Presentations
Yes, I'm available to present; I charge proportionally to what you do. Let's talk.
- Blind navigation crash course
Slides
Talk/workshop feedback form (results)
Learn to see the world without your eyes. Wonder what it's like to navigate while blind? Want to learn to use your everyday senses in ways you don't know you don't know? In this talk, I hack you with permanently enhanced sensory perceptions.
This is very participatory, not just "sit and listen", and workshops are even more hands-on (blindfolded w/ cane in hand).
- Meditation for Hackers
EMF 2016 feedback form (results; form PDF)
2 hour applied workshop practicing ~5-7 very different meditation techniques and discussing dozens of variants. Will include discussion of the basic mechanisms and instruction on how to customize to your own preferences.
No experience required. Techniques taught include methods that tend to work well for people who find "emptying your mind" difficult.
This will have no religion, metaphysics, "woo", etc — just practical methods. Techniques taught will not be particular to any "school", though people with prior experience will recognize at least one.
- "Opted out of verbally communicating": TSA's efforts to silence protest and obstruct justice
slides
This talk discusses what happened to me at BOS and TSA's obstruction of justice in covering it up. Given in October 2015, before I won the Rehab Act case compelling TSA to at least respond to me.
- Conlanging and US Intellectual Property Law
video
slides
memo
To what extent are constructed languages and writing systems protected by intellectual property law in the United States?
Copyright, patent, and trademark law all potentially apply to conlangs. However, there are many limitations and requirements for each that, applied to conlangs, bring up unique issues that have rarely (if ever) been clearly tested in court.
Thanks to generous pro bono work
from the law firm Dentons US LLP, the Language Creation Society has gotten a informational background memorandum addressing these issues, which we are now making public. This talk, based on the memo, discusses the basics of intellectual property law in the US, how it may or may not apply to conlangs, some pragmatic take-aways, and Q&A. - Make Your Laws
video
Make Your Laws is an open source, nonprofit, practical project that aims to replace all existing legislatures with online liquid democracies. Our aim is simple: to let you make your laws.
This talk includes background on the concepts of direct, representative, and liquid democracies; the tradeoffs inherent in different types of government; interesting problems for online voting and policy authorship; discussion of some legal context (e.g. loopholes in US campaign finance law; using Super PACs to empower normal people, etc); a practical road map to gaining full control over your legislature; updates on our activity with the FEC; and extended Q&A.
- CSS History Hack History
slides
A brief history of the CSS history hack, the technical flaws in CSS & Javascript spec that led to it, the fixes that were considered and eventually adopted, and the projects (including my CSS Fingerprint) that took advantage of the data to do further fingerprinting and deanonymization.
- Cognitive Psychology for Hackers
video
feedback (results)
slides
Experience firsthand some of the most interesting, surprising, and perspective-changing findings from cognitive and social neuropsychology. With perceptual illusions, priming, biases, heuristics, and unconscious influences, humans have tons of firmware "bugs". All have exploits; some even have patches.
Learn how to improve your own thinking, use others' bugs to your advantage, and gain new perspective on the unconscious and often illusory processes involved in your perceptions.
- TSA Screenings & Your Rights
video
handout
slides
- Conlanging 101
video
slides full , lightning
Introduction to history and typology of constructed languages. In full talk, the audience co-creates a very simple language on the spot.
- TEDxUChicago finalist
- 26th Chaos Communications Congress video workshop audio feedback
- Notacon 7
- Toorcamp 2009
- Noisebridge Five Minutes of Fame video
- Free Space File System
slides
proposal of a novel thin steganographic file system that stores data in the “free” space of a host file system
- Introduction to anti-telemarketer law
slides
discussion of US federal & California laws regulating telemarketers, and how to track down and take action against abusive telemarketers who behave improperly
- Intro to American Sign Language
- Massage techniques
- How to run a conference
slides
- Why blocking cookies won't save you
- A gripping language
slides , details
the unique tactile phonology of our gripping language, which is communicated entirely by finger presses
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Applied Morphology & Vocabulary Generation
slides
2 1-hour workshops teaching a creative approach to morphology; first using tinker toys to allow participants a more abstract view of potential interactions of morphemes, then applying these ideas to standard phonology using nonce morphemes.
- Non-Linear Fully 2-Dimensional Writing Systems video
