Category Archives: Uncategorized

Defcon is hosted in a desert. This is exclusionary to people from cold regions, who cannot handle the heat. Defcon is in Las Vegas. This is exclusionary to people who have gambling problems. Defcon provides attendees with open bars. This … Continue reading →

We hear it every day: the future is here. If you didn’t think so last month — if you somehow thought we had more time before the Wired became real — take a look outside. Somewhere between 10 and 50 … Continue reading →

“Enemies can pick up dropped weapons.” Lambdaconf‘s got me thinking a lot about what the purpose of a conference is. I think people have a variety of reasons for attending. Some go to network, find jobs or employees. Some go … Continue reading →

How big is your filter bubble? What’s in it? What’s outside it? Okay, next question: how can you tell? In 2011, Eli Pariser defined a filter bubble as “that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by algorithms.” Unfortunately, he never defined a … Continue reading →

There was a time when I was lucky enough to take a ride in a hot air balloon. Standing above the world, you see things in a different light. Things that seemed random, chaotic, and mysterious display an ordering not obvious … Continue reading →

Update: Pieter chose euthanasia around 1pm Belgian time, October 4th, 2016. Everything else in this post is still accurate. Pieter Hintjens will most likely be dead before terribly much longer. Cancer, bile duct, metastatic. He is not exactly shy about any … Continue reading →

In the midst of all this controversy over Mr. Yarvin, something has come up that I feel the need to talk about. One of the main points of the critics of Yarvin, of Lambdaconf, and of Status451’s actions is the … Continue reading →

Twitter’s tech hives were abuzz once again with the telltale sound of moral indignation. For many it’s just too tempting to pile on, but here at the ol’ 451 we prefer to put our money where our mouth is instead, … Continue reading →

Sometimes it seems like the cold war never ended. The western world is ostensibly a free-market democracy, and yet you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Corporations are universally reviled, sometimes with hilarious results. The socialist running for US president is … Continue reading →