Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Strange Places

[Endovior]

I shrug, and would point out that there's a vast difference between 'very rare and occasional errors to the tone of maybe a bit flipped every dozen bytes or so in the worst case' to 'on average, one in five bits is wrong throughout the whole of the datastream'. I know about the various ways you can build parity and apply checksums and whatnot into a regular stream of data to ensure that it's not corrupted, but beyond a certain point, you actually can't send the data in an error free way. If every message you send contains an average of 20% bits that are wrong, then every individual bit of data is suspect, most of your parity checks report errors, all of your checksums are wrong... and any of that which is not wrong is suspect, because a calculation indicating no fault is just as likely to indicate an undetectable fault. Any fault tolerance you might apply is, by definition, only fault tolerant to a certain degree; this degree of error is actually too much error for that, by the rule of disjunction... the odds of any one thing going undetectably wrong increase exponentially with signal length... so on average, you must expect that somewhere in the bulk of your message is an error which your fault-checking does not identify. And if an undetectable error occurs in a securely encrypted file, then you can't decrypt that file. (Not to mention that in terms of the actual quantum events involved, 20% is somewhat generous, really)

The only solution to this problem is to expend vastly more qbits then you have data, which will be inordinately expensive; if the message absolutely must be faultless and you're dealing with a 20% per bit fault rate, then to get the possibility of a failed transmission below 1%, you're talking several orders of magnitude here (which also means several orders of magnitude more physical bulk). Far better, not to mention a more interesting story, to assume that that's far too expensive an extravagance for even the megacorps; instead, assuming that they would have heard about it if their shipments were intercepted, they transmit regular unencrypted data, and not uncommonly find minor typos in their messages, rather then not uncommonly finding that their messages did not go through.

As for the other, presuming that you can reuse qbits... no, no you can't. If you think you can, then you are simply mistaken as a question of fact; entanglement does not at all work that way. If you can get information across an entangled system at all, you get it only in the process of subjecting the entangled system to decoherence, beyond which point the existing entanglement has effectively ceased to be relevant. To proclaim that you can reuse qbits is to proclaim that you have no idea what you're talking about. This is not a question of mere speculation; I've actually done my homework on the subject for unrelated reasons, and I could give you a lengthy mathematical explanation of the phenomenon... but it's meaningless to the discussion at hand except to say that no, it doesn't work that way. If quantum communication is possible at all, then each bit of information you ever send must individually correspond to a physical particle that you've already sent over, and one that is furthermore expensively isolated from it's surroundings. If you're wanting to diverge from this model, you are explicitly ignoring the actual science on the subject, which isn't something that you should do without a viable reason. The question then becomes, "Would the game be improved by ignoring the science on this issue?"

Given the assumption that people wouldn't use magic for really secure communications because there's some sneaky way you can use other magic to eavesdrop on your magical communication (and you can bet they'd be trying against anything really important); quantum communications is the high-end maximum-security level of talking. Since the actual science on this issue presents such an interesting and viable reason why megacorps might hire shadowrunners to go in and steal the things, why would you ever want to change things to an unscientific state to make things way better from the megacorps' point of view, and therefore remove it from the PCs ability to influence?

[RadiantPhoenix]

I shrug, and would point out that there's a vast difference between 'very rare and occasional errors to the tone of maybe a bit flipped every dozen bytes or so in the worst case' to 'on average, one in five bits is wrong throughout the whole of the datastream'. I know about the various ways you can build parity and apply checksums and whatnot into a regular stream of data to ensure that it's not corrupted, but beyond a certain point, you actually can't send the data in an error free way. If every message you send contains an average of 20% bits that are wrong, then every individual bit of data is suspect, most of your parity checks report errors, all of your checksums are wrong... and any of that which is not wrong is suspect, because a calculation indicating no fault is just as likely to indicate an undetectable fault.

Provided you know when to flip the metaphorical coin, couldn't you just use a system where you use a batch of such coins and go with the majority? I'm pretty sure such a system allows the probability of successful communication of a bit to converge to 1.

[Vebyast]

Provided you know when to flip the metaphorical coin, couldn't you just use a system where you use a batch of such coins and go with the majority? I'm pretty sure such a system allows the probability of successful communication of a bit to converge to 1.

That's pretty much what Endovior is talking about when he says that you need to use up several {,dozen,hundred} qubits for every real bit you want to send.

"Would the game be improved by ignoring the science on this issue?"

Mechanically, no. The real science gives us fancy, expensive, weird MacGuffins, so we're keeping the real science. We're just trying to figure out the best way to condense it down into two lines of fluff for players that don't know quantum physics, statistics, or indeed any math at all. Our description will inevitably have errors. We're just trying to figure out the details of the slightly-wrong fluff with a focus on maximizing MacGuffinness.

[Endovior]

I shrug, and would point out that there's a vast difference between 'very rare and occasional errors to the tone of maybe a bit flipped every dozen bytes or so in the worst case' to 'on average, one in five bits is wrong throughout the whole of the datastream'. I know about the various ways you can build parity and apply checksums and whatnot into a regular stream of data to ensure that it's not corrupted, but beyond a certain point, you actually can't send the data in an error free way. If every message you send contains an average of 20% bits that are wrong, then every individual bit of data is suspect, most of your parity checks report errors, all of your checksums are wrong... and any of that which is not wrong is suspect, because a calculation indicating no fault is just as likely to indicate an undetectable fault.

Provided you know when to flip the metaphorical coin, couldn't you just use a system where you use a batch of such coins and go with the majority? I'm pretty sure such a system allows the probability of successful communication of a bit to converge to 1.

Yes, yes you could. The problem is disjunction; for whatever probability of failure you've just reduced the problem to by your repetition, you now need to multiply for each bit in your total data stream. If you're transmitting the data normally, that's not a problem; you might at worst get a few errors that correspond to minor typos (and I note that these are errors your software doesn't see as errors, since they're errors substantial enough to break your error-checking). If you're trying to encrypt the data stream, though, that variable amount of error is not unlikely to get you a stream of data you can't decrypt (or, more precisely, since you're talking about a securely encrypted file, the undetected error causes it to decrypt into a garbage state, and since you can't tell where the error was, you can't tell what the message is). If you're using conventional means of data transmission, that's not a problem either, since you can just re-send the data. If you're using quantum communications, on the other hand, that's a lot more problematic.

All this can technically be overcome by sufficiently large amounts of redundancy and multiple complex layers of error-checking. The problem is that given the math involved, your overhead increases exponentially; for a message of any length, the costs quickly become exorbitant. Adding to the problem, short messages are not cryptographically secure. Essentially, you can't reasonably apply modern cryptographic methods to a data stream that's got this much built in error within the kind of bandwidth restrictions you're dealing with in quantum communications, since attempting to use any encryption method which is much more complex then a simple substitution can totally corrupt the message if there are undetected errors present. The very best you could reliably do would be a simple variation on the one-time pad, but that's... something else that needs to be physically shipped to the target, and which can also be stolen en-route. Probably more hassle then it's worth, although I suppose you could further encrypt the one-time pad using another encryption scheme previously known to both parties for added security. Even so, if it gets intercepted, your enemy ultimately has both the OTP and the message, so it's a mathematically weak encryption.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Given that your message can't be intercepted in transit, and that only one attempt can be made to read the message, I don't know how much encryption you would really need.

[Endovior]

That's my point, yes.

Unless the box itself is stolen in transit without you knowing about it, such that you send it messages anyways regardless, it's perfect security; trying to encrypt it is a waste of both time and valuable qbits. Of course, there are valid reasons why you might pretend you were unaware of the theft of a box full of qbits... to turn your enemies attempt at disinformation against him, say. Even so, there's generally not any reason to actually encrypt your transmissions. You use encryption only when you expect that your message might be intercepted, and if the box in question has been properly delivered, then it really can't be, short of your base actually being attacked and looted. And if that last is true, you've got more serious problems to worry about.

[DrPraetor]

Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker: Assymetric Threat

"Except that the admixture of cyberspace and, spare me, *elves*, has always been more than I could bear to think about." - William Gibson

Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker (abbreviated FTCpFHb, pronounced "Fat Cop Fob" or "Assymetric Threat") is a cooperative storytelling game set in a speculative near future where Magic is real. Players take on the roles of Lancers, grey-market secret agents who may moonlight as mercenaries, bounty hunters, private investigators or spies. One of the players takes on the role of the MC – a combination referee, narrator, and roleplayer of last resort for antagonists and minor characters in the story.

Cooperative storytelling can be done without any products at all, as with collaborative writing or Cops and Robbers. FTCpFHb provides structure and conflict resolution in the form of an established world and story, as well as with a set of mechanics to determine the results of actions with the help of six sided dice. In this way, players of FTCpFHb can bypass many of the hangups of both collaborative fiction and Cops and Robbers: most notably the “I shot you/ No you did not” problem. It is hoped that the backstory and established characters of FTCpFHb will be sufficiently evocative as to give players of protagonists and MCs ample launching points for stories of their own.

The materials in this book are open content. You can print copies, trade electronic copies with friends, modify the files, or produce derivative work. If you like After Sundown enough, go ahead and “buy” a pdf. But if you'd rather trade it around as a torrent, that is fine too.

Frank Trollman's Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker

"One of the attractive contradictions of good science fiction is that its speculations about the technology of the future are recorded and transmitted in a medium that's been around for centuries, the old technology looking to the new without either deference or condescension." - William Gibson

One of the primary purposes of a cooperative storytelling game is to provide a foundation upon which stories can be told. The other is to provide a framework by which disagreements about how a story should progress can be worked out in an acceptably impartial fashion.

FTCpFHb is set in a speculative future of 2070, with the trends and currents of our own era (the 2010s) taken to their logical extremes. Corporate greed and economic inequality have skyrocketed, so that while technology has advanced to the very horizon of what we know is possible today, the lot of the common population has materially worsened. The great nation states and institutions of the present world are in a state of decay or collapse, and democratic participation is minimal. On the other hand, the collapse of central authority has allowed populist movements and alternative societies to thrive. Thus, challenges and alternatives to the new world order are numerous and well-organized, struggling to build a better society amidst the tumult and rubble.

In addition to all that, FTCpFHb imagines a near future where magic is real. For unknown and mysterious reasons, the 21st century has seen a gradual re-establishment of contact with an alien reality, with natural laws completely different from our own. This alien reality warps our own where such contact is established, resulting in strange transformations and allowing entry to our reality by quixotic energy beings of questionable sanity, termed "spirits". At the same time, this alien reality seems to respond to humans (and other living things) in a semi-reproducible way, allowing those with the will and talent to work Magic, which is a great equalizer in the depleted future of 2075.

---

How's that? Mostly just hacked together from the After Sundown intro, if that wasn't clear. Need more William Gibson quotes!

[DrPraetor]

Also:
"Novels set in imaginary futures are necessarily about the moment in which they are written. As soon as a work is complete, it will begin to acquire a patina of anachronism."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/se ... cyberspace

[Draco_Argentum]

"If you like After Sundown enough" Got your IPs mixed up here.

Couldn't it be Assymetric Threat: FTCpFHb, the other way around is really long winded and noone will ever say it.

[A Man In Black]

I don't know where he originally said ""The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed," but that's worth using.

Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers (partial transcript), 1990

"Everyone I know who works with computers seems to develop a belief that there's some kind of actual space behind the screen, someplace you can't see but you know is there."

"Computers [...] are simply a metaphor for human memory."

"Information is the dominant scientific metaphor of our age."

Some Amazon interview promoting Pattern Recognition, from his website

"And when things are changing too quickly, [...] you don't have any place to stand from which to imagine a very elaborate future.

"If I could know one thing about the world a hundred years from now, or have access to one train of information, I think I'd want their history of our time, because not only would it tell me a lot of things that I can't know about our time, but it would tell me everything I needed to know about their time, like what they're willing to believe. "

The Tyee, 2007

This has a bunch of stuff about asymmetrical warfare and terrorism that I'm too tired to quotemine, too.

"People who say I'm dystopian are middle class pussies!"

"Virtual reality was one of our most recent experiences of a future that didn't happen."

"The kids being born today will grow up finding the quaintest thing about the past was that people had these different devices that had discrete functions."

"Conspiracy theories are popular because no matter what they posit, they are all actually comforting, because they all are models of radical simplicity."

Washington Post interview, 2007

"When I wrote 'Neuromancer' almost 25 years ago, cyberspace was there, and we were here. In 2007, what we no longer bother to call cyberspace is here, and those increasingly rare moments of nonconnectivity are there."

Wired article, 2005

"We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge, and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of change they generate. We legislate after the fact, in a perpetual game of catch-up, as best we can, while our new technologies redefine us - as surely and perhaps as terribly as we've been redefined by broadcast television."

[Starmaker]

Also, it's "Asymmetric".

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Also, it's "Asymmetric".

this is correct

[Username17]

So... hacking together South Asia. The goal is to have countries that aren't so big that they are world conquerers, but still big enough that the section doesn't make peoples' eyes glaze over. It's been a bit hard, because some independence movements are lame. For example, THIS IS NAGALAND:



However, this is the actual Nagaland flag that the literal headhunters in their independence movement fly:



That is not a joke, although it probably should be. So while the various Khmer tribes along the Myanmar border clearly get independence, I am having them unite under Assam, because that is way less embarrassing.

Anyway, here's the list:

• Pakistan
• Kashmir
• Khalistan
• Rajasthan
• Uttar
• Gujarat
• Bihar
• Deccan
• Orissa
• Andrha
• Vijayanagar
• United Bengal
• Assam
• Chin
• Lanka
• Patala

Now to work on the Chinese Puzzle. I already have a flag for Turkestan, Tibet, and the Timurid Empire so Central Asia is basically done and Xinjiang isn't a country or even a region.

-Username17

[Username17]

Patala!

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Hail hydra.

[Lokathor]

Patala!

-Username17

Reminds me of that logo that the secret corp in LOST uses.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

The trigrams are an old, old symbol.