Was thinking the same thing. Leaving stuff in public that resemble known consumer electronics will guarantee they perform disappearing acts ASAP.

Ideally, you'd want something firmly attached to a wall, something that looks industrial/enterprisey, like it's an important part of the building alarm, water, power, HVAC or network system. Then people won't fuck with it.

And when you're installing it, wear a brightly coloured safety vest, helmet, badge, clipboard, safety boots and a tool belt around your waist. That way you look super official and nobody will question you and I just made this stuff up, no guarantee that it'll work IRL :)

Anything that looks like it is attached to wall or just hidden from eyes, will have a lot more chances to avoid being stolen/reported.

When i see one of the usb outlets with exposed screws in public the only thing that comes to mind is to partially disassemble the oulet and power the device from it leaving the device inside. There is much less of a chance that someone will report a partially malfunctioning USB outlet than someone snatching a free power brick.

Never done anything like that with a public outlet, did something similiar with my personal hardware.

Regarding size, Lichee Pi [0] comes to mind.

[0] https://www.licheepizero.us/

Agreed. I was thinking something like a GFCI Outlet Tester would have a better chance of sticking around... Make it seem like the electrician forgot to retrieve it but will be back for it in a few.

The police on my city arrested this week 3 people that stole ~4tons of cable, on daylight, in crowded streets.

They did exactly that. Got a very visible vest, with a company logo, closed part of the walkway, and dig the cables without anybody suspecting anything.

Cursing is pretty common on here. Just re-read the guidelines and there's no rules against inappropriate language like the "f-word"... Especially when considering such a benign usage as the parent comment, ie: just replacing the verb in "mess with" which is not targeting the language at anyone/anything.

It may not be as common as other platforms, but casual conversation does happen here which includes the occasional curse word.

Just trying to inform - I'm sorry you're sensitive to it.

Thanks for letting me know, I really appreciate it :)

folkhack is correct - I'll just add that this has been the case for a long time on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - indeed it's always functioned this way. We care about people not being mean to each other, but profanity isn't that.

No doubt there are downsides and I'm sorry that it's disagreeable to you.

Keep in mind that you're not allowed to use any sort of colorful language when disagreeing with whatever the mainstream take on an issue is. Those people get down-voted and a bunch of "y u so mad" (but in better more relevant words, this is HN, not youtube comments) replies. Hooray for double standards.

I'm going to assume that this was a low-quality joke rather than a literal attack, but since we've had to warn you before not to attack other users on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25309677), it would be better not to go there.

Order two game theoretic trick: fake a main socket device that is in fact a battery powered sniffing tool. Robber may willingly carry that thing in his home.

Now, put it in a case like [1] this with USB pass-through and slap a "Property of McDonalds IT" sticker on it and I'm guessing you could keep it there for longer...

[1] https://www.allelectronics.com/item/actx-1620/16-vac-20-va-w...

Are you saying that you need to hide a USB thumb-drive in a wall charger instead?

c'mon epoxy the thing to the outlet