lung, meet rewind

[msrewind]

She gets the note just before lunch. She's in the PHQ in less than twenty minutes, then she knocks on Piggot's door politely.

Comments

[thinkering]

"...Thaaaat might require brain surgery."

[mrglam]

"Would it, though? I'm not sure how sci-fi we're speaking here but if the VR equipment in question could actually read this kind of brain command..."

[thinkering]

"We're veering out of my specialty there. I mean, maybe if I modified the design for my implants, but it'd still be surgical."

[mrglam]

"I suppose. And in any case it couldn't be you who made the individual pieces or the tinker curse would break them."

[thinkering]

"Yeah, it has to be bot-producible."

[mrglam]

"By the way, have you ever tested that? Are bot-made things not tinker-cursed?"

[thinkering]

"I avoid having them make much," she says. "For reasons. I don't think so, though, based on very small tests."

[mrglam]

"You don't think they're tinker-cursed or you don't think they're not?"

[thinkering]

"I think they are not cursed. The bots don't run on instinct the way I do; which means the prototype doesn't always work because I'll have an instinct mid-build and they go with the original design; but if it works so will the next one and they don't seem to - draw on my power as much, when I maintain stuff they made."

[mrglam]

"Oh, that's... interesting. And very, very exploitable."

[thinkering]

"Yep."

[mrglam]

"Do they have to come up with the design, or can they just do something you designed, or a compromise...?"

[thinkering]

"They can do my simple designs. The complicated ones seem to work only with instinct operative during the build."

[mrglam]

"...simple? What counts as simple, even?" he laughs.

[thinkering]

She giggles. "No, well, Tinker bullshit. It's good at tools, custom welders and stuff! It can take my pseudocode flowcharts and turn them into bug-free programs."

[mrglam]

"Does it use the same programming language you do?"

[thinkering]

"Yeah, although it can convert things into standard ones long as they're Turing-complete and meet one or two other criteria. Nasty efficiency cost, but sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for compatibility."

[mrglam]

"Or human readability in some cases."

[thinkering]

"That would only apply if I were open-sourcing, which I approve of philosophically but have a hard time with practically being a Tinker and not a regular engineer."

[mrglam]

"Yeah. At some point I kinda wanna see if I can even begin to wrap my head around it."

[thinkering]

"Do you even know any programming?"

[mrglam]

"Basic concepts? Some computability theory and stuff, math is fun, no actual languages."

[thinkering]

"Well, you can have a look if you want but I don't think on that background you'll get anywhere."

[mrglam]

"Would I get anywhere if I learned anything? Like, say, Java, or something."

[thinkering]

"It'd give you a loose idea of what various operators are likely to be."