Is a movie prop the ultimate laptop bag?

> For me, the ultimate laptop bag is one that looks nothing like a laptop bag; it should look like nothing special at all.

That sounds like almost any regular backpack then. They can also be pretty weather proof, don't need to be carried in one hand, aren't open topped showing what's inside easily, and padded. Any simple and cheap backpack would solve this exact problem but better surely, unless your desire is to be different rather than just to move your laptop from one place to another with little ceremony.

> regular backpacks look nothing like a laptop bag

You're missing some context here — this is in San Fransisco.

> Any simple and cheap backpack

Where I'm from, a simple and cheap backpack is just as much a target as a laptop bag. The only solution is to just keep an eye on your stuff, and be aware of your surroundings, at all times.

I don't even live in SF but I'm a bit skeptical that a lot of people even carry around an obvious dedicated laptop bag at this point. I don't see them.

When I lived in San Francisco, backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car. High-school students might carry a backpack, college students might carry a backpack, people on the bus might carry a backpack, but mostly not professionals who drove to work.

Maybe that's changed, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwWpqsI_3s purports to be from 02022, and in its first minute, I count 17 pedestrians of whom 4 are wearing backpacks. So maybe backpacks are mainstream in SF now.

I've had my car burgled twice for them to only steal a backpack with nothing in it. I'm pretty sure the assumption is that backpacks have laptops.

Even if it's marginalized, you can still just use it. I think I used to think that way in high school, but it's hard for me to understand functioning adults avoiding a type of bag, otherwise useful, because it's associated with being poor.

Isn’t looking poor a good strategy for being an unattractive target for theft?

Maybe you're used to being around functioning adults who don't need other people's approval, for example because they're rich.

No, police punish theft from rich people, not theft from poor people.

> and padded

I prefer to use a laptop sleeve, and then it doesn't matter if it is padded or not.

> Isn’t looking poor a good strategy for being an unattractive target for theft?

Looking poor is also an expression of wealth where wealth is defined money one has not yet spent which provides options in the future. (Source "The Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel.)

What is 02202? A postal code?

I'm in the suburban Seattle area, and many, many adult professionals carry a backpack...even when they commute a few miles by car and walk 100 feet into their offices.

Good thing my backpack was stolen so I won’t look poor when I go into the police station to report the theft.

I'm guessing they use 5 digits for displaying the year. 02022 = 2022.

He wrote 02022. It's the year in a Long Now [0]context, avoiding the Y10K problem that's just around the corner.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

I always wonder why no one invented hoodies or jacket with some kind of built in laptop pocket in the back.

Sounds like generally good advice, with or without a laptop on hand.

I'm glad to hear it.

Surveyors vests have those. Probably draw a lot of attention to yourself wearing hi viz though.

Police (and DA) in SF don't punish any theft from anyone in my experience.

It's only a Y10K problem if people assume that a year that happens to be 4 digits is existing in a system that doesn't permit years of 5 or more digits.

But as soon as you put a leading 0, (besides confusing people) you seem to be telling people to definitely use arbitrary fixed lengths for years and analogous purposes. Even though they weren't necessarily doing that before.

Sincerely,

    "neilv                           "

Some of scottevest's can apparently fit a laptop in the pocket: https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/comments/6w2p0o/scottevest_o...

Maybe it's just startup life, but living in SF during the 2010s decade, I didn't know many people who drove to work. Who wants to sit in traffic and then pay like $300 a month in parking fees when you can sit in traffic on MUNI vehicles for much less, while doing something useful?

Even people who lived in the farther-out suburbs usually drove to BART.

By car? Where they all parking?

Cringe (him, not you)

These comments always make me laugh a bit. When the conversation is about cars, people chime in about how owning a car is dumb and public transpo is great. Yet, when the stories pop up about how public transpo is failing, people complain about how horrible the experience of using public transpo is and it's just easier to own a car

I have to admit I prefer living in places where you can leave your laptop on the front seat of your running car and come back twenty minutes later and it’s all still there.

But that’s a luxury and I know it.

> I prefer living in places where you can leave your laptop on the front seat of your running car and come back twenty minutes later and it’s all still there.

We have that and it's one of the few perks of our suburban hell. My neighbor was gone for two weeks and had 10-20 packages on his doorstep. Our only concern was that rain might get to them.

In this millennium humans have not yet begun using five digit years. Otherwise, nice job covering your time travelling tracks.

I really hate this! Long ago, I had a quarterlight window smashed because someone broke into my 20 year old Toyota Corolla to steal a 4L, but half empty bottle of engine oil and a street directory. Obviously the engine oil wasn't expensive, and no-one used street directories anymore, even back then.

This was in nice suburb in New Zealand, so it was a bit of a surprise. The replacement window cost many times the value of what they took, and I was finding small pieces of glass for a while afterwards despite careful vacuuming.

Since then I'm more careful that there is nothing removable visible at all through windows. Ideally, anyone looking through the window should think I am the kind of compulsive person that carries every single thing inside each night. Unfortunately, the trick to making that work almost requires it to be true.

Two different groups of people commenting different things.

Kragen not human?

>When I lived in San Francisco, backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car. High-school students might carry a backpack, college students might carry a backpack, people on the bus might carry a backpack, but mostly not professionals who drove to work.

Huh? By extension you seem to be implying anyone who doesn't drive to work is not a "professional", which is bananas.

Smart people took Caltrain, BART, or a company sponsored gentrification shuttle into work and reclaimed the time they'd spend driving to "work". (AKA shitpost -- I noticed a remarkable uptick in trolling during commute hours back in the days I lived in the bay during rush hour.)

Anyways, no, carrying a backpack is not a sign someone is "poor" in SF, or anywhere else -- it's usually a sign they value their back.

Some folks wear messenger bags instead, but those were usually bicyclists.

Also keyword is "looking" poor. 300 hundred dollar jeans, fifty thousand dollar hybrid civics -- meanwhile, my Casio got a lot of curt remarks.

How long ago was that? I’m 40, grew up in the SF Bay Area, and never had that impression.

Any city, an office drone carrying a container has good odds of holding a laptop.

Ha! I used to be a land surveyor before I was an engineer. I had one of those vests and yes, I did put a laptop in there a few times during lunch breaks when I didn't want to leave the laptop in the truck.

It's possible to have lots of different experiences across the many people with different lifestyles who might interact with public transportation. I loved my bus lines when I lived in sf because they were safe and super convenient and I hated city parking and I don't have kids. I can imagine the bus being crappy if those things aren't true.

> backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car.

The majority of all commuters in SF do not commute by car: https://www.sf.gov/data--vision-zero-benchmarking-commute-me...

This has been true for at least a decade. The trend, even ignoring COVID, is that a decreasing proportion do so.

We had just moved into a small town and then left for a week or so in the winter; the sheriff tracked down my phone (presumably from there real estate agent) and called to make sure we were OK when the driveway didn’t get plowed after a snowstorm.

Because a) it would be awkward to remove and replace the laptop from a slot on your back, and 2) sitting down in any chair with a back would be uncomfortable at best, and potentially damage your laptop.

> fifty thousand dollar hybrid civics

Bro - the highest trim line civic hybrid has an MSRP under $35k…

No, it's an affectation.

You don't need to be rich to have enough backbone to do your own thing, and not worry what someone else might think.

Maybe... I mean in the sense that the median lifestyle in North America is 90-some percentile in the world. Is that even true?

Field vests for biologists or other folks who work outdoors but not near a highway or construction site have lots of pockets and aren't hi-viz.

They have!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBQBKseozuY

https://www.less-is.jp/products/bagless-shirt_less-is-jp

Honestly I don't know how date parsing code coped back when we ticked over from 999 to 1000, a lot of monastic accounting software must have shit the bed.

Anyway I'm creating the Long Long Now Foundation to solve the shortsighted 5-digit year issue. Look for more news in Q000001 of 002026

I see people who look like hedge fund managers wearing backpacks (obviously not Jansport). VCs and founders certainly do. Go on Bart- most people have a backpack. Nothing to do with whether you own a car. Driving to and/or parking in the city is a nightmare.

Type R gets up there

It's simpler than that: the assumption is that a bag will hold something of value, whether laptop, purse, wallet, cash, or otherwise

Username makes me a little apprehensive nonetheless

  The majority of all commuters in SF do not commute by car

A plurality do (35% in 2022 vs 17% via transit). Remote work knocked down the percentage that commute by car a bit, but took a bigger chunk out of the other modes (e.g. 34% used transit in 2018 but 17% in 2022).

I've used a messenger bag for decades and never felt marginalized in the least. Plenty of other folks seem to rock employer swag backpacks. vOv

I dunno about drawing attention. I've heard enough stories of physical pentesters getting into secure areas using the "wear a hi-viz vest and a hard hat" strategy. The outfit seems a little like Douglas Adams' "Somebody Else's Problem Field". People seem to be blind to the stereotypical "workman" getup.

Assuming it's an octal number: 1042.

Yeah I don't get why I don't see these more often. I have a case around my MacBook and it's a pretty good protector. My tip: get something cheap from Amazon. I tried the Incase Hardshell and it broke within a year.

> This was in nice suburb in New Zealand, so it was a bit of a surprise.

A friend had her ancient Toyota’s back window smashed in and they stole an old dirty blanket lying on the back seat that they could have gotten for free from any number of places (clean and in better condition)

In a warm climate New Zealand suburb.

My takeaway at the time was that a subset of thieves will steal anything, with zero rational basis and no regard for consequences.

A paper bag would be just as enticing.

Laptop sleeve are nice, I used to use them... but they need to be the _perfect_ size for your laptop.

Otherwise they are hard to open/close if they are just a bit too small, or they are floppy if they are too big.

I currently have three laptops, they all have their own dimensions. So I would need three sleeves to carry anyone of them at any given time. For work, I switched between three sizes in the last two years.

Meanwhile, my 5yo hiking backpack with a water pouch dedicated space is able to carry any of those laptops safely.

Yup simple laptop sleeve with a good zip and a reliable handle works well for me. In case of inclement weather there's a ziplock bag inside big enough for the laptop.

That goes inside another thin bag for safe carry. If I'm visiting somewhere new and carrying other things, bag-in-bag works well; leave the day bag in the conference room, the thin bag with the laptop comes with me.

Such jokes are a luxury as well

>no-one used street directories anymore

I disagree! Out in the woods, a few pages ripped out of an old street directory found in the trunk once saved my ass... quite literally. Couldn't have used a smartphone or GPS for that!

>Ideally, anyone looking through the window should think I am the kind of compulsive person that carries every single thing inside each night.

When I have to park my car in a shady-looking spot, I usually open my glove box to reveal nothing but garbage inside, and a note saying "nothing to steal here". I obviously can't prove this works, but I would like to believe it does, because thieves might consider it a courtesy that saves them unnecessary hassle.

Not if you're willing to die. Otherwise you do.

Sure, it's just ...pretty odd? for OP to say "backpacks were marginalized as being associated with being too poor to own a car" when it's 65% of people who do not use a car in this context at all.

(aside: transit is up to 25% again recently, apparently; https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/remote-work-home.... And that graph has an even more interesting number which is that in 2019 transit was the plurality.)

This was 20-25 years ago. No Uber Cab, no Google shuttles, no e-bikes, no rental scooters, Caltrain was diesel and hadn't been renovated, and there was no real-time tracking of Muni buses' positions, so unless you were taking an express bus, you had no idea when the bus would arrive at the stop. And a large part of San Francisco's population was still poor.

There were a lot of people who didn't use a car in that context at all, but people who could mostly did.

The time I'm talking about was before company-sponsored gentrification shuttles and before shitposting. I agree that the society was pretty bananas, which is part of why I left.

I'm sure you can find even more things to sneer at me about. Perhaps you would find my choice of programming languages flamboyant and my attire effeminate, as well.

You may be in the wrong place. Hacker News is not for posting comments about how you are superior to people you find contemptible. Kindergarten is that way →

My guess, from experience: they assumed the blanket was hiding something of value underneath it.

One thing I learned living in a dangerous area was that you should keep zero visible things inside your car when it's parked, otherwise someone will smash the window. :(

Suburban office parks still have lots of parking.

As do suburban neighborhoods.

I didn't say owning a car was dumb, just that driving to downtown SF specifically for an office job is pretty inconvenient and expensive and therefore most of my startup colleagues didn't do that.

Also it's hardly a hot take, I am sure 90% of the ones who do that commute would agree!

Are people... dying for using unfashionable laptop bags? That's terrible.

No, people are dying because they can't get good enough jobs, which is 100% contingent on what other people think of them, or because they've been ostracized from their previous support structure, or because they're depressed and commit suicide, or because they're divorced and alone. Very few people can get away without worrying about what anyone else thinks of them.

Perhaps it's a coincidence that Joe O'Brien died this week at 48 or 49 https://old.reddit.com/r/rails/comments/1nn3jel/joe_obrien_1... after being ostracized from the Ruby community†. But there aren't many people who die that young. Social isolation is a top risk factor for depression.

______

† for, in my view, good reason: he fired his employee after she turned him down when he sexually assaulted her in a bar. I don't think he deserved to die for this, but I also wouldn't have wanted to hang out with him.

Type R isn’t the hybrid civic