But the whole point of the modifications was so it could pass as human. Which means beforehand, it was a struggle to.

Agreed. I hope they pull it back. It’s clearly where anyone would prefer to live!

After ART’s modifications. Other secunits would know from it’s gate and general movement, etc.

I remember it being a clear thing, but I’ll be rereading soon. It’s the book after the next one.

It was only after ART’s modifications that Murderbot was able to pass for a heavily augmented human. That was the point of them.

I hope they show the Preservation more seriously later. It was all vague at the start in the books. Though I will be rereading!

I think commercially, they needed a known actor and who can not only look genderless, but sound it? It is easier in books.

I do see what your saying, it is just the books have a secunit clearly not looking like any gender. They have skimmed over Muderbot’s disgust of gender and sex, but in the books it is constant theme. It’s visceral.

To have them be genderless is only half way, as secunits, in the books, also look genderless (and not human).

Skarsgård, for a dude, is doing as good a job as he can. Not many known actors could visually do what I’d have preferred, and also can do a ungendered voice. (Any?). I know it’s easier to do it books and realistically they needed a well known actor to pull people to the show.

It’s just…just… That’s not my Murderbot!

It’s an interesting point, and I agree with it politically, but in the books it’s made clear secunits look androgynous and non-human.

Some change between media change is always going to happen. I think Skarsgård is doing as good a job as can be done with his face. I’m making peace with it. Maybe the bigger problem is the dismissiveness of the portrayal of Preservation Alliance society. But we did live in the Corporate Rim!

Not quite as I saw them, but I certainly saw it clearly not human. A composite of plastic, metal and flesh. Comfortable with the label it.

Though the counter to that, I’m sure the books mentions sexbots basically being the same platform as secunits, only with a gender and without built in weapons. With a combatunit being the same again, but with even more weapons (including cyber). Which does say maybe Martha Wells had the platform, without armour, as maybe more fleshly than we are thinking.

The TV series is good, but it’s not as I saw in my head. Other than “Sanctuary Moon”, which nails it.

I am surprised there hasn’t been real unset by fans by giving Murderbot gender. They could have at least picked someone who didn’t look binary. But Skarsgård has got the right character if not the right face.

Big US Corp is in bed with money and power. Right now, that means MAGA and that does mean fascism & Zionists. The tech itself can be ok. Though WhatsApp/Facebook isn’t.

They could of at least removed his hair and put some clear cybernetics. In the books, you couldn’t mistake Murderbot for a human. Even after ART’s modifications (adding hair etc) Murderbot still could only pass as a heavily cybernetically augmented human.

I do fear the shied away from the gender stuff.

Same here in UK. So many people think of it like email. A universal communication system. They can’t see the problem with it being a single, closed, for profit, provider. Now Meta feels people are locked in, they will be finding out. But they still won’t see the problem until it ratcheted to really bad. Like frogs in boiling water.

If you do use an SD card, use an official one rather than a random one. Not all SD card are the same and the official ones have been selected for this use.

This helps with wear and the power loss issue, which is the biggest issue with them.

When SD write, they shuffle which block is which to share out the writes. If power is lost in the middle of this shuffle, you get a new type of corruption no file system can handle. This is why you must shutdown anything running from an SD card, not just yank the power.

I’ve been using it for over a decade. I use it to auto upload all my family photos from family phones. I use the calendars to organize. I use Notes on my phone all the time and pick them up my laptop. I use Passwords for all my passwords. I use Contacts to sync my contacts from my phone and Thunderbird. Then I nightly remote backup it to a machine I leave at my parent’s. It’s great.

Just leaving this here : https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

This is battle they can’t win and it just makes everything stupid trying.

Right to repair, and openness, is absolute must for devices being put into peoples bodies. The fight seams to not even started yet. Most people are completely asleep to issues right now.

Karen Sandler did a great talk on closed source software medical devices many years ago.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1h1s_ojpM

This even more the case if it’s your brain! It probably won’t work for decades, but we should get house in order long before it does.

The point is that they are malleable.

They don’t care about being bad or good. They just care about money. Change what makes money and they change. There is no resolve. Along with changes happening I listed before, one big thing we need do is bring environmental cost on to the balancesheet. At the moment it’s all external costs. Move the costs of items disposal on to the up front cost. Scale it by item’s life time. Incentivize better behavior.

Suits aren’t evil. I mean I’m they aren’t good either, but all they care about is money. They push for closed because that is where the money is, but they have no resolve on anything. Law makers either try and follow experts or money.

To the extent either believe anything, they believe the IP lie and thus don’t see the tragedy of the commons they advocate.

Open however has passion, and is technically correct. (The best kind of correct.)

Little by little, we’ll keep winning out. Right to repair is an important front, but so is digital rights, privacy and competition.