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Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

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Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#111

Post by nradov »

bluGill wrote: post #101
DaSHacka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All it took was one irresponsible employee handing their keys to a 16 YO. Sometimes not even. As a semi-related personal story, many years ago in university some friends and I set out to reverse-engineer the master keys. All it took was buying 10x of the same blank from an online retailer for ~$12, cutting 6/7 positions to the same dephs of our dorm keys, then iterating the last remaining position down one depth at…

> steam tunnels, roofs, and penthouses explored, Most of those should be explicitly open anyway. If a steam tunnel isn't safe for a few students to be in maintenance should need extra training to enter it as well. Roofs are too valuable spaces to make off limits (this is a rant should apply to all flat-top buildings). A penthouse might be a private space if so stay out, but many of them serve public functions at a un…

In the real world if urban colleges leave those spaces unlocked then random people who aren't even students will use them to sleep or get high. Have some sympathy for the maintenance staff who just want to do their jobs and keep the campus running without a lot of hassle.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#112

Post by bko »

gslepak wrote: post #55
bko wrote: post #4

I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. For instance, find out where porch thieves like to hit. Plant a package there and park a patrol car there for a few hours and chances are you'll catch someone. Or put in a tracker. A cop can get a bike stolen in hours in the right neighborhoods in NYC. If a youtuber can park their car wit…

> I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. I've come to believe people who make statements like this were previously chanting "ACAB".

I can assure you I was never chanting ACAB

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#113

Post by mindslight »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90
bityard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not strange at all. Driving is dangerous enough as it is. Adding the extra anxiety of getting lit up by a speed-limit camera for accidentally exceeding the speed limit does not make it safer. Plus, we Americans are inventive. If there were no traffic cops, the wealthy and mischievous would simply modify their cars to hide their license plates when driving past speeding cameras on their normal route.

> the wealthy and mischievous would simply modify their cars to hide their license plates when driving past speeding cameras on their normal route This is a good way to meet the local police in any jurisdiction with cameras. We hate speed cameras because Americans like to speed. There is a minority that is privacy focussed. But the majority hate it because most we drive unsafely [1]. [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016…

We "speed" because speed limits are used not as a tool for defining normative behavior and policing rare outliers, but rather as feel good social engineering - similar to the war on drug users. Note how that AAA's article definition of unsafe wholly depends on what roads have been signed.

There's a stretch of through road around me that had been signed a low 30 my whole life - straight with perfect visibility, sidewalks, decent house setbacks, backyards for most activities, etc. The prevailing speed is 40 (adding 10 is standard and accepted around here). I've never seen or heard of any kind of crash on it.

I tended to keep it to 35 because my parents were always complaining about getting tickets on it [0], and as I got older I decided it wasn't worth worrying about (I would generally end up being tailgated for this). But recently, the city ratcheted it down further to a ridiculous 25 [1]. Since the customary speed is now so far over the sign I've just given up and go 40-45 now while spending the effort to scan for cops.

[0] in retrospect I think they were just unobservant, since there's nowhere really for a cop to hide. I've only ever seen cops sit in one place, and it might as well have a big red arrow pointing at it

[1] along with a lot of other roads, I think they must have gotten a quantity break on the signs. Or maybe just a bad case of affluenza.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#114

Post by cocojumbo123 »

VancouverMan wrote: post #74
bArray wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because policing in general is not at the standard it once was. Currently police are only rewarded for "big busts", but it's the smaller crimes that make all the difference to the individual. In the UK for example, only something like 4% of burglaries get investigated at all. We're talking about the police not turning up at all. A neighbour down the street had a car stolen from their drive, under no less…

[flagged]

No offence but you are mixing socialist policies, socialism and communism - very different things; I'm unaware of any communist country which goes soft on crime.

I also fail to see how premise leads to conclusion.

If you want another wacky theory here's mine: imho capitalism unleashed (extract every single penny) leads to less time to be active in a community because people have to work more.

On another hand loss of religion leads to hedonism - satisfy the immediate needs.

Combine the two and you get what we have today.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#115

Post by l1tany11 »

bko wrote: post #4

I've come to believe that acceptance of crime is a choice by officials. Many low level crimes I've witnessed are trivial to catch. For instance, find out where porch thieves like to hit. Plant a package there and park a patrol car there for a few hours and chances are you'll catch someone. Or put in a tracker. A cop can get a bike stolen in hours in the right neighborhoods in NYC. If a youtuber can park their car wit…

Most of policing is scarecrow. Deterrence is the name of the game. One time my credit card number was stolen, and they purchased airline tickets for more than $1000. I reported it, but was told nothing would happen. They already have police at the airport, I can’t imagine how it could be easier to catch the thief, but no effort was even given.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#116

Post by joquarky »

emilamlom wrote: post #107
VancouverMan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you really making a thinly-veiled argument for ethnostates? Careful, your racism is showing. Society isn't an algorithm that should be optimized for max efficiency/productivity anyways. A completely unregulated market like you allude to is like an ouroboros. It will consume itself because unchecked growth is unsustainable.

As I approach 50, I'm gradually realizing that efficiency was a red herring.

It turns out that I meant to strive for all my life is called "wu wei", but it's not well known in our culture, so "efficiency" seemed like the closest match to what I was seeking.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#117

Post by joquarky »

mindslight wrote: post #113
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the wealthy and mischievous would simply modify their cars to hide their license plates when driving past speeding cameras on their normal route This is a good way to meet the local police in any jurisdiction with cameras. We hate speed cameras because Americans like to speed. There is a minority that is privacy focussed. But the majority hate it because most we drive unsafely [1]. [1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2016…

We "speed" because speed limits are used not as a tool for defining normative behavior and policing rare outliers, but rather as feel good social engineering - similar to the war on drug users. Note how that AAA's article definition of unsafe wholly depends on what roads have been signed . There's a stretch of through road around me that had been signed a low 30 my whole life - straight with perfect visibility, sidew…

If DOTs really cared about safety, they would label persistent dangers explicitly rather than attempt to encapsulate the signaling of dangers by a single variable.

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#118

Post by brendoelfrendo »

brigadier132 wrote: post #92
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does someone like that become a DA? Presumably by going to law school, doing work in the DA's office, and eventually campaigning for election. His track record as DA notwithstanding, I think it should be obvious that the crimes of the parents are not the crimes of the child, and I think it's kinda funny that you'd make that claim in a thread about policing actual crime.

> that the crimes of the parents are not the crimes of the child Yeah, this is some more idealistic nonsense. Children should obviously not be criminally persecuted for being the child of evil people but being the child of and raised by terrorists (and other evil people) should automatically disqualify you from certain jobs. Given Chesa Boudin's actual track record and the fact he was recalled I think history proves…

> Why do you think it's funny?

Because we're talking about policing actual crime and you're talking about punishing people who haven't committed any crime at all.

> Given Chesa Boudin's actual track record and the fact he was recalled I think history proves my point.

I don't think you can make the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree" argument when the tree is "bank robber" and the apple is "made questionable policy decisions as DA."

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#119

Post by mattdmrs »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #86
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is strangely staunchly opposed to traffic cameras, whereas you barely ever see cops on the roads in many EU countries, and yet traffic tickets flow abundantly.

this is a good thing, I think. Traffic safety is about feedback that changes behaviour - immediate feedback. Traffic cameras and photo radar are about revenue generation. Imagine if you pull aside your toddler tonight and take away their ice cream cone, because they sad a bad word 2 weeks ago.

I like how you compared car drivers to toddlers in terms of behaviour change

Re: Californian fed up with stolen mail sends Apple AirTag to herself to catch thief

#120

Post by black6 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #80
jonhohle wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t this the broken windows philosophy that may or may not have reduced crime in NYC in the mid 90s? It seems like cracking down on low level crime should reduce bigger crimes, but the research seems to become politicized based on who instituted the policy.

The cost of punishment has also skyrocketed. Keeping someone in jail "a few years to cool off" costs a fortune.

I've said it before: we need the Starship Troopers style public floggings for all crime. Eliminate expensive jails, and corporeally punish the offenders immediately and publically.
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