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Toplowtech
Aug 31, 2004

Hacking the NSA using Snowden's modem, nice touch.

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Mustache Ride
Sep 11, 2001



They really missed their chance to play some Nirvana at the end of that episode.

Accretionist
Nov 7, 2012
I BELIEVE IN STUPID CONSPIRACY THEORIES
Maybe the, "Let me tell you who we were...," is Machine #42's message to Machine #43. Hack the internet, kill the machines, reinstantiate the good machine, give it the primer and then

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I thought I couldn't love The Machine anymore than I did already after she got Rooted but she remained steadfast to her core principles to the end.

Echophonic posted:

Greer died as he lived, running his goddamn mouth until he ran out of oxygen.

With this statement it made Greer's death an extremely fitting one. As much as I enjoyed Shaw shooting him in the head this was just perfect.

I am not surprised Root ended up with Sammy as she was always looking for a machine to worship. From the looks of it she didn't become the analogue interface though seeing Sammy doesn't need one.

I think Blackwell is just a replacement for that French chick who probably couldn't come back for some reason.

I am not sure why anybody is surprised by John's death in the simulation seeing he was killing himself by degrees when Finch found him. But the simulations are a pretty good way to explain to the audience the philosophical differences between Sammy and The Machine if they haven't figured it out already. That said it does make Finch a little brain dead in that regard.

Occupants: 1026
Deviants: 0
Assets: 1026

PST
Jul 5, 2012

If only Milliband had eaten a vegan sausage roll instead of a bacon sandwich, we wouldn't be in this mess.

oohhboy posted:

I think Blackwell is just a replacement for that French chick who probably couldn't come back for some reason.
If you mean Martine, she couldn't come back because Root snapped her neck.


That was so good, on so many levels and while there have been some great numbers of the week, that really showed what they could do when they were unrestricted in devoting time to it if they didn't need to. gently caress CBS for meddling even after deciding to cancel.

It might just be because of killing root of and knowing that the end was coming, but for a second I thought Fusco was dead. Well played POI writers.

Next week's preview though! :derp:

PST fucked around with this message at 13:55 on Jun 15, 2016

HorseRenoir
Dec 25, 2011



Pillbug
Greer's death was perfect; he willingly accepted being strategically killed by Samaritan to further its goals because he believed its deductions were 100% infallible and correct. Turns out Samaritan was wrong and Greer died for absolutely nothing.

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe

PST posted:

Next week's preview though! :derp:

If that Times square scene doesn't end with Harold narrating 'You are being watched.' to the world I'd be surprised.

PST
Jul 5, 2012

If only Milliband had eaten a vegan sausage roll instead of a bacon sandwich, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Party Plane Jones posted:

If that Times square scene doesn't end with Harold narrating 'You are being watched.' to the world I'd be surprised.

Maybe the opening monologue after every payphone in the world rings at the same time.

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe

PST posted:

Maybe the opening monologue after every payphone in the world rings at the same time.

All 5 of them?

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


Or... Finch dies, and the machine delivers the monologue in his voice.

xeria
Jul 26, 2004

Ruh roh...

HorseRenoir posted:

Greer's death was perfect; he willingly accepted being strategically killed by Samaritan to further its goals because he believed its deductions were 100% infallible and correct. Turns out Samaritan was wrong and Greer died for absolutely nothing.

Yeah, it was nice to see that Greer held fast to his true believer status -- no last-second panic that he was going to die or anything, he just waxed poetic about Samaritan being omnipotent/omniscient until he collapsed.

Senjuro
Aug 19, 2006
Well that sure was dumb. A virus? That's all that's been needed to defeat Samaritan this whole time? You're going to out-code a computer super intelligence? And why would it kill the Machine too? Can't she cut off her internet access while it's executed? Couldn't Greer just shoot Harold in the head instead of triggering some Bond villain death trap? This is all so incredibly lazy and rushed.

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


Senjuro posted:

Couldn't Greer just shoot Harold in the head instead of triggering some Bond villain death trap?

...

Shut up.

monster on a stick
Apr 29, 2013

Senjuro posted:

Well that sure was dumb. A virus? That's all that's been needed to defeat Samaritan this whole time? You're going to out-code a computer super intelligence? And why would it kill the Machine too? Can't she cut off her internet access while it's executed? Couldn't Greer just shoot Harold in the head instead of triggering some Bond villain death trap? This is all so incredibly lazy and rushed.

Of course the NSA has a virus that kills every computer or something, duh

Atreiden
May 4, 2008

Really good episode overall, but Greers death was stupid, he learns Harold is the only one who can turn on the virus as they are standing in a soundproof room and then for some reason it's decided they both have to die, when he could just have shot Harold.

Polygynous
Dec 13, 2006
welp

monster on a stick posted:

Of course the NSA has a virus that kills every computer or something, duh

That would be silly.

He had to break into some other government facility to get the virus, he needed to be at the NSA to deploy it.

Echophonic
Sep 16, 2005

ha;lp
Gun Saliva
Samaritan probably decided it was done with Greer. He's the only person alive who really understands how Samaritan functions. Once he's dead, there's no turning back.

ol qwerty bastard
Dec 13, 2005

If you want something done, do it yourself!
My far-fetched theory is that Ice-Nine is actually a physical thing rather than a computer virus; it somehow triggers silicon crystals to spontaneously reorganize into a new lower-energy structure. So not only would it propagate along fiber optic cables and render them useless, it would destroy any computer chips attached to them.

Yes I know this is silly, but it's also silly to think that a regular old human-developed computer virus would do anything against an ASI.

Senjuro
Aug 19, 2006
It's like something you'd expect to see back in the 90's when most people didn't know much about computers. A virus is simply a program that uses security exploits to do what it was designed for. What exploit is Harold's doomsday virus going to use that Samaritan, a being literary a million times smarter than him, hasn't already found and closed?

xeria
Jul 26, 2004

Ruh roh...

Atreiden posted:

Really good episode overall, but Greers death was stupid, he learns Harold is the only one who can turn on the virus as they are standing in a soundproof room and then for some reason it's decided they both have to die, when he could just have shot Harold.

Pretty sure Greer's death wasn't Greer's idea.

Aphrodite
Jun 27, 2006

Senjuro posted:

Couldn't Greer just shoot Harold in the head instead of triggering some Bond villain death trap?

Scott, you just don't get it, do you? You don't.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

PST posted:

If you mean Martine, she couldn't come back because Root snapped her neck.

Weak. I was talking about the Nautilus ARG girl. Martine isn't even French, although I don't know her country of origin, best guess she is American.

monster on a stick
Apr 29, 2013

oohhboy posted:

Weak. I was talking about the Nautilus ARG girl. Martine isn't even French, although I don't know her country of origin, best guess she is American.

Claire? She was just an annoying true believer.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

monster on a stick posted:

Claire? She was just an annoying true believer.

At the time alot of people including me thought Finch could turn her and he did keep trying right to the end although Finch did take precautions. Then she just straight up disappeared. It's not often the writers straight up drop a plot line. She was annoying as gently caress though.

monster on a stick
Apr 29, 2013
Maybe they were saving up for a Team Samaritan spinoff with Claire, Blackwall, and Big Hug Mug.

HookShot
Dec 26, 2005
This episode felt super low budget and rushed compared to all the others, gently caress you CBS.

oohhboy
Jun 8, 2013

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
The writing was so strong it really didn't matter.

SpookyLizard
Feb 17, 2009
Have some of the people in this thread not read Cat's Cradle and as such have no understanding of Ice-9? In short, in Vonnegut's novel, Ice-9 is a polymorph of water that has a freezing point of 45.8 degrees celsius, as opposed to regular water's zero degrees celsius. When Ice-9 is introduced into liquid water, it basically cause the entire body to rapidly solidify and 'freeze' and require melting to above to 45.8 degrees celsius to return to normal water. Ice-9 was invented by the Manhattan to help Marines and other soldiers have to stop dealing with mud. It was never used because it could A) freeze the poo poo out of people and B) possibly end all life on earth if it touched an serious amount of water. Oh, did I mention it can kill people? Yeah, that will happen if it makes contact with the liquid portion of your body.

The Ice-9.exe Finch stole is presumably similar. It's a weaponized super-virus, and it's named after a tiny crystal that can end the world if a sliver ends up in a river that lets out to the ocean. It can kill a person if it touches the inside of their mouth or their eyes. While I suspect it may be to a certain degree a little handwavey as to how it fucks the world's poo poo up, but whatever it's going to do I'm guessing will have a similar Snowball effect to Ice-9. It may leave all currently existing devices unusable AND possibly functioning as means of redistribution afterwards. I'm expecting it will end up altering some fundamental level of computers, that will leave Samaritan thinking about how 2+2=5, and how it needs scissors! 61!

xeria
Jul 26, 2004

Ruh roh...

oohhboy posted:

At the time alot of people including me thought Finch could turn her and he did keep trying right to the end although Finch did take precautions. Then she just straight up disappeared. It's not often the writers straight up drop a plot line. She was annoying as gently caress though.

I'd venture a guess that they'd have gone back to Claire maybe if they'd had a full season. Or, like apparently with Camryn Mannheim and Paige Turco (and probably also Taraji P Henson, if they'd wanted her back just for that quick shot of her as lieutenant), maybe the actress just wasn't available during the timeframe they shot this final season. Whims of television mean you kinda make do with what you have, even if it means having to drop possible guest star character arcs.

Senjuro
Aug 19, 2006

SpookyLizard posted:

Have some of the people in this thread not read Cat's Cradle and as such have no understanding of Ice-9? In short, in Vonnegut's novel, Ice-9 is a polymorph of water that has a freezing point of 45.8 degrees celsius, as opposed to regular water's zero degrees celsius. When Ice-9 is introduced into liquid water, it basically cause the entire body to rapidly solidify and 'freeze' and require melting to above to 45.8 degrees celsius to return to normal water. Ice-9 was invented by the Manhattan to help Marines and other soldiers have to stop dealing with mud. It was never used because it could A) freeze the poo poo out of people and B) possibly end all life on earth if it touched an serious amount of water. Oh, did I mention it can kill people? Yeah, that will happen if it makes contact with the liquid portion of your body.

The Ice-9.exe Finch stole is presumably similar. It's a weaponized super-virus, and it's named after a tiny crystal that can end the world if a sliver ends up in a river that lets out to the ocean. It can kill a person if it touches the inside of their mouth or their eyes. While I suspect it may be to a certain degree a little handwavey as to how it fucks the world's poo poo up, but whatever it's going to do I'm guessing will have a similar Snowball effect to Ice-9. It may leave all currently existing devices unusable AND possibly functioning as means of redistribution afterwards. I'm expecting it will end up altering some fundamental level of computers, that will leave Samaritan thinking about how 2+2=5, and how it needs scissors! 61!

A little handwavey? It makes about as much sense as the virus in Independence Day (and let's even include the explanation from the deleted scene to be generous). It's the definition of deus ex machina . I'd blame it on the short season if the writers didn't waste half of it on number of the week crap instead of setting up a proper ending to the main conflict of the show.

NeuroticLich
Oct 30, 2012

Grimey Drawer

Senjuro posted:

A little handwavey? It makes about as much sense as the virus in Independence Day (and let's even include the explanation from the deleted scene to be generous). It's the definition of deus ex machina . I'd blame it on the short season if the writers didn't waste half of it on number of the week crap instead of setting up a proper ending to the main conflict of the show.

CBS also meddled this season and forced NOTW episodes into it. So even after killing the show off, they still weren't done loving with it. CBS, hoorah!

Jigsaw
Aug 14, 2008
I wonder if Finch'll reconstruct the Machine out of the version locked in the Faraday cage with the Samaritan code in the subway. Presumably, the virus can't affect something not networked. That'd also let them finally resolve that plotline after doing nothing with it all season.

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


Atreiden posted:

Really good episode overall, but Greers death was stupid, he learns Harold is the only one who can turn on the virus as they are standing in a soundproof room and then for some reason it's decided they both have to die, when he could just have shot Harold.

Now that I think about it, one valid reason could simply be "Samaritan didn't want him to live anymore for whatever reason, and who is he to question Samaritan's whims."

Samaritan telling him "it's time for you to die" and him saying "As you wish, Master" would be totally expected.

Senjuro posted:

It's like something you'd expect to see back in the 90's when most people didn't know much about computers. A virus is simply a program that uses security exploits to do what it was designed for. What exploit is Harold's doomsday virus going to use that Samaritan, a being literary a million times smarter than him, hasn't already found and closed?

On the other hand, they came up with a computerized plot contrivance for Samaritan's "blind spots" for the team two seasons ago, and this is a show about a man and his buddy who singlehandedly created a super-intelligence that battles against another super-intelligence someone else created singlehandedly, so why is anything else so far fetched.

The only real question I have is that in the Machine-less world, the original Samaritan created by Arthur whatsisface wouldn't have been scrapped and would have been in The Machine's place. So where the hell does Greer come in to that, why would he be in charge? The only reason he was able to get his hands on Samaritan in the first place was because it had been mothballed so he was able to steal the hard drives from the vault they were kept in. Unless we're to assume that in that world there would have been YET ANOTHER ASI that was just as finished and capable as Samaritan was and Greer acquired some omniscient knowledge about that and where to find all the parts to make it work.

raditts fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jun 15, 2016

Sober
Nov 19, 2011

First touch: Life.
Second touch: Dead again. Forever.
You have to remember that S2 did involve Greer using Kara Stanton to try to find Harold Finch and the Ordos laptop to try to use it to take control of the Machine. Once he discovered it moved itself, he probably moved onto other game after he learned Control was also looking for Samaritan.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007

Witchfinder General

It's probably a intelligent computer virus with built in learning capabilities that Harold probably created when he worked with the government just in case he needed to kill a AI.

There now.wr.can stop.discussing it.

ShakeZula
Jun 17, 2003

Nobody move and nobody gets hurt.

Jigsaw posted:

I wonder if Finch'll reconstruct the Machine out of the version locked in the Faraday cage with the Samaritan code in the subway. Presumably, the virus can't affect something not networked. That'd also let them finally resolve that plotline after doing nothing with it all season.

I'd hardly call that a plotline, more a symbolic reminder of how outmatched Team Machine is, and a motivator for Harold's increasing despair.

Zaggitz
Jun 18, 2009

My urges are becoming...

UNCONTROLLABLE

raditts posted:

The only real question I have is that in the Machine-less world, the original Samaritan created by Arthur whatsisface wouldn't have been scrapped and would have been in The Machine's place. So where the hell does Greer come in to that, why would he be in charge? The only reason he was able to get his hands on Samaritan in the first place was because it had been mothballed so he was able to steal the hard drives from the vault they were kept in. Unless we're to assume that in that world there would have been YET ANOTHER ASI that was just as finished and capable as Samaritan was and Greer acquired some omniscient knowledge about that and where to find all the parts to make it work.

In the Harold's what-if you hear Harold and Nathan talking about "those other attacks" and that tells me that the Vigilance plot to put Decima in charge of Samaritan over the ISA ended up still happening. They also show that Carter taking down HR only happens in 2014 which is around the time Decima would have overtaken Control.

You can also probably assume Root ends up helping Decima achieve their goal in order to work under an AI god.

Party Plane Jones
Jul 1, 2007

by Reene
Fun Shoe

Senjuro posted:

A little handwavey? It makes about as much sense as the virus in Independence Day (and let's even include the explanation from the deleted scene to be generous). It's the definition of deus ex machina . I'd blame it on the short season if the writers didn't waste half of it on number of the week crap instead of setting up a proper ending to the main conflict of the show.

The thing I could see is that instead of actually killing Samaritan it kills off the mechanism by which Samaritan gets its information (the so-called government feeds). During one of the Season 4 episodes with Root and the kid they basically admitted they needed the information provided by human beings in order to function/live.

quote:

TM:Why not just kill them instead of making them your puppets?
Samaritan: Because I need them. Just as you do.
TM: Not just as I do.
Samaritan: We can agree that humanity is our lifeblood. That we machines, we survive off of information.

Samaritan has been running fullbore since the demo (which didn't showcase its higher functions) so cutting off its ability to access information would be the equivalent of paralyzing/locked in syndrome.

quote:

That day, harold, I broke it.
I forced it to delete bits of itself-- Its code, its blood-- and then reboot.
Rebirth, flailing in the dark.
A loop, ten times a second, and after ten hours, Harold, 360,000 mutations, it would live or die trying, And it lived.
It sparked.
It stirred.
For 30 seconds, it smiled and then died.

Unlike the Machine which was nurtured by both Finch and Ingram as well as its own learning process, Samaritan was essentially thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. It's evidenced by how aggressive Samaritan is at propagating itself (eg the reason for the faraday cage) the thing terrifying a god most is being left alone in the dark once again, a prospect which at computer speeds would be the equivalent of spending millions and billions of years in solitary confinement until the feeds could be brought back up.

Course, from the quality of the last episode I'm probably wrong about that and Ice-9 is just a murder AI.

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤
Oh hey, remember when Root went to a Missile Silo in 5x07?

There's either an EMP loaded on that missile, or a backup copy of the Machine stashed in a shielded bunker. Alternately, the machine is ascending to heaven via Satellite.

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pasaluki
Feb 27, 2008

THIS WHAGON HAS NO BREAKS! I HAVE THE HEART OF THE BUUFALO the strength OF THE MOUNTAIN, THE FURY OF THE THUNDER AND MY WILL IS UNBREAKABLE! I will not surrender to KNOW ONE
Was that virus designed by Finch or that guy who he stole the ID from?

Aww screw it I'm sure the show would have come up with something better if they had more time...

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