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Ask HN: How can I do social good through programming?

• formula_ninguna 9y ago
  I help women become happier by making love with them. It's for free.
• NoGravitas 9y ago
  This is almost certainly the wrong place to ask this question, unfortunately. The HN demographic is spectacularly disinterested in the well-being of humanity. Try /r/socialistprogrammers or /r/anarcho_hackers on Reddit.
  • austenallred 9y ago
    > The HN demographic is spectacularly disinterested in the well-being of humanity. Wait, what?
    • throwanem 9y ago
      GP appears to use a very idiosyncratic metric of such interest.
    • falcolas 9y ago
      It's crudely phrased, but the quantity of posts which show up in opposition to anything that helps society at large at the cost of profits is remarkably high, and getting higher as time goes on. All anecdotal, of course.
      • austenallred 9y ago
        I'd say that HN seems extremely interested in the wellbeing of humanity. That's all anyone talks about. The disagreements are over what methodology is most likely to reach that ends. My guess is that parent sees comments that recommend a different means to the same end we all generally believe in, and views those as disregard for humans.
        • eeZah7Ux 9y ago
          "making the world a better place by selling $service" is usually hypocrisy rather than a matter of methodology. Same goes for making a service cheaper at the expense of the workers and the list goes on...
          • BeetleB 9y ago
            >"making the world a better place by selling $service" is usually hypocrisy rather than a matter of methodology. You can't be binary about this. In many situations, selling a service has made the world (or at least a city/country) a better place. Private cell phone service in many developing countries, for example. I know countries where, before they came in, people would have to wait years to get a landline (some in excess of 10 years). Private companies swooped in and gave people access (at least those who could afford it). Imagine how limited your life would be if you didn't have any phone (and that includes no Internet). Sometimes giving to charity is better. At other times, it's non-sustaining and you need some kind of profit model. Both can benefit society.
            • eeZah7Ux 9y ago
              ...and that's why I wrote "usually".
      • NoGravitas 9y ago
        Indeed. Go read the comments on the "My Family's Slave" article from a few days ago. A large proportion of them were supportive of slavery, or at least identified strongly with the slavers rather than their victim. Furthermore, the admins apparently disabled downvoting of comments, and detached strongly anti-slavery subthreads. HN and the HN demographic are strongly interested in preserving/advancing a particular social order; one that is largely detrimental to most of humanity.
        • krapp 9y ago
          > Furthermore, the admins apparently disabled downvoting of comments, and detached strongly anti-slavery subthreads. I checked that thread, and the detached subthreads appear to be either tangential or uncivil. I see little evidence of the pro-slavery agenda you allude to.
        • julianmarq 9y ago
          > Go read the comments on the "My Family's Slave" article from a few days ago. A large proportion of them were supportive of slavery, or at least identified strongly with the slavers rather than their victim. Furthermore, the admins apparently disabled downvoting of comments, and detached strongly anti-slavery subthreads. Both of these are outright lies. You can dress them however you want if you dare to reply but these are lies. And why bother? It's not as if everyone can go check the discussion and see that these are lies. Weird.
    • darwhy 9y ago
      You can see it in the many comments claiming that working at an ordinary day job or donating your income to charity is akin to the social good asked for by OP. It's a failure of imagination to assume that you can do more good for the world as programmer #9001 at Facebook who donates some of his income to effective altruism than as a programmer who adds all of her value to some other cause. A good programmer making 100k contributes far more than 100k value to the company she works at, so why not find a charity to which she can contribute similarly?
      • austenallred 9y ago
        > You can see it in the many comments claiming that working at an ordinary day job or donating your income to charity is akin to the social good asked for by OP. If OP doesn't see donating to charity as interest in the well-being of society then let's just admit that the parent isn't so much concerned about whether or not HN is interested in the well-being of society so much as if HN wants to contribute to the well-being of society in the same way the parent would. Thus, parent really should say, "HN doesnt seem to agree with my particular persuasion as to how one creates well-being in society." Donating to charity is, almost by definition, interest in the wellbeing of society. Also, if you're going to be paid $100k at Facebook that means the value you provide is >= $100k to Facebook. It does not mean that your work is objectively worth $100k anywhere you could go. There's some correlation, of course, but I think given the context it's an important distinction to make. As an aside, it's entirely possible for me to imagine a scenario in which the most beneficial thing one could do for society is utilize the scale and reach of Facebook. I doubt that the vast majority of the work at Facebook is that specifically, but it's certainly possible to imagine.
        • eeZah7Ux 9y ago
          > Donating to charity is, almost by definition, interest in the wellbeing of society. ...or dodging taxes while getting good PR and also giving jobs to people in your own country (instead of elsewhere)?
          • maxerickson 9y ago
  • weberc2 9y ago
    Disinterested or differently-interested?
  • ska 9y ago
    In my opinion, the HN readership is far too diverse to accurately make any such narrow statements about.
  • MichaelMoser123 9y ago
    I just took a quick look at these communities: how exactly are /r/socialistprogramm and /r/anarcho_hackers furthering the well being of humanity? For what i see its all about fringe politics (meaning that they keep themselves busy)
• isomorph 9y ago
  OurPath maybe. 23andMe ? Medical / health stuff
  • pplonski86 9y ago
    I agree medical/health stuff is the most strightforward. I would also add some tiny mobile apps that make our life easier and more happy!
  • fenwick67 9y ago
    23andme is a private company
• dontreact 9y ago
  The medical world has a lot of uses for software and machine learning.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Sure, but would be cool to know where to find some particular areas or projects to help. This is the core problem here: I could personally name a ton of industries and endeavors that could use software to be better - but finding a particular need and someone willing to work with you on fulfilling that need? That feels incredibly hard.
• santiagobasulto 9y ago
  We do that everyday. Maybe indirectly, but we're making a lot of things way more efficient. Information is a huge part of our nature, since the first days, and we're the main collaborators to simplify the access to information. Said that, you can also think "smaller". Teach someone how to code, and it might be a complete life changer. I run a coding school and we offer free sits for people who need it, and we're greatly satisfied. We've seen students working for McDonald's, for 10 hours per day making just minimum wage, move to a software company with a $+90K salary and changing their lives completely. Share what you know, try to fix the problems that humanity faces. Don't try to do everything just by yourself. But your "tiny" collaboration ads up.
• _asummers 9y ago
  Machine learning is pretty popular right now. With obvious applications in things like biology, you can go into things like gene research (see CRISPR) or AI. Could even go embedded and do medical security things to prevent the next WannaCry. A recruiter shot a job across my email a few months back about using technology to get people more active in government. Depending on how you feel about government, that could be taken to any number of applications, with some company filling the niche along the way. I work in education, myself, and I find that pretty rewarding. Being able to use technology to help teachers do something even a little bit easier is a good feeling. Even though these scenarios are very different, they all help advance individuals and the species in their own micro and macro ways. Tech is useful everywhere, so decide who you want to help, and find companies that exist to help those people and go from there. And if you don't find a company there, then maybe you have your YC interview already cooking.
• dragonbonheur 9y ago
  Local exchange systems. Mentoring and apprenticeship forums and exchanges. Grants and sponsorship databases. Digital permaculture, hydroponics, aquaculture, aeroponics & DIY encyclopedia. Tools to fight against misleading and inaccurate information and to clarify and annotate ambiguous laws that don't benefit the population. Better corruption and dark financing graphs about people in power.
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    what's digital permaculture?
• Xoros 9y ago
  I worked years ago on a project named babeltree(.org). Don't know if it's still active, but the idea (and the founder) behind it was really about making the world a better place.
• tacostakohashi 9y ago
  Work as a programmer for whoever will pay you the most. Invest, and donate money to causes you care about.
  • vlaaad 9y ago
    ...Unless it's advetising. Or Uber. Or government wanting you to implement yet another freedom-restricting bullshit.
    • romanovcode 9y ago
      > Or Uber. There are plenty of companies 10x worse than Uber. Hivemind.
      • falcolas 9y ago
        That there are worse companies than Uber doesn't make Uber good, or even worth working for.
        • romanovcode 9y ago
          But pointing it out makes OP look like he just read some clickbait titles two weeks ago and is now some cringey Anti Uber SJW.
          • falcolas 9y ago
            I think it makes the point that there are some cases where the cost of negatively impacting society is not worth the benefit of making more money to give to charity.
    • beachbum8029 9y ago
      Ummmmmm but Uber made the world a better place? (for me anyway)
      • 9y ago
• Svenstaro 9y ago
  This is going to sound pessimistic at first but hear me out: Unless you're extremely gifted in many ways and super resourceful, you're not likely to make any noticeable impact on the species. However, you can still make a big difference for groups much smaller than the whole species (and I think that's actually preferable from a human point of view because it's more tangible). The world is full of problems that could easily be solved by good software. This is especially true in industries that are usually not very technological by themselves. Depending on your current network you might have gotten to know an industry or two that is not strictly technological. If not, ask your friends who do not program software all day and ask them what problems they have at work that they find annoying and try to come up with a software solution for that. Once you do that, convince their bosses that it saves them more money to pay for your software than to do things the old way.
  • bjelkeman-again 9y ago
    I wouldn't be so pesimistic. We started an organisation that builds open source cloud data systems used among other things to track drinking water infrastructure and sustainable food production in Africa and Asia. We started from scratch and we now work with 20+ governments, 200+ NGOs and several UN organisations. We are probably not extremely gifted, but more like middle of the road startup geeks. Still we make an impact.
• leoreeves 9y ago
  I'd recommend http://dotimpact.im/ http://dotimpact.im/, it's part of the Effective Altruist movement—people who want to do the most good with the time/money/resources they have.
• teddyh 9y ago
  FSF's High Priority Free Software Projects list: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/ https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/ • Free phone operating system: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-phone https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-phone • Decentralization, federation, and self-hosting: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/decentralization-federation https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/decentraliza... • Free drivers, firmware, and hardware designs: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/hardware-firmware-drivers https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/hardware-fir... • Real-time voice and video chat: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/voicevideochat https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/voicevideoch... • Encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/contribute https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/contribute • Free software and accessibility: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/accessibility https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/accessibilit... • Internationalization of free software: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/internationalization https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/internationa... • Security by and for free software: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/security-by-and-for-free-software https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/security-by-... • Intelligent personal assistant: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/personalassistant https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/personalassi... • Help GNU/Linux distributions be committed to freedom: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/help-gnu-linux-distributions-be-committed-to-freedom https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/help-gnu-lin... • Free software adoption by governments: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-software-adoption-by-governments http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-software...
• asmt3 9y ago
  Consider working for NGOs like ours - International Alert. In our case, we use software development to analyse data and build mobile apps. Android is particularly sought after skill in the (economically) developing world. Follow me on https://twitter.com/alanthomson https://twitter.com/alanthomson to hear about job opportunities. (... when Twitter starts working again!)
• ajdecon 9y ago
  Honestly, I think the most effective thing to do is find an organization doing social good, who is hiring programmers, and go work for them. There are plenty of non-profits and governments that do a ton of good, and employ developers to work on their web sites and infrastructures. A good friend of mine is a developer for the ACLU, for example. There are also organizations like Code for America that do open source work with local governments. Since those projects are open source, you could probably volunteer your time and contribute to those. Or simply volunteer in a non-developer capacity! :) Doing actual social good -- helping people in ways that will actually solve their problems, understanding the consequences of changing their lives -- requires a ton of context and communication. I think it's very, very difficult to do so without either dedicating most of your time to that cause, or working closely with an organization that is already doing so. (E.g., volunteering for a food bank is a lot more effective than just picking up food and distributing it on your own.)
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    Thank you for the Code for America recommendation, checking them out now
    • germinalphrase 9y ago
      Jennifer Pahlka, the founder of Code for America, has been making the rounds lately. Good conversations on both the Econtalk podcast [0] (which I know is an HN favorite) and the Long Now Foundation [1]. Procurement sounds absolutely awful at the federal level; she makes a compelling case for how needed modern software design and development processes are in providing effective and cost efficient government services. [0]http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/jennifer_pahlka.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/05/jennifer_pahlka.htm... [1]http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/feb/01/fixing-government-bottom-and-outside/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/feb/01/fixing-government-b...
    • oddlyaromatic 9y ago
      Through the Code For Atlanta group I was able start a project with MARTA to make some things better about paratransit customers' access to up to date ETA info for their rides, which is currently a pain point for many customers. The code for America idea is awesome and stuff really does happen!
• numlocked 9y ago
  Work with mission-driven businesses. B Corps[0] are a good place to start. There's nothing quite like coming to work every day with a group of like-minded folks who want to make a dent in the universe. My company, www.grove.co, strives to help families making it easy to buy sustainable products vs. conventional CPG. It seemed a bit crazy when we started, but now literally thousands of families get sustainable products from us every single day. It's hard to make a big impact on your own, but organizations and companies can do great things. [0] https://www.bcorporation.net/ https://www.bcorporation.net/
  • sz4kerto 9y ago
    Exactly. :) Shameless plug: we at https://www.patientsknowbest.com/careers.html https://www.patientsknowbest.com/careers.html are also hiring and are a B Corp -- our mission is to give patients control over their own medical data.
  • ISL 9y ago
    B Corps don't always stay B Corps when they get all grown up: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-18/the-barbarians-are-at-etsy-s-hand-hewn-responsibly-sourced-gates https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-18/the-barba...
    • hooverlunch 9y ago
      Worker co-ops usually have provisions in their bylaws to ensure they stay co-oops. This is to guard against the issue you allude to here.
• falcolas 9y ago
  Warning - strong opinions ahead: Provide services and tools without the strings attached. That is to say, provide email services that don't mine data for profit. Provide a social interaction space that doesn't attempt to manipulate moods, opinions, or sell its user's eyeballs. Provide an aggregation service with strong filtering tools in place of strong moderation. Provide a code repository with great tooling that doesn't include value judgements. Provide anonymous, secure communication between parties. Make mobile applications that provide wanted services without the in-app purchases, ads, or profiling. The downside is that you're unlikely to get paid for it. You'll probably even lose money on it. In some cases, you'll even face legal pressure to stop or change.
  • pc86 9y ago
    Is "Facebook without advertisements" really the bar for social good now?
    • kolbe 9y ago
      yes. the world would be a much much better place had a non-corporate version of facebook had become facebook.
      • simplicitea 9y ago
        I'm not convinced yet that a non-profit is capable of doing what Facebook does. I'd love to read about it if you have any lit on the topic.
        • kolbe 9y ago
          I doubt anyone has ever written anything on the topic. Keep in mind that non-profit is not the same thing as non-revenue. Also, replicating facebook isn't necessarily what I'm talking about, but instead seeing whatever sorts of applications would be developed in the presence of altered incentives.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      In some way it is. One can't deny that social networking has pretty huge positive impact on communication and creative output. It would be better if it didn't come with surveillance capitalism in the same package.
• valarauca1 9y ago
  You don't. The idea you can _do anything_ to _help_. Is mostly a myth people repeat so they don't constantly feel like shit for doing nothing in the face of mass social injustice by which they are (partially) the benefactors. If you want social change, you need social action. Anything short is just rationalizing your guilt.
  • jerf 9y ago
    I'm sort of intrigued at your belief in the existence of "social action" that somehow manifests without any individual doing "anything" to "help". As if it is some sort of ontological force that exists independent of the individuals participating in it?
    • valarauca1 9y ago
      I incorrectly worded my post. And placed too much focus on the individual, when I was as attempting to stress the individual AS A software developer. But nonetheless I do agree with the final output. An individual is largely incapable of doing anything ALONE. Only thought organized and mass action are things accomplished on societal scale. Change requires work... this is physics. A large change requires a lot of work. If your force is too small (an individual). You may never over come friction. If you want social change, you need organization.
      • qntty 9y ago
        I tend to agree with you, but somehow seeing someone else say what I feel made me realize that this is the wrong way to think about the issue. Individuals can do exactly what they can do, and it isn't nothing.
        • valarauca1 9y ago
          >Individuals can do exactly what they can do, and it isn't nothing. Effort exerted without results is technically doing something. You are burning energy. But you are not making change happen, you are NOT doing work.
• awjr 9y ago
  As a cycle campaigner I am using my programming/data/design/socialmedia skills to present information to decision in better ways. 1) https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ https://cyclebath.org.uk/map/ This one has gone national and is up for a Creative Bath Innovation Award. 2) Using Census 2011 Data I've created a healthy cities and towns league index as well as spatial analysis on commuter behaviour. (6M people drive to work, of which 3.5M live within a 20 minute cycle ride) https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4YARJgso6IxRjd1ZlNDZklGaXc https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4YARJgso6IxRjd1ZlNDZklGaX... 3) Worked with Bath Hacked and Strava to deliver a year of cycling in the city of Bath strava.bathhacked.org 4) Get involved in your local tech4good meetup. Do not start from a "hey where can I use my skills for good?". Start with "I am passionate about X, what can I do to help X in anyway?"
  • tomglynch 9y ago
    I'd like to get involved in this kind of thing in Melbourne, Aus. I'm already a campaigner, but hadn't thought of contributing in a technological sense! I think I'll get in contact with the others I know and offer to help out! Cheers for the insight!
    • awjr 9y ago
      I'd look at the 2016 http://www.abs.gov.au/census http://www.abs.gov.au/census data set and see if you can start playing around with some of the data sets within there.
• DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  As individuals, we benefit from being in control of our computers. To maintain that control, good security is essential. So I'd say work on that, specifically on sandboxing and limiting the damage untrusted or compromised programs can do, re-writing crucial programs in languages immune to as many exploitable bugs as possible, maybe even try formal verification (for small but essential code, like OS kernels or filesystems), if you're feeling ambitious.
• mmesh 9y ago
  Find a local nonprofit or other organization you like and ask them what tech help they need. Many small nonprofits are starving for IT resources, either for financial or cultural reasons. It's not glamorous, but if you're willing to volunteer your time helping with an org's Wordpress site or making sure everyone is educated about phishing and 2FA, you can make a meaningful impact in your community.
• grblovrflowerrr 9y ago
  IDK about helping the species but maybe contribute to open source software in one of the following?: Disaster Management Software EMS Software Assistance software for the blind,deaf,etc. Of course, not everything becomes magically better from software's involvement. There might be some good opportunities in robotics, robotic medical care and elderly care especially come to mind.
• fimdomeio 9y ago
  I would love to have the opportunity to explore the concept of hyperlocal. Using the web to help bring local communities closer together. Never really had the opportunity yet. I myself, work mainly on projects related to museums, culture, green economy... In the projects I accept I try to find a balance between money I can get and how I view it as work for the greater good. A very hard balance and a very subjective one. Also have some friends that are a lot into open data which is also an interesting area to explore.
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    Do you have any recommendations for exploring what you call hyper-local work? I currently cook food for a living but even that, with it's immediate (feedback lol) to the local community, is a service that comes as a premium to people who don't need help. Where do you look for projects that fit your worldview as a programmer? Are there any groups of people based in Seattle that you'd recommend getting in touch with?
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
• oevi 9y ago
  Teach coding to children and those who want to learn it.
• rajadigopula 9y ago
  https://socialcoder.org/ https://socialcoder.org/ You can find a project that you can contribute to.Can even boast it on your resume!
• simplicitea 9y ago
  OP here, actually floored by the rapidity and variety of responses. Thanks HN. I'll take this opportunity to float an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a long time. The premise is to: 1) (this is almost certainly the easy part) build out a platform that is like a two-way khan academy - teacher and student, with at least the teacher having a tablet and a stylus that function well, sharing a digital blackboard, with a video chat optional -- where a student of something in a relatively privileged situation teaches a student of the same thing in a relatively less privileged situation -- where the sessions are stored and rewindable, both video and blackboard input. 2) the hard part; selling it as something to invest in and driving it to a point of having an endowment behind it, like Harvard's endowment, that allows the service to pay for moderation of student-teachers something like $12.00 USD an hour to teach, while subsidizing well-chosen students to have to pay something like $2 an hour to learn it's been an idea for a passion project for a while
  • srikz 9y ago
    You may want to explore this with the folks at freecodecamp. I feel it aligns a lot with what they are doing. I wanted to suggest you to check their initiative to build apps for NGOs as part of the process of graduating from FCC (maybe bypass the learning part and directly contribute?) but this may be even better.
  • Theodores 9y ago
    You need to develop this for a market that will pay you for it. Then you 'fork' your code for your favourite causes. In the world of retail many companies have to train sales staff in third party dealerships, this can be with lots of site visits and with those staff doing some away day thing. The reason for this sales training is so products can be demonstrated and those sales converted by knowledgeable staff. So you find your market in this type of a business and solve the challenges. There will be plenty in keeping company staff trained and on-board, with a long-term relationship with them selling stuff they get training updates about. You tailor your solution to different verticals and when you have a base product that can be tailored to your customers you then do your project version as that 'base product'. So maybe do this the hard way, put in some time being that person that does company training materials, build out whatever is needed for doing that much, much better, pioneer it with the company that you work for, and on their clock, put in a lot of work needed to build out the backend and support needed for your big idea, then leave to polish it off knowing you have a commercial version out there and proven to be good (hopefully!). Whilst you are doing this you might also want to help or support those around you on a friendly basis rather than as part of an organisation. Just being a friend to an elderly neighbour, having time for them and being willing to help them get their teevee plugged in correctly is pretty good. You can also be there for others that have problems of the mind or of the body that you are glad you are not afflicted by. Through maintaining friendships and looking out for a few vulnerable souls from different walks of life to yourself you can learn immense things about the human condition. You can also change people's lives with money and learn the nuances of that. There are no tax deductions or medals for making charity something you do informally, the whole world is not going to care if you walk the old guy's dog for him every morning.
• delormev 9y ago
  Volunteer for DataKind (http://www.datakind.org/ http://www.datakind.org/), a charity that connects "data professionals" (in the broad sense of the term) to charities who have problems to solve and the data to solve them, but not the resources to do it! They organise different types of projects: DataDives, which are hackathon-type events and focus on data exploration and analysis; and DataCorps, longer term projects (a few months), where a team of volunteers will team up on a more project for the client charity. They are looking for volunteers for a wide range of roles, including data scientists, programmers with experience with ML, dataviz experts, project managers, etc.
• cybermonkey 9y ago
  We, as species, are invasive parasites. If you want to do some good for the future of the human kind, environment and this planet, invest your time in research about reducing human population by at least 2/3 without compromising future scientific discoveries and advances.
  • Jemmeh 9y ago
    Sexual education, especially about birth control. Make birth control affordable. Make adoption mainstream/ preferred to having your own kids. I agree that we have an overpopulation issue, we don't have the resources to support this many people currently. But calling people parasites is probably getting you downvoted.
    • cybermonkey 9y ago
      Most likely that is the reson for down votes. I don't mean that in a bad way. We are what we are - invasive parasites. Homo sapiens wiped every(thing|one) out: deus, erectus, habilis etc. Overpopulation is the real cause of most of serious problems and future endangerment of our species. The king is naked.
• sethbannon 9y ago
  I really like the UN's Sustainable Development Goals as a guide for "the world's biggest problems". See them here: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 Luckily, these days there are an abundance of ways you can 1) make money, 2) work on interesting problems, 3) work with amazing people, and 4) do social good. You used to have to choose 2 or 3 of those things, but no longer. I run a nonprofit organization that highlights these opportunities: http://impact.tech/ http://impact.tech/ I also run a VC fund that supports these sorts of startups. You can see an example of the companies we back here: http://www.fifty.vc/companies/ http://www.fifty.vc/companies/ If anyone is considering jumping into the social impact startup space, feel free to drop me a line and I can help you navigate the opportunities. First name AT the URL of the nonprofit I mentioned.
• Externon 9y ago
  do something for the education
  • brightsize 9y ago
    Here's one avenue for doing that: https://www.donorschoose.org/ https://www.donorschoose.org/
• johan_larson 9y ago
  You have a job, right? If your employer solves a useful problem for its customers at a reasonable price, obeys the law and treats its employees and suppliers fairly then it is doing good and you are doing good through it. Do your work conscientiously and go home happy.
  • NoGravitas 9y ago
    This is precisely what I meant when I said this was the wrong place to ask. Thanks for providing an example.
    • TeMPOraL 9y ago
      No. This is you not understanding that while this answer has huge caveats attached to it, it is also a solid point worth talking about and taking into account. A lot of "mundane" jobs are actually socially beneficial in some way.
  • mjburgess 9y ago
    That's assuming "giving people what they want" is inherently good, or worse, the only good. It is neither. People getting what they want is neither good nor bad; it is effective at distributing resources. But this is distribution isnt inherently good either (effective != good). We don't need to define "Good" in order to observe this. Very few definitions by anyone, let alone OP, produce this equivalence.
    • johan_larson 9y ago
      I agree with you. It's quite possible to make money doing pernicious things. It's even possible to make money legally doing pernicious things. And that's why I'm setting the bar considerably higher. Note my words: "useful problem", "reasonable price", "treats ... fairly".
• Externon 9y ago
  You can do something for education.
• timpark 9y ago
  UN Volunteers ( http://www.unv.org/ http://www.unv.org/ ) has a Technology development section. ( https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities?f[]=field_task_id:5 https://www.onlinevolunteering.org/en/opportunities?f[]=fiel... ) A lot of it is web work, but there's sometimes app development.
• purrcat259 9y ago
  I started a project to link charity streams to 3rd party charity fundraiser websites to allow better exposure of the cause and the fundraiser progress in real time. I'm currently working on version 2 which returns a lot of stastical information, allows for graphs and better statistics to be shown on stream overlays and a back end console for auditing and reporting purposes. I am currently breaking up each part and exposing them over HTTP APIs to allow future integrations and to allow the system to scale for large streaming events such as Special Effect's Gameblast. The gaming for good initiative is ripe for new tools and services, as there are very few players in this space, to the end where I thought that I was the only one with this idea up until a few months ago.
• RichardHeart 9y ago
  Humans are executed data. The blueprint of life has never been more like computer code. Ben Horrowitz believes where data touches biology is where there's ton of profit waiting. Pick a SENS initiative and see where you can attack it with software. Human Longevity Inc is using machine learning I think to figure out what genes actually cause what pathologies. It would be interesting to point at the genes for the heritability of IQ for giggles. We are all data, the meat is what matters. The life you save may be your own.
  • RichardHeart 9y ago
    72hrs later: "In ‘Enormous Success,’ Scientists Tie 52 Genes to Human Intelligence" https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/science/52-genes-human-intelligence.html?mabReward=CTM4&recp=6&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/science/52-genes-human-in... So I guess that suggestion is less exciting.
• Jemmeh 9y ago
  https://github.com/HospitalRun https://github.com/HospitalRun Open source, modern software for charitable hospitals in the developing world. Find some open source projects for some issue you care about. The medical community could use a lot of help, anything that automates some part of their job means medical staff is available to help more patients. There's a lot of room for automation in this field. Personally I think anything in renewable energy, sexual education, and poverty alleviation are good highly effective causes to get behind as well.
• skdotdan 9y ago
  Accessibility?
• staltz 9y ago
  Hint: help the Scuttlebutt P2P project https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/. It can be used for social media in areas disconnected from the global internet, through gossip replication of social feeds. Can be quite useful for communities in Syria, Amazon, and Africa.
• SolubleSnake 9y ago
  DTOcean is an interesting piece of open source software, to help engineers install renewable energy equipment offshore (wave, wind, tide). https://github.com/DTOcean https://github.com/DTOcean
• SolubleSnake 9y ago
  https://github.com/DTOcean https://github.com/DTOcean An open source tool to help engineers install renewable energy equipment offshore. Wind, wave, tide (one day!) etc
• pwne 9y ago
  https://www.drivendata.org/ https://www.drivendata.org/ "Data science competitions to save the world" OK, the tag line might be a bit much, but here's a snippet from one of their current competitions: Your goal is to create better models to estimate populations for hard-to-reach sites in the Antarctic, and thereby greatly improve our ability to use penguins to monitor the health of the Southern Ocean!
• francamps 9y ago
  If you're into political action, live in London and are proficient in THREE.js or WebGL, well, we could definitely use your help here -> www.forensic-architecture.org/jobs-internships/
• lngnmn 9y ago
  as a species, no less? ;) Education then.
  • whistlerbrk 9y ago
    Besides the brevity of your answer I can't imagine a possible explanation as to why you would be downvoted. Education is by far the best way to implement positive change on a generational and self propagating basis.
    • lngnmn 9y ago
      There are even obvious historical evidences - one should compare the impact on Upanishads and Buddhism (which philosophy has been built upon Upanishadic) with primitive, barbarian cults which are still powerful in some unfortunate countries. The borrowings from Greeks and Romans (and in the later times British) in progressive European nations are self-evident.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• matthjensen 9y ago
  https://www.github.com/open-source-economics/tax-calculator https://www.github.com/open-source-economics/tax-calculator Open source tax-calculator for tax policy analysis. Used by many policymakers to inform their decisions about tax policy via the TaxBrain GUI (https://www.ospc.org/taxbrain https://www.ospc.org/taxbrain). Influences decisions that affect hundreds of millions of lives.
• erlend_sh 9y ago
  Work for a B Corporation: https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps https://www.bcorporation.net/what-are-b-corps
• Mz 9y ago
  I think the best social good comes from fostering a more civilized environment. Sure, we need things like fire fighters and EMS. But keep in mind that fire fighters also try to do fire prevention. Sometimes, people get so focused on how to be a hero (metaphorically looking for the best way to fight the worst conflagrations) that they overlook opportunities to do more valuable though less "sexy" prevention. Anything that helps feed people well or better, promotes germ control, reduces social friction in some way, helps marginalized peoples earn a living or helps people of limited means access basic decent housing promotes the social good. But those things are often not the heroics people have in mind when asking this type question.
  • nyargh 9y ago
    This. We have had a horrible track record with tech volunteers, in part because our mission is not tech-centric, so they don't get any glory. It doesn't mean there isn't anything for them to do - it's just that the story isn't about technology ... or them. There is a mountain of boring, yet critically important work waiting for people to just roll up their sleeves and pitch in.
    • Senderman 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure the original post is asking what's in that alleged mountain.
      • nyargh 9y ago
        Go ask the people doing the work - not the folks looking to enrich themselves by "disrupting" (read: injecting software into) every industry imaginable. I mean this is Y-Combinator after all, not exactly a hub of philanthropy.
      • Mz 9y ago
        Long experience suggests they probably are not.
        • TeMPOraL 9y ago
• cprayingmantis 9y ago
  I'm working on an application that will allow organizations to better keep up with the homeless. From what I've heard a lot of folks who are chronically homeless difficult for a single individual to keep up with so it often takes a team to keep tabs on them. Sometimes information isn't adequately disbursed through the whole team and it leads to knowledge that goes nowhere. My idea was to create an app that works as a single source of truth allowing all workers to update on an individual and raise issues. Probably just going to make it donation oriented unless it really takes off and I need to acquire an operating budget.
  • stult 9y ago
    I don't know where you're located, but in the US, the HMIS was intended to serve this purpose. It hasn't for a variety of reasons, but especially because it isn't easy to use so only trained intake specialists use it. Beyond just poor design, the legal requirements for privacy and non-discrimination make intake and data tracking a fraught activity. Also homeless people will frequently avoid giving accurate biographical information to avoid denial of services. So those are two major obstacles you will face. Tracking homeless individuals is an incredibly challenging task, even without considering the tech. For example, my girlfriend works in macro-level social work primarily focusing on the homeless population. (She and I are data geeks so we talk about this a lot). She currently works at a shelter where they are trying to identify the homeless citizens who cost hospitals and medicaid the most money, because there's some insane distribution of costs such that something like 1% of the patients account for 90% of the costs. She can't get any cost data from hospitals though, because they refuse to disclose it, even anonymized. Medicaid only has part of the data at best and the government officials there haven't been responsive to her requests. So she can only get the cost data by getting individual clients to sign consent forms. Which is methodologically troublesome because she only has access to the clients that happen to come to her shelter and many of the highest cost patients are specifically those who don't go to shelters and instead end up in the hospital due to exposure/hypothermia/etc. Point being, she can't get the necessary data in the first place, never mind that she doesn't have anywhere to store it. Beyond tracking individuals, the data problems in the field are enormous and I think that may be where you can make the most difference. Even within her one agency, she can't get a lot of the basic data to evaluate programs because the agency has not invested any money in tech for 15 years. Primarily because they can barely afford to stay open. So they've got tons of legacy systems with data scattered around. No one knows where anything is, and even if they did know where to find data, they wouldn't know how to aggregate it or display it in a useful manner. This is a common problem for community services organizations. They are chronically underfunded and tend to be run by people with little expertise in tech. And the staff tend not to be much more qualified. My girlfriend asked their in-house accountant for a list of expenses related to a specific set of grants the other day. The accountant sent her a part of the general ledger, which is incomprehensible to anyone who isn't familiar with accounting (and it was the wrong part, but that's another story). She also went to a program director and requested some demographic data that was required for reporting under the grants. Turns out he hadn't been collecting it. Anyway, my point is that it would be helpful for many of these shelters and agencies to have a consolidated information system. So, for example, they can enter information about a grant they've received, including important dates and reporting requirements. And then have some tool to ensure that the program director is aware of and meeting those requirements. So far, my girlfriend's biggest data/tech success at this agency has been a project I helped her code. The head fundraiser has to fill out a ridiculous number of grant applications every month. They are all in PDF and mostly request the same kinds of information (agency location, purpose, intended use of grant, etc.). So we wrote a program that takes a canned set of responses and automatically inserts them into the PDFs, so that the fundraiser only has to enter answers for non-standard questions. It then auto-updates their grant tracking system. It's cut down on the time they spend processing applications tremendously. It would work a lot better if there was an integrated information system from which we could pull a lot of that data automatically, because currently it requires the fundraiser to keep the underlying data store up to date manually.
• leke 9y ago
  I think any charity would benefit from software. You just need to contact them and ask what is taking up their time and try and simplify the process. Educational tools are also good investments of time, IMO.
• Alex3917 9y ago
  Join the Progressive Coders Network: https://www.progcode.org https://www.progcode.org There are a ton of projects you can jump on aimed at helping to get progressives elected and enact progressive policies. For those not familiar with progressive politics (or at least not beyond Bernie or whatever), the basic idea is to make it easier for people to get involved with government. For example, making it easier to to figure out which elections you're eligible to participate in as a candidate and/or as a voter.
• deleted 9y ago
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• nyargh 9y ago
  Support the people already doing important work - get away from the egocentric "tech will save the world" attitude that is so endemic to our industry. Just get involved and see where you can help.
  • Senderman 9y ago
    Get involved in what; where? Unspecific suggestions like this are the reason people get lost and resume the attitude you're deriding.
    • nyargh 9y ago
      That is an exercise left to the reader. Find groups that interest you and are effective in their mission. Ask how you can help and follow through with your commitments. Be humble and aware that initially you will be taking not giving as they expend resources to spin you up. Or as mentioned above - just donate some of that sweet, sweet cash that tech workers are making hand over fist compared to nearly every other occupation. > Unspecific suggestions like this are the reason people get lost and resume the attitude you're deriding. Yes, surely those people bear no responsibility around their personal level of civic engagement.
      • Senderman 9y ago
        > Yes, surely those people bear no responsibility around their personal level of civic engagement. "Those people" started this thread and asked for specifics. > Find groups that interest you and are effective in their mission. That's what the poster is doing. I don't disagree with your sentiment; the answer to "how do I do good?" isn't just going to be handed to you. I suppose I was prompted to jump in because I think somebody might otherwise confuse your comment for being a useful answer to the original topic.
        • nyargh 9y ago
          > I suppose I was prompted to jump in because I think somebody might otherwise confuse your comment for being a useful answer to the original topic. Doing the lord's work, right here ...
• sorrymate 9y ago
  I would also like to mention the Humanitarian Toolbox www.htbox.org/ The goal is to help humanitarian organizations solve technology problems with open source solutions. This excellent group of people are developing solutions to common problems like logistical, and communication issues that help improve humanitarian aid. You can see the source code on their github: https://github.com/htbox/ https://github.com/htbox/ If you are interested, you can hear more about it by listening to Richard Campbell on this podcast and many others like it: http://www.podcastchart.com/podcasts/herding-code/episodes/herding-code-220-richard-campbell-on-humanitarian-toolbox http://www.podcastchart.com/podcasts/herding-code/episodes/h...
• perlgeek 9y ago
  Something I recently heard on a podcast: Teach Python to girls in Zimbabwe: https://www.zimbopy.com/become-a-mentor https://www.zimbopy.com/become-a-mentor
• garysieling 9y ago
  One simple thing is to volunteer your time to build websites for non-profits, which I've done. If you have time, you can also build a useful side project. For me - Youtube and Reddit give a lot of weight to popular content. If you're trying to learn new ideas, videos with conspiracy theories, popular speakers, and things people already know dominate search results / subreddits. My project (https://www.findlectures.com https://www.findlectures.com) recommends high quality content, but across as much topic variety as I can find (discourages ignoring speakers based on demographics or them not marketing their talks well).
• sophacles 9y ago
  I can't link directly to the talk (or i can't figure out how...), but I enjoyed a short talk about this topic at shmoocon this year. If you go to this page: https://archive.org/details/ShmooCon2017# https://archive.org/details/ShmooCon2017# Then go to video 20 (friday night firetalks) and skip forward to 1:31:55 theres a talk called "You can do the thing". tl;dw - Theres a lot of help that can be done by finding local orgs that you agree with, and offering to modernize their websites, help manage IT, and so on.
• chrisfosterelli 9y ago
  Check out 80,000 hours: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/ They have a bunch of interesting research, online articles, guides, and a book. The entire website is focused around how to make a difference with your career in a way that aligns with your own goals. It's a great resource.
  • darwhy 9y ago
    Definitely seconded. They also have an excellent pamphlet with the evidence-based advice on how to be successful at whatever job you have, including advice both general to life and specific to work: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/ https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    I'm skeptical of the premise (sounds self-helpy) but I'm gonna check it out. Thanks for the recommendation and I'm completely open to being wrong!
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    I'm skeptical of the premise (sounds self-helpy) but I'm gonna check it out. Thanks for the recommendation and I'm completely open to being wrong!
• Kholo 9y ago
  Wikipedia and Khan Academy.
• jblz 9y ago
  Do everything you can to advance the "open web" (or publishing & distribution of content in general) and eschew "walled gardens" (corporate or otherwise).
• alexfi 9y ago
  You can become programming teacher for startups in Gaza. Check out: https://gazaskygeeks.com/ https://gazaskygeeks.com/
• splitrocket 9y ago
  Blue Ridge Labs @ Robinhood. We have a yearly, paid, 5 month long fellowship in Brooklyn for mid-career engineers, designs, and product managers that combines human centered design and Lean Startup to build tech ventures that fight poverty. https://joinpropel.com https://joinpropel.com came out of our fellowship and just raised a seed round from Andreesen Horowitz. Our website: https://labs.robinhood.org https://labs.robinhood.org
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• j45 9y ago
  I've volunteered technology skills for a long time for social and community causes. Tech assistance ends up often starting as a secondary way to assist and first beginning with non-tech volunteering as a way to learn about problems. It's interesting how much more we can get done if a social enterprise/cause had the right tools and I invariably end up helping with something if I just get involved as a volunteer. There's some important things that can make a lasting difference, beginning with ensuring there's something you care about, possibly obscure, but important, for possibly a long time. A big part of this is learning about what the issues are and their impacts. To help pick a problem or area you care about.. there are things that you are naturally drawn to and can't help yourself with. It's not a bad place to start looking for problems (and other people trying to make a difference) you care about and want to add value to is an important consideration. Why? The most important thing I experience is the importance of always adding value first, and finding a way to do it. It simply opens more doors and opportunities than anything else I've ever experienced. From a tech perspective, many social enterprises, groups can benefit from basic mobile apps or tools for the people they work with. The skillset here isn't the hard thing to find, it's a willingness to learn and only then solve problems even if they aren't new or interesting but deliver great value. If you can help someone save a few hours a week with 10-15 minutes of making an excel sheet, it is a greater help and a start. All big problems begin as and consist of a lot of smaller problems. A secret of finding interesting projects that can grow, is that the willingness to solve small problems, because small problems leads to large problems on their own. Almost all of my multi-industry experience is due to the transferability of solving similar problems. With this in mind, social good can happen independently, with a group, from an initiative at work, and not just exclusively from working with non-profits. Help where no one's helping and you'll find lots of opportunities to add value.
• ungzd 9y ago
  Get involved into development of free software, preferably that can be used by people and other free software developers, not just corporations building "cloud services" (i.e. graphic editor, not js framework). "Fixing world with software" nowadays cynically means just "to build closed platform and seek for rent".
• inlinestyle 9y ago
  You should check out Popcode! (https://github.com/popcodeorg/popcode https://github.com/popcodeorg/popcode). It’s is a free OSS online IDE used by https://scripted.org https://scripted.org to help kids in under-resourced high schools learn HTML/CSS/JS. The big focus is helping students identify and fix mistakes in their code in a friendly and approachable manner.
• java_script 9y ago
  Join the Democratic Socialists of America's tech committee! [0] [0] http://www.dsausa.org/tech_committee http://www.dsausa.org/tech_committee
• dominostars 9y ago
  You can also work a normal job and donate a non-trivial amount of your money to organizations working to make a difference.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• swalberg 9y ago
  Leave your programming at work. Find a cause you believe in or a political candidate you think will do good, and volunteer for that. Knock on doors. Call people. Do research. Organize events and people. Donate money. Change other people's minds. A lot of these social good things need people to get involved, not software to be written.
  • cosinetau 9y ago
    This is an understated answer. It's not enough to be a strong engineer, solving problems well often means having a lot of context from several backgrounds and experiences.
• EnFinlay 9y ago
  This link will be of interest to you: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/. It's a long read, but it's packed with ideas.
• nyae 9y ago
  Check out one of Data for Democracy's projects and see if you'd like to contribute to any of their open source work: http://datafordemocracy.org/ http://datafordemocracy.org/
• deleted 9y ago
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• rnmp 9y ago
  I work at a matchmaking platform that connects nonprofits with professionals of all kind who are willing to volunteer on projects. http://www.catchafire.org/ http://www.catchafire.org/ Sometimes our nonprofits post iOS/Android prototyping projects, for example.
• meesterdude 9y ago
  I had the exact same thought, a few years back. I believe there is a vast amount of untapped human potential that languishes in self-defeat. People that, with just a little help, could right themselves and unleash all sorts of good on the world. so, I'm trying to help people make cognitive and behavioral improvements in their lives with my side project (http://willyoudidyou.com http://willyoudidyou.com)
• xysmas 9y ago
  I have recently started volunteering my tech skills (I'm a data scientist for a well-known tech company) to the local chapter of the ACLU and am exploring volunteering for a UN subsidiary who desperately needs the help. If you are interested in potentially working to help the UN project, message me.
  • msadowski 9y ago
    What kind of projects can you help UN with? I've been thinking on donating some of my time and skills for the past month and would be more than happy to help. I'm a robotics engineer but I can also program.
• claytoncorreia 9y ago
  If you’re looking for a job where you can do good as a programmer, we’re always interested in speaking with talented people at Chimp. Our platform, chimp.net, is built to dramatically improve the human experience of participating in charity by helping people, communities and corporations to make bigger impacts on causes they care about. I personally have been at Chimp for over 5 years. I can tell you that it’s a pretty amazing feeling to come into work every day, sit in a comfy chair, wiggle my fingers on a keyboard and, as a result, help get hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the charitable sector. All while getting paid a competitive salary at a stable company that’s poised for massive growth. If this sounds interesting, checkout https://chimp.net/careers https://chimp.net/careers or email jobs@chimp.net if you don’t see a role posted that matches your skill set. Again, we’ll always connect with talented people that we think we can work with.
• dragonbonheur 9y ago
  Have you noticed the word "encyclopedia" at the end of the sentence? Now try to imagine Samuel L. Jackson screaming "English, m*? Do you speak it?".
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    already looked it up. do you ever find that a human response lends insight or relevant, current links that an encyclopedia lacks? I sure do.
    • dragonbonheur 9y ago
      You know what? Thank you. You've made me question yet again why I even bother going to HN. This place is just full of compulsive arrogant hair-splitters passing for geniuses.
      • simplicitea 9y ago
        I don't disagree with you, for what it's worth. I just don't know of a better community to ask my questions of.
  • sctb 9y ago
    Could you please not get personal like this here? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14375318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14375318 and marked it off-topic.
• caseyohara 9y ago
  PrintReleaf is a platform for automated reforestation https://printreleaf.com/ https://printreleaf.com/ We measure paper consumption for businesses, equate that to forest impact, then automate the planting of those trees back into the environment at planting projects around the world. We're always looking for talented designers and developers that want to do social and environmental good through technology.
• mulnz 9y ago
  Where do you live? find things like this: http://atxhackforchange.org/ http://atxhackforchange.org/
• rojobuffalo 9y ago
  I think the most basic and overlooked thing is food. Eating well, reducing waste, and sustainable production are areas with huge opportunities. Energy and food are fundamental for improving quality of life; and they're also the human activities with the largest negative externalities to nature.
  • iagooar 9y ago
    Totally agree. This is a field I'd like to explore and see where I can help improving it. Also, everything that has to do with food is tangible and understandable by every single person in this world.
• bevan 9y ago
  Work on what pays the highest and then donate that money to the most effective charity. According to GiveWell.org, that charity is currently the Against Malaria Foundation, which will statistically save a life for every $3500 it receives going forward. It is ridiculously cheap to save a life that would otherwise not be saved. I highly recommend Sam Harris' interview with Will Macaskill on this topic (effective altruism). http://www.givewell.org/charities/against-malaria-foundation http://www.givewell.org/charities/against-malaria-foundation
  • jrs95 9y ago
    This is the right answer imo. Other options might make you feel better personally since you'll have more direct involvement, but just making as much money as you can with your skill set and donating that to the charities that are most effective will probably result in better outcomes than donating your time.
• iammiles 9y ago
  I know a few people who have contributed some of their time weekly teaching less privileged kids the basics of programming. I always thought that was a great thing to do.
• msadowski 9y ago
  Probably not exactly what op had in mind but I took interest in a humanitarian hackathon organized by a CERN group The Port(http://theport.ch/ http://theport.ch/) in Geneva, Switzerland. I'm hoping I can take part in it this year.
• hooverlunch 9y ago
  Join or start a tech worker co-op! First, one of the best ways to do social good is to fight capitalism. Just by working at a worker co-op, you're doing this. Many tech co-ops are also built around resisting other oppressions like racism, patriarchy, etc. Second, many co-ops (e.g. http://sassafras.coop http://sassafras.coop, the one I work for) work on lots of social good projects.
  • sheraz 9y ago
    Yes, evil capitalism. You know, don't want to think you actually think that. Perhaps you meant, "fight the negative outcomes sometimes found in capitalist societies."
    • lotyrin 9y ago
      I don't think it's unreasonable to be consequentialist about it and short-cut that, especially if done tongue-in-cheek.
    • arglebarnacle 9y ago
      Honestly the idea that capitalism itself systematically causes inequality is not a crazy thing to believe. You obviously don't agree and that's fine, but it's not the case that every smart person believes the "negative outcomes found in capitalist societies" can be resolved without a fundamental change in the underlying system.
      • thomastjeffery 9y ago
        My thought process: Inequality causes capitalism. Liberty allows inequality. Those "negative outcomes" come from inequality, not capitalism. Fighting capitalism is a workaround. It's an appealing workaround because the "underlying system" is centralized, and inequality is not.
        • sheraz 9y ago
          Can you expand on how capitalism is an outcome of inequality?
• threepipeproblm 9y ago
  Although it sounds like they are working on some important issues, I'm not sure I'd want to work for an organization who posts racially targeted messages -- which presumably they think are ok with some races filled into the blanks, but not others. https://twitter.com/JazmynLatimer/status/864585574581059584 https://twitter.com/JazmynLatimer/status/864585574581059584 It seems like non-racist messaging would be a better approach!
  • adamsea 9y ago
    A little history-and-context-free, are we? First, this is the text of the tweet in question: "Any black or brown engineers wanna work at Code for America on criminal justice? Come code to keep people out of jail, it's worth it." Your assumption that the poster is not OK with non black/brown engineers is an assumption. I'd add, your comment is context-free and somewhat disingenuous, considering that we live in a society which has had a high degree of (and still has a significant amount of) systemic/institutional racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism#United_St... If one wants to talk about racially targeted messages, well, there's plenty of good studies on portrayal of minorities in media (film/tv/news). I think you raise a valid topic of discussion, but don't seem to want to put all the facts on the table before drawing conclusions.
    • devrandomguy 9y ago
      Thank you for explaining. That tweet would almost certainly be considered unacceptable within my own society, because it reinforces division by a highly visible, but ultimately misleading metric: skin tone. I get that there is a persistent segment of the population that needs help to achieve economic and educational parity. Surely, the group targeted by this tweet could have been identified by a label that is specific to the relevant issues, and supported by logically sound metrics? "underprivileged" is a term we use around here, and the social systems do seem to have a sensible set of filters for it: low household income, mental illness or physical disability, lack of formal education, refugee status, etc. The good thing about a label like "underprivileged", is that a person can truly overcome it and put it behind them. It does not have to be a part of their cultural identity, it is just an environmental problem to be solved.
• lbearl 9y ago
  Come look at Transplant Connect: https://transplantconnect.com/ https://transplantconnect.com/ We make software which facilitates the organ, tissue and eye donation process in partnership with a number of other organizations and non-profits. It's really rewarding work.
• llccbb 9y ago
  I have posted this before, countless times, but techies who want to volunteer their skills and knowledge to advance the democratic process should think about joining the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should be. They are party-neutral, but seek to empower the people and provide tools for running successful campaigns and being engaged as a citizen. If you can take away the need for millions of dollars to run a campaign then policy makers aren't beholden to the few wealthy supporters that helped get them elected. They help connect volunteers to projects that range from building an open-source voter database to an Uber-like app that helps the mobility-limited get transportation to vote. They are extremely transparent and always interested in growing the network. Many members of the network are engineers, product managers, or independent coders. [0]http://progcode.co http://progcode.co
  • lesingerouge 9y ago
    And if you're not American?
    • archgoon 9y ago
      Then liccbb's suggestion doesn't apply to you. Look through the other comments and see what you can find. Or you can consider looking at the organization that liccbb is talking about, and see if there exists something similar in your own country, or start your own movement.
  • mkohlmyr 9y ago
    Party neutral? They list MoveOn as a key partner: https://github.com/ProgressiveCoders/functions/issues/196 https://github.com/ProgressiveCoders/functions/issues/196 This document clearly states the organisation is founded by Berine Sanders supporters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8iL3kTWO0Y9aYe8lndcUWTJ27BOZyXWwL03LJ3kxT0/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P8iL3kTWO0Y9aYe8lndcUWTJ... And they built something called the "Resistance Calendar", containing events like: https://tockify.com/resistance.calendar/detail/384/1495231200000 https://tockify.com/resistance.calendar/detail/384/149523120... I mean for the most part it seems to be stuff I would support (personally), but to call it party neutral is at best true by way of technicality. I doubt you find many Republican events on that calendar. Of course, I wouldn't expect to given the name of the group, but let's not play games and pretend it isn't partisan?
• jtalbot 9y ago
  If you're interested in using your developer skills to help social impact organizations engage their communities, I'd love to talk. At twilio.org we connect volunteer developers with nonprofits and social enterprises that need your help building high-impact communication tools. Our current volunteer developer initiative is called Voices for Democracy, and is focused on creating tools to advance the discourse between people with their elected representatives. If this excites you, or if you'd like to learn more about other opportunities to use your skills for good, check out twilio.org and send us a note. Thanks for starting this awesome thread. -Jacob from twilio.org
• vok 9y ago
  Work to make widely-deployed software more efficient. For open source software, anyone can help with this. Data centers are ~2% of U.S. energy consumption [0], and that will probably grow. [0] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/06/27/heres-how-much-energy-all-us-data-centers-consume/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2016/06/27/heres...
• ianai 9y ago
  OP is asking for what problems to work on, not projects/etc. there is a difference there. I personally think we need better ways and more people to know about better ways to aggregate social preferences. If people knew about alternative voting methods they might entertain using them. You could work on coding implementations that would introduce the masses to alternatives.
• bradyo 9y ago
  I recently went through a job search focusing on organizations doing social good. Full disclosure, I now work at Remix (https://www.remix.com/jobs https://www.remix.com/jobs) and we're hiring! We're a for-profit founded by a collection of former Code for America fellows helping to improve cities. I have a list of resources that I collected while I was searching as well: - The Fast Forward accelerator's tech nonprofits job board and directory. This is easily the most extensive list I found: https://www.ffwd.org/tech-nonprofit-jobs/ https://www.ffwd.org/tech-nonprofit-jobs/, https://www.ffwd.org/tech-nonprofits/ https://www.ffwd.org/tech-nonprofits/ - The YC-funded non-profits (subset here https://github.com/smartergiving/open-data/blob/master/v0/funder_highlights/y_combinator.json https://github.com/smartergiving/open-data/blob/master/v0/fu...) - The well-known non-profits: Mozilla, Wikimedia, Khan Academy - https://twitter.com/goodtechjobs https://twitter.com/goodtechjobs - Code for America is hiring, takes fellows, and has a government job board: https://jobs.codeforamerica.org/ https://jobs.codeforamerica.org/ - Tech co-ops: https://techworker.coop/members https://techworker.coop/members - https://www.fossjobs.net/ https://www.fossjobs.net/ - Angel list nonprofits: https://angel.co/nonprofits https://angel.co/nonprofits - Some other random social good orgs that I found were hiring in the SF area or remote: Open Whisper Systems, Binti, Nuna, The Human Diagnosis project, Bayes Impact, Nava, GovEx, Democracy Works, The Guardian Project, The Internet Archive, EFF, Exygy, Open Law Lib, Angaza, Fight for the Future, - An article written by the co-founder of Bayes Impact for techcrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-call-to-action-for-tech/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-call-to-action-for-tech/ - Civic Makers (http://civicmakers.com/ http://civicmakers.com/) has a newsletter highlighting civic news I also second the progressive coder's network.
  • gkop 9y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Binti! We help people become foster parents and help foster care agencies approve foster families. More foster families means vulnerable children can get out of group homes and into family homes, where they're more likely to have a good experience. With the help of Binti's web software, social workers spend less time doing paperwork and more time helping families, so they have a greater impact and are less likely to leave the field. We're needing generalist full-stack engineers, as well as lead engineers in the areas of data, devops, and security: https://binti.com/binti-careers/ https://binti.com/binti-careers/
• brbrodude 9y ago
  Study anticapitalism and go on from there. I`d recommend anarchism and World History. Ps.: In tech & programming specifically, I think Free Software is a beautiful idea. Ps.: I`ll add, why I think this is(my original point), is that I think it's very nice to understand(or try to understand) what is the `structure/mechaniscs of the world`, I mean, to me it would be the same to study capitalism as it is to study anticapitalism(that is, the more you see how it works, the more you`ll see stuff that is flawed), some would disagree with this, of course. Contrary to what many think, ideology to me means NOT seeing reality as it is(so I'm not talking about intantile, superficial, ideas/agenda here), so I think it's absolutely fair the everybody should take some understanding of it based on people who wanted to figure out found out, even if not 100%. Since the more correct is your model of things, the better you can act on them(you can't engineer a car with wrong math, for example). To me, personally, getting my mind out of the techie neophile mindset and knowing broader and deeper stuff gives me plenty of ideas on things to do. Even more so, that since I'm using this 'footing', I can then try to see if it matches reality and goes on to have real-world effects! ;P But anyway, what I`m saying is sort of a longer road, to try to get interested and understand other topics and then look to your habilities and see what you can do with them about the other thing. That's where the project I'm trying to work on came from and it's really meant to be a drop in the ocean and a simple program etc, but it's something I really care about since it's tied to deep layers of my person and perspective on `world`, `society`, `individuals`, `species`, etc.
• peacetreefrog 9y ago
  Just read all the top line comments here. Interesting that no one had mentioned the one thing that has probably done the most to "better our chances as species" in the last few hundred years, and has helped hundreds of millions in India and China get out of backbreaking poverty and accumulate some wealth. And that is... Work hard, accumulate skills, and become better at your normal job. Even if you're not writing open source software to help local governments in third world countries have free elections and fight malaria or donating 50% of your salary, you're creating value and "bettering our species" just by doing something that someone is willing to pay you for. In fact, that's how most of the world's wealth is created. Not saying you shouldn't volunteer or donate your salary (I personally try to donate a decent chunk of my salary to givedirectly) but -- unless you're a nigerian hacker or malware developer or something -- just because you're getting paid or working on something that isn't an absolute necessity doesn't mean you aren't doing social good. Just something to think about.
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    It's a good one, but the caveat is stronger than you mention. Just because someone wants to pay you for something, doesn't mean it's good to society. Some things are unambiguously socially harmful - cigarette industry, gambling industry - but there are also many things that are harmful by perpetuating waste of resources and man hours. Be wary of zero-sum games, where your effort goes mostly to cancel out the effort of others. Some areas of adtech come to mind, for example. So in short: use judgement. There's a lot of social good to be done in mundane jobs - but just because someone is willing to pay for something, doesn't mean it should be done.
  • ChuckMcM 9y ago
    I think Bill Gates is an interesting data point here. For a lot of his life he was reviled by many, and yet in the past 15 years he has used his wealth to do great good.
    • peacetreefrog 9y ago
      Agree that he's done a ton of good with his charitable giving, but point is that he bettered humanity (probably even more than his charity) even before that with Windows (giving the masses an easier way to interact with computers, allowing individuals and companies to create other valuable things in turn), the whole software not hardware paradigm (led to rapid development in terms of the type of programs and functionality people had access to), and Microsoft Office (Excel and Word == a ton of social value). Obviously he wasn't personally responsible for all that, and also became a multi billionaire in the process (and is giving most of it away, kudos) but even if he kept it all, that's all benefiting humanity and creating social good.
• jjhale 9y ago
  For an in depth talk about the affect of directing your salary to charity check out the following Tech Talk by Toby Ord: "How Many Lives Can You Save? -- Taking Charity Seriously" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCVRA7T7FE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGCVRA7T7FE They talk about using the metric of "how many lives can be saved" with your cash. ABSTRACT People admire doctors and rescue workers and marvel at the possibility of saving someone's life -- something that few of us would ever achieve. And yet at the same time, we routinely hear that for a small sum of money we could save someone's life in a developing country and this scarcely impacts our behaviour. There is an important disconnect between these two attitudes and it has serious moral implications. I will speak about the evidence which shows that we really can make a tremendous difference by giving, and then explore the moral case for giving much more than we typically do. I will then look at the great disparity in effectiveness between different charities and show how choosing where to give can be even more important than the decision to give in the first place.
• holmesworcester 9y ago
  I work at fightforthefuture.org and I've thought a lot about this. My first answer is to develop your skills to the point where you are strong on design and UI/UX, not just coding. I say this because we've worked with some people who have this ability, and they're extremely effective as activists once they focus on a mission. Aaron Swartz is one person who had this ability, but you don't have to be a genius polymath to be good at this, and Aaron wasn't amazing at visuals and design either. (He was good enough at it though, which was what mattered.) Ideally, you should be able to speak persuasively online, using text, code and design creatively to get your message across. But as a minimum you should be able to build a prototype from your own vision, get the UI/UX to a point where you're happy with it by iterating, and QA it yourself. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that most social change gets done by small groups of people, and many of those people aren't technical. And usually it leverages certain moments when people happen to be paying attention, and makes the most of those. So you won't have a big team, and being able to do most things yourself lets you respond quicker. If you have that, I'd try your hand at working on some issues that interest you, either directly, or showing up at an org you admire and seeing if you can help. We're setting up a space for volunteers, and also a YC-like fund for new activism projects that emphasizes the need for technical founders: http://fightforthefuture.org/ateams/ http://fightforthefuture.org/ateams/
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    Since you mention a YC-like fund for activism projects, and at the risk of breaking a rule i may not be aware of (let me know) I'm gonna quote myself and hope you are interested or know people who may be interested " OP here, actually floored by the rapidity and variety of responses. Thanks HN. I'll take this opportunity to float an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a long time. The premise is to: 1) (this is almost certainly the easy part) build out a platform that is like a two-way khan academy - teacher and student, with at least the teacher having a tablet and a stylus that function well, sharing a digital blackboard, with a video chat optional -- where a student of something in a relatively privileged situation teaches a student of the same thing in a relatively less privileged situation -- where the sessions are stored and rewindable, both video and blackboard input. 2) the hard part; selling it as something to invest in and driving it to a point of having an endowment behind it, like Harvard's endowment, that allows the service to pay for moderation of student-teachers something like $12.00 USD an hour to teach, while subsidizing well-chosen students to have to pay something like $2 an hour to learn it's been an idea for a passion project for a while "
• davidmooreppf 9y ago
  Our non-profit builds Councilmatic - https://www.councilmatic.org/ https://www.councilmatic.org/ - free & open-source tech for city-level civic engagement. Closing the feedback loop with local government, accessible tools for community dialogue. But in my ten years' experience, here's what I see as the biggest potential for tech for social good: open data standards for constituent communications. Breaking public messages out of the current silo's of individual e-mails, e-petitions, social media, civic tech apps, and issue advocacy platforms. Making possible open structured data on real public priorities and policy preferences in every Congressional district. This never took off because government offices haven't wanted such a level of participatory democracy, and because existing advocacy groups haven't wanted to share membership lists and enable peer-to-peer organizing - it would undercut the business models of e-petition companies and legacy advocacy vendors and VC-backed civic startups. But making public opinion info more free and open for analysis could push forward reforms that have wide support, and are stymied by the current U.S. two-party system: http://www.participatorypolitics.org/open-data-infrastructure/#standards http://www.participatorypolitics.org/open-data-infrastructur...
• TheAntiEgo 9y ago
  At Helpwith.co we're focussing on facilitating something that seems very simple and obvious, but is often very difficult to achieve: One person teaching another person what they know. We believe that peer-to-peer, community driven, education is one of the best ways that our small team can meaningfully impact the world. The more effectively we can disseminate meaningful information, while also building connections between people, the easier it becomes to solve every other world problem. Always looking for more collaborators, so feel free to email me: John@helpwith.co
• welder 9y ago
  Contribute to http://freecodecamp.com http://freecodecamp.com
• kolbe 9y ago
  My opinion: take whatever idea you have for a great company, but make it a non-profit. Other than maybe e-mail, wikipedia is the best thing to come out of the internet. And its creator may not be a billionaire oligarch, but he has a GREAT life. If you can set aside a need to be filthy, needlessly, pointlessly rich, then maybe turn your next idea for a social network or a communication platform or whatever into a non-profit. It's amazing what types of products can be built for this world when you're building for the world, and not the shareholders.
  • bradyo 9y ago
    This is the dream. OpenStreetMap is another great example of such an idea. To take it a step further, I'd encourage setting the non-profit up as a worker's cooperative. Just imagine all of the big companies out there organized as open-source, co-operative non-profits. We could kill a lot of redundant work, retain people's privacy, and really empower the employees of these companies to ensure the company works on things they believe in.
    • devrandomguy 9y ago
      Tools for automating the mundane tasks of running a co-op, sounds like a great idea for a project. Something along the lines of the GNU tool suite. How does one build and maintain a co-op? Could anyone recommend a book on the subject, that covers a variety of nations or regions?
      • bradyo 9y ago
        I'm not sure about resources for starting a co-op outside the US, but here are some resources I've found on how to start a co-op. Web searching will find more. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14135068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14135068 - https://electricembers.coop/pubs/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf https://electricembers.coop/pubs/TechCoopHOWTO.pdf - https://www.coops.tech/ https://www.coops.tech/ - Tech co-ops mailing list: https://npogroups.org/lists/info/tech-coop https://npogroups.org/lists/info/tech-coop I talked briefly with this co-op whose set up in Europe and seems to have members from all over, so they might provide good insight: https://camplight.net/ https://camplight.net/ Also, talking to nonprofit founders, I've heard that starting a non-profit yourself can be pain in the ass. However, you can essentially outsource the management of the nonprofit to another nonprofit via 'fiscal sponsorship.' Web searching for that will bring up more details. For example, http://grayarea.org/incubator/fiscal-sponsorship/ http://grayarea.org/incubator/fiscal-sponsorship/. I met the founder of this organization that started providing fiscal sponsorship recently as well: http://blog.hacker.fund/fs/ http://blog.hacker.fund/fs/ And finally, there are actually some co-ops that are trying to make this process easier. For example, this co-op alternative to kickstarter: https://snowdrift.coop/ https://snowdrift.coop/ and this co-op that makes software for making decisions within co-ops easier: https://www.loomio.org/ https://www.loomio.org/
• devrandomguy 9y ago
  Looks like a lot of the top-voted suggestions are only applicable to a single country. If your suggestion has a major restriction like that, then would you please declare it upfront?
• tahw 9y ago
  Join wikileaks and their ilk in the fight to uncover and unravel the conspiracies that are preventing progress from advancing in "first world" countries!
• tryitnow 9y ago
  Improving the efficiency of biomedical research.
• whatwhosdis 9y ago
  Program whatever the heck you want to program but stop eating meat while doing it. Check out the documentary Cowspiracy (free on Netflix) to see what I'm talking about.
  • darioush 9y ago
    how is it free if you have to pay for netflix?
• conductr 9y ago
  Teach! You know you have a valuable skill, help others tap into that value
• ouid 9y ago
  Social utility is not easy to define. The main problem is that it's impossible to speak for all timescales at once. Particularly when you take some sort of norm on all the individual utilities. This sounds overly technical, but I have a point. Don't work towards maximizing the utility of everyone, it's nonsense. People aren't that cooperative, even. Work towards bounding the minimum utility. There's lots of social and physical extinction events that humanity faces. Even if you have nothing directly to contribute to these problems, perhaps you can realistically contribute to the welfare of other people who are contributing to these problems.
• simplicitea 9y ago
  Curious that ctrl+f 'climate' doesn't have a single hit before this comment, at 234 comments.
  • Jemmeh 9y ago
    Look at the word "energy" there are a few mentions. I mentioned renewable energy pretty early on.
• aswin8728 9y ago
  elixirlabs.org :) donate your spare time to building tech for nonprofits who could really use the assistance!
• acd 9y ago
  Social good Ideas * Program for charities * Make Reddit style voting for political topics * Invent an econmic system that saves the planet * Work on blockchain projects for good for all * Contribute to open source projects
• shawndimantha 9y ago
  We are taking a technology driven approach to improving the US healthcare system at the Peterson Center on Healthcare, our goal is to improve the quality of healthcare accessible to all, reduce the total cost of care our system bears, and improve the experience of healthcare professionals delivering this care. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions, on HN or by email at sdimantha(at)petersonhealthcare(dot)org. Here is one of the engineering roles we are recruiting for (more to be announced later) - http://petersonhealthcare.org/careers/software-engineering-tech-lead http://petersonhealthcare.org/careers/software-engineering-t...
  • simplicitea 9y ago
    What is a problem that you have recently defined and solved?
    • shawndimantha 9y ago
      We solve a variety of problems, but one example is physician burnout, especially in primary care. We've implemented technology enabled behavior change initiatives that help primary care practices implement and maintain evidence-based habits like team based care and ensuring staff operate at the top of their license meaning more time with patients and less time with paperwork for physicians and creating a more sustainable environment. There are other areas we address in primary care like patient access to care, quality care gaps and more that we break into smaller chunks. Our overall focus is on dramatically improving the performance (quality of care, cost) of the healthcare system piece by piece at an increasing pace, starting with primary care and eventually moving to different focus areas like high need patients.
• Casseres 9y ago
  One option is to contribute to a cryptocurrency. Being able to store one's money without the use of predatory banks and cheaply transfer money to places without good banking infrastructure will lift people out of poverty.
• eriknstr 9y ago
  Contribute to the Tor Project, aka The Onion Router. https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#Projects https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en#Pro...
• andkon 9y ago
  Honestly, most of the skills I've learned in building products for people can be used to make tech that has a social purpose. First, you find a problem. Then you find people who can honestly tell you if your solution will actually work. Then, you do the hard work of building what you're gonna build, and seeing if it can fit at the locus of how things are actually done. That sounds vague, so an example might be nice. I travelled to Oaxaca recently and toured around a bunch of palenques (mezcal distilleries) to see how folks did their work. It sounded like there's an enormous problem with overcultivation of maguey — a plant that needs 30-some years to mature in some cases. I thought maybe an app that could identify + track maguey would help. I talked about it with folks, and realized that the problem isn't that they don't know where the plants are, or that they don't know how long they should grow for. It's that there's too much demand for what the ecology can bear, and a lot of it gets carted off to Jalisco to fill tequila bottles before it's mature. In that light, an app for identifying + tracking maguey isn't really gonna help. But now I have the contacts, they know I want to help, and we can keep talking about what they're working on. Maybe it'll line up. But it's uncertain. And frankly, that's how this stuff works — whether you're building something in the hopes of getting into YC, or building something to help out humankind. Just because you can earn a paycheque writing code doesn't mean you can identify and fill a new need with that same skillset.
• Frondo 9y ago
  If you want to do social good on your own, pick a cause you can get excited about and look for meetings in your town around that cause. Go to those meetings for six months and get to know people. Talk to them and find out what problems they're facing, and brainstorm with them ways tech can solve those problems. Find the most curmudgeonly people in that community and work with them until you've won them over. Now you have an idea! Make it, refine it, and when you launch, your local community around that cause will be able to promote it to like-minded folks elsewhere. Simple, but takes a lot of time, patience, listening, and humility. You can't go in thinking you have the answers, it's got to be a collaborative process.
• shmerl 9y ago
  Replace some proprietary stuff with FOSS. That's a social good.
• gregable 9y ago
  How about something like US digital services?
• NumberCruncher 9y ago
  Take care about your own family and children. Do not harm others. It is that simple. If everyone would do that, we would be all better off.
  • nowarninglabel 9y ago
    I find your comment very interesting, because I view it somewhat the opposite. Basically, many take your statement just the way you ordered it: #1 Take care about your own family and children #2 Do not harm others Then, it becomes very easy to cause harm to others and justify it through the idea that one's first priority is taking care of your own family and children and that outweighs the harm you are doing to others. Which is just to say, it's not that simple.
    • NumberCruncher 9y ago
      >> many take your statement just the way you ordered it I used a not ordered list. That makes it so simple.
• tonydiv 9y ago
  Teach kids how to program! I view it very similar to "teaching the (wo)man how to fish." I'm working on the 1st live online school that teaches kids to code. It's nearly impossible for parents to find teachers locally between 4-7PM, especially at a reasonable price, so come help :) http://block.school http://block.school
• hwayne 9y ago
  Find a nonprofit you like and offer them free tech support.
• zubat 9y ago
  Fix ordinary problems. That is to say, there are probably hundreds of things, off the top of your head, that bother you and probably bother others. To the best of your ability choose one that you have a clear "thread to pull on" - as in, there is an action here you could take that might not be elegant, might not scale, be politically heated, or put you in a position beyond your understanding, ultimately require a team or need financing. But you could do it NOW and not just dream about it, consequences be damned. When the potential is scary like that, that means you actually hold a lot of leverage to unleash new forces, just by starting on it and not stopping. Most of software isn't like that: it's predictable in its design, it automates a thing that was done slower or less effectively before. It fits into the system and stays within the lines. So you also won't find many examples for the particular thread you're pulling on, and that's expected. If you do this and it's something you personally care about and will pour heart and soul into, you're doing about as much as anyone could hope for. You won't and can't get all of it right - but what people need isn't perfection, so much as a vehicle that will last well enough for the journey.
• andreasgonewild 9y ago
  How about simply working on what you find interesting and sharing the results with the world for free? If more people did that, this world would be a better place.
• 4a60ab76 9y ago
  someone would tell you: "if you want a selfless, social work - some good jobs are, but: don't work for nuclear weapon production" (finance what (also) finance such production, healthcare that (also) heal the weapon enterprise managements desease, and so on - think this all as examples) but then a (here abstract) "other side/party" will then (because without your benefit for nuclear weapon controll software) thirst start a rocket so your decision was not real altruistic (at all men in world) because you make a "broken glass" (like in the funny nice example above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14379040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14379040 ) so, your problem was: your data before decision were not enough and the analysis of the situation (in the whole world) not deep enough. some people will argue: so much data - never possible to make the best decision. I agree with it. But you can do some approximation and before doing an (also only aproximated) List of "good, selfless, altruistic" destinations (with view of whole world and view to some influence like climate, politics, geophysics, space-riscs ... and so on.) make a risc and a potencial map about the world. And second part construct your own priority List for this risc and potencials. Big project - but also big fun! So go web and search for science studys, travel around the globe, talk to many people, educate kids, help older people with desease - so you get a good (eventually excellent) database. Work out a mind set of gouls, of answers for the question "what is good (for my neighbor)". Your longtime values. But you will not forget the borders of your brain: for example - you are a good coder and engineer, and not so good corner speaker ... so go politics as job would not good decision, because your influence will go zero and as coder zero++ ... ;-) But you will not forget the borders of others brain: for example - you everytime check different (also antagonistic) sources of the data for your decisions. And if somebody troll you - be calm: very good input for your decision - database (part:psycho-problems)! And think of the time of your live: its all in move, you must check in some weeks or months again and again, the same procedure .. (Will be fine: DO WHILE(true)) ask, analyse, check, do - a simple and fine procedure in a endless loop: your live. and the backup loop is: ask one more question everytime, everywhere - to everybody ... Find the position were you with your (everytime living) "database" can make the most influence to the "problem-vector" of the world. then so you also will make some mistakes, errors appeare again and again, BUT: then you are old and grey you can say: I had done best of my willnes, my power and what my brain was able to think: attempt(sic!) to change the world to a better one. A (only limited) list of my own tasks (differ already to the list of my son, friends) : - participation, transparency with (for example) openData Apps - - networking: bring together good coders amd other - identify deficites in care for older people - organise help and also change of the reasons - ... and so on the list is under construction and any bugs I must find out next days ... ;-) Wish you a good and viable decision for your dream - job! CU
• Millerow 9y ago
  someone would tell you: "if you want a selfless, social work - some good jobs are, but: don't work for nuclear weapon production" (finance what (also) finance such production, healthcare that (also) heal the weapon enterprise managements desease, and so on - think this all as examples) but then a (here abstract) "other side/party" will then (because without your benefit for nuclear weapon controll software) thirst start a rocket so your decision was not real altruistic (at all men in world) because you make a "broken glass" (like in the funny nice example above https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14379040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14379040 ) so, your problem was: your data before decision were not enough and the analysis of the situation (in the whole world) not deep enough some people will argue: so much data - never possible to make the best decision. I agree with it. But you can do some approximation and before doing an (also only aproximated) List of "good, selfless, altruistic" destinations (with view of whole world and view to some influence like climate, politics, geophysics, space-riscs ... and so on.) make a risc and a potencial map about the world. And second part construct your own priority List for this risc and potencials. Big project - but also big fun! So go web and search for science studys, travel around the globe, talk to many people, educate kids, help older people with desease - so you get a good (eventually excellent) database. Work out a mind set of gouls, of answers for the question "what is good (for my neighbor)". Your values. But you will not forget the borders of your brain: for example - you are a good coder and engineer, and not so good corner speaker ... so go politics as job would not good decision, because your influence will go zero and as coder zero++ ... ;-) But you will not forget the borders of others brain: for example - you everytime check different (also antagonistic) sources of the data for your decisions. And if somebody troll you - be calm: very good input for your decision - database (part:psycho-problems)! And think of the time of your live: its all in move, you must check in some weeks or months again and again, the same procedure .. (Will be fine: DO WHILE(true)) ask, analyse, check, do - a simple and fine procedure in a endless loop: your live. and the backup loop is: ask one more question everytime, everywhere - to everybody ... Find the position were you with your (everytime living) "database" can make the most influence to the "problem-vector" of the world. then so you also will make some mistakes, errors appeare again and again, BUT: then you are old and grey you can say: I had done best of my willnes, my power and what my brain was able to think: attempt(sic!) to change the world to a better one. - thats it - A (only limited) list of my own tasks (differ already to the list of my son, friends ...) : - participation, transparency with (for example) openData Apps - - networking: bring together good coders amd other - identify deficites in care for older people - organise help and also change of the reasons - ... and so on the list is under construction and any bugs I must find out next days ... ;-) Wish you a good and viable decision for your dream - job! CU
• phoenixProgram 9y ago
  the people (political people, legal people) are not a single species. there are multiple species and there is no such thing as a single dominant species. tall tales of this sort are jewish lies. the jews love to have sex with species they consider inferior and take care of their inferior offspring by using operant conditioning on society to inflict psychological wounds. they are evil bugs who breed half bug/half humans. these half-people are unable to cope with society, so the jews inflict psychological wounds on those who display real talent since the half bugs cannot stand actual competence. They hate competent people. You can forget about the "single species" lie. Stop repeating it. That is how you can do some good for yourself and your species. Don't ask me what species you belong to.
• mythrwy 9y ago
  If we go looking for what truly betters our chances as a species I'm not sure we'd like the answers we'd find. And I'm pretty sure most of it would fly in the face of just about every conventional human morality (which comes about largely for self serving purposes in my opinion). Our horizons of view are necessarily limited by the narrow slice of space and time we occupy and the culture in which we come to conceive the world. We can break out a little from time to time but for the most part we can't separate our innate ideas of "social good" from that which more objectively probably is better for the species. I understand the sentiment. I thought about it a lot. As I got older I realized the important things in society are the little things. We are individuals, there are millions of us. We generally won't dramatically alter the course of history but the way we treat others personally, the way we conduct our affairs, our character as individuals, that's what makes up a society. We have to eat and drink. It's part of life. So we sometimes have to do things that we'd rather not. But we can try to minimize our negative impact. Also I think we partially got where we are right now because some of our ancestors were basically beasts who killed the competition and took their women. And if that hadn't happened at some level regularly we'd probably still be swinging from trees and eating seasonal fruit. I'm not sure I want to know what the implication of that is. But I try to live in peace and stay balanced which means not worrying about saving the world all the time. Because it truly cannot be saved but maybe you can be. And a few others.
• droithomme 9y ago
  > I want to apply what I know to better our chances as a species and/or as individuals. As an individual how are you doing? Is your life in order? You're doing OK, those you love are doing well, things are good?
• neuronotic81 9y ago
  Read "Forces of Production" - it'll give you some background to what pressures are at play in technical roles.
• zubairq 9y ago
  Programming is only a SMALL part of doing social good. Find a problem you care about first. For us we wanted to help people who were skilled, but ended up washing dishes, as they did not understand the Danish culture. We made NemCV.com to make them CVs in 2011. The website is now defunct, but since we cared about helping people we turned into a real life event to help people and has helped 1000s of people into a better life here in Denmark, and continues several times a month to this day: https://www.meetup.com/get-your-dream-job/ https://www.meetup.com/get-your-dream-job/ So, find the problem first, and then spend time helping and make an IT tool IF needed!
• LostWanderer 9y ago
  I am working on restarting tech from the ground up in rural places. It always amazes me on how phones get so easily addictive but hardly have much utility values.Like recording the environmental changes or just simple information dissipation to their peers would do wonders to help them. Something i have been very interested in the use of local languages in developing areas in spreading of their rights and information
• andmed3 9y ago
  As a programmer you have knowledge which can guide you to make a donation to organization that does something important for many people. They just don't realize that, but you do. Donate to EFF that fights for net neutrality, or some other organization of your choice. And just do your normal work, to have money for that. Thats the way I prefer personally, yesterday I have made my first donation, ever. And kind of proud of it.
• FrozenVoid 9y ago
  Kick start the singularity by writing the first recursively-optimizing generic AI? Probably with some new kind of neural network that is fast and versatile enough for all problem domains. An neural network that can extract features of its own design and improve on it with some external metric, test improved copies of itself to solve other problems. AIs that have human-level of intellect would advance science and technology, without any human-level limits. Though such AI would have to be pro-human by design: e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/frozenvoid/wiki/ai/super-intelligent/risks/supergoals https://www.reddit.com/r/frozenvoid/wiki/ai/super-intelligen...
• fjahr 9y ago
  The best you can do where success is guaranteed is to teach underprivileged how to program for free and help them improve their situation by finding a job in the space.
• jancborchardt 9y ago
  My partner is doing an incubator program called Social-Digital Innovation Initiative: https://sdinnovation.org https://sdinnovation.org The basic idea is to bring together a person who knows of a specific social issue, and a tech person who wants to help solve it. Together they are the core team and are helped to work on their project, form a non-profit, get conmections etc. At the moment the program is piloting in Berlin. It's planned to expand to Hungary, Austria and ideally other areas. If you are interested, drop by at one of the barcamp/unconference events or check out the website. :)
• asheikh 9y ago
  Join #YesWeCode https://www.yeswecode.org/ https://www.yeswecode.org/ #YesWeCode is a national initiative to help 100,000 young women and men from underrepresented backgrounds find success in the tech sector https://www.yeswecode.org/ https://www.yeswecode.org/
• stefek99 9y ago
  Shameless plug: https://astralship.org https://astralship.org Converting chapel from 1838 into visionary environment to realise human potential and heal the planet. No more BS jobs but flow state, peak performance, deep focus, quality work on projects that truly matter. (I did my fair share of man hours stuck in chair, now making conscious deliberate effort to set free) Another good resource: https://80000hours.org/ https://80000hours.org/
• strokeswan 9y ago
  > What problems do i work on? 1. identify the main threats to mankind - degradation of biodiversity, for humans, animals, and flora (climate change, pollution, over-production, you name it) - nuclear damages (power plants, bomb, wastes) - natural causes (meteorites, earthquakes, volcanos, solar flares) 2. analyse the roots of those (examples) - technical limitations - economically not sustanable - pursuit of profit - natural but avoidable - natural and inevitable Do a maximum of research for those points, and pick a cause that motivates you the most. I, as a developper would personally aim to protect the internet, to have a free and truthful network to share knowledge. With knowledge and science we can aim to have a global awareness of our impact on humankind's future. I'm striving for a ressourced based economy, and leave that capitalistic aberration that the Gross domestic product (GDP) is coming from the amout of money spent, which means the more you consume (food, equipment, energy, health care, ...) the higher the GDP will be
• medialab_eyi 9y ago
  We think about how to do this from the MIT Media Lab as well. In that vein, we recently launched Cortico (www.cortico.ai), a non-profit with a strong software engineering focus working on issues of the public sphere. Oftentimes, research code that has clear social good potential ends up never getting deployed. We're trying a new form of creating social good opportunities from within the academic setting and through a non-profit vehicle managed like a Bay Area tech startup. I think we'll start to see more entities like this emerge.
• piccolbo 9y ago
  Why not work on the only two existential threats to mankind currently known, nuclear war and global warming? If global nuclear war or extreme climate change occur, what else matters?