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".
> 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.
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?
Just to be clear, I posted this link to HN, but I didn't write the blog post. Nothing to do with me at all other than the fact I found it interesting. I can understand why you might not have found it interesting, but I did, and that's why I posted it.
"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.
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.
And that is predicated upon the idea that somehow engaging with bits and bytes can be detached from the emotional, political, cultural, and historical.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".