[zipfle]

A bit ot, but I've found that you can tell a good engineer by whether, when you tell them about the design of something, their first response is a question or a suggestion or criticism. With good engineers it's almost always a question.

[TeMPOraL]

A question - like, "How the fuck is that supposed to work? Did you even do the math?".

Bringing the topic back to the article - a lot of technological non-solutions like those mentioned in the article are something that didn't make sense even on paper. My question is, how on Earth are such things getting funded? Even in humanitarian aid, is there no one with even a little background in engineering, science and sociology to tell them that "no, this shit won't work"?

Or is it just like the startup industry, where the actual utility of a product is one of the least important things, because what matters (and gets funded) is for it to a) be sexy - so it grows fast, and b) have a high lock-in factor, so that customers don't escape, at least not without spreading the love some more. If so, could we please get someone else to fund aid?

Also, maybe it's time for a service that would evaluate various aid-related products and business models and verify which ones make sense, and which don't. Like GiveWell, but instead of focusing on best charities, it would focus on calling out bullshit when they see it.