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

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

#281

Post by saagarjha »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #236
saagarjha wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The optimum is never zero. Not because we like murder and rape as a society, but because we don't know how to make it zero and broad attempts to bring it closer to zero significantly limit our freedoms and worsen our society. Of course it sounds horrible if you're the victim of a rape (and I guess it would be terrible as a murder victim if you weren't, well, dead) that we accept a baseline level of crime as optimal b…

You are torturing the word optimal so I think it is meaningless to discuss that feature. I also reject your view that everything is social tradeoffs. I think it is a extremely narrow perspective that completely ignores culture, norms, and behavior.

That’s literally what it means in this context. Apple puts up with some amount of crime because doing so is optimal for them. Driving crime to zero would cost them more money than it would save.

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

#282

Post by saagarjha »

fastball wrote: post #245
saagarjha wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you replied to provides an alternative.

So they steal from you, and then you get the privilege of your tax dollars paying for their room and board. I dunno, I can see why some people might not be chuffed to bits by that solution.

You are welcome to avail yourself of this free room and board anytime you like.

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

#283

Post by LorenPechtel »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #173
cwmma wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

The optimum risk level is never zero. There comes a point where the cost of averting the risk is greater than the cost of the risk.

Consider my standard example of this: electric power. We insist nuclear plants be insanely safe, making them uneconomic, making us use far more dangerous sources of power instead.

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

#284

Post by LorenPechtel »

doctoboggan wrote: post #18
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…

I am also surprised they got a warrant based on AirTag data, especially with stories like this: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/08/us/denver-police-raid-wrong-h... I suspect there has to be more evidence than just the AirTag, but it is possible that the police used that tip to kick off an investigation that ultimately led to the warrant and search. Or they already started building a case. Based off the estimated 15,000 s…

Storage unit. You can drive right up to the door and use the precision tracking to confirm it's in there. And it's single story so you're not going to have a problem with it being upstairs. They might also have had permission from the owner to hunt for the tag.

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

#285

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #275
Dylan16807 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Whether or not the work sucks is orthogonal to the many reasons slavery is bad. While inmates certainly don't have freedom, they are still not property of the state, and profiting from their labor is both immoral and presents a huge moral hazard to the broader criminal justice system. > I can't figure out any way to read the comment that way ? The comment literally says: > States with prolific death penalties just sk…

> ? The comment literally says:

> States with prolific death penalties just skip the religious angle.

But read the two sentences before that. They're making a complete comparison without mentioning death penalties at all, and without any placeholders that could be filled in by a later sentence. The third sentence mentioning death penalties does not retroactively change what the first two sentences were talking about.

The comment very clearly says that slavery in the prison system is next to sacrifice, not just the death penalty.

If it wasn't supposed to say that, then the original commenter needs to come here and clarify.

> Whether or not the work sucks is orthogonal to the many reasons slavery is bad. While inmates certainly don't have freedom, they are still not property of the state, and profiting from their labor is both immoral and presents a huge moral hazard to the broader criminal justice system.

So there's a much bigger and connected moral hazard, that the people that are paid to run prisons want there to be more inmates, whether or not they do any labor. That's especially bad when it's third party for-profit companies running things. And they'll use prison labor to make extra money on top of what they're already paid.

We should fight against that situation very strongly.

But if we have all the money controlled by the state, and the labor merely reduces the cost of keeping prisoners, then there's not a huge moral hazard to the criminal justice system.

If prisoners actually start making enough money to offset the entire cost of the prison system, then we should intervene. But limiting hours and/or giving more of the money to the actual prisoners doing the labor should be enough to fix that moral hazard.

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

#286

Post by ForOldHack »

mcny wrote: post #222
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that 99% of the crimes are committed by repeat offenders, a simple dusting for fingerprints (costs pennies) could likely identify the culprit. But they don't bother. And they act like we've seen too many movies/tv shows. But when an "interesting" crime happens they do in fact dust for fingerprints (cheap!) and do all sorts of swabbing and testing (expensive). The police are lazy in CA especially. And yet they a…

I’m not holding my breath. Things won’t change until there’s a price to pay for corruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Smith

There is so much more:

https://www.kqed.org/news/11988510/case-of-former-san-jose-p...

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

#287

Post by kube-system »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #285
kube-system wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not the work sucks is orthogonal to the many reasons slavery is bad. While inmates certainly don't have freedom, they are still not property of the state, and profiting from their labor is both immoral and presents a huge moral hazard to the broader criminal justice system. > I can't figure out any way to read the comment that way ? The comment literally says: > States with prolific death penalties just sk…

> ? The comment literally says: > States with prolific death penalties just skip the religious angle. But read the two sentences before that. They're making a complete comparison without mentioning death penalties at all, and without any placeholders that could be filled in by a later sentence. The third sentence mentioning death penalties does not retroactively change what the first two sentences were talking about.…

Read it in context again, it is commentary on the US prison system as a whole.

> But limiting hours and/or giving more of the money to the actual prisoners doing the labor should be enough to fix that moral hazard.

Maybe but it doesn't address the immorality of the situation to begin with. There's a simple solution, here: eliminate the prison loophole for slavery. There can still be labor in prisons, it should just follow prevailing labor law.

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

#288

Post by technothrasher »

Spooky23 wrote: post #255
ww520 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cities with less busy police departments, police actually do investigative work. I had police came by couple times asking for security footage for investigation nearby. One time it’s for a family member of a neighbor down the street “stole” a family car parked across the street. Another time was for an alarm wire tripped at 3am at a vacant house couple houses down the street. The footage showed a guy riding a bike…

It depends on the department and who you get. In alot of places, police tend to take care of friends and referred people first. The top down control involved in that discourages the rank and file from doing more than required.

When I owned a liquor store many moons ago, the police in that city basically would only respond, at least in any reasonable time frame, to businesses who made regular donations to the "Policeman's Benevolent Society". They didn't even pretend to hide their racketeering; it was openly understood you paid up or you got ignored.

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

#289

Post by notatoad »

kstrauser wrote: post #41

"But AirTags aren't for finding stolen things!", someone asserts every time someone mentions wanting to use AirTags for finding stolen things.

>mentions wanting to use airtags for finding stolen things

usually, this is in regard to complaints about the anti-stalking features making airtags less useful for finding stolen things. use airtags for whatever you want, but apple has made it clear that's not their priority when making product decisions.

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

#290

Post by s1artibartfast »

jjav wrote: post #248
s1artibartfast wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

> The absolute optimum is zero. Define optimum. It would be trivially easy for Apple to make theft at their stores absolutely zero. How is that optimum though? The same measures that make theft zero would also drive away pretty much all legitimate business. Is that optimum for you?

The optimum is the most desirable situation or outcome. It depends on the factors you can change, and those you assume are constant.

Surely you agree it would be best if Apple could have no theft, and no extra costs?

There are factors within apples control and factors outside apples control. Apple has limits to what it can do, but that doesnt mean that no better solutions exist outside the control of apple.

There is a best solution of those you can choose (relative), and also a best solution out of all those that are possible (absolute)

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