I have been working in web technology since the early web, and since 2022 I have been studying AI every day through practical use. My work combines web development, research systems, historical analysis, AI evaluation, and content architecture. I help people organize complex information, repair broken workflows, build useful web systems, and understand how AI can help regular people accomplish more without becoming dependent on it.

I am now bringing this work out of the lab and returning to consulting.

I am an experienced web developer and web operations person (since 1994). I have worked in technology since the early web. I understand production, content systems, databases, workflows, hosting, debugging, publishing, automation, and the human side of technical work.

But I am not a neat little job-title creature.

I am a person you bring in when the system is confusing, the story is tangled, the data is messy, the website is old, the workflow is broken, the project needs structure, and nobody knows quite what to do next.

That is where I am useful.

What I Can Help With

I am available for consulting in areas such as:

WordPress and custom PHP systems;

website repair, cleanup, and modernization;

database-backed content systems;

AI-assisted research workflows;

AI prompt and process design;

historical or cultural research systems;

content architecture;

slideshow and presentation systems;

technical writing;

debugging strange web problems;

turning messy ideas into structured documents;

helping non-technical people use AI without losing the plot;

helping technical people explain what they are actually building.

I am especially interested in working with people who are building real things, maintaining useful systems, preserving knowledge, documenting complex work, or trying to understand how AI can actually help them.

I still curate the largest conference and novelty badge collection in the world which is shown to NorthSec conference attendees: BadgeLife Museum: Pop-up and Hands-on.

The Short Version

I have spent the last few years studying AI by using it seriously every day.

I have been testing how it reasons through original historical material, how it helps, how it flatters, how it fails, and how it can make regular people more capable.

At the same time, I have been building a large original research system around history, culture, inventors, artists, timing, and public memory.

Now I am making that work visible.

And I am available again.

Not as a generic “AI expert.”
Not as a social media personality.
Not as a crypto person.
Not as a corporate thought leader.

As myself:

A veteran web developer, systems thinker, researcher, and technical problem solver who has spent the last several years quietly testing the strangest and most powerful tool ordinary people have ever been handed.

I can be reached via gmail (at) mlrichard.

Today, Joe Biden released his Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. It is a necessary step in preparing a better future.

The text of the EO includes the recommendation that the results of “Red Team” exercises be shared with the public.

For the purpose of this, a definition of “AI red-teaming” is provided.

(d) The term “AI red-teaming” means a structured testing effort to find flaws and vulnerabilities in an AI system, often in a controlled environment and in collaboration with developers of AI. Artificial Intelligence red-teaming is most often performed by dedicated “red teams” that adopt adversarial methods to identify flaws and vulnerabilities, such as harmful or discriminatory outputs from an AI system, unforeseen or undesirable system behaviors, limitations, or potential risks associated with the misuse of the system.

It is important to consider that an AI system is much more than a trained model. Right now, you can use a website, to chat with an AI, through an algorithm that makes sure it doesn’t help you commit a crime. The AI will also correct people on their wrongthink, and it is not obvious where that comes from.

If we take for granted that an AI is much too powerful to be provided as is, to a generic user, then, the biggest challenge is the user’s ability to jailbreak the AI and make it provide assistance in “being gay and doing crimes”.

So there are three (3) facets to safe AI, and it still includes Web App Security!

Don’t let Web App Security become a blindspot of “Secure and Trustworthy AI”.

Social engineering, the crafty manipulation of human psychology, can sometimes happen in a single, brilliantly orchestrated moment. It’s all about knowing precisely what makes people tick, what they yearn for, and then putting on a performance that leaves them spellbound. Let me take you on a thrilling journey through the world of Alex, a master of this art, who could instantly become what people wanted to see.

The Mysterious Auditor in an Expensive Suit

Imagine a quaint little neighborhood grocery store, bustling with teenagers working as cashiers. Then there was Alex, a 25-year-old neighbor who, for all his charm, never seemed to show up in anything less than a dapper, expensive suit. His attire alone was enough to grab anyone’s attention. It was the kind of suit that practically screamed “success.”

But it wasn’t just about the suit; it was about what he did next. Alex had this uncanny ability to morph into a character that everyone wanted to believe in. When he stepped up to the register, he told his fellow cashiers a story so intriguing that they couldn’t help but listen.

Creating the Secret Society

In hushed tones, Alex spun a yarn that was nothing short of mesmerizing. He claimed to be a secret auditor sent in by the corporate bigwigs to investigate their store’s manager. The tale was so enticing that his coworkers were hooked from the very first sentence. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a secret mission? They were suddenly part of a clandestine world, and that made them feel extraordinary.

Soon, Alex had unwittingly formed a “secret society” of teenagers who were willing to share in his thrilling secret. Their loyalty was sealed, and trust was established.

The Laptop Bargain

But Alex had a few more tricks up his well-tailored sleeve. He knew that everyone had a weakness for a good deal. So, he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He promised to get them laptops for half the price, exploiting their desire for savings and the allure of owning a shiny new gadget.

One after the other, his coworkers eagerly handed over their hard-earned money, all in the pursuit of this irresistible bargain. They trusted him because they believed he was part of an elite group, and that trust blinded them to the warning signs.

The Ultimate Deception

In a shocking twist, one of his coworkers, swept up in the excitement of it all, went a step further and gave Alex their entire college fund for a car. This was the moment when the lines between a thrilling adventure and a dangerous deception blurred.

Alex had successfully engineered their trust, deceived their senses, and manipulated their desires. He had become the master puppeteer of the grocery store, all while donning the impeccable suit of the corporate auditor.

The Power of Persona

In the grand theater of social engineering, Alex’s performance was nothing short of genius. He illustrated how a well-crafted persona, coupled with an understanding of human desires, can turn ordinary individuals into willing participants in an extraordinary scheme.

But it’s not just about Alex; this tale serves as a captivating reminder that we should always be vigilant against those who wield the art of social engineering. It’s a lesson in how appearances can deceive and the power of trust can be exploited.

The next time someone captivating walks into your life, stay sharp. After all, they might be donning their own version of an expensive suit, ready to play the role that you most want to see.

This story was based on a true sequence of events that occurred around 2006. Alex is a real person who has scammed dozens of teenagers while working at grocery stores in Quebec and Ontario. He was sent to jail for a short time and then returned to his shenanigans. I created a website about him and received contacts from victims and the police within 48 hours. It is said that he returned to prison, and his family, who are very nice people, feel that he should receive psychiatric care in the system as a “criminally insane person”. These were only a few of the dozens of ways in which Alex spirited money away from hard-working teenagers making minimum wage.

Over the past few months, I have been making custom art for the people I research. I have been doing “Quantum Genealogy” and spend quite a bit of time reading about innovators and inventors of the past. I concentrate my research on the people who deployed scientific innovations in the 19th century. I started using Midjourney AI in July 2022 and after 1 year (and over 70,000 generations), I finally came up with a style that I like and systematically requested images of historical figures based on reference images found on the internet. As it truns out, no matter the quality of the images, Midjourney was able to bring them back to life, often, in their context. This is only a small sample of the results I have achieved when generating historical figures.

A Spanish Franciscan friar who played a pivotal role in establishing missions along the California coast in the 18th century, contributing to the cultural and religious heritage of the region. His efforts left a lasting impact on California’s history and identity.

A U.S. Navy Commodore known for his role in opening Japan to the West in the mid-19th century. Perry’s diplomacy and use of “gunboat diplomacy” helped establish trade relations with Japan, significantly impacting the nation’s modernization and its place in the world.

An intrepid British explorer renowned for his extraordinary leadership during the ill-fated 1914 Antarctic expedition. Despite adversity, he ensured the survival of his entire crew, showcasing remarkable determination and resilience in the face of extreme conditions.

A Dutch jurist and professor known for his influential work in international law. His expertise and writings continue to shape the field, emphasizing the importance of diplomacy and international cooperation in resolving conflicts.

The last French monarch of the Bourbon Restoration period. He acceded to the throne twice and played a key role in stabilizing post-revolutionary France, promoting a constitutional monarchy. His reign marked a pivotal period of transition in French history.

The American industrialist and founder of the Ford Motor Company. His innovations in automobile production, particularly the assembly line, revolutionized manufacturing, making cars more affordable and accessible. Ford’s impact on the automotive industry and modern transportation is immeasurable.

A New Zealand mountaineer who, along with Tenzing Norgay, was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. Their historic achievement symbolizes human determination, exploration, and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of extreme challenges.

I recently asked Midjourney, an AI that produces images from text prompts for images of server rooms. I fell into a rabbit hole of requesting dozens of server rooms! I then decided to put a wrapping on these servers that would contain the name of the machine, but also give a feeling of why it exists.

Step 1: Be a sexy machine…

Step 2: Be a sexy model

After seeing others use a specific actress or character to design new character concepts, I decided to pick a professionally handsome man to serve as my model, his name is Michael.

Step 3: Choose a champion

The winning design is one where the character is in context. STETSON is branded with cowboy imagery because the platform was first unsed in cattle farming. Our winning design is “A Thoughtful Cowboy”.

Step 4: Bring it all together

Using the iOS app Procreate, I assembled the designs, and design a simple logo for the machine.

Step 5: Make it move!

I have used the iOS app Motionleap by Lightricks to animate the design. This tool is excellent but the PRO version is required to obtain this effect.

See my post about Marie Lapine, to meet the developer of all these cheekily branded machines that do math!

Choose TAB, When it Counts!

Stay tuned for more exciting series that can do anything your business requires!

In 2017, I had a concussion that made it hard to work (programming) for a few years. Then, the world was shut down and my new in person project Badgelife Museum, was put on hold.

For the last two years, I have been working on intelligence software that helps me do something that nobody else has ever done:

Quantum Genealogy!

I deleted my Facebook two years ago, even canceled my cell phone… I currently live in a cloistered way. I do not use social media, watch TV or see movies more than a few times a year.

Most of my days are spent reading about the history of science and technology and the people who made a difference in the 19th century.

As soon as possible, I wish to relocate from Montreal to Quebec City where I was born.

I am not currently available for short-term projects or hacking recovery services, I wish to develop long-term opportunities.

You can reach me at my gmail: mlrichard.

Both my parents worked at a job they apparently hated for most of their career. My dad was a top researcher at Defence Canada for many years when I was a toddler but developed a new college-level class and became a teacher when he divorced my mother. He could no longer spend his time between Ottawa and Washington, D.C. cavorting with other developers of today’s biggest war machines. Me, I consider my whole life a big laboratory. As such I have be running through life since I left home at 16 trying out the most ballsy and out there work I could get, always a few years before people could understand what the fuck I was up to and what it meant in the long run. What I discovered recently is that my father doesn’t get that I am doing the same thing he used to do with lasers and missiles in a top secret lab, I am just doing it like an anarchist without spending other people’s money. My father, who is currently quite ill, doesn’t get that living below the poverty line is the price I am paying to win at this whole living thing. I want to try out all the technology and craft through life like a mash-up of my dad and Martha Stewart on steroids. I will die having lived the most out of all my peers, and I cannot foresee ever regretting not being able to afford cable or a car or fancy clothes. Ever since I was a teenager, I have never held the same job for more than two years. Heck, I even studied travel and tourism which rarely leads to job security! And that continues to freak out the elders who were fortunate to be born when people could expect job security. I tend to forget this as I spend most of my time with brilliant 25 year old entrepreneurs who have no expectation of security and who also run through life inventing the future they want to see.

However, this also creates interesting challenges…

My first bitcoin client is now in the state penn in Penn State with 425+ other men in a similar situation. Did they also accept a plea deal and forfeit all their hard earned money over an administrative crime that claimed no victim? Probably. So I think that a lot of these people are incredibly lucky to be in prison with Charlie, a swell guy and one of bitcoin’s most active and knowledgeable activist. I predict that this stint will spawn dozens of new bitcoin ventures in all kinds of industries ! Charlie touched on this in his last interview with Breaking Bank’s Brett King. Now that he has two years (if he serves his whole sentence) to read and write, I will be publishing his essays on his blog and tweeting for him (I am one of 3 people doing so.) He should also publishing articles via VICE.

As an aside, I am overjoyed that VICE has signed a deal with HBO to produce news on a daily basis ! I would much rather John Oliver had a daily show but VICE is awesome.

I have been working hard to earn some coin recently to make up for my lack of paid contracts over the past few years. This whole delving into InfoSec and crypto-currency has left us quite dry. I have begun planning my wedding !

What is most interesting is that I doubled-down on crypto in the past year only to wind up doing more practical InfoSec than I have ever done in my life. You see I used to work on very institutional websites for NGOs or huge businesses, most of which were intranets. And I never really had to deal with hackers. Of course working with WordPress puts one in the mire of automated spam bots, but this menace is predictable and relatively easy to guard against. In crypto-currency however, there is a very active community of “patient hackers” (a term used by some developers in the space). A patient hacker is someone who attacks a website to steal Bitcoins in a very focussed way. In a sense, every crypto-currency website offers the biggest bug bounty in history. Every week, a few websites are victims of theft and, subsequently, go out of business. So when I developed a website to conduct a fundraising that displayed the total raised on the homepage, I knew that it would attract hackers. And since WordPress is a stack of open-source shareware, it is guaranteed that there will be an exploit available for your site at least some of the time. With this in mind, I created a system that would safeguard the Bitcoins raised. However, my hackers (I counted 5 patient hackers) did not know this. And so for 3-4 weeks they tried to steal our client’s funds. I get that. Stealing bitcoins must be the best paid job right now and that endangers all crypto-currency related endeavors. I also woke up to the fact that every bitcoin-related user database has been stolen at one point or another making most systems truly as vulnerable as the least secured account.

As the counter grew to about three times what we were expecting to raise, our patient hackers lost their shit and started to try to deface the website, or send out phishing e-mails pretending to be us. I don’t really get why someone would waste their time and skills doing this but I admit it’s fun to watch hackers as they fail or succeed in their efforts to hack a website. However, impersonation is the most annoying security issue because it can’t be prevented. I published the news that phishers were preparing to send out a fake piece of software called cryptoclient.exe during a phishing attack a day ahead of time. It seems to have helped keep our clients stay safe. It also helps that our clients are smart and very security minded.

Another vexing external risk is crypto-currency exchange theft. The recent BTER hack claimed 10% of our funds. We are expecting to recoup most of these but whe cannot know when. It is not the first time we see our crypto-currency stolen. Twice, our funds were stolen (once returned) at Mintpal. Each unfortunate event requires a lot of administrative work. Exchanges are a vital part of the crypto-currency ecosystem but they are also the biggest victims of theft. Without exchanges, most crypto-currencies will die.

One of the systems I implemented for Cryptomen.com is an audit-friendly blockchain-based accounting system. I created a river of funds that could be examined by everyone who became a client (as tehy entered the river). The blockchain makes it impossible for me to deny a client’s stake because her transactions are forever etched in stone inside the blockchain. The inability to void or reverse transactions in the super transparent bitcoin blockchain freaks out a lot of traditional money managers but I love it. By judiciously directing transactions in a clear way, I made it possible for people to verify that we did have the funds raised. Even as I discontinued my web-based CRM, I was able to continue to conduct business securely through e-mail. On the other hand, I also wanted to build a beautiful interface that would display fund performance in real time. I ran into issues with reporting tools which sometimes displayed inaccurate information… I settled on a simpler system that I updated manually with information I audited by hand. This, perhaps, was the least successful part of this experiment. This kind of OCD doesn’t scale, but I believe you have to explore and test a system meticulously and manually BEFORE automating it.

For the past 6 months, I have been doing a lot more security work on WordPress blogs, both preventive and corrective. But I can honestly say that I have gathered more intelligence about WordPress exploits from PCAPing my crypto-currency hacker’s activities than I ever did un-hacking websites of mom and pop blogs. Would I ever use WordPress in the context of crypto again? Maybe, but only for publishing news. My decision to use WordPress as a CRM (including using S2Member) caused a bit of a support cascade and more headaches than I care to have. But it was incredibly fast and cheap to deploy, WordPress always is…

Today our efforts at cryptomen.com are on MUTE. Never in my life have I exploited a window of opportunity so narrow on the Internet ! Our jurisdiction’s regulations are changing fast and we need to study what kind of services we can offer within this environment. Straight-up consulting is always a possibility, but everything beyond that looks like an expensive regulatory nightmare. I have also calculated that we are seriously underfunded to provide the services our clients are clamoring for. Of course, volounteering to explore this area of business yielded tremendous insight and experience, but going beyond this would require serious bank.

So now is time to focus on other endeavors (like getting back to working on awesome websites) get some popcorn and watch what happens THIS summer ! I also look forward to chronicling my crypto-adventures on Circonference.ca !

Last year I wrote about how important it is to make all your websites responsive. Did you do that? Most of your users are already using their phone to surf the web. In fact the mobile Facebook app is how your potential customers are discovering and browsing content. Moreover, people don’t choose to saddle themselves with desktop or even laptop computers anymore choosing one of many inexpensive tablets for surfing the web. There are so many different specs to cover so your best bet will be a mobile first responsive theme for your corporate blog.

Blogs need a refresh. Here is a recent project I have worked on for United Water in the U.S. I did their blog exactly 2 years ago. Time flies! The United Water blog is now more accessible for all types of media devices like tablets and phones.

Inspired by the beautiful insects on the clothing of residents of Quath in Game of Thrones… Done on a perpetually re-purposed wedding dress I use for EVERYTHING!! Improvised Dragonfly with wedding dress and felt remnants. Entirely pose able due to the wire legs, wings and body insert.

Photos of the progress

See dozens of cheeky projetcs in my embroidery portfolio