Comment by ookblah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ookblah | Hacker News Reader

I found this similar mentality in Korea where you can leave your laptop, phone, etc. at a cafe completely exposed on a table while you go to the restroom or even out to lunch. When you come back your stuff will still be there.

As I live in NYC, this completely blew my mind and I still felt that anxiety and awkwardness just leaving my stuff to go use the restroom. Near guaranteed theft in NYC lol.

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And to add another story. A friend and I were traveling in Japan a few years ago. My friend had the lucky privilege of forgetting his backpack (with laptop, passport, all the not-fun-stuff to lose items) not once, but twice during the trip.

The first time, he forgot it on the train ride to Osaka (left it on the rack above the seats). The bag went all the way to the end of the line. 4 hour round trip to get it back, but we were super surprised.

Second time was the day we were to fly back. He left it on the train platform bench (!!!) for that non-stop ride to Narita. That feeling of dread when we started moving and he realized he had to wait at least an hour before he could contact anybody about it.

Long story short, he took the 1 hour train back and it was still sitting there. Missed the flight, but got everything back safely. Amazing.

I worked in NYC coffee shops on a daily basis for 2 years (and Toronto and SF for more years). Whenever I went to the bathroom, I just asked a random person nearby if they would make sure no one walked off with my stuff. I never had anything stolen, and the people I ask don't seem bothered in the slightest. It's a very small burden, and I think there's something pleasant about having someone put their trust in you.

This is the standard I've encountered at coffee shops and school libraries, no one seems to mind. However, it would be easy to build an app that alarms when the battery becomes disconnected (i.e. someone walks away with your stuff).

> It would be easy to build an app that alarms when the battery becomes disconnected (i.e. someone walks away with your stuff).

Wait what? How does this work?

This is already a thing: https://beepify.com

$19.99...

Seems a reasonable price.

If laptops/phones have power events that you could hook into for when charger is unplugged. Just start blaring the speakers when you detect such an event without the alarm being disarmed first.

on OSX or Linux you could grep the logs every few minutes or seconds or whatever and see the battery status that includes AC power. From there you could have it alert you via whatever method you want.

On OSX:

pmset -g rawlog

Output:

$ pmset -g rawlog pmset is in RAW logging mode now. Hit ctrl-c to exit. * Battery matched at registry = XXXX 01/15/20 XX:XX:XX No AC; Not Charging; 75%; Cap=5490: FCC=XXXX; Design=XXXX; Time=X:XX; -752mA; Cycles=14/1000; Location=XX; Polled boot=01/15/20 XX:XX:XX; Full=01/15/20 XX:XX:XX; User visible=01/15/20 XX:XX:XX

I expect there are more elegant solutions, but this would theoretically work, as I used to use this among other things to track my daily laptop usage to see how on task I was any given day. If the lid is closed but unplugged then I was probably going to/in a meeting, if the lid is closed and charging then I was likely afk, not working. Worked pretty well to give me a ballpark of my productivity.

If you just want to talk to someone, I get it, but otherwise there's no point. Nobody's going to fight a thief to safeguard a stranger's stuff (and shouldn't because they could be sued by the thief). And it's a crime of opportunity, thiefs are not sitting in cafes waiting for a laptop user to go to the bathroom; high risk, low reward.

> I worked in NYC coffee shops on a daily basis for 2 years (and Toronto and SF for more years). Whenever I went to the bathroom, I just asked a random person nearby if they would make sure no one walked off with my stuff.

Used to do this as well (NYC) till I realized nobody was going to be pulling John Wick stunts to keep my five year old laptop from being taken away. Now I just make sure I'm not right near an entrance and leave my stuff with reasonable confidence. YMMV of course.

Personally I'd pipe up if someone asked me to watch a laptop and another person made a move on it. In a crowded store full of witnesses, that's all it would take to deter a thief.

Fair point. Especially given such a crime would be pretty opportunistic.

That being said, this does remind me of the stunts pulled to get Ross Ulbricht's laptop:

> To prevent Ulbricht from encrypting or deleting files on the laptop he was using to run the site as he was arrested, two agents pretended to be quarreling lovers. When they had sufficiently distracted him,[30] according to Joshuah Bearman of Wired, a third agent grabbed the laptop while Ulbricht was distracted by the apparent lovers' fight and handed it to agent Thomas Kiernan.[31] Kiernan then inserted a flash drive in one of the laptop's USB ports, with software that copied key files.[30]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht

I do think if anyone was that determined to get my laptop they probably deserve it.

Wow, this guy got a double life sentence plus 40 years for "money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics"? He could have gotten a lighter sentence if he had carried out a mass shooting.

And how did the flash drive trick work? Was he running Windows on that laptop? Very bad idea.

I lost my phone on the NYC subway. It was returned to a station and I picked it up a week later.

Here in Hong Kong that’s pretty common too, I’m still super surprised people actually do this without fear. I regularly work in coffee shops, but when I need to use the bathroom I always take all my stuff with me.

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