Worldbuilding Realism Consultation Thread Mk. 4

[Bears Armed]

Non-police related: Is it feasible to have some political subdivisions of a country be 100+ times the population of others?

I mean, the present-day US does it (Cali and New Yawk vs Alaska and Wyoming), but is it really a rational system or should the more populous ones be sliced up?

Yeah, it's fine. In many ways, it makes sense; for instance, a large metropolis may well have a hundred or more times the population of an empty, unincorporated county. But this doesn't mean that the city should be split up, since in many ways it is more efficient for services to be coordinated by a single government city-wide, rather than having a dozen individual governments duplicating services. That's leaving aside the matter of culture and such.

And for an example where "culture and such" is a factor, as well as location, consider RL India whose division into a set of 'states' & 'union territories' is partly based on ethnic lines: most populous state = Uttar Pradesh (the middle part of the Ganges valley, inhabited mainly by speakers of Hindi) @ c.200 million --- larger than many actual [RL] nations; least populous union territory = Lakshadweep (the 'Laccadive Islands', a cluster situated off of the south-western coast) @ 64'429 [census in 2011] which is roughly equal to the nation of Marshall Islands but is only 627th among the 640 districts in India even though almost all of the more populous ones are included inside states rather than counted as other union terrriories; Population Ratio > 3'000:1 !

[Radictistan]

Should professional rugby in Radictistan be Rugby Union or Rugby League? I don't know much about either, I just thought "Rugby in Radictistan, why not?"

Let the flame war commence.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Should professional rugby in Radictistan be Rugby Union or Rugby League? I don't know much about either, I just thought "Rugby in Radictistan, why not?"

Let the flame war commence.

American Football ftw

[Radictistan]

Should professional rugby in Radictistan be Rugby Union or Rugby League? I don't know much about either, I just thought "Rugby in Radictistan, why not?"

Let the flame war commence.

American Football ftw

At least I know something about that. Sport is such an undeveloped part of my worldbuilding becasue I'm pretty apathetic about it in RL and not too knowledgeable.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

American Football ftw

At least I know something about that. Sport is such an undeveloped part of my worldbuilding becasue I'm pretty apathetic about it in RL and not too knowledgeable.

Or, be awesome and have both football and rugby. Choose rugby league.

[Radictistan]

At least I know something about that. Sport is such an undeveloped part of my worldbuilding becasue I'm pretty apathetic about it in RL and not too knowledgeable.

Or, be awesome and have both football and rugby. Choose rugby league.

For the extra bodily contact?

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Or, be awesome and have both football and rugby. Choose rugby league.

For the extra bodily contact?

Union only became pro in 1995? Whereas league has been professional since the late 1800's iirc

And yes I think it's generally more entertaining, although I'm not really knowledgeable on the subject.

[Rich and Corporations]

Robust Wireless Networking Security Standard

Source of Entropy
All RWNSS parent wireless nodes must include but aren't limited to the following two sources of entropy:
-A camera behind the data rate LED indicator. It is deemed to be sufficiently unpredictable because of flaws in the camera, thermal noise, and the number of photons that are generated by the LED is a random process. The picture taken is hashed using a 512-bit hash algorithm. A sysadmin through a wired connection can view the camera directly.
-Clock drift measurements for the two core CPU.

Authentication Process

There are two specified modes of authentication and connecting to a parent wireless node:

-Hotspot
Enter a pre-shared key for authentication between 1 and 47 characters in length.
The parent node will regularly broadcast it's public key. The child node will encrypt the message with the public key and send the pre-shared key and a 192-bit symmetric key to initiate the connection. The connection will thereafter use symmetric key cryptography.


-Enterprise
Insert a synchronization key dongle into the USB port of the wireless parent node. The wireless node will synchronize with the dongle a Salsa20 stream position and key, as well as the parent node's public key. Every second the stream position will be incremented by 1.
Insert the synchronization key dongle into the USB port of wireless child node. The child node will contact the parent node encrypted using the public key and include the 192-bit or 384-bit symmetric key. The connection will thereafter use symmetric key cryptography.


Encryption

For asymmetric cryptography, a 192-bit key for the elliptical curve is used.

The symmetric block cipher algorithm is a uses a variable length hash to populate the values of the substitution boxes and is structured like a Feistel network.
The best attacks upon the algorithm have broken only 25% of rounds with a 2^14 reduction in difficulty. It is estimated that the 192-bit variant will be secure for the next twenty-five years.

Alternatively Salsa20 can be used as a symmetric stream cipher algorithm in certain RWNSS-compatible models.

Channels and Frequency
There are 8 primary channels, and 32 sub-channels. Each sub-channel support 5 mibibits per second bandwidth under optimal conditions. Each sub-channel is dynamically assigned by the parent node to each child node. Quality of service controls can easily restrict sub-channel allocation.
Unlike WPA2, channels do not completely overlap each other.

These channels are centered near frequency 1.9 GHz, allowing for greater range then WPA2.

Suspicions
Many believe that the elliptical curve algorithm used for public key authentication was purposefully weakened and cryptographers suggest using enterprise encryption.

[Rich and Corporations]

What radio frequency do you use to microwave your food?

I use 5 gigahertz.

[Costa Fierro]

Should professional rugby in Radictistan be Rugby Union or Rugby League? I don't know much about either, I just thought "Rugby in Radictistan, why not?"

Let the flame war commence.

Rugby union is more rule bound and generally is used to represent various nations. League is more about clubs and getting shitfaced/sex orgies.

[Costa Fierro]

To change the subject, can anyone give me the 411 on how automobile production works? What kind of parts do companies like Ford, Toyota, etc. actually produce in-house as opposed to buying from other companies? Is there any reason not to have a mega-plant where steel goes in, cars come out?

That really depends on a lot of factors. Chief among which is money. Usually a company needs to be making a few billion per year in income after taxes before it can think about the running costs of a steel mill, which isn't limited to payment of workers and electricity but also sourcing the machinery, building it and sourcing the steel needed for production. Which is why most cars these days come in various composite materials or have copious amounts of aluminium in their construction, which is just as strong but also lighter, which makes the car overall lighter meaning better fuel economy (and that's always a plus).

As for parts, again, that is a lot of factors. The vast majority of vehicles on the roads today have parts that usually come from one manufacturer who sells their parts as part of contracts to various manufacturers. To illustrate my point better, here is a picture of a Saab 9-5 showing where the various parts of a car come from. And even then, the rest of the car doesn't necessarily come from the manufacturer. Most small cars sold by Seat, Skoda, Volkswagen and Audi share the same platform and engines because they are owned by the same parent company. Pagani uses engines made by Mercedes. The few actual parts made by the actual manufacturer in some cases are usually limited to the actual body shell and the doors, bonnet and boot. And even then, that's not always the case. The Seat Exeo for example is just a reconstituted Audi A4.

[Radictistan]

That's a really interesting picture. Thanks for the tip.

[Kouralia]

A company of 101 EOD Regiment, as it would appear on territorial duties with an attached Liaison Officer team of the local Police.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

A company of 101 EOD Regiment, as it would appear on territorial duties with an attached Liaison Officer team of the local Police.

Pwetty cool, but why aren't they marked with like EOD or smth

[Costa Fierro]

That's a really interesting picture. Thanks for the tip.

Not a problem. Feel free to scream in my direction if you want to know more (especially about rugby given that living in NZ, it's hard to get away from it).

A company of 101 EOD Regiment, as it would appear on territorial duties with an attached Liaison Officer team of the local Police.

Pwetty cool, but why aren't they marked with like EOD or smth

British EOD units aren't flashy. Usually it's just a truck with some fancy robots tucked inside.

[Kouralia]

A company of 101 EOD Regiment, as it would appear on territorial duties with an attached Liaison Officer team of the local Police.

Pwetty cool, but why aren't they marked with like EOD or smth

Yeah. Basically what Costa said. In Britain they're marked Royal Logistics Corps Bomb Disposal, but I didn't have room to fit that on the lorry. It doesn't really matter though, as they're the only units to use such colour schemes, and if they turn up with blue lights flashing then the presence of 'bomb disposal' isn't going to much affect their reception. In Kouralia the lorry carries most of the kit like robots and charges and disruptors etc., and the van carries the bomb disposal experts.

[Costa Fierro]

Ours are even less fancy.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Ours are even less fancy.

have fun getting stuck in traffic

[Kouralia]

Ours are even less fancy.

have fun getting stuck in traffic

Yeah, I'm actually confused: where are the blue lights?

I mean, looking at this - you get out the way if it's hurtling down the road with blue lights flaring and sirens blaring.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

have fun getting stuck in traffic

Yeah, I'm actually confused: where are the blue lights?

I mean, looking at this - you get out the way if it's hurtling down the road with blue lights flaring and sirens blaring.

A literal ticking bomb doesn't allow for stealthiness.

[Costa Fierro]

have fun getting stuck in traffic

Yeah, I'm actually confused: where are the blue lights?

I mean, looking at this - you get out the way if it's hurtling down the road with blue lights flaring and sirens blaring.

I don't know actually. Presumably there's a siren somewhere.

[Costa Fierro]

This is the wiki page for our national police.

And yes, $1.16 billion is peanuts.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

This is the wiki page for our national police.

And yes, $1.16 billion is peanuts.

Doesn't sound too good lol.

[Radictistan]

This is the wiki page for our national police.

And yes, $1.16 billion is peanuts.

Nice article. Well written.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

This is the wiki page for our national police.

And yes, $1.16 billion is peanuts.

Nice article. Well written.

To make clear on my former comment, I was referring to the content itself not the way it is organized. Corruption & all. Otherwise it is indeed tidy and well written.