o11o1 wrote:

The rise of good wearables is also a bit of a knock against implants. Why implant something when a better one is sure to come out in two years?

It depends on the type of wearable. Ectos are a wearable, but provide nothing more that mesh inserts, with the added point of "take them out, put them again, charge it, store it"... Granted, in this specific case most people want the disposability of the ectos. The main use I see for wearables is support stuff for what a Sentinel would have, or cheap alternatives to "paupers" who have a baseline morph and can't go to have modifications (because of money, beliefs, contractual obligations...). Of course, not having time to get the morph modified because of mission constraints is another reason to go with wearables (camo smartclothes come to mind here). For sentinels, disposable support and supplies would be the norm, kinda like military aircraft carrying external fuel tanks. The obvious stuff are Feedstock pre-packed for some selected blueprints, extra batteries/ammo, surveillance systems, comms enhancers/maskers, extra processing power, extra cold storage, etc... Another thing that is making some (quiet) headlines today and might be really relevant for EP are the "anti-cam stickers", adhesive printed patterns designed to confuse automated image recognition software, something that has been tested against google's systems (a 3d printed plastic turtle, and then another with two smal holes on the base and a different pattern of color and shell shapes lead to the system recognizing the first as a turtle, and the second as an assault rifle). While I doubt AGI or Uplifts will get so confused (there can be camo patterns specific against them, though, the same way there are some specific against human minds nowadays), the automated systems of the Panopticon would be another matter entirely, and while it will be possible to counter those stickers, new ones will be designed. And those are, in a way, visual basilisk hacks of the "you are not seeing what you see" kind.

MrWigggles wrote:

AGI and Uplifts wouldnt be confused because they dont do machine learning pattern recongization, they're sapient self aware creatures.

Image recognition in year 2017 is usually done by simulated neural networks which are trained for the task by machine learning algorithms. It is possible to do image recognition with hardcoded programs made "by hand" by programmer. But it is much easier, comparatively, to use neural networks for image recognition. Image recognition in human brain is conducted in analog neural network. Sufficiently advanced neural network could be indistinguishable in accuracy to human visual cortex. What you are missing though is processing power. Simulating neural networks is pretty resource intensive. So image recognition soft is optimised for efficiency. On the other hand biobrains are optimised for accuracy (correctness is essential to survival). And also they usually further process the image beyond first identification, which allows them to correct mistakes and identify discrepancies. Just ask yourself how many times you mistaken for a bush only to see that it is a TITANspawned fractal when it moved. Soooo that exposes a very big flaw in the logic of EP setting. With Transhumanity mastery of neural networks (clearly evident with widespread use of cyberbrains and psychosurgery) the limiting factor on any intelligence is processing power not the know-how and design of the intelligence itself. If we assume that much of the tasks performed by AGIs out indentures is dull and grueling then they clearly don't need ALL their "brainpower" to run the task. Therefore it is massively inefficient to use fully fledged egos where artfully pruned forks or specialty intelligence would suffice. It casts new light at the indenture and hypercapitalism making it seem almost benevolent where they accept massive cost* increases in exchange for reinstatement of ego for society as a whole. If we assume that "hypercorps" want to instantiate as many egos as possible it somewhat rationalises their underhand handling of nascent and rising corps. They have to eliminate newcomers who could run without inefficient indenture system and destabilise the instantiation operation. *This interpretation assumed that costs of running a full ego vs pruned forks are sufficiently different. EDIT: I also assume that intelligence is a continuous spectrum spanning from a toaster to a sapient being with very smooth and full curve/dataline for a biobeings between bacterium, single cellular organisms, protozoa, bugs, rodents, dolphins, humans etc. with AUTOMATED machines as sparse datapoints below the bacteria and all the rest of the way. In Eclipse Phase with titans and their creations extending way beyond human range. Also IMO intelligence doesn't require self-awareness.

Ok, first of all (before I forget): "camo" patterns do exist since the dawn of time, the difference with the stickers I mention would be essentially that they work against programs designed to recognize physical stuff by using cameras; while it becomes possible to "patch" this vulnerability on programs (or even digitized egos... but Psychosurgery would be more a "reprogram parts of an ego without crashing it... too badly", instead of "psychological treatment on steroids, IN SPACE!"), for a regular human it would need some neural rewiring (thus, evolution or genetics manipulation). Anyway, one could say that BIDI codes and this "camo stickers" are the "cuneiform level" of what Basilisk hacks are in the setting, remember that the Firewall book mentions how some strains have been "patched" (all of them from the time of the Fall, however) after some huge brute force testing. Remember, even nowadays some machines are "programmed" using barcodes! On the reason for indentured use in a Hypercapitalistic society: there are several things going on here, and in fact the "indentured contracts" by themselves are good and logical for that kind of society. First: Transhumanity is small, much of the population killed during the Fall, and the only attempt to produce a new generation of post-fall transhumans giving the Lost Generation. This means the hypercorps have a small base of consumers (so not as many people that buy stuff). This means low demand of goods and services. Second: even Sunward, the society is a post-scarcity one. However, we must remember the Offer-Demand graph: too much offer, too many demand, and you have an economical crisis where the value of money plummets down because the goods are overabundant. Third: Waste not, want not. It's faster to grab an ego willing to work his ass off for some time in order to get a body, than to make a psychosurgery operation to edit and prepare forks en masse, and copying forks has been forbidden by law precisely because #1... those "slave egos" earn no money, so they cannot spend money... so whatever they produce is superfluous for a capitalistic society, since no one has the money to pay for it, aside from the corps, leading us to #1... I think it's safer to assume that those thinking among this lines live in their own private habitat with the slaves they need. Fourth: Societal situations. Anything "AI-related" (AGIs, Infomorphs, synthmorphs...) is seen on a bad light in a lot of places, because of the Fall; as alien as anything humanity can produce, at least. This means that you cannot use AGIs, but LAIs (Limited AIs), which need a supervisor, which means having people herding systems at all times... Fifth: a consequence of #2, and why sleeves for indentures are as uncomfortable as possible without being detrimental for the job: motivation ("get out of this hellhole fast") and scarcity mindset ("the synthmorphs are inferior, I spent years sleeved on one", and the biomorphs take months to assemble), plus a synth with medichines requires less "maintenance" than a splicer with medichines (which still needs to sleep, eat, wash...). So the hypercorps solution is simple: generate future clients by way of "training" (indenture contract!) them with usefull skills for the future, mantaining the societal sctructure the infugee is used to (and expects), while mantaining a carefully balanced offer amount by way of different means and ways. Consider that with EP's tech it would be possible to instanciate all the infugees in cold storage in less than a month, by way of using nanoswarms to assemble steel morphs from some asteroids, and you can reposition other asteroids closer to the Sun for the production of energy... It's all about keeping the money circulating, in the end. Which is good and well, until some "bright corp" decides to run the scam of hiring the same ego, from backup, over and over... which provides little to no gain to the corp in both the short and long term: they have to train that ego over and over, give it a synthmorph to do the job, and they save, what, giving them a biomorph at the end of the contract? The other corps would quickly apply pressure over that corp to release a new consumer onto the herd ASAP. Which makes the fiction text on the venusian miner indentured who is programmed to kill himself (and wrecking the VERY expensive morph he uses!) not really about how hypercorps abuse clauses to keep you indentured forever, but something else...

(moving this over to General since this isn't about the playtest)

o11o1 wrote:

So what -are- the most important societal effects of having ubiquitous mesh inserts? Functional telepathy with anyone closer than a light minute of you? Does this mean that you encounter all sorts of new views, or that the entire hab swiftly trends towards a social mono-culture?

I'd say it's more like being able to "/w [insert name of target here] [message]" in real life, kinda like in an MMO. Which is, in itself, an interesting way to live (you have the AR, so... I'm sure somebody is living in EP like inmersed in World of Warcraft-like graphics XD).

o11o1 wrote:

Externalized memories stored on whatever random bits of data storage you have in your house? If someone steals my tablet computer, does that mean they remove my ability to remember who was in my high school science class? If they faked that sort of thing, would I automatically notice or just chalk it up to being a memory I didn't worry much about? Seems like a clever spec Ops could insert themselves as a vague childhood acquaintance well enough to try "catching up over lunch" if people don't keep all their memories in their skull.

To be fair, the distributed stuff are processes, as in Ram/CPU. Storage hasn't been mentioned as spread upon devices, explicitly, and considering how much does a cortical stack stores, I'd say its not a real necessity. Cloud storage, however, with XP recordings... So if your tablet is stolen, your local mesh might lose some processing power and bandwith, but little else.

o11o1 wrote:

Do Venus-Tech and Martian-Corp brand mesh inserts play nice with each other over internet? How often do I need to upgrade them and what happens if I try to switch manufacturers?

This is not something the setting explains at all, but there are merits and demerits about compatibility. The first demerit about compatibility is the Exurgent Virus, we have had a Real Life example a month or so ago with the microprocessors vulnerability (Meltdown and Spectre) where all chips made in the past decade have the vulnerability... The first merit, of course, is the fast deployment of patches... Anyway, considering how things go, I'd say it's not really relevant. Mostly because even if the hardware is widely different, the software is the prime product in EP, so it's reasonable to think there will be emulation layers, firmware adapters and the like. As for interoperability, considering how there are no "brand variations" on implants or weapons, I'd waive it aswell, unless it's relevant for the running game (and only because it's interesting, important and does NOT become a chore), because this is not a game about shopping after all xD.

o11o1 wrote:

Everytime I look at someone, facial recognition checks tell me their name, and if we share the same Rep Networks. At a glance, I can tell that my @-friends want me to shun that c-rep personality, and i can pull up a miles long list why that should be. The counter-arguments are stored on CivicNet, and effectively invisible to me if I choose not to look. If I can think of the above issues in five minutes, what counter measures have been taken for them, and how widely adopted are they in different polities?

Well... yes and no. Facial recognition is essentially useless in EP: resleeving, implants, surgery... you need Kinesis software, which requires some degree of the skill, which also requires processing power, which is a chore unless you have a reason for it (call it the "detect evil" of a cleric/paladin...), the usual way to ID someone is a IFF tag that might include "links" to the sender's social media ("rep score account"), or at least the public ones, maybe even coded so only those of certain level in those circles can access the rep level (very likely for Guanxi, while for Eye Rep you will need to ask for the codename/"nick" on a secure channel). As for the "reasons to drop that guy", consider how your muse acts as your secretary, so your friends won't tell you "look at this page, he's a bad influence", it would be more like "here, take this data packet", your muse would peruse it, check it contains real data instead of forged data, and pass you her veredict... which you can check by yourself or (which is the norm) accept without a doubt.