[HN Gopher] Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of s...
___________________________________________________________________
Carpenter's AirTags help uncover 'massive' case of stolen tools in
Maryland
Author : williamsmj
Score : 123 points
Date : 2024-05-31 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ec54N
| bhouston wrote:
| 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.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| This is _exactly_ what I was thinking, because a real theft
| ring wouldn 't be sitting on so much unsold inventory... what
| if it ends up being the dealer reps attempting higher
| commissions?
|
| ----
|
| As a retired tradesman (IBEW), discovering your tools have been
| stolen is "up there" in gut-wrenching professional experiences.
| My good luck meant most items stolen from me were probably just
| "walk aways" [leant out, never returned]. Last time my work
| truck was burglarized, they only stole personal effects
| (leaving behind thousands in rechargeables).
| brookst wrote:
| 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 would bankrupt the company overnight if
| it ever came to light.
|
| But critical thinking seems nearly extinct, and the thrill of
| having _figured it all out_ seems irresistible.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Compared to some stuff that actually seems to happen, the
| only leap of imagination I see here is that it would bankrupt
| the company overnight, or that it would matter to the people
| involved.
|
| Not to say that it's even remotely _likely_ , but all you
| need is for someone with a vested interest to find a cost
| effective way to boost sales. Depending on how desperate
| people and the broader economy are, and how little people
| care about risk, it's not exactly that farfetched that people
| will go to insane measures. People will try and pull off
| ridiculous schemes/crines for relatively small amounts of
| cash or even social media points and shoulder huge amounts of
| risk, and then turn around and buy nonsense with it, that's
| just America.
|
| The person stealing doesn't need to know who hired them,
| nobody else at the company needs to know did the hiring,
| shareholders are happy.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> The person stealing doesn 't need to know who hired
| them_
|
| I think you're _vastly_ underestimating how difficult it is
| to anonymously recruit and pay thousands of thieves from
| all over the country to target one particular brand _and_
| ensure they actually do the job.
|
| _Maybe_ one could offer some sort of buy-back program to
| maybe induce this behavior, but that would be quite
| expensive.
| axus wrote:
| It's really amazing when it actually happens though:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENl3eh1o-SM
|
| https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Japan-s-Bigmotor-scandal-
| is-...
| intrasight wrote:
| Wow! That is a lot of tools.
| cmclaughlin wrote:
| The article states...
|
| Though none of the prolific thieves has been arrested yet, Der
| said, "we are investigating several suspects for their roles in
| this massive theft scheme and expect charges soon."
|
| I wonder who owns and/or rents that warehouse...
| k2enemy wrote:
| That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced? Sent
| abroad? Craigslist and FB marketplace? I've bought some used
| tools from online classifieds, but it always seems to be a
| homeowner or business owner selling one or two things.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I have no idea but I remember the Sopranos episode where
| Christopher's father in law owns a hardware store and sells
| fenced goods out of it.
|
| It's not hard, but the owner can get done for it of course.
| papercrane wrote:
| That seems like the mostly likely way, at least for the new
| items stolen from retail. Trying to sell on craiglist/FB
| marketplace doesn't seem like it would scale. An unscrupulous
| hardware store owner could mix the stolen goods in with their
| stock to pad their margins. The tools could also be used as
| stock for 3rd party seller on Amazon.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| For whatever reasons, my mind equates overseas with
| Europe and even Eastern Europe more specifically when it
| comes to trading in illicit wares. In my mind, any where
| in the Americas just isn't overseas.
|
| But you are absolutely right in that a lot of stolen
| items do end up in that part of the world.
| closewith wrote:
| None of those countries are overseas from the US.
|
| Maybe there's a case to be made for Venuzeuela and
| Colombia because of the Darien Gap, but that's pushing
| it.
| ornornor wrote:
| Amazon comingled inventory would be the perfect vehicle for
| the perfect crime. They can't even tell who shipped what,
| it's basically like a cryptocurrency tumbler but for real
| world goods!
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| In fact it already is, lots of stuff is stolen and sold
| this way.
| bredren wrote:
| I just read (by audiobook) two great fiction works by Colson
| Whitehead that include some of these ideas, Crook Manifesto
| then is prequel Harlem Shuffle.
|
| Great stuff.
| roflchoppa wrote:
| Probably a mix of online and FB. Our local flea market has
| stuff tables of tools like this. Some tools are sold for like
| half the price.
|
| Maybe there is some organization to it, one wear house,
| multiple people selling.
| kube-system wrote:
| Every flea market I have ever been to in my life always has
| some guy with a huge amount of lightly used and heavily
| assorted high-dollar power tools.
|
| Before Home Depot started putting tools in cages, I used to see
| a lot of craigslist/marketplace/etc postings for brand new and
| unopened tools, posted at amazing prices.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah, and then people act like the flea market is some
| precious cornerstone of the local culture. In my city there
| is a flea market that has dozens of freshly stolen bikes
| every week. There's a fund where people buy back the bikes
| and reunite them with their owners. Unfortunately, there's no
| fund supporting violence against these bike thieves.
| consumer451 wrote:
| Violence for property crime is a bit 18th century, no?
|
| I've been robbed, and wanted to inflict violence in the
| heat of the moment, but cooler heads... prison would be
| fine, and you know, civilized.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Prison in the US is hardly civilized.
| MisterTea wrote:
| A former coworker came to the USA from Chile with a degree in
| Molecular Biology but couldn't find work in that field because
| of his language barrier. Instead he got a shitty job and build
| a small export company that sold used appliances and other
| goods from the USA to Chile. A big chunk were things like air
| conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines. Even though
| Chile is a 50Hz 220V country 60Hz stuff will run off a
| transformer though sub-optimally which for most people is
| better than nothing. BUT he also found a more lucrative path by
| selling gun parts (mostly ammo parts like shell casings) hidden
| within said appliances. So there is an international market for
| this kind of stuff.
| wnevets wrote:
| > That is a huge inventory. How do stolen tools get fenced?
|
| Sold in bulk to someone overseas is my theory, way too much
| effort and risk selling this stuff piecemeal online or locally.
| You can see something similar happening with stolen cars in the
| US. [1]
|
| [1] https://abc7ny.com/stolen-cars-tri-state-port-of-newark-
| west...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Makes me wonder if they were having trouble selling? It seems
| "poor business" to let stolen items sit for up to a decade.
| duxup wrote:
| From the article they note that some of the things they found
| were VERY old, sounds strange but maybe they hadn't gotten to
| that part / were not able to move that much stuff:
|
| >Some were stolen as long ago as 2014
|
| Weird situation near me, some local folks where stealing
| construction stuff were found not far from me and ... they
| found everything stolen over the course of a few years. If a
| generator and some tools were taken, there they were, all of
| them together. It appeared they straight up had no plan /
| active effort to sell everything.
| educasean wrote:
| It required the victim to take matters into his own hands and
| invest inyo buying multiple AirTags in order to sort out the
| burglary. I wonder how many of these burglary cases just sat
| there gathering dust and for how long.
| duxup wrote:
| I mean let's say tools vanish from a job site. That's not a
| heavily evidence laden situation. Not like there will be muddy
| tracks to the warehouse.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > 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 an anti-theft device. The word "theft" doesn't appear
| even once on https://www.apple.com/airtag. It would be
| interesting if they still released a puff piece as a response:
| "Oh look, a carpenter `found` his tools in the next state, in a
| warehouse along with other tools. We don't know how they ended up
| there, but isn't that great?"
| tamimio wrote:
| 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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."
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The roots of police departments are the paid security
| forces of business owners, and their values as
| organizations reflect this. Business owners worked with
| local governments to create police departments to socialize
| some of the cost of securing their private property; their
| rented homes, their warehouses, their stores. And they
| reflect this to this day.
|
| Individual property crime doesn't mean shit. A criminal can
| sell _your_ Macbook if they like, but if they steal from
| Apple itself? Oh man there will be hell to pay.
| nickff wrote:
| Where did you get this idea about the origins of police?
| It doesn't agree with the history on Wikipedia, or my
| understanding of their origin (having more to do with
| rulers maintaining order). Corporations, and what you
| call 'businesses' are a very modern concept, long
| predated by rulers, courts, and police.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police
| mingus88 wrote:
| OP's description of police sounds very similar to the
| history of the Pinkerton organization in the U.S.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agen
| cy)
|
| Fast forward to today and it's very common for private
| security to be composed of ex-cops and former military,
| creating a very fluid dynamic of all policing as a
| paramilitary organization in support of capitalism.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| From your link
|
| >The first example of a statutory police force in the
| world was probably the High Constables of Edinburgh,
| formed in 1611 to police the streets of Edinburgh, then
| part of the Kingdom of Scotland. The constables, of whom
| half were merchants and half were craftsmen, were charged
| with enforcing 16 regulations relating to curfews,
| weapons, and theft.
|
| That sounds a lot like businesses working with government
| to secure their property.
| nickff wrote:
| Those 'statutory police' were predated by others by
| thousands of years, and it seems more like the king
| enlisted business owners to enforce the king's laws in
| the city than 'paid security forces of business owners'.
| nick238 wrote:
| Maybe in Europe that's the case. In the US, law
| enforcement has its roots in slave patrols.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-
| invention-...
| ljf wrote:
| I went to read a bit more about this - as this was
| something I was only vaguely aware of:
| https://theconversation.com/the-racist-roots-of-american-
| pol...
|
| It seems there were police in the States before the Slave
| Patrols though.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| What do you think Slave Patrols were...? Security to
| enforce private property. Slaves were property. Runaway
| slaves might be property that stole itself, effectively,
| but it's the same thing.
|
| And also, the slave patrol link has much stronger ties in
| the southern states where slavery was more prominent.
| That's not to say it didn't happen in the north, of
| course it did, but it happened more in the south, the
| south's economy was near dependent upon both the slave
| trade and the massive amounts of free-at-point-of-use
| human labor that supplemented their agricultural
| industries. That's why the civil war happened and don't
| start with me about how it wasn't about slavery, the
| confederate constitution lays out in black and white
| (beige?) that it was absolutely, definitely about
| slavery. The south's economy would've utterly collapsed
| with total abolition.
| jjmarr wrote:
| A common good like security should be socialized because
| the alternative is multiple independent groups enforcing
| property rights, and when they start to conflict, you get
| a civil war won by the person who spent the most on
| security.
|
| The idea that police are inherently corrupt because they
| developed from paid security forces ignores that the very
| process of development is what enshrined the rule of law
| over power.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I don't disagree that security should be a socialized
| good, it's a good idea. That doesn't change the fact that
| police in the United States and elsewhere were formed in
| the basis of law not to protect _people_ but to protect
| _property._
|
| Even today courts have ruled that police are under no
| obligation to protect civilians from direct, inevitable
| harm. They are not there to protect you, they are there
| to protect "the peace" which can be fucking anything.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > police in the United States and elsewhere were formed
| in the basis of law not to protect people but to protect
| property.
|
| Be as that may (and as shitty as that is), this thread is
| about police forces utterly failing to protect property
| (or even attempt to).
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Well right, my point is the damaged party is in the wrong
| class. That's why it's not being resolved.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Even today courts have ruled that police are under no
| obligation to protect civilians
|
| Yeah, LAPD's "protect and serve" was dreamed up by the
| City's marketing arm in the 1950s.
|
| And those rulings have come because PDs have stood up and
| said "We have no obligation to prevent crime or protect
| people" and the courts have said, "Yup, you're right."
| defen wrote:
| > A criminal can sell your Macbook if they like, but if
| they steal from Apple itself? Oh man there will be hell
| to pay.
|
| Where do you get the idea that there will be "hell to
| pay" if you steal from Apple itself? People regularly run
| out of Apple stores with tens of thousands of dollars
| worth of merchandise and never get caught.
| cwmma wrote:
| There is an amount of theft that apple is OK with because
| preventing it would hurt sales and occasional theift of
| product they can easily brick is certainly under that
| limit, plus there is likelyreporting biases, as it's
| likely you've seen videos of it happening but when there
| are arrests or recoverys you havn't seen those reports.
| google234123 wrote:
| 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.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Evidence has shown that punitive penalties for crime do
| not affect crime rates.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| 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 stolen tools, this theft ring was in the millions of
| dollars and was quite possibly already on their radar.
| duxup wrote:
| Warrant doesn't mean they had to go all storm trooper in that
| situation either, that would lower the risks.
|
| I suspect just one more data point would be pretty easy to
| manage, peek in a window, or even have the dude drive around
| the facility and see if the location was consistently
| reporting.
| tantalor wrote:
| I guess tracing the stolen property to a huge storage facility
| vs house makes a big difference to the district attorney.
|
| Big time vs. small beans
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I think it's dependent on the local government.
|
| There are cities that have gotten proactive and fought against
| high car theft rates by handing out free Bluetooth trackers to
| the public and having people hide them in their car.
| bagels wrote:
| It's more sad that your expectations would be met in most
| places.
| nytesky wrote:
| Maybe they don't advertise AirTags as antitheft, but this Apple
| Ad had the owners sleuthing after laptop thieves via Apple
| device tracking
|
| https://youtu.be/asKvPLmjxXY?si=bkHzT42gSzhjDWqE
| nashashmi wrote:
| Also not to be used for tracking someone you are stalking.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| "OK, I have a gun and I'll go get my stuff myself" is not
| illegal to say and 100% gets police to show up. Source: tried
| it more than once
| rdtsc wrote:
| Not bad strategy. Though I can see, depending on their
| disposition them turning against you. "Oh, you have gun?
| Better not reach for it! Is it registered, where is it?".
| They could turn into assholes real fast if they feel like
| you're trying to force them to do something.
| m463 wrote:
| some of that depends on the state/jurisdiction you're in.
|
| I think in texas you can defend your self/loved ones/property
| with a gun.
|
| In california, you can take a gun to the target range (in
| your trunk, unloaded). Not sure what else you can use a gun
| for except maybe get in trouble.
| fragmede wrote:
| California's not happy about guns existing, but if you're
| being attacked in your home, there are some limited carve
| outs.
| vundercind wrote:
| The single case of theft I personally know about ever being
| acted on by the police, was when a business owner spotted the
| van that'd been present at burglaries of his business and
| several others (several of them had footage of the van, the
| thieves, and legible shots of the license plate--cops didn't
| care), called the police to report it, and, when they _still_
| acted reluctant to do anything, said "you better come down
| here or I'll confront them myself".
|
| I assume what got them to show up was that they didn't want
| the bad press if the dude got shot.
| PointyDog wrote:
| 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.
| 1024core wrote:
| You will find similar pockets of responsive police in areas
| like Piedmont (in Oakland), Atherton, Hillsborough, etc.
| hangonhn wrote:
| My buddy got his bike stolen in Mountain View. Not only did
| the police find his bike they also arrested the thief.
|
| Another buddy was woken up one night by a drunken stranger
| pounding on his door. He called the MVPD and within 5 minutes
| 3 squad cars showed up.
|
| I used to live in Dallas. One night an entire floor of cars
| parked in my apartment garage was broken into. I called the
| police and reported it. Then I asked when they're coming and
| if I should stick around to wait for them. They told me
| they're not coming. The next night, the thieves returned and
| broke into all the cars on the next garage level.
|
| Funding really matters. Mountain View is one of the handful
| of cities in the country with a triple-A municipal bond
| rating.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| > _Mountain View is one of the handful of cities in the
| country with a triple-A municipal bond rating._
|
| Having Google headquartered there probably helped their
| finances.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| Two years ago, WhistlinDiesel youtuber used trail camera's and
| his air tags to bust his neighbors stealing from him. It took a
| few calls, but he got it done. He was smart and used the cops
| as mediators and didn't just go over and start yelling at the
| dude to get his stuff back.
|
| https://youtu.be/rnFOWvAAapU?si=lqkQBFijR3U2UdSJ
| diogenescynic wrote:
| In California, they definitely wouldn't do anything.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The logistics of this is kind of interesting to me. Even if each
| of the victims reported them to the police, the value of the
| items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in the grand scheme
| of things. Construction equipment might raise more of an eyebrow,
| but the hand tools would even be noticed. Unless...someone was
| collecting all of those reports and analyzing them bigData style,
| o wait, we're talking about the police here.
|
| Of course it was a civilian victim tired of the cops being unable
| to do anything. I say unable vs unwilling even though I'd also
| suggest unwilling, but I digress. It's the kind of theft ring
| that would just not motivate anyone to look at anything. I
| wouldn't be surprised to see that this has been going on for a
| really long time. It's kind of genius
| chucksta wrote:
| > Even if each of the victims reported them to the police, the
| value of the items from each theft wouldn't add up to much in
| the grand scheme of things.
|
| I don't think you know how expensive commercial power tools and
| accessories are.. They cited 15k items with a range of 3-5
| million. At 3 million that's $200 an item. Hardly peanuts.
|
| The article also says the tools likely came from a variety of
| sources
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't think you know anything about me to claim I don't
| know the value of tools commercial or not. I have quite the
| collection, come from a family of construction where my
| grandfather was a custom cabinet maker where I grew up in his
| woodshop. It's amazing how people just assume so wildly
| wrong.
|
| Even at $200, that doesn't even qualify as anything more than
| a misdemeanor. The police are just not going to care if the
| victim even bother reporting it. I've had my battery powered
| lawn equipment stolen within the time it took me to push my
| mower to the front of the house and then walk back to the
| garage to grab the now stolen items. Of course I didn't
| report it to the police. Why would I waste my time as well as
| theirs? I even specifically qualified some equipment like
| construction equipment would potentially raise an eyebrow
| implying their value is more than my weekend warrior power
| tools.
|
| Talking about totally being so far off base, and missing the
| point that you even attempt to use math to get to. However,
| even your math totally misses the point. If you think $200
| gets the police excited, you are grossly putting too much
| faith in the system. It doesn't matter at all that somebody
| else thinks $200 is hardly peanuts. It doesn't move the
| needle at all in motivating someone doing some investigating.
| That is the point I was making. It's the perfect crime to run
| for a long time as even if it is reported, nobody is going to
| do anything about it.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's all relative. The above commenter was comparing to
| construction equipment.
|
| https://www.deere.com/en/loaders/skid-steers/334-p-skid-
| stee...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't think the police are going to be very interested in a
| random $200 theft.
| tantalor wrote:
| > tired of the cops being unable to do anything
|
| The cops literally raided the place when it was reported
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because they were specifically shown the guy's items were
| there. They didn't find it for him. They took the data
| provided, asked for a warrant, and then proceeded from there.
| How is that confusing? It's not like they were expecting to
| find what they did. I'm actually surprised they even did
| that. There are lots of stories of people showing the police
| their Find It showing their device at a specific location and
| doing not a damn thing with that information.
| tamimio wrote:
| Did the carpenter alter the tags?! Afaik they beep sounds around
| other unpaired iphones, additionally, using apps like AirGuard
| can alarm you about such ones.
| mcpherrinm wrote:
| If they were in a storage unit, the thief may not have stuck
| around long enough to notice. And it sounds like this happened
| pretty soon after theft, so they wouldn't have started to beep.
| bagels wrote:
| It takes 3 minutes to remove the speaker. There are great
| tutorials on youtube. I've only purchased airtags for use as
| theft recovery, and if they beep it defeats the purpose.
| swah wrote:
| I also have one on a office key (useful, it vanishes every
| few months), umbrella (useful, its left in restaurants and
| vanishes in the car trunk), laptop bag (useless so far, I
| never forget about it), and car (waiting for it to be robbed
| but its old)
| gnicholas wrote:
| Don't iPhones pop up notifications if there's an AirTag that
| doesn't belong to you following you around?
| duxup wrote:
| Did the thieves bring their phone with them to steal from
| numerous job sites as far back as 2014?
|
| That would seem like a poor choice. If the same thieves are
| taking everything they might be "smart" enough to NOT bring a
| personal tracking device with them.
| kstrauser wrote:
| "But AirTags aren't for finding stolen things!", someone asserts
| every time someone mentions wanting to use AirTags for finding
| stolen things.
| TimeBearingDown wrote:
| It's not optimal for that purpose due to the anti-stalking
| features, but it's better than nothing.
| supportengineer wrote:
| There has to be a shady operator somewhere with no scruples,
| who sees the market demand for this use-case.
| throwanem wrote:
| GPS trackers with SIM slots and cell radios have been
| available for ages, and easily enough found for purchase that
| I don't think mentioning them here adds meaningful risk.
| AirTags distinguish on Apple's UI polish - including the care
| for stalking mitigation - and platform integration, rather
| than their basic functionality.
| jkestner wrote:
| Dogcow the Bounty Hunter
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| And q-tips aren't for cleaning ears, but what you gonna do.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Oh, I totally use them for the same thing. It's more that
| whenever this comes up, some people inevitably go off on
| tangents about how that's not what AirTags are used for, and
| we're crazy for using them for this (incredibly obvious)
| application.
| mattm wrote:
| What are they used for?
| wingspar wrote:
| Off topic, but reminds me of the lost hunting dog whose tracking
| collar was found in a big gator, along with a lot of other
| collars.
|
| Solved a long running 'lost hunting dog' mystery.
|
| https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/aug/29/dogs-tracked-d...
| dolmen wrote:
| Totally on topic.
| jhund wrote:
| In the video that shows the stolen tools in the warehouse, there
| are hardly any Ryobi tools (HomeDepot's cheap tool brand). This
| is in stark contrast to many of the recent woodworking videos on
| Youtube that feature craftspeople using Ryobi tools (without
| explicitly mentioning an HD sponsorship). The thieves know a good
| tool, and HD is trying to fool the rest of us that their Ryobi
| tools are any good.
| habosa wrote:
| Almost nobody think Ryobi is the best, and almost everybody
| agrees they're plenty good for a non-professional toolkit.
| CornishPasty wrote:
| FYI. Ryobi has nothing to do with Home Depot. It's owned by a
| Hong Kong power tool manufacturer, and used to be Japanese (in
| fact, Ryobi still exists as a tool manufacturer, just not the
| power tool division)
|
| Probably the reason they're not in any of the hauls is because
| they have a reputation for not being very good, and are harder
| to sell/fence...
| hfe wrote:
| What is the brand with the best reputation these days?
| midtake wrote:
| Tools are weird like text editors where people get religious
| about some brands over others. But if your hustle is fencing
| the most reputable and easy-to-move tools, you would probably
| want to acquire the standard ones you see in Home Depot and
| Lowe's, such as Dewalt, Milwaukee, Craftsman, etc.
| Reputation-wise they're all about the same. Personally I like
| Makita.
| rocqua wrote:
| Milwaukee seems to have a strong reputation. in Europe,
| mafell too.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Pick the color you like best of the reputable manufactures.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I spent hours researching the various pro-sumer level
| brands when upgrading my tool collection this winter. And
| settled on Milwaukee. Because red. Ok fine, their track saw
| played a part. But mostly red.
| xyst wrote:
| If you are a diyer that needs it for maybe 1-2 jobs a year,
| ryobi is usually not a bad choice.
|
| Personally, I stick with DeWalt because I like quality even
| though I fall under the "diyer" category. This impact driver
| has survived 5-6 moves, at least a handful of projects across a
| few years, and it's still working as if I just picked it up
| from the store. Haven't had to do any maintenance or repairs.
|
| One of the cheaper harbor freight or off brand power tools I
| picked up many years ago lasted at most 1-2 yrs with only a few
| projects. Which is the reason I started investing in higher
| quality (prefer dewalt, but will buy Milwaukee).
| m463 wrote:
| > Though none of the prolific thieves has been arrested yet,
|
| why would they announce this without someone in custody?
| elicash wrote:
| Either they ran into a wall investigating and needed public
| help, or to get victims back what was stolen? Or, it says they
| expect charges soon, so maybe they waited until the
| investigation was over.
|
| Just a guess, though.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| The thieves would've gotten away with it if they had iPhones.
| They would receive notification saying an airtag was traveling
| with them.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Which has a benefit of alerting you if a stalker has planted an
| airtag on you or your car or something
| exabrial wrote:
| Lol on hacker news i was blasted for suggesting the primary use
| of air tags was recovering stolen goods. Ah last laugh feels good
| once in awhile.
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