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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

elevationlab.com

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big is your item and how hard is it to search? If you know a bag has an airtag in it, it won't take that long to find.

If you get a bit creative you can definitely hide it well enough that "removing the air tag" is no longer the weak point in the plan. I've got a Pelican 1510 that has a suitcase-style pop up handle and wheels on it. It's just screwed on there. I took the screws out, took it off, filed the sides of the air tag down slightly so I could fit it in a little cranny and then held it in place with some black tape so it's har…

I have a feeling that thieves aren't going to spend any time fooling around if it isn't obvious, they'll dump the valuables out of the bag, and discard the bag.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#182
post #155

> My camera bag with $10k of gear was stolen from my car. When I saw the broken glass and empty backseat, I immediately pulled up FindMy to track the thief ... Aha, but that's not what AirTags are for, according to Apple at least. On https://www.apple.com/airtag Not a single mention of "theft" or "stolen". It will even politely inform the thief you have a tracker in your stuff: > AirTag is designed to discourage unwa…

Just as a thought experiment, what do you think would happen if Apple specifically advertised them as theft prevention tools?

Presumably people would start complaining that they're really bad at that, since they loudly make themselves known to any thief.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has not been my experience. I’ve had multiple AirTags notify me multiple times over a period of months that I needed to change the batteries.

So last week my keys AirTag was dead, and I checked my notifications and I only received one notification in October that it had a low battery, but to be fair, I don't know exactly when it died between October and last week. Maybe my batteries die completely before the second notification triggers.

Maybe they need an option for people like you called "smoke detector mode" where it starts to annoyingly beep once a minute.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is called an evolutionary stable strategy. (my favorite type of Nash equilibrium) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strate...

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but is any old car thief on the street going to hang on to a car they know has an airtag in it? They probably were going to joy ride it for the afternoon, maybe commit some other crime, wreck it, and dump it regardless. I have an airtag in my car, but I don't think I'm going to get much value out of it other than finding my car when I forget where I'm parked. If you want to catch a criminal in the act, you usu…

> but is any old car thief on the street going to hang on to a car they know has an airtag in it? No, and that's mostly the point right? If they get in the car, get an alert they're being tracked, then dump the car, at least you find it faster.

By the point it's stolen, it's probably already too little too late. Not only will it probably be going to some impound lot before I can get to it -- it'll probably be on track to be my insurance company's car at that point. Seeing it on a map might be fun for curiosity's sake at that point, I guess.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is fear of punishment the main reason you aren't out there stealing the things you want and killing those who get in your way?

Yes

interesting. the concept of that's not yours and is actually someone else's isn't the most compelling reason? very interesting

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#189
post #81

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, bu…

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.

I don't want someone to put razor wire on their catalytic converters so that it slices thieves' fingers off. I do, however, wish to leave the impression with thieves that perhaps my catalytic converter is protected by insanity armor.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#190
post #155

> My camera bag with $10k of gear was stolen from my car. When I saw the broken glass and empty backseat, I immediately pulled up FindMy to track the thief ... Aha, but that's not what AirTags are for, according to Apple at least. On https://www.apple.com/airtag Not a single mention of "theft" or "stolen". It will even politely inform the thief you have a tracker in your stuff: > AirTag is designed to discourage unwa…

Just as a thought experiment, what do you think would happen if Apple specifically advertised them as theft prevention tools?

> what do you think would happen if Apple specifically advertised them as theft prevention tools?

I don't know, I am not Apple, and I don't even have AirTags. What do you think would happen, it seems you already have an idea?

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