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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

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673 points dmd | 8 comments | 18 Dec 24 18:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.434s | source | bottom
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jmull ◴[19 Dec 24 19:42 UTC] No.42465013[source]▶
I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story...

Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained?

How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway?

If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, but that's going to take more time, during which the thief is even more likely to ditch the AirTag.

Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device. They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.

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elzbardico ◴[19 Dec 24 21:28 UTC] No.42465858[source]▶
A lot of those thiefs are not hardened criminals, because the payoff for this kind of crime is usually a small fraction of the actual value of the things stolen. Most of time it is the average wimpy addict and the reason he resort to this kind of criminal activity is preciselly because he is not ready for the violent potential of more profitable criminal activities.

If you relativelly fit, and have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts, it is not that stupid to try to recover your stuff.

If you don't feel confortable with the prospect of any kind of violent confrontation or don't have the street smarts to evaluate the risk potential of saidconfrontation, you'd still have the hope that the police would do something anyway if you have the location of your goods.

Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.

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1. citizenpaul ◴[19 Dec 24 22:46 UTC] No.42466529[source]▶
>stop glorifying cowardice

I mostly agree. I don't think its cowardice most of the time though. Its that laws now favor criminals if you attempt to do anything yourself. Its become public policy that "rich" people buying things can simply absorb the loss and the police don't even have to do anything because no one bothers to report it. The police win because crime stats go down, thiefs win because they get the goods, the victim absorbs all the cost and if they try to do anything the victim goes to jail for whatever charges that made the police have to get up and work.

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2. netsharc ◴[20 Dec 24 00:24 UTC] No.42467164[source]▶
> Its that laws now favor criminals if you attempt to do anything yourself.

That just reads like a general "this is why I'm a coward" excuse.

Also what you want is spelled "It's".

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3. spacebanana7 ◴[20 Dec 24 00:48 UTC] No.42467273[source]▶
It’s a good excuse because it’s a fair description of why cowardice is rational in many western legal contexts.
4. weakfish ◴[20 Dec 24 03:44 UTC] No.42468090[source]▶
Can I get a source on any of these claims?

Tbf, I am generally anti-police in the sense that they’re pretty institutionally bad at preventing or deterring crime in the current model, but I don’t really understand the argument you’re making here

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5. zonkerdonker ◴[20 Dec 24 08:15 UTC] No.42469209[source]▶
Not a source (and I'm also not GP), but 'duty to retreat' laws exist even in many states in the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_retreat

Just google property crime + [any largeish US city] + reddit and youll find dozens of anecdotal stories from citizens.

Property crime seems to have essentially become a problem dealt with exclusively by citizens. Hell, SPD wouldnt even do anything to help when my car was stolen a few years ago. I got a call from the bar where it was abandoned and had to have it towed myself.

I think the argument GP was making was that of incentives. Police department have essentially zero incentive to devote time+manpower to petty theft or property crime, so the easiest solution is to simply encourage citizens to not 'resist' so to speak. If you get mugged, its a lot easier to deal with as a police officer if you simply hand them your wallet, vs starting a fist/knife/gun fight in the streets.

6. michaelt ◴[20 Dec 24 14:13 UTC] No.42471210[source]▶
I don't agree with citizenpaul

But I do know if you're a homeless drug addict and you commit a crime that makes the cops throw you in jail - that's three meals a day, somewhere warm to sleep, and no lost income because you didn't have any income.

Whereas if you're a member of the middle class and you commit the same crime and get thrown in the same jail? Mucho lost income, you can't pay your mortgage, you get fired for not showing up at work, and as a convict your employment prospects become much, much worse.

So a "rational" member of the middle class might opt not to fight a homeless drug addict over $500 simply because they've got a lot more to lose.

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7. mrguyorama ◴[20 Dec 24 17:44 UTC] No.42473123{3}[source]▶
>that's three meals a day, somewhere warm to sleep

I don't know why people always parrot this like a fact. Plenty of prisons serve only two woefully inadequate meals a day (like, Fyre festival sandwich levels of inadequate) and prisons generally have atrocious climate control. In the southern states, they don't have air conditioning and it gets genuinely dangerous for the prisoners.

Some jurisdictions give the Warden a budget for feeding the prisoners, and any dollar they don't spend, they get to KEEP. This predictably results in malnourished prisoners, but Americans do not have the empathy to care most of the time.

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8. MikeRichardson ◴[21 Dec 24 16:21 UTC] No.42480487{4}[source]▶
> any dollar they don't spend, they get to KEEP

I'd love a source on that.