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A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

elevationlab.com

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s left anywhere in the open at anytime, you can repossess it legally as well. This happens with auto repossessions all the time. You don’t owe anyone an explanation as it’s yours - just take it if you can do so safely.

Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft! File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the pol…

Some jurisdictions are great at protecting all the wrong people

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#362
post #94
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…

I've been wanting exactly this for so long. I want to bury an AirTag in my luggage, backpack, etc. and never think about it again. In those scenarios, it doesn't _need_ to be tiny. I'd rather trade compactness for longevity. However, an AirTag attached to my keys _should_ be small and it's easily accessible so I don't mind swapping the battery as needed.

This is really a non-issue. Your phone literally tells you when the tag's battery is low. I'd rather do that once every 365 days than having to carry 2 AA batteries for 365 days/year.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft! File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the pol…

I’d be curious what jurisdiction that is true. In my jurisdiction in the US it doesn’t matter if someone purchased the stolen goods or not, the goods still belong to the owner. This is sometimes called the "nemo dat" rule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money, but the goods still belong to the origi…

That is probably mostly a common law thing, and as the article notes

> however, in many cases, more than one innocent party is involved, making judgment difficult for courts and leading to numerous exceptions to the general rule that aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers and original owners

> The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money

Generally as long as the purchase is made in good faith, you are wrong. It is the original owner that needs to file a claim against the thief.

Obviously, what constitutes a sale in "good faith" is a rather imprecise science, although one steady element is the sales price: it needs to have been appropriate for the item. So for example a mint bicycle or antique coin should sell near sticker price.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all seriousness, if I put an Airtag on my $6k bike and it was stolen and it showed where it was. I'd be getting that bike back and not worrying too much about a confrontation. Worst case scenario I report it to police directly and it tells them exactly where it is. If something is stolen, if I don't know where it is that makes the problem 10x worse. At the very least the airtag shows where that item is (unless it…

My experience of an airtag on my stolen $300 bike was that the tag showed up in a location the cops told me was about a block away from a notorious chop shop in the city. I just sighed and bought a new bike.

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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#365

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.

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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Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can still thread the needle. The cases are identical except for one situation--if the air tag is difficult to find or remove. If you can't find or remove the air tag, then the option you have left to not be tracked is to separate yourself from the tracked thing. In the case of someone being stalked, that's inconvenient (that doesn't do it justice, but not really important to my point). In the case of some…

TBH your response makes me realize there's possibly a decent use case for bicycles with the right diameter tubing. > You can try a less reputable mechanic, but they're gonna be pissed when the cops come knocking asking about the stolen car sitting over there and you might not be going back there any time soon. So if you can't find and remove the air tag relatively quickly, what options do you have left? Probably make…

Not sure what year your WRX is but my my suggestion would be "cup holders". And I don't mean "leave it in a cup holder"--pop the boot off the hand brake and there's like one screw and some clips to remove the cup holders from the center console and then an absolute _ton_ of space underneath. Even if someone _was_ looking there, there's room to hide it (hell, it's carpeted so a discreet hole in the carpet could hide it well).

If you put it towards the back near the center console storage, even with a phone someone's going to be checking the cup holders, the center console storage, down beside the seats, the seat back pockets, under the seats, _in the seats_, etc first. Then rechecking them. Then checking them again. Like you say, those would all be "normal" places to put it or drop it.

But you'll be able to pull it out and replace the battery or something in like 20 minutes when you had to do it once a year with nothing but a phillips screwdriver.

Alternatively, if you don't mind listening to it rattle around sometimes, from what I hear from people who have dropped rings and things into the under seat vents... you basically need to remove the entire interior to get in there. I'd get the 10 year battery first though.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#367
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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-... .

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?

You're assuming independence, almost certainly incorrectly.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Presumably quite often the bag and the airtag are worth more than the contents?!

In my case definitely not.

If I had nothing of value or only antifragile things I'd just throw everything in an old backpack. The reason I own the pelican case is for when I'm flying with $15k of computers, camera gear, etc. If anything I'd see the pelican case as _increasing_ my risk of it being stolen (who puts some clothes and some deodourant and a toothbrush in a $500 hard case?), but massively decreasing my risk of physical damage which is way more likely.

The air tag isn't even really in there for "sophisticated thieves stole my stuff" purposes so much as "airline made me gate check it and now they've lost it" purposes. Though I imagine the air tag and some basic padlocks would definitely help my chances with most unsophisticated thieves.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#369
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…

A lot of those thiefs are not hardened criminals, because the payoff for this kind of crime is usually a small fraction of the actual value of the things stolen. Most of time it is the average wimpy addict and the reason he resort to this kind of criminal activity is preciselly because he is not ready for the violent potential of more profitable criminal activities. If you relativelly fit, and have some experience wi…

Being fit doesn’t do anything against a knife or a fire-gun, is not being a coward, it’a just the logical conclusion. The people who want to stay fit in order to potentially fight burglars/thieves are doing it wrong, they should train in either gun use or how to better handle a knife. And, of course, have an expensive lawyer at the ready in case something goes wrong and you actually get to physically hurt said thief/burglar.

Re: A 10-Year Battery for AirTag

#370
I know the concept here is set it and forget it, but still: wouldn't it make more sense to have a smaller (but still probably larger than the current setup) rechargeable battery? I admit I haven't done any research on this, but the Magic Mouse/Keyboard seem to prove the concept of a rechargeable battery lasting months at least, and the Apple Watch proves the idea of wireless charging in a compact form factor, so it seems likely you could produce something that 1. Still roughly fits the AirTag physical profile (i.e. could be used as a dog tag, which this certainly could not) and lasts for months at least and is easily rechargeable. And again, I get that I'm making it require more maintenance rather than (effectively) zero maintenance with this product, but the wireless recharging makes that maintenance much less of a burden than sourcing and swapping a watch battery.
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