Remove ads

Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard? (Worm/MGLN) (Complete)

Reader mode
While the discussions can be interesting about how complex math involving 32 or 64 variables would be, or how much more complex they would be if some or all of the variables are vectors, where vectors have two components each (quantity and direction), and how much more complex the numbers get when "spin" needs to be added to the vectors...

Frankly, the author has been wise enough to keep actual equations out of it. Let's leave it at "massively complex", and focus more on the actual elements of the story. Say, wondering how long it will take to ID Manton as the Real Siberian Parahuman, or wondering how stupid the Fallen will be...
 
Jacen1 said:
While the discussions can be interesting about how complex math involving 32 or 64 variables would be, or how much more complex they would be if some or all of the variables are vectors, where vectors have two components each (quantity and direction), and how much more complex the numbers get when "spin" needs to be added to the vectors...

Frankly, the author has been wise enough to keep actual equations out of it. Let's leave it at "massively complex", and focus more on the actual elements of the story. Say, wondering how long it will take to ID Manton as the Real Siberian Parahuman, or wondering how stupid the Fallen will be...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How about a nice game of 5 Dimensional Chess?
 
Brainstorm813 said:
Alright. I thought I knew how to play Chess. But the video alone made my head hurt.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Basically it is Chess, but pieces can also attack the past from the future, or the future from the past, or one timeline from another timeline, and to win you have to checkmate your opponent in every timeline instead of just one.

I reckon this Taylor would be pretty good at it.
 
...lots of derail.

I'm just going to go for this single comment right now:

Jacen1 said:
Say, wondering how long it will take to ID Manton as the Real Siberian Parahuman
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That's an easy one! June 7th.

What do you mean, that's a date, not a duration, and we're past June 7th in-story?
CmptrWz said:
Bonesaw, Burnscar, and Nilbog also had linker cores, with Crawler and the Siberian not having any. The Siberian was further odd in that she didn't have biology, and one surveillance drone was sent to trace the odd distorted shard-like connection she had back to its source. That led to a van with a man sitting in the back, one without a linker core but with a normal shard connection. Which meant that the Siberian was probably his projection, and not a parahuman herself. A projection with a decent range, given that he was still well outside of the quarantine zone.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Brainstorm813 said:
To be fair, it doesn't sound like they know that the man is Manton, yet.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Why would they? The only way Taylor and co. could possibly know that is if they had either memorized Manton's appearance (unlikely, as he is believed to be dead), or if they had deliberately gone searching for his identity, which they have no reason to do.

Without external input, they have no reason to not assume that the Master of the Siberian isn't just some dude. Realizing he is William Manton requires a bunch of information that they have no reason to peruse, and doesn't actually mean anything anyway.

It was William Manton all along, so what?
 
Last edited:
Forgot if it was addressed, but if I remember correctly - team Taylor came up with "mage" being an acronym for "mana attuned genius entity". I take it that wasn't mentioned on their website ? And how would they explain what mana is ?
 
Qro said:
Forgot if it was addressed, but if I remember correctly - team Taylor came up with "mage" being an acronym for "mana attuned genius entity". I take it that wasn't mentioned on their website ? And how would they explain what mana is ?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That would be easy; Mana is the extradimensional energy a Mage uses to manipulate reality. This explanation has the benefit of making magic sound rational and scientific instead of mystical and irrational, and thus sidesteps the stigma that would come from calling it magic.

Those that treat powers as Magic are seen in setting as crackpots. Instead treating magic like a reality warping parahuman ability makes the user seem rational instead.
 
Last edited:
Fair enough. Considering that "Belkan Empire" is supposedly made entirely of "parahumans" - PRT might decide that they figured out where powers come from. While leaving Cauldron confused
 
David DeLaney said:
3D stuff: center needs x,y,z, 3 variables; orientation requires you to take the top point, specify an angle it rotates straight toward you, then an angle around the z-axis, to get that point to the right place on the sphere around the center. Then you need one more angle to spin the object around the line between that point and the center, once it's there, to get the rest right. Total 3 angles + 3 coordinates.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No, 3d orientation only requires 2 variables, an angle along a plane, and another along a second plane at right angles to the first. XY plane and YZ plane for example. This can be clearly seen with polar coordinates where you represent a vector with a magnitude and two angles.
mathworld.wolfram.com

Spherical Coordinates -- from Wolfram MathWorld

Spherical coordinates, also called spherical polar coordinates (Walton 1967, Arfken 1985), are a system of curvilinear coordinates that are natural for describing positions on a sphere or spheroid. Define theta to be the azimuthal angle in the xy-plane from the x-axis with 0<=theta<2pi (denoted...
mathworld.wolfram.com

I'll grant I'm not that familiar with n-dimensional vectors, but you seem to have something wrong in your base assumptions.
seems to support my assumption that for n dimensions you'd need n-1 variables to define orientation and n variables to define a location.

EDIT: If we continue this it should probably be in PMs
 
Last edited:
Also, considering that the theory "where did Minerva come from?" has changed several times - I'd bet PRT grunts at least have a wall with every possible theory attached. They're spending their free time by throwing darts at it blindly - whatever theory dart hits becomes main theory for the week.
 
Qro said:
Also, considering that the theory "where did Minerva come from?" has changed several times - I'd bet PRT grunts at least have a wall with every possible theory attached. They're spending their free time by throwing darts at it blindly - whatever theory dart hits becomes main theory for the week.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How did the PRT get their hands on a copy of Lisa's conspiracy wall?! :V
 
Neruz said:
How did the PRT get their hands on a copy of Lisa's conspiracy wall?! :V
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Maybe FBI gave it to them ? For some reason. Lisa is with the FBI at the moment... I think. That interlude where she noticed insects acting really weird around her still bugs me. Considering that Hive is often acting on his/her own - wouldn't be surprised if she/he somehow got in contact with Lisa. Her shard could potentially be useful. Though I have no idea how it would translate into MGLN magic. Can't remember any kind of divination, aside from Aura Colour one.
 
Valdimarian said:
I had an Algebra2 / Trig teacher who handed out a 'how to' sheet on Side Angle Side and Angle Side Angle trig work (finding the sides and angels of a triangle with only 2 sides and their angle or one side with two angels)

By the end of that class period I'd coded the thing into my TI-83 and showed it to her.
She let me use the program on tests because I showed my understanding of the problem well enough to translate it to TI-Basic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The TI-83 came out in time for my senior year of high school, but I took Algebra 2 in my junior year so got a TI-82. There wasn't much difference between the original TI-83 of '96 and the TI-82, although the later TI-83 silver or TI-83+ had more memory (which was either extremely useful if you loaded the calculator with games and math programs or useless if your school made you reset the calculator before tests to prevent this kind of "cheating").
I used the program in a similar way to do things like that, or in Algebra and Pr-calculus to do things like complete the square. The teachers were ok, since it just gives you the answer, on the tests and homework you have to show your work to get full credit.
Then I pissed them off because I wrote a program to show the work and I just had to copy it off the screen.
What really pissed them off was me selling the program to other students before a test using the TI-GraphLink so they just had to copy off my program. I originally tried doing it as soon as the program became available to help with homework, but ran into piracy problems. They saw no reason why each should pay $5, why not just all chip in, give my $5 and then spread it around themselves.

The teachers told me that they didn't have a problem with me writing the programs and using them myself because it shows I understood the material well enough to code it. They had a problem with me selling it to other students who might not understand how to do something like complete the square and can now do it on a test, and show the work as well.
Complete the square was not the only such program I did that to, it's just that one particular program sticks out because it's the one they all yelled at me for selling and all the rest kinda blur together as it's been 25 years.
 
SlickRCBD said:
The TI-83 came out in time for my senior year of high school, but I took Algebra 2 in my junior year so got a TI-82.

I used the program in a similar way to do things like that, or in Algebra and Pr-calculus to do things like complete the square. The teachers were ok, since it just gives you the answer, on the tests and homework you have to show your work to get full credit.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In 1987 I passed a numerical analysis test only because I shelled out $275 and bought a second-hand HP-67. Well worth the money and I still have it today. (Plus an HP-67 emulator I bought that I've got on my home and work computers.) RPN for the win, baby!

Fun thing about the HP-67 is that it can write programs to magstrips and read them in. An example was a 4x4 matrix transform calculation that I wrote (the math pack only came with 3x3). Gave me the answer, I just had to show how to get from [A] to .

SlickRCBD said:
What really pissed them off was me selling the program to other students before a test using the TI-GraphLink so they just had to copy off my program. I originally tried doing it as soon as the program became available to help with homework, but ran into piracy problems. They saw no reason why each should pay $5, why not just all chip in, give my $5 and then spread it around themselves.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd be yelling at you, too. Ethics, it's a thing.

Selling people the answers in a class is like selling people the answers to the written driving test. Would you trust those idiots with 2 tons of metal on the road afterwards? I was in the DMV one day, watching a man who couldn't read English having his wife translate all of the questions for him. Either that or she was giving him the answers, take your pick. And I have to drive with people like that on the road.

In the same course, our final exam was a fairly simple Vax Macro Assembler program we had to write. We had 1 month to do it. I came in the last day, wrote mine from scratch in about an hour. (I already had 10 years of work experience including 2 years working in x86 Assembly.) There were other people there who had no idea how to solve it. I took one of them and walked him through a very simple way to do the project (totally different from mine). I asked him at every step if he understood what I was showing. Completed, demonstrated, asked again; he said yes, he understood the steps.

Then I erased it.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top