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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Watomatic, for lower Whatsapp switching costs

Any discussion of monopolization of the web is bound to include the term “network effects,” and its constant companion, “natural monopolies.” This econojargon is certainly relevant to the discussion, but really needs the oft-MIA idea of “switching costs.”

A technology has “network effects” when its value grows as its users increase, attracting more users, making it more valuable, attracting more users.

The classic example is the fax machine: one fax is useless, two is better, but when everyone has a fax, you need one too.

Social media and messaging obviously benefit significantly from network effects: if all your friends are on Facebook (or if it’s where your kid’s Little League games are organized, or how your work colleagues plan fun activities), you’ll feel enormous pressure to join.

Indeed, in these days of Facebook’s cratering reputation, it’s common to hear people say, “I’m only on FB because my friends are there,” and then your friends say, “I’m only there because you are there.”

It’s a form of mutual hostage-taking.

That hostage situation illustrates (yet) another economic idea: “collective action problems.” There are lots of alternatives to Facebook, but unless you can convince everyone on Facebook to pick one and move en masse, you’ll just end up with yet another social account.

This combination of network effects and collective action problems leads some apologists for tech concentration to call the whole thing a “natural monopoly” — a system that tends to be dominated by a single company, no matter how hard we try.

Railroads are canonical “natural monopolies.” Between the costs of labor and capital and the difficulty in securing pencil-straight rights-of-way across long distances, it’s hard to make the case for running a second set of parallel tracks for a competing company’s engines.

Other examples of natural monopolies include cable and telephone systems, water and gas systems, sewer systems, public roads, and electric grids.

Not coincidentally, these are often operated as public utilities, to keep natural monopolies from being abused by greedy jerks.

But the internet isn��t a railroad. Digital is different, because computers are universal in a way that railroads aren’t — all computers can run all programs that can be expressed in symbolic logic, and that means we can almost always connect new systems to existing ones.

Open up a doc in your favorite word processor and choose “Save As…” and just stare in awe and wonder at all the different file-formats you can read and write with a single program. Some of those formats are standardized, while others are proprietary and/or obsolete.

It’s easier to implement support for a standard, documented format, but even proprietary formats pose only a small challenge relative to the challenge presented by, say, railroads.

Throw some reverse-engineering and experimentation at a format like MS DOC and you can make Apple Pages, which reads and writes MS’s formats (which were standardized shortly after Pages’ release, that is, after the proprietary advantage of the format was annihilated).

This is not to dismiss the ingenuity of the Apple engineers who reversed Microsoft’s hairball of a file-format, but rather, to stress how much harder their lives would have been if they were dealing with railroads instead of word-processors.

During Australia’s colonization, every state had its own governance and its own would-be rail-barons. Each state laid its own gauge of rail-track, producing the “multi-gauge muddle” — which is why, 150+ years later, you can’t get a train from one end of Oz to the other.

Hundreds of designs for interoperable rolling stock have been tried, but it’s proven impossible to make a reliable car that retracts one set of wheels and drops a different one.

The solution to the middle-gauge muddle? Tear up and re-lay thousands of kilometers of track.

Contrast that with the Windows users who discovered that Pages would read and write the thousands of documents they’d authored and had to exchange with colleagues: if they heeded the advice of the Apple Switch ads, they could buy a Mac, move their files over, and voila!

Which brings me to switching costs. The thing that make natural monopolies out of digital goods and services are high switching costs, including the collective action problem of convincing everyone to quit Facebook or start using a different word-processor.

These switching costs aren’t naturally occurring: they are deliberately introduced by dominant firms that want to keep their users locked in.

Microsoft used file format obfuscation and dirty tricks (like making a shoddy Mac Office suite that only offered partial compatibility with Windows Word files) to keep the switching costs high.

By reverse-engineering and reimplementing Word support, Apple obliterated those switching costs — and with them, the collective action problem that created Word’s natural monopoly.

Once Pages was a thing, you didn’t have to convince your friends to switch to a Mac at the same time as you in order to continue collaborating with them.

Once you get an email-to-fax program, you can discard your fax machine without convincing everyone else to do the same.

Interoperability generally lowers switching costs. But adversarial interoperability — making something new that connects to something that already exists, without its manufacturer’s consent — specifically lowers deliberate switching costs.

Adversarial interoperability (or “competitive compatibility,” AKA “comcom”) is part of the origin story of every dominant tech company today. But those same companies have gone to extraordinary lengths to extinguish it.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Just as a new company may endorse standardization when it’s trying to attract customers who would otherwise be locked into a “ecosystem” of apps, service, protocols and parts, so too do new companies endorse reverse-engineering and comcom to “fix” proprietary tech.

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. Once companies attain dominance, they start adding proprietary extensions to the standard and fighting comcom-based interoperability, decrying it as “hacking” or “theft of intellectual property.”

In the decades since Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook were upstarts, luring users away from the giants of their days, these same companies have labored to stretch copyright law, terms of service, trade secrecy, patents and other rules to ban the tactics they once used.

This has all but extinguished comcom as a commercial practice. Today’s comcom practitioners risk civil and criminal liability and struggle to get a sympathetic hearing from lawmakers or the press, who have generally forgotten that comcom was once a completely normal tactic.

The obliteration of comcom is why network effects produce such sturdy monopolies in tech — and there’s nothing “natural” about those monopolies.

If you could leave Facebook but still exchange messages with your friends who hadn’t wised up, there’d be no reason to stay.

In other words, the collective action problem that the prisoners of tech monopolies struggle with is the result of a deliberate strategy of imposing high technical and legal burdens to comcom, in order to impose insurmountable switching costs.

I wrote about this for Wired UK back in April, comparing the “switching costs” the USSR imposed on my grandmother when she fled to Canada in the 1940s to the low switching costs I endured when I emigrated from Canada to the UK to the USA:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/social-media-competitive-compatibility

Today, there’s a group of tech monopoly hostages who are stuck behind their own digital iron curtain, thanks to Facebook’s deliberate lock-in tactics: the users of Whatsapp, a messaging company that FB bought in 2014.

Whatsapp was a startup success: founded by privacy-focused technologists who sensed users were growing weary of commercial surveillance, they pitched their $1 service as an alternative to Facebook and other companies whose “free” products extracted a high privacy price.

Facebook bought Whatsapp, stopped the $1 charge, and started spying. In response to public outcry, the Facebook product managers responsible for the app assured its users that the surveillance data WA extracted wouldn’t be blended with Facebook’s vast database of kompromat.

That ended this year, when every Whatsapp user in the world got a message warning them that Facebook had unilaterally changed Whatsapp’s terms of service and would henceforth use the app’s surveillance data alongside the data it acquired on billions of people by other means.

Downloads of Whatsapp alternatives like Signal and Telegram surged, and Facebook announced it would hold off on implementing the change for three months. Three months later, on May 15, Facebook implemented the change and commenced with the promised, more aggressive spying.

Why not? After all, despite all of the downloads of those rival apps, Whatsapp usage did not appreciably fall. Convincing all your friends to quit Whatsapp and switch to Signal is a lot of work.

If the holdout is — say — a beloved elder whom you haven’t seen in a year due to lockdown, then the temptation to keep Whatsapp installed is hard to resist.

What if there was a way to lower those collective action costs?

It turns out there is. Watomatic is a free/open source “autoresponder” utility for Whatsapp and Facebook that automatically replies to messages with instructions for reaching you on a rival service.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.parishod.watomatic

It’s not full interoperability — not a way to stay connected to those friends who won’t or can’t leave Facebook’s services behind — but it’s still a huge improvement on the nagging feeling that people you love are wondering why you aren’t replying to their messages.

The project’s sourcecode is live on Github, so you can satisfy yourself that there isn’t any sneaky spying going on here:

https://github.com/adeekshith/watomatic

It’s part of a wider constellation of Whatsapp mods, which have their origins in a Syrian reverse-engineer whose Whatsapp comcom project was picked up and extended by African modders who produced a constellation of Whatsapp-compatible apps.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

These apps are often targeted for legal retaliation by Facebook, so it’s hard to find them in official app stores where they might be vetted for malicious code.

It’s a strategy that imposes a new switching cost on Whatsapp’s hostages, in the form of malware risk.

Legal threats are Facebook’s default response to comcom. That’s how they responded to NYU’s Ad Observer, a plugin that lets users scrape and repost the political ads they’re served.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/553000000-reasons-not-let-facebook-make-decisions-about-your-privacy

Ad Observer lets independent researchers and journalists track whether Facebook is living up to its promises to block paid political disinformation. Facebook has made dire legal threats to shut this down, arguing that we should trust the company to mark its own homework.

Whatsapp lured users in by promising privacy. It held onto them post-acquisition by promising them their data would be siloed from Facebook’s main databases.

When it reneged on both promises, it papered this over by with a dialog box where they had to click I AGREE.

This “agreement” is a prime example of “consent theater,” the laughable pretense that Facebook is “making an offer” and the public is “accepting the offer.”

https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96

Most people never read terms of service — but even when they do, “agreements” are subject to unilateral “renegotiation” by companies that engineered high switching costs as a means of corralling you into clicking “I agree” to things no rational person would ever agree to.

Consent theater lays bare the fiction of agreement. Real agreement is based on negotiation, and markets are based on price-signals in which buyers and sellers make counteroffers.

A “market” isn’t a place where a dominant seller names a price and then takes it from you.

Comcom is a mechanism for making these counteroffers. Take ad-blockers, which Doc Searls calls “the largest consumer boycott in history.” More than a quarter of internet users have installed an ad-block, fed up with commercial surveillance.

This is negotiation, a counteroffer. Big Tech — and the publications it colonizes — demand you give them everything, all the data they can extract, for every purpose they can imagine, forever, as a condition of access.

Ad-block lets you say “Nah.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

The fiction that tech barons have “discovered” the “price” that the public is willing to pay for having a digital life is a parody of market doctrine. Without the ability to counteroffer — in code, as well as in law — there is no price discovery.

Rather, there is price-setting.

Not coincidentally, “the ability to set prices” is the textbook definition of an illegal monopoly.

#pluralistic

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ugly-crying-over-bucky-barnes · 4 years ago

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Roguish Women Part 31

Summary: Kate is an American who fled to Paris to escape her past life. Now she's dancing and playing the part of a courtesan at the Moulin Rouge. There she meets Tommy Shelby who thinks she can be useful in expanding his empire. But has he been blinded?

Part 31: Kate dances again and reunites with Alfie before receiving a promising telegram.

The floor looked freshly polished. Light from the floor to ceiling windows caused the hardwood to gleam. And the floor was so expansive. There was so much space with very little furniture to get in the way. It had been so long since she had space, room to move around, stretch her limbs.

She’d been raised in the city. A poor girl in a poor neighborhood, Kate was accustomed to the claustrophobic nature of living in the heart of any city. Every day she went to her neighbor’s house and warmed up by pushing the furniture to the walls so she could have enough space to practice. Even then, she often bumped into things.

Then she auditioned for the ballet company in a studio downtown. One with a proper barre and proper flooring. She had never danced so well.

When she first danced on stage, it felt like the whole world was hers.

Then the feeling was taken away and she retreated to her small spaces. A small flat in Paris. A crowded dressing room where she would stretch. The dancefloor packed with dancers and patrons. Her small flat in Birmingham, the banister used as a barre. Then finally back to Boston, ever the familiar feeling of being suffocated.

Now, she stood in the ballroom of Arrow House. Suddenly, she was offered all this room and for a second she didn’t know how she would fill it all.

A bit timid, Kate walked in and set her ballet shoes down on the well-kept floor. A gramophone had been brought in, at her request and was waiting in the corner by the windows.

She went to the gramophone and found a few records piled neatly on the cabinet against the wall. She hadn’t specified exactly what music she wanted, but instead just said anything classical. Shuffling through the records, her heart soared when she landed on Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Her neighbor would make her practice to the music nonstop, insisting Kate was destined to dance the swan’s role.

After warming up, Kate carefully tied her shoes, the motion so familiar it was as if she never stopped dancing at all. It wasn’t particularly comfortable getting back into pointe, but she knew she needed to work through the discomfort.

She returned to the gramophone and started the record. Although she couldn’t remember the number in full, she could pick out a few moves that she recalled. And it seemed the years of dancing at the Moulin Rouge and stretching in her little flats had paid off somewhat. She felt as flexible as she was in her prime. And she had remembered the techniques her neighbor barked at her for hours on end.

When she felt brave enough, she tried a fouetté. It proved to be a bit too much and she stumbled on a turn. Catching herself, Kate couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at what her neighbor might say if she had been there.

“Weak! Again! Do it right or do not do it at all!”

Kate smiled to herself and tried again. It was still shaky, but much better than before. When she stopped, she noticed Tommy was standing in the doorway of the ballroom.

“Oh, Tom, I thought you were out.” She felt her cheeks go a bit red as she went over to turn off the gramophone.

“I just got back and heard music in here. I was hoping I could catch a bit of you dancing.” He walked in.

“I’m really out of practice.” She admitted sheepishly.

“It looked good to me.” He met her in the middle of the room.

“That’s because you’re not a trained ballerina.” She reminded him.

He chuckled. “Yeah, I could never do any of that.” He took her hand. “It’s been a while since I’ve danced.”

“Did you used to?” Kate could vaguely recall a few moments when she might’ve caught Tommy dancing. For sure, it had to be with Grace. Maybe at the Derby or perhaps even their wedding, but Kate wasn’t too sure. The past seemed such a blur those days.

“I think the only person who really got me to dance was Greta Jurossi.” He mused.

“Who was Greta Jurossi?” Kate lifted his arm so she could do a small spin under it.

He smiled though there was sadness in his eyes. He led her into another spin, wincing a bit at how painful the pointe shoes looked. “She was the first girl I ever loved. I lost her to consumption before I went to the war.”

“Oh, Tommy, I’m sorry.” It was devastating to know that no matter how well Kate knew him, she still didn’t know the true root of all his pain. It could have been blamed on luck. Maybe his family just had no luck when it came to love. In a way it was hard to understand his persistence. So many times, he’d loved and lost. Yet, he continued to allow himself to explore another relationship.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was a long time ago though.” As per usual, he wasn’t willing to accept sympathy. “I don’t understand how that doesn’t hurt your feet.”

Kate smiled. “It takes a lot of practice. It’s painful at first but you learn to tolerate it. And soon you don’t feel anything.”

Tommy nodded absent-mindedly. He had some idea of what that was like.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Miss Lynch.” Ollie looked pleased to see the woman walking towards the bakery.

“Hello, Ollie.” She smiled. “Alfie’s expecting me I hope.”

“Yeah, you can go right in.” He opened the doors for her.

Her heels attracted attention from the distillers but when they lifted their heads, they averted their eyes quickly. They would discuss the return of the American woman, but not until she was out of the room and they were absolutely sure Alfie wasn’t near either.

Alfie smiled when Kate entered his office. “There she is.”

“Good to see you, Alfie.” She greeted warmly.

“London ain’t been the same without you, love.” He chuckled and sat down behind his desk after greeting her.

Cyril trotted up to Kate when she sat too. “Hello, handsome boy,” She cooed and ruffled his ears. “I’ve missed you too, yes I have.”

“M’glad you’re here safe and sound,” Alfie said with a rare tone of empathy and concern. “’Course no one was more worried than our dear Tommy, but I’m sure he told you that.”

“Well, I appreciate it. I’m just glad to be home.”

“So, everything wrapped up back there then?” Alfie posed a question that sounded innocent enough but of course, was meant to pry.

“I’m guessing Tommy wasn’t too forthcoming on the matter.” She surmised if he was asking for the story.

“Of course, he didn’t, you know him.”

Kate sighed. She hadn’t exactly said out loud what specifically happened to anyone. But she trusted Alfie to accept the story for what it was. She understood Tommy had heard enough and telling him more would only further anger him and deepen his guilt.

“He caught me talking to Tom on the telephone. He started to…he said he was going to kill me. So, I killed him before he had the chance.”

“How did you leave the scene?” Alfie wasn’t about to clutch his pearls at what she told him. This was his job, and he could get technical about it if he wanted to. And in Kate’s case, he wanted to because he wanted to ensure what she did wouldn’t catch up to her in the future. Of course, if it did, he wouldn’t mind going to arms for her even if it meant having to work alongside Tommy.

“I made it look like someone had killed him and kidnapped me. That’s what his men think still as far as I know. I have someone there who is going to help spread the rumor and give it some validity.”

“Clever lass.” Alfie looked proud of her. “Good riddance to ‘im, yeah, fucking deserved it.”

Kate didn’t look vindicated or happy with herself. “He just…” She picked at her fingernails. Alfie had been a confidante to her in the past, but she wasn’t sure how well he could help with what happened in Boston. She might’ve felt more comfortable speaking with Polly or Ada about the matter, but Tommy’s family was a tricky situation and she didn’t want to complicate things.

Alfie picked up on her discomfort and knew there were things she hadn’t said that were on the tip of her tongue. “Whatever he did, right, it don’t take away from who you really are.”

She shook her head. “I just…it’s affecting my relationship with Tommy because I can’t get over happened. And I can’t explain it properly to Tommy because I know he only blames himself even if it wasn’t his fault. I can’t tell him otherwise. So, I feel like, there’s nothing I can do but sit with how I feel.”

“It don’t help that the fucker’s rotting now?” Alfie asked. Perhaps it varied, but he knew he got a satisfaction whenever he put someone who wronged them in their place. Whether it was metaphorical or Alfie really did put them six feet under.

Kate shook her head. “I feel it’s something I can’t shake. I-I’ve gotten better about being around Tommy but when I’m with him. I still feel like people can see it on me. I know that makes no sense but people know what happened and I can only assume they can guess the outcome. It’s like they can see it written on my face or something.”

Alfie frowned; his brow furrowed. “Is he the first man you killed?” He asked, not sure if they’d ever discussed the topic before.

Kate’s mouth opened slightly. No more lies, there was no point to continue lying. She had come clean to Tommy. “No.” She admitted. Although her death count was very low, probably compared to the men she ran with her entire life, it was still much more than a normal woman. “It’s not about me killing him. I don’t care if people know about that. I care if people know that he-” She tilted her head to the side hoping he would pick up on her hints so she wouldn’t have to say it out loud.

“He took advantage of you.” Alfie nodded. He could understand Tommy’s anger. Kate had become like a sister to Alfie, he thought very highly of her. And no one messed with Alfie’s family blood related or not.

Kate wrapped her arms around herself. “You think I’ve been through enough that it wouldn’t bother me.” She tried to laugh bitterly but couldn’t force herself to.

“Don’t say that, Katie. You can allow yourself to be hurt, right? That fucking monster hurt you and you deserve to be upset. Deserved to kill him too, so don’t ever feel guilty ‘bout that.” He reminded her. “Now, Tommy, he’ll learn to forgive himself. But don’t try to coddle ‘im. You be honest with him.”

“I will.”

“Good, lass. Now, looking to the future, what’s next, aye?”

“Well, everything’s out in the open now.” She took a deep breath. “So now I’m going to move forward.”

“You have plans?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, so do I.”

~~~~~~~~~

“Kate?” Tommy caught her coming in through the front door and passing by his study.

“Hi.” She smiled when she saw him.

“How was London? Alfie’s well?”

“Yeah, it was nice to see him again.” She walked into the room to give him a kiss.

“I’m sure he was happy to see you as well.” Tommy chuckled. “Sure, he was scrambling to make things work when you were gone. You’re crucial to his smuggling operation.”

“I know, and I make sure he remembers.” She laughed softly, feeling a bit lighter after speaking with Alfie.

“You’ve a telegram from London.” He sifted through the papers on his desk to hand it to her.

“Oh, good, I’ve been expecting one.” She took it from him and scanned the typed letter with a nod. “Good.”

Tommy sat back in his desk chair; his fingers laced over his stomach. “Good news?”

“Yes, and it pertains to you as well.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Aye?”

“While you mend your relationship with your family, you should be looking for allies. Especially since Luca Changretta is still a threat you need to keep mindful of.” She started, proposing the business plan she thought of a few days earlier.

He nodded. “Okay.” Letting her continue.

“There’s a gang in London known as the Forty Elephants.”

A skeptical look began to form on his face. “I’m aware…”

“I’ve reached out to their leader, Alice. Just to meet up. I think it’s something you should consider. You’re looking for territory in London, looking for allies, and Alfie’s neutral with them.”

Tommy’s doubt was mixed with amusement. “They’re a petty shoplifting gang.”

“They’ve chased out four independent gangs in the West End. They were allied with Elephant and Castle but as you know, Sabini’s been getting the upper hand over them recently. I think you need to step in. Alfie’s allied with Elephant and Castle, but if you absorb them and aid the Forty Elephants, you gain control over West End and your tie with Camden Town is much stronger.”

His mirth faded as he realized Kate was elaborating on a very solid plan. “You’re confident about this?”

“Very.” She looked pleased that she was getting through to him.

He smiled and shook his head with a look of awe. “God, I’ve missed your wits.” He said affectionately.

“It’s good to be able to use my wits again.”

He chuckled. “Alright, send a telegram back to Alice, tell her I’m willing to meet with her. You’ll be with me, of course.” He arranged. “Now, c’mere.” He grabbed her hand to pull her onto his lap so he could kiss her.

//The title IS Roguish WOMEN. So prepare yourselves my friends. For the forty elephants.

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jackhkeynes · 4 years ago

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Glossary of Terms: from A to Z in the Boralverse

The full list of Boralverse jargon may be found under the cut.

adamant | titanium

aeronaut | airship

air-steeple | telegraphy post on a balloon

alchemick | chemical, relating to chemistry

alchemist | chemist

alchemy | chemistry

aldreman | mayor, municipal leader

alluning | moon landing

aphlox | carbon dioxide, also carbonic acid as a liquid

aquifex | hydrogen

arithmat | computing

astrapic | electric, electromagnetic

aumond | almond

autonome | autonomous, unauthorised

autune | sparkling wine, esp. from the Autun region

bdella | virus

billrod | cochineal, a crimson dye produced from the shell of an insect and imported from Lower Mendeva

bit-sheet | tabloid, cheap newspaper

blacklair | horror, media intent to scare

blankpine | white pine, Weymouth pine

bookhouse | library

brimstone | sulfur

caddar | to distil, purify, extract

calamine | zinc oxide

case | cell

casting | publishing

chain substance | polymer

chimer | chimera, hybrid

christmas pie | savoury pie eating on Revillon across Northern Europe but especially in Borland

circular function | trigonometric function

clavier | keyboard, piano

cmm disk | vinyl record

cmm | "chain muriac mitigor", polyvinyl chloride, PVC

codnere | kidney

collocker | interviewer, investigator

collock | chat, dialogue, interview, conversation

collusion | collaboration, confederation

concord | treaty, agreement

concrescence | instantiation, model, prototype

concurrence history | history of a particular time period

conjure | to conspire, to collude

connit | disguise, inconspicuousness, secretiveness; hiding place

connock | ice skating

console | leader of merchant republic, esp. Genoa

convoker | representive, PR person

convoy | troop, division, band of soldier

copperplate | right-wing

coppers | cheap seats, nose-bleeds, lowest-quality product

copysheet | study notes

coronal | helium

corporal quillsam | periodic table, set of chemical elements

coshow | rubber, esp. natural rubber, latex

costumery | clothing catalogue

coswer | cousin

counter-zoic | antimicrobial

covring | (maths) surjection, surjective map

dackin | indigo

daily gyre | circadian rhythm, body clock

daplight | LED

davarn | grand hotel, resort

deficient | positively charged

deixism | approach to research focused on collecting primary sources and references

deixist | researcher, archivist

detaxion | synthesis, combining, esp. in chemistry

dominium | region of control, domain, demesne

druckdue | the silver screen, cinema

drypepper | peppercorns, black peppercorns

edition | publishing, publication

ersteigung | apex, crest, sforzando, peak, climax

excourse | competition, tournament, quiz, game

extent | field (physics)

fecundation | fertilisation

fendle | fennel

filmic | cinematic

geoscopic | exploratory, cartographic, intending to see the world

giftale | media set in or taking aesthetic inspiration from Italy

grade | separate, sort in categories

green snowfall | first snowfall of the new year (after the first of March)

guild | corporation, company

gum | rubber, esp. synthetic rubber

gyre | orbit, cycle; to orbit, to ring around-

herdtale | agricultural stories and songs of mid-19C Gulf Mendeva

heredian acid | DNA (also shortened to heredian)

hereditarian | genetic

hereditature | genome, DNA

heredity | genetics

heverrath | bicycle, velocipede

hever | lever, pedal, also the verb

hourchain | rosary, armilla

hydromotor light | microwave radiation

iamb 5' | iambic pentameter

icon | photo, photgraph

igniac | oxide

ignifex | oxygen

indreck | nonprofit, charity

in peripatetico | abroad, on an exchange, on a sabbatical

in tesquo | in the wild, in practice, in real life

Iscovalian variation | evolution by natural selection

jalick | tuxedo, high formalwear

jast | zinc

kenonaut | spaceship

kernel | cell nucleus

kester | beggar, panhandle

lacker | veneer, false surface

laic | secular, irreligious, oecumenical

lampfire | naked flame used as a light source

leavingstore | gift shop, shop for trinkets

lencorve | line of credit, tab

limmon | lemon

lineball | team ballgame, resembling (soccer) football or rugby

lithing | account, list, enumeration

lodginghouse | waystop, inn, traveller's rest

longform light | radio waves

lorrer leaf | bay leaf

lovetale | romance writing

luetic pox | syphilis

lux | radiation, elementary particle

machinal | automatic, by rote

machovine | strontium

manner | property, nature

mapbook | atlas

masquira | genre of stories typically featuring vigilante characters and plots driven by hidden identities, high society and complicated schemes. It has some overlap with the later spycraft genre, especially in modern works.

matching | (maths) bijection, bijective map

mechanics | dynamics, physics of motion and collision

mecon | metre (length of pendulum with halfperiod 1 second

melee | high society, the gentry (old-fashioned), the ton, the activities of the gentry

meshforum | online community

mesh | network

methodics | computer science, programming

ministry | department, ministry, bureau

mitigor | ethene, ethylene, C2H4

modest | socially conservative, with respect to family, children and gender relations

moneypurse | wallet, purse

mozardisto | member of a populist faction involved in the Second German War primarily made up of Andalusian Christians but expanding in scope, especially towards the end of the war.

mozard | populist, antiestablishment

muriac | chloride

muria | chlorine

myton | type of merchant ship in wide use during the late fifteenth century

namecard | ID, nametag

narjill | coconut

natron | sodium

normal nawat | Classical Nahuatl

normal speed | lightspeed, œ

nucalic acid | DNA (see heredian acid)

odyssey | cinema, movie theatre

oeculux | electromagnetic radiation

oecumen | landscape, outlook, overview, universe

one-case | single-celled

one-zeffre | binary, one-bit, digital

onyx lace | shell pasta, conchiglie

ostracon | lottery, sortition

parachthon | speculative, science fiction and fantasy (of stories)

penetrating light | X-ray radiation

petersly | parsley

plenty | electric charge

poise | currency of Britain as of 1950 N

prase | administrative head of ancient and modern Borlish government

propagant | wave-like

prosequent | descendant, progeny, something proceeding from a source, accompaniment

pseudogum | synthetic rubber

quanga | butler, esp in East Asian context; secretary, PA

quasipolitic guild | multinational megacorporation

quasipolitic | resembling a nation or polity

quaterno | textbook, handbook, primer

quill | source, spring, basis, foundation, (maths) domain

quire | reference book, textbook

quister | phone, telephone

quist | to call, to phone

raincatcher | gazebo, free-standing roofed structure without walls

rath | bike

reckoning | arithmetic, counting

redirection bank | switchboard

refettorio | refectory, cafeteria, mess hall

replacement code | substitution cipher

revillon | christmas eve

romance | story, tale, fiction

sam | set, group of things, (maths) set

sandrine | vitamin C, ascorbic acid

scattering light | ionising radiation

scattering | ionising

scitation | examination, test, exam

scole | school, college

scratcher | (colloq.) journalist, reporter, writer

sevring | (maths) injection, injective map

shadome | tomato

shortform light | gamma radiation

signum | macron, long diacritic

sithing | (in mathematics) function, assignment

slate | display, screen

sodality | group, club, association

sodal | member, element

solarium | sunroom, seaside resort

songcraft | music, composition, music theory

sorty | party, get-together, do

spycraft | espionage, spywork; also a genre of fiction

staddomain | trade colony, colony for the purposes of resource production, esp. those colonies of the Stadbund in Cappatia and Africa

starce | coin used in mediæval Borland

stauron retainer | intra-uterine device

steeplecard | telegram

steeplemesh | telegraph network

steeplepost | telegraphy

steeplescript | analogous to Morse Code, with four symbols

steward | deputy, second-in-command

sticket | label, tag

subcase construct | organelle

subrussic light | infrared light

sufficient | negatively charged

surblavic light | UV light

switcher | one working at a redirection bank

tachslate | touchscreen device

tachygraph | typewriter

tallath | province, region (esp. of Britain)

tapestry | big screen, billboard, film screen

tapper | telegraph operator

tartoffer | potato

technic | technical, scientific

Tellard book | atlas (archaic)

tender | barman, bartender

tenyear | decade

the hex hours | the small hours, the middle of the night

threepoint method | triangulation

threshold force | nuclear fission power

threshold mill | nuclear power plant

timehold | marine chronometer

tinplate | left-wing

Tiong loom | Jacquard loom

toriot | large wind instrument with roughly the range of the bassoon

totalism | absolute monarchy

totalist | absolute, authoritarian

tovarick | homosexual

tovarism | homosexuality

trevold | novel, story

trone | currency of Provence as of 1950 N

ubiquity | cultural supremacy, totalist ideology

veck | bus

vectory | bus, omnibus

veldsvindung | global economic recession, depression

viker | steward, affairs manager, right-hand man

vittles | diet, food intake

voidtale | story set in space

void | outer spaceship

walkway | pedestrian footpath, esp in urban context

wares | ingredients, apparatus

wayport | supply point along the coast for long naval voyages

weekly | a weekly newspaper

well-mint | well-off, prosperous, wealthy

whitefish | white fish

workshop manufacture | industrial production

xanthal | neon

xenic | alien, extraterrestrial

xenozone | alien, extraterrestrial being

yacht | cult, secret society

yatherpot | casserole, one-pot dish

yearturning | the New Year

zest | vibe, morsel, speculation, suspicion

zetter | note, memo

zoia | microorganism

#conlang #conlanging #conworld #boralverse #alternate history

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thisbluespirit · 2 years ago

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#the brothers#BBC#classic tv#1974#Roderick Graham#N.J. Crisp#Gerard Glaister#Patrick O'connell#Jennifer Wilson#Jean Anderson#Robin chadwick#Richard Easton#Hilary tindall#Derek benfield#Murray hayne#Margaret ashcroft#Jonathan Newth#the double dealing is in full sway already; with Brian and David scheming to bring a new director onto the board (and thus break#Ted's tie breaking monopoly) the elder Hammond brother sets about stacking the odds for himself with good old Bill Riley#he's also bought a snazzy new car and had a sign put on his parking space. nothing says midlife crisis like a personalised car parking#space Eddy.. elsewhere Brian follows up on a minor plot point from the previous series‚ a telegram Ann sent to Nick (bleugh) Fox whilst he#was abroad. I'm particularly impressed with this plot point bc it's a nice attention to a minor detail as well as organically setting up#Brian discovering their affair AND it's a nicely in character thing to do too (the eternal accountant‚ of course Brian would check through#their telephone charges). as the cogs start to whir‚ Brian's work starts to suffer‚ and just as a big contract is being hammered out#less happily (for me) Jenny seems to be getting closer to Mr Martin the bank man. I like him‚ I do‚ but let's face it Jenny and Ted#are end game! still at least it gets them out of the office and we have some nice location stuff going on#the final mystery of the week: the mysterious case of Gabrielle Drake.. she's been conspicuously absent from the series so far#initially away on a film shoot and now simply out of the room or just having left it whenever she's mentioned.. could she have moved on#to pastures new? that would eventually require a storyline to sort out just where Jill had ended up.. here's hoping it was just a schedule#issue and she'll turn up safe and sound...

The Brothers: Investigations (4.3, BBC, 1974)

"Your father founded this company. Why do you want to sell shares to outsiders?"

"Well, as far as I'm concerned, I don't."

"Then why did you allow it to happen? Hammond's has always been a family business. Well, your father would turn in his grave if he knew what you were doing."

"Then Father should have left me in control of it, instead of deliberately arranging the opposite! He didn't trust me, that's what it amounts to. He thought that I needed Brian and David and Jennifer Kingsley, but once they get together my hands are tied."

#replies #reviews #the brothers #mariocki #1970s #i've nothing to add except i'm laughing a lot #poor jill where could she be?

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crypto-currency-ico-blog · 7 years ago

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CRYPTERIUM - THE FUTURE OF BANKING

The project is very powerful and interesting. No wonder the advisors of the project include Keel Tire (Accelerated Digital Ventures), Roger Crook (Capital Springboard), Mike Raicin (ICObox) and others. A project with a high-level idea of creating a crypto-bank and combining the worlds of phantom and cryptogeny, just in the absence of intelligible services for people and business. With all the pluses it comes out against the background of the bitcoin, which is not understandable to the atmosphere in the regulation of crypto currency, and the opinion that "ICO is a soap bubble". We put all the pluses and minuses into virtual scales, we get: The developers will provide the basic critical standards of the ERC20 standard through any terminals equipped with NFC, and this is somewhere around 42 million terminals in the world. In addition, through this bank will be available: International transfers to any bank account, including bank cards. Without limits and restrictions Convert and exchange between crypto assets Direct payment for services, such as telephone, utilities, fines, taxes - Automatic direct debit payments Transaction history Transaction with a currency. Additional services:Multicurrency transactions (writing several currencies at the same time) The photographic payment is a snapshot of the account, and the Crypterium application will already make the payment itself Payments by QR-code By the summer of 2018 the project plans to increase due to the following: Traditional banking services (after obtaining a banking license), which will allow to coexist with classical banking services and critical services. Translation of crypto currency and currency in the P2P system Deposits in the crypto currency with interest Banking reports Salary accounts Pros for Business: Exchange of Crypto-currency Trash history - Billing management Filtering by currency, payment time, method of purchase, etc. Connect to a new store Individual loyalty programs and cashback Pros of the project: A popular idea of the transaction of the phantom and crypto-money. This idea owns the world. And many projects can raise funds thanks to the idea. Moreover, when it touches everyone and we are already accustomed to them. As for example, paying for Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, for us it's a matter of course service. And here the same thing, only with crypto money, why not? Packing the idea is just as important. Crypterium - our case, competent support, promorolls, support in the media, and the collection of 2.3 thousand people in the English-speaking group of Telegrams and 210 in the Russian-language, looks very interesting at the beginning of the ICO. The ability to purchase tokens in many ways, ranging from traditional bikun and ether and ending with gambling money. This can allow to attract new investors, those who just would like to try for the first time acquires tokens. Clearly defined goals and a plan for the development of the project. Availability of developments in the form of CrypteriumSX, which is on beta testing (see it). It gives reason to believe that the project will be implemented in the near future. Technological solutions for the challenges facing Crypterim already exist, in many ways the "bicycle" will not have to be invented, you just need to collect the best in the world and implement. - Expansion of the target is not planned. It is assumed that only one issue will be issued and 15% of the fund will not immediately go to the market, which means that in case of a good confluence of circumstances, it will allow us to spur the growth of the cost of CRPT tokens. _______________________________________________________ More information here: WEBSITE :https://crypterium.io/ ANN :https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2214098.0 WHITEPAPER :https://crypterium.io/wp/index.html?v=1.01 TWITTER :https://twitter.com/crypterium FACEBOOK :https://www.facebook.com/crypterium.io TELEGRAM :https://t.me/crypterium

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cryptswahili · 6 years ago

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Numerous Social Media Platforms Make Headlines For All The Wrong Reasons

There has been a lot of unsavory news about Facebook and Google with sharing and selling our data for the past few months which have made users somewhat uncomfortable. More recently LinkedIn, IBO Toolbox and Steemit have been under fire. And from what I can gather all very much founded.

It may be common knowledge that LinkedIn was bought by Microsoft four months after LinkedIn’s price on the stock market plummeted 44% in a day after the company announced a lower forecast preceding a bad financial quarter, back in 2016. Before and even after the acquisition, LinkedIn’s performance has consistently been turbulent. They are known for overpriced advertising which is not user-friendly. Also, poor integration with 3rd party companies made scalability impossible to the point they had to abandon the products.

De-platformed! Really!?

Notably, an incident occurred where a rival company had their account closed and company page removed by LinkedIn with no notification or reason. Basically, the company was de-platformed which can be seen as a huge antitrust violation. After a little tap on the shoulder by the company’s legal firm, their account was restored. Boasting about its user growth but not being able to monetize it has become a real issue for Linkedin. Perhaps they feel threatened and the need to do away with the competition.

With technology scaling, it would seem these giants are suffering even more now. It has been said that LinkedIn doesn’t innovate as it’s a monopoly. They tend to get lazy when they think they have won. And like Facebook and LinkedIn have demonstrated, there has been no care or consideration for the end user.

Old Technology declines

IBO Toolbox is a platform for network marketers and bloggers, that are being scrutinized. It has been in operation since 2010 and has also been sold, however, the current owner is unknown. It is apparent IBOT has gone downhill since being sold. Alexa ranking was at 4000, now at nearly 70,000. IBO Toolbox has since been under fire about integrating fake traffic bots which of course will result in false traffic statistics. Good hard earned money and time down the drain along with your reputation. It is now considered a scam site by some and not to be trusted with your website or your Google AdSense Code. I have actually paid for advertising impressions that I have not even received, nor a reply from support regarding the issue.

Of course, all these platforms can now be seen as old technology. Due to the blockchain, we are starting to see Companies, systems, and platforms coming to the fore that are decentralized and will benefit the user in many ways. Firstly, privacy and transparency; they are more peer to peer and are not run by a centralized organization. Freedom of speech, where you will not be banned for having an opinion. Plus, providing they have viability, a complete ecosystem generating universal income is available to all users.

Steemit Under Fire?

Steemit, a Social Media for Bloggers and creative content have recently topped 1 million users predominantly because the immutability aspect of being on the blockchain is believed to prevent any activity from users being banned or their accounts closed. This was very appealing to people who wanted a voice. Unfortunately, Steemit has recently found itself in a dilemma whereby it did ban a group known as the Dark Overlord. It had been banned from mainstream centralized Social Media, so believing Steemit may be their saving grace they shifted the group there only to find Steemit wouldn’t tolerate what they stood for either, which in the eyes of the group was “the truth”. Although this hacker group’s motives may be questionable, there has been some unrest within the community questioning the integrity of the Steemit platform and its censorship resistance since they terminated the account.

One Steemit User retorted:

“Shame, censorship is never the right path.”

Another says:

“Seriously? Now censorship?”

The thread then leads on to the theory of Steemit rolling back blocks and eventually censoring content. Due to blockchain infrastructure, this is difficult to achieve in any case. A user explains,

“There are lots of things that are theoretically possible, but trying to stir up worry about them when they are not even being discussed is basically FUD. To entertain your idea though (since it is at least theoretically possible), if we ever did get into the territory where witnesses were being forced to censor content on the blockchain itself, it is likely that you would see a “Steem and Steem Classic” (fork) type situation occur, and the data would still be available on the unedited fork.”

Over the past few years, many businesses and individuals have experienced this pattern of unethical and anti-competitive practices from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and other centralized networks. And what we know of, include excessive surveillance, data mining, algorithm manipulation, subjective bans, inconsistent enforcement of terms and even complete de-platforming.

What are the Alternatives?

There are alternatives to the Oligarchs of Social Media of the last 10 or so years.

Minds.com is a blogging platform with encrypted messaging facilities built on the blockchain and has a growing user base that allows anyone to speak their mind and boost their content using its tokens. In fact, Minds is suspending their support of Google and Facebook products, even Paypal and Patreon have been removed from their monetization systems until this unethical behavior is resolved. A free open internet is their goal and they are prepared to take all steps necessary to protect the users’ rights.

Markethive is a decentralized Market Network integrated with a social media interface that will definitely give the monopolies a run for their money. Built on the blockchain with its own coin (MHV) is setting the pace of a new era in how we communicate and do business online. State-of-the-art integrated inbound marketing platform, social network, artificial intelligence, business services, ewallet, coin exchange, mining datacenter, and faucet lead portals for success in the crypto-preneurial and entrepreneurial markets. Markethive’s mission and objective are to pioneer “Universal Income” worldwide. To empower the novice through to the seasoned entrepreneur.

Social Networks Were The Last 10 Years. Market Networks Will Be The Next 10.

First, we had communication networks, like telephones and email. Then we had social networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn. Although it has been said Facebook has become a surveillance network masquerading as a social network.

It’s just a matter of time until nearly all independent professionals and their clients will conduct business through collaborative Market Networks and have a massive positive impact on how millions of people work and live, and how hundreds of millions of people buy and sell better services. Also be able to impart any and all information through blog casting without fear of being banned or spied upon, along with creating relationships of value and integrity.

Logo

Company Name: Markethive

Website: https://markethive.com/

Author:

Deb Williams

http://blog.hodlthrive.com/

Adelaide, Australia

Email: [email protected]

Deb is the Market Manager for Markethive, a global Market Network, and Writer for the Crypto/Blockchain Industry. Also a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. She embraces “Change” with a passion and her purpose in life is to help people understand, accept and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.

The post Numerous Social Media Platforms Make Headlines For All The Wrong Reasons appeared first on ZyCrypto.

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#cryptocurrency

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