Human + Robot = Cyborg

Everyone has seen Atlas, the robot that can do parkour and his little fellow Spot Mini.

Link: Atlas the self-balancing robot.

Atlas, a humanoid, who can run, balance and do flips indoors and outdoors, is like a science fiction come true! It is only today we can see this kind of technology which is futuristic like a robotic utopia. But, I would rather see it become more useful for humans.

This comes the ability to meld the two: humans + robots to become cyborgs. Robotic future is great but a human that has the ability of a robot that can lift cars, do obstacles better than human-only counterparts, is getting the best of both worlds. Just like cars, self-autonomy is not effective and is hard to perfect, but joining human drivers AND robots in cars makes it safer and more beneficial. But, here comes the best part.

What if disabled people, those with severed limbs can suit-up like Iron Man and become like one? What if we combine the robotics that can really help humans with disabilities and become super-humans? It is the future, right now!

It’s like Luke Skywalker who got his hand cut off by Darth Vader with a lightsaber, and got a robotic hand and becomes able again, what is keeping us from being better?

Securing Voting Machines Like A Bank

Elections are near and Americans go to the polls to elect leaders who will run the country. The only problem is hacking.

Hacking computers is an everyday problem that we see in the news. This may be the airline industry, social media, e-commerce stores, and everything on the Internet. So, why not go offline?

In our country, we’ve been using paper to cast votes that led to deaths, cheating, fraud and months of delays. In short, it was total chaos. Then later, the government moved to computerized voting that proved to be better and faster. It only took a day or two to know who won and no more deaths.

Now, the problem is hackers may compromise these machines without anyone knowing and the worse part is a candidate won which shouldn’t. A terrible consequence for the whole country.

I am a developer myself and knows much about technology. Why not invent a centralized machine that does only one thing that counts ballots. And, guard it like a bank. Which is not connected to the Internet but have a special network backbone. Thus, really makes it hard for hackers to infiltrate. The voting machines as well should be guarded and has a special key for individual voters given upon registration. Better yet, we should have biometrics like fingerprint scanners.

In conclusion, this solution is critical in protecting people’s freedom and choosing leaders for the future of our country.

Solving The Traffic Problem Using Mobile Apps

The traffic problem is getting worse. As population rise, traffic will become an everyday issue for all of us. Transportation is key to economic growth that is why governments spend huge amounts of money to build bigger roads, skyways and having electric trains for the future.

So how exactly a mobile app can solve the traffic problem? One word: “Crowdsourcing.” By harnessing the crowd, we can make data be useful and powerful information on how we decide where to go.

As we were coming home from a mall, I noticed an app used by drivers to know which roads are having heavy congestion and which aren’t. So, I asked him how this is possible? He told me that there are buttons that they press to alert all drivers (using the app) where there is low, medium and heavy traffic, and only registered drivers can use this added feature. I was thinking back then that there is already an existing solution to a ubiquitous dilemma.

Therefore, let’s say we design two mobile apps, one for traffic enforcers, and one for the drivers. The app for traffic enforces presses a button about the status of his current location designated to him/her. This data goes to the headquarters for monitoring all of the traffic statuses on a map. Then, this gives the drivers important information about which way to go to their destination. It can also give the time of arrival if the roads are inundated with floods, road accident data, and maybe a nationwide breaking news notifications.

This is an effective and most affordable solution that is already existing and proven that governments may adopt to solve the traffic crisis.

Partition Backups: Golden Rule

One golden rule in digital computing is to backup, backup, and backup your important data to another drive in case a ransomware attack takes place. In any scenario, backups can even save lives whether you’re working in healthcare or medical institution that is crucial and life-threatening.

Backing up documents, spreadsheets, and some data is often cared for, but what about the time it cost to reinstall the OS and all the applications needed to function normally? This will drain the working hours just to recover from an eventuality that’s why Partition backups are essential.

Partition backups are backups that store everything from a hard drive into another disk including the operating system, applications, files, and everything. If you need to restore from the backup, you just need one click and wait for it to transfer everything to a new computer and everything will be exactly in its place just like before! The downside is that you may have created the backup WITH the malware installed and so render it quite useless when restoring it. BUT, you can copy individual files from the backup to a stable location.

In the mobile computing age, this kind of backups is rare since there are no (or few I don’t know of?) solutions that people actually use. Do you know any device that directly does partition backups of your smartphone or tablet? It will always need a desktop or laptop to do this and thus making the backup redundant (which is not always a bad thing). However, the cost of having another computer just to do partition backups is quite annoying and cumbersome since you have to backup both.

Isn’t there a clever way to streamline the process? Cheaper and more convenient? Like an external hard drive that connects via USB-C at a click of a button?

Ransomware: The Rise of Devices

We all know what we’ve read and heard: Ransomware the scourge that cost the world 10 Billion dollars. This menace should be solved because it’s causing widespread havoc in our offices and personal lives; it’s causing us to be scared, losing trust in the miracle of the Internet age.

The World Wide Web or Internet should be the answer to almost all questions you desire to ask. It must help us learn and open our eyes to a world of knowledge and truth. If that truth is bent, and if that knowledge is corrupted, then the Internet is doomed.

Ransomware is a form of malware that installs in our PCs and does terrible and irrevocable damage. Even if we paid the ransom, it is not certain if your computer will free up encrypted data and let us continue to move on to our lives. There MUST be a solution! Antivirus software is a step behind (well, not always), and it’s not always updated to catch these undisclosed, or undiscovered definitions, so its purpose is quite limited but kind of helpful.

Every day, I sit with a hot coffee beside me while reading with my Kindle and found a solution with a different approach.

We all work in the office, and every day we use specialized applications or tools that make us do our work. This may be an Office Suite and some client-server application that we use to do our work every day and nothing more.

I look at my Kindle, and I love how simple and easy to do its basic task: Read eBooks AND nothing more. Computers nowadays become a multi-purpose device that does all kinds of things because of “convergence.” We use computers to make documents, spreadsheets, presentations, play games, develop software, chat with our friends, etc. This made computers so valuable that it became a Swiss army knife of some sort. However, this brought some problems. Because it can run ANY software, it brought us to malware infections that cripple our machines turning it into a paperweight. Do you see what I’m getting at?

If computers in offices just run the “essentials” and nothing more (like locking down) to very specific tasks, and can ONLY run the software we need, then it becomes more secure from outside attacks. We should make operating systems that are NOT full-blown systems but rather, specialized, customized systems that run applications that only needed for us to do our work in offices.

I don’t think eBook readers will get infected since it’s literally locked-down to just read eBooks. PCs that are locked-down to running, creating office documents only. PCs that are locked-down to reading email, and etc.

We can drive innovation here by inventing devices that do specific tasks only. And limiting devices doesn’t mean lost productivity but preventive measures that will keep our lives humming.

 

The Story About Privacy

This is a hot topic since the Cambridge Analytica scandal and people around the world are wondering if privacy is still a human right.

I was playing a PC game called, “Orwell” and it answers some difficult questions that raise from its plot and even gives you a view on how surveillance is done. In this game, you are a state operative whose job is to get information about a suspect, listen to conversations, view their emails, and read messages in order to help the police digest these data and make decisions or warrant an arrest for those suspects and even save citizens from another bomb explosion or terror act. It will compel you to conclude that surveillance IS necessary to bring justice and save lives. But, the catch is the terror suspects in the game became radical of a group that protested state surveillance and thus led to their criminal acts.

So, it brings us to the question, “Is state surveillance can be trusted?” If there are criminals who would do harm and we seek help from authorities to avoid fatalities then it is. On the other hand, if the state is oppressive and corrupt, it is hard to imagine how surveillance from the crooked can help the citizens who are honest and thus result in exploitation and injustice.

Then I guess, the solution might be you.

People have the right to be free, free what they wanted to be, but not free to do anything. There are just things that we cannot and should not do, thus the ten commandments. Ten commandments are crude in a sense it’s for a time and age that don’t have privacy issues on a massive scale. Therefore, comes the New commands. In the new testament, it is written that we should mind our own business. Nobody should invade the privacy of others because we don’t want to be invaded ourselves and it also applies on-line. Breaking a person’s privacy is like walking on the street naked; we don’t want others to know things we don’t want others to know. Pictures of your secret girlfriend, exchanges between couples’ problems, or hiding the number of your business accounts. Sometimes, we want to keep it between ourselves, and sometimes we want to be more transparent. Social media has given us the tools that are very powerful and so can be dangerous if used unwisely.

Now, the only way to keep their business from our own business is to control ourselves. We should be careful and vigilant at all times when on-line because what is on-line is a mirror of our face.

Call to Action: Invent something that will protect us from surveillance for nefarious purposes and protect us from the avalanche of IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

 

 

How To Repel Rats At Home Cheaply

Just this month, 153 people have died of Leptospirosis. This disease is plaguing our country for years and has claimed men, women, and children. This is the result of people getting infected by having contact with rat urine which is prevalent since widespread flooding has begun, and thousands of lives are at stake.

I was doing a little research and prayed that God would lead me to a solution. Just the other night, I was reading Nikola Tesla’s biography and some people who contributed to society by their discoveries, and I came about a solution called, “Carbolic Acid.”

Carbolic Acid is used for treating wounds so people won’t get infected to avoid amputation. Now, this may be quite unrelated but it is when I Google searched this chemical. While typing on the search bar, Carboxylic Acid turned up unexpectedly which controls rat infestation.

Carboxylic Acid, on the other hand, is also quite unrelated but has given me a clue about how to make vinegar. The further search gave me the answer that the cheap, old remedy  vinegar is something that rats flee from because of its smell and acidic nature.

Finally, I found proof that vinegar will keep rats away from homes especially where families live. Another good thing about this is its affordability, environment-friendly while very effective in repelling rats for poorer communities.

Please check this link: Vinegar Keep Rats Away.

 

One Engine Jet Airplane

I remember the time when we were visiting our family abroad and sitting inside the airport for hours waiting for the airplane to arrive. There is this huge window that gives a view of the planes taxing outside a sunny day.

While waiting for the doctor’s appointment, I saw this newly designed electric fan that blows air from a tube below as a base, upwards and horizontally beside are small holes that push the air outwards. Then, it struck me. Why not build a single jet engine at the rear of an airplane which pulls air from vents at the sides. This will lessen the energy to lift the plane.

Here is a rendering of a crude design I built:

2D Rendering of a one-engine commercial jet airplane.

Here is a more accurate 3-D rendering.

 

Raspberry Pi Like Laptop

I’ve been dabbling previously with a Raspberry Pi single-board computer and amazed at how this tiny computer can do so many things. You can add sensors like temperature sensors to monitor the environment and record this in a file where you can review its data. Or, you can attach a servo so you can turn on the light switch by Tweeting a command online, anywhere!

The only problem is it is a mini desktop and you need to plug it in an electrical outlet. Therefore, portability is a problem.

An idea just switched on me since Raspberry Pi is an Internet Of Things computer, why not create a laptop that has IO board you can attach to a USB port or Thunderbolt ports, and you can now use this laptop just like a Raspberry Pi!

This is super useful for students and teachers alike, and it would be great to do so much more and even save the world!

Save Lives During Flooding

Last year, I remember riding on a plane to Belgium to have our family reunion. Before taking off, there was a short video on how to use the life vest in an eventuality the plane crashes to the sea. It is located under the seats and it inflates just seconds by pulling two cords.

Now, I wonder if all cars and houses have these life vests in an event where there is terrible flooding. We all know this is already the norm during a rainstorm, especially in our country in the Pacific.

If putting these inexpensive life vests to save millions of lives, then what is stopping us?