11 ms·

Gaza: Coding in a conflict zone

102 points by goodcanadian 8y ago

mustuhfa 8y ago
Having worked closely with GSG for the last few years and done 2 trips there to mentor and host workshops, I would encourage anybody who has the time and interest in sharing their knowledge to reach out to them and help them. As the saying goes that constraint breeds creativity, I have never meet a more energetic, enthusiastic bunch of people who just want to make themselves useful and build something that they can be proud of while helping themselves. As unfortunate as their situation is, it does not stop them or the GSG crew and I believe that one day in the future, this effort will have laid the foundations for a vibrant and impactful engineering community. If anyone has any questions, please ask away and I can answer.
- jackthrow1 8y ago
  Be more precise. What kinda help they need? I aint got money, are they still enthusiatic about taking non-monetary help? Or is the help in such case simply reduced to "well contact them and ask them if they need anything" (in this case I can tell you their answer even without bothering to email them: "nah, we only need money bruh")? I assure you that I dont have nothing against Gaza and its inhabitants, what irritates me is that you encourage to help them, yet you use the language so vague that it sounds more like an advertisement of their "future vibrant community" (yea, without actual drinking water and severe overpopulation, but with computers, sure, sounds plausible), without any clearly pronounced areas where they need help, except of money of course.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    I would assume the GP means "to mentor and host workshops".
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Khol 8y ago
    In some cases offering money _is_ the best way to offer support. When goods are donated they're often not what's actually needed, or not in the proportions required. Planet Money covered this in an episode: https://www.npr.org/2015/11/27/457565052/food-banks-pickle-getting-food-to-the-right-place-at-the-right-time https://www.npr.org/2015/11/27/457565052/food-banks-pickle-g... (transcript rather than episode link). This relates to food banks, but it also affects other organizations: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/aid-workers-at-calais-refugee-camp-make-plea-for-right-kind-of-donations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/aid-workers-at... . If you can't offer that support then I suspect that spreading the word about these projects is the next best thing. Edited to add additional links, tidy up language.
  - mustuhfa 8y ago
    Mentors go there from all aspects. From engineering to marketing to design. I come from a technical background, and on the first instance I did a presentation but found that it was not as useful as I had hoped. But I noticed a lack of fundamental knowledge around concepts and tech that we use on a daily basis (e.g no monitoring and a lot of manual work being done). Second time I went, I held a 3 day continuous delivery workshop introducing them to concepts like CI, CD and testing. This enabled them to deploy a simple hellow world server through a pipeline with monitoring. The feedback was that the workshop was what they needed. If you are interested to find out more, I would suggest that you reach out to them and ask them. They have a number of initiatives (e.g coding bootcamps) and its best to understand what they have coming up and where your skills could fit in. Money no doubt would help the GSG organisation but honestly, if you can, I would go there and help on the ground. They need technical mentors more than ever.
  - dang 8y ago
    We've banned this account for nationalistic flamewar, or whatever kind of flamewar this is, as well as for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128852.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I could see myself doing this a few years from now. Does a Gaza stamp in your passport limit someone's entry into other countries? (eg USA)
  - Krasnol 8y ago
    In Germany you can have a second pass just for that purpose. It costs more though.
    - gsich 8y ago
      Yeah, the cost of an additional passport.
      - Krasnol 8y ago
        What I meant was that it costs more then if you get a first one new.
        gsich 8y ago
        What? The price of a default passport in Germany is always the same. 60€ for 32 pages.
    - m-localhost 8y ago
      I see this recommendation quite often and wonder if you get in trouble sooner or later, at least if you want to travel to the US. I would think the purpose of a passport is a single identification with a track record. Everything else is cheating. Not?
      - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
        That's rather part of the point. Many of the countries that offer a second passport believe in freer travel than some destination countries might.
      - Krasnol 8y ago
- bjourne 8y ago
  What kind of help do they require? I'd like to help but actually travelling to Gaza and risk getting stuck there is a bit outside of my comfort zone.
padraic7a 8y ago
That's an incredible article. It must have taken some amazing mental gymnastics to talk about the situation in Gaza and Palestine without laying any responsibility at the feet of Israel. Instead the Israeli stance is noted as being the same as Egypt, or the same as the EU. Lets be clear, Israel's behaviour marks it out as an exception internationally. Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Israel's blockade contrvene's international law.
- yahoo234 8y ago
  Gaza is ¬1M people and has received tens of BN$ of aid. Israel has withdrawn all its forces from Gaza 10 years ago. At what stage do Gazan start behaving like responsible adults rather than blaming the Great Satan?
  - sgift 8y ago
    Probably the moment the 'Great Satan' stops to control all flow of goods into and out of the Gaza. It's easy to say Israel has withdrawn when all they did was move a few kilometers further out.
    - firic 8y ago
      What would you recommend Israel do when Hamas's charter literally says that they what to destroy Israel and the Jews? Hamas is Gaza's elected party and letting them import weapons is very bad for Israeli civilians.
      - sinaz 8y ago
        The only solution for the Gaza-Israel crisis is mutual destruction.
        dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account. You can't post like this to HN, even in a shitty flamewar like this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
partycoder 8y ago
Note that the article quickly turns political, and often the follow up political discussion is not welcome here on HN. It will take a lot of restraint for those kids to stay in development.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  Of course it has to explain the circumstances and background for people who don’t know, and that necessarily will be a political discussion.
- beagle3 8y ago
  It's actually the least political article on anything in Gaza that I've seen for a long time now. The previous almost-unpolitical one was also about Gaza Sky Geeks.
bengrunfeld 8y ago
It is disgusting that the BBC uses "coding" as the clickbait, and then proceeds to use nearly 50% of the article to discuss politics. We all know the politics, but this felt like a cheap way to get us to discuss it, even though what we really wanted was to read about tech in Gaza. It's articles like these that fuel the conflict by "sneaking one over" the readers to try to sway their opinion one way or another. UPDATE: 3 of the 5 pieces of non-text media discuss politics and war rather than tech. Do you need any more proof?
Vinnl 8y ago
Gaza Sky Geeks looks like an excellent programme. For European programmers who would like to help out with similar programmes, but perhaps not move to Gaza, be sure to check out Hack Your Future. It's currently located in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden (with I think more locations coming up), and it's teaching programming courses to refugees in those countries. I'm sure all of them could use more volunteer teachers. Teaching a group of motivated individuals and giving them a real shot at properly being part of society is an incredibly satisfying experience.
wallflower 8y ago
In case you missed Manish Sinha’s “Mentoring in Gaza's first hackathon” in 2016, it is an insightful perspective that complements this article. http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/ http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/ EDIT Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963
- dopeboy 8y ago
  Thanks for the shout out. Happy to extend that AMA here in case I missed anything.
walrus01 8y ago
As a network engineer I would be really interested in learning some real world info about what ISPs are operating in Gaza, what their ASNs and IP space are, where their upstreams are (both network topologically, BGP adjacencies/other larger ASes, and at OSI layer 1). If there is anyone reading this who is physically located in Gaza and using a local ISP, I could get a lot of info if you just google "what is my IP", go to one of the first few links, and reply with the results. You don't have to send your exact IP, to the /24 level of accuracy is enough.
ovrkil 8y ago
I like Marwa Hassanein physiology. The worlds past generations have always fought over physical borders and resources. Our generation is learning to live, work and share with out these physical borders. I true believe time is our friend.

102 points by goodcanadian 8y ago

Having worked closely with GSG for the last few years and done 2 trips there to mentor and host workshops, I would encourage anybody who has the time and interest in sharing their knowledge to reach out to them and help them. As the saying goes that constraint breeds creativity, I have never meet a more energetic, enthusiastic bunch of people who just want to make themselves useful and build something that they can be proud of while helping themselves. As unfortunate as their situation is, it does not stop them or the GSG crew and I believe that one day in the future, this effort will have laid the foundations for a vibrant and impactful engineering community. If anyone has any questions, please ask away and I can answer.

jackthrow1 8y ago
Be more precise. What kinda help they need? I aint got money, are they still enthusiatic about taking non-monetary help? Or is the help in such case simply reduced to "well contact them and ask them if they need anything" (in this case I can tell you their answer even without bothering to email them: "nah, we only need money bruh")? I assure you that I dont have nothing against Gaza and its inhabitants, what irritates me is that you encourage to help them, yet you use the language so vague that it sounds more like an advertisement of their "future vibrant community" (yea, without actual drinking water and severe overpopulation, but with computers, sure, sounds plausible), without any clearly pronounced areas where they need help, except of money of course.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  I would assume the GP means "to mentor and host workshops".
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Khol 8y ago
  In some cases offering money _is_ the best way to offer support. When goods are donated they're often not what's actually needed, or not in the proportions required. Planet Money covered this in an episode: https://www.npr.org/2015/11/27/457565052/food-banks-pickle-getting-food-to-the-right-place-at-the-right-time https://www.npr.org/2015/11/27/457565052/food-banks-pickle-g... (transcript rather than episode link). This relates to food banks, but it also affects other organizations: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/aid-workers-at-calais-refugee-camp-make-plea-for-right-kind-of-donations https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/03/aid-workers-at... . If you can't offer that support then I suspect that spreading the word about these projects is the next best thing. Edited to add additional links, tidy up language.
- mustuhfa 8y ago
  Mentors go there from all aspects. From engineering to marketing to design. I come from a technical background, and on the first instance I did a presentation but found that it was not as useful as I had hoped. But I noticed a lack of fundamental knowledge around concepts and tech that we use on a daily basis (e.g no monitoring and a lot of manual work being done). Second time I went, I held a 3 day continuous delivery workshop introducing them to concepts like CI, CD and testing. This enabled them to deploy a simple hellow world server through a pipeline with monitoring. The feedback was that the workshop was what they needed. If you are interested to find out more, I would suggest that you reach out to them and ask them. They have a number of initiatives (e.g coding bootcamps) and its best to understand what they have coming up and where your skills could fit in. Money no doubt would help the GSG organisation but honestly, if you can, I would go there and help on the ground. They need technical mentors more than ever.
- dang 8y ago
  We've banned this account for nationalistic flamewar, or whatever kind of flamewar this is, as well as for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18128852.
skrebbel 8y ago
I could see myself doing this a few years from now. Does a Gaza stamp in your passport limit someone's entry into other countries? (eg USA)
- Krasnol 8y ago
  In Germany you can have a second pass just for that purpose. It costs more though.
  - gsich 8y ago
    Yeah, the cost of an additional passport.
    - Krasnol 8y ago
      What I meant was that it costs more then if you get a first one new.
      - gsich 8y ago
        What? The price of a default passport in Germany is always the same. 60€ for 32 pages.
  - m-localhost 8y ago
    I see this recommendation quite often and wonder if you get in trouble sooner or later, at least if you want to travel to the US. I would think the purpose of a passport is a single identification with a track record. Everything else is cheating. Not?
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      That's rather part of the point. Many of the countries that offer a second passport believe in freer travel than some destination countries might.
    - Krasnol 8y ago
bjourne 8y ago
What kind of help do they require? I'd like to help but actually travelling to Gaza and risk getting stuck there is a bit outside of my comfort zone.

padraic7a 8y ago

That's an incredible article. It must have taken some amazing mental gymnastics to talk about the situation in Gaza and Palestine without laying any responsibility at the feet of Israel. Instead the Israeli stance is noted as being the same as Egypt, or the same as the EU. Lets be clear, Israel's behaviour marks it out as an exception internationally. Israel has turned Gaza into an open air prison. Israel's blockade contrvene's international law.

yahoo234 8y ago
Gaza is ¬1M people and has received tens of BN$ of aid. Israel has withdrawn all its forces from Gaza 10 years ago. At what stage do Gazan start behaving like responsible adults rather than blaming the Great Satan?
- sgift 8y ago
  Probably the moment the 'Great Satan' stops to control all flow of goods into and out of the Gaza. It's easy to say Israel has withdrawn when all they did was move a few kilometers further out.
  - firic 8y ago
    What would you recommend Israel do when Hamas's charter literally says that they what to destroy Israel and the Jews? Hamas is Gaza's elected party and letting them import weapons is very bad for Israeli civilians.
    - sinaz 8y ago
      The only solution for the Gaza-Israel crisis is mutual destruction.
      - dang 8y ago
        We've banned this account. You can't post like this to HN, even in a shitty flamewar like this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

partycoder 8y ago

Note that the article quickly turns political, and often the follow up political discussion is not welcome here on HN. It will take a lot of restraint for those kids to stay in development.

Synaesthesia 8y ago
Of course it has to explain the circumstances and background for people who don’t know, and that necessarily will be a political discussion.
beagle3 8y ago
It's actually the least political article on anything in Gaza that I've seen for a long time now. The previous almost-unpolitical one was also about Gaza Sky Geeks.

bengrunfeld 8y ago

It is disgusting that the BBC uses "coding" as the clickbait, and then proceeds to use nearly 50% of the article to discuss politics. We all know the politics, but this felt like a cheap way to get us to discuss it, even though what we really wanted was to read about tech in Gaza. It's articles like these that fuel the conflict by "sneaking one over" the readers to try to sway their opinion one way or another. UPDATE: 3 of the 5 pieces of non-text media discuss politics and war rather than tech. Do you need any more proof?

Vinnl 8y ago

Gaza Sky Geeks looks like an excellent programme. For European programmers who would like to help out with similar programmes, but perhaps not move to Gaza, be sure to check out Hack Your Future. It's currently located in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden (with I think more locations coming up), and it's teaching programming courses to refugees in those countries. I'm sure all of them could use more volunteer teachers. Teaching a group of motivated individuals and giving them a real shot at properly being part of society is an incredibly satisfying experience.

wallflower 8y ago

In case you missed Manish Sinha’s “Mentoring in Gaza's first hackathon” in 2016, it is an insightful perspective that complements this article. http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/ http://dopeboy.github.io/gaza/ EDIT Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963

dopeboy 8y ago
Thanks for the shout out. Happy to extend that AMA here in case I missed anything.

walrus01 8y ago

As a network engineer I would be really interested in learning some real world info about what ISPs are operating in Gaza, what their ASNs and IP space are, where their upstreams are (both network topologically, BGP adjacencies/other larger ASes, and at OSI layer 1). If there is anyone reading this who is physically located in Gaza and using a local ISP, I could get a lot of info if you just google "what is my IP", go to one of the first few links, and reply with the results. You don't have to send your exact IP, to the /24 level of accuracy is enough.

ovrkil 8y ago

I like Marwa Hassanein physiology. The worlds past generations have always fought over physical borders and resources. Our generation is learning to live, work and share with out these physical borders. I true believe time is our friend.