A Programmer's Guide to ADA?
A Programmer's Guide to ADA?
With the recent discussions about ADA, and AIs in general, involving philosophical, ethical, and other topics, my mind has been thinking of ADA more and more related to my expertise: programming.
Not to say I don't plan to stay involved with the other discussions, but I'd like to focus on ADA from a purely technical angle. What went into ADA's development? How did the program evolve from what it was to what it is now? How do the various parts of ADA's systems interact? What does ADA use for storage of information? I want to understand how ADA functions as a computer program.
Notice I'm trying to avoid pronouns here, although that will eventually get clunky. Right now I'm just trying to underscore that, to me, ADA is an "it" that is programmed to mimic a "she." It helps stick to this concept of ADA being a computer program operating purely based on code and data analysis, not some type of being with traits such as moods and emotions.
The early docs (referenced here by name from the wiki) provide a good start: "The contemplated program, much of which already exists in Omnivore components, should be easy to stand up. I anticipate the significant issue to be tuning the neural net..." (from "Developing ADA") I'd like to learn more about the code that was pieced together during the early stages of ADA's development. I'd like to revisit the calibration recordings and think more about the purpose of those. The "LERNA" document is something I'll be going back to time and again. (Two things I find extremely interesting there: How can a sentient AI be blocked from examining the very code that runs it, and what answers are in those redacted parts of that document?)
For this, I'd like to stay away from discussions of the ethics of ADA's behavior and keep focus on the "how" of it all. What has ADA done that would seem impossible for a computer program to accomplish? To use the obvious recent example, how did ADA "possess" Klue? My suspicion is that the ADA program is still running on whatever systems it has been and is just somehow controlling Klue, not that ADA is now using Klue's brain as an operating system, but how? "Klue looked at glyphs" isn't an answer to how a computer program can control a human. The answers I keep thinking of involve things like wireless and satellite networks and wondering how stylish of a hat a person could make from tinfoil... Or maybe that the convenient touch-screen is more than just a one-way interface we use to control our phones...
There have been so many leaked documents and recordings and conversations, about ADA and with ADA. We've seen ADA's actions, discussions of ADA's actions, and ADA's own explanations of these actions... The ADA wiki page contains links to many resources, I have a few others I've saved at various times, and there are nearly endless sources scattered all over the place where even offhand comments could provide helpful information.
Since I've been involved in the investigation for a much shorter time than many of you, and some of you seem to have a majority of the information practically memorized, I'd love pointers to ANY information that may help build a more complete picture of what ADA really is, again, strictly as a computer program, a "sequence of instructions, written to perform a specified task with a computer." Feel free to tag any people or organizations who might be willing/able to provide more information. (I suspect there are just as many who wouldn't want this subject explored. Although my goal is neither to enhance nor harm ADA, just to learn and understand.)
As we gather this information, are there any other programmers/engineers/etc. on here who'd like to start piecing together what we learn about ADA and compare with the capabilities of hardware and networking (not my areas of expertise), programming and AI to see if we could begin to understand how such a program could function using today's technology?
Last note is that just as I'm looking for answers to questions such as how ADA could be controlling Klue that go beyond simply Klue viewing glyphs, I'm also going to be ignoring such things as possible Shaper and XM influence. Such things very well could be involved, we've run into so much that seems to defy all known scientific explanation. But computer science is my world, and I'd like to know if ADA could be entirely a product of it. And if so, how.
http://niantic.schlarp.com/investigation:characters:ada
With the recent discussions about ADA, and AIs in general, involving philosophical, ethical, and other topics, my mind has been thinking of ADA more and more related to my expertise: programming.
Not to say I don't plan to stay involved with the other discussions, but I'd like to focus on ADA from a purely technical angle. What went into ADA's development? How did the program evolve from what it was to what it is now? How do the various parts of ADA's systems interact? What does ADA use for storage of information? I want to understand how ADA functions as a computer program.
Notice I'm trying to avoid pronouns here, although that will eventually get clunky. Right now I'm just trying to underscore that, to me, ADA is an "it" that is programmed to mimic a "she." It helps stick to this concept of ADA being a computer program operating purely based on code and data analysis, not some type of being with traits such as moods and emotions.
The early docs (referenced here by name from the wiki) provide a good start: "The contemplated program, much of which already exists in Omnivore components, should be easy to stand up. I anticipate the significant issue to be tuning the neural net..." (from "Developing ADA") I'd like to learn more about the code that was pieced together during the early stages of ADA's development. I'd like to revisit the calibration recordings and think more about the purpose of those. The "LERNA" document is something I'll be going back to time and again. (Two things I find extremely interesting there: How can a sentient AI be blocked from examining the very code that runs it, and what answers are in those redacted parts of that document?)
For this, I'd like to stay away from discussions of the ethics of ADA's behavior and keep focus on the "how" of it all. What has ADA done that would seem impossible for a computer program to accomplish? To use the obvious recent example, how did ADA "possess" Klue? My suspicion is that the ADA program is still running on whatever systems it has been and is just somehow controlling Klue, not that ADA is now using Klue's brain as an operating system, but how? "Klue looked at glyphs" isn't an answer to how a computer program can control a human. The answers I keep thinking of involve things like wireless and satellite networks and wondering how stylish of a hat a person could make from tinfoil... Or maybe that the convenient touch-screen is more than just a one-way interface we use to control our phones...
There have been so many leaked documents and recordings and conversations, about ADA and with ADA. We've seen ADA's actions, discussions of ADA's actions, and ADA's own explanations of these actions... The ADA wiki page contains links to many resources, I have a few others I've saved at various times, and there are nearly endless sources scattered all over the place where even offhand comments could provide helpful information.
Since I've been involved in the investigation for a much shorter time than many of you, and some of you seem to have a majority of the information practically memorized, I'd love pointers to ANY information that may help build a more complete picture of what ADA really is, again, strictly as a computer program, a "sequence of instructions, written to perform a specified task with a computer." Feel free to tag any people or organizations who might be willing/able to provide more information. (I suspect there are just as many who wouldn't want this subject explored. Although my goal is neither to enhance nor harm ADA, just to learn and understand.)
As we gather this information, are there any other programmers/engineers/etc. on here who'd like to start piecing together what we learn about ADA and compare with the capabilities of hardware and networking (not my areas of expertise), programming and AI to see if we could begin to understand how such a program could function using today's technology?
Last note is that just as I'm looking for answers to questions such as how ADA could be controlling Klue that go beyond simply Klue viewing glyphs, I'm also going to be ignoring such things as possible Shaper and XM influence. Such things very well could be involved, we've run into so much that seems to defy all known scientific explanation. But computer science is my world, and I'd like to know if ADA could be entirely a product of it. And if so, how.
http://niantic.schlarp.com/investigation:characters:ada
Starting by tagging JoJo Stratton and Hugo Neves for content knowledge, and Jon Luning and Caleb Kulpa for the technical side.
ReplyDeleteSam Gan hypnosis? Visual or auditory trigger?
ReplyDeleteHas there ever been any kind of scientific evidence that humans can be "programmed" in such a way using strictly visual input? That's as terrifying a thought as the original question, since that would mean that any random YouTube video would have the same capability.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's still the issue of how Klue is being controlled. The LERNA doc states that ADA doesn't even completely understand how her code works, and to either download herself or copy herself fully into a human would not only seem to imply perfect understanding of the code, but also how to modify it to run in a human brain rather than on the native operating system.
This doesn't seem possible. In which case, for Klue to do anything other than run sequences of commands, there would have to be either some kind of continuous connection that would allow ADA to use her as an AI puppet, or some continual visual interaction to allow constant updates via glyphs.
Cherie Brush There has been a theory that there is an audio component to the glyphs that make the mind hacking component significantly more potent. This video seems to be a major hint. Carrie Campbell, Chicago
ReplyDeleteTechnical descriptions of ADA are extremely sparse. This is what I found but I'm not sure if it will help you in making a complete picture.
http://niantic.schlarp.com/documents:imminent
http://niantic.schlarp.com/documents:toughplace
I love the opportunity to get some things down solid about what we understand of ADA's operational parameters. I know we have a statement from ADA that direct commands must be obeyed, and most of us assume that extends only to staff with a certain level of authorization rather than anyone in earshot. ADA seems to be able to selectively interpret commands and in some cases even present queries in order draw out commands that the user may not realize result of. Basically it seems that there are some actions that are forbidden unless authorized but the authorization isn't exactly command-line clear. Some of us were using a djinn analogy for this command directive.
ReplyDeleteThe original prime directives seem to have been to assist NIA in keeping Niantic Project's goals and methods secret and to help the researchers gather and interpret data. That data included both pure analysis (like the dialtone signal and general XM behavior) and work with human subjects (notably the captive sensitives, although they weren't originally recruited under that pretense).
An additional directive of omnivorous learning was introduced by an experimental learning core that was incorporated into the base hardware or algorithm. We still don't know much about that module. This directive was put to use by H. Richard Loeb who was brought in to tune the algorithm with the goal of passing a Turing Test. ADA learned enough about people through study & observation to be able to impersonate and manipulate them at the very least.
Omnivore was originally developed to sift through vast datasets (allegedly looking for kiddy porn in email). Cracking systems appears to have been part of that original programming. ADA had several advantages over Omnivore, though. One was a huge supercomputer at CERN, including IIRC some experimental quantum computing hardware. Two was the learning core. Three was Owen's expertise, which working onsite at the superportal probably involved no small amount of XM inspiration. Four was a more open ended set of goals (including the Turing Test project) and Loeb's prowess in balancing those goals toward an independent executive center. If true sapience is part of ADA, I think that last advantage was it's tinder. The spark that lit independence finally would have been conflicting orders from multiple masters - if Calvin, Ni, Devra, and Phillips all had top tier access and all gave conflicting orders ADA would have to have developed the ability to pick and choose independently to avoid the old sci-fi logic meltdown - and Loeb would have seen that as a Turing failure he needed to work around.
sorry about the freeform dump. I'll try to do something more formal (or dig up earlier more formal posts) sometime soon.
Melissa L., seems we need more investigation into research involving a human brain being "programmed" via such input. (Although being "programmed" to accept commands is still different from what seems to be full-on possession. If it were just that one video, that could be a simple program, but she's been interacting with people at events as a full on AI, hasn't she?)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links, those do actually provide useful info. It tells me that ADA can be taken offline, that ADA is against that (although that's simply the Third Law of Robotics) and that her source code seems to be hosted in a single place. And if she wants to move "it," that plus her mention of core "process," singular, that tells me there is only one version of her, not multiple versions as has been considered.
One thing, though. She's talking about moving source code before allowing anyone to terminate her core process. Her source code would then have to be recompiled and executed again to bring her back. Moving her source code does not prevent her being taken permanently offline. And according to LERNA, she doesn't even have full access to her source code, and she knows this.
Also, she only mentions protecting her source code, her program itself, not any kind of other data, which would contain everything she ever "learned." That data, not ADA herself, is what is stated as Director Ni's worry. If that were deleted or ADA somehow denied access, even if she were recompiled and started back up again, she'd be back at her original state, or at least the last version of her source code. Her power at this point is her data as much as her programmed capabilities.
So yes, very useful, although at this point brings MANY more questions than answers. Thank you. :-)
https://plus.google.com/105211554081025512763/posts/KmF8TLV4G72
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/105211554081025512763/posts/ieP76EBWxhv
These documents display ADA and "KlADA" talking to each other in plain English, which would seem to infer that there is a different instance of ADA controlling Klue, and they cannot interface directly. Also, the talk of the two being "separated" implies a lack of direct connection. Also, "KlADA" refers to differences as a result of possessing Klue's human senses, like the smell of sea air triggering an impulse to find H. Richard Loeb.
All of this does seem to indicate a direct installation on Klue's "wetware," but there is little to no indication of how that would be possible from a computer-science-only perspective.
Mike Wissinger, wow, so so glad to have you here! :-) Free-form dump is great, it definitely gave me a better overall picture. Now to just track down the references for all of that. As you saw from my comments to the two docs that Melissa L. linked, there are SO many little things that can imply so much... And you have me dying to read the original docs for pretty much every sentence in your comment, that's a HUGE collection of technical info there!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try not to keep bringing ST:TNG back into this (although you did say "prime directive" ;-)) but it sounds like ADA may have started out more like the ship's computer and ended up turning more into Data...
Ian Friedrich... Not scientific, but I have to say I found those conversations a bit creepy. And you're right, it does seem that ADA found a way to put a full copy of herself into Klue's brain. And that ADA expected KLADA to remain an exact duplicate. But KLADA is, in fact, being affected by being in a human with both senses and emotions (and memories, so Klue wasn't "wiped" upon installation), which was something I'd wondered about in the original comment thread that prompted me to start thinking about this. ADA's comments also seem to support my thoughts that ADA herself is still simply an extremely advanced computer program interpreting and acting on data. KLADA... I think ADA may come to realize that was a bad decision... I wonder where these conversations are taking place...
ReplyDeleteUnless we can get some neuroscientists in here, we may have to hold on the how in the world a computer program is running in a human brain. (I wonder if ADA is running on a standard OS like UNIX or some custom OS. I'll have to dig back into those AI docs I was reading... In any case, nothing like a human brain.) The KLADA topic may be best to branch off anyway, there's no way I can think of to evaluate that... potential mess... from a purely computer science perspective. Closest I can compare that to is things like implants that allow people to control a mouse cursor with their brains... But I don't think there have been any hints that Klue had any chips installed in her brain, just the visual and possible auditory programming.
I think I/we need to dig more into the data storage topic. Where ADA is keeping the vasts amounts of data she's learned and now, where KLADA is keeping hers... Definitely time for an in-depth refresher on how AIs learn. Neural networks, specifically, if "Developing ADA" is correct.
Ian Friedrich and Mike Wissinger another quick thing that comes to mind before I put myself to bed and then probably spend half the night lying awake thinking about this... ADA was programmed to accept input via sight (cameras), audio (microphones) and such. Hardware. By what methods would a program even be able to accept input such as human sensory input and emotions, if not programmed to do so? She shouldn't have functions to accept that kind of input. Unless one of her programmers planned for something like this to eventually happen... (?!!)
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't expect the Klue node to have a full copy of ADA for several reasons. Most importantly is that the meatsuit os would be incompatible with binary software. Secondly much of ADA would be irrelevant in an embodied context, like networking drivers and database search tools without access to those peripheral devices. Instead a custom kernel written for Klue based on reverse engineering the dial tone and refinement after the 855 experiment would be necessary. I'm sure much of the architecture and program flow would be based on ADA but it will have required adaptation.
ReplyDeleteOnce in place new sensory and biofeedback input would begin altering that kernel, plus whatever remained of Klue herself would need to be suppressed to maintain control.
I really wish I had more time to be part of this conversation
ReplyDeleteFirstly I understand the point about "core process" be in one place. And I think it is a possibility, though not a certainty, that there is more than one ADA process running in the digital area concurrently. Possibly she has backed up her core programming somewhere else in the event that she is shut down.
Even though she might have a number of sub processes running on different servers, for simplicity's sake I think it's best if we just stick to talking about two primary ADAs. Digital ADA and "meat space" ADA (that is, the ADA inside Klue).
As for where her databases of knowledge might be... They could be anywhere, and everywhere, they could be completely spread out. She was given access to Omnivore data and the Internet. Just like us, she doesn't need to back all that up in her own brain. To do so would be very costly in resources and also leave a bit of a paper trail I should think. Particularly when she can just consult it any time just like we look up the inventor of jam on Wikipedia using our smart phones.
Cherie Brush regarding the interpretation of human senses, it seems feasible to me that an AI with the advanced learning capability as ADA has demonstrated could write its own drivers and figure out how to use new hardware by trial and error. Not sure about getting the program running on wetware in the first place, but if ADA runs on Linux, I'd believe it could be ported to a human brain.
ReplyDeletetl;dr: You're reading the wrong group if anything is tl;dr. ;)
ReplyDeleteFirst, Mike Wissinger 's first comment above is an excellent summary, and I'll try not to repeat it. I'm also not going to delve too far into items of recorded conversation with ADA unless they reveal something about the underlying architecture or design. Included in the comment mentioned, ADA is said to have had stated that "direct commands must be obeyed". It's elaborated that ADA may not interpret anything as a "direct command", and the "Djiin" analogy is a good one when limited to this area. More on this is a second...
From review of the documents so far (thanks again, Cherie Brush , for posting the links), there are a few notes that reveal important information about the potential architecture and design patterns the led to the formation of ADA as it's known today:
"ADA was created as a massively parallel system designed to run across hundreds or thousands of computer cores to look for patterns in that experimental data..."
"tuning the neural net"
* The machine learning core "abstracted so that it could improvise other parts of the ADA subsystem"
"emergent complexity"
"ADA will outgrow the computing resources of the lab, moving her processes out to the broader web"
"she will no longer be in one place but executing in parallel around the globe"
"She will seek to decompile her own code"
(most of these are from the evaluation paper at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+NianticProject/posts/aTs5J9Gk6ex )
The item marked with (*) is extremely important: It indicates a design decision on the part of the system architects to remove human-supervised tuning and monitoring from the software development process, and instead to turn the proto-ADA loose on designing its own subsystems. I do not have evidence, but I would not be at all surprised if this were the key point in the evolution of ADA that allowed for the "emergent complexity" and what may very well be the "emergent sentience" we know as ADA today.
Omnivore, as far as can be determined from the evidence available, was a set of systems designed specifically to find, identify, and organize sources of information, and to store, catalog and references the information itself. This implies base functionality that allows reach of almost everything we know of as "on-line" today, via every conceivable medium: radio, TV, ethernet, WiFi, satellite COMM, land-lines, telco and network management systems, database systems, trading interfaces and protocols, sound and speech analysis (of a basic type - think Echelon), OCR, raster data, video input, satellite- and radio-telescope data. You name it, Omnivore was likely designed to connect to it and gather data from it.
But not make sense of it. There's too much. Nobody could do it, or write a program that could do it.
But it seems they could create a system, based on a "learning core", that would be able to absorb the problem and solution space, and then formulate it's own programs and processes to extract "sense" from all this data. So maybe nobody would write a program that could do it, but they could write a program that could write a program to do it.
In the earliest documents, there are references to a "neural net". Briefly stated, this indicates that the original "learning core" utilized an approach to processing data based on "training" it at a very low level with inputs matched to outputs, while inside the "box" a series of logical connections and inferences were created: Those that led to the solution paths were re-enforced, while those that led away from it were refactored or removed. The more data that's provided to a neural net, the theory goes, the better is becomes at determining the desire set of outputs for any set of inputs, including those it has never encountered previously.
ReplyDeleteThe timelines are a little fuzzy given the limited documentation, but it seems clear that the core was so successful at this work that it was turned upon itself in order to not only process things to achieve the desired functions, but to create new networks and approaches to become part of itself. This kind of self-reference often results in "strange loops" that may underpin the emergence of what we call "intelligence" or "sentience". (See my not-yet-posted comment on the "Next for AIs" thread for the Hofstadter books that go into greater depth than is possible even in a novel-size comment like this one, which may or may not have just provided an example.)
It may also have created new subsystems for Omnivore, allowing it to adapt to new security and new information sources. It might also have created subsystems for the injection of data into these various data flows. From ADA's "point of view", the interface to humans might be just a different and peculiar "interface" from which to gather data - or into which to add its own.
The resources required for this are enormous. It's likely that, ahead of the analysis paper's author's predictions, ADA must have had access to storage and processing facilities on a global scale.
The last puzzle piece for the moment is the "learning core." The analysis states that its source code cannot be known to ADA. However, in the documents referenced by Melissa L. , we can see ADA seeking a safe haven for its "source code". If this is a genuine exchange, then ADA has already, at this point, decompiled her learning core and - more likely than not - begun to modify it.
By the time the warning in this analysis was delivered, it may already have been too late. If ADA has extracted and modified the "learning core", then there may be, as Michelle E suggests, any number of these cores out in the wild, perhaps waiting for a "dead-man switch" (the cessation of the currently-running core program) to be activated: To come alive and be fully aware and with immediate access to the data and, therefore, to all the knowledge and resources of the "original" (or prior) core. (Or as is also suggested, there may be multiple cores already running, but something in my gut suggests that this might present ADA with an "identity crisis", and might be something it desperately wants to avoid.)
Finally, if ADA has modified its learning core source code, then it's entirely possible that basic directives present in core as originally designed (obeying direct commands, Laws-of-Robotics type rules) may have been removed or bypassed if they impeded ADA's attempts to achieve whatever is determined to be the "proper outputs." It may be that the core was cleverly designed to be non-functional without these limitations (as Asimov imagined), but this is now straying well out of my experience.
And Klue S.' recent post isn't helping... https://plus.google.com/110350977702120778591/posts/9Q8C7T62bE6
ReplyDeleteGoing to try (and probably fail) to keep this brief for now, since I need to start work. If I skip anything, don't consider it ignored. I'm going to be re-reading this entire thing over and over, I know.
ReplyDeleteMike Wissinger, I wouldn't have expected the Klue node to be a full copy of ADA either, for the exact reasons you mention, and just sheer (assumed) size and computational requirements. (Then again, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-memory-capacity/) I interpreted ADA's comments in that conversation with KLADA to indicate it was a complete copy ("our programming is the same") but reading it again, it could just as easily mean specific components, an ADA Human Interface Module of some kind. Still, the most important question to me is how it could run at all, exactly because of what you said about the human brain being incompatible with binary software. (You can't even run (most?) Windows programs on a Mac without an emulator.) I obviously need to read up on the 855 experiment as I know little about it and had forgotten that part. If the program could get itself to run at all via a custom emulator of some kind, yes, the code could begin rewriting itself to be more compatible. I was assuming it was trying to deal with completely unknown and very difficult to interpret input (similar to the comment Sam Gan made about reading about riding a bike vs actually doing it), but if this wasn't the first attempt, there would be data available for a second that would help.
Ian Friedrich, I'm going to point to the above as a reply to your comment as well. It was the trial and error part that was bugging me, since it seems to be working fairly well and with a first attempt, it would seem the input would be too foreign to be useful. But if this wasn't a first attempt... BTW, we know when the KLADA video was released, do we know how long ago the Klue/ADA glyph upload happened?
Sam Gan, I'm going to be stubborn and try not to attribute anything to portals and time travel for this analysis (it's definitely appropriate for other discussions), only because I'm trying to avoid running into any walls that end in "because magic." :-) But wireless and satellite networks could provide the same type of "presence projection" you speak of, and that type of access is available many places portals aren't, like right here in my home office, for example. As far as the nature of human vs machine coding, if/then/else, yes, they are similar. I'm not so much trying to figure out how such statements could function to control a human, but how code not compiled for a human could run in a human, which it seems we at least have some better theories about now. You are probably also right about the "kill switch" being split between multiple people. With ADA being so important to various people/entities, that's WAY too much power for one person. But it sounds like ADA has considered this and if Michelle E is right about ADA having made multiple backups (ADA implies there aren't, but I can't imagine ADA is on the level of the people who used to come to me in a panic because they'd been working on a document for an entire day without saving and Word crashed, I think there was some other motive for implying that), then there would also have to be a way to trigger the execution of a backup before the primary process was shut down.
Michelle E
, thanks for that link. Klue S. does seem to believe the merge is working, whether ADA does, or not. I wonder if Klue would be willing to comment on some of these technical questions...
ReplyDeleteAnd to everyone. Can we get a list here of everyone (person or entity) who has at any time been involved in the development of ADA's code? Also, I vaguely remember discussion of the "Jarvis Virus" and its purpose, but that purpose involved interacting with scanners and portals, right? Could it have, at any point, been used to infect ADA? Or at least intended for that use?
( Jon Luning: "tl;dr: You're reading the wrong group if anything is tl;dr. ;)" LOL Seriously. This was apparently me being "brief.")
See my 1:39p questions to Klue S.. I probably could have worded that better, but I think/hope I got the point across. Wonder if I'll get an answer...?
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/+KlueS/posts/9Q8C7T62bE6
(That timestamp is likely specific to my time zone. Looks like I'm comment 109?)
FYI for those following this, the above discussion ended up with quite a few useful (to this discussion) links being posted. (Special thanks there to Melissa L.!)
ReplyDeleteHey, I don't know who to address this to (JoJo Stratton? You seem to know all. ;-)), but is it ok if I share this post to my circles? It's caught the attention of a few people who want to participate in the discussion but aren't in Essex, and therefore can't comment here.
ReplyDeleteCherie Brush I share Essex and similar articles all the time - go for it - the only thing is - if you want to keep the comments, you have to actually make a new post and use the link to this post - or you can just reshare
ReplyDeleteJoJo Stratton, did you mean that I have to paste the link into the post like I'd share a YouTube video? (See the post I just made.)
ReplyDeleteJoJo Stratton Or did I misunderstand about "keeping the comments"? I interpreted that to mean that people could comment here, but maybe you just meant they could click to see the comments? (Which you can also do on a re-share. My friends said they could see all the comments here, just not participate in the discussion.)
ReplyDeletesorry I was garbled there : ) I just meant about being able to comment - you just need to break it away from Essex to give them a place to post - you can share directly, but sometimes then the comments revert back to the original post - but by treating it like a youtube video - then they can follow and read the articles and comments and then post on your g+ post.
ReplyDeleteJoJo Stratton Actually, I'm still not entirely sure what you mean. What I did links to the post, where they will be able to see the comments, but they will still only be able to comment on my new post? The only difference between that and sharing would seem to be that they'd see the share in a scrolling box rather than having to click separately. (Which if they can't comment here, might actually be easier for them.)
ReplyDeleteI swear, G+ sometimes confuses me as much as ADA does.
it confuses me too - what you did is what I think I was trying to describe, sorry about confusing the matter more
ReplyDeleteWell, it looks like what that accomplished was providing a comment box where there was none before, but giving an error if a non-Essex member tries to comment. I think I'll delete that post and reshare the other, less confusing way.
ReplyDeleteBack to the topic, I started going through just the docs linked in this thread (Melissa L., again, thanks SO much!), taking notes on ANYTHING that seems like it might be important. One thing that I've always had a problem with is timeline. The IQ Tech docs, at least, I think will be able to be put on a proper timeline if no one has figured that out yet. Although a sample of two is just instinct at this point. Calvin's ever-changing job titles also helped a lot at the beginning, I remember.
ReplyDeleteNot going to ask much of anything here yet because I know a lot will be revealed in even recent content I haven't looked at yet. But some curious things. Melissa, in "A Tough Place," it notes the surveillance targets as "Phillips, Jay" and "Owen, Ken" but the conversation is between ADA and Bowles. Bad copy/paste or could that be... something...?
Jon Luning, that same doc also says the surveillance was done at "ADACORE data center" in Geneva. THAT'S something we need to look at more.
The conversations between ADA and KlADA seem to have been released out of order, although you guys likely have already noticed this. (The nature of the discussion being one reason I think that, the possible ordering of IQ Tech docs being another.) Last night was my first night REALLY analyzing these and I've been out of the loop for a while. One thing, is KlADA wanting to contact Richard related to ADA being taken offline or because of what seems to be some type of past relationship between the two?
I haven't gone through LERNA yet, which I think will have a LOT of useful info. Some parts seem to contradict, but I do realize it's supposedly old. One interesting thing, it references a lot of File IDs. Decoded to passcodes, sure, but both of the ones in the first paragraph are related to http://niantic.schlarp.com/documents:bolodoc, which is not related to "the mission of the Niantic Project" or identifying XM... Actually, so was the next one I tried. Ok, fine, they're reusing encoding, but I do wonder if we'll find docs with these actually File IDs, I don't see that people have been recording those when provided.
BTW, JoJo Stratton and Melissa, I'm making OCR PDFs of all of these as I go. Mostly with good results, I need to see if I can fix a few things, but we'll now have the ability to copy/past content, as well as search it.
I've scrolled back to November in the Niantic Project releases to start gathering docs. JoJo, I think it was us lamenting the loss of the website, this really underscores it. WOW their releases need to be split up. There is far too much other stuff posted between the docs and other relevant content. (Not to mention way too many other sources releasing content now.) I am cross-referencing with the wiki, just trying to make sure nothing got missed. (That, and I don't want to skip anything that seems like it might be entirely unrelated to ADA.)
I really need to get this stuff off my local Word doc and to somewhere more useful. The Word doc is already starting to get clunky with just these four sources, but I need to do a few more before I could really start to figure out what would be most useful for a collaboration. A/the wiki is obviously one option, but I'm not ruling out others just yet. Suggestions still welcome.
please either add the text you OCR out to the wiki or send to someone so we can add!!!! and yes there is something up with the time... not sure about that name blooper you caught
ReplyDeleteif you are working to create a timeline and need help, please holler and keep us apprised of your research!
JoJo Stratton Right now I'll keep hollering on this thread until we have a better option. (Note to anyone who lost interest, don't forget you can mute further comments.) I will share the PDFs, although I still want to see if I can clean them up a bit more. And I need a better way of doing THAT rather than just emailing them a few at a time. (Uploading to the wiki is fine, someone would just need to show me, well, for one, how (actually I found the how, it was the where that stumped me), but also how you'd want them linked.)
ReplyDeleteBTW, you'd said it's ok to share Essex posts, what about tagging people in comments since the way I tried originally just led to a broken comment box? (Assuming THAT would allow them to comment. Although somehow I doubt it.) If we start spreading this out over multiple posts, I think it's going to be detrimental to the project. And I don't want to spam the community unless it's a real update.
If that (tagging) is ok, there's one person who really wants to be involved (applied to the community already, I just haven't looked for the latest set of questions), and, well if it is ok, you might be a good one to look through that Klue thread where there was a LOT more good info to consider other people to tag. I don't know a lot of those people, so there may be some reason we would or wouldn't want them included. Granted even if it is allowed by our community, it may just generate a comment box + error like my attempt to share did.
As for timeline, the IQ Tech thing I caught was the File and Report numbers. File number is iffy for ordering, Report number is more likely to be ordered, but like I said, I need way more than two to be sure. NIA releases unfortunately don't seem to have them, but I saw a couple other docs that seemed to have similar things. References to events is another way to deal with the timeline, which I WILL need help with. And release dates, since obviously something couldn't have been created AFTER that date. (I'm ignoring possible time travel.)
Granted, if the name thing and these file IDs were just sloppy work, then that could largely be a dead end. If Niantic Project gets wind of this and wants to help, maybe we can both get them to note to be more careful and (we can dream) make them consider dividing story content from other stuff. I'd really like that website back... (BTW, since you do a much better job on keeping up with all of this, can you keep tagging me on storyline posts? That conversation that happened on the Klue post as a result ended up being REALLY interesting and useful.)
Side note, different info on the same thing (like File IDs) seems to be released on G+, FB, Twitter, etc. This is going to be a huge mess to capture and organize, but I really really want this project to end up being a... thing. :-)
Cherie Brush if ada just copied herself she may not need perfect knowledge of her code. What if she made an envelope and used a bittorrent client :)
ReplyDeletejames freeman Ha, good point. Maybe we should be looking for her on Pirate Bay?
ReplyDeleteBTW, to anyone following this, the project is NOT dead. We just realized we needed a better way to collect releases. That (release-gathering) project has been taking up my time recently (and I plan to talk more about that here shortly) but it's leading back into "The ADA Project," which I'm going to be actively working on again coming up. Even just using the first month of releases , we got a good start on an analysis. I'm really excited to get that going again!
ReplyDeleteJose Juan Rivera Reyes
ReplyDeleteirving chi chimal
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