Investor Information at weylandindustries.com

[Darkfox]

It seems that finally there comes new content to the Weyland Industries website, but what a content it is! There seems to be really a lot of stuff. https://www.weylandindustries.com/#/information Processor overloaded, shutting down.

I think everybody can go and check for themselves. I really like the concept of the whole site, and this goes well in the line - you got nukes, you got knives charts, you got diagrams... everything looks pretty "live".

I am sure somebody with more interest in economics, diagrams, and all this rubbish can make much more out of that than I do   The page obviously, in any case, provides a lot of material for discussion.

Just a few first-sight highlights from my pov:

As a company, we have virtually eradicated cancer.

Virtually. So much for the heated debate regarding Amanda Ripley-McClaren we've had on another thread. I would also like to know, for that matter, whether they have virtually eradicated cholera while we are at it.

Obviously, Weyland employees have longer average life expectancy. I assume Amanda then wasn't an employee. (Explains why it took so long to Burke to find out about her, huh? Otherwise he could have just looked it up in any random Company database, I am sure, which of course would collect all the data about the employees...)

The Unemployment Rate map fascinates me. Do you think it's actually based on something real? Because the countries which are the best (implying there are much more Weyland employees) seem sometimes just very interestingly chosen. Everybody could expect US, Russia, Canada (what is that with the northern islands? Are they supposed to be separate country?) having lots of WY employees since the Company would sweep through the big countries first, but I am speaking about some countries in central and south-eastern Europe where the choices seem rather random (I mean, seriously - Germany okay, Switzerland okay, then more curious - Czech Republic but not Slovakia - why?; Hungary and Romania - but not Bulgary; and half of former Yugoslavian states), likewise so many African countries (one can imagine W-Y having the Shell-like investments and activities there).

You can probably base a whole "mythology" on that (as in, starting making up what is the geopolitical situation at that point and why the situation is as it is). It is maybe only somewhat boring that the map is the same that we have today (if anybody spots any differences from the current geopolitical system, let us know, but I haven't notied anything).

The android diagrams are another thing, shows nicely the development towards David 7. It is notable that the biggest number of androids is employed in (probably) space exploration (or is it simply "transport"?). Literally millions of Ashes throughout the galaxy, then - what was Parker so surprised about? No androids in security (?), though. Goodbye, combat androids. Yeah, they should be illegal anyway. Robotic laws hold...

I am skipping the dull and ununderstandable (for me) economical parts and leaving them to somebody who can say more about that; the only thing I would point out is that terraforming seems to be the biggest issue for WY when it comes to income and all.

And finally, we have the progress of Project Prometheus. See for yourselves. What the heck does "Cosmic Call 2 - messages received - 3/5" mean??

[deezelboy]

That's down to the hidden content. Three hidden pictures have been found so far, and there are two more to go.  They've been basing the hidden stuff around Active SETI transmissions to other stars - the Cosmic Call messages.

I'm not entirely impressed with the info. Weyland employee satisfaction at 90%? Something must have gone seriously wrong by the time of the Alien films, as the only employee we saw who seemed satisfied was Aaron (well, ok, and Burke too).

No droids in security does seem a bit odd. Even if they weren't on the frontline, you'd kinda want them around given that I'd assume they'd be a lot less open to corruption. They're great at keeping secrets.

It is notable that the biggest number of androids is employed in (probably) space exploration (or is it simply "transport"?). Literally millions of Ashes throughout the galaxy, then - what was Parker so surprised about?

Yeah, the timeline also gives the indication that droids are around in the domestic market too.  So every household might have one. But this doesn't match up with what we see in the films. Droids are fairly rare.

Strange that Burke and Bishop's explanation of Ash's behaviour wasn't questioned more, given that Ash would have been a far more advanced model by that time, and presumably way less likely to bug out and kill everybody than the droids that had been around for around a century.

Resource reserves: Adamantine? Eitr? Carmot? Orichalcum? Really? Seems a bit mythological.

[Darkfox]

I'm not entirely impressed with the info. Weyland employee satisfaction at 90%? Something must have gone seriously wrong by the time of the Alien films, as the only employee we saw who seemed satisfied was Aaron (well, ok, and Burke too).

Well, the results the company publishes about itself would surely be more than a bit biased. I mean, hand the employees a questionnaire with well-formulated questions, and even Lydecker will say that he likes his job.

Yeah, the timeline also gives the indication that droids are around in the domestic market too.  So every household might have one. But this doesn't match up with what we see in the films. Droids are fairly rare.

Strange that Burke and Bishop's explanation of Ash's behaviour wasn't questioned more, given that Ash would have been a far more advanced model by that time, and presumably way less likely to bug out and kill everybody than the droids that had been around for around a century.

Resource reserves: Adamantine? Eitr? Carmot? Orichalcum? Really? Seems a bit mythological.

Yes, there is something wrong about those. If I am not mistaken, Orichalcum is something mentioned only in relation to Atlantis, made up by Plato, I think. Eitr was supposed to be the substance the life came to being through in some of the Nordic sagas, so this one at least I'd find to be a nice connection (thematically) with the Prometheus plot. However, it does not really make sense to put those in the website which, otherwise, tries to look pretty "realistic". Nothing against orichalcum being mined in the future, anything is possible, but... it's just a bit too over the top. I would phrase it this way: too much magic for my taste (nothing against magic, but not in this particular mythology).

[Hieronymus]

The person who discovers a mineral gets to come up with the common name, right?  I don't know if this fits with the timeline, but coming up with such grandiose names for materials mined outside the solar system sounds about right for the larger-than-life persona of Peter Weyland.

[deezelboy]

No androids in security (?), though. Goodbye, combat androids. Yeah, they should be illegal anyway. Robotic laws hold...

Thought about this last night, and there's no reason not to have combat droids then.

Bishop's a newer model, with behavioural inhibitors. Killing humans can't happen now, in 2179, but could've been all the rage previously. Ash wasn't governed by robotic laws, and it sounds like none of the Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2s were.

[Darkfox]

The person who discovers a mineral gets to come up with the common name, right?  I don't know if this fits with the timeline, but coming up with such grandiose names for materials mined outside the solar system sounds about right for the larger-than-life persona of Peter Weyland.

Oh yes, that's true in fact. It is quite probable that some weird stuff with weird properties was found or developed, so why not now use weird names for it... given that we have already all these "Plutonium" and "Thorium", who cares about the others...

Thought about this last night, and there's no reason not to have combat droids then.

Bishop's a newer model, with behavioural inhibitors. Killing humans can't happen now, in 2179, but could've been all the rage previously. Ash wasn't governed by robotic laws, and it sounds like none of the Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2s were.

Ah, that's true. Yes, obviously the "older moders" didn't have the inhibitors (now let's also see what comes out of that in Prometheus). Btw, I still find it interesting that Bishop's first reaction to the mention of A2's wasn't rather something like "but these are half a century old models, Miss... still using steam engine..."

Maybe the androids simply are not trusted enough to be part of the security forces.

[BishopIII]

I don't have any issue with Parker being surprised that Ash was an android. There may be the commercially available droids such as the David line, with every one rolling off the assembly line with an identical face and persona, and then you have your far superior espionage droids, who all have unique faces and are passed off as human to covertly protect the Company's interests. The fact that there are humanoid androids may not have been a shock to Parker, but the idea that a known crewmember could be one might well have been a shock. The way he was grumbling about it afterward suggests this.

[Hieronymus]

I imagine that, even if androids are common on starship crews, it's SOP for everyone to know who the androids are.  Imagine, for instance, there's a disaster on the ship and not enough room for everyone on the escape shuttle (this should sound familiar).  Androids are considered to be expendable, so the crew will know that their android crew don't need to take a spot on the shuttle that could be used by a meatbag.  Same if there's an accident that puts many of the cryotubes out of commission or any number of other scenarios that might put organic crew at risk.  That, perhaps, is why Parker was surprised - he was never informed.

[deezelboy]

If, as the website suggests, androids are both prevalent (1% of all Weyland employees) and cheap (offered on the domestic market to consumers, so probably around the cost of a car), why are they bothering with human crews on their spaceships at all?

[Darkfox]

If, as the website suggests, androids are both prevalent (1% of all Weyland employees) and cheap (offered on the domestic market to consumers, so probably around the cost of a car), why are they bothering with human crews on their spaceships at all?

Most likely there still should always be at least one human as a sort of "overseer", to be sure. But yes, that would still make the ratio like "6 androids:1 human" better than the other way around.

Maybe humans are still cheaper...

[deezelboy]

They can't possibly be cheaper - WY had to train humans, and pay them a wage, and pay for all the life support stuff on each ship it sends out.

I'm even a bit reluctant to think that there would need to be a human overseer - from what we've seen of the ships, 99% of the time they're run on automatic pilot with the human crew in hypersleep. If trusting an AI's the problem, then why do they allow this?

It never really occurred to me during the Alien films as androids were rare and usually used for special purposes - human employees seemed cheaper. But with the Davids being mass produced and on the commercial market for domestic consumers, they sound a lot cheaper than your standard employees.

[Hieronymus]

The actual production of androids might be the rate-limiting step.  1% is still a lot less than 100%.

[deezelboy]

But if you want to recruit a crew of seven for a ship, that can't possibly be a problem, can it? They've got something like 8 million androids employed plus the ones they manufacture for commercial sales by the 2070s.

[Darkfox]

But if you want to recruit a crew of seven for a ship, that can't possibly be a problem, can it? They've got something like 8 million androids employed plus the ones they manufacture for commercial sales by the 2070s.

Maybe, in case of Nostromo, they actually wanted human crew (gather specimen in your chest, thank you very much). Though one could of course think of much neater way of gathering specimen, if they actually knew what they were coming for, and if they didn't, then again why not simply send a crew of androids with their orders and be done with it...

With Prometheus, I assume a hyper-project like that was supposed to be done by humans. I mean, they had also sent random spacecraft to the Moon, but the point when a man walked the Moon was what mattered. (And also, if all this invitation talk is true, then it was meant to be humans, of course...)

[deezelboy]

Completely fine with the Prometheus going out with a human crew - it's a scientific mission. Do you really want to trust an android's programming with the unknown? 

But for just a routine transportation job like what the Nostromo was doing, it seems a bit iffy as to why they'd send real people on the ships, especially as the work seems to be quite antisocial.