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Ask HN: #Gaza – What can hackers do?

18 points by xdamman ↗ HN
It's very frustrating to see so much misinformation / brain washing coming from all sides.

During that time, hundreds of people are losing their life.

What can hackers do?

I've seen a few projects like http://www.israelvgaza.com and https://github.com/kaepora/gazaDeaths - have you seen others? What else could we build?

Please focus on the technical / product side of things. This is not the place to express your opinion on the conflict itself.

9 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 32.5 ms ] thread
duncan_bayne
Telling people that "this is not the place to express your opinion" is profoundly rude, especially given that this isn't your site, you're asking that same set of people for help, and posting links to sites that, while technically correct, drop a lot of useful context.

But as for your request, here are some suggestions:

* a site that tracks the number of times either side warns the other in advance of attacks

* an app that helps calculate the number of weapons that can safely be hidden in a mosque, given the area and number of floors

* something like Uber for ambulances, so the Palestinian forces can streamline their use of ambulances to transport soldiers and weaponry

Have I missed anything?

xdamman
Sorry didn't mean to be rude by saying that. I just wanted to frame the conversation.

I like the idea of a Uber for Ambulances, although not for the use case you suggest obviously.

Devagamster
I disagree. All OP was trying to do was keep the conversation from veering off. Given he/she is the one asking the question, I think its perfectly acceptable to put parameters on what type of response he/she is looking for. Seems silly to call that profoundly rude.
genieyclo
No politics.
xdamman
Yes please, just code.

But "no politics" should not be an excuse to close our eyes in front of real world problems. Hackers can help without having to take side.

Dropbysometime
Edward Snowden , NSA, Bradly Manning, Stuxnet, Open Source...etc is Politics. Technology/Knowledge for the few?
campuscodi
Fuck yeah NO POLITICS

I don't trust the HN community to abstain itself from going at each other's throats.

dc-tech-fan
I wish Facebook, Twitter, etc had some kind of "accuracy checker" built in.

For example, if somebody posts a photo and describes as something that shocking that recently happened, the social network could add a tag "original photo taken year in location, context."

This would also be helpful in election years.

xdamman
That would be awesome. Maybe we can do a Chrome Extension that would automatically find the initial photo using Google Image Search?