A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

There exists a small percentage of men who will go absolutely savage on somebody for stealing from them, and the existence of those people is probably a bigger crime deterrent than the police.

So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.

This is called an evolutionary stable strategy. (my favorite type of Nash equilibrium)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strate...

Ah yes very insightful. My comment has net 50 karma at the moment — more evidence this is a stable behavior with majority support.

I don't want someone to put razor wire on their catalytic converters so that it slices thieves' fingers off. I do, however, wish to leave the impression with thieves that perhaps my catalytic converter is protected by insanity armor.

When I lived in California I wrapped a bunch of chain around the cat on my truck. Wasn't actually that secure but thieves see a ton of chain and padlocks and go "ehhhh keep moving."

I believe that. A big part of security isn't making your property theftproof, but making it more work than your neighbor's.

You don't have to outrun the bear...

Razor wire is called that because it looks like a razor.

The danger is about the pointy shape.

I'd be careful climbing it, if you fall/slip it's way worse than barbed wire. (Not sure how to do it tactically)

I don't think it's that unethical to put it around the cat if it's obvious. It might be a danger in an accident or something.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_wire

Around the cat?

That must mean something different than I am imagining.

Those Persians look like fluffy dusters, but mess with a man's truck that one is guarding, and it'll flip out like a ninja angel of bloody vengeance.

When you buy a new F-150, a Persian guard cat is an even more essential add-on than a bed liner.

You'd think so, but America is the most armed country in the world and most of us have had something stolen. I think the overall sentiment is "I'm like 99% going to get away with this and pawn it for money" and they're right.

If you live in a city, yeah maybe.

I have 3 removed cats in the toolbox of my truck, which I don’t lock, and neither they nor the truck have been touched.

I even loaned the truck out to a rando on Facebook marketplace when I gave a fridge away, for free. Truck and cats came back

Not all AirTags exist within the US :)

There are other places? Really I just assumed he meant here because he mentioned people getting unnecessarily violent.

Short for catalytic converter.

I think that in your eagerness to malign cities, you might have missed the joke.

The very next day?

“and most of us have had something stolen”

I’m not sure that’s accurate. It may be true in large cities, but most people don’t live in NY or SF.

Yeah - the closest stat I can find works out to fewer than 2% of people per year are theft victims.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191247/reported-larceny-....

I mean I live in a city now (denser than any city in the Bay) and I left my truck unlocked for 3 months before I sold it.

Btw, in case this is relevant: if you have a 1st gen Tacoma, never sell that thing. Still miss that truck.

Given the average lifespan is ~80yrs then the average chance you've had something stolen over over say 40 years is much higher than 2%. It's 2% per year so ~45% for 30yrs and 55% for 40yrs?

You're assuming independence, almost certainly incorrectly.

I've had multiple belongings stolen while a grad student on an Ivy League campus, presumably that is not a shit hole but one of the wealthiest areas of America.

meaning?

My point isn't that those number are exact. My point is 2% chance per year expands to a larger number over many years. So saying "most people have experienced theft" many not be that far off. 2% is 1 in 50 but 55% is more than 1 in 2. My personal experience is would be 10 or 11 in 55yrs depending on whether an attempt counts

bike, bike, bike, car radio, car radio, car radio, car, car radio, bike, camera/dashcam/kindle, attempt (broke window to check for loot but didn't find anything). Still cost $$$ to replace window so you could say my window was stolen.

Also I didn't just multiply by the number of years. The probably for 100yrs is 86% (not 100% and not 200%).

The events are not independent. Maybe the first time you leave your bike outside you learn that it will be stolen, and then you don't do that anymore, reducing your future risk.

Where do you live that has no crime?

The US has a monopoly on people getting unnecessarily violent? That seems like a trope - projecting the stats of a few zip codes onto a very large and diverse nation.

For most people, the chance they are a victim of theft (VOT) in year 1 is correlated to the chance they are a VOT in year 2. So the probability that they are a VOT at least once in those two years is NOT simply (1 - (1 - 2%)^2). That formula only works when the two events are independent, like two coin flips.

As an obviously extreme example, imagine a world where 98% the people live in zero-crime areas, and the rest live in places where they are robbed annually.

In such a world, the percentage of people who were a VOT in a single year would be 2%, and it would not rise as you broadened to multiple years. (The same 2% of people would be targeted over and over.)

This is all just a roundabout way of stating the unfortunate fact that some people live in bad areas.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience.

We thought he was a goner.

Wealthiest area might also be one of the most unequal, and thus be theft prone.

New York and California are not even in the top 10 of thefts per 100k residents: https://www.statista.com/statistics/232583/larceny-theft-rat...

yes, and that 2% per year average figure takes that into account. The percent for your life is higher. You got robbed, do something to make it go down, it gets lower. Over the course of the average life, it ends up at 2% per year. It's probably highest around 15 to 25yrs old (have possessions, get robbed, learn to do differently) and lower at the end (except for getting robbed by scams which often target the elderly)

Off topic, but I was very pleased with how easy a catalytic converter shield was to install on my car. It’s normally sold and installed by a dealer, but if you have any semblance of DIY skill it’s straightforward.

96 250, non-diesel. I’ll never get rid of it.

I totally believe this, but now I want to check my assumption. Can anyone offer pointers to supporting evidence or research on it? Thanks

> Not sure how to do it tactically

A mattress thrown over

Single data point but I moved from the UK to the US 30 years ago and the prevalence of stuff being stolen is two orders of magnitude lower.