1. I'm not about to break a streak.

    27 September 2015

    It's getting near the end of September and I haven't posted anything yet this month. What's going on?

    Rather a lot, actually.

    I've taken on a significant amount of responsibility at my day job this year, and sometimes that means putting in long hours. Long enough hours that, if I don't faceplant shortly after arriving at home I'm awake for only an hour or two afterward, and the last thing I want to lay eyes on is a keyboard. I usually study during that time before crashing for the next day. Yes, this means that I'm at the point in …

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  2. UPDATED: I'll be presenting at the Future of Politics Conference.

    25 August 2015

    EDIT: While I will be attendence at this conference, I am no longer in the lineup of speakers.

    On 18 October 2015 I'll be presenting at the Future of Politics Conference held by the Brighter Brains Institute. I'll be giving a talk (which doesn't have a title yet, and in fact I have yet to start writing) on tools and strategies for grassroots organization in a time when we're all connected on a 24x7x365 basis (which is to say, today).

    The conference will be held at the Humanist Hall in Oakland, CA from 10:30am until 6:00pm. Lunch will …

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  3. DefCon 23: Presentation notes

    20 August 2015

    Here and behind the cut are the notes I took at DefCon 23. They are necessarily incomplete because they're notes, and I refer you to the speakers' presentations and eventually video recordings for the whole story.

    Applied Intelligence: Using Information That's Not There - Michael Schrenk

    • Knowing your operations and resources
    • More effective and efficient
    • Competitive intelligence
    • What's happening outside of your business
    • Know your competitors and markets
    • Collect, analyze, and apply external data
    • There is a professional association of people who do competitive intelligence
    • Applied intelligence is actionable and changes what you do
    • Most is useless unless you develop it …

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  4. DefCon 23: The Writeup

    17 August 2015

    Well, I'm back from DefCon in sunny and hot Las Vegas, Nevada and more or less reinserted back into my everyday life. I'm just about caught up on everything that happened at work and finally finished the notes that are going to comprise this article. I'll type up the notes I took during the talks at DefCon in a couple of days; they've voluminous and I want to get the experience out of my head and into external storage before the memories fade much more. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to any of the villages so I don't have anything …

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  5. Fabbing components, parallel processing with rats, and synthetic neurons.

    27 July 2015

    Life being what it is these days, I haven't had much time to write any real posts here. If I'm not working I'm at home studying because I'm back on the "get letters after my name" trail, and if I'm not studying or in class I'm helping get family moved out and set up on the west coast. Or I'm at the gym because I'm fighting alongside my essential vanity by trying to lose weight; people tell me that I look good these days but there's a fine line between looking healthy and needing new clothes. So there you have …

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  6. Notes from the Transhuman Superpowers and Longevity Conference - 12 July 2015

    20 July 2015

    And now, hopefully sooner than the last set, my notes taken during the Transhuman Superpowers and Longevity Conference held on 12 July 2015 in Oakland, CA. Everything's behind the cut, with references as applicable. Personal observations (are on separate lines in parenthesis) to differentiate them from the speaker's material. Vertical Farm Civilization - Karl Doerrer

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  7. Notes from the Transhuman Strategies conference, 21 March 2015

    17 July 2015

    At long last, here are my notes from the Transhuman Strategies conference held by the Brighter Brains Institute on 21 March 2015. It took me a while to find the notebook I wrote them in, so that's why they're a few months late in coming. Anyway, my notes are under the cut.

    Hank Pellissier - Transhumanitarian Projects

    • Goals: Extending life, increasing mental ability
    • Life expectency in Japan is 80, in Sierra Leone is 35
    • Hunger is still the greatest killer
    • Shipping food or backing projects
    • De-worming - parasiting infections in children
    • The energy deficit incurred by parasitic infection lowers IQ in children …

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  8. I am this week's special guest on the More Than Bits! podcast.

    13 July 2015

    Last week Alexius Pendragon invited me to be the special guest on the podcast he co-hosts, called More Than Bits! During the interview I fielded a bunch of questions about the RaspberryPi and my lunchtop, Squeak and Scratch, capture the flag competitions and Project 2 by dirtbags.net, Project Byzantium, and being on the Global Frequency.

    I was unfortunately ill-prepared for the interview because I ran home from work and jacked in without taking the time to get my head or my notes together, so I made quite a few gaffs. I hate it when I'm operating half in work …

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  9. The OPM compromise and information dynamics.

    06 July 2015

    If you pay attention to the news, you've undoubtedly heard that the US Office of Personnel Management, which coordinates the background investigations for every civil servant and contractor of the United States government was pwned so thoroughly that the intruders even got into E-QIP, the online web service that prospectives have to enter their life histories into (well, at most the last decade of it) so the process can begin. Say what you want about government, but this will probably go down as the most gigantic clusterfuck in history and it shows every sign of getting worse, not better. One …

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