For the French folks here, I have contributed to the creation of the GSCN group and I co-authored their website.
The TL;DR is GSCN acts as the firemen of computer science (engineers, technicians in security/dev/servers/networks) and propose emergency help for free to doctors, pharmacies, town halls, teachers and any professional fighting now to keep strategic services up and going while France is in lock-down. We offer help with any tech/computer/communication issue they might have so they can focus on doing their job and donât bother about digital tools.
On my end I have been helping the elderly with groceries and understanding what the fake news are. Generally, being a polite patient decent human being helps.
Unfortunately my only global contribution is debunking some fake news on social media and groups, using my knowledge and understanding (I got a PhD in virology, and currently doing research in fungus and virus epidemiology).
But most most of my time at home is going towards making school at home to my two 11 years old daughters. And it takes more time than I expected!
Iâm in America here, and let me say this: Iâm absolutely shocked, but not surprised at how Trump has handled things. Also, I did notice that red states takes it far less seriously than the blue state here, and it shames me to know that I live on the red state though on the blue side of the red state.
Red = Republicans - Base is rural, more religious, and generally arenât supportive of equality/equity
Blue = Democrats - Base is urban, less religious, and generally more for equality/equity
Sad for the folk in Europe (well planet) at the moment. Heard tha the number of deaths in Italy now officially exceeds that of China. Crazy times we now live in. My part-time job shuttered all stores until next month. Still have my full time job. Oh well. More time to play (computer rendering) and I needed that time.
Heh, Iâve offered to help our Croatian Academic and Research network with setting up a system based around nextcloud and other open services, but they paid Microsoft to help set up the online schooling system for our country (Croatia) with their tools, and the system wasnât working at all. They broke the authentication code for the network when integrating it with Microsoft systems and theyâve put it all in production xD Later the infra couldnât handle all the requests from the users. XD
Then they lied that they were experiencing the DDoS attack so they can get away with spending the all the money for nothing but more problems. Even our minister of edu and ministry of internal affairs were lying about why the system doesnât work and were threatening to the made up âhackersâ on twitter with some childish messages like; âweâll get youâ, âitâs better for you to go to school then play piano for 8 yearsâ (meaning theyâll have their hands cuffed in front of them for 8 years XDD). The thing is, it were just normal users not a DDoS.
I raised the issue about that withing Croatian developers group (10k+ members). Needless to say that it went viral and now the ministry admits it were just normal users. The system still only works at night when the entire country is sleeping XD
Here we have almost 600 in total, but given the fact thatâs itâs crazy hard to have access to doctors to discuss what kind of help they actually need, Iâm starting to think that the best thing to do is stay put and do nothing.
Lots of people are already talking about AI and machine learning, contamination models and stuff, but me thinks emergency situations are not the best time to innovate properly, and models need to be tested and validated before deployed. Otherwise the risk of harming instead of curing is very high.
Plus doctors have better things to do now than learning new stuff, even if itâs software meant to alleviate their workload. By the time all the voluntaries will start having some sort of structure and organization to actually help properly, the fire will be extinguished.
So, yeah⊠Iâm kind of thinking to stick to image processing and let the pro handle the situation as much as they can with tools they master. Hacking to help is one thing, but designing proper solutions to clearly identified problems doesnât work well under pressure.
As they write in some buses : donât distract the driver.
Food for thought: our lifes will change a lot over the next few months. i mean in worst case we will have to fight this for 6-18months.
help teachers with OBS+twitch and friends so they can keep teaching. or help them to move to digital in first place. help them to use things like moodle.
teach your elderly how to use things like skype, jitsi.
find more activities you would normally do offline, how to do them online. having people in company is just as important right now than helping doctors. I was actually talking to friends earlier about playing things like DND online. many more things come to mind.
ask your local government how to make more processes digital.
If you want to help doctors, help the rest of the people to stay inside and get things done.
