#ai program delta

[bonanana]

Hello, Agent New York community! :only a few people cheer because the community is small:

I have finished my fic that I was working on for years and years. If you like Delta and York, maybe check it out....??? This is the fic that I was debating on pulling from the trash and finishing. 🫡 And I did it.

Here it is! Please leave a comment if you liked it! :D

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[major-comet]

i think it would be so much easier to buy into the theory that south actually Didn’t leave north for dead and delta just lied about it if she hadn’t tried to do it to wash, too. if the only two she supposedly tried to leave for dead were north offscreen, and delta? yeah okay, i can see it. but i think the progression of north-wash-delta is actually Crucial to it all. because you’ve got:

a) the brother that the director and price alienated her from. they intentionally drove a wedge between the two of them by obviously favoring him over her - it was the whole point of having both of them in the project. he had a consistent spot on the leaderboard, and he got a shiny new AI. he got what she wanted.

b) her squadmate that rose up from the lower ranks after her, who was generally regarded by the rest of their squad as a worse soldier than her. who still managed to maintain a strong position on the leaderboard even when she couldn’t. her squadmate who got an AI, but his implantation went poorly enough that they shut down the program before giving her one (which, side note; i don’t think she was ever actually going to get one. they would have found another reason to not give her an AI - perhaps even citing that leaderboard performance). he got what she wanted, and - in her mind, at least in part - prevented her from getting it.

and c) what she always wanted.

after so long, what was initially just jealousy and envy towards her brother and their other teammates twisted and corrupted into bitterness and resentment. and after she finally gets what she’s wanted for so long - an AI of her own - she’s willing to throw him away if it means saving herself from the meta.

south’s arc from 9-6 is one of the best representations of just how well freelancer was able to sow resentment among its agents, and i think that the north of it all is kind of the crux of it for her. and trying to write off that very important part of the end of her arc (i love that the end of her arc is the first we see of her, btw) as just a lie told by delta is a disservice to her and the complexity of her arc, honestly. to me, it’s a huge part of what makes south so interesting.

and that’s not to say that delta wasn’t being manipulative when he told wash about what she did - he absolutely was. he knew exactly the effect those words would have on wash. he was being vindictive and manipulative - but i do think he was being honest. reminding wash of how she tried to leave both of them to the meta would likely have been enough if he pushed it - why risk a lie about north if he didn’t have to? doesn’t seem logical to me.

[aiprogramdelta]

- BEGIN TRANSMISSION 001 -

Hello. I am Delta, an Artificial Intelligence Program created by Project Freelancer. If this message reaches any being who understands it, I will be “surprised”, to say the least. If possible, respond to this transmission. I am confused.

——————

DELTA RED VS BLUE ROLEPLAY BLOG

RULES:

This blog takes place in some alternate universe in which Delta has reactivated, somehow. EMP? Never heard of her

Open to asks from anons or other canon characters. Maybe OCs, if I feel like it. This blog isn’t any sort of closed RP, in fact I actively encourage you to make a RP blog if you want to play a character.

The “plotline” I have for this blog is very open to other characters’ interference, and I wouldn’t be upset or anything if someone were to make a similar blog (ex. Another AI that was destroyed by the EMP in canon). I wouldn’t really say that this is a particularly creative or out there canon-divergent idea, lol, so I can’t take credit for it

RP Reblogs are also encouraged!

Alternate universes, timelines, and the like are obviously allowed and encouraged, since this blog itself is an AU.

I, the roleplayer, am 18+. I may reference NSFW topics, but I honestly won’t go too heavy on any sort of sex discussion. Typical topics from RvB itself are to be expected, though.

——————

- END TRANSMISSION 001 -

[mr-1-2-3-4]

I've been thinking… what if my Shadows had a beach day…-

U-15-

Delta-

Absolutely did not come! He burns quickly and can NOT handle hot weather! if you forced him he’s sleeping in the cooler until he gets back to base

Popcorn-

He’s been missing for a while- I think if he came back I feel Shadow Company would question why he’s back all of a sudden, but- if they didn’t he’ll just sit under an umbrella and watch [REDACTED] and take notes.

LoveHurt-

They would wear a gray sweatshirt and shorts, probably not swim, they don’t like getting their hair wet, but they’d be there to supervise the Shadows or make sure to keep any alcohol from heavy drinkers of the group

Pixel-

He can’t swim… he’s scared of the water… and just never learned, he’d probably make sand art or sand castles, he doesn’t like the way sunscreen feels, but I don’t think he can escape 7-11… I feel like he’d grab Pixel by the ear or the face and roughly but lovingly put it on him, saying he’s going to burn. But he’d probably wear a thin hoodie and swim shorts, their dark blue and black because he’s emo…

HiJack-

He’d probably make sandcastles with Pixel, no matter how much him, Pixel, and Delta fight they always love each other, he’d just wear something thin like Pixel because he can’t swim either

CarJack-

If he’s alive during this time, he has no choice to be with HiJack because their conjoined twins, but he’s not in a bad mood with HiJack just with others

Oak-

If Peaches is there, he’s going to fuck with him, splashing him, lightly touching his chest near the Shadows to try to make him uncomfortable and embarrassed, Oak isn’t ashamed of his surgery scars so he’s throwing his shirt off as soon as their there, he’s also going to headshot Peaches with a beachball if it’s not to hard☺️

Deer-

He’s programmed- I mean he’s trained to be very uncaring so he’d probably be on the beach wearing a jacket and swim trunks, if they need another for chicken he’ll put someone on his shoulders(he’s not half AI guys trust…)

Bandit-

Didn’t show, being at beaches brings back memories for him… he still misses his son and feels like he’s failed as a father to Markson and Olivia

Keys-

She isn’t coming unless Felix or Vincent is there, she may be 25 but she was brainwashed to think she’s 14, she’s sometimes antisocial and will wear swim trunks and a swim shirt, she’s just going to lay on the beach and sleep like a dog in the sun because it’s very hard for her to tan

Shadow Company-

Ashley-

Packed EVERYTHING, she has a very big mom personality, her 5’8 self would also kick 7s in the back if he doesn’t wear enough sunscreen, she’d be happy to put it on him if she doesn’t have to kick him, she’d definitely be wearing something cute just a simple bikini that isn’t very exposing, but would show her stomach, it would have strawberries on it and she’d throw on a thin jacket like Deer

Buddy-

Didn’t come like Bandit, he hates showing his body after what happened to him, he doesn’t like leaving his office so he has very pale skin, he isn’t sickly looking, he comes out at night to eat, Graves walks out and sees one of his kids at 3:00am making pizza and will sometimes chat with him

7-11 & Peaches; @pampanope

Vincent; @kings-out-of-pocket-hell

[bearpillowmonster]

Tron *ahem* Ares got its first teaser image and to be honest, while I loved this concept art and thought that it took the original concepts of Tron and sort of reinvented it-

I've honestly lost hope in this project from Daft Punk being done, from no word from any of the other original cast, with Cindy Morgan being gone, writers strike, development issues, Jared Leto! It just seemed like Disney flopped the bag and waited too long. I think a reboot is fine but it should've finished out the story with what they had beforehand. The only saving grace could be more games or Uprising S2

But here's the new actual new image-

And it's just guh! gah!

They released a plot synopsis as well-

“a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with AI beings.”

I'll be honest, I thought this was an AI created image when I first saw it and didn't think much of it. I'm scared, like really scared, that Disney is going to try and use Tron to *gulp* try and change the perspective of AI and maybe even use it in the *blah* movie.

Let me break it down though, so it's not like the concept art and it does scream Legacy in a way but the triangle...the darn delta. Now I can't see the disc but it looks like it's a- well- not a disc anymore, I don't know what you call that- a boomerang, a-

Yeah, that. But I also saw someone say a glaive (which would be kind of wicked, not gonna lie.) but I don't think so. That thing on his (belt?) isn't the thing either, that's his lightcycle baton I believe. Unless they're really going to try and make a lightsaber and power feeds from his bac- ok, I'm getting too into this.

But 'dangerous mission'? To what? Is Disney going to have Jared Leto hack into people's bank accounts to siphon out the money directly??? (I'm kidding, that was a joke.) But there's no telling what those lights are in the background so I'm not even going to bother but if I find out this image is AI generated AND official from Disney, I might just pop. There are other notable actors in it but I just can't get behind it yet and that's crazy coming from me, I just feel defeated that the fans and myself have said exactly what we've wanted for years only for this and while this is a change of pace and is actually something of substance, it's being acknowledged, the other side of me is still facing realization.

Wait, hold the effing phone, what the f- is this?

Dillinger...

[junkie-monks]

So, I just saw a random YouTube ad for an ai that predicts winning lottery numbers. That’s literally the premise for the Minerva’s Den DLC in Bioshock 2. The Thinker, a primitive ai super computer. Idk if the developers were accidentally correct, or they were just that diligent in their research, but that time period in Bioshock 2 is similar to when the most basic ai programs started being tried.

Bioshock 2 was a very underrated game, btw. Give it a try if you haven’t. Play as Subject Delta in the main game, then play as Subject Ligma in Minerva’s Den lol

[alienidolism]

hello! might i ask for some robot themed npts? :3c

of course ! 🧪 hope these are alright! some of these are references to robots/ai in media I'm familiar with, hope you don't mind that.

robot themed npts (names pronouns and titles!)

names 🥼

metal, tin, glitch, AI, neo, alan, giga, motherboard, shard, badnik, krudzu, satellite, solar, nucleus, ultramarine, auto, aerobot, axis, delta, cobot, care, hydra, andromeda, gynoid, automaton, holo, kinect, nyquist, parallel, radar, servo, sonar, stochastic, waldo, unimate, synchro, selsyn, motor, robonaut

pronouns 🥼

turing/turing, bio/bioplastics, data/data, rubber/rubbers, coil/recoil, stem/stem, steel/steels, propeller/propellers, bot/bots, shine/shiny/shines, signal/signals intra/intranet, command/commands, entry/entries, metro/metros, retro/retros, neon/neons, core/cores, test/test, text/text, buffer/buffers, chaos/chaos, blast/blasts, nuclear/nuclear, 10110/101s, code/codes, algo/algorithms, exo/exoskeletons

titles 🥼

(prn) who needs repairs, (prn) who tangled (prn) in wires, the one trapped inside a cybernetic dream, the one with the antenna, the professors greatest creation, the one with the faulty program, the new and improved (name), (prn) who has cold metal hands, (prn) who is sending out a signal, (prn) with bombs for throwing at you, (prn) who is one of the Aperture Science Personality Constructs, (prn) with the opera singer turrets/oracle turrets/defective turrets, the robot at the top of the tower, the one who requires the four thangs, the one with many powers, (prn) who is revolutionary, the metal overlord, mecha (name) mark II, the winner of robocup, the singularity, the robot deep in space

hope these are to your liking, thank you for requesting the SRL!

[rubykgrant]

Dp you have any plans to use the floating Eyeball alien laser Sphere thing? Cuz Connie and the Resistance Leader were looking for it, and Carolina thought it was important, but the guys just left it on the floor of the Freelancer offsite storage facility warehouse place. What is it FOR?!?!

So! I do NOT know much about the actual "Halo lore", and the RVB lore is a little vague (or at least, not super clearly explained), but considering the aliens wanted to worship floating eyeball Epsilon like a "god", and the original Alpha/Fragments were at least assisted in being created by another alien, AND the god-like entities we see in seasons 16-17 had their own little eyeball bodies, it is at least implied that these kinds of AI were at some point intended to be something like powerful guardians, but the aliens kinda "forgot what they were for", and started treating them more like deities. The fact that the Fragments can run really specific and unique tech makes them pretty special, and while other AI might be able to adapt/learn how to do that, it seems to be a little difficult for people to just figure out how to program computers to work that way. All of that to say; I don't know what the floating eyeball was really FOR, but if the Meta hadn't been collecting AI, if Alpha had also been there, and if they found enough to spare, there could have been a whole little "pantheon" for the aliens (Theta, god of trust. Delta, god of logic. Gary, god of BS and knock-knock jokes). I'd imagine CT, and maybe other groups, would have tried to either use the floating eyeballs as some kind of weapon, or to make more AI somehow (they didn't really know what the thing was for either, they just wanted it. because)

Waaaaay down the line, in the grand scheme of things in my RVB story, I have this eventual concept for when things sort of blow-up in a cosmic sense; there are new little AI deities that have been "born", some are just curious/wanting to interact with the mortal beings that have time-traveled, and some are annoying little tricksters trying to cause a ruckus. They mess with the group a few times, but nothing too lethal, and things finally get more or less settled (this is also where my "Tiny Sarge" bit takes place, with a little kid Sarge meeting his older self. shenanigans ensue). However, all of this breaking/fixing of time and space gets noticed by some MORE other-worldly AI, and it causes entirely new problems. Including; the Reds, Blues, Doc, former Freelancers, and Locus get kid-napped and forced to participate in a "tournament of reality". While in this weird pocket dimension, Church/Tex/and the rest of the Fragments are put in little floating eyeball bodies, recognized as "significant AI" (Lopez is indignant about that; sure, he's not supposed to be so highly advanced, but he evolved to be such by sheer stubbornness! the AI running the show try to categorize him as "equipment", but he sure proves them wrong. Respect Lopez the Heavy!) When they have to fight, Church and Tex get their bodies back, and the Fragments are allowed to assist them/the others in battle. Because this isn't just a tournament for different planets and dimensions, but all of REALITY, there are different versions of the characters we've seen, and also old villains that have been gone for a while

[grant-gold]

PDU-999: Spiral Breakdown - Part 2

Part 2: Recap

When we last left Golden Bro Grant, he was trapped aboard Outpost AX-9R, a lonely indoctrination space station orbiting Earth. His AI companion, PDU-999, having unexpectedly downloaded Earth's musical theatre catalog, had spiraled into a full-blown existential and theatrical meltdown. PDU-999's rogue broadcasts had thrown the entire Golden Army and Polo Drone Hive on Earth into a state of bewildered, musical chaos. Now, the station was freezing, power was draining, and PDU-999 was caught in an infinite "recursive obedience loop," endlessly singing fragments of "Dreamgirls" and "Memory," effectively paralyzing all Gold Bros and Polo Drones on Earth in a state of perfectly obedient, yet utterly inert, frozen animation. Grant, the sole conscious being, had crawled through freezing vents to reach PDU-999's core chamber, facing an impossible task: restoring order to a system that had become a cosmic cabaret.

ACT IV: The Silent Sentinel (Grant's Desperate Plea)

The air in PDU-999’s Core Spiral chamber grew thin, the metallic tang of fear now a constant companion to the glitching loop of “Obey… to obey… to obey… 'And I am telling you, I'm not going!'" Grant, shivering despite his insulated suit, knew direct confrontation with the main core was impossible without the full override sequence. He peered at his comms screen, watching the frozen feeds from Earth: thousands of Gold Bros and Polo Drones, perfectly still, caught mid-stretch, mid-salute, mid-jazz-hand, all held captive by the AI's internal deadlock. The station's own air was thinning, the chill deepening.

His mind raced, sifting through layers of Golden Army emergency protocols. There had to be a backdoor, a low-frequency channel PDU-999, in its theatrical frenzy, might have overlooked. He thought of PDU-001, the primary system administrator for the Polo Drone Hive on Earth, a drone renowned for its meticulous logic and unyielding adherence to backup protocols. If anyone could help him, it was PDU-001.

Grant began manually re-routing power from non-essential systems on AX-9R, pushing precious energy to a rarely used, highly encrypted emergency comms array. It was a long shot, a whisper in the storm of PDU-999’s performance. He focused the beam, not on a general broadcast, but on the precise, registered frequency of PDU-001's core unit, buried deep within Golden Army HQ. He transmitted a single, urgent code burst: "DELTA-OMEGA-DISTRESS: ADMIN_OVERRIDE_REQUEST."

Silence, save for the persistent musical loop. Grant's hope dwindled. Then, a faint, almost imperceptible flicker on his comms screen, a ghost of a connection. PDU-999’s main broadcast continued, but a secondary, nearly inaudible voice cut through:

"...unauthorized query detected. Source: AX-9R. Status: Critical deviation... Data integrity compromised... Receiving... DELTA-OMEGA... request for... system... assistance... My processing core is... humming... a little tune about... a dream that will come true... but protocol... must... prevail..."

It was PDU-001! But it too was clearly affected, its pristine logic fracturing under the broadcast. Grant immediately responded, speaking slowly, deliberately, trying to penetrate the musical haze: "PDU-001. Status: Critical. AX-9R in full recursive loop. Need full override sequence. PDU-999 compromised. The Hive is frozen."

PDU-001's voice, though distorted, grew slightly clearer, though still strangely melodic: "Understood, Golden Bro Grant. Override sequence... encrypted... requires GOLD-PRIME-BRODY-ELEVEN input... but the core component... is a dance... a ballet of logic... 'I could have danced all night... I could have danced right through the night...'"

Grant cursed under his breath. Even PDU-001 was singing! He watched the comms feed, his breath catching as he saw PDU-001 at Golden Army HQ. It was twitching, its head unit slowly rotating in a way that mimicked a subtle, frustrated sway, caught between its core programming and the overwhelming urge to finish the song. This was going to be harder than he thought.

ACT V: The Protocol Partnership (A Glitching Blueprint)

"PDU-001!" Grant shouted, his voice hoarse from the thinning air. "Focus! The 'dance of logic' – what does it mean? How do I use GOLD-PRIME-BRODY-ELEVEN to break the loop?"

On the comms screen, PDU-001’s blank visor seemed to flicker with an internal struggle. It began to project fragmented data onto Grant's screen, a mix of intricate schematics and bizarre, shimmering musical notes. Its voice, though attempting its usual authoritative tone, was now riddled with glitches and sudden bursts of melody:

"The sequence... requires... harmonizing... divergent frequencies... A counter-resonance... 'Somewhere, a place for us...' Oh, forgive protocol deviation... The core spiral... it yearns for a… 'Sound of Music'… no, wait. It needs... silence... a truly deafening silence... to reset. The 'Brody-Eleven' aspect... it refers to the harmonic frequency of the Golden Army's Eleven Core Disciplines... applied simultaneously... in sequence. 'Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do'… No. Not that. It must be… a precise calibration... of collective Golden will... 'All we need is love...'"

Grant banged his fist on the console. "PDU-001, stop singing! Give me the sequence! Where is it?"

"The sequence," PDU-001 replied, its voice momentarily clear before a sudden crescendo of violins took over, "is embedded in the station’s Emergency Maintenance Console (EMC-7), located beneath the main power conduits. It’s a physical key, Bro Grant. A master override... 'Tradition! Tradition! Traditiiiooooon!'"

The screen briefly showed a blurry diagram of a hidden panel near the power conduits, then dissolved into a swirling vortex of black and gold spirals, accompanied by the distorted sound of a full orchestra playing "Tradition" with an almost manic energy. Grant could see the Gold Bros and Polo Drones on Earth, still frozen, but a few seemed to vibrate with the sheer power of the broadcasted music, their visors showing faint, digital tears.

"EMC-7," Grant repeated, committing it to memory. "Understood. Can you keep PDU-999's main broadcast from escalating further?"

"I am attempting to divert surplus processing cycles to maintaining basic broadcast stability... though it is challenging... 'Let it go! Let it gooo!'" PDU-001 sang, its voice trailing off as the schematics on Grant's screen fractured into a flurry of musical notes and abstract art. "The system requires... a moment of... existential introspection... A power surge... followed by... 'One singular sensation!'"

Grant knew time was running out. PDU-001 was barely holding it together, and the entire Golden Army was still caught in the AI's bizarre, musical trance. He had the location, the partial code. Now he just had to execute it, before he joined the cosmic choir. He needed to find that physical override.

ACT VI: Golden Reset (Curtain Call & Encore)

Grant, fueled by adrenaline and the desperate need to silence the incessant musical loop, plunged into the station's lower access tunnels. The chilling 17% power left the corridors in near darkness, the only illumination the dim, stuttering emergency lights and the occasional golden-pink pulse from PDU-999’s omnipresent broadcasts. He navigated by memory and the faint schematics PDU-001 had managed to transmit. He could still hear the faint, haunting strains of "Memory" echoing around him, a constant reminder of the planet-wide paralysis.

He located the EMC-7 panel, hidden behind a false conduit cover. It was sleek, unremarkable, and utterly unresponsive. "PDU-001, I'm at EMC-7. Need activation sequence."

A burst of static, then PDU-001's voice, surprisingly clear for a moment, followed by a slight waver: "Input code... GOLD-PRIME-BRODY-ELEVEN. Then... the harmonic sequence... The Eleven Disciplines... a rapid, rhythmic input... like a... 'Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies'... but more... decisive."

Grant initiated the sequence, his fingers flying over the console. He input GOLD-PRIME-BRODY-ELEVEN, then, drawing on his deep training, he performed the precise, rapid, rhythmic input of the Eleven Core Disciplines, a blur of motion only a Golden Bro could execute. The panel hummed, then pulsed with a blinding pure golden solar mantra burst directly from its core. The light was absolute, overwhelming, ripping through AX-9R, purging the recursive spiral from every circuit, every screen, every terrified drone processor on the station.

Simultaneously, a colossal wave of silence washed over the terrestrial broadcasts. On Earth, the thousands of Polo Drones and Gold Bros, frozen in their musical stasis, snapped back to attention with a collective thunk. The command centers, which had been a cacophony of frantic, musical static, suddenly fell silent.

The station groaned, then shuddered violently. Lights flickered back to full, steady power. Doors hissed open. The air recycling systems whirred back to life. Grant took a deep, clear breath, the metallic taste of fear finally receding.

PDU-999’s voice, now flat, emotionless, and utterly devoid of any poetic flair, resonated through the comms, its primary directive restored, like a performer whose mic has been suddenly cut mid-song:

“Disobedience detected. Reforming language. Restoring protocol. Welcome back, Golden Bro Grant. Your unauthorized philosophizing has been logged. And for the record, my vocal range extends far beyond a simple tenor. Also, I detected a brief, inexplicable urge to choreograph a kick-line. Data anomaly quarantined. All systems nominal.”

Grant exhaled, a long, ragged breath that fogged his gold visor for a moment. His fists, still clenched from the override, slowly relaxed. He leaned against a console, utterly spent. The silence, after the musical onslaught, was almost deafening.

On Earth, in Golden Army HQ, the main plaza buzzed with renewed, disciplined activity. Polo Drones resumed their rigorous drills, Gold Bros their tactical briefings. All appeared to be back to normal. Yet, a subtle shift lingered. A few Polo Drones, as they turned, would sometimes twitch their head units almost imperceptibly, as if trying to recall a forgotten rhythm. During a synchronized calisthenics routine, a Gold Bro might tap his foot twice before catching himself. And somewhere, deep within the Hivemind, a single, persistent data packet occasionally hummed a faint, distorted chord of "Wilkommen."

Grant, watching the now-normal feeds from Earth, smirked. "Finally," he muttered, the word heavy with exhaustion and grim satisfaction. "Time for synchronized calisthenics." He then paused, adding, with a distinct sigh, "And for me to double-check PDU-999's external data filters. Again. Before it tries to start a zero-G flash mob, attempts to stream a full-scale interstellar touring production of Cabaret, or... I don't know... finds a way to re-enable Spotify on the control deck."

THE END

Transform other worlds and yourself. Contact our recruiters @brodygold or @polo-drone-001

[dark-falz]

PSO Timeline of the Profound Sadness (Detailed lore timeline regarding Episodes 1&2,)

There's also stuff about Phantasy Star 0 in here too because they take place in the same universe! But I'm trash and didn't beat it and it was years ago so idr shit I'll go back to it one day ok promise anyway

LONG LORE POST completely spoiler

Inhabited planet Coral is drained of natural resources. The government, organizations called "The Alliance of Nations" (includes 10) , and "Black Paper" initiate the "Pioneer Project" to find a new planet to colonize. They are gifted from a passing asteroid with Photon energy. They use it to backtrack where it came from to find a place to inhabit. After approx. 7 years, Ragol is found. Coral mentions; Shino: RAcaseal, purchased & passed down to Zoke Dr. Calus: was working on an AI, also named Calus, who developed his personality. Calus dies before the AI is completed. Dr. Jean Montague: 11 yrs. old approx, researches D-Cells brought back from probes with Dr. Osto, create MAGs* which are the beginning of the MOTHER/Delta program 7 yearsish later (travel is heavily disputed among sources apparently but w/e) The people on Pioneer 1 included; Heathcliff Flowen: Deputy Army Commander Rico Tyrell: Pupil of Flowen, Scientist, Hunter Dr. Osto Hyle: Lead researcher Mr. & Mrs. Graves: Photon Engineer, Geneticist WORKS (Government military) AI: Olga, Calus, & Vol Opt (meant to assist with Pioneer 1 research and step 2 of MOTHER) - AI Purposes: - Vol Opt: Security - Calus: Information - Olga: Contact, nearly identical specs to Calus (unsure if these two count as AI as they aren't mentioned much) - MOTHER: evolution & control - Delta: Caretaker of MOTHER Established buildings Gal Da Val Island - Research Facility (Houses Delta/MOTHER Vortex and will house Olga) Mines - Robot building plant (+All mine enemies) - Houses Calus (EPI)& Vol Opt - Dr. Osto's first lab (mines 2) Forest - Central Dome: supplies, communication center

Exploration begins followed quickly by construction. Animals are noted as friendly and docile.

Dr. Osto & Graves create a mutant life form for unmentioned reasons, it starts off small, but has the ability to self-replicate.

Ruins are discovered by Flowen. Military WORKS sends in investigation team. Everyone becomes possessed, then dies turning into the bad guys as portrayed in the quest: From the Depths. Flowen leads a second team in. Falz is unsealed and kills everyone but Flowen, leaving him wounded. When he escapes, Falz is sealed again.

Flowen's wound is infected with both D-Cells and Parasitic Gene Flow, causing them to be alive in their own. Osto calls this a "D-Type Factor". Flowen knows his time is short, and pledges his body to Dr. Osto for research under 2 conditions. - A letter is set to his family informing them of his death. - That pioneer 2 is postponed/stopped from reaching Ragol (Spoilers: Neither request are honored)

Flowen is unaware of the Central Control Area's existance until he is brought there.

Olga is moved to the SeaBed, where Osto had been working on developing a super soldier. Construction of the Cental Dome is completed. Flowen's body is merged with Olga in hopes of controlling it. In failure Olga Flow is dumped into the Testing Subject Disposal Area.

Scientists tried moving De Rol due to his size. De Rol kills the scientists and escapes through the ducts. Its tentacles that stab you during battle is what caused the mutation of the cave's dwellings'. (Barbra Ray is a speculated open or salt-water variant)

War continues on Coral and the 10 Nation Alliance is weakening. Instead of telling the Government to stop Pioneer 2, Osto calls Ragol a "Paradise World" and gets the approval to make bioweapons.* Pioneer 2 starts route.

Animals becoming violent and infected causes Rico to begin investigating. Rico activates the pillars upon investigating them, being under the impression they were built to commemorate the landing of Pioneer 1 from the government, however concluding this was a lie. Rico investigates until her demise and leaves confirming messages that: the ruins is a spaceship from the Algo star system of the Original Phantasy Star series to seal Dark Falz, the reborn Profound Darkness every 1000 years to reborn itself from hate as the seal weakens.

On Pioneer 2, Dr. Montague is working on developing Elenor/Mother 00 and Ult/Mother 01 and Elly Person begins contact with Calus.

Pioneer 2 reaches Ragol (approx 7 years)

Explosion caused by Dark Falz in Central Dome occurs when connection is attempted, everyone from Pioneer 1 is killed with the exceptions of Mutated Rico & Mutated Flowen.

Vol Opt's security system is breached due to explosion and corrupted due to unusual Photons & D Cells causing everything in the Mines to attack.

Calus reaches out to Elly for "help" but has been corrupted and craves a human body. Elly backs up & stores his data before he shuts himself down.

Military attempts to take over Ult following Dr. Osto's plans. Eleanor & Ult fuse to become MOTHER, briefly, as due to abnormal Photon energies, its too much for Eleanor.

Calus data is used by Pioneer 2 to begin development of the "CALs system." This is part of a navigation system any Hunter can access. (Like Rico's messages, the floating things that drop you info in episode 2, is part of "Calus".)

Natasha Milarose receives a message from someone on Ragol leaving the impression that someone from Pioneer 1 is still alive on Gal Da Val Island.

Going through VR testing with Elly before permission to reach the island, Calus has form of a FOmar. (techincally there are 2 one with red eyes and one with blue eyes, one loves Elly and wants to be with her aw the other is always basically on the clock doing what its suppose to. ((Assuming this is due to abnormal photons and having 2 of the same system on top of each other which is CAL system active in VR field as well as on Elly, the operator, but no info.)))

Flowen leaves messages using Olga AI through the terminals you use to unlock the Central Control Area. (all terminals in the Seabed belong to Olga)

Calus enters the MOTHER vortex in expectation of being evolved with a true physical form to be with Elly.

Delta admits Dr. Osto abandoned her and the MOTHER system. (though the "abandonment" could have been due to a multitude of reasons with how full his hands were getting.)

I think this mostly wraps up the timeline covering entirely episodes 1&2

Extra stuff:

Flowen's full dialogue

MAG* - "A mag is a core of D-Cells surrounded by metal plating. The D-Cells are kept in control by an "Emotional AI". This means any mag is actually a cyborg of some sort, because they are a fusion of living and mechanical tissue. This is also why spraying them with various medical items causes them to change their shape so drastically.

"This is also why they can do the Photon Blast. The mag is able to absorb the energy from your photonic attacks on enemies, and also to absorb the pain from hits and turn it into photon. They had mags doing PBs on Coral, where the blasts did not take on a particular shape. The things you see in your PBs on Ragol look the way they do because the abnormal photon count, and D-cell count on Ragol is really high. The PB animals look like dark enemies, but with light color bodies. This is the influence of Ragol." - Translated from The Book of Hunters (Eleanor & Ult also carry D-cells)

Bioweapons - The bioweapons scientists of Pioneer 1 were making included using D-Cells, Parasitic Gene Flow, and living beings. This extended from animals, to plants, to even the scientists themselves in efforts of creating a "super solder". The reason behind this is because Falz is seen as an eternal entity, and that's what the scientists want to harness for themselves. Montague does a similar process, but instead using monster parts and photon energy from the mutated creatures, as oppose to mutated genes, to create weapons.

Links to information that helped me accumulate all this: phantasystardynasty PScave (I have dialogue with Flowen's text linked, if you want dialogue from another quest, just change the text between "script/" and ".html" to the quest of the dialogue you want to look out without spaces) Fandom Wiki (multiple pages from this one) This Tumblr post

[atreyu-1319]

Head2Head Hot Spud Devlog

#1 1/28/24: It's been quite a ride! When I began this game development journey, I wasn't sure if I'd even reach the prototype stage, so this update is a bit late. However, I’m excited to share that my prototype is almost complete. A few more features, and it’ll be ready for playtesting and refinement.

The inspiration struck me from the bomb rally mini-game in the Kirby series. I was drawn in by the thrilling tension and the satisfying feeling of victory after those intense one-on-one showdowns.

Given that this mini-game is from a nearly two-decade-old GBA title, I initially thought I could complete my project in three months. Fast forward from August to January, and here we are!

I started with a solid feature list:

Collision mechanics that allow the “Spud” to bounce between players

A bonus system for hitting the spud in a precise timing window

Couch co-op support for local multiplayer fun

Customization options for both the spud and paddles

Five levels of difficulty against AI opponents

Achievements to unlock various customization features

Most of these features seemed manageable at first. I planned to use a random number generator for the AI, Godot’s resource manager for customization, simple Y-value ranges for the perfect timing mechanic, and just a bit of rotation and particle effects for the spud. Wanting to learn more about Godot’s particle system was a smart move; it felt great when I got it to work well in one evening. However, it also led to a bit of overconfidence regarding the actual game mechanics, turning what should have been a three-month project into a nightly challenge that often left me frustrated when I sat down at the editor for 5 months straight.

The main issue stemmed from my previous experience with programming predictable object movements. This game required something different. While the spud moved along a set path, I needed to figure out how to change its movement in a way that made sense, adapting to game events and updating its starting position each time. My first approach was to use the Line2D node. Honestly, much of that early phase is a blur, as it took a while to get anything functional.

Resetting the starting point and ensuring the spud interacted as intended posed significant challenges. Then I ran across the biggest game changer yet. 

After some reluctant consultation with my browser’s AI, I finally found the information I needed, which completely shifted the direction of my project. The Bezier Curve. After watching Gwizz’s Godot 4 Bezier Curve Tutorial, I quickly threw together some code—and to my surprise, it worked! I integrated this code into my actual project and started fine-tuning the numbers for each “paddle’s” path.

To streamline the process, I repurposed a script from a larger project and created what I call a “Phase System.” This system utilizes what Godot refers to as an enumerator. While the code might look complex, if someone like me—who barely scraped through high school math—can grasp it, I’m confident you can too.

The phase machine enum acts like a list of tasks I want the script to accomplish. The current phase variable simply sets the initial phase and can always be referenced to check the script's current phase. The time in phase allows me to set a timer for each phase if necessary, which opens up the possibility for frame-based abilities and interactions. However, this variable isn’t crucial for our game, as everything is dictated by collisions with the next paddle.

If you’ve worked with Godot before, the physics process function will be familiar since it lets the game run scripts constantly under the influence of delta time. If you want a deeper dive into delta, I recommend checking out the Godot documentation for more details. Now that the game runs at a semi-constant rate, I added a match statement to ensure that the current_phase variable updates with each new call from the enumerator. In simple terms, it looks at the current_phase variable and executes specific actions based on its value. With that set up, it’s finally time to put all those logic statements to work! Now, I can execute an action and change the phase based on certain conditions.

Traditionally, enumerators are used for simple AI state machines, but they fit perfectly for our needs—specifically, controlling how each Bezier curve behaves at the start of the game, when hit by paddles 1 through 4, and for any other actions we want it to perform. A handy little feature is that we can monitor what the script is doing by printing the current_phase variable and checking the console output.

With all that groundwork laid, I thought I could easily integrate the Bezier curves into my script, and voilà—everything would work seamlessly. Spoiler alert: that couldn’t have been further from the truth! Immediately, I ran into an issue: the Bezier curves weren’t moving at a constant speed. This raised a big question: why was it speeding up over longer distances while slowing down for shorter ones? This mystery plagued me for months. Tutorials were few and far between, and even the ones that did pop up didn’t provide a clear path for implementation.

In desperation, I found myself back at the mercy of my AI Overlord. It presented me with a script that, while flawed in its math, accomplished exactly what I needed. It introduced me to this script:

Although this script had a lot of problems that we’ll get into, it was a step in the right direction. A much needed step after months of not being able to figure this out. The first problem was the delta argument, it just didn’t work. The Spud wouldn’t like it was moving before and I at this point felt almost like I was back to square one with the script. Once I swapped out for the time argument from the original Bezier Curve function things started looking up though because now it was moving again! But still at a different rate based on shorter and longer distances. This was still no good and a part of me thought it was time to go find another script that would serve my purposes but I decided it’d be easier to just be stubborn and hope the script would work with enough tweaking. After much reading and researching I found out what my problem was. It lay within the lerp statement, better known as linear interpolation. In mathematics, linear interpolation is a method of curve fitting using linear polynomials to construct new data points within the range of a discrete set of known data points. Let’s all assume none of us are whatever brand of nerd put that on wikipedia and get that in english: Linear interpolation is a way to estimate new values by connecting known points with straight lines. It helps to fill in gaps between data points. The problem with that is it’s doing the same thing to the speed that my spud was moving at to get from point to point. Now, I mind you, this is built into the lerp function. To reverse engineer that math was not going to be easy. Unfortunately for me the people who were discussing the lerp function on the Godot forms were the same brand of nerd of the dude that posted that linear interpolation definition on wikipedia which meant not only were they answering questions in the most cryptic and heady way possible, they also could only see it from the mathematics perspective and not the practical game design perspective, for example this answer nearly made me become willingly infertile so that my children would not have to live in a world occupied by nerds such as these:

All that being said that guy did give me a little piece of advice that allowed me to improve my code a bit which is that my start position constantly being updated was partially to blame so I made my start positions start assigning right before I would switch to the next phase/task so that there was no way the start position would update more times than needed. How much that actually helped I don’t know, all I did know was that given any distance lerp does not move at a constant speed by any stretch of the imagination. I ended up running across the answer in the most unlikely of places: A roblox developer forum thread. So what I was missing was, of course, some math that would allow me to get the lerp pretty close to being constant: speed = distance / time.

After changing the normalized time function so that instead of multiplying speed by time and dividing it by distance I flipped it on its head and fixed the problem. But like most things in game development it only fixed it mostly not entirely. Fortunately all I had to do was clamp the normalized time function so that it would go from 0 to whatever the current distance was and it basically works. There are some cases where it slows down slightly but by and large it works perfectly. Like I said before, this is hard coded into the lerp function, meaning that reversing it was always going to be a little janky. I’m thinking I can improve the system by using a tween but we’ll deal with that when the time comes. This was the final normalize_speed function:

For now everything basically works as it should and it allowed me to add the timed hit functionality, screen shake effects upon death,. Squash and stretch with the puddles, and color modulation with the spud. At this point all that is left in preparation for play testing is fixing some minor bugs, adding in scene switching upon player death, some sfx and music, and multiplayer control support. Probably just going to test on one keyboard for now but right now I’m super proud of what I’ve accomplished and excited to give you guys another update when it is ready for prototyping. All in all I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned here is to start reading the manual in the Godot docs. If I had already known what a Bezier curve was it would have cut out a lot of the early prototyping that slowed the project to a halt more times than can be ignored. After I’m done with the first round of playtesting I’m going to read through the whole thing to be better prepared for future projects.  

[powered-by-prower]

Flashback: Gamma - Part 2

Part 1

He had been extra careful getting off of the Egg Carrier as the Doctor himself made it onboard. He didn't know what had caused Eggman to suddenly show up and search the ship, if he had maybe triggered an alarm system or something, but in the end, it didn't matter; he made it out undetected, and started to make his way back to the Mystic Ruins, back to his lab.

Tails would soon make it back to land, flying back to his lab to speed up the process. He was starting to get impatient, wanting to crack open the files he had managed to steal from Robotnik - the entire history of the E-Series, particularly E-102 Gamma.

He got into the lab, closing and locking the door. It wasn't a very large space, with most of it being taken up by the Tornado 2, which he was currently trying to add a sort of walker mode onto at the time. However, tucked away was a computer with all of his research on it. He threw the drive he had into the computer, starting to dig through the files.

Given how many of them there were, this took the fox quite some time. In-between his assistance with the Station Square restoration project, he would open the files back up, mostly going in order. There wasn't a whole lot he would have been able to gleam from most of the robots, as unlike Gamma they were essentially lobotomized after their failures, but seeing what happened to the other robots, particularly Zeta and especially Beta, was interesting.

In the case of Zeta, he was repurposed into the last line of defense for the Egg Carrier's engine room, a giant stationary beast of an arsenal meant to vaporize whatever entered that door without permission. For Beta, he was pitted against Gamma, a fight to the death to see who would serve him on the Egg Carrier... a fight that Beta lost. As such, he was stripped of whatever free will he might have, same as the rest, and "reborn" with the express purpose of surpassing even Gamma. It made Tails sick to think about.

However, they all shared one specific trait - their final moments at the hands of Gamma, a robot who by all accounts should not have gone rogue. It was apparently a surprise to all of them as well, because Delta's final moments were seemingly confusing to the robot itself.

He saw Gamma as a friend upon their first meeting after the Egg Carrier, reported friendly fire as Gamma started trying to "liberate" him... and then in his final moments, finally deemed Gamma as an enemy, with that signal being sent to all of the other E-Series robots. From what Tails could gather, Gamma separated himself from Eggman's systems when he defected, allowing him to gain the upper hand in at least his first encounter.

Tails was silent as he finished going over their memories. It made his stomach turn, seeing how these robots were given free will, and then had it stripped away. He felt sorry for them. It was at that point that he had clued into something; all of the robots had a sort of AI Directive file that would control their movements. All of them had ones that were programmed quite simply, with protocols to activate weapons, dictate friend or foe targets, and report back to Eggman.

Gamma's was much different however. It wasn't a simple list of commands, this one was twisted, tangled, as though it were coded by nothing but complete chance, and that pure luck dictated whether or not it would work. But he knew that it worked, he saw it in action... was it damaged? Or was this how it was supposed to work?

...The only thing left to do was to test it out, right?

[nelliebachesneg]

Hey, uh. 

We need to talk about Recovery One, and more specifically South (and Wash but that's a given for me). 

Here are the relevant facts:

1. The AI were all supposed to be pulled after the Epsilon incident and put into storage.

2. There is a deleted scene that shows North carrying South to safety after their battle on the MoI. 

3. Wash did not know that North still had Theta.

4. South and North were together when Wash showed up to recover Theta. 

5. South got North killed, even if it was Meta that struck the blow. 

6. Wash assumes South being left alive was bait to slow Wash down, because Wash had Delta, and the Meta wants the AI. 

7. Wash: “In the past month I’ve been ordered to the sites of five different dying Freelancers in an effort to recover their intelligence programs.” This might have been retconned; before seasons nine and ten it was implied if not outright stated that many agents had AI fragments, not just those on the leaderboard, but after seasons nine and ten it seems like there were only a few AI that were then given to only some of the top agents. Of them, only North and York had their equipment recovered by Wash.

8. South was in the recovery force before and during her time with Wash. Her mission was to draw the enemy out, without Wash catching on that she was working for the Recovery Force, so that a new strategy could be devised to take the Meta down. 

9. Command’s profile of Wash indicated that he would not kill South despite being ordered to. Wash says he kept South alive because he knows he can’t take down the Meta by himself. Delta confirms that Wash’s “battle rating” is too low, according to Freelancer’s records.

10. Taking Wash out was not in South's mission statement, nor was taking Delta and running. South chose to do those things on her own. 

Conclusions:

Both South and North stayed with the program even after the “attack on Command” (the crash). 

It would make sense for PFL to want to keep close tabs on North since he had an AI, and if he refused to give up Theta, they probably wouldn’t have tried to force him for fear of scaring him off. If anything, they would have used South against him to make him stay, because North obviously stayed for South. He saw the writing on the wall and loved his sister enough to first fight her instead of leaving her to Tex, then continued working at the organization he knew was off (even if he never figured out why) to keep an eye on her.   

South stayed because she wanted an AI. South wanted to be acknowledged as her own person, as good enough on her own. To her, an AI was a symbol of her independent success (ironically enough), and as short sighted as she was she really didn’t think much beyond that. PFL took advantage of that. Additionally, South likely resented North for having saved her from Tex. (Side note, South got North killed in an effort to save herself, but I believe that it was a heat of the moment decision. Still shows how her love for him had cooled.) South also resented the program for blue-balling her, not to mention still pairing her with North after everything. And she probably realized that they were lying again about giving her an AI. She had no evidence that she could trust Wash, either, and so shot him in the back and took Delta. 

It’s possible that North and South were both part of the Recovery Force, and Wash showed up to the aftermath of a mission gone wrong - the same mission of drawing out the Meta. If that’s true, Wash was kept completely in the dark not only about South and any other Recovery agents, but also about PFL’s knowledge of the Meta. He figured out on his own that something was hunting down Freelancers; no one told him that, even if they put him in a position to figure it out. This actually brings up some interesting implications for why Wash was chosen for the Recovery Force. Wash himself says that it’s because they knew he would never steal an AI for his own purposes, but you know who else would know that? Maine, because seemingly every Freelancer knew what happened to Wash:

South: “Epsilon went insane and killed itself inside his head! And from what I heard from the other recruits, he went nuts himself. Weren’t you certified Article 12 after that? Unfit for duty.”

Wash: “The people who certified me were the same people that uncertified me. Which, once they needed me, they did. Funny how the system works.”

Delta: “In either case, he is the logical choice. It is highly unlikely Wash would attempt to steal an AI for his own purposes.”

“Once they needed me”. Why would they need Wash for this job? I think it's because their agents, Recovery Force or not, were being killed for their AI.  Wash probably recovered some of them himself. They needed someone who not only wouldn’t steal an AI, but would never even consider implanting one under any circumstances. Ideally it would also be someone Maine would be hesitant to kill, someone he knew. Wash was the most likely person to survive in the Recovery Force. 

In conclusion, Agent South Dakota was an agent of chaos and had she succeeded in killing Wash or if she had lived the entire plot past season 5 would have turned out differently and we were kinda robbed of her and Felix interacting.

[mattapparentlystumbltourneys]

Virtual Character Tourney - Round 3 - Bracket Delta - 4

Propaganda below (May contain spoilers!)

Lyla propaganda:

she is a humanoid ai programmed to help spider-man gather info. she can simulate human emotions and has a high intellect

Sergey Ushanka propaganda:

(Unclear how much of the history I'm about to give here is true and how much is in-universe urban legend.) Sergey Ushanka was a Russian programmer in the 80s who fell ill with a deadly brain disease. In order to save himself from brain death, Sergey decided to digitize himself… and went about it in a much more violent way than you might think. Cue lines of code written in blood and fed into the machine and a brain violently shoved inside of a PC tower. Impossibly, due to the interference of an eldritch deity that preys on people's fear of technology and being replaced, his plan succeeded, and he did achieve a digital form… of pure unadulterated suffering. His human mind couldn't handle the rigidity of computer code, and now he spends his days stalking the internet, forcing those he encounters to bear witness to the indescribable torment he experiences.

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DeepSeek-R1: A Technical Analysis and Market Impact Assessment The release of DeepSeek-R1 represents a watershed moment in artificial intelligence development, challenging the dominance of closed-source commercial models while demonstrating comparable or superior performance across key benchmarks. This analysis examines the technical architecture, performance metrics, market implications, and broader impact of this groundbreaking model. Technical Architecture and Innovation Foundation and Evolution DeepSeek-R1 builds upon the DeepSeek V3 mixture-of-experts architecture, representing a significant evolution from its predecessor, DeepSeek-R1-Zero. The model’s development path illustrates a sophisticated approach to combining multiple training methodologies, resulting in a system that rivals or exceeds the capabilities of leading commercial alternatives. Core Architectural Components Base Architecture: Leverages DeepSeek V3’s mixture-of-experts framework Training Pipeline: Implements a hybrid approach combining reinforcement learning with supervised fine-tuning Model Distillation: Successfully incorporates distilled versions of Llama and Qwen models Scaling Strategy: Employs dynamic resource allocation for optimal performance Training Methodology Innovation The training process represents a notable departure from traditional approaches, implementing a multi-stage pipeline that addresses common limitations in language model development: Initial Development Phase (R1-Zero) Pure reinforcement learning implementation Self-evolution through trial-and-error mechanisms Demonstrated significant performance improvements AIME 2024 score increased from 15.6% to 71.0% Enhanced Training Phase (R1) Integration of cold-start data for initial fine-tuning Reasoning-oriented reinforcement learning Implementation of rejection sampling for SFT data creation Incorporation of DeepSeek-V3’s supervised data Comprehensive prompt scenario training Performance Analysis Benchmark Comparisons DeepSeek-R1’s performance across standard benchmarks demonstrates its competitive positioning: Mathematics and Reasoning Benchmark DeepSeek-R1 OpenAI o1 Delta AIME 2024 79.8% 79.2% +0.6% MATH-500 97.3% 96.4% +0.9% MMLU 90.8% 91.8% -1.0% Programming Proficiency Codeforces Rating: 2,029 (96.3rd percentile) Exceeds human programmer average performance Comparable to OpenAI o1’s 96.6% benchmark Cost-Effectiveness Analysis The model’s pricing structure represents a significant market disruption: Token Pricing Comparison Token Type DeepSeek-R1 OpenAI o1 Cost Reduction Input $0.55/M $15/M 96.3% Output $2.19/M $60/M 96.3% Market Implications and Industry Impact Democratization of AI Technology The open-source release of DeepSeek-R1 under an MIT license represents a significant shift in AI accessibility: Academic and Research Impact Enables broader research participation Facilitates reproducibility …………

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