“Me: 22, transmasc femme NB libra with a penchant for aggressive femmes and routine strap-on rodeos. Radically vulnerable, goofy, blushing, boob-less beatboxer. Too easily wifed up but working on it. You: consumer of fragrant hair products, soft on the inside, believer in ghosts & bell hooks’ definition of love.

“Washington, DC”

In August 2018, the ad was posted to the Instagram account Personals, known for posting such ads by and for the queer community. Malina, who uses they/them pronouns, had recently gotten out of an open relationship and was seeking monogamy.

Though they had labored over the ad, Malina felt little intimidation in sending their romantic wants and needs into the internet ether, because they knew the queer community was going to be on the other end. And if no dates had come out of their ad, Malina still feels like it would have been “a great experience.” But the first person they started talking to is their current partner, who successfully fulfilled Malina’s “believer in ghosts” requirement with an offer of a ghost tour.

After starting in 2017, Personals became a hugely popular place for people like Malina to meet a partner or to make a friend, attracting more than 60,000 followers. Last month, founder Kell Rakowski took the next step of turning it into its own app, Lex, creating a rare queer-centric platform for romance and friendship.

The Instagram account began with one spontaneous screenshot. Rakowski, a graphic designer in New York City, discovered an online archive of print personal ads from On Our Backs, a women-run erotica magazine in circulation from 1984 to 2006. She posted a screenshot of them on her lesbian history Instagram account, @h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y, and instantly her followers clamored for more. In her bio, Rakowski threw up a Google Doc link for people to create their own ads, and quickly realized the reaction warranted an entirely new account.

Personals specifically catered to the LBTQA of the LGBTQA community (essentially, everyone in the community but cisgender gay men, a group better represented in the world of LGBTQA dating apps). People submitted ads summing up themselves and their desires (like “softie 4 softie,” a request for a partner as sentimental as the poster), touching upon personality quirks, preferences for friendship or romance (or both) and sometimes a promise of an idyllic first date.

Rakowski found that the community was not only frustrated with dating apps, but also lacked a more general digital space to connect with one another. Mainstream dating apps don’t often prioritize LGBTQA inclusion. (Tinder only recently expanded its gender identity offerings.) Many Personals fans felt its creation was long overdue, particularly on Instagram, where Rakowski found queer people were already converging in more subtle ways.

“The kind of revolutionary thing about Personals was that it was 100 percent queer people looking for other queer people,” says recent Bryn Mawr graduate Shira Steinberg, who met their Pittsburgh-based partner on the account, later moving to the city to be closer to them. “It wasn’t, like, a straight couple wanting a third or a straight person wanting a gay friend.”

Before discovering Personals, both Steinberg and Malina were exhausted by the number of Tinder or Hinge messages they received that reduced them to a stereotype. Personals’ lack of images meant their interests, energy and personality were prioritized over physical appearance.

“It’s not fun to go on first dates and discovering people want something else that you don’t offer,” says Malina, who found their androgynous, masculine-presenting appearance gave dates an expectation that they were going to act a certain way or “be their boyfriend.”

The Columbia University graduate student was initially attracted to the platform because they had seen a friend get a lot of digital attention from an ad (“And I really like likes and attention!”) but soon discovered Personals’ unique ability to seemingly unite the entire queer community in one corner of the internet.

“Even drafting my own personals ad, I knew that people from many different perspectives were going to read this,” says Malina, who loved scrolling past ads based anywhere from Australia to Canada. “You have to be very conscious of language.”

The ads had a minimalist aesthetic, which Rakowski says made the posts easy to read yet “contemporary and cool.” They spilled out on alternating electric teal and white tiles, with the occasional yellow one indicating a “missed connection” post about a stranger someone recently encountered (a nod to another old-school form of romantic longing, if you consider Craigslist old.)

Language was another key component to why Personals worked; the short and charming descriptions could ask for cuddling in the same breath as sexual domination. Plus, the LGBTQ community has historically used words such butch, transfemme, genderfluid and switch as identifiers, indicating sexual preferences, gender identity and more. And on Personals, where posters had to squeeze their personalities into packed ad descriptions, these words helped concisely show who they are.

But sometimes the language could cause controversy. Malina remembers seeing a post containing the word “boi,” and the subsequent backlash questioned whether the white person who posted the ad could describe themselves using a word that originated in the African American community.

Such disputes could create a learning experience for some, but for others, it felt like a burden of labor to dispense that knowledge, Malina noticed. They fit into a larger conversation about the white privilege that dominates many queer spaces. With the creation of the app version, Lex, Rakowski and her newly hired five-person team hope to better recognize these issues and rely less on members of the community to call out inequity.

Rakowski started Lex after realizing that the community had outgrown Personals, which had racked up a couple of thousand posts. “People were submitting personal ads all day long,” says Rakowski, who also didn’t like feeling bound to the “Facebook/Instagram megaplex.”

Lex (short for lexicon, a playful wink to the queer community’s unique vernacular) was financed by a Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $50,000. The profiles look similar to those on Personals – minimalist, no photos – but users can message privately and set geographic boundaries.

Malina was excited to start using Lex to remain part of that Personals community, but asked their partner if it was OK to download it. “The benefit of Instagram was that people who didn’t want to directly interact with anybody could kind of just see it happen,” says Malina. “Downloading an app feels like a step towards looking for something. … It definitely feels like more of a commitment.”

But for Malina, Rakowski and others, the benefits of Lex outweigh any doubts. On Lex, there is less risk of trolls storming the comment section, faster ad posting and more opportunity to meet people in your area. Vogue reported two weeks after the launch date that there had been around 12,000 downloads.

Rakowski finds that Personals, and now Lex, have offered a place for all types of queer connections. Personals followers in Britain met up to watch “The Great British Bake Off,” for instance, and soon became their own LGBTQA collective called Queerpack London. Rakowski says the community attracts unexpected subgroups: older people in long-term monogamous relationships wanting to be entertained and kept up-to-date; bisexual people in straight-passing relationships seeking queer friends; and those who are exploring their sexuality, reading ads to learn more about the community and, ultimately, themselves.

“I want it to be a place that people feel safe and unfettered by cis men,” says Rakowski. “I just want a place that can live online and be healthy and thoughtful, not superficial and looks-based. Hopefully, also bringing people together offline. That’s the whole point.”

In a statement to Bloomberg News, Craig Wright said that he “cannot be certain that information will in fact arrive” to help identify the coins he has to split in a legal dispute. The Australian scientist added that he hasn’t said the “private keys” to those coins would become available or be actually used next month.

Earlier this year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach, Florida, said Wright submitted false documents and lied in the legal dispute. He ruled that the late Dave Kleiman owned half of all Bitcoins that Wright mined through 2013, and half of all intellectual property he created. At the time, half of the Bitcoins was valued at about $4 billion, but the digital token’s price has declined since. The ultimate test may be whether Wright is actually able to deliver the Bitcoins to his former partner’s estate.

Wright is a controversial figure, with many in the cryptocurrency community believing he didn’t invent Bitcoin and doesn’t have any extensive holdings. Still, some investors have been concerned that a dump of the coins, supposedly locked in a complicated trust holding about $6 billion, could affect the market.

“I do not intend to dump my family’s BTC as some people suspect or want, as this would hurt many people in the industry,” Wright said in the statement, referring to his Bitcoin fortune.

Reinhart found “clear and convincing evidence” that demonstrates the encrypted trust file doesn’t exist and that Wright’s testimony about it was “intentionally false,” Vel Freedman of Roche Freedman LLP, representing the Kleiman estate, said in an email. The plaintiffs’ position has always been that Wright has access to the Bitcoin now and “no bonded courier” needs to arrive for him to get access, he added.

The lawsuit hasn’t been resolved yet.

The app can be downloaded at AppStore or Play Store.

This is according to the Big Data policy of the government.

From January 1, 2020, the ministry will open an i-Industry system for four main services: queue registration for service at the central offices of the Industry Ministry, factory licence application, single form report, and payment service.

Suriya added that the Ministry of Industry will continue to improve and by 2020 and 2021, he will accelerate the development and expansion of a modern Big Data centre. The focus will be on facilitating entrepreneurs and the public as well as increasing the efficiency of services of all departments under the ministry to prevent government agencies from becoming outdated or being an obstacle to the competitiveness of Thai entrepreneurs in the fourth industrial revolution era.

“I appreciate the executives of the Ministry of Industry who joined and created the data centre in each department in order to accelerate the development of the “i-Industry” system using Big Data database. The system will be available on January 1, 2020,” Suriya said.

The long-awaited draft rules call for a massive new tracking network for everything from toys to larger commercial drones so that law enforcement can spot the devices flying anywhere, from congested urban areas to the most rural zones.

The controversial measure by the Federal Aviation Administration, which is subject to public comment and could change before it becomes final, is a key foundation to advance drone-driven commerce, including deliveries of consumer goods by companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Wing and Amazon.com’s Prime Air.

“This is an important building block in the unmanned traffic management ecosystem,” the FAA said in the proposal.

With only limited exceptions for groups such as model-airplane operators, all drones weighing more than 0.55 pounds (0.25 kilograms) would have to broadcast their position and operator’s identity at all times under the FAA proposal.

The FAA is suggesting that private companies approved by the agency would set up tracking systems for drones, replicating the existing air-traffic control system for traditional aircraft.

Law enforcement and homeland security agencies had demanded a tracking mandate in response to the growing number of drone threats, including a handful of close calls that halted airline flights near airports, collisions with other aircraft or use of the devices by terrorists around the world.

The issue has fractured the rapidly growing base of drone operators, at times pitting recreational fliers and different segments of the industry against each other even as the majority of users acknowledge the need for some type of tracking. It also has raised significant concerns about government monitoring of the public.

Under the FAA proposal, if drone operators want to operate freely, they would have to both broadcast their identity on a radio frequency that can be monitored nearby and simultaneously upload the information via the internet.

In that way, other nearby drones and aircraft can steer clear and local police equipped with tracking devices could identify rogue operators. At the same time, the devices could be monitored from a remote, central system.

Drone users can choose a more limited option of uploading the information to the internet only, but they would be restricted to flying within 400 feet of the operator.

The proposal wouldn’t take effect for three years after it’s finalized, meaning routine delivery flights and other commercial operations won’t be possible until at least then. It typically takes a year or more to finalize a regulation.

Existing drones wouldn’t have to install tracking equipment retroactively, but would in most cases be banned from operation after the rule becomes law. Starting two years after the regulation takes effect, new unmanned devices sold would have to have approved tracking devices.

The proposal would create exemptions designed for traditional model-aircraft operators, who have been flying at designated sites for decades without posing a safety hazard.

Because there is no current method of reliably tracking the devices, existing regulations typically require civilian hobbyists and commercial operators to keep their drones within 400 feet of the ground and within sight. Better tracking would not only allow drones to fly safely over far larger areas, it could also enable a robotic system allowing drones to sense each each and avoid collisions.

The Academy of Model Aeronautics, which represents model aircraft buffs, has argued that its members have their own system of identification, so should be at least partly exempt.

SZ DJI Technology Co., the world’s largest civilian drone manufacturer, has urged the government not to require a new radio beacon be installed on its devices, which could drive up the cost. The company believes a proprietary system it has developed could be used to track its devices without new equipment.

By contrast, Wing and Amazon want a more formalized technology that can track drones in real time across the nation, similar to how existing radars keep tabs on jetliners now. Such a system is needed to maintain order in skies crowded with drones, they say.

The rapid growth in drone use has been a challenge for regulators. More than 1 million people and businesses have registered with the FAA as drone owners and the agency estimates there were 1.3 million of the devices in the U.S.

Through June, there have been more than 8,700 reports received by the FAA of drones flying in prohibited areas or in an unsafe manner. There are typically more than 200 such incidents a month when the weather is warmer, according to FAA data.

While most incidents are relatively minor, the large numbers indicate that at least some drone users are ignoring the rules. Catching such perpetrators has proven all but impossible.

The National Transportation Safety Board has confirmed at least two collisions between a drone and a traditional aircraft: a U.S. Army helicopter hit a small civilian drone in September 2017 near New York City and a small drone grazed a hot-air balloon in Idaho in August 2018.

The agency is investigating whether a drone struck a TV station’s helicopter flying over Los Angeles on Dec. 4. The impact damaged areas near the tail of the copter.

Another fear is the growing use of drones as terrorist weapons. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned lawmakers last year that drones pose a “steadily escalating threat.”

Saudi Arabian officials alleged that drones were used to attack that country’s oil fields on Sept. 14, though they were far larger than the typical civilian drone. Explosive-laden drones were used in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro last year.

Amazon.com Inc. was among the top equity performers after the e-commerce giant reported a “record breaking” holiday season. Ten-year Treasury yields fluctuated around 1.9% while the dollar slipped versus major peers as U.S. jobless claims data came in close to expectations. The Japanese yen headed for its biggest drop in two weeks.

European markets remained shuttered. Shares ended higher in Tokyo, Shanghai and Seoul, while exchanges were closed in Hong Kong and Sydney.

Investors are pushing the $51 trillion MSCI ACWI index of global stocks toward a more-than 8% advance in the final three months of the year, a quarterly performance only bettered a handful of times in the past decade. As traders digest data showing strong consumer confidence, attention now turns to January, when they’ll look for the U.S. and China to consummate a phase-one trade agreement.

“The consumer continues to be shown as the supporting pillar,” said Tim Courtney, chief investment officer at Exencial Wealth Advisors. “They’re continuing to spend and they’re not cutting back.”

In China, the overnight repo rate fell to the lowest level since 2009 Thursday in wake of recent liquidity injections by the central bank.

Elsewhere, the pound rose for a third session. Crude oil climbed above $61 a barrel in New York. Gold advanced beyond $1,500 an ounce, having increased every session this week.

Here are some events that may be of interest this week:

–Japan retail sales and industrial production are scheduled for Friday.

And here are some of the major market moves:

Stocks

–The S&P 500 index gained 0.5% at the close of trading in New York; the Nasdaq added 0.8%.

–The MSCI Asia Pacific index rose 0.2%.

–The MSCI All-Country World index added 0.3%.

Currencies

–The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index dipped 0.2%.

–The British pound increased 0.3% to $1.3002.

–The euro rose 0.1% to $1.11.

–The Japanese yen weakened 0.2% to 109.64 per dollar.

Bonds

–The yield on 10-year Treasuries slipped one basis point to 1.89%.

–The yield on two-year Treasuries rose one basis point to 1.63%.

Commodities

–West Texas Intermediate crude futures increased 0.9% to $61.63 a barrel.

–Gold gained 0.8% to $1,511.58 an ounce.