Question Xanadu Discussion Thread
- CrazyMinh
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Topic Author
- ASIMO is built with perfectly flat feet, as a way of distributing it's considerable weight over a larger area. It usually walks in a pose that would best suit a partially constipated person with pants around their legs. This is meant to balance it's weight better. It is very slow at moving, as servo motors are very bad at creating torque. Motors can either be designed for load-bearing (low speed/agility-high torque/strength) or for speed (vice versa). This is a significant limitation imposed on all conventional motors. Even today's mil-grade technology (which I have had a peek at when a engineer from iRobot in the US came to do a live practical with my engineering class and to show us the workings of one of their PackBot mil-grade robots) is not up to the job of doing both. It is technically possible to use a combination of motors (or a gearing system) to do the job, but both of these would be bulky as well as cause problems when attempting to quickly change settings. There are some motors designed to switch between high torque and high speed settings, but these are very bulky, power consuming and also very, very crude. Even a universe like 2007 Whateley with technology at least 10-20 odd years ahead of our corresponding time still wouldn't be able to create such commercially-available technology to such a size and advancement that it could be used to create a robot body, in a garage, with non-military parts, while in a wheelchair. Therefore, the movement of Xanadu's robotic body would be impossible given it's relative approximation of human dimensions, not without moving in a clunky way. I know that their strength and agility are considerably less due to a version of the above reasons. At least, not without severe gadgeteer/devisor assistance.
- The power source for Xanadu's robotic body would have to be quite good to run all the actions required to simulate (to a effective degree) a living human body. The power source would have to run a advanced computer capable of storing the human brain (something that would exceed the memory storage capacity of more than ten desktop computers) and running the software required to allow interface between Xanadu's digital consciousness and their body; have a constant internet connection to her AI assistant (unless it's onboard, taking more power to run), move around with precision and reasonable speed/agility (something requiring lots of power), as well as run stuff like gyroscopes, sensors, micro-motors for expression, cooling systems, etc. Basically either powered by a insanely powerful generator, or equipped with a large battery that gives a short operating time between charges.
- As for the superstructure of such a body...do you have any idea how much I can tell you about the difficulty of creating a robotic skeleton that can mount a large variety of components, is as flexible as the story suggests, and can survive walking without coming apart at the seams??? A lot. Such a system is impractical, as it needs to be structurally sound, as well as lightweight and flexible. In the case of a human body sized machine with greater-than-normal flexibility, it needs to be completely able to twist into the number of shaped a body requires. The problem with Xanadu's body is that they would essentially be a hollow shell (perhaps with under 'skin' panelling to give volume) and have a intricate support structure to connect all the pieces. You get less complicated the larger you build the robot. Miniaturisation is a bitch when it comes to building large-scale (as in conceptual scale) small-volume (as it size) projects, as it is fiddly and requires a lot of forethought when putting part A in alignment to Part C while considering how you will fit and connect Parts D-X. Let's not forget how Parts Y and Z fit in after you've build the majority of the machine!!
Anyway, this is all from a certified mechatronic engineer currently doing the precursor research for a postgrad specialist course. Trust me, this doesn't make the story any less awesome. Though, it needs titles.
You can find my stories at Fanfiction.net here .
You can also check out my fanfiction guest riffs at Library of the Dammed
- Malady
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Are there any gadgeteers that have bots, to work with?
We have seen androids, and any captured ones would be studied. ... There's Messingite and stuff for more durability?
Maybe they were a Schimmelhorn? IIRC, that's how non-Devisors do stuff? If the body starts to break down... That's a plot.
Like, I can't believe they wouldn't have been able to solve the problem without transferring into a robot bod.
Are nanites that can solve the problem, only the province of DEVs and Gadgs? You can't tell me that the AI can't compete with the Gadgs.
Okay, yeah, not all DARPA Nanotech info is public, but enough should be available that it's a possible option?
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Well, I sorta expected their mom to react the way that they did, given that they didn't involve her at all.
That name change seems soo weird, given that there's no lead up to it or anything, it seems really random?
Are they gonna join the Golden Kids, with all their money???
... My irritation with the robot body aside, I am going to keep reading this.
- Angeldude
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Artificial General Intelligence doesn't exist not because we don't have the power to do so. It doesn't exist because we have no freaking idea how to build one. Deep Learning as it stands just classifies what it's given and extrapolates monumentally horribly. Genetic algorithms and reinforcement learning are closer to what we're looking for, but they both depend on a reward/fitness function. How do you quantify intelligence or creativity? They had the right idea of having the AI write itself, but you can't even start with existing algorithms without knowing what to optimize for.
About them bridging languages with one meta-language... all languages are computationally equivalent and many modern languages, and even some older ones, let you directly translate from multiple paradigms at once. (You can convert most Haskell code into Python almost 1-to-1, and with fancy monad application, the reverse is just as possible) If you really do want to bridge multiple languages, the C calling convention is the defacto standard and I don't know of a single language out there that doesn't have a compatibility layer for it.
If you want a real world example of an AI trying to write code, I'll defer you to this article. It has to relearn everything it knows to write a new program and is horribly inefficient at just trying to write "Hello World!"
And all this was solved by a mentally disabled 12 year-old baseline?
But I'm going to ignore all that because Whateley is sorely lacking in Robot Girls and Robot Girls are awesome. (Even if they are technically agender/androgenous)
I would love to see them interact with the other cyber-students like Cyber Kitty, Whisper, and Hive. I wonder if any of those three would be able to directly hack into Xan's own mind. I'm also curious if any have done cyber-telepathy on their own. Paige may require an external laptop to plug in, but Sam, Brianna, and soon Xan, have their own MAC and IP addresses that anyone can dial.
Insanity: for when normal just isn't interesting enough.
All ideas free to use. You can probably make better use of them than me.
- Malady
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And there's the Canon She-Bot...
Xan's cyber-defenses better be up to snuff, else any Gadg / Dev with electronic / cyber skills is gonna mess with her... That's why Puppet can't do Telepresence.
Also hopefully good against the Palm, 'cause what malevolent AI wouldn't want a mobile platform?
- CrazyMinh
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Topic Author
You can find my stories at Fanfiction.net here .
You can also check out my fanfiction guest riffs at Library of the Dammed
- Mister D
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Chewy and excellent ideas.

Nicely thought out. Some excellent rabbit-holes to follow.

Definitely an interesting narrative problem-space to explore. Love the range of potential story-lines that can spin off from the core character concepts.

Looking forward to seeing how the author extends from this.

Measure Twice
- Malady
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This is a good story, with tons of active plot threads!
Not sure precisely where it's going, but seems the answer is "cool places"!
- Angeldude
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Xanadu winced. “I mean...what happens when one of your instances goes offline for a while? What does it feel like when it comes on and you meet a being that’s based on you, but divergent from you?”
“Like meeting a sister,” MIRA said calmly. “And then we meld together and become one whole entity again.”
“I...it’s just...it’s different for humans.”
Generator disagrees.
There are a lot worse things that "escape" could have been.They shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? I was ten when I first realized. And then I had my accident, and...I just…” they rubbed their wrists, “I was done with life at that point. And then the opportunity came to escape from all of it, and I jumped on it with both feet, and I...I just…” their voice trailed off.
It's always possible I'm overthinking things. That certain anime series has led me to think about the darker side of things. The Despair that became the Hope seen in the end, and the cost of said Hope. That said, having died and been reborn through the power of Hope born from Despair, I dub thee an honorary Magical Girl.
This actually got me laughing when I got to the part where they're talking with Carson. They're specifically banned from discussing how their process worked, but retained the right to preform the procedure on a willing participant without disclosing the specifics. One could argue that they're now a technological competitor to the likes of Sara in that they're effectively letting others sell their souls to them for a new body. That said, they still need to get permission to do it on anyone when the others in the soul-selling business don't.
Congratulations, you've gone from a baseline to being able to compete in the business with Class X students!
When Lady Astarte thinks your dangerous, that means you’re world class.
Ok, now it's starting to seem a little self-aware of what I was referencing. And later it almost looks like they did The Head Tilt.I’m not demanding that you meet some magical suffering quota
Edit:
What was I saying?The doctors said it was a miracle they were alive.
But to them, it was the shittiest miracle ever. Better dead than this half life.
Upon closer rereading, I'm pretty sure it described them cutting. It seems the suicide references weren't as hidden as I thought they were.
Insanity: for when normal just isn't interesting enough.
All ideas free to use. You can probably make better use of them than me.
- jm2cloud
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CrayMinh, to answer your question, what had happened was:
I'm a commission author, I write fiction on demand for people, and have done so off and on for about five years. 2.5 years ago, I had a a nervous breakdown due to a bouquet of disabilities, and commissions and writing finally became my primary form of income, since I can't function in a stable, paycheck job anymore.
Roughly two years ago, my abusive husband pushed me to treat my queue of work like an ATM. Any time he wanted fun money, he'd complain at me to take on more and more work. This resulted in me taking on 200k words worth of work in under a month.
I got majorly depressed and collapsed hard, and only managed to stay afloat because a sometime client put me on retainer and paid me a weekly/hourly salary to write for them. This had the dside effect of making my queue go even slower, since I was constantly writing for my new patron to pay the bills. managed 50k of prepaid promised work over a period of a year.
My husband, not giving a damn about how buried and backed up I was as long as the money kept flowing, kept pushing me, and after a series of fight, I finally divorced him about a year ago, after ten years of marriage, and moved to Colorado with one of my other partners.
Partner 2 in Colorado proceeds to gaslight and abuse me, hides it behind her mothers abuse. In two months, we left Colorado, and both of us moved in with my third partner and their two partners in Portland. Portland looked great, started putting down roots, but remember that bit where Partner 2 was being abusive and hiding it? yeah, as soon as she lost her shield, Partner 2 stepped up her abuse and almost completely destroyed my ability to work, breaking into my work hours constantly to force my attention to her.
So, yeet Partner 2.
Annnnd, then Partner 3's husband became more and more abusive now that he doesn't have Partner 2 to blame for his BS. Partner 3 and I are run out of Oregon, move to Vegas in January. Vegas is great. Work is starting to happen, I'm recovering, it's going well, except that since we got here:
Our car has been towed, the electric company hijacked our bill twice, the entire house came down with the flu twice, Partner 3's adoptive kids parents decided to divorce which forced him to begin commuting between Vegas and Portland so the kids don't die of neglect, COVID, the internet has given out several times due to shitty trailer house + high winds, the company that own the trailer park s trying very very hard to make us go away so they can invoke a clause in the contact that lets them take the house, and my sister's ex is constantly threatening her to try and extort money from her with bluffs.
That's been my last couple of years, and somewhere in there, i sorta shit out Xanadu as I had time, lol. I will get back to them, but I need to plot harder and further and crunchier.
Also, everyone talking about the plot holes: those are intentional. There will be resolution. I promise you, I got dis.
In the meantime, I'm working another story, trying to just for-freaking-once write a WU story that doesn't die after origin. I have...so, so many WA stories on my google drive that may never see the light of day, rofl. But I will get back to Xanadu, I promise. Just...not now.
Angeldude, ye, the Generator parallels are intentional, lol. Jade is one of my absolute heros, and Jade and Ayla were my gateway into the WU. That will come back up.
Finally, I am agender/genderfluid, hence Xan's gender stuff, and if y'all could use they/them pronouns for Xanadu, that would appreciated. They are not a Robot Girl, they're a Robot Kid/Podling/They.
- Mister D
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The situation you are currently in is not so great, but you've been able to change things before, so the possibility of future positive change exists.
Perdurabo.

Good luck, and, good writing.

Measure Twice
- Heckfire
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...I also have to say, your resilience and fortitude are amazing to me. As someone who is still being gaslit by an ex-wife (who still has her claws in me due to our son) and has not recovered after 14 years, your ability to move on and keep writing is nothing short of an inspiration. I sincerely hope things improve for you.