Hacker News Reader

svepurion Amazon Launches Snowball, a Storage Appliance for Importing Data to AWS by FedEx

Which all companies would need this service?

svepurion A robotic sewing machine could throw garment workers out of a job

Thats a good point.

svepurion Helicopter derives Power from its blades (Could make Drones self-sustainable?)

Almost all Quadcopters have a short flight time. According to DroneLifeStyle.com, it’s usually between 10-20 minutes. It is advised to carry an extra battery, or even several. Unfortunately, the recharging times range from 45-90 minutes. Looks like doing tricks and flips or changing altitude drains the battery because of the increase in power used on the motors. http://dronelifestyle.com/drone-buying-guide/

Perhaps this new technology will give a new life to drones (quadcopters) by making them self-sustainable in terms of energy consumption and production.

svepurion A robotic sewing machine could throw garment workers out of a job

Sustainability takes 3 aspects into consideration: Economical, Social, and Environmental. Inventing a glue and making the garment last 1000 washes makes sense environmentally, but think about the negative impact it has on the economies. Potentially, it will increase the unemployment related problems in many developing nations.

svepurion A robotic sewing machine could throw garment workers out of a job

Garment companies can make the working situations better by implementing sustainable work practices.

Sustainable Apparel Coalition is an organization working on this approach. Not working is not any better than working in a potentially dangerous place, which could turn better in the near future. http://apparelcoalition.org/

svepurion A robotic sewing machine could throw garment workers out of a job

You mean these workers need to be trained to handle machines? Perhaps thats going to be a huge challenge for the middle-age workers, who would have lived all their lives doing the craft work. Survival of the fittest!

svepurion A robotic sewing machine could throw garment workers out of a job

While I appreciate the advances in technology to sew garments, I wonder how this will negatively impact the economies, which are thriving because of the garment business.

svepurion Another African leapfrog: First drone highway in Rwanda 'by 2016'

Thanks for sharing this article. Looks like mgafrica.com is a source that most of us don't refer to.

The following details are pretty impressive - "Drones could account for 10% -15% of Africa’s transport sector in the next decade. The initial plan for Rwanda is to build three buildings that will enable the network to send supplies to nearly half of the country by 2020, the droneport proposal shows. Subsequent phases of the project could involve more than 40 droneports, rolled out like a network of petrol stations"

svepurion The nuke detectives – New ways to detect covert nuclear weapons

Thanks for that suggestion :)

svepurion The nuke detectives – New ways to detect covert nuclear weapons

This article explains how satellites can detect "underground" nuclear explosions http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/satellites-can-detect-u...

svepurion Ask HN: As a startup CTO, how do I protect my web app from security threats?

Check this link http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/22/security-for-startups-in-10... It may help to some extent.

svepurion Ask HN: As a startup CTO, how do I protect my web app from security threats?

What are the more protections you are referring to in your last sentence?

svepurion Ask HN: As a startup CTO, how do I protect my web app from security threats?

Currently my webapp is built using PHP and MySQL LAMP stack and is hosted on AWS EC2. I have taken care to avoid SQL injections.

svepurion Ask HN: Which browser add-ons do you use, what for and how did you discover them?

I use Chrome and the following extensions 1) Wallaby - Helps me pick the credit card which can offer more rewards for a site. 2) Pocket - To save data for reading later. 3) Page Monitor - To monitor the changes in webpages. Eg: It alerts me when a book is returned to the library. Helps me in taking quick actions. 4) Selector Gadget - Helps identify the Xpath of CSS and HTML components in a webpage.

svepurion [dead]

I met the co-founder of inPDV in TechCrunch Disrupt in SFO. He claims that 2.5 billion people in Brazil don't have access to credit/ debit cards. Consequently, they can't buy anything online.

inPDV is offering a new mechanism using which people can pay online using cash. All that they have to do is select cash in the drop down list of payment methods. These payment accounts are connected to the user's mobile phone numbers. Reloading the balance is also easy.

svepurion Hackathon prize suggestions?

Duke University conducts a hackathon named HackDuke. In the last couple of years the theme has been Code for Good. HackDuke stresses on collaboration and not on competition. Participating teams build technical solutions to help non profits in fields such as education, health & wellness etc;

Prizes are usually categorized into two - grand prize and company sponsored.

The grand prize awarded to the winning team will be donated to one of the participating non-profits based on the team's choice. If you apply this strategy, which ever prize you award, it comes back to your charity. Almost no expenditure :)

However, there were a few sponsors, who wanted to give prizes to winners. To know more, please check this link http://spring2014.hackduke.org/prizes