Freefall

I wonder if it's the first time Florence exhibited blatantly non-dog behavior. To help Chris in the storm.

Ok. So the rain is significant◊. Maybe this is how she became an engineer?

As a side note, while I know why young Florence in flashback is wearing a collar, it feels really weird to see.

Yeah, she able to identify and fix the problem.

OK, fine, ID and talk Chris through fixing the problem. (Tho It's not clear if she can talk at this point; maybe this is what triggers her ability to do so..)

edited 15th Sep '17 4:49:22 PM by Geoduck

Without opposable thumbs?

Small tragedies◊. So far.

Wait, was she able to talk at the time?

It's possible she just carried appropriate cards. You know, "Timmy is stuck in a well," and all that.

It could be something as simple as "I am a service dog. If I'm giving you this card, my master is in trouble." Actually, do service animals carry something like this?

IIRC she could talk before she got the hang of the whole "biped" thing.

"Hello, sir? Your son's wheelchair has failed and he's stuck in the rainstorm."

"Oh, and your dog talks."

For good or for ill, there's no major drama currently for the wheelchair situation◊.

I wouldn't say it's in that bad a location, being in the rear slope means it's naturally protected from the rain.

Bad location or not, if the alternative is it catches fire then failing is still better.

He's not talking about the location of the engine, he's talking about how the failsafe left Chris stranded in the rain.

edited 20th Sep '17 3:56:22 AM by Aetol

I'm glad to see that there is at least one engineer who understands the proper appliance of expletives in a repair scenario.

Among other things, a failsafe should generally be a "fail open" sort of scenario where it's possible to exert manual control. For the case of automatic door locks, it should allow for the use of keys (and, unless you're operating a prison, should default to unlocking everything with loss of power. My middle school learned that the hard way when a power outage locked people into classrooms. Fortunately, we didn't have a fire before that was discovered). For the case of brakes, often it is a good idea to automatically brake (as per trucks and trains where, if the lines get disconnected, the brakes engage), but it should be possible to manually disengage that so that someone could push the wheelchair to safety.

Well, one consideration at least is that an electrical system that encounters a fault should not remain operating unless the faulting component can be isolated; that's not a design flaw.

edited 20th Sep '17 7:51:49 AM by Fighteer

And indeed, this is what drives Florence into engineering◊.

And to acquire thumbs.

Acquiring a set of opposable thumbs is every canine's dream — so they can open the refrigerator door and help themselves to food whenever they wish, just like Humans do.

Most dogs have pretty poor eyesight. Do we know how hers is?

All I remember was something about her color vision being hijacked for some other purpose by Dr. Bowman, explaining the Science Marches On situation of Florence being more color-blind than actual canines.

Ah, here we go:

Keeping track of what's important◊.

A callback to how easily Florence is distracted from deep intellectual work by a ball.

Something-something-technical jargon-something — Ball!

Mechanical ecosystem◊

Why do I feel like Dvorak and Qwerty have probably already created something for this? Closest I can think of is the waffle irons which steal power. Of course, this runs the risk of a runaway Von Neumann setup where the machines, much like today's rats, aren't necessarily so picky on only going after the dead stuff, settling for moving too slowly to get away.

Technically, robots working on recycling other robots, including hunting down un-recycled robots, also counts as such an ecosystem.