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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

(www.elevationlab.com)
673 points dmd | 8 comments | 18 Dec 24 18:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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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encoderer ◴[19 Dec 24 20:06 UTC] No.42465202[source]▶
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.

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mattmaroon ◴[20 Dec 24 00:33 UTC] No.42467222[source]▶
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.
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1. happyopossum ◴[20 Dec 24 03:08 UTC] No.42467927[source]▶
“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-....

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2. nox101 ◴[20 Dec 24 03:21 UTC] No.42467989[source]▶
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?
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3. valleyer ◴[20 Dec 24 05:40 UTC] No.42468582[source]▶
You're assuming independence, almost certainly incorrectly.
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4. nox101 ◴[20 Dec 24 07:25 UTC] No.42468998{3}[source]▶
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%).

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5. bagels ◴[20 Dec 24 07:41 UTC] No.42469066{4}[source]▶
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.
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6. valleyer ◴[20 Dec 24 09:59 UTC] No.42469658{4}[source]▶
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.

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7. nox101 ◴[20 Dec 24 14:03 UTC] No.42471135{5}[source]▶
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)
8. ◴[20 Dec 24 14:11 UTC] No.42471198{5}[source]▶