morph/stack with surgery (although popping doesn't sound like it should be hard with modern medical equipment). Now, the emergency farcaster augment allows transmission of the stack whenever in radio range of of the storage facility and as described is "is typically only used inside a habitat to broadcast backups back to a nearby space ship". So short range only, and also the backup is typically only broadcast every 48 hours as "ego broadcasts are generally limited for security purposes and because they hog bandwidth". Unfortunately, in my opinion, the emergency farcaster also includes a single-use emergency neutrino broadcaster which can transmit the ego pretty much anywhere in the solar system (100 AU) which destroys the host morph, and this is specified as taking less than 0.1 second. I'm going to be making changes, but I'd love to hear more about this from others and please do tell me if my suggestions do not make sense, have flaws or is already in the book and I just haven't spotted it: 1) Emergency Farcasters should be fairly rare, and come at the price of a security access hole to your stack - although any hacking beyond copying/altering/blocking the transmitted ego would be extremely difficult and perhaps impossible for anyone not a post-singularity mind like tha TITANS. 2) I think they missed a trick by not considering bandwidth limitations when broadcasting your ego, so I think that farcasting your ego should take anything from 10 minutes to several hours depending on the model of your farcaster, distance to transmit and any interference (also lots of fun to be had with partial or corrupted ego transmissions). 3) While regular backups every 48 hours are all well and good, I think I will also introduce insurance options to back up a set number of times in a period, such as once a week, twice a week, once a day, etc. at various price plans, but whenever the user chooses. 4) I will make the single-use emergency neutrino broadcaster a separate and extremely rare/expensive black-ops type augment. It is already stated that some habitats ban this implant entirely because of the antimatter, and I think this will be the standard for anyone having this aug. 5) Uploading using an ego bridge will likely only be needed for those who do not have a transmitter on their cortical stack and surgery to remove the stack is impractical or not wanted for whatever reason. I just don't see why you would scan your brain if there is already a perfect copy in the stack. PS! I haven't read enough about the mesh yet to know if it would make sense to allow ego stack backups to be transmitted through the mesh, but if so then that would likely flood the bandwidth of smaller habitats and be extremely prone to hacking, viruses and copying.

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Transhuman Mind

Fri, 2012-12-28 22:18

#11

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Cortical stacks are designed

Cortical stacks are designed not to be accessible while "in use", so to speak, to ensure that they cannot be tampered with by outside systems while the user's still alive. That means that, as long as the person is alive, they cannot be readily accessed. That's why you need an ego bridge to make a back-up during any time other than after the person's dead. While you can always just blow your brains out and have someone pop the stack, that's a waste of a perfectly good morph... That said, if your players know they're about to die, and if any of them are in a synthmorph, they can always just have non-synths commit suicide and have their stacks popped and transmitted by their synth buddy, who sends a copy of themselves while they're retrieving the other's stacks. If none of them are synthmorphs, well... Someone has to make a noble sacrifice, then, don't they? As for why emergency farcasters are so fast, I don't see that as a particular issue. The actual transmission of data is probably actually very fast, though how far away the receiver is will determine the time of arrival. The 48 hours thing and bandwidth issues are simply because sending a constant stream of ego data is probably a huge bandwidth drain and security hole, and updating every 24 hours is probably just overkill. That said, as you noted, emergency farcasters are a huge security hole for someone. They're a bomb in your brain that sends copies of you constantly somewhere. Even if it is quantum-encrypted, it's still a hole that could be potentially exploited.

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Sat, 2012-12-29 10:45

#12

Skelshy

There's two issues at play I

There's two issues at play I think, how we imagine the future and make it internally consistent, and gameplay balance. I imaging the EP future as having unlimited bandwidth for uses we can imagine today. For example, one would be able to download the entire contents of todays internet (like the google archive) within seconds and store it internally. Understanding the core assumptions is essential for the GM, since I have to make a lot of on the spot decisions about what people can do :) Intuitively it was consistent if you have a backup every second and massive bandwidth, you would be able to trigger a backup. That was consistent with how I imagined it would be done. Of course I forgot about the emergency farcaster. You should not be able to do something for free that otherwise requires an expensive item. Now security is a major concern. (like in Altererd Carbon, where they

Spoiler: Highlight to view

infect the bad guy's single backup with a virus and then kill his sleeve

) Gameplay wise the farcaster of course is a great dramatic element. So is the struggle of the main character in the story in the core rulebook. Did I lose memories of the love of my life? or just memories of another painful death? However, I think this is a bitch to role play and the player actually has these memories, making them a lot less painful to not know. I was gravitating towards the following house rule: The cortical stack is not meshed for security reasons - hack attacks and intercepted uploads. Real death is a real possibility when your only backup gets wiped or corrupted. In everyday life, most people upload directly at a secure facility run by their backup insurance company, or own a private ego bridge hard wired into their location's network. Emergency farcasters store a one-use key token. This makes the transmission very secure, but you need to visit one of their secure facilities to replenish your security token.

Sat, 2012-12-29 15:42

#13

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Skelshy wrote:I imaging the

Skelshy wrote:
I imaging the EP future as having unlimited bandwidth for uses we can imagine today. For example, one would be able to download the entire contents of todays internet (like the google archive) within seconds and store it internally.

I have never understood why people envision "unlimited bandwidth" to be the reality of EP. First, in any science fiction setting, we should be cautious about the word "unlimited" it is a simile for "magic". But also, the concept of Unlimited bandwidth ignores the, (improbable), nature of the mesh itself as an add-hock network of user's devices where total bandwidth and individual bandwidth depends on the number of those devices participating in the network. There is no mesh infrastructure, no one has to subscribe to get access to lightpipes owned by some corporation, it's just every participating PDA sharing a portion of it's processor and radio transceiver. The reason I say this is improbable is because nearly every PC in the game opts out of sharing by running in privacy mode and establishing an encrypted VPN. This is certainly how you'll behave if you're transmitting a copy of your EGO. If everyone is connected to a Private Network while transmitting their ego updates then you've pretty much killed the mesh. Another problem is density. While free, unused bandwidth is likely in a healthy mesh network with tens of thousands of nodes in range, there is a threshold minimum of subscribers necessary that would determine the maximum bandwidth available to any individual. Smaller habitats probably do not achieve the threshold minimum of free bandwidth needed to transmit an Ego. And that assumes a healthy network. Territories where large numbers of users respect the privacy meme can choke the mesh significantly even in dense populations. A very real cap to bandwidth is the size and capability of the transceiver that can fit in the space of a creditcard sized device or built by nano in the spare volume of a person's skull. There is a limit to the amount of EM bandwidth a person can carry. However, content is unlimited and, with full sensory AR, lifeloging, real time, continuous social networking and just general communicating and file trading it's easy to imagine that we will reach the capacity of a mesh network very quickly. Throw Ego transmission and Private networks on top and you crash the mesh easily and often. The SPAM zones mentioned in the core book are a great, and probably underutilized, example of this.

Quote:
In everyday life, most people upload directly at a secure facility run by their backup insurance company, or own a private ego bridge hard wired into their location's network.

In everyday life most people can't afford to have backup insurance or a private location let alone own an ego bridge. That is the utility and importance of the cortical stack. It's a minor insurance that even the poorest of the embodied get to have.

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Sun, 2012-12-30 00:50

#14

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

OneTrikPony wrote:

OneTrikPony wrote:
I have never understood why people envision "unlimited bandwidth" to be the reality of EP.

I do because the game book explicitly says so? Pg. 236 "Bandwidth is such a non-issue that most people forget it ever was.........The mesh is also [i]never[/i] down." Pg. 248 "Mesh networks and AR are overrun with yottabytes of information." How big is an ego? Don't know. Our best educated guess (Arenamontanus) had it a handful of petabytes (10^15 range) vs. the yottabytes above (10^24 range). You can always downgrade your vision of EP from this, but that's where the books are with it.

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Sun, 2012-12-30 04:50

#15

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

I'm aware of that.

I'm aware of that. I think it's a bit optimistic to read statements about the whole mesh in general to apply to to the mesh inserts of the individual. Because that would be the same as suggesting that a single wireless device is capable of carrying bandwidth a hundred times greater than the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic]total global internet traffic per month[/url] in 2011. I'm confident that I can assume that the amount of bandwidth available to a single person's mesh inserts is quite a bit less than yottabytes with out "downgrading" my vision of EP. :) There is, after all, only so much EM spectrum to go around and every node within range has to share a slice of that pie.

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Sun, 2012-12-30 05:59

#16

NewtonPulsifer NewtonPulsifer's picture

A mesh insert carries about

A mesh insert carries about the processing power five times that of the total PCs on earth. So why is someone in EP using a similar ratio of bandwidth an issue? 4 exabytes per month 2011 US backbone per month, call it 7 now, multiply by 5.5 (ratio of US Pcs to world total) we get 38.5 exabytes per month. Multiply by 5 - ratio of mesh insert CPU power to world CPU total for 192.5 exabytes. So if my EP character copied his 2.5 petabyte ego compressed file 85,000 times in a month (that's 2 times per minute) he'd just be using an average amount of bandwidth. There's more bandwidth out there than you might be aware of. There's a whole extra degree of freedom to encode information in a photon that currently is not being exploited in EM communications: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_angular_momentum_multiplexing A less technical but more breathlessly optimistic article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/120803-vortex-radio-waves-could-boost...

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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."- Isoroku Yamamoto