Hello Steemit! Your local information security guy / hacker guy, with a plot twist!
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I think creating a Steemit account was in the future when I heard about this social platform ages ago. But I didn't know when I was going to be creating my account until a few days ago when a friend reminded me about it...
I actually created my account because I wanted to see what Utopian.io was all about when I was looking around Steemit. The idea of Utopian sounded cool, so I decided to make an account here. I believe in open source software and I love to program a lot. It's one of those things that make you feel powerful because you have the power to change anything with some technology and a bit of will power. Programming while listening to music is one of my favorite things to do. If not then, music and art is my other passion, out of many.
My name is Stephen Chavez. I started to learn about tech when I was younger. Computers taught me so much growing up and they helped me grow as a person. It was a challenge for me, because well, as you see I am in a power-wheelchair. But more on that later.
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I'm a recent computer science graduate from Metropolitan State University of Denver. I've been making great success for myself with my information security work on medical devices. I like to hack medical devices such as power-wheelchairs, heart peace makers and, of course smart "IoT" devices like fitbits. With this research, I do presentations all over the world with my wonderful friend Lani. So far, I am getting noticed internationally, which is wonderful and awesome! Here are two out of many articles out there that shows what I am doing thus far.
http://www.therooster.com/blog/stephen-chavez-dreams-mind-controlled-machines
I specialize in information security and software engineering. As such, I like to work on interesting problems that improve my life and as well as others that may not be able to fix themselves. One such interesting problem that I worked on is making my power-wheelchair semi autonomous. This little project seemed insignificant at the time, but it turned out to have far-reaching possibilities in technology. This helped me to find that I have a passion and a desire to help secure medical devices. The research opened many doors for me in multiple areas like information security, medical device hacking, and help me to earn presenting spots in globally recognized conferences. Before graduating from university, my project was turned into an open sourced framework to work with a closed and proprietary protocol R-Net that earned international recognition.
You can see the project in action here:
I've worked hard on this hacking project and received a lot of help to make it a reality! Thanks to Solid State Depot Hackerspace. They rock!
People all over the world have been emailing me about how they are grateful finding my project to expand on. Some people made a self driving chair, some are making eye tracking software for chairs, and other projects with my code. I cannot be more happy about it. I hope you, yes, you, will help me with my future projects and follow my life adventures!
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Why are you in a wheelchair?
I have a condition called Schizencephaly. It is an extremely rare brain condition that at the time, not much was known about it. It can affect everything from physical motor skills, logic skills, speech skills, hearing, eyesight, muscle, and spinal cord communication. I had one of the worst cases at the time and am not supposed to be here right now. I was to be a vegetable for the remainder of my life and I would have multiple seizures a day. But to everybody's amazement, I don't suffer from the standard issues that this condition brings. I only have the poor motor skills. This is confusing to doctors because I am missing a large portion of my brain. I have abnormally high complexity of thinking.
I can hear and understand everything that's said to me. However I cannot speak and must type on my computer to respond. It is really hard for me to communicate sometimes. I can only express myself through technology like my computer, but that's been very limiting. People are very impatient. They don't wait for me to type unless they know me personally. And in my career and today's world that is unacceptable for me. I need to express my thoughts faster
In my spare time, I've successfully added external functionality to my equipment and I am constantly looking for Human-Machine-Interface hacks and improvements. I recently have been working on a OpenBCI project with some friends. We just started it, the end goal is to control my chair with my thoughts.
Anyway... I think this is a long enough post on introducing myself to you all. Don't be scared to reach out and talk to me, I'd love to hear from people. I'm also currently looking for work and contracts to support the research I do. Let me know if you have anything! :)
Twitter confirmation post.
Hello Stephen, and welcome to steemit! Yours sound like an incredible story and I csn't wait to see what you will bring of unique content to steemit.
I hope you will receive a warm welcome here and have a great time on the platform (I certainly am!)
I would recommend that you make a confirmation post just to confirm that you are who you say you are. Whether it be sharing a link to your steemit post from another social media account, or posting a picture here of you with a note saying your account name and date.
Anyways, again welcome and good luck on steemit:)
Hi Fred,
Thank you for the warm welcome. Yeah, I just fixed my post to include a link to my Twitter account. :D
I might post a picture later.
What is your favorite part about Steemit?
I see you're doing space stuff, I dig that! I will have to read more of your posts later.
I'd like to see what you do sometime in the near future :) I'm always travelling when I can.
Welcome to Steem Community @tech.ninja! As a gentle reminder, please keep your master password safe. The best practise is to use your private posting key to login to Steemit when posting; and the private active key for wallet related transactions.
In the New Steemians project, we help new members of steem by education and resteeeming their articles. Get your articles resteemed too for maximum exposure. You can learn more about it here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@gaman/new-steemians-project-launch
Great to have you on Steemit!
You offer us a very unique perspective and we hope you will continue to share.
As an IT type I find the notion of an IofT is absolutely terrifying for a myriad of reasons. Don't get me wrong. I love technology but I also know that it is virtually impossible to secure an IP connected device. However the message being sold to everyone with less understanding of the risks is that it's totally safe! You can give the community insight into this space!
They are turning everything into IoT in some way. It's actually scary. And people don't even care until it's too late.
Welcome to Steem Community :), So glad you've joined and I'm looking forward to reading more of your posts!
:D
Hey man you are really great and going to become inspiration for many I do believe that people like you really inspired me every time when ever i feel demotivated. I am again full of energy and really welcome you here with a open heart my friend.
Welcome to Steemit, Thank you for this presentation. I hope you enjoy the Steemit universe. Looking forward to discover you. Thank you
Welcome to Steemit tech.ninja and I'm sure you'll have a great time here!! :)
Welcome to Steemit dude!
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Welcome to steemit Stephen. You have an interesting background. There are plenty of good people out there in the site. I am sure you will do fine among them. Keep writing :)
Thanks man! I hope so too.