Comic for Monday, December 26th, 2022
I realize that parts of the comic will be harder to read, the panels at the start are meant to be chattering, that’s not individually importantly, and that Mium’s aggregated answers is somewhat difficult to follow is sort of the point.
To Mium it makes perfect sense, but Mium doesn’t think like a human. Now, Mium is probably capable of understanding that’s not the most helpful way to answer questions, but Mium’s helpfulness tends to vary rather distinctly when it comes to answering questions as we’ve seen. This is just Mium’s latest attempt to fast forward through conversations with humans that don’t fall particularly high on his list of priorities. After all, Arkady’s value to him is being alive, not necessarily well informed, and, as he says, he’s curiously developed some curiosity about this ice cream his sister is obsessed with.
Hope folks had a good Santa Hat Day. I apologize there wasn’t a character poll this year. Unfortunately I’ve been sick pretty much all month. Without getting into the weeds too much, I’m on medication for it now, and I think that might be helping, but it’s still not beaten yet. It mostly manifests as headaches, and having a headaches more or less constantly for a month isn’t the most productive thing ever. On top of that my other job (making D&D stuff) has been eventful recently as we are in the last leg of actually getting things shipped (with the US/CA books finally about to go out), and there’s some unfortunate difficulties that have arisen (the sort of difficulties which need to get lawyers involved, which is a whole different sort of headache).
In very brief (as this isn’t that venue for my complaining about that job) the license to publish 3rd party D&D content is changing (despite being explicitly a perpetual irrevocable license, but at the end of the day, things are only as perpetual and irrevocable as lawyers say they are). Anyway, between that, getting ready for the next Kickstarter (aside from the legal side of it), and finishing the shipping of the last book, I’ve been a little busy, or at least it’s been chewing through what productive time I’ve had lately.
I don’t like to spend this text box complaining and listing out excuses (though there’s always a temptation when one has a text box to do just that) – just wanted to sort of explain what’s going on as I feel it’s probably obvious I’ve been a little distracted this month, and you folks have been around a long time.
Loading ...
Past, when you say “big storm here,” where is “here” located?
As far a we’ve been able to determine, Past spends most of his time near the northern border of Malsa.
WotC is doing what TSR did, and the end result may be similar if not the same.
There’s also what happened to Rusty and Co….
There is a page coming this week, but may be a little late. For folks that follow the other side of what I do (with D&D stuff), that industry is literally burning the ground at the moment, so I’m somewhat distracted between the ramifications and watching the morbid show.
It seems to me that a company unilaterally revoking an already granted perpetual/lifetime license would/could/should make said company the target of several thousand lawsuits from around the world. Any attempt to consolidate the lawsuits could be met with a multitude of motions to deny consolidations that would sue the assholes into bankruptcy.
While that sounds satisfying, it is important to note that from what I’ve heard, no actual legal harm has been done, yet.
And legal systems have to wait for harm to happen before cases could be filed.
Unfortunate for the target industry, curious to see this drama unfold.
You can file a lawsuit to prevent future harm but that wouldn’t be necessary. The lawyers can argue that the action to revoke the previous license without agreement of all parties may be the harm. The jerks would need to respond to filed lawsuits.
There’s already been a chilling effect on the creation of new content! That’s harm!
But what I’m really hearing… Past will soon have more time to make comics! Woohoo!
What? Too soon? Okay fine, grab the pitchforks and torches. Let’s head for the Coast.
Unfortunately, perpetual does not necessary mean irrevocable, it just means no specified end date. There is a credible legal argument that it can’t be revoked, but it’s not a guaranteed win. The only externally visible legal action so far has been a demand for clarification from a lawyer for Sad Fishe games.
Page is still coming this week, but a little later than anticipated. Maybe not till Wednesday. Lost power last night on top of what-not-else (big storm here such as we do big storms).
trust me pal, I know a thing or 2 about bad weather. hopefully you’ll get things all fixed up. and i also hope you’ll get your legal issues sorted out too.
“We’ll aim for getting back to weekly eventually, but for now keep aiming for “at least every other week”. Still sick generally busy with stuff.”
~Past, 12/21/22
This comic got posted two weeks after the one before it. Look for the next two weeks after this one.
“At least every other week,” as we were told.
Chill!
Hello Utopian Readers!!!
What are your new Year’s Resolutions and have you broken any yet?
I gave up on making resolutions long ago and it is probably the best decision I have ever made, just ahead of getting a Kindle.
Pledged to buy local, sustainable, recyclable torches and pitchforks for when Past misses a week…
Wow, given Pasts update schedule, you must be keeping a blacksmith employed full time just by yourself.
I think one of the things I’m most jelous of most of the characters here is how they are able to treat rules as things to be followed when convenient. If only we had a SMAI to deal with lawyers…
Given that it is *this year’s* resolution, he would not be keeping a blacksmith employed much at all. We’ll see how the year progresses.
And very few people treat *all* rules as things to be followed zealously. They tend to have at least a few rules they are willing to skirt when they find it convenient.
Here’s another takeon Mium’s feelings about ice cream and his extended speech….
Mium is evolving.
Yes, and it scares the bejezus out of Peter.
We know he’s evolving because not only have several people in story said he is, but he went from “I can’t be upset” to actually being upset. Having an AI like ice cream is one thing. Having one that actually gets upset is another.
I made a new years resolution to help reduce ILA’s tendency towards extreme, lethal violence. Unfortunately, that resolution is already broken. ILA was sent a box of a dozen airsoft pepper balls. A message was soon returned to send more tasty food! Sigh ….
My real resolution to lose some weight is going to be severely tested. A trip into rural Iowa ended up at an Amish country general store. They had everything from food to clothes to shoes. EIGHT varieties of pickled eggs including quail eggs! Staff were all very polite and dressed neatly. Men wore suspenders and women wore long dresses and white hats. Plan is to visit again sometime this week. Food savings more than pays for gas.
Technically what’s going on with the ‘perpetual’ license is that the license is in fact perpetual for anything published under it (the 3e, 3.5e, and 5e SRDs) but they’re not under any obligation going forward, so they’re using a new version of the license for the One D&D SRD.
Unfortunately it’s not just that. There’s a limit to how much I can talk about details (for legal reasons) but if you follow the D&D side of things stay tuned for early next year when the OGL 1.1 license terms become public.
Suffice to say that I’m not concerned about One D&D as I don’t (and probably won’t) publish for it. Note that new OGL is coming out well over a year before One D&D is. I would have fully agreed with you a month ago.
Past, Hope your legal issues get settled in your favor.
BTW, stress and especially lack of sleep can bring on headaches that sometimes don’t respond to meds. Hope you get this sorted out.
The last two comics were more excellent than usual. Getting in depth discussion by characters was awsome. The Consul’s analysis of the Rogues vs Ashvalt was insightful as are her plans to not interfere. This seems to be the first time that Mium volunteers a LOT of info that normally wouldn’t be made available without a series of questions being asked. Perhaps it is the ice cream having this effect.
PS – This discourse would have been impossible under the old comic format. The new format has allowed to expand your creativity. Good job!
PPS – For Past and everyone, here’s wishing you a happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everyone (if and when it applies to you)!
hey PastUtopia, I’m sorry you’ve been through the ROUGH parts of the month.. believe me, I know how that feels. I hope you get well soon, and get the legal issues sorted out. p.s., hope you have a Happy New Year.
Panel 4: I will answer them all once. -> all at once
Last panel: human-like motiviations -> motivations
I wonder if Mium has a sense of aesthetics. I figure probably not, but in practice he behaves as if he does.
Art appreciation is basically unclear motivations. Pieces of our brain for evaluating living environment, partners, visual processing and so on say “This is good to live in!” “This is symmetrical!” “This input is easy to run physics simulations on!”, “This food contains easily digestible calories!” and so on.
Mium has conflicting motivations that behaves similarly, but I think he’s very aware that he’s satisfying Query by for example structuring information to be easily understandable or answering a bad guy’s questions.
I can imagine Mium infiltrating a network and pausing for a millisecond to correct a shoddy bit of code. But he wouldn’t do it because it was ‘ugly’, but because correcting it followed straight-forwardly from his directives. He doesn’t confuse instrumental goals for end goals.
That in mind, I suspect he won’t appreciate ice cream for ice cream’s sake.
It’s my impression Mium does have a sense of aesthetics. However, they’re very different from what most of the rest of us would consider a sense of aesthetics.
Actually, there’s a hidden value in fixing some shoddy code when you break into a server. If you manage to find a bit of shoddy code that is rather visibly shoddy to the server maintainers on an ongoing basis (for example, it’s noisy, or it’s something they use frequently that’s flaky in some fashion), and you fix it, the system administration team is likely to disbelieve any evidence they find that indicates you broke in. “Nobody would break in and fix our code.”
Ah, an Info Dump from Mium, the best way to go away with more questions than you had before 😀
Also, in the second panel from Lisa, “Arkady, would be rude of me to ask…” I think there’s a typo there
I had no problem either following the chatter or understanding just what Mium was doing in his monologue shpiel.
I hope your headaches go away, both the lawyer-induced and physical health-induced types, Past!
Thank you for the comic.
“she is a creature of free”
Is this a grammatical error, or is “Free” an organization of which Ila is part of?
You got here fast… it’s fixed now 🙂
Coincidental and accidental; I apparently had some tabs open from the last time I was reading webcomics. (Yay “Open in Background Tab” for entire bookmark folders. Makes reading so much easier than having to open each comic separately.)
Oh… and there’s a bug in the comment editor. Specifically the one for editing already-posted comments. It doesn’t block the rest of the site from detecting arrow key presses, so if you hit Left Arrow to correct something, boom you’re on the previous comic page.
Yeah, it’s an annoying bug, but not something I can really fix (it’s just a plug in). Unfortunately wordpress comments are sort of a legacy feature and not well maintained.
That’s actually a fairly well known bug for regular commenters on this site. If I had more time, I might ask Past what the name of that addon is so I could attempt to figure it out, but I don’t have more time.