[spayu61]

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, property rights, resilience and climate change."

[jacknews]

Apart from just celebrating that a group of teens won a competition, there are several newsy points, though all beg further questions.

The fact that a team of girls from Afghanistan built a robot. That seems amazing, but what were the circumstances around that? An all-girl tech team from Afghanistan seems like a political statement in itself; was there a boy's team, or a mixed team, for example? Were they poor kids? Was an NGO involved and in what capacity? Did they just get together and build the robot after reading wikipedia?

The fact that they won a prize in an EU competition. Was that based purely on merit, or were there political considerations? Eg "poor girls from war-torn country should be supported", or "The NGO behind this should have their work promoted", or "Public snub/rebuke to trump's disgusting visa policies", etc. Or should we be hearing more about an imminent improvement in agricultural productivity?

The fact that it's quite a saccharine narrative, and has raised questions and suspicion. That says something both about the news system, and society, I think. It seems sad that we can't just celebrate achievement without considering (with justification) the hidden forces shaping the landscape.

Etc. Cui Bono?

[lackdaisacal]

I did some digging and found a Forbes article that goes into more detail. Their prize was won in the 'Entrepreneurial' stage of the competition, enough they won more with their sales pitch than anything else.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...

[devnonymous]

> 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 be better to celebrate this, promote this and encourage things like this until a time that such things are common place enough to not be news worthy?

[newsbinator]

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 weeks to build its robot for the event because a shipment of parts was delayed, won a silver medal for courageous achievement.

Courageous achievement is good politics, but not necessarily good engineering.

Here's an article from NPR:

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/22/538088825/what-re...

> The winner was chosen by the thousands of spectators who attended the event.

They mention what the robot actually does:

> Every team arrived with a robot in tow, each built with the exact same components, but designed, engineered and programmed differently. The goal: to gobble up and sort blue and orange plastic balls representing clean water and contaminated water.

> The Afghan team's consolation prize: a medal for "courageous achievement" and knowing that they placed much higher than countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

- - -

So my takeaway is that apart from facing all of the challenges that come with delayed shipments and denied VISAs, the girls managed to build a robot out of the standard parts list.

Their robot was voted on by thousands of attendees, and they placed higher than teams from developed countries like Canada, the UK, and the US.

What's the actual news? Not much, this is a fluff story. But it means something that a team of Afghan girls even made it to competition, much less built something that could legitimately outcompete more developed teams.

[kaitai]

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).

[spayu61]

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 is simply missing nothing. So the entire thing is a fabrication.

[newsbinator]

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 because it's so good, or what an outlier the team is because they pulled off a feat of engineering against all odds, then I'd be cheering along with everyone else.

But mainly the article is: "these girls faced far more adversity than most anyone else, but still managed to perform adequately."

That's something for them to be proud of personally, and for Afghanistan to be proud of nationally.

At the same time, if the competition were adjudicated in a double-blind way, would they have still beat out other teams?

There's nothing wrong in discussing whether that's a relevant question.

On another note, I'm surprised I got downvoted when adding background information to the discussion.

[kaitai]

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.

[yorwba]

What exactly are you calling a fabrication? The whole competition or only the achievement of the Afghan team?

[austincheney]

> Maybe. But rather than feeling bad wouldn't it be better to celebrate this, promote this and encourage things like this until a time that such things are common place enough to not be news worthy?

Absolutely agree. I have lived in Afghanistan for two years.

[spayu61]

That's not the actual news here, because as I said, there's 0 insight on whatever they achieved. The emphasis was put on how bad it is to not let everybody in the US. Hence I believe this to be just some propaganda piece.

[johnchristopher]

You want their blue print ? Would that be actual news to you ?

Edit: turns out a five minutes search on mobile isn't enough for me to get a picture or a description of the actual robot.

[lackdaisacal]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2017/11/29/afghanist...

This gives more detail.

[pbhjpbhj]

It's still not great as far as factual information, it gives 3 contradictory sizes for the team (a picture purports to show the team, 4 people (+ the sponsor); it's said the team is 12 people and also 6 people in the text). I don't think they named any of the team, just the sponsor.

The angle appears to be "overcame adversity" but we don't learn where they worked on the project, what facilities they had, nor seemingly anything about the engineering other than the rules of the two competitions ...

Meh.

[Seems like a good personal achievement, I wouldn't belittle that, like get them up in school assembly, show them in the local paper, write about them in your family Christmas missive. But aside from the pretty unexceptional visa refusal it's a non-story IMO.]

[richardw]

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.

[rdlecler1]

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.

[probablybanned]

It's as though nobody remembers the Syrian ambulance boy who seemed to hit every single Western publication at once. Or the fawning PR pieces for the "White Helmets."

The insinuation that Forbes is not part of the propaganda conspiracy is absurd. This is exactly what it looks like when an NGO is peddling a narrative.

[asadlionpk]

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.

[aquadrop]

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.

[kaitai]

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.

[lackdaisacal]

But the point is that they were given their prize precisely because they were underprivileged. That's why it's not that impressive.

[jacknews]

"The win here is that they achieved this while being very underprivileged."

Do we know that?

I have some experience in this area, I don't live in a "privileged" country, and I find there is at least some truth to the adage "Aid, is poor people in rich countries, giving to rich people in poor countries".

Good for them they've achieved this, whether they were privileged, assisted (because they were underprivileged?), untouchables from broken families, or whatever, or not, but let's not jump to conclusions about the actual backstory.

[dguaraglia]

First: you don't know that. There's nothing in the article to suggest that they "won because they were unprivileged" rather than on the merits of the device they created.

Second: you don't know what the criteria for giving the price out is. What if the idea of the prize is to encourage kids to get into tech? Who would benefit more, some kid who went to a Palo Alto school and whose parents work at Google and Apple, or some kid from a developing nation with not nearly as many resources?

It's very cavalier - and very disturbing - to assume all you are assuming just because they are Afghan. Have you ever wondered if you'd had the same concerns if they came from -say - Brazil?