My name is Lafe. I studied math, physics, and technology for 20 years(Berkeley BA, 1998 math and physics, Yale applied physics PhD 2006, researcher at NIST 2006-12), then started two companies, and after a few years concluded that both capitalism and government Big Science is in contradiction with my goals for science and technology and now I build free things, where I try to use as strict a definition of "free" as possible.
The purpose of this project is to be a substitute for the university research lab(I view the university system to be so broken and corrupt as to be not worth dealing with at this time). Lafelabs LLC is a Virginia limited liability corporation which I use for making enough money for basic living expenses by teaching, tutoring, training, and consulting. Lafelabs.org is the home site for my research and teaching lab which is intended to be as close to truly free as possible.
It is the long term goal of this project to move into a self sufficient ocean-based platform which will enable a total escape from the money system in a way scalable to all of humanity. For now, however, I offer specialized training for a variety of applications(see the teaching section of this site) which can be useful for government agencies, non profits, and a variety of companies of all sizes.
I live in Arlington, VA, right by the airport, and can get anywhere in the North East accessible by train and bus(i.e. DC through Boston).
This site is designed in what has recently come to be called "web brutalism", but used to be called "html". I do this to avoid dealing with the horrors of the "web design" technocratic priesthood, who have mostly made the web more frustrating and broken in every way(while getting rich in the process). No one but me was involved in the creation of this site.