Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stolen, what should we do?

Re:Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stol... by ChuckMcM on Saturday September 07, 2013 @05:26PM (#6346684)

I agree, Storage isn't that much of an issue these days and six web cams around the place feeding into portable USB drives is pretty simple to set up with a RasPi these days. Then you have the chance of adding a face to the police report as well.

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Re:Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stol... by gugol on Saturday September 07, 2013 @05:40PM (#6346725)

WTF? There are systems for doing that task specifically, why would you want to build one from scratch?

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Re:Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stol... by ChuckMcM on Saturday September 07, 2013 @06:43PM (#6346918)

Well assuming the Hackathon is on a razor thin budget (which I grant you it may not be) might be able to support adding some equipment which can be tasked to other things when not hackathoning and can be installed/removed in a variety of venues. The WebCam/Pi/Disk system is about $100 (less if you use the Pi's camera module).

You absolutely could go out and buy a video surveillance system of course.

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Re:Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stol... by mindslight on Saturday September 07, 2013 @06:03PM (#6346808)

So that you can incorporate plausible deniability, selective disclosure, and secret-sharing based quorum. Do you really want to have created a system that gets subpoenaed for automated guilt-by-association when it turns out that one of the participants is being investigated for thoughtcrimes?

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Re:Ask HN: Running a hackathon and someone's laptop got stol... by tylerlh on Saturday September 07, 2013 @05:49PM (#6346755)

FWIW, building this out with a Pi is a trivial task and would probably end up much cheaper/more flexible in the long run.

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