Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot • Hacker News Board

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#31

Post by onetimeusename » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 3:49 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #26

orf wrote: post #15

Holy hell, what are these comments. A group of girls form a pretty messed up country had the willing and the guts to go ahead and submit anything to this competition, knowing full well they would be at a disadvantage compared to other first world countries, and coming from a very male orientated culture. Their parts where late and they only had two weeks to build it. Meanwhile a single accurate quote about how they w…

Well, it is a highly political topic. And I found no article yet, with technical details, about what they technically actual accomplished. The Reuters article is especially lacking any information, except stating that they succeded technically, but faced problems at the US border before and the latter they repeated many times, not just one quote. So it looks a bit missleading and I would not call it journalism, if th…

One of the reasons, I assume, it is difficult to gain access to the US, even for teams of student-scientists, is because of things like this happening https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/07/23/mystery....

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#32

Post by rdlecler1 » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

richardw wrote: post #12

spayu61 wrote: post #2

So what's the actual news here? That they were denied entry in the US? Should we feel bad about it or what? There's 0 insight into what they achieved and the reporter even got the name of the European country wrong. Looks like propaganda to me. Edit: yes, it's propaganda: "Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, p…

Is Forbes part of the propaganda conspiracy? https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist... There are multiple angles on this story and your border is the least relevant part of it. Move on.

I have no details on this particular case. But I’ve been a judge for many agrifoodtech pitch events and in many cases it wasn’t the best company/entrepreneurs that won, rather the judges decided to vote on what had the best feel good story.

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#33

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

tenpies wrote: post #29

nasredin wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention they are likely risking their lives in doing this. (Americans should know by now Taliban's stance on girls and education. US has been in that country since October 2001 FFS IIRC.)

That seems like a big assumption. There is a very rich upper class in Afghanistan that lives a nearly-Western lifestyle. If a student is female (1), in a robotics class (2), attending a school that had a robotics class (3), and planning a trip abroad to compete (4); the chances that their lives were at risk is zero. These girls are most likely going to an international school in the safest part of the country. It is…

How does that square with the news that the captain's father was killed in a suicide bombing just four months ago?

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#34

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #8

devnonymous wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what's the actual news here? School girls from Afghanistan built a solar powered robot. That's news because this is something which is very hard to do in the absence of the many privileges that would make such an achievement easy. > That they were denied entry in the US? Yes. That too is news worthy and was covered extensively. > Should we feel bad about it or what? Maybe. But rather than feeling bad wouldn't it…

I'd like to encourage their achievement, but it's not clear what they achieved. > The team’s winning entry was a solar-powered robot that would help small farmers carry out tasks including seeding and cutting crops like wheat Apart from the general idea, what was created? Here's a more detailed article from the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/world/afghanistan-girls-r... > The team, which had only two we…

You are mixing up two competitions. The prize for courageous achievement was won in the FIRST Robotics competition, in the US, last summer. This new prize is for a different robot, at the Robotex competition in Tallinn, Estonia. The division this time was "entrepreneurial challenge." The FIRST robot had to be out of specific parts; the Robotex robot has to satisfy different rules. At FIRST they got the crowd award (the "political" prize that commenters are alluding to).

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#35

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

newsbinator wrote: post #24

spayu61 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for doing this research. This looks fabricated, the same way Abdul's clock was. In response to the guy down here (I can't post anymore): the fact that they "won a prize", as shown in the title of this post, is highly misleading, when it was just a consolation prize. THe takeaway of these news is "look at everything the US is missing for not opening their borders", and this being a consolation prize, the US…

I don't think it's a fabrication. The girls won a prize for overcoming adversity, and they arguably built a better robot than teams that didn't have much adversity to overcome. That's not nothing. But at the same time articles like this one leave me with a feeling of pandering and head-patting. We all like to see groups of underdogs do impressive things. If the article were about what an outlier their robot is becaus…

Again, you're talking about a different competition than that discussed in the article. The way you have presented the background information is misleading. The "entrepreneurial challenge" prize at Robotex has different criteria than the "courageousness" award for overcoming adversity at FIRST.

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#36

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

For people who seem upset that these girls won a different, US, prize for courageousness, in a different competition in a different month for a different robot...

Someone was going to get the courageousness prize at FIRST. Why not the kids who built their robot in two weeks and traveled 2000 miles to get their visas before even leaving the country? If they didn't get it it would the inner city team whose adult mentor got cancer and couldn't come due to chemo, or the rural team from Mexico that crowdfunded their trip and blah blah blah. Complaining that kids with a feel-good story won a feel-good award is like complaining the nicest girl at a pageant gets Miss Congeniality.

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#37

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #33

tenpies wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a big assumption. There is a very rich upper class in Afghanistan that lives a nearly-Western lifestyle. If a student is female (1), in a robotics class (2), attending a school that had a robotics class (3), and planning a trip abroad to compete (4); the chances that their lives were at risk is zero. These girls are most likely going to an international school in the safest part of the country. It is…

How does that square with the news that the captain's father was killed in a suicide bombing just four months ago?

In addition, further reporting about that story indicates that at least the team captain's family is poor: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/world/asia/afghan-robotic...

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#38

Post by kaitai » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

aquadrop wrote: post #30

asadlionpk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying this from a privileged position. That's why it's ordinary to you. The win here is that they achieved this while being very underprivileged.

The point is we don't know that, because there's not that much info in the article. It's not known what is background of those girls and what did they actually build.

It would be great to know more about the robot. Robotex has video from each day posted to Youtube but it's 8hrs/day and I don't have time to investigate where we might see the robot in question.

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#39

Post by eighthnate » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #15

Holy hell, what are these comments. A group of girls form a pretty messed up country had the willing and the guts to go ahead and submit anything to this competition, knowing full well they would be at a disadvantage compared to other first world countries, and coming from a very male orientated culture. Their parts where late and they only had two weeks to build it. Meanwhile a single accurate quote about how they w…

> and it's just a political hitpeice

It is a political hit piece no better than awarding obama a nobel prize before he did anything as president. I'll make you a bet. There will be a syrian or a refugee who will "win" a prize in the next few years.

> Get a life and grow up, I'd like to see you have the guts to try anything like this, even with your inherent advantage of living in a first world country.

What's strange is you attack people and the moderators aren't censuring you.

All you are doing is appealing to the "feels". Should we make a mockery of science just for your "feels" and to push a political agenda?

Anyone remember the clock in a suitcase boy a few years ago? The exploiting and ruining the good name of science in order to push a political agenda?

Re: Afghan girls win European prize for solar-powered farming robot

#40

Post by sandergansen » Sat, Dec 02, 2017, 7:03 PM UTC

So I'm here as the Chairman of Robotex and will quickly give an overview of these girls achievement.

We first saw Roya, the entrepreneur helping those girls ar World Summit AI in Amsterdam earlier this October.

There they decided to participate in the Entrepreneurial Challenge, which is a new competition determined to find the most awesome new robotics teams and/or solutions across all continents. It's somewhat like a prototype competition, as we're still building the whole Entrepreneurial concept and raising a pre-seed global robotics fund to help such companies in the future.

At this competition, they showcased a prototype for the solar-powered agricultural machine and managed to get almost 35% of all votes, not because of their popularity, any politics or just the product but for their ability to market their product throughout the whole event + the idea itself.

Overall we're happy that they came. Even happier that they got the first place. And now looking into starting a franchise of our event also in Afghanistan.

If anyone wants to help out with the latter, then please contact me.