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And thus we arrive at SCREAM64 encoding, base64 in scream cipher.

Sweet Lord Jesus.

such a great idea that we ought to call it based64 encoding

If you use base64 with the intention of hiding the encoded information, surely it’s as much a cipher as rot13 is, right?

And what do you think is the algorithm from the article? Looks awfully similar to base64 to me, except its lacking the bit-shifts. Both use a lookup table like that.

I think a lot of this depends on if you read the article as the scream cipher being specifically the exact listed substitutions or just any substitution with forms of As. Also depends on how you define encoding, cipher and the overlaps between the two. Plus questions on the relevance of intent, transformation of data, plus changing of meaning and definitions over the years. Some people say morse code is a cipher, but braille isn't - definitions can depend on way more than the black and white logical "but it does this" you're using.

You'd do better debating this with a real life friend over a pint, rather than wasting your time trying to argue with multiple people here.