Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland • Hacker News Board

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#171

Post by adolph » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:08 AM UTC

brookst wrote: post #14

bhouston wrote: post #3

A good Hollywood caper story would end with this being ultimately engineered by the tool vendors themselves in order to stimulate more demand for their goods.

That would be a good Hollywood ending. Sadly the world has become so credulous that people probably believe nutty conspiracy theories like that today. When two seconds of thought would make anyone realize that the conspiracy story is insane: professionals working at a company literally paying for criminal acts targeting their own customers, in support of a sales increase they could never get credit for, and which wou…

> people probably believe nutty conspiracy theories like that today.

Executives were upset about the newsletter’s coverage, so their employees set out to ruin the lives of the couple who ran the website, sending a funeral wreath, bloody pig face Halloween mask and other alarming items to their home, authorities said. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband’s name on it to their neighbor’s house and planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car, officials said.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/ebay-empl...

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#172

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:09 AM UTC

adolph wrote: post #167

throwup238 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really mean it in the quality of life sense as prison is pretty awful in most of the world, especially in developing countries. The 13th amendment codifies slavery into our prison system and few things are as barbaric in my mind. It's basically a few small rungs down from sacrificing prisoners to Quetzalcoatl and the rain gods, which is graphic but no more dehumanizing. States with prolific death penalties ju…

> It's basically a few small rungs down from sacrificing prisoners to Quetzalcoatl and the rain gods, which is graphic but no more dehumanizing. The sacrifice would then be laid on a stone slab, a chacmool, by four priests, and their abdomen would be sliced open by a fifth priest with a ceremonial knife made of flint. The most common form of human sacrifice was heart-extraction. . . . The cut was made in the abdomen…

[deleted]

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#173

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:18 AM UTC

cwmma wrote: post #125

google234123 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a regressive and defeatist attitude. We actually don't have to tolerate this in a society- those engaging in it should be punished and forcibly removed if they aren't able to change.

You misunderstand, the optimal amount of "loss" both internal and external, from Apple's perspective, is greater then zero. They know they could do straight forward things to reduce it, like put everything in the back room so you have to ask for it, or hire security guards to physically prevent theft. But they decided that would be worse for business to prevent all theft then to simply have a few people steal stuff.…

That's the relative optimal loss given the alternatives presented.

The absolute optimum is zero.

>It being easy for people to grab thousands of dollars worth of stuff and run out of the store is a choice they made intentionally.

Risking rape or death when I leave my house is a choice I make intentionally. That doesn't mean that murder is optimal or should be tolerated.

There are straight forward ways crime could be reduced if the public chooses.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#174

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:19 AM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #115

PointyDog wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Howard County for a year. With the combination of county income tax and affluent property taxes, every service was exceptionally well funded. Having lived in Mountain View & Sunnyvale, CA as well for a decade my experience was Howard County itself had quicker and better services than those cities. It doesn't surprise me at all that their police department is competent and helpful.

Exactly this. Since there's less crime in affluent areas, the police actually have time to investigate what get's ignored in other areas. By also solving these crimes, it tells the criminals to avoid those areas, it's kind of a feedback loop.

It helps if there are less affluent areas nearby where police are more overworked, as it easily shifts the problem to those areas instead. For example, King county in the Seattle area is notorious for not locking criminals up, but as long as Bellevue police send a bunch of cops to each incident, no longer how small, detain people and even send them to jail (even if they are quickly released), it’s enough of a disincentive to send the problem back to Seattle or to southern suburbs where police don’t have time for that.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#175

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:24 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #31

tamimio wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is the carpenter knows someone that knows someone in the police department that they actually did something, but in a normal situation, definitely they won’t bother.

Yeah, I pointed the police to someone who was selling fifty plus obviously stolen MacBooks and iPhones, including mine (all described as "locked", "no charger, no accessories", etc., etc.) and the could not possibly care less. "He probably was not the one who stole them." "Isn't it still a crime to sell stolen goods?" "Shrug."

If you are asking a best cop, what can they do? Legos shoplifted from Target were being openly sold at a thrift stall in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, everyone knew they were stolen, but until there was someone to formally connect the dots (they noticed legos from their store stolen at the thrift shop), the cops really couldn’t do anything about it.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#176

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:30 AM UTC

jjulius wrote: post #142

WalterBright wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The person you are responding to is saying that Seattle did not defund the police. Literally the second sentence in your link is: >The answer is not that the Seattle Police Department was defunded. What do you think you are refuting? Edit: And how on earth do you cite a hiring bonus as an example that they have been defunded ?

Yes, I misremembered it and I was wrong about it which I discovered by googling it. But the number of police is way down, so it had the same effect as defunding. Part of the reason for the reduction is the Seattle City Council abused them by calling them murderers. The cops felt unsupported by the Council and unwanted, and they left.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/defamatio...

https://www.bigcountrynewsconnection.com/local/seattle-counc...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12656567/Seattle-la...

The suburb cities did not experience an exodus, so it has nothing to do with the pandemic.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#177

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:30 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #159

rdtsc wrote: post #11

> He called police, who got a search warrant Kind of sad, that I was surprised they did that. It's definitely a local thing. I'd expect the police to shrug, and say it's too bad, just file a report to use for insurance. I remember people saying "so what if you have tags, police won't do anything and you shouldn't be confronting thieves anyway". Apple, on the other hand, is also explicit about tags not to be used as a…

Apple can't acknowledge that Airtags are an anti-theft device, because if they do, they would also be implicitly acknowledging that they are a stalking device. The only reason why they can sometimes work against theft is because thieves do not realize they are being tracked. That's because Apple's anti-stalking measures are sometimes insufficient.

The fact that police aren’t going after stalkers anymore also doesn’t help. But ya, it’s impossible to tell the difference between a stalker and someone just trying to recover their stuff.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#178

Post by luma » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:35 AM UTC

segmondy wrote: post #115

PointyDog wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Howard County for a year. With the combination of county income tax and affluent property taxes, every service was exceptionally well funded. Having lived in Mountain View & Sunnyvale, CA as well for a decade my experience was Howard County itself had quicker and better services than those cities. It doesn't surprise me at all that their police department is competent and helpful.

Exactly this. Since there's less crime in affluent areas, the police actually have time to investigate what get's ignored in other areas. By also solving these crimes, it tells the criminals to avoid those areas, it's kind of a feedback loop.

Are we still talking about the police in the OP? Who needed someone to give them GPS coordinates to find the stolen goods after at least 14,999 previous tool thefts went unsolved?

Not exactly batman level detective work here, this case was cracked because it was handed to them on a silver platter.

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#179

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:36 AM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #154

kube-system wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people choose their work. I think the sacrifice comparison wasn't to labor, but to the fact that capital punishment is still practiced in the US.

> Most people choose their work. Yes, but it's not nearly as big of a gap as the above comment suggests. Being in prison sucks. If there's forced labor that approaches the same magnitude of unpleasantness, or even worse exceeds it, then that's a huge problem. But if it makes prison mildly worse than zero labor, that's not a tremendous issue. > I think the sacrifice comparison wasn't to labor, but to the fact that cap…

The labor could actually make prison mildly less worse, as it breaks up the monotony of doing nothing. There is also often some comp, although way below minimum wage, and you can opt out (most don’t).

Re: Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in Maryland

#180

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 01, 2024, 3:38 AM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #27

dylan604 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amazon marketplace seller is what I thought would be the most used route. Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs I would think which would probably not be something they're willing to do. Unless it's common to use adapters or have people make that mode themselves as part of the "but it was cheap"??? Amazon marketplace is one of the best fences of all time.

> Selling overseas would require hardware changes with the plugs Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, and a few other Central/South American countries can plug these tools right into the wall.

China exports lots of stuff to the USA and those containers go back empty. They can easily be filled up with stolen iPhones and catalytic converters for recycling, so that they aren’t all empty.

Power tools probably not though.