I’m not. Again, there’s no reason to think that the Drifters would have any reason to use galnet address structures for internal communication. The very suggestion is ludicrous, and would require an assumption of a coincidence larger than ‘the Drifters are a totally random natural phenomenon’.
So if they’re not internal communication, then they tell us nothing about their internal communications. Nor do they answer the question of whether or not they can ‘think in the limited constraints of language’, because we don’t know where those communications came from. We know where ARC’s finding them, but that doesn’t tell us their point of origin. Maybe that’s something the Drifters are picking up from another, unknown, party. If so, it’s just a recording they’re making, which doesn’t indicate anything about their capabilities at all. It may be completely meaningless to them, in fact.
The footage was recorded in such proximity to the Drifters that it stands to reason that they were the source of it. To that matter, if they were not the source of the footage, than it could be inferred they are - as you say - not the source of the datavaults. That they just… Picked them up.
That creates a rabbit hole of additional questions. I am more keen to subscribe to Occam’s Razor.
I lean towards your view that they are running from something, those images of probable vessels of unknown origin and power imply such to me. If these vessels make the Drifters turn tail then they are a primary concern for us. Especially if they follow the Drifters through into k-space.
I’m still not convinced the messages aren’t for us one way or another, it’s just too convenient that we can easily decrypt the locations for the files.
A couple of questions though: The only crew on board the Drifter vessels are the Drifter infomorph cyborgs are they not? Everything else is automated. Given that the infomorphs themselves all carry the same few names this would imply the name is a model designation as with drones, ships etc, or that they are merely a projection of a singular entity.
The latter would explain the shoaling behavior of their flight patterns and the apparent singular focus of the whole fleet on one target at a time. Either way they are simply tools used for a purpose and therefore expendable to the controlling entity. Destroying them would be as consequential to those entities as losing a clone is to us.
In fact allowing them to be destroyed to deliver us a message might make an odd kind of sense, what’s the first thing capsuleers do in the face of new tech? We blow it up and reverse engineer it.
Not convinced it’s from the Drifters. This could easily be footage they recovered from other entities yet unknown. The Drifters and their Seekers and Lancers love scanning and taking whatever information they can.
Then why adhere to a ‘solution’ that requires more assumptions of things not supported by the evidence? Right now, the evidence tells us these recordings are found in Drifter wrecks, they use a language we’re able to understand, and they contain a galnet address structure we are the only ones known to use. Without making assumptions, that doesn’t point to Drifter origin.
So, here’s a theory I’ve been bouncing around. Please note that this is unsubstantiated.
We approach the issue of violence and destruction from a customarily meatspace, baseliner perspective. The Drifters, whatever they are, are a collection of infomorph entities. It may be that the destruction of their ships and clones aren’t considered bothersome, given the number of Sleeper cadavers they’ve likely been able to harvest from enclaves.
Indeed, given that the Drifters are seemingly unable or unwilling to communicate normally, it may be that this is their way of ensuring that we get their reconnaissance data.
It’s a bit out there, I know, but it would explain things at least a little bit.
That’s the point I was trying to make earlier. The Drifters are merely drones it would seem, and the loss of them means the same or less to their controlling entities as the loss of our clones to us.
They’ve also had ample time to observe our behaviour and understand how we as capsuleers respond to anything new. Blow it up first, ask questions later.
The more I think on this the more I think the damaged fleets are escorts to get the information through to us. The fleet ships are basically ablative armour against whatever is out there hitting them.
I’d guess it’s stored in trinary because that’s how they store things once they intercept it. I mean, we don’t store our copies of it in trinary, right? Cuz that’s not how we store stuff.
As for the idea that they’re basically throwing the ships away to ensure ‘we’ get the message… It’s plausible. They’ve shown no real aversion to being blown up, after all.
Indeed, and consider an ‘alien’ civilisation observing Empyrean actions. Faction Warfare, Code, Nullsec wars, Hisec wars, CODE. How many ways do we simply destroy each other to get a message across?
Alternate possibility that occurred to me: so, the likely form of the damage we capsuleers have been doing to the Sleepers is destruction of the hardware sustaining their civilization. If the Sleepers are upload entities-- essentially bodiless beings of data … could they be working on immigrating over here?
Without even going that far-- could the Drifter “scans” of our hardware be mostly for the purpose of accessing wireless data connections and so on? They’d likely have data tools good enough to basically beat our existing defenses outright, so…
Could we be finding bits of Drifter data on GalNet because the Drifters are using our own media for storage?
To extend this theory: If the Drifters can hack into and store data upon GalNet with ease, surely they could encrypt the actual data with equal ease. If you want to secure data you don’t place it on a public access platform unencrypted. This strongly implies it is meant to be seen.
Don’t forget they also harvest capsuleer corpses. If they got technology that can scan the burnt imprints, they could gleam bits of data about us that way. Enough capsuleer corpses & they probably can put stuff together.
So the galnet stuff could been accessed this way by them if it was intent to be seen by us, but that they are just very awkward with communications with non-drifter entities for some reason(see the Hilen Tukoss coding messages)
It’s worth questioning whether or not this information was intended for us - to retrieve it, their damaged and battle-weary vessels are destroyed. The footage seems to be from a Drifter perspective, meaning they’re possibly battle recordings. But the situation preceding the revelation of not unrelated distorted recording is what’s making me think:
It’s important to remember that the Drifters used our common language in their messages from “Dr. Tukoss”, albeit imperfectly. If this data was meant to be readily given to us, they would have made things far more simple - that, or it’s this is some sort of test of our capabilities.
Do the Drifters usualy leave/flee the battlefield once they’re engaged and visibly are losing the fight ?
Considering that they seem to be merely High-Tech Drones with only 2 different entities/programs (btw why ?) and that they seem disposable why would they flee even if confronted to another strong ennemy that is destroying them ? Is it thinking “our way” or thinking “their way” ?
I see damaged ships that indicate that they had a very tough fight, not that they lost it for sure.
I just say it’s another possibility that we shouldn’t put aside, don’t you think ?
What’s really weird about all the damaged ships is that usually in a fight with Drifters you wouldn’t damage many at once; you’d focus fire and kill one completely, then another, then another. If there are lots of damaged Drifters turning up, it seems like either someone’s using large-area weapons to damage a lot at once (and maybe not worrying too much about drawing multiple “doomsday” strikes), or these are survivors from many, many different engagements-- Drifters called primary by fleets that failed, for whatever reason, to finish the job.
Or maybe they just cozied up to something that didn’t turn out to be too comfortable? Caroline’s Star comes to mind?