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Australia The Military

Developers Observe Anzac Day, Commemorating Those Who Served, With a Data-Based 'Anzacathon' (anzacathon.com) 30

Today is Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand for those who served, marked on the anniversary of the 1915 campaign that led to the first major casualties for Australian and New Zealand Army Corp forces during World War One.

"More than 87,000 Turks died, along with an estimated 44,000 men from the British Empire and France, including 8,500 Australians and nearly 3,000 New Zealanders," remembers the BBC, "one in four of the Kiwis sent to Gallipoli."

Taking special note is free and open source software engineer Daniel, who is also a Debian developer, who writes: In 1981, the movie Gallipoli made the career of Mel Gibson. In 2018, The Guardian lamented that Australia had reached peak Anzac after committing $500 million to expand a war memorial.

At the other end of the spectrum, a group of students in Kosovo organized a very low-budget Remembrance Day hackathon in 2019 and it has now been used as the foundation for a data-driven online Anzacathon while traditional memorials will remain closed due to coronavirus.

The video helps us reflect not only on the legacy of the Anzacs but our own plight today.

Living in Europe, Pocock describes the origins of the project. "Last year I had asked myself: are there any sites where there is only one Australian casualty, where nobody has visited them for Anzac Day?"

The activities list on the Anzacathon page now suggests updating its list of lone Anzac graves around the world, by sharing your own information from the Anzac honour roll of your school, village, company, or club.
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Developers Observe Anzac Day, Commemorating Those Who Served, With a Data-Based 'Anzacathon'

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  • Lest we forget
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 24, 2020 @09:09PM (#59987598)
    to spin this story into an anti-Trump screed
    • by Xiaran ( 836924 )
      Come in spinner.
      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        The traditional Anzac Day post-lunch two-up game will be missed by many. Although there are online versions, it's just not the same.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        Years ago, my town had a single police officer. Before it was legalised to play on Anzac Day, he would always find something to do out of town after lunch on Anzac Day. I suspect the current officer-in-charge is relieved he doesn't have to do it anymore.

  • What the heck is the connection between Anzac Day and open source software? The summary reads as if part of a completely unrelated story got accidentally dropped into the middle of a story about remembering a horrible war campaign.

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      In WWI , a "computer" was someone who did calculations for artillery trajectories or logistics. Often , soldiers unfit for front-line combat were re-assigned as computers, many with open wounds from the trenches. The fully qualified computers sometimes disparagingly called them "open sores computers".

    • What the heck is the connection between Anzac Day and open source software?

      There isn't any. These days the solution to most perceived problems seems to be "let's code an app".

      If warlike aliens do ever invade Earth, the only opposition will be a crowdfunded hackathon to create an app to register peoples' opinions on how much it hurts to be deminimalised to the fourth dimension irretrievably by their Positronic rays.

    • "Last year I had asked myself: are there any sites where there is only one Australian casualty, where nobody has visited them for Anzac Day?"

      There's Szentendre, where my mate Kevin from Goondiwindi went drinking and had his wallet nicked by one of the locals. Does that count?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

    Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

  • Mel Gibson starred in Mad Max back in 1979. Gallipoli was two years later.

  • What this anzacathon website really highlights is the blatant disrespect of the Australian public, including this pocock fellow, to the "other country" in the word ANZAC. The quote in the post here even shows this disrespect, talking only about single buried *austalian* soldiers. The website only adds to this frustration being completely filled with links to only-Australian websites and legals. Chur bro.

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