
How I welcomed an immigrant family with a Linux laptop - pshapiro99
https://opensource.com/life/16/6/linux-laptop-haitian-family
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jnmandal
I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo
English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole
audio book read along thing is more of an advanced level learning tool, or
perhaps something you would do when there are no normal course materials in
the target language.

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88e282102ae2e5b
I have failed beginner Duolingo exercises in a language in which I'm fluent,
due to it quibbling over something that truly could be translated in several
different ways.

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noxToken
I'm no linguist, but is it truly something ambiguous or are you being a
stickler? I've seen some of the comments on some of those exercises, and there
are plenty of indignant sticklers mucking about.

It's the same on CodeCademy with some of their exercises. "Well shouldn't it
_really_ be like this?!" No. The accepted answer works fine. Don't over-
engineer a simple solution.

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
I can't remember the specific example, but it was a scenario where the source
language was ambiguous but the target required more specificity. It was like
"give me some bread" in one language and then when I supplied "give me a piece
of bread" it told me it should have been "give me a slice of bread".

While I could see where it was coming from, this would be incredibly confusing
for a beginner, who wouldn't even know to report this as a problem - they
might conclude that "piece of bread" was just incorrect.

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

~~~
jkot
Poor people are everywhere. For low cost / direct impact, you could "remotely
adopt" kid in India or Africa and provide basic education. You get letters,
pictures etc... Its very nice.

I found catholic charities to be best for this (I am not catholic). They work
on site, have long tradition and very small overhead.

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ryandrake
Wow, I've always just assumed those things were total scams. How do you verify
that your money is providing care for an actual kid and not funding some
entrepreneur's third yacht while he sends you stock photos of kids?

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whamlastxmas
You have to pick a charity that goes above and beyond the legally required
reporting. This provides transparency into how the money is spent on a more
granular level. I don't know how common this is, I suspect not very.

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

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

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

~~~
Mz
From the article:

 _The mother told me she was very eager to learn English so that she could
find her first job. In Haiti, she was close to finishing her law degree. So, I
started thinking about what I could do to help speed her towards that goal._

Maybe you have heard of the Digital Divide.

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, feed him for a
lifetime."

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bobthechef
I appreciate charity and I am convinced there is not enough of it
(philanthropy isn't enough and often misses the point of helping others which
is not self-glorification, but the death of ego). However, some things
bothered me about this article.

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

~~~
Someone1234
> First, the article is rather vacuous and chaotic in content, and so the
> motive for writing the article shifts toward drawing attention to oneself
> ("Oh, look how charitable I am!"). Charity doesn't do that.

There is no such thing as a selfless good deed, and a lot of philanthropists
want people to know how good they are. But when selfless and selfish ambition
align, as in the case of charity, society itself benefits. That's a good
thing.

If a charity is legitimately disinterested in being recognized you never would
have heard of it. This getting popular could help the concept spread.

> Second, the article seems to reinforce the condescending/patronizing
> attitude Americans often have toward immigrants when they're not busy hating
> them. The attitude consists in thinking that immigrants come from backward,
> horrible, uncivilized places and that the American is the noble, better
> educated, civilized, great benefactor.

Which exact text in the article gave you that impression? I feel like I am
pretty sensitive to such tones but I didn't pick up any of that.

> Third, if you're paying $60 for a laptop, just pay for it yourself. Getting
> people to chip in for a 10 year old, $60 brick just looks really cheap. It's
> not much of a sacrifice, guy.

You too could chip in. As you yourself said, it isn't much of a sacrifice, so
why don't you?

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mxuribe
Very cool!

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jacobsladder
I don't understand why couldn't the immigrant family just get a pirate
Windows? Torrents are standard solutions to people who have no money to
purchase software. They break the law, but the risk of prosecution is slim to
none, so why not do it? They can start purchasing software as soon as they can
afford it. No reason to stop them from being able to be a productive members
of the society now.

I come from Russia where me and all the other kids of my age used solely a
pirated software. Now I am building software for other people and only have
licensed software on my computer. If I was not allowed to use Windows, as well
as other supercool development apps from Adobe, etc, then that would be a
simple waste of life.

It sounds like the guy imposed Linux on this family who didn't know what their
real choices were (even though some may have been unethical).

~~~
dijit
Why would it be a waste of life? Presumably you'd be making applications on
Linux if enforcement was strong.

And the Linux market would have benefited from that, which fosters a growing
community on the platform.

~~~
jacobsladder
I don't think so. I use Linux a lot as advanced user now, and I definitely
appreciate what it has to offer, but if I was forced to use Linux before, it
would have been a disaster.

There are just so many programming applications that allow one to explore
programming in a quick drag'n'drop and fun way. Imagine using Delphi, you drop
the button on screen and you see the generated code right away. You then start
to tinker with it and let go of WYSIWYG editor completely.

Apps like that were instrumental in my education. I even had superexpensive
pirated 3d Max type of software to try myself at 3d modeling and understand
what it is about.

I also tried lots of expensive and well-made software (at the time) from Adobe
and it was a great learning experience.

I think the fact is, for many such cases pirated software is a great pragmatic
solution. I understand there are ethical issues when suggesting something like
that publicly, but the individual can make the choice for himself.

~~~
m1k3r420
Maya for 3D modelling - Open Source

Scratch for Drag and Drop programming - Open Source

Linux and open source software are fantasic, perfect for a refurbished 7 year
old laptop like this. Windows would also run like crap on one of these, Christ
it runs like crap on an i7 with 16GB of RAM.

~~~
xabotage
Maya is not open source, though there is a free (read: castrated) version. Use
Blender. I learned everything I needed to launch my career from a bottom-rung
2gb Intel Celeron P.o.S. laptop running Linux, Blender, Gimp, and all kinds of
other open source programming and creativity tools. That laptop is 6 years old
and still gets stuff done today (though I do have a far more powerful rig
now). IMO the modern equivalent of this kind of low-end laptop with open
source software could really help refugees, and it would be relatively cheap.

