Random Hacks of Kindness

Elizabeth Sabet writes "Google, Microsoft, NASA, The World Bank, and Yahoo! are unlikely partners, but they are bringing together the best and brightest in disaster relief management and the ever-growing hacker community in a progressive initiative called Random Hacks of Kindness. Its mission is to mobilize a world-wide community of technologists to solve real-world problems through technology. RHoK is gearing up for its first world-wide 'hackathon for humanity' on June 4-6, 2010. Following last year's inaugural event in Mountain View, California, which produced software solutions that were used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the partners have decided to take the effort global. RHoK engages volunteer software engineers, independent hackers, and students from around the world in a marathon weekend of hacking events and coding competitions to develop software solutions for problems posed by subject-matter experts. This first global Hackathon will feature sponsored events in Washington, DC, Sydney, Nairobi, Jakarta, and Sao Paulo." Here's where to go for more details or to register for the DC event.

Re:Just make sure

[deniable]

Exactly, from the site linked:

At a RHoK Hackathon, benevolently-inclined hackers will listen to a keynote speech presenting the challenges we are facing. Then they’ll churn out some of the most important open source code on the planet

Emphasis mine. I'd love to see someone try to close-source this stuff with the major players. Let's see a four-way fight between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the US Government. Popcorn anyone.

Africa’s Gift to Sil Valley: How to Track a

[SpzToid]

NY Times:

...an important force behind this upheaval is a small Kenyan-born organization called Ushahidi, which has become a hero of the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes and which may have something larger to tell us about the future of humanitarianism, innovation and the nature of what we label as truth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14giridharadas.html [nytimes.com]

Re:If You Build It

[value_added]

And I hope there are many interesting results, other than buncha nerdy half-assed bullshit software projects. There are a lot more out there in life in need and want. Build a better water pump. Build a better wiring harness. Things people in need can use.

Like this pump [nytimes.com]?

Here's an excerpt:

For 15 years, Kevin Costner has been overseeing the construction of oil separation machines to prepare for the possibility of another disaster of the magnitude of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Disturbed by the effects of the Valdez spill in Alaska, Mr. Costner bought the nascent technology from the government in 1995 and put $24 million of his own money into developing it for the private sector.

Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill, and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn't have separation technology, said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner's lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the technology.

On Wednesday, BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said that the company had approved six of Ocean Therapy's 32 machines for testing. All boast centrifuge processing technology giant vacuum-like machines that suck oil from water, separate the oil, store it in a tanker and send the water, 99.9 percent purified, back into the gulf.

The technology was available for use 10 years ago, Mr. Houghtaling said. "These machines have been very robust, but nobody's been interested in them until now," he added.

He said that the largest four machines have the capability of separating 210,000 gallons of oil from water a day, 200 gallons a minute.

Sounds like the quintessential hacker.

And for god's sake, stop wasting your good brains cooking up another social network bullshit. You young people can do way way better than that.

Kostner's efforts are the product of fifteen years work and $24 spare cash. And on a somewhat related note, the special submarines [independent.co.uk] that James Cameron wants to contribute, those were financed courtesy of the movie studios. The point here is that it's hard to avoid the fact that the alternative (working on some possibly useless social networking thing) looks a lot more attractive. And do-able.

Re:Haiti Earthquake and Ushahidi

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Sahana and Ushahidi are Free and Open Source projects, and like any non-profit org are always in desperate need of qualified helpers. Join the mailing lists, introduce yourself & explain what programming or other help you can bring, and I'm sure they'll point you to a list of 1000 waiting tickets in a bug tracker somewhere! It's a lot more productive use of your hobby time organizing resources & solving puzzles for real instead of sinking it into a video game ... !

2010 Summer of Code ideas links given as those are immediate needs the communities have prioritized.

http://www.sahanafoundation.org/ [sahanafoundation.org]
http://wiki.sahanafoundation.org/doku.php/foundation:sahana_gsoc10 [sahanafoundation.org]

http://www.ushahidi.com/ [ushahidi.com]
http://www.ushahidi.com/dev_team [ushahidi.com]
http://wiki.ushahididev.com/ [ushahididev.com]
http://swift.ushahidi.com/extend/ideas/ [ushahidi.com]

fix a bug, save someone's life (or maybe 70 or 300.. it scales!) who wouldn't otherwise've made it... no joke. how often do you get that opportunity in your day to day? maybe we can't do f.all about leaking oil wells, but we do have the ability to do something here. which is pretty neat if you think about it.

Re:Haiti Earthquake and Ushahidi

[Anonymous Coward]

oh yeah, and of course there is OpenStreetMap & co.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org]

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Haiti/Earthquake_map_resources [openstreetmap.org]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2010_Chile_earthquake/Maps_and_data [openstreetmap.org]
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2010_Yushu_earthquake [openstreetmap.org]