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Comment by WhoIsSatoshi | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for your experience. Interesting post, chilling thoughts at the end:

>When I sit in front of the computer in San Francisco, the only thing that comes to my mind is to build a Face Recognition system and check the burglar’s face in it. Something similar to Clearview. Machine Learning is my expertise; creating such a system is straightforward but will take some time. Tempting. Thinking about it.

The thought my peers are pushing for extended surveillance/identification tooling is terrifying.

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It’s terrifying, but somewhat natural. They feel violated. AirBnB gives them a pittance. The police say they don’t think they will catch the crooks. The host shrugs their shoulders and moves on.

The author is looking for an alternative, even if it’s somewhat dark. Ideally, AirBnB would either provide or mandate insurance for situations like this, but they can probably increase profits by allowing this type of bad situation to hit a small minority of customers.

> would either provide or mandate insurance

No hotel does this. They clearly state that your possessions are solely your responsibility. Some may provide a small safe for valuables.

I agree somewhat natural. Sometimes it is just bad luck and there isn’t a next step or something we should be doing. Just keep using Airbnb and hope it doesn’t happen again. Thats what I would do.

Did you expect nuance from the "Kaggle Grandmaster" who's too thick to secure valuables in a not-quite-hotel? Between travelling to another state to Friendsgiving during the pandemic, and having zero awareness that his destination city's economy's been shattered by said pandemic, then getting jacked by locals... maybe he should grow some awareness.

A bit acrid but maybe on point. I feel what bothers me the most is that I related to the post until the very end. What frustrates me is that I, too, operate under a guise of assumptions that might not be mandated: there is room for nefarious actors in the AirBnb system, up to and including hosts who control the wifi you connect to and/or the locks you use. I'm not sure where to take it from here, Awareness is a delicate virtue, too much of it and it turns into paranoia.

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