An ocean of words

Glossary

Every term explained in any rabbit hole washes up here — 230 so far. Grouped by the kind of knowledge it belongs to. Each word is restored to its niche meaning, not the flattened one the wider web tends to leave it with.

Chemistry & neuroscience

Amyloid plaques
protein aggregates in Alzheimer's brains, associated with neuron death. — in lions mane
Blood-brain barrier
the selective membrane shielding the brain from most large molecules in the blood. — in lions mane
H. pylori (Helicobacter pylori)
a stomach bacterium implicated in ulcers and gastric cancer. — in lions mane
Metabolite
a compound an organism makes for defence or competition, not basic survival. — in lions mane
Neurite outgrowth
the growth of new axons and dendrites — the connections between neurons. — in lions mane
NGF biosynthesis
production of Nerve Growth Factor — a protein neurons need to survive and regenerate. — in lions mane
Oxidative stress
cellular damage from reactive oxygen molecules, implicated in ageing. — in lions mane

Design

achromatic
without colour — black, white and greys — in grey world color decline
blanding
bland + branding — the convergence of brand identities on the same minimalist look — in grey world color decline
chromophobia
fear or devaluation of colour — in grey world color decline
computer vision
software that extracts measurable features — colours, shapes, objects — from images — in grey world color decline
debranding
stripping a logo of ornament, colour, and often its symbol, down to a plain wordmark — in grey world color decline
dopamine decor
deliberately bright, joy-first interiors, named for the neurotransmitter associated with reward — in grey world color decline
grayscale
white, black, grey and silver together — colours with no hue — in grey world color decline
greige
grey-beige, the compromise neutral of the 2010s — in grey world color decline
grisaille
a painting technique executed entirely in grey monochrome — in grey world color decline
luminance
the brightness of an image, independent of its hue — in grey world color decline
orange-and-teal
a film-grading scheme pushing skin tones warm and shadows blue-green — complementary colours that make faces pop — in grey world color decline
saturation
the purity or intensity of a colour, from vivid down to grey — in grey world color decline
серость (seryost')
Russian "greyness," which also means mediocrity or drabness of spirit — in grey world color decline

Ecology

Buna-rin (ブナ林)
Japanese beech forest — the cool, humid montane forest of Honshu. — in lions mane
Endophytic
living inside plant tissue without immediate visible harm. — in lions mane
Functional sapwood
the living outer wood beneath the bark that conducts water. — in lions mane
Large-diameter dead wood
thick dead trees that hold moisture for years; the substrate it requires. — in lions mane
Taiga
the northern conifer-forest biome — not the broadleaf trees this fungus needs. — in lions mane

Economics

Bilateral currency swap arrangement (BCSA)
a standing agreement between two central banks to exchange set amounts of each other's currency on demand. — in idr yuan conversion history
Cross rate
an exchange rate between two currencies derived mathematically from each one's rate against a shared third currency, rather than quoted directly between the two. — in idr yuan conversion history
Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS)
China's RMB-denominated payment-settlement network, launched in 2015, built so cross-border yuan payments do not have to route through dollar-clearing infrastructure. — in idr yuan conversion history
Liquidity / spread premium
the extra margin market-makers charge for a currency pair that trades in thinner volume than either currency's own dollar pair. — in idr yuan conversion history
Local Currency Settlement / Local Currency Transaction (LCS/LCT)
a Bank Indonesia framework letting trade and investment transactions between two countries settle directly in each country's own currency, bypassing a third intermediary currency (typically the US dollar) for that specific transaction. — in idr yuan conversion history
Money illusion
the tendency to reason about money in nominal (face-value) rather than inflation-adjusted real terms. — in idr yuan conversion history
Redenominasi (redenomination)
striking zeros from a currency's face value without changing its real purchasing power. — in idr yuan conversion history
Sanering
an Indonesian-coined term (from Dutch, "sanitation/reorganization") for a forced currency-value cut combined with a deposit freeze. — in idr yuan conversion history
Special Drawing Rights (SDR)
the IMF's composite reserve-asset unit, a weighted basket of major currencies used for official reserve accounting between governments and the Fund. — in idr yuan conversion history

Food & culinary

Baked custard
a mixture of eggs, dairy fat, and liquid set by the thermal coagulation of egg proteins through oven heat — produces a gel, not a sauce — in quiche in the airfryer
Blind baking
pre-baking a pastry shell without its filling, weighted with pie weights or dried beans to prevent the dough from puffing or shrinking — in quiche in the airfryer
Brasserie
a French restaurant type, originally beer-oriented, operating with a relaxed service style and a broad menu; derives from the French brasser (to brew) — in quiche in the airfryer
Convection oven / air fryer
a compact oven with a high-speed fan that circulates heated air; marketed as an "air fryer" for its ability to crisp food without oil immersion — in quiche in the airfryer
Lardon
small rectangular-cut strips of cured smoked pork belly, used in quiche Lorraine and French sauté preparations — in quiche in the airfryer
Nimono / oden / yakizakana
nimono — traditional Japanese simmered dishes (vegetables, meat, or fish in a seasoned dashi-based broth); oden — a specific dashi-simmered winter dish of fish cakes, eggs, and vegetables; yakizakana — grilled fish, typically salted and cooked whole — in quiche in the airfryer
Ovalbumin
a dominant egg-white protein — approximately 54% of albumen protein by mass — the last egg-white protein to coagulate during heating, setting at approximately 84 °C≈ 183 °F — in quiche in the airfryer
Pâte brisée
French short-crust pastry for savoury tarts — fat-rich, minimally-worked dough producing a crumbly, tender shell — in quiche in the airfryer
Quiche
an open-faced savoury tart with a baked egg-and-cream custard filling in a pastry shell — in quiche in the airfryer
Tarte flambée
an Alsatian thin-crust dough preparation baked at very high heat in a wood-fired oven, topped with fromage blanc, onions, and smoked bacon; also called flammekueche in Alsatian dialect — in quiche in the airfryer

Fungal biology

Basidiomycota
the fungal division that makes spores on club-shaped cells. — in lions mane
Fruiting body
the reproductive structure — the visible mushroom. — in lions mane
Mycelium
the fungus's true body — a network of hair-thin threads (hyphae). — in lions mane
Parasite
lives at the expense of a living host without immediately killing it. — in lions mane
Primordia
the pin-stage fruiting bodies — the earliest visible bumps. — in lions mane
Saprotroph
an organism that feeds on dead organic matter, breaking it down externally. — in lions mane
Spawn
the "seed" culture — mycelium pre-grown to start new substrate. — in lions mane
Spores
single-celled reproductive units — like seeds in function, not structure. — in lions mane
Subclade
a branch within a species' family tree showing how populations diverged. — in lions mane
White-rot fungus
a wood-decomposer that breaks down both lignin and cellulose. — in lions mane

History

Archetype (textual criticism)
the reconstructed common ancestor of all surviving manuscript witnesses of a text. — in source the missing stratum
Authentication (FRE 901)
the legal requirement to produce evidence sufficient to show an item is what it's claimed to be, before it can be admitted. — in source the missing stratum
Chain of custody
the documented, unbroken record of who possessed a piece of evidence, and when, from collection to courtroom presentation. — in source the missing stratum
Circular reporting
a situation where information appears to come from multiple independent sources but actually traces back to only one. — in source the missing stratum
Citogenesis
the loop where a false or unsourced Wikipedia claim gets repeated by an outside publication, then cited back into Wikipedia as if that publication were an independent source. — in source the missing stratum
Hearsay
an out-of-court statement offered in court to prove that what it asserts is true. — in source the missing stratum
Pertinenzprinzip
the archival principle of arranging documents by subject, territory, or person — library-style — rather than by who created them. — in source the missing stratum
Provenance
the documented origin of a record — who created it, and in what functional context. — in source the missing stratum
Provenienzprinzip
the German archival provenance principle, formally established for Prussian state archives in 1881. — in source the missing stratum
Q (biblical source)
the hypothetical lost sayings-document proposed to explain material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. — in source the missing stratum
Reference rot
the combination of link rot (a URL stops resolving) and content drift (the URL still resolves, but the content behind it has silently changed). — in source the missing stratum
Registraturprinzip
the original-order principle: a creator's own filing sequence should be preserved, because the arrangement itself is evidence. — in source the missing stratum
Respect des fonds
the French archival principle: group records by the entity that created them; never mix creators together or rearrange by subject. — in source the missing stratum
Stemmatics
the study of relationships between surviving variant manuscript copies of a text, used to reconstruct a lost original. — in source the missing stratum

Linguistics

Backronym
an acronym-style explanation invented after a word already existed, to make it look like it was originally an acronym. — in coding names hierarchy
Calque
a word or phrase translated piece-by-piece from another language, rather than borrowed as a sound (a loanword) or coined natively. — in coding names hierarchy
Can f 1
a major dog allergen protein, found in dander, saliva, and skin oils. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Caniche
the French name for the poodle, literally "duck dog." — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Dander
microscopic flakes of shed skin, a primary vector for pet allergens. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Designer dog
a deliberately bred first-generation crossbreed, marketed under a portmanteau name. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Doodle (fool sense)
an old English word for a fool or simpleton, from the 1600s. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Doodle (scribble sense)
to draw or scribble idly while thinking of something else. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
F1 / F1b / F2 / multigen
breeding-generation terms: first cross, backcross, second cross, later stabilized generations. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Fons / fontis (false etymological sibling)
Latin for "spring, fountain" — the root of English font and fountain, but NOT of English source. — in source the missing stratum
Hollywood Principle
"don't call us, we'll call you" — the software-engineering name for inversion of control, the formal test that distinguishes a framework from a library. — in coding names hierarchy
Hypoallergenic
less likely to trigger an allergic reaction — never allergen-free. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Loanword (phonetic)
a word borrowed from another language by carrying over its sound, rather than translating its meaning piece-by-piece (a calque) or building a native equivalent. — in coding names hierarchy
Pinyin tone ambiguity (as a keyword-design objection)
the specific linguistic argument, raised in Chinese-language developer discourse, that pinyin (the romanization of Mandarin) cannot serve as programming keywords without losing tone information essential to distinguishing words. — in coding the infant discipline
Pléonasme
French for pleonasm — using more words than a meaning strictly needs, where one word already contains what a second one repeats. — in quiche in the airfryer
Pudel / Pudelhund
the German name for the poodle, literally "puddle-hound." — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Runglish / Ruglish (рунглиш / руглиш)
a named, documented hybrid register of Russian technical speech carrying heavy English-loanword content — a recognized code-switching style, not casual borrowing. — in coding the infant discipline
Source (etymology)
a person or written work supplying information or evidence. — in source the missing stratum
Wacky → wackadoodle
eccentric, comically unhinged; the suffix chain wacky → wackadoo → wackadoodle. — in doodle wackadoodle poodle
Велосипед (idiom — "reinventing the wheel")
Russian technical slang for an unnecessary self-written duplicate of an already- existing library or solution — literally "bicycle." — in coding the infant discipline

Music theory

6/8
a compound duple time signature — six eighth notes per bar, grouped into two dotted-quarter beats. — in creature half alive
BPM (beats per minute)
the standard measure of a song's speed; typical pop sits 100–130 BPM, 70 BPM is slow and deliberate. — in creature half alive
Chord progression
the sequence of chords that forms a song's harmonic backbone. — in creature half alive
Common time
the time signature 4/4 — four quarter-note beats per bar; the most prevalent in Western pop. — in creature half alive
Compound duple meter
a meter with two main beats per bar, each dividing naturally into three — a lilting, rolling feel. — in creature half alive
Compression
a technique reducing a signal's dynamic range — quiet parts louder, loud parts tamed — for evenness and closeness. — in creature half alive
Diction
a singer's style and precision of consonant articulation — how sharply or softly they hit word boundaries. — in creature half alive
Enharmonic
two differently-written notes (or keys) that sound identical — G♯ and A♭ are enharmonic equivalents. — in creature half alive
Falsetto
a vocal register where only the edges of the vocal cords vibrate — lighter, higher, often breathier than full chest voice. — in creature half alive
Head voice
the upper resonant register of the singing voice — adjacent to, but slightly fuller than, pure falsetto. — in creature half alive
Key signature
the set of sharps or flats at the start of a piece indicating its home key. — in creature half alive
Minor key
a tonal system on a scale with a flattened third — conventionally tied to tension, weight, or melancholy in Western music. — in creature half alive
Outro
the closing section of a song — typically a repeated or intensifying passage that winds it toward its end. — in creature half alive
Placement
a singer's imagined location of vocal resonance — "forward" resonates in the face, "back" in the chest/throat. — in creature half alive
Producer's fingerprint
the recognisable set of sonic choices — effects, mixing, arrangement philosophy — a producer applies across their work. — in creature half alive
Relative major
the major key that shares the same notes as a given minor key — G♯ minor's relative major is B major. — in creature half alive
Reverb
an effect simulating acoustic space — the tail of a sound echoing as if in a physical room. — in creature half alive
Self-backing vocalist
an artist who records their own harmonies and layered vocal parts. — in creature half alive
Tenor
the highest standard adult male voice type, roughly C3–C5, with extension above via falsetto. — in creature half alive
Timbre
the tonal "colour" of a sound — what makes a violin and a flute differ on the same note. (Said TAM-ber.) — in creature half alive
Time signature
the numerical notation at the start of a piece telling the performer how beats are organised per bar. — in creature half alive

Philosophy

Anti-reductionism (testimony)
the epistemological view that a hearer has a default, defeasible right to accept testimony without needing prior positive evidence the speaker is reliable. — in source the missing stratum
Echtheitskritik
the older German term for external source criticism — authenticity criticism. — in source the missing stratum
Principle of credulity
Thomas Reid's term for the natural, non-inferential human disposition to trust other people's word. — in source the missing stratum
Quellenkritik
the German historiographical method of assessing where a historical source came from and how much its content can be trusted. — in source the missing stratum
Reductionism (testimony)
the epistemological view that a hearer needs independent, non-testimonial reasons to trust a speaker before that speaker's word can justify belief. — in source the missing stratum
Tradition (Geschichtswissenschaft)
in historical-method terms, a source deliberately created to inform contemporaries or later generations — a chronicle, a memoir, a monument's inscription. — in source the missing stratum
Type-species classification (Pushkarev)
the Russian source-studies system of sorting historical sources by how their information is encoded, rather than by subject or intent. — in source the missing stratum
Überrest
a historical source not created to inform later generations, but which survives and can still be read as evidence — a tax ledger, a ruin, a grave. — in source the missing stratum
Истoчниковедение (Istochnikovedenie)
the Russian academic discipline of "source studies" — a full field distinct from the German Quellenkritik tradition, not a translation of it. — in source the missing stratum

Society

Kapitan
a Dutch colonial-era appointed leadership/intermediary role given to a prominent member of the Chinese community in the Indonesian archipelago. — in idr yuan conversion history
Peranakan
long-settled, intermarried, culturally localized descendants of earlier Chinese migration to the Indonesian archipelago, often matrilineal in custom. — in idr yuan conversion history
Totok
more recently arrived Chinese-Indonesian immigrants and their descendants, culturally closer to mainland Chinese tradition, typically patrilineal. — in idr yuan conversion history

Technology

.env file
a plaintext key-value file loaded into a program's environment variables at startup. — in vault file and the vibe
.gitignore
a file listing patterns Git will not track going forward. — in vault file and the vibe
1C:Enterprise language (bilingual keyword mode)
the built-in scripting language of 1C:Enterprise, a Russian enterprise-software platform, in which nearly every keyword has both a Russian and an English form usable interchangeably in the same file. — in coding the infant discipline
80-column line (punch-card origin)
the historical convention limiting a line of code or text to 80 characters, inherited from the physical width of IBM punch cards. — in coding the infant discipline
ABI (Application Binary Interface)
the binary-level contract between compiled program components — calling conventions, data layout, and symbol names that let separately compiled code link and call each other — in electron and the default
Add-on (browser)
Mozilla's umbrella term covering extensions, themes, and (historically) plugins and search-engine plugins together. — in coding names hierarchy
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
writing and structuring content specifically to be retrieved, selected, and quoted by an AI answer engine, as distinct from Search Engine Optimization's goal of ranking a page for a human to click. — in in depth search expanded
AOT (Ahead-of-Time compilation)
converting source code into native machine instructions before the program runs, so it executes directly on the CPU without a runtime interpreter — in electron and the default
API (Application Programming Interface) — full restoration
the defined set of requests a piece of software will accept, and how it will respond. — in coding names hierarchy
Argon2 / Argon2id
the winning algorithm of the 2015 Password Hashing Competition; a memory-hard key derivation function, standardized informationally as RFC 9106. — in vault file and the vibe
Autocomplete attribute
the HTML field attribute that signals whether an input is a login field or a new-password field. — in vault file and the vibe
Benchmark contamination (search-time)
a live-search analogue of data leaking into training: an agent's own web search can retrieve pages that directly discuss the benchmark question it is being tested on, inflating its measured score. — in in depth search expanded
borrow checker (Rust)
Rust's compile-time mechanism that enforces memory safety by tracking data ownership and preventing access to freed memory — in electron and the default
Breadth-first question
a research task solved by many independent, parallel lookups (e.g. finding every board member across an entire stock index), as opposed to one deep chained lookup. — in in depth search expanded
bundle size (desktop app)
the total disk footprint of a packaged desktop application, including the framework runtime, application code, and all assets — in electron and the default
Citogenesis
a term coined by webcomic author Randall Munroe: an unsourced claim added to Wikipedia gets picked up uncritically by a journalist, whose article is then cited back on Wikipedia as independent confirmation — a closed, self-reinforcing citation loop. — in in depth search expanded
CLI (Command Line Interface) — full restoration
controlling a program by typing text commands rather than clicking visual elements. — in coding names hierarchy
Client / server (architectural pair)
the client is the program or device making a request; the server is the running program that listens for and answers it. — in coding names hierarchy
CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network)
the 1993–1995 Perl module repository that established the modern package-registry pattern. — in coding names hierarchy
CPU-bound
work whose completion speed is limited by how fast the processor can calculate, rather than by waiting on network or disk. — in sif implementation languages
Credential stuffing
automated replay of already-breached username/password pairs against unrelated sites, hoping victims reused the same password. — in vault file and the vibe
Cron Trigger (Cloudflare Workers)
a Cloudflare Workers feature that runs a piece of code automatically on a schedule, expressed as a standard cron expression, with no separate always-on server. — in hosting data vps
D1 (Cloudflare D1)
Cloudflare's managed, hosted version of SQLite — same file format, run as a service with zero-config bindings from a Worker. — in hosting data vps
Daemon — full restoration
a program that runs continuously in the background with no window or user interface, waiting to do a specific job. — in coding names hierarchy
Database — full restoration
an organized, persistent store of data, structured so it can be queried independently of the specific machine it resides on. — in coding names hierarchy
Deep Research Bench / RACE score
an independent leaderboard evaluating deep-research agents against 100 PhD-level research tasks across 22 fields, scored by an LLM-as-judge method. — in in depth search expanded
DPAPI (Data Protection API)
Microsoft's OS-level encryption API (via the `CryptProtectData` function) that ties secrets to a specific Windows login on a specific machine. — in vault file and the vibe
EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator)
one of the first stored-program computers, built at Cambridge University, 1949. — in coding names hierarchy
egress
data leaving a storage or hosting service out to the internet — the part many cloud vendors meter and charge for. — in hosting data vps
El-76 (Эль-76)
a Russian-keyword high-level programming language built for the Soviet Elbrus multiprocessor computer systems, developed 1972-73. — in coding the infant discipline
Electron (software framework)
a framework that bundles the Chromium browser engine and Node.js runtime so developers can build desktop apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — in electron and the default
Endpoint (API)
one specific address within an API where a particular kind of request is answered. — in coding names hierarchy
Engine (software) — full restoration
a runtime specialized to do one demanding, repeatable job extremely well — render graphics, run a game world, search text. — in coding names hierarchy
Envelope encryption
encrypting a data key with a master key, rather than encrypting the underlying data directly with the master key. — in vault file and the vibe
Epistemic diversity
how varied the range of framings, sources, and conclusions is across a knowledge system, as distinct from how much raw content simply exists. — in in depth search expanded
Extension (browser)
a sandboxed piece of software that adds a user-facing capability to the browser itself — an ad blocker, a password manager — through a defined API, as distinct from a plugin's embedded-content-rendering role. — in coding names hierarchy
FFI (Foreign Function Interface)
a way for one programming language to call functions written in another, at the binary level, without serialization overhead — in electron and the default
File format — full restoration
the agreed shape data is written in, so anything reading it knows how to parse it. — in coding names hierarchy
Focused crawler
a web crawler that scores every link it finds for topical relevance before following it, rather than following every link it encounters. — in sif implementation languages
framework (software)
a pre-built collection of tools and structures that handles the common hard parts of building software, so a developer only writes the parts specific to their application — as opposed to building from scratch — in electron and the default
HKDF
HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand Key Derivation Function — a standard way to turn one cryptographic key into several independent ones. — in vault file and the vibe
Index (database) — full restoration
a lookup shortcut built alongside data so a search doesn't have to scan everything. — in coding names hierarchy
Information hiding
the design principle that a module's internal workings should be hidden behind a stable interface, so the internals can change without breaking anything that calls it. — in coding names hierarchy
IPC (Inter-Process Communication) — desktop frameworks
the mechanism by which separate OS processes send messages to each other, since they run in separate memory spaces and cannot share variables directly — in electron and the default
JSON Lines / JSONL / NDJSON
a file format where each line is one complete, independent JSON object — readable and appendable one line at a time, without loading or parsing the whole file at once. — in sif implementation languages
Kernel — full restoration
the innermost, most privileged core of an operating system, mediating every program's access to actual hardware. — in coding names hierarchy
Key derivation function (KDF)
a deliberately slow, computationally expensive function that turns a password into a cryptographic key, rather than a fast lookup value. — in vault file and the vibe
Knowledge homogenization
the narrowing of vocabulary, framing, and reasoning style a reader encounters, as more of what they read is produced or mediated by the same small set of AI systems. — in in depth search expanded
Lethal trifecta
Simon Willison's named risk pattern for AI agents: private-data access + exposure to untrusted content + the ability to communicate externally, all present in one session. — in vault file and the vibe
Library (software) — full restoration
an organized collection of ready-made, callable code that a program picks up and uses on its own schedule (contrast: a framework calls the developer's code instead — see "framework (software)" above, the Hollywood Principle). — in coding names hierarchy
Litestream
a tool that continuously copies a SQLite database's changes to S3-compatible object storage in real time, providing backup and disaster recovery without running a separate database server. — in hosting data vps
Mac Catalyst
Apple's compatibility layer that runs UIKit-based iOS apps on macOS — used by .NET MAUI for its macOS desktop support path — in electron and the default
main process (Electron)
in Electron: the single privileged background process that owns the app's lifecycle, creates windows, and communicates with the OS — in electron and the default
Memory / objective / knowledge defect (AI coding agent taxonomy)
three named, distinct root causes of security vulnerabilities in AI-agent-written software, as opposed to one undifferentiated "the AI made a mistake" bucket. — in coding the infant discipline
Memory-hard function
a key-derivation function that requires large amounts of RAM to compute, not just CPU time, specifically to resist GPU and ASIC hardware acceleration. — in vault file and the vibe
Microservice / monolith
a microservice is one focused, independently-deployable server-side responsibility; a monolith is a single application where all request-handling logic runs in one process. — in coding names hierarchy
Middleware
software that sits between two other pieces of software to let them exchange data. — in coding names hierarchy
Mixed-use crawler
a single automated crawler whose fetched data feeds more than one purpose at once — search indexing, live agent assistance, and model training — making a simple "search good, training bad" blocking rule structurally imprecise. — in in depth search expanded
Mixture-of-Experts (MoE)
a model architecture where only a small fraction of the model's total parameters actually activate for any given input, keeping inference cost close to a much smaller model's despite a much larger total parameter count. — in in depth search expanded
Module (programming) — full restoration
one named, self-contained unit of code inside a larger program. — in coding names hierarchy
nodeIntegration (Electron security)
a legacy Electron configuration flag that, when enabled, lets renderer processes directly call Node.js APIs — disabled by default in modern Electron — in electron and the default
Null reference
a placeholder value meaning "nothing here," embedded in a type system, that a program can accidentally try to use as if it held real data. — in coding the infant discipline
Option type (Rust)
an explicit wrapper type — `Option<T>` — that forces a programmer to handle the "value might be absent" case at compile time, instead of allowing a silent null. — in coding the infant discipline
Origin (web security)
the scheme + host + port combination browsers use to decide whether two pages count as "the same site." — in vault file and the vibe
Package (software) — full restoration
a module or library bundled together with the metadata needed to install, version, and distribute it. — in coding names hierarchy
Parametric memory
everything a model learned during training, frozen at a cutoff date and stored as weights — no live lookup happens when a model answers from this alone. — in in depth search expanded
Pay Per Crawl / Pay Per Use
Cloudflare products: the first lets a site charge an AI company per page fetch; the second, its 2026 evolution, pays a publisher when their content demonstrably contributes to an actual answer, not simply when a bot fetches the page. — in in depth search expanded
PBKDF2
Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2 — repeatedly re-applies a cryptographic hash function thousands of times, so that even a fast computer takes real time per guess. — in vault file and the vibe
Pipeline (computing) — full restoration
an ordered chain of processing stages, where each stage's output feeds directly into the next stage's input. — in coding names hierarchy
Plugin — browser sense (retired category)
a browser component that renders one specific kind of embedded content directly inside a web page — Adobe Flash Player and Java applets are the canonical examples. — in coding names hierarchy
Plugin — general sense (pre-browser)
software loaded by an already-running host program to extend its abilities at runtime, without rebuilding the host. — in coding names hierarchy
PostgreSQL (Postgres)
a full-featured relational database that runs as its own always-on server process, supporting concurrent multi-writer access and advanced query features SQLite lacks. — in hosting data vps
Prompt injection
hidden or embedded instructions inside content an AI agent processes, aimed at redirecting the agent's own behavior rather than informing it about the subject. — in vault file and the vibe
Protocol — full restoration
the agreed rules two systems follow so they can exchange information correctly. — in coding names hierarchy
PWA (Progressive Web App)
a web application that is installable from a browser, can work offline, and can access some OS-level APIs through standardized web capabilities — in electron and the default
R2 (Cloudflare R2 / object storage)
Cloudflare's S3-compatible object storage product. — in hosting data vps
Readability algorithm
software that identifies the main body text of a webpage and strips surrounding navigation, ads, and layout chrome — the same category of logic browsers use for "reader mode." — in sif implementation languages
REFAL (РЕФАЛ) — programming language
a Russian-origin functional programming language built around pattern matching and term rewriting, oriented toward symbolic computation (string processing, natural- language translation, early AI work). — in coding the infant discipline
Registry (software)
a centralized store of records other software looks up. — in coding names hierarchy
renderer process
in Electron: an isolated Chromium process that draws one application window, with web APIs but no direct OS access by default — in electron and the default
REST (Representational State Transfer)
an architectural style for networked systems built around addressable "resources" manipulated through a small, standard set of operations. — in coding names hierarchy
RFC 9309
the 2022 Internet standard formalizing the robots.txt convention websites use to tell crawlers which pages they may and may not fetch. — in sif implementation languages
Rosetta 2
Apple's translation layer that runs Intel (x64) compiled apps on Apple Silicon (arm64) chips — makes older Mac apps run on M-series Macs, at a performance cost — in electron and the default
S3 API
the request format Amazon's S3 storage service popularized, now implemented as a de facto industry standard by many independent storage providers. — in hosting data vps
Salt (cryptographic)
random data unique to each user, mixed into a key-derivation function so identical passwords don't produce identical stored outputs. — in vault file and the vibe
Schema (database) — full restoration
the blueprint describing what shape data inside a database must take. — in coding names hierarchy
Secret Service API
the freedesktop.org specification, jointly authored by GNOME and KDE developers, behind Linux keyring services such as GNOME Keyring, accessed via libsecret over D-Bus. — in vault file and the vibe
Secrets manager
a dedicated service (e.g. HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager) that encrypts, serves, and can automatically rotate credentials on demand, rather than storing them in a plaintext config file. — in vault file and the vibe
Secure Enclave
Apple's physically separate, hardware-isolated security coprocessor, which never exposes its internal keys to the main operating system. — in vault file and the vibe
Secure Remote Password (SRP)
a cryptographic protocol that proves you know a password without ever transmitting the password, or a value equivalent to it, over the network. — in vault file and the vibe
Shamir's Secret Sharing
a cryptographic scheme that splits a single key into several independent shares, any sufficient subset of which can reconstruct the original key. — in vault file and the vibe
Shell (CLI)
the outer, replaceable command-interpreting layer wrapped around a kernel. — in coding names hierarchy
Skia (graphics library)
a 2D graphics library used by Chrome, ChromeOS, Android, older Flutter, and Avalonia UI — draws shapes, text, and images with GPU acceleration, cross-platform — in electron and the default
Smooshgate
a 2018 JavaScript standardization incident in which a proposed standard method had to be renamed because it conflicted with an already-widely-deployed library. — in coding the infant discipline
SQLite
a database that lives as a single ordinary file on disk, with no separate database server process running in the background. — in hosting data vps
Synthesis (research)
properly integrating findings from multiple sources into one coherent claim, rather than listing them side by side without connecting them. — in in depth search expanded
unattended-upgrades
a Debian/Ubuntu Linux tool that installs security patches automatically on a schedule, without a human running the update command each time. — in hosting data vps
Vibe coding
building software primarily by prompting an AI and accepting its output with little or no manual code review. — in vault file and the vibe
Vibe-coded application (security research sense)
a deployed, real-world software application built primarily by an AI coding agent from natural-language instructions, with minimal human review of the resulting code. — in coding the infant discipline
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
a slice of a physical server, rented whole, that behaves like an independent Linux computer. — in hosting data vps
Wayland (Linux display protocol)
the modern Linux display protocol replacing the older X11 system — apps running native Wayland have better color accuracy, variable refresh rate support, and cleaner window management than running through XWayland compatibility — in electron and the default
WebAuthn
the W3C/FIDO web-authentication standard underlying "passkeys," cryptographically binding a credential to a specific origin at the protocol level. — in vault file and the vibe
WebView (desktop framework context)
the platform-native component for rendering web content inside a native app — WebView2 on Windows, WKWebView on macOS, WebKitGTK on Linux — in electron and the default
wenyan-lang (文言)
an esoteric programming language (esolang) modeled on the grammar of Classical Chinese literary prose, created in 2019. — in coding the infant discipline
WinAppSDK (Windows App SDK)
Microsoft's packaged API layer providing modern Windows features (WinUI 3, notifications, app lifecycle APIs) to apps not built inside the older UWP model — in electron and the default
workerd
the actual open-source runtime engine that executes Cloudflare Workers code. — in sif implementation languages
write-ahead log
the internal record a database keeps of changes before they are permanently saved to the main data file. — in hosting data vps
Zero-knowledge architecture
a system design where the service provider is structurally unable to read a user's data — not merely policy-forbidden from trying. — in vault file and the vibe
易语言 (Yìyǔyán / "Easy Language")
a fully Chinese-keyword, visual programming environment first released in 2000, designed to make programming accessible without needing English. — in coding the infant discipline