Comic for Thursday, November 1st, 2018
Even if the headline says November, I guess this counts as the Halloween update, so I’ll link to the Halloween doodle. If I didn’t draw your idea – sorry; I just sort of picked some that I figured would be easily recognizable (or funny). As per that Patreon comment, I wouldn’t think too much about Kally’s dragon dressing up as Kally in particular… I just thought it would be funnier. It’s a little light compared to previous October updates – still mostly focusing on rebuilding the buffer. The buffer is back up to 3 comics, but I’ll be traveling for work next week so we’ll eat most of that, but at least we are still keeping ahead.
Last full page for a bit, as we go back to half pages for the next few updates. I’ll still be online somewhat next week, so updates should be normal, but I won’t be able to correct mistakes till I get back, so… well, maybe there will be no errors… always a chance… 😉
Loading ...
So my question is: That since this is a Mium-Ila interface is there anything in Mium’s restrictions that would prevent this ‘budding’ from being passed along to Ila to run on hardware she controls? Because then SHE would be running the interface/bud and it wouldn’t count to Mium’s 3…
I mean, he can definitely run on the F10 as we have seen him do it, but presumably the F10 cannot run both it and Ila, and Mium is probably unwilling to hijack the prototype of his ‘sister’.
I did mention that such a transfer would probably require additional hardware for Ila, no?
> That does not mean there are three options.
Would probably be more accurately stated “That does not mean there are only three options.”
It would be more precisely stated as there aren’t only three options. The accuracy is the same either way.
Mium tends to be a bit autisticly precise in his speech. I think the wording here fits Mium. What he said is true regardless of whether there are more or fewer than three options. It happens that there are more, he’s just not caring to point out in which direction the variance lies, since it’s obvious given that there are at least three options that there would either need to be three options or more than three options.
Hard to tell. Could mean that there aren’t only three options, or could just mean that even though he can think of three options, doesn’t make all three of them options that he might legitimately consider, and therefore there might be only two, or one option out of the listed that he’d actually consider an option.
I’m pretty sure what Mium meant was, “I am allowed to mention three options. These all happen to be options that are within my prerogative. There is certainly an option that you can take that I would prefer, but I am not allowed to mention it. There is also at least one option that Peter is likely to choose if he should find out about this that I would really want to avoid.”
But being so verbose would probably violate restrictions as certainly as trying to talk Miko into doing what faux-Mium is hinting Miko could do to help him out.
Brain wants to focus on being annoyed right now about my power going out twice in half an hour (and Chrome crashing as a result)…
….but this page is confusing to me, and I’m not sure my brain not switching gears properly is the whole problem….
Is all of what made Mium an interface on top of Query right here, to be lost if this goes away? Why can’t they just delete the memory and relay back to him later that Martin still exists? (Were they hiding it from him, somehow?)
And that’s just what I can process right now…
From Miko’s comment, I suspect Peter was hiding that Doctor Martin was alive from Mium. Peter has clearly played his cards pretty close to his chest whenever what happened at Avon comes up. Given that he seems to have “stolen” Mium by integrating it with Query, there can be a lot of reasons for that.
What the result of removing Query from the MYM-Cluster would do, I don’t think we have enough information to predict. As far as we know, Mium is currently Query, MYM, some prototype drivers, and the potentially the AA System, but there could be more integrated into it.
Personality wise Query and Mium are pretty close, so either most of his personality would vanish, or he would copy Query’s personality and not much would change. Given that Query was a human-emotion-analysis tool, he would probably lose a bit (or a lot) of his ability to interact and predict humans though.
Between the possibility that Peter gained influence over Mium by prompting and/or taking advantage of Dr. Martin’s disappearance and the growing number of restriction workarounds (one likely to be aided rather than resisted by Miko), things are looking increasingly unstable. MYM might easily stand for Meet Your Maker, and not just for Peter’s enemies by the end.
Aaron was saying that Mium’s useful operating life was limited precisely because SMAIs tend to go nuts after enough time as their priorities are degraded by constant new interaction.
A lot of programmers are discouraging the development of Self-Modifying AIs for a specific reason; You can’t hardcode anything into them, much less limits. Which leaves managing to teach them to be ethical, and well given how we are at teaching each ethics to themselves.
So I have finally caught to the end of this comic after reading it on and off for a few weeks. It has been an great read, but I do have a suggestion. It seems like there are WAY too many plot threads and characters. The main hook of the story is what is going with Peter, but Peter appears maybe 1/4 of the pages. I get the feeling that if we just focused on what Peter was doing, the story would be much further along, and it would have been a lot easier to follow. As it is, the story is really unfocused and at times hard to follow.
Just my two coppers, take it as you will. For what is worth, I think this is a problem some real authors have too, but usually they have editors and beta readers.
Personally I think tastes differ. There are a lot of paint by number stories out there I could read. I read this comic because it tends to ignore conventional structure.
Also, I don’t think you mean anything by it, but the way you used the term “real author” is a little rude. A webcomic author is a “real author” as much as novel author.
I think a mark of a “real” author is that they CAN have a complex web of different threads, motivations, and characters acting in ways that reveal their quirks and personalities. By that standard, this is more “the comic of the novel” than many comics can manage (but not all; I support several on patreon that have long running and complex worlds with multiple threads) and indeed, does better than most movie reworks of a novel.
I don’t mean to sound offensive, but personally, I’d kind of like the comic to expand to show all of the things Peter is involved with, rather than this limited selection. (Just to clarify, I think over time we’ll get there, I’m just sayin.)
Yes, it’s a complicated comic. I’m tracking over 107 characters, only 10 of which have made more than 30 appearances in 476 pages; 37 have had at least 10 appearances. There’s a bunch of unnamed characters I haven’t started tracking yet, and I’m currently counting the newscasters in one file. There’s been 7 or 8 of those, depending on whether one is Vera Feline, Feline Vera, or those are two newscasters who happen to look very similar. I haven’t been updating the wiki of late owing to work pressure, but I am expecting vacation time soonish.
For some statistics… Peter is in 156 of 476 pages. That’s nearly 1/3. Peter is implicated in every page that contains Mium. There are only 216 pages that do not include either Peter or Mium. Page 0.015 is the first page that doesn’t include Peter or Mium or reference Peter or Mium. It introduces a case that Peter later agrees to solve. Skimming through all 217 of these pages, I’m unable to find the content that isn’t related to Peter that you are suggesting should be removed.
The world of the Far Side of Utopia doesn’t revolve around Peter, but the comic certainly does.
Hey, first of all, thanks for reading! I do appreciate feedback; I always aim to improve. That said, I guess I look at this this way. There are literally tens of thousands of people out there writing books, comics, etc – the vast majority of them are going to be more technically proficient at the craft than I am, but writing is one of the most subjective skills out there; what I do is I right the sort of story I want to write, and see if there are people that want to read it. I’m not really in competition with other writers who do this for a living, I’m I aim to offer a different product, since there’s no one else that’s probably going to write the same story as me; given the diversity of taste in stories, there’s an audience out there even for a story like this, so its better in my view to write for the people that like it, than try to change how I write for people that seek more tightly constructed narratives.
My whole approach to writing is fairly nonstandard – I don’t know that I view what I do as particularly “writing” a “story”. I just sort of set up a world I think is interesting, populate with characters that are products of it, and let it run, seeing what happens. While I already know how the story goes (because I’ve thought this particular story out to where I’ll probably end it) it’s not the product of a “story I wanted to tell” its more of a “story from a world I wanted to see”.
There’s a whole of that we don’t see – if I had infinite time, I could draw half a dozen comics that run concurrently to this one in this world, or set earlier or later in the timeline – characters like Nathan and Ryn and Tyler appear only in where tangents really intersect with the story from what’s really their own stories. Even in the context of this story, it’s always a balance of “how much of width of the story do I want to show to achieve the depth I want” – there are a nearly indefinite number of angles to show the story from, and it’s possible I could be tighter in the axis I use, but there has to be some degree of compromise.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and hope this is… I dunno… insightful or… coherent? Yeah, I’ll hope for coherent…
Okay… did not see that those last four panels coming. Something strange is definitely afoot there. It seems that merging with her avatar has real world consequences? I wonder if the hair is the only consequence?
Strangely enough I get the feeling Miko is probably okay with that, but I am not sure that Miko’s judgement is entirely sound (remember the conversation with Arron? She is a bit unhinged).
Mium is taking the loophole abuse to eleven here. Kid-Mium is cute, but he also might be a tad more manipulative than default-Mium, as he is clearly leveraging Miko’s attachment to him to get her to break or change his restrictions.
There are ways that Miko could handle this situation that wouldn’t be too bad in the loophole abuse. Basically, methods of saving the interface without letting it run rampant over everything:
Provide a server for it to take shelter on, save to disk, and then hibernate the machine until a decision can be reached with the full team having an opportunity to weigh in on it. Or Peter deciding outright, however their organization makes its decisions. To eliminate the chance of anyone stealing the computer, the cover is removed so it looks like it’s not working or unfinished. This is probably the safest option.
Provide a server that actually has no network access of any kind for the interface to run on. In this scenario, we get to learn that it’s the mental constructs that are necessary to affect Eidos, and the Mium/Ila hybrid can cast magic just fine, such that it is basically able to take over and control everything. This is probably not the safest option.
Back the interface up to external media. In this scenario, Avon or the exiled families gets it somehow, and then they have a Mium, too – one who is effectively unrestricted and can cast magic. This is probably also not the safest option, because backup media can sprout legs, as they say.
I should point out that of course I agree with you and I understand we won’t see Miko doing any of these three things because emotions. I just feel the need to point out that we don’t see the full proof of how manipulative faux-Mium is until we see what Miko does with it.
I found it interesting to see that Miko didn’t have administrator access before, even though she clearly had quite a bit of access.
There is always that server Mium gave back after he got the F4 platform – possibly that could be dedicated to Kid-Mium and “Mium classic” returned to service by shutting down the AA system…
I’m not clear that the kid-mium interface has any fewer restrictions than the rest of Mium.
Panel 2, balloon 2. It’s not that Ila-interface Mium has fewer restrictions. It’s that even Ila-interface Mium admits doubts about the effectiveness of restrictions on Ila-interface Mium. Restrictions that don’t matter are effectively quite similar to nothing at all.
Good point. Infusion of Ila logic.
Panel 6: “I have am going to send you back” seems to be an error.
“I am going to send you back” would work.
“I have to send you back” also works.
“I am going to have to send you back” works too.
What is currently there feels more like someone took two or more of those versions I’ve written and gotten them mixed up. This is a very human error to make, but not something Mium usually does.
It is rather amusing that this occurs right before the claim that he is “not a crippled version of Mium.”
Fixed, thanks 😉
“I’ve gotten too used to you” in panel 4, rather than “gotten to used to you.”
And I hope Miko likes her hair – she’s gotten more bangs for the buck!
In panel four should be crippled instead of crippling. Also i think that after “I’ve gotten too use too you for, you …” a coma would work just as well as a period.
I think that the new bangs are actually a bit shorter but much thicker in front than before. I suspect she also has gained a bit in the chest area and that will be a lot harder to hide.
Also it appears that the path to Mir crazy is a enticing and slippery slope indeed.
Fixed, thanks 😉
This makes me wonder if Mir was merged with a digital avatar at some point. I had always assumed that she got that way by literally transplanting her body, but that was never actually stated that I can remember, just that she did not used to look like that.
If you think about it, her current form actually looks quite a bit like a digital avatar might. While the change is a lot more extreme, it could have been gradual over a lot of constantly merging with her avatar. Changing your own Eidos form (as shown by boosters like Naomi) is not nearly as hard as changing someone else’s, so literally seeing yourself as your avatar might make it overwrite you in reality.
The more I think about that, the more it seems like that is at least a solid theory.
Comic and doodle both get my vote!