Objective: become the dominant system for phones, tablets and laptops — a small but determined company now, but hey, this is Cyberspace!
A better way to back complex new technology?
Objective: become the dominant system for phones, tablets and laptops — a small but determined company now, but hey, this is Cyberspace!
A better way to back complex new technology?
US$25, plus any taxes, before any further commitment.
1 Potential financial risk
You could lose the US$25 (plus any taxes paid) without getting an end product, either because the project fails or because you decide not to go any further.
2 The project may not succeed
THWIXEL is new technology, and there are many ways a project like this can fail. We may be unable to source the components we need; the design may not work as intended; we may hit bugs we cannot resolve; we may run out of funds, or be unable to proceed for regulatory, legal or commercial reasons; or the project may stop for any other reason. If it does, membership fees are not refundable.
3 Project loss
We have an extensive portfolio of IP, but no patents have been granted yet, and they may not be. Without that protection, competitors could undermine our chances of bringing investors and others on board to help us reach the goal.
An even more damaging scenario is existing IP we are not aware of that prevents us from commercialising the project.
That is why the first US$5 of every membership fee goes towards furthering and fortifying our IP and searching for problematic prior art: the foundation on which everything else depends.
That said, we believe our approach is novel and likely outside the realm of existing protection, as it is difficult to see how anyone would have conceived it without our foundational disclosures.
4 Not enough members joining
The biggest risk of all is not enough members joining. If that happens, we will keep protecting the IP and pursue other routes to market. It will not be given away.
5 The risks we haven’t thought of
We can’t list every risk, because some we haven’t thought of. You’re backing a project we believe can be commercialised, but we may be wrong, and something we never saw coming could stop it. You may get nothing at all from your membership.
The earlier you join the project, the greater the risk. That is why early members go to the front of the queue if there are end products.
Full details, and the T&Cs, to come.
Well, you did ask...
1 The moat
For starters, the device makers have built themselves a lovely moat around their business.
Take a TV: nobody charges you to watch anything on it. Phones? That’s another story.
The moat is carefully guarded. “Oh, we have to maintain security.” Convenient, but fair enough, except that it is decades of software patches piled on software patches that made it so sensitive to security in the first place.
Worse is the operating system itself: bloated, and getting bigger every year, which makes it a minefield for anyone trying to build something substantial on it. That leaves the average publisher at the mercy of big tech just to publish, and hoping their work doesn’t get lifted along the way.
So, how popular do you think we’ll be, trying to upset this cosy little clique with what we argue is better security, and a third processor that lets stacks of users and developers write code to do lots, and much more simply?
2 The manufacturers
Then there are the display and phone manufacturers. Retool a production line on spec, with no guaranteed mass volume at the end of it? Not likely. And they are hardly going to upset the vendors they already depend on.
Yep, scratch that one.
3 The toll collectors
And what about all the toll collectors on the advertising route, each clipping a little of the ad spend on its way from the advertiser to your screen? They will hardly be happy to be made redundant by smart glass that can attest the ad was actually delivered.
Another potential enemy.
4 The money
Venture capital likes software: quick to build, quick to sell. Silicon is slow, expensive and risky, and plenty of the deep pockets are already invested in the very clique we are trying to upset.
Yet they are quick to pour billions into any startup with AI in its tagline, most of them likely headed down the gurgler. Oh, that brings back dot-com memories. We doubt they will be particularly enamoured with what may be the most useful AI addition to the phone of all: a guard rail in the Secure Processor that stops agents causing havoc.
Hmm, maybe not that one either.
5 The buy-out
Suppose a big player did offer to buy it. The easiest way to protect a moat is to buy the bridge and leave it in a drawer. Not interested in that at all.
(That is not BS. It is why my spouse has let me carry on with this rather than finish renovating the house!)
6 The twist
Remember number 2? What the manufacturers need is proof of volume before they retool. A crowd that has put its hand up is that proof. You are not just supporting a product; you are the evidence that gets the production line moving.
7 Who it’s for anyway
The people who gain from this are the people outside the moat: users, advertisers, publishers, developers, and the tinkerers who will write apps for the Infinity Machine. It makes sense for them to be the ones who start it.
So that leaves you.
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The subsidy is never paid out as money. It builds up in a subsidy account held for each member, and can only be used against the purchase of a THWIXEL phone. Its purpose is to get an initial critical number of phones onto the market, much as phone companies subsidise phones for their customers. It’s just that ours favours those who gave us a helping hand along the way!
When subsidy funds come in, they are allocated straight away to the subsidy accounts of the members at that date. Anyone who joins later is included in the next allocation, not that one.
1 Half is allocated equally
The subsidy account of every member at the time of the allocation receives the same amount, so a large allocation brings everyone’s phone price down.
2 Half is allocated by weeks of membership
Each week you have been a CyberWarrior earns one frequent backer point. The more points you have, the more goes into your subsidy account.
3 Used only when you buy your phone
Your subsidy account builds up to a maximum of US$250, and is applied as a discount off the cost price when you buy your THWIXEL phone. If you want a faster processor, a bigger display, or a tablet instead of a phone, you simply pay the difference.
4 Nothing wasted
Once a member’s subsidy account reaches the limit, further allocations stay in the pool for later members. And if a member decides not to buy a phone, the balance of their subsidy account goes back into the pool.
Subsidy comes only from our other income, never from other members’ fees. A subsidy account has no cash value, cannot be withdrawn or transferred, and all subsidy allocation is at our sole determination.
If you would like THWIXEL to see the light of day (and we can think of a few names that will not!) please join the CyberWarriors.
A single one-off fee of US$25 (plus any taxes; about £19, €22 or A$36) makes you a CyberWarrior for the life of the THWIXEL project. Members support its development, contribute ideas, vote on how we progress through its milestones, get early access to selected sections of our filed IP, and qualify for very special pricing – assuming there is something to price!
Membership is not an investment. It gives no shares, ownership, profit share or financial return of any kind. It is personal to you, one per person, and cannot be transferred or resold. Member pricing and subsidies have no cash value. We may stop accepting new members at any time.
Be warned, this is a large project, and we are going into battle against Big Tech – perhaps all of it!
So, just to be clear, the only thing you may get for your 25 bucks is the pleasure of trying to curtail the industry goliaths. If you do not get pleasure easily, you may not get that either!
Don’t get us wrong, we would love to have THWIXEL in their phones, but the independence it might give to users of their devices may be problematic. We figure our best bet may be with a company currently having credibility with security in Western markets, because we reckon we have security nailed down.
See Product Staging below for details, but if we get the first silicon for our custom dual-input DDIC for controlling the display, souvenir chips that may be raw or embalmed in something resembling a piece of jewellery will be available for members (cost + P&P, or maybe less or free, depending on how much is left in the piggy bank!).
An entire silicon wafer (assuming there is one) will be the prize in a contest for members. When we figure out how to do this without jurisdictional constraints, we will provide details.
If the project succeeds, one THWIXEL phone per member will be available for purchase at cost price as determined by us. We will advise how we have structured the costings, but we are the final arbiters of this. Costing will not include any salary or other payments made to either of the founders.
It is our objective to get an initial one million THWIXEL phones onto the market to kickstart the ecosystem. We are prepared to further subsidise the cost price, up to a maximum of US$250 per member, from a percentage of revenue received from other sources that may include Picotronix, THWANGO or investors. There is no guarantee that we will receive any revenue from these or any other source, and any subsidy allocation is at our sole determination.
The subsidy will not be equal for all members and will depend on length of membership. This is only fair, as the chance of success and supporting revenue streams is expected to improve with time.
Before you join, make sure you read and
Here’s the roadmap as we see it, assuming things go to plan. The stages are indicative only and subject to change. Two principles run through every stage: beyond the one-off membership fee, we only ask members to pay for anything at a stage when we are confident we can deliver it, and members help decide the direction at each step.
Advancing our IP portfolio, the Virtual THWIXEL, the forum, and CyberWarriors membership. Your member code, kept safe, is how you vote and claim member pricing.
We put the big decisions to members: OLED only, or LCD support as well; which phone, tablet and laptop sizes first; which host processors, and whether to offer a choice; a replaceable battery, and the physical layout of the device. And early on: should we co-develop tablets and laptops alongside the phone? The display controller and the secure processing are essentially the same in all three. Alongside the hardware we start building up the software: which apps the Infinity Machine and the Secure Processor could run first, and the tools developers will need. And we will be finding out who has skills to offer, from chip and display design to app development and testing. Anyone with something to contribute is welcome to get in touch, and our CyberWarriors will be the first to hear where help is needed.
THWIXEL could be built into a device in other ways, but the dual display is the most practical, so the first milestone is the display controller chip, designed and verified using simulation. Proving it on real glass with a programmable (FPGA) prototype first remains an option.
The first chips are made on a shared wafer with other companies, the safest and most affordable way to prove the design. A chip is fitted to a display and shown to work, and a few prototypes go to selected members to test.
Once we know the dual display system works as expected, we turn to the Secure Processor: assessing what is already available, what needs modifying, and what, if anything, we need to build ourselves. We won’t commit to this until the display side is proven.
Then a full wafer of THWIXEL chips, made with members’ contributions. Your chip from it is reserved for your THWIXEL, and you can also have a memento of the first of the line (a bare chip, a souvenir or jewellery), made and sent at cost plus postage. One whole wafer is the trophy in a members’ contest.
Finished THWIXEL display panels. Members can choose to buy one held by us for their future THWIXEL device, one for their own use, or both. You are only asked to pay once the display is proven.
By now we expect partners on board: a phone maker, a display-chip maker, investors. If not, we build it ourselves and say so plainly: this is what we are building, and this is the price. Either way, members take part in the device design, and member approval sets the direction.
Your voice, all the way. It’s a long road, and we want as much feedback from our CyberWarriors as we can get, positive and negative.
Said yes? Then you’re already a CyberWarrior at heart.
CyberWarriors registered so far
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