

To the person who stole my phone last night - neotek
http://joethepeacock.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/to-person-who-stole-my-phone-last-night.html

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tsm
I'm struggling to feel sympathy here:

a) He owns a top-of-the-line phone, yet complains about being poor.

b) He owns a phone that makes it trivially easy maintain backups in the cloud,
and yet didn't think that his livelihood was worth backing up.

c) There's no real _point_ to this post, yet it was published and submitted to
HN.

d) He attempts to egocentrically link this post to his own humility.

Nobody deserves to have their property stolen, and it sounds like Peacock is
in a particularly tight bind, but this is hardly enlightening journalism or
something "that good hackers would find interesting".

~~~
venus
> didn't think that his livelihood was worth backing up

Came here to make this exact point. Not to kick someone who's already down,
but for god's sake people: _If you do not do backups, your data is ephemeral._

There's only so many times one can hear sob stories about people losing all
their un-backed-up data, especially from people who should know better, before
one stops feeling all that sorry. Don't complain to me if you roll the dice
and lose.

~~~
Wingman4l7
I just flat out don't understand it -- I back up stuff a lot less important
than things that provide me income. How hard is it to attach a copy to an
email draft when you're done?

------
nnoitra
"Consider it a fair exchange for the perspective you gave me this morning."
Not really. If it was for the perspective you wouldn't have written a blog
post bragging about how you are such a nice guy. You giving him the phone is
self-serving. You are looking for attention.

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austenallred
I read this article and hoped to come to the comments finding support and
encouragement for someone who was going through a rough time; I found 6 trolls
criticizing the author for his choice of words and supposed financial
decisions.

There are times to be critical and there are scientific studies that deserve
to be nitpicked, but the story of a man learning to forgive despite being
taken advantage of during a time of extreme hardship is not one of them.

There's more to life than bits and bytes; there's humanity, which is what we
are really all building things for anyway.

~~~
GhotiFish
Eh, emotions are best left to another aggregator, if you're looking for more
than bits and bytes, here seems like a bad place to fulfil that need.

~~~
austenallred
If participating in a technical discussion requires me to forget humanity,
then to hell with all of this, I'm out.

~~~
foolrush
Well said.

And that is predicated upon the idea that somehow engaging with bits and bytes
can be detached from the emotional, political, cultural, and historical.

------
artursapek
Why do you own the most expensive cell phone there is if you "desperately need
money?"

~~~
austenallred
Because financial situations change over time?

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anologwintermut
Why can't that phone be bricked the moment it's reported stolen. Unable to
connect to any cell tower in at least North America.

Sure, the cops might not track down someone who stole a $600 phone( which is a
little absurd), and maybe some people steal them for parts. But most people
intend to sell them for use. We can make them useless in the US,Canada, and
Western Europe trivially.

~~~
Wingman4l7
This would require the carriers to set up such an infrastructure -- and why
would they? It would cost them money and they'd lose the revenue of
replacement purchases. Also, such a system would be ripe for abuse on multiple
fronts. Someone piss you off _(or, more insidiously, are they a political
opponent)_? Impersonate them and get their phone blacklisted. This could also
potentially kill the secondhand phone market, if carriers decide they're going
to brick "obsolete" phones after a couple years.

~~~
banelicious
I'm thinking more of some sort of service offered by manufacturers/OS
developers. A la Google Device Manager.

If I can remotely wipe my phone, it won't be hard to also brick it, remotely.

Leave the carriers alone, those incompetent jacks

------
DustinCalim
Unfortunately, there are more desperate people than cell phones. You should
visit India sometime.

------
joshlegs
And, the point of putting this here was ?

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GhotiFish
I don't understand, if he located the theif with Find My Phone, why wasn't law
enforcement able to apprehend the perp?

I get the author is venting his frustrations at this. I know the feeling. It's
a combination of infuriated and helpless, and that's just from having property
that wasn't MINE stolen, let alone my own property. My sympathies there, btw.
However I would like to know why the thief wasn't caught.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Because law enforcement will tell you that they have better things to do than
retrieve your cellphone. Sometimes they'll do it if you hand the perp to them
on a silver platter -- it's happened with some phones and bike thefts.

