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Fi to Fn

Filenapping

A crime where, using a cryptovirus that encrypts files with a strong encryption scheme, the criminal can extort the victim. "If you don't put 10 megacred in this untraceable monetary network you will never see your dear accounts again!".

Michael Beck

filigliders

Small, about 5-8 cm long organisms with a nervous system only slightly above that of a flatworm. In appearance they vaguely resemble moths or humming birds, with a slightly elongated neck and a 1.2 cm bulb of various primary colors where a head would be.

Prior to use Filigliders are programmed with a simple tropism toward the pheromones of local omnivores. They are often released at parties and allowed to circulate around the heads of the guests allowing guests grab a snack from mid air. The head bulb usually contains a cream filling or fruity gel of various flavors, but custom flavors are easily available. Removing the head bulb causes the remaining organism to cease muscular activity.

Filigliders bodies and wings, though traditionally an animal based protein, quickly harden after after head-bulb removal and take on a taste and consistency similar to that of the Old Earth "fortune cookie". Of course due to the social and nutritional demands of various clades and cultures, strongly plant based or animal tasting filigliders are also produced in many areas.

Unfortunately the energy storage medium of a typical Filiglider body only lasts about 30 standard hours after thawing. Toward the end of this time most types of Filigliders take on a somewhat gamy taste as most of the sugars in their filling are used up and replaced with metabolic wastes, since Filigliders have no secretory glands.

Fun facts: On Revelry Habitat 5127 in the Draakar system, it is said that viewing a residence post-celebration strewn with fallen filigliders, is one of the 10 sad things. A particular "day after" cocktail, the Yrogi Martini, is traditionally flavored with half of a 32 hour old Filiglider carcase. In some sectors covert operatives of the baseline and near baseline persuasions, wishing to elude pursuers of a similar nature, have been known to release several cases of filigliders at a time providing an adequate smoke screen.

"Adventure in the Filiglider Warehouse" was once a virch popular among children of many near-baseline clades. It mainly involved finding edible filigliders, discovering which were poisigliders for the participant's clade, and avoiding bamagliders. Jumping on boxes and gaining pieces of a key also featured prominently in the virch.

Peter Kisner

Filium's Proof

Suggests (but does not actually prove) that there might be some obscure or unseen forces working even beneath the facade of hoaxes and layers of archailect sponsored super powers.

Peter Kisner

financial institutions

Institutions which provide a range of services including lending,accepting deposits,providing advice.

financial intermediaries

Institutions which channel funds from sentients and institutions wishing to lend to those wishing to borrow

Financials

Financials and financial effects vary greatly throughout the galaxy. There is a decent amount of indebtedness and something approaching debt peonage or indenture amongst the NoCoZo. There are also moderate to high levels of corporate intrigue. The Solarian league only deal in Solarian credits, or will only deal with other financial tokens at steep discounts. Keterists have an information or computronium standard - so many cycles at so many petahertz with such and such bandwidth and storage capabilities. And so on

John B

Finity Box

High level clarketech device. Basically a box from .5-1m on a side that is larger on the inside than on the outside. May employ a basement universe or space time folding (no S level below the creating intelligence knows for sure). A Finity Box may be as much as 5x larger on the inside than on the outside and no amount of mass put inside it causes any perceptible change to the mass or inertia of the box itself.

So far some 2048 Finity Boxes have been found, all within a 5 LY radius of the brown dwarf Grupna Red, and from the years 5221 to 5279 (late ComEmp period). None have been found since, despite repeated searches. Nor has any ISO been observed in the vicinity.

Since their discovery, several have been stolen, 2 destroyed, one spontaneously disassembled when probed with an exploratory nanowormhole, and 12 used in spacetime hyperdimensional research. The rest reside in private collections or artilect museums throughout the galaxy.

Todd Drashner

Fire Dancing

Extreme art form from Morini, NoCoZo. The dancer's body is coated with a mildly inflammable oil which is set alight, and only extinguished when the dance is over

firewall

Software, hardware, or firmware that protects an AI, program, or agent from attack.

firmware

Software encoded into the hardware or wetware. Programming involves replacing the circuitry or chips or implants. Many simple bots, nanites, and simple bioborg modules and wetware applications are based on firmware

first contact

The event at which two civilizations, or terragen and xenosophont races, encounter each other for the first time First contacts have profound sociological impacts, and, unless properly managed, can be disastrous for the weaker civilization or species (the tragic case of the Daharrans is a good example)

First Federation period

The period encompassing the historical span of the First Federation, i.e. from about 900 to mid third millennium. It was succeeded by the establishment of the archailect empires ("sephirotics") in their own right.

fish

[1] Paraphyletic taxon; aquatic non-tetrapod terragen vertebrate, usually (though not necessarily) with paired fins and scales. Important component of most terragen aquatic ecosystems. There have been several successful fish provolve, especially since the Empires age. However, most fishes remain today a subsapient sentient animal life.

[2] generally; alifes, bioships, and xenobiota of fish-like (pisciform) appearance and behaviour.

fission rocket

rocket that uses a nuclear reactor to heat liquid hydrogen or some other reaction fluid.

Unfortunately the exhaust gas of the fission thermal rocket is highly radioactive due to passage through the nuclear core, and for this reason this engine has never been adopted on biont worlds, and is banned in most planetary systems. A few vec outposts and mining factories in the outer volumes use nuclear fission rockets as a cheap low tech solution.

fitness

The measure of the ability of a biological organism, alife, or other replicator, to reproduce viable offspring.

$Category: Mathematics or Systems Theory$ fitness landscape

An abstract or mathematical representation of how mutations can change the fitness of one or more organisms. Evolution will tend to make populations move in an uphill direction on the fitness landscape.

Five Leaves

Philosophy group dating back to the first federation.

Founded in 3984 by Emuald E. Baring, Liese-Omi Kahn, Thanith Waypoint, Ull 34 Golden and Wasanatharala at Ganymede Federal University it became a focal point for the sociosubjectivist ideas of the time. Being critical of federation hegemonism and the emerging ideas of Archailect manifest destiny, it attempted to demonstrate the subjectivity of reality and the reverse absolute of choosing a political system. These attempts were collected in the work The Black Line, published at irregular intervals for the next five millennia.

Over time the original members merged, recruiting new individual members to take the vacant chairs, keeping the number of entities in the group to five. The merged entity, generally called Five Leaves Subject, acts as a philosophical liaison to posthuman sociosubjectivists and interface with the subsingularity philosophers. Since the ComEmp era Five Leaves have been located at Hydersbaad Consensus in the Corona system.

Anders Sandberg

$Category: Mathematics or Systems Theory$ fixed point

A point in a dynamical system's state space that maps back to itself. A stable point in which the system does not undergo a perturbation.

Flaresteroids

First positively identified as separate astronomical bodies in 74 a.t., flaresteroids can spell disaster for unlucky planets or habitats. They are like normal asteroids, but composed of extremely reactive elements like those of the alkali group. In the vacuum of space this means little, since there is no oxygen to react with. However, if they hit something with an oxygen atmosphere the damage done by the explosion can be vast, far larger than the simple impact. They are extremely rare, but even a single one can destroy a habitat or wipe out unprepared cities as the massive fireballs suck up air and sear the structures. The Riam 5 explosion of 2908 is believed to have been caused by one of these.

Michael Beck

flatland, flatlander

flatland: the state of existence beneath the first singularity

flatlander: a sentient of SI:<1 toposophic.

(from Old Earth atomic age hu Edwin A. Abbot's mathematical fantasy Flatland: a Romance of Many Dimensions which describes two-dimensional creatures unaware of the third dimension of space.

fleet

A group of (usually although not necessarily) armed ships moving together as a unit. The range, speed, and endurance of a fleet are the range, speed, and endurance of its most feeble vessel.

flexus

A very low curvilinear ridge with a scalloped pattern, on the surface of a planet or a moon

abbrev. FE

Flinger

Space-time catapult pair used for rapid transport of cargo and passengers between the primary wormhole pairs of a Relay system.

Flingers reduce the average travel time between Relay gates from nearly 10 days to a single standard day.

Todd Drashner

fluctus

Flow terrain on the surface of a planet or a moon

abbrev. FL

Fluent Veil

Smart fabric veil worn by many citizens in the Solar Dominion and some other polities.

The veil integrates a number of functions and capabilities including color and shape changing abilities and data links to the local cybercosm. However its primary function, and the origin of its name, is to act as a translation system between various languages. The veil absorbs the sound waves of the wearers voice, reconfigures them into any of several preprogrammed languages being used by the listener, and re-emits them while retaining the sound of the speakers voice. Fluent Veils were originally used as translation devices in the early days of solar and later Dominion civilization before being replaced with the more common implant based translation matrices. In the current era, they remain in use as a popular clothing accessory used to generate appropriate background tones or overlay music to enhance the wearers voice.

Todd Drashner

flugumes

A genetically engineered instrument derived from various legume varieties.

Typically used by baselines or near baselines, but more as a humorous prop than a seriously taken musical apparatus. During the early 2300's the composer Mlarr Bigglemun did come up with a Flugume Suite in the tradition of P.D.Q. Bach that gained widespread popularity among more renowned baseline musicologists.

Peter Kisner

fluidentity

A state in which traditional boundaries of identity are completely in flux while immersed in a superliquid economy, cyberspace anarchy and/or distributed po matrix (see functional soup).

Paul Hughes, in Transhumanist Terminology

fluid nano

nano or utility fog which, in its un-self-altered state looks like a puddle and has the rough consistency of pudding or thick soup.

This is self-adhering nano which, when not needed, withdraws into a 'feeding' reservoir where its energy needs are cared for. Properly designed, there can be a constant slow stream of nano going back and forth from this reservoir and replacing bits which are tiring.

John B

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