6 ms·

How I welcomed an immigrant family with a Linux laptop

112 points by pshapiro99 10y ago

chaghalibaghali 10y ago
Can anyone recommend ways of finding out about low cost / direct impact things like this? I'd much prefer to fund a specific laptop than throwing money into the void of big charities.
- jkot 10y ago
  Poor people are everywhere. For low cost / direct impact, you could "remotely adopt" kid in India or Africa and provide basic education. You get letters, pictures etc... Its very nice. I found catholic charities to be best for this (I am not catholic). They work on site, have long tradition and very small overhead.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Wow, I've always just assumed those things were total scams. How do you verify that your money is providing care for an actual kid and not funding some entrepreneur's third yacht while he sends you stock photos of kids?
    - whamlastxmas 10y ago
      You have to pick a charity that goes above and beyond the legally required reporting. This provides transparency into how the money is spent on a more granular level. I don't know how common this is, I suspect not very.
    - jkot 10y ago
      My friend went to India to visit adopted kid. There are stories on news papers, some students even came to study university in Europe.
- ashray 10y ago
  Please email me (link in bio), I'm also looking to fund grassroots initiatives like this and I've found a few but two heads are better than one :)
- nanna 10y ago
  There's a group in Canada called Computers for Refugees that does this sort of thing. https://www.facebook.com/computersforrefugees https://www.facebook.com/computersforrefugees I've been thinking about setting something like this up where I come from in London, UK. A worker at a refugee centre told me that laptops are an extremely helpful tool for refugees so they can communicate with authorities and aid agencies in good time, but that they were out of reach for most. Refugees generally have stupidphones because they're cheap and easy to get a hold of, but not laptops. Anyone interested in working together on something like this in London?
- netcan 10y ago
  When that sort of thing gets big enough for HN to recomend, it loses a lot of the directness. There are lots of attempts to scale personalized, direct giving but if you want the real deal, there's nothing wrong with small. Find local people in your area. Religious communities are a good place to start, especially if you have any sort of affiliation yourself. There might be refugee focused charities or community groups, PC recycling charities.. Shouldn't be hard to find. Call them. Ask what they need or tell them what you'd like to do. Other than PCs (and other material things they need), it can be good to just have newly arrived refugees to dinner. It helps to know local people like you personally.
- erubin 10y ago
  One charity that I contribute to is GiveDirectly[1]. They are one of GiveWell's[2] highest rated charities and are quite transparent about the impact they have. GiveDirectly is also currently experimenting with basic income and have matching donations for that project. [1] https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/ [2] http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/
- Kluny 10y ago
  Ask a local church to recommend a parishioner who would benefit from it. They usually have a long list.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Watsi seems pretty transparent. I can't help but feel good even pitching in $25 to fund someone's sometimes lifesaving medical treatment from across the world. As an aside, the costs are actually representative of the treatment, unlike in the inflated world of American insurance.
- cuchoi 10y ago
  GiveWell recommends charities where you should donate based on impact-per-dollar: http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/
jnmandal 10y ago
I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole audio book read along thing is more of an advanced level learning tool, or perhaps something you would do when there are no normal course materials in the target language.
- dublinben 10y ago
  It sounds like they might not have reliable internet access. In this case, resources that can be freely downloaded make more sense.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
  I have failed beginner Duolingo exercises in a language in which I'm fluent, due to it quibbling over something that truly could be translated in several different ways.
  - empath75 10y ago
    Leave comments, they're pretty good about correcting it.
  - noxToken 10y ago
    I'm no linguist, but is it truly something ambiguous or are you being a stickler? I've seen some of the comments on some of those exercises, and there are plenty of indignant sticklers mucking about. It's the same on CodeCademy with some of their exercises. "Well shouldn't it really be like this?!" No. The accepted answer works fine. Don't over-engineer a simple solution.
    - 88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
      I can't remember the specific example, but it was a scenario where the source language was ambiguous but the target required more specificity. It was like "give me some bread" in one language and then when I supplied "give me a piece of bread" it told me it should have been "give me a slice of bread". While I could see where it was coming from, this would be incredibly confusing for a beginner, who wouldn't even know to report this as a problem - they might conclude that "piece of bread" was just incorrect.
mxuribe 10y ago
Very cool!
bobthechef 10y ago
I appreciate charity and I am convinced there is not enough of it (philanthropy isn't enough and often misses the point of helping others which is not self-glorification, but the death of ego). However, some things bothered me about this article. First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that. Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward, horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better educated, civilized, great benefactor. There is pleasure in the delusional superiority. (White upper middle class college students also have a rite of passage known as peace corp or a semester abroad in Africa, but I digress.) Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. If you're going to have people chip in, at least have the courtesy to buy them a more recent piece of technology. There are better ways of integrating the family into the community. Fourth, and perhaps the most minor of my points, there is a waft of Linux ideology in the air (this related to first point).
- ryukafalz 10y ago
  >Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. This really, really depends on how much you make. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem for us, but I know many people who can't afford to drop $60 on something like that out of the blue.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  > First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that. There is no such thing as a selfless good deed, and a lot of philanthropists want people to know how good they are. But when selfless and selfish ambition align, as in the case of charity, society itself benefits. That's a good thing. If a charity is legitimately disinterested in being recognized you never would have heard of it. This getting popular could help the concept spread. > Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward, horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better educated, civilized, great benefactor. Which exact text in the article gave you that impression? I feel like I am pretty sensitive to such tones but I didn't pick up any of that. > Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. You too could chip in. As you yourself said, it isn't much of a sacrifice, so why don't you?
ovt 10y ago
I wonder what the author's reasoning was in being quite so self-congratulatory.
- ascotan 10y ago
  Because he could buy a laptop for $60 (and pre-loaded it with socialist drivel). I guess he thought that it was neat. I'm not sure how this makes it to the top of HN. I have been noticing that submitted content on this site is getting worse.
jacobsladder 10y ago
I don't understand why couldn't the immigrant family just get a pirate Windows? Torrents are standard solutions to people who have no money to purchase software. They break the law, but the risk of prosecution is slim to none, so why not do it? They can start purchasing software as soon as they can afford it. No reason to stop them from being able to be a productive members of the society now. I come from Russia where me and all the other kids of my age used solely a pirated software. Now I am building software for other people and only have licensed software on my computer. If I was not allowed to use Windows, as well as other supercool development apps from Adobe, etc, then that would be a simple waste of life. It sounds like the guy imposed Linux on this family who didn't know what their real choices were (even though some may have been unethical).
- dijit 10y ago
  Why would it be a waste of life? Presumably you'd be making applications on Linux if enforcement was strong. And the Linux market would have benefited from that, which fosters a growing community on the platform.
  - jacobsladder 10y ago
    I don't think so. I use Linux a lot as advanced user now, and I definitely appreciate what it has to offer, but if I was forced to use Linux before, it would have been a disaster. There are just so many programming applications that allow one to explore programming in a quick drag'n'drop and fun way. Imagine using Delphi, you drop the button on screen and you see the generated code right away. You then start to tinker with it and let go of WYSIWYG editor completely. Apps like that were instrumental in my education. I even had superexpensive pirated 3d Max type of software to try myself at 3d modeling and understand what it is about. I also tried lots of expensive and well-made software (at the time) from Adobe and it was a great learning experience. I think the fact is, for many such cases pirated software is a great pragmatic solution. I understand there are ethical issues when suggesting something like that publicly, but the individual can make the choice for himself.
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
analognoise 10y ago
We circle jerk about providing people computers when they need food, shelter, medical care, and a functioning systemic care system that enables people to integrate, learn the language, and find work. This is pablum of the worst sort - the slacktivist, feel-good variety.
- Mz 10y ago
  From the article: The mother told me she was very eager to learn English so that she could find her first job. In Haiti, she was close to finishing her law degree. So, I started thinking about what I could do to help speed her towards that goal. Maybe you have heard of the Digital Divide. "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime."

112 points by pshapiro99 10y ago

Can anyone recommend ways of finding out about low cost / direct impact things like this? I'd much prefer to fund a specific laptop than throwing money into the void of big charities.

jkot 10y ago
Poor people are everywhere. For low cost / direct impact, you could "remotely adopt" kid in India or Africa and provide basic education. You get letters, pictures etc... Its very nice. I found catholic charities to be best for this (I am not catholic). They work on site, have long tradition and very small overhead.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Wow, I've always just assumed those things were total scams. How do you verify that your money is providing care for an actual kid and not funding some entrepreneur's third yacht while he sends you stock photos of kids?
  - whamlastxmas 10y ago
    You have to pick a charity that goes above and beyond the legally required reporting. This provides transparency into how the money is spent on a more granular level. I don't know how common this is, I suspect not very.
  - jkot 10y ago
    My friend went to India to visit adopted kid. There are stories on news papers, some students even came to study university in Europe.
ashray 10y ago
Please email me (link in bio), I'm also looking to fund grassroots initiatives like this and I've found a few but two heads are better than one :)
nanna 10y ago
There's a group in Canada called Computers for Refugees that does this sort of thing. https://www.facebook.com/computersforrefugees https://www.facebook.com/computersforrefugees I've been thinking about setting something like this up where I come from in London, UK. A worker at a refugee centre told me that laptops are an extremely helpful tool for refugees so they can communicate with authorities and aid agencies in good time, but that they were out of reach for most. Refugees generally have stupidphones because they're cheap and easy to get a hold of, but not laptops. Anyone interested in working together on something like this in London?
netcan 10y ago
When that sort of thing gets big enough for HN to recomend, it loses a lot of the directness. There are lots of attempts to scale personalized, direct giving but if you want the real deal, there's nothing wrong with small. Find local people in your area. Religious communities are a good place to start, especially if you have any sort of affiliation yourself. There might be refugee focused charities or community groups, PC recycling charities.. Shouldn't be hard to find. Call them. Ask what they need or tell them what you'd like to do. Other than PCs (and other material things they need), it can be good to just have newly arrived refugees to dinner. It helps to know local people like you personally.
erubin 10y ago
One charity that I contribute to is GiveDirectly[1]. They are one of GiveWell's[2] highest rated charities and are quite transparent about the impact they have. GiveDirectly is also currently experimenting with basic income and have matching donations for that project. [1] https://www.givedirectly.org/ https://www.givedirectly.org/ [2] http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/
Kluny 10y ago
Ask a local church to recommend a parishioner who would benefit from it. They usually have a long list.
Hydraulix989 10y ago
Watsi seems pretty transparent. I can't help but feel good even pitching in $25 to fund someone's sometimes lifesaving medical treatment from across the world. As an aside, the costs are actually representative of the treatment, unlike in the inflated world of American insurance.
cuchoi 10y ago
GiveWell recommends charities where you should donate based on impact-per-dollar: http://www.givewell.org/ http://www.givewell.org/

jnmandal 10y ago

I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole audio book read along thing is more of an advanced level learning tool, or perhaps something you would do when there are no normal course materials in the target language.

dublinben 10y ago
It sounds like they might not have reliable internet access. In this case, resources that can be freely downloaded make more sense.
88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
I have failed beginner Duolingo exercises in a language in which I'm fluent, due to it quibbling over something that truly could be translated in several different ways.
- empath75 10y ago
  Leave comments, they're pretty good about correcting it.
- noxToken 10y ago
  I'm no linguist, but is it truly something ambiguous or are you being a stickler? I've seen some of the comments on some of those exercises, and there are plenty of indignant sticklers mucking about. It's the same on CodeCademy with some of their exercises. "Well shouldn't it really be like this?!" No. The accepted answer works fine. Don't over-engineer a simple solution.
  - 88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
    I can't remember the specific example, but it was a scenario where the source language was ambiguous but the target required more specificity. It was like "give me some bread" in one language and then when I supplied "give me a piece of bread" it told me it should have been "give me a slice of bread". While I could see where it was coming from, this would be incredibly confusing for a beginner, who wouldn't even know to report this as a problem - they might conclude that "piece of bread" was just incorrect.

mxuribe 10y ago

Very cool!

bobthechef 10y ago

I appreciate charity and I am convinced there is not enough of it (philanthropy isn't enough and often misses the point of helping others which is not self-glorification, but the death of ego). However, some things bothered me about this article. First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that. Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward, horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better educated, civilized, great benefactor. There is pleasure in the delusional superiority. (White upper middle class college students also have a rite of passage known as peace corp or a semester abroad in Africa, but I digress.) Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. If you're going to have people chip in, at least have the courtesy to buy them a more recent piece of technology. There are better ways of integrating the family into the community. Fourth, and perhaps the most minor of my points, there is a waft of Linux ideology in the air (this related to first point).

ryukafalz 10y ago
>Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. This really, really depends on how much you make. Maybe it wouldn't be a problem for us, but I know many people who can't afford to drop $60 on something like that out of the blue.
Someone1234 10y ago
> First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that. There is no such thing as a selfless good deed, and a lot of philanthropists want people to know how good they are. But when selfless and selfish ambition align, as in the case of charity, society itself benefits. That's a good thing. If a charity is legitimately disinterested in being recognized you never would have heard of it. This getting popular could help the concept spread. > Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward, horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better educated, civilized, great benefactor. Which exact text in the article gave you that impression? I feel like I am pretty sensitive to such tones but I didn't pick up any of that. > Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's not much of a sacrifice, guy. You too could chip in. As you yourself said, it isn't much of a sacrifice, so why don't you?

ovt 10y ago

I wonder what the author's reasoning was in being quite so self-congratulatory.

ascotan 10y ago
Because he could buy a laptop for $60 (and pre-loaded it with socialist drivel). I guess he thought that it was neat. I'm not sure how this makes it to the top of HN. I have been noticing that submitted content on this site is getting worse.

jacobsladder 10y ago

I don't understand why couldn't the immigrant family just get a pirate Windows? Torrents are standard solutions to people who have no money to purchase software. They break the law, but the risk of prosecution is slim to none, so why not do it? They can start purchasing software as soon as they can afford it. No reason to stop them from being able to be a productive members of the society now. I come from Russia where me and all the other kids of my age used solely a pirated software. Now I am building software for other people and only have licensed software on my computer. If I was not allowed to use Windows, as well as other supercool development apps from Adobe, etc, then that would be a simple waste of life. It sounds like the guy imposed Linux on this family who didn't know what their real choices were (even though some may have been unethical).

dijit 10y ago
Why would it be a waste of life? Presumably you'd be making applications on Linux if enforcement was strong. And the Linux market would have benefited from that, which fosters a growing community on the platform.
- jacobsladder 10y ago
  I don't think so. I use Linux a lot as advanced user now, and I definitely appreciate what it has to offer, but if I was forced to use Linux before, it would have been a disaster. There are just so many programming applications that allow one to explore programming in a quick drag'n'drop and fun way. Imagine using Delphi, you drop the button on screen and you see the generated code right away. You then start to tinker with it and let go of WYSIWYG editor completely. Apps like that were instrumental in my education. I even had superexpensive pirated 3d Max type of software to try myself at 3d modeling and understand what it is about. I also tried lots of expensive and well-made software (at the time) from Adobe and it was a great learning experience. I think the fact is, for many such cases pirated software is a great pragmatic solution. I understand there are ethical issues when suggesting something like that publicly, but the individual can make the choice for himself.
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

analognoise 10y ago

We circle jerk about providing people computers when they need food, shelter, medical care, and a functioning systemic care system that enables people to integrate, learn the language, and find work. This is pablum of the worst sort - the slacktivist, feel-good variety.

Mz 10y ago
From the article: The mother told me she was very eager to learn English so that she could find her first job. In Haiti, she was close to finishing her law degree. So, I started thinking about what I could do to help speed her towards that goal. Maybe you have heard of the Digital Divide. "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, feed him for a lifetime."