301–310 of 508 posts
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I want to see AirTags built into all mobile Apple devices. iPhone, iPad, remotes. With it's own rechargeable battery, it would be really useful when my silly kid forgets where he left his iPad.
The find my network is supposed to be that already - Apple devices even ping when turned off. Try opening “find my” and clicking devices. If you all share a family account, their iPad should display its location.
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In addition, carrying a knife on you without a good reason is a crime in itself - and yes going home with a knife you just purchased is a perfectly valid reason. But having a knife on you "just in case" is not, unless you live in the middle of nowhere or are a farmer or something. Get stopped in the middle of London with a knife and that's a serious crime.
I must say, as an adult in the habit of carrying a lockback folding knife whenever I leave the house, a practice I ultimately owe to Lord Baden-Powell, I found it.. discomfiting that this benign practice is illegal in London. Lovely city in general, one of my very favourites, but there's something grim about that. "Be Prepared" was considered a perfectly valid reason at one time. Still is in hmm. Many places.
[1] https://www.onlondon.co.uk/the-number-of-homicides-in-london...
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I have an AirTag in my car. I can always find my parking spot. I use this more often than to find my keys.
That's a creative use I hadn't thought of before. I guess it probably wouldn't help me since I use CarPlay, which causes the phone to save the parking location automatically, but I can definitely see a use case there.
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Wow. Not disagreeing with or commenting on that policy at all, but I had no idea knives were treated so seriously in the UK (and presumably elsewhere). Meanwhile in much of the US, not only can you can openly carry a gun around, you don’t even need a permit. Just wow. The world is vast and strange.
The Brits don't have a 2A. We have it because of the Brits. Life isn't that strange if you follow it back. They have knife bans because they never let their citizens have guns, so there are knife attacks, so they ban knives. That's why terrorists when they can't sneak AK47s in, rely on vans to run people over, that's why there are bollards everywhere. Chemical attacks, axes and such can also be used to kill or harm p…
I don't think knife bans have anything to do with the the 2A or the lack thereof. Knives can be seriously dangerous weapons, and in an urban environment, the stealth afforded by a knife over a gun presents further menace.
Android users are still vulnerable, and these announcements do nothing to reduce that. All a stalker needs to do, is remove the speaker. To detect a rogue AirTag, an Android owner needs to: 1) know AirTags exist (many obviously don't) 2) go out of their way to install Apple's Android AirTag scanner app (only 100k-500k worldwide have done so according to Google Play stats) 3) manually open the scanner app and scan, si…
Trackers have been around for years . Tile came out in 2014, and Samsung has their own Galaxy tracker line for a while now. Neither have anti-stalking features of any kind to this day. If one was stuck on your car, you wouldn't get an alert or any info on who placed it there, be you an iPhone user or an Android user. And before that, there were GPS trackers which have bigger batteries and were more accurate (if a bit…
Very true, the only real difference is that Airtags are simply a better product, but that means their use as stalking devices (along with their legitimate uses) is now much more practical and casual.
I think the real long-term solution is for Apple to open up the U1 chip/protocol so at the very least Google/Tile/Samsung are able to implement the same countermeasures Apple has, if not use it in their own tracker devices. It would probably cost them revenue, but I imagine it would be worth it compared to the negative press they're getting from this, particularly since they're also making huge strategic missteps wrt App Store 3rd party payments.
Are airtags still useful for eg. tracking a stolen bike? Or will it now alert the thief within minutes that the bike contains a tracker?
Destroy the speaker and hide the device inside a tire, steerer tube, or other such place? I mean the thief will get notified, but what are they going to do? Dismount tires, disassemble steering assembly, remove the grips, undo the saddle, bottle mount, Garmin mount, bash guard, lights, etc? This all takes time and skill, it can’t be done on the spot and if they dragged the bike home or to a fence they have already di…
Might be useful: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuarg , a third-party Android app, can force an AirTag to make a sound even if Apple hasn't determined that tag has been following you (the BLE characteristic is unauthenticated: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard/blob/main/app/src/mai... ) HN discussion: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories (298 points, 150 comments) ht…
At what point do you go “you know, the low severity problem we’re solving (finding my keys) is probably not worth creating high severity problems like stalking and sexual assault?”
Might be useful: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuarg , a third-party Android app, can force an AirTag to make a sound even if Apple hasn't determined that tag has been following you (the BLE characteristic is unauthenticated: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard/blob/main/app/src/mai... ) HN discussion: AirGuard: Protect yourself from being tracked by AirTags and Find My accessories (298 points, 150 comments) ht…
AirGuard is great. They optimized the app to the point that it doesn't even show up in my Android device's battery usage statistics anymore. It's a set and forget app that scans for AirTags in the background automatically, but also when you trigger a manual scan. It's free and open source.
Apple's Tracker Detect app for Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...) doesn't have automatic scanning, and requires the user to open the app and tap the button to manually scan for AirTags. It also forces the user to wait 10 minutes before they can make the AirTag emit a sound. I'm glad that the Technical University of Darmstadt made a better solution and released the source code, too.