Shadowrun General > General Discussion

Musing on programming and such

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Voran:
As far as I know this wasn't covered in the various matrix related addn sourcebooks, and I'm gathering its more from a 'kind of like how we don't want to really give rules on how PCs could bypass the fake SIN/ID system and do it themselves' I'm figuring its a 'we don't really want to put rules towards this' for things like 'can I build my own fairlight excal quality deck and open source/program it myself?"

I also get something of the sense of "once you get a Fairlight Excal, if ever, you could jailbreak it and fiddle with its stuff so its not ratting out on you or doing automatic updates without your consent/etc' but also no one in the setting has done a 'I've cloned the OS of a Fairlight Excal that you guys can use on your homebrew tinkered decks you made'

In terms of the way the rules set it up, there's no option to buy your own individual components and 'build your own desktop/cyberdeck' without it being anything better than a rating 1, even if you were Fastjack or something.  There was also an aside of commlink descriptions that went "you can't have a rating 3 commlink and make it look like a rating 6 one' and 'you can't have a rating 6 one and make it look like a rating 3 one'  I mean sure, Form Function you could make the casing look different but it would 'be obvious' you're running a high tier device if you had one, instead of making it seem worse than it is.  Which....sounds like it bypasses the whole 'edit icon' kind of thing.  You can make your gun look like a potato with RFID if you want, but not make a commlink DR 6 look worse than it is?

Anyway, back to cyberdecks and stuff.  It made me wonder, since Fairlights are actually pretty rare out in the world, especially if you do something like "Fairlight Paladin, yep, there are less than 20 in the WHOLE WORLD" you start thinking, "Why would you ever buy one? Wouldn't that make you immediately noticeable to GOD?"  Hey guys look, there's some guy using one of the 17 Paladins in the world over here, wonder what's going on? kind of thing.

Going back to my original jailbreak thought, I figure much like modern smartphones and stuff, or computer OS/etc, they get updates.  Probably some data sharing info back to the manufacturer.  Now, any runner would immediately try their best to disable those functions and either do like I think...Glitch?...does by checking all updates line by line before letting it touch his stuff.

I think about Windows 10 and such, you can sorta do 'free no license windows 10' with some restrictions and such, but it also kind of feels like in setting that OS is way specific to hardware and there isn't really a true no license version unless you hack it somehow.  Higher end deck manufacturers want to maintain that exclusivity, so I don't know/don't believe there would be a "Linux for FL Excalibur" would there?

mcv:
Cyberdecks are specifically meant for security stuff, aren't they? Be it defensive or offensive. So I'd expect them to give way more control to their owner than even the fanciest comlink.

I don't know what the rules say about it, but I would expect a Fairlight Paladin to be able to spoof its identity to appear more harmless than it is. Or certainly not something that would make alarms go off. Maybe upon close inspection it quickly becomes obvious what it is, but nobody is going to inspect every device on their network closely enough for that.

The system doesn't really deal with operating systems, but I would expect cyberdecks to be open and loaded with all the power tools any hacker might need, rather than the closed, smooth, walled garden experience of consumer-oriented comlinks. Cyberdecks may be able to do the same things a comlink can do, but they can do a lot more on top of that. They're not comlinks. They're not comlinks with some extra features. They're devices that allow you to break or circumvent all the rules. They will absolutely run the 2070s version of Linux, and not the 2070s version of iOS.

FastJack:
I always saw the cost of the fake SINs as either you're paying someone to do it for you, or here's the cost for the time and materials to do it yourself. Even with programming, you still have to get the data for the SIN, and that's bribing, buying, or run resources.

Rapier:
Fake sins arent fake id where you just get a forged peice of paper. Its a process where a fake history is created and inserted in many databases. Its a complex and lenghty process that cannot be done with just one person.

One thing that is questionnable is that the runners' real biometric data has to be used in the fake id so anyone getting your fake id thus has your real biologicals. Thus the real notion of long term anonymity is debatable.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat:
Nor are fake SINs made to order.  Not the good ones, anyway... they need to just be out there, existing for a while, to add to their bona fides.

A fake SIN that didn't exist yesterday will never have the veracity of a fake SIN that's been cultivated in The System for years.  That kind of crafting/hacking isn't covered by the rules that focus on the here and now of shadowrunning.

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