Author Archives: Romeo

About Romeo

Born in Romania in the Botosani district (Romanian: Judet) sometimes between 1960 and 1970. Immigrated to Canada in 2001. Computers and more precise software for application and database servers as well as automation (micro electronics) is the way I make a living. Working for IBM Canada Ltd since 2010 to present

End Police Brutality – Black Lives Matter

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I hear you, I see you, I fell for you! Yes Black Lives Matter!

If you are a police officer and your priorities are not in this order:

  1. Safeguard life
  2. Teach and enforce the law
  3. Your own wellness

then you need to find a different job!
Imagine a soldier going to battle and putting his life first above of his duty.

Reverse this values and the police becomes difficult to be distinguished from a gang, it becomes the reverse of what we all think it should be. No policeman can be proud and be respected with a reversed system of values. I have faith and pray that most officers have it right

We need to stop looking at policing as “normal jobs” because no normal employee has the right to kill people (basically any of its customers and employers). Policing is an essential occupation, is so different from any other human activity that we have to see it as it is, Special!

I found this TVO documentary called “Coppers”, revealing about what is wrong with the current system and how it ends up hurting people both citizens and police officers.

I also do not understand the role of police unions. In general unions fight for the rights of their members against greedy employers and/or dangerous work environments. The problem is that we the citizens are the employer of the police services. In this case unions fight against us and put the lives of the officers above the people they should protect. It basically makes the police unions antisocial. Maybe a better solution would be to declare police as essential service and have a hard talk about their pay and work safety. Clearly we want to pay our officers well and yet tied to the median wage of the people they serve and keep them as safe as possible and yet not at the expense of citizen’s safety.

The above requirements may be very difficult to obtain without employing advanced technology we now posses.

We have now the technology to finally solve this problem in a way that can be fair and safe for everyone. By combining the new AI capabilities, 5G and/or Starlink (or equivalent but publicly controlled) systems, drones and robotics we can rethink and reshape the notion of safety and policing in a potential #SelfReliant society.

I’m not talking about autonomous drones and robots that can roam free and take decisions of their own. That would be very very wrong and scary! I’m talking about human controlled technology where members of the public and law experts are together as a group remote controlling the technology in order to safeguard life, teach law and keep the peace.

We need to extract the police officers from interacting directly with humans so we can keep them safe and cool minds can prevail. Additionally any mission involving robots and automation MUST also combine civilian groups monitoring every mission where machines are controlled by officers. This is when officers can be helped by society avoid misconduct at any level.

The semi automated remote presence machines can also take the tedious work away from humans and allow them to analyze the big picture social wellness and be proud of the work they do.

Some YouTube videos exemplifying the technologies I’m pointing to, some are sales pitches for the products but please look beyond that, just at the current capabilities and imagine future capabilities.

Fast Pandemic Control?

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Is there a strategy we can employ in the future to control a pandemic? And what can help you as an individual to live as close to normal as possible during a pandemic? This article highlights some of the actions we need to take now so that in the future we will be able to get trough a pandemic faster(as fast as 2 weeks) and with less disruption to our lives.

The minimum time of isolation in a pandemic is equal to the maximum time of incubation plus convalescence, that is the time between when you got infected and when you are healed by your immune system.

This short time can be achieved if and only if we can achieve simultaneous full isolation of all people on Earth. Before you deem it impossible please keep reading.

Since for all viruses we know this time is ~14 days, then if once detected for the first time, ALL people on Earth go in complete isolation then we can destroy the virus in one single sweep by simply denying the pathogen the ability to reproduce. In this article I’m analyzing this idea and what we need to realize it.

The New Corona Virus pandemic started around November 2019 and is tagged all over the web with tags like #COVID, #COVID19, #COVID-19, #CoronaVirus etc. All this mess is created by a sub-micron size biological entity we call viruses. The thing is so small that it can’t be seen on a regular microscope using visible light no matter how much magnification we try.This is due to visible light’s wavelength that is from 380nm(blue) to 780nm(red) whereas a virus size is is somewhere between 30 to 220nm, way smaller than the visible wavelengths. This means that the visible light simply “goes around” them. To “see” viruses we need electron microscopes and we get pictures like the ones in the Wikipedia article about viruses.

The fact a virus is so small it means that (for now) only expensive laboratory equipment can image a virus particle. The internet is now full of images of viruses, just type “virus” in a Google search(or other search engines, Yes! there are other search engines out there!) and select the “images” class of results and your screen will be flood with images. At the same time we also have a lot of created (by artists) and digitally edited images showing also viruses. It is not hard for some of us to get confused and ask what is real and what not.

Though I can’t help you remove your confusion by simply saying “believe me” I can only tell you that If fully believe is that viruses are as real as you and me and you can learn how to protect yourself against them.

Please remember though that only a small fraction of viruses and bacteria are dangerous, bacteria are part of the great chain of life on Earth (and in your own body) and viruses can be used to fight pathogens, cancer and other illnesses.

So what do we need to do to protect ourselves?

The answer to that question is not singular, three different things must happen at different times so that you will be protected against a pathogen (virus or bacteria) destructive actions.

  1. Information – early detection by any human being
    standard, personal, fully automated, pathogen new DNA/RNA detection (such as the one Nanopore Tech) is providing and global automated notification system (a many-to-many factual approach)
  2. Avoidance via isolation – using personal full isolation PPE (personal protection equipment)
    this is an enclosure with the ability to allow its inhabitant to live in full physical isolation where all material exchange is fully controlled
    This simply means to deny the virus transmission form person to person
  3. Immunity – train your body to identify the virus and produce the necessary substances that will destroy the virus once it enters your body

When all those three abilities are mastered by any human out there then we should be able to control the spread of basically any pathogen and deny the existence of pandemics of any nature (natural mutations, genetics mishaps, bio terrorism?) in the future.

The basic scenario in such a future would go like this. Everyday at any time of your choosing but probably best as part of the ritual we all (should) do before going to sleep and brush our teeth (oral hygiene) the device we use for it will sample our oral microbial and viral profile by scanning the DNA/RNA profile of all micro-life in the sample store it in a personal database that compares it to the one sampled the day before.

If any new genome is detected then that information is immediately shared with ALL people on earth. The DNA/RNA information is then used be everyone as a group to decide if it poses a threat. This decision can take some time as not all new mutated viral or bacterial genetic material is dangerous but we should be able to track all its changes in humans or borrowed for environment (as in animal to human transmission).

Once the new genome is decided as dangerous, everyone goes in self isolation. Since the pathogen’s ability to be transmitted is fully denied we can expect that the viral material will be fully destroyed by the natural immune responses.

The decision of to declare a genome as dangerous is made as a group in a many-to-many communication mode by using well defined commonly accepted protocols (global legal system?). From all requirements in this paper this will definitely test us the most. It will not be easy, but I believe and hope that for our own good we will be able to come together on this one.

During the isolation, all people continue to fully communicate with each other and continue to do what they were doing before but in remote mode. During the isolation, the tests continue as they did before in order to detect when the pathogen was destroyed (can’t be detected anymore).

At the same time (in isolation) each person’s spare computation power and bio test abilities are used to search for a vaccines or solution to the problem. This is important as to search fast for a solution a highly parallel process is required in order to test fast most possible solutions.

Once again we can only succeed by working together!

Once the pathogen is destroyed a common decision (many-to-many mode) is made and the isolation can end. The maximum time spent in isolation should not be longer than the one pathogen cycle (infection to convalescence) if we can work all as one.

During the isolation some people will need help as their body will be fighting the pathogen, the isolation system must include automated and remote control human care.

The bits and pieces of the technology and knowledge to achieve this type of solution are present.

We have the internet for implementing a many-to-many communication system.

We know how to read and decode genomes but the devices needed to do that are not yet small enough and cheap enough so every person would own one. Additionally all information gathered must be gathered by using a factual enabled sensor devices.

This is where more effort needs to be done to bring this ability to everyone. To do so microelectronic technologies and biologic tech needs to come together. This is doable we need to work on it.

We know how to create full containment enclosures, we have the technology to automate all human care we just need to put them together to achieve the ability to self isolate with zero loss of abilities to control out environment and help other people of living things by using remote presence.

If this sounds like Sci-Fi then you need to know that it is not, we can do this if we work together and the benefits of doing so are enormous for the future.

This article will be edited in the future to add more information, info-graphics etc. for now its just the idea the bare bone text.

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2019 Resolutions

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New year resolutions, things made to be broken, or maybe this time, this one time, we (I) may succeed in making progress on what really matters now.

I wish everyone reading this article a lot of happiness in 2019 and hope you’ll check to see if the resolutions I’m sharing here make sense to you and your beloved ones. I believe they can make or break our future our children and the generations to come, so we should probably not ignore them.

So what are those few things which really matters to everyone?

Number one: The ability to distinguish Fact (Real) from Fiction and understand the notion of Truth Hash-tag: #ReFiT or #FaFiT UUID: ab3fb2d4-9cfa-4f72-9a5b-bebd72b0c65e

Second: Understand how to use Computers Automation and AI to help yourself as an individual to thrive and avoid the dangers those technologies pose. Tho hash-tags: #SelfReliant(UUID91d101ea-d250-4298-9177-20880e1dded6) and #informageddon(UUID: b17ea217-e20c-4202-bb0e-954803cd2176)

#ReFiT / #FaFiT

Our life and life quality depends on how accurate our inner model of reality built by our minds since we are born reflects the actual “hard” “cold” reality. In my opinion there is nothing more important than our ability as individuals to get our inner reality model in sync with the actual common reality out there.

I have wrote two articles describing the notion of Fact Fiction and Truth (links bellow), in 2019 I would like to get a step closer to giving everyone who reads my articles a clear guide on how to produce and verify factual information by using existing technology and seek future more reliable ways to produce it.

Fact Fiction and BS (describing the notion of Fact and Fiction and the danger of consuming a mix of fact and fiction thinking is fact, a mix I call BS).

Fact Fiction and the Truth (describe the notions of Truth and Fact and how we confuse them and why it is almost impossible to detect a lie)

#SelfReliant & #informageddon

Automation is inevitable, AI is inevitable, if you think you can escape it you are fooling yourself. So, if you can’t beat them join them. However, as with any new technology there are some avoidable pitfalls.The computers and AI have some very dangerous and insidious ones. Knowing them is (in some cases) literally a life and death situation. More, it is about our future as free people or as disposable (irrelevant) salves.

There are two distinct ways this can go down.

First path is if we will try to keep the current social organization unchanged and try to graft automation and AI on it. In my opinion this is guaranteed to lead to #informageddon and irrelevant slavery, a future 99% of us will hate.

The second path (or social model) is the one where the technology of automation computers and AI are used mainly to enhance each individual in order to produce a #SelfReliant entity using a symbiosis between human and machine (carbon+silicon). Those entities will be capable of thriving in (almost) any conditions without required help from anyone else.

The society (almost as we know it) can then be rebuilt from free standing, self reliant, entities, a society which will be orders of magnitude more powerful and resilient than the current one, A society which can exists for millions or maybe billions of years. This model has the potential to lead to a social organization close to the one depicted in the SI-FI series StarTreck or even more advanced (excluding warp drives and teleportation for now) and is probably the real future incarnation of the current American-Dream.

In 2018 I’ve created and launched a Global Challenge hosted on https://timenet-systems.com in 2019 I wish to start a first iteration solution design for this challenge.

That is all!

Please live any comments via Twitter (use the Twitter button in the WordPress page).

Thank you very much for your support and feedback, have a wonderful 2019!

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WordPress defect breaking direct links to articles (fixed now)

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Just realized that my WordPress seem to break the direct (perma) links to articles. Until I figure it out and fix it please scroll down from the main page (this page) to get to the article you are looking for).

+30 min, OK, I fixed the issue, it was (my guess) linked to my change in .htaccess to force SSL to the site. I had to revert the change as it probably interfered with WordPress URL rewrite rules and I’ll need to review everything to make the SSL redirect compatible with WordPress redirects.

So, at the moment please type https://romeolupascu.net/… instead of http://romeolupascu.net/, both SSL and non SSL URLs will work at the moment. However without SSL what you see may be intercepted by a “man-in-the-middle” type of attack on you.

Confusion * US Senate and Supreme Court Appointments

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Confusion seem to be the right word to describe what’s going on these days in the US Senate. I think that most people got so tightly pushed in their own corners that they forgot to check the big picture of why this is done and what are the consequences on long term.

I’m  a Canadian so you may think “why do you care”, well because I work daily with US colleagues and because US used to be “The shiny city on the hill”. These days though it seem the lights in the city tends to flicker as before they would fade away forever. From where I live that affects me too even if as a non US citizen I have o way (other than this blog) to influence anything.

Why Confusion?

The first type of confusion is on the notion of Truth and Fact, second we seem to be convinced that people can’t change, “once a criminal, always a criminal” there is no redemption out there and last but not least not being able to distinguish between “the letter” and “the spirit” of the law.

Another very dangerous trend I see in the US senate when appointing supreme court judges these days is the obvious biased way of selection. The senators does not seem to look for judges which have none or minimal bias from political perspective but exactly the contrary. This means both social halves (left and right) are looking to create and use a biased justice system hoping it will force their own cause. This means one side wants to use the justice system to force the other side to live their lives they way the other side feels is right. Unfortunately this bias goes against one fundamental and universal principle of this reality and that is diversity. I’m afraid the universe will not take lightly on entities trying to break or circumvent its basic rules. Usually when a universal rule is circumvented there is a price to pay and the payment is always due, tough it is not necessary paid by the people who did the did but by their successors.

If we take in account the above ideas and apply them to the current vote for appointing judge Kavanaugh one can realize that both side’s arguments are mostly pointless. Even if it can be decided factually that the unfortunate event which hurt and turned lives upside down for both the judge and his accusers what we need to know is how will Judge Kavanaugh will rule in matters of fundamental importance in the society. None of the events which happened when he was a child and a teenager should matter now if we as a people can understand and apply the well known phrase “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” or if we believe in redemption. Personally I think that a society which do not believe in redemption will not be able to survive for long in this universe.

I waited and hopped that Judge Kavanaugh would have testified in the US senate by saying something equivalent to this: “I do not have a memory of the event professor Ford has. I do not believe she lies. I call for all people who can help this case to be solved to come forward. If professor’s Ford memory is factual then I will apologize for the trauma I’ve accidentally created.” In less than 5 minutes all would have been over and Judge Kavanaugh would (in my opinion) been part of the supreme court today with his head up.

Unfortunately this is now what I’ve seen and heard. The way the judge Kavanaugh approached this issue is a testimony of how we expect he would approach any issue of crucial importance for people’s freedoms. He did not seem to allow for any chance that his memory to be faulty and this is an issue when it comes form a person with his experience. He also did not show empathy for professor’s Ford memory and situation. He said his Daughter prayed for professor Ford but that did not seem tome come form him and unfortunately his Daughter will not sit on the supreme court. The last, but not least, the judge seemed vengeful rather than understanding, something that if true (vengeance) should make all your hair raise on your body, as such a person will be able to influence decisions on how justice will treat you in the future.

I do not doubt that judge Kavanaugh is a good person and a good judge and I have no way to tell if what he is accused of is true or not. However I think the universe (or GOD) gave him a test in this nomination and to my current opinion he failed it for the reasons I’ve explained above. I do not think that based on his last audition on the US senate he still qualifies for a sit in the US supreme court.

So, you can see why I say Confusion is the best word to describe the state of this appointment process. In my opinion no FBI investigation will bring any information more important than the one the judge provided himself to the senate.

Unfortunately we seem to be also blind not only confused, or maybe the blindness comes from the confusion, who knows. I predict that there is a high probability that judge Kavanaugh will be in the supreme court. I hope judge Kavanaugh will overcome all this unfortunate events, will learn from it and become the person we all hope he will be.

I believe it is possible, I believe in redemption, I believe in all my human (and not human) brothers and sisters, I believe we as humans are here to stay.

“Live long an prosper!”

PS: In case you wonder about “(and not human) brothers and sisters” would mean remember that if you go back in time, based on scientific proof of evolution we all share the genes of same parents, so we are truly all brothers and sisters. If you don’t believe in science and evolution then based on sacred books the same is true!

Fact and Truth & the fascinating case of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Professor Christine Blasey

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I watched like many others the US senate hearings of Professor Christine Blasey Ford and judge Brett Kavanaugh. Is it possible that they are both telling the truth and will pass with full colors any lie detector test?

I’m not a US citizen, so I have no interest in left or right but this case seem to be the best example of people confusing the notions of fact and truth.

I believe judge Brett Kavanaugh tell the truth and so Professor Ford even if there is one and only one fact which none of us will ever be able to know.

If you read my article Fact, Fiction and the Truth  then you’ll see that for a fact (real event) there can be different recollections for each mind witnessing the fact. Each person can have different memories which in time will drift apart or be deleted from one’s memory. So, there is one fact and multiple truths. The notion of “the truth” is meaningless in a group of people.

All the people I’ve seen, on both senate floor as fell as the new channels, were talking about truth as being interchangeable with fact. This confusion can lead to dangerous situations.

On CNN Wulf Biltzer said that if both Kavanaugh and Ford have given contradictory depositions under oath it means one of them lied and should be investigated and punished. That is true if and only if we can demonstrate that someone lied. In my opinion (and other people smarter than me) this is not possible beyond doubt. (what really ‘reasonable’ means in the classic expression? where do we draw the line for reasonable?)

The worse thing though is that we “the people” should be able to behave like civilized people and not make the life hell for two people who most likely tell their own truth. It is completely unacceptable to attack and issue threats to people just because we decided they are layers when in fact is basically impossible to know when someone lies.

I hope judge Kavanaugh and other members of the justice system will think and work harder to distinguish between Fact Truth and Fiction to avoid horrible injustice by justice mistakes…

 

RIP Senator John McCain

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Senator John McCain passed away. I am not an US citizen and he was not my Senator, but I have the highest respect for people who respect and honor Truth and Facts and he was one of them. RIP Sir John McCain, my condolences for the family and all who valued and loved him.

 

RIP Senator John McCain