Uhh, I don't know about that. Since getting airtags I've misplaced my car keys multiple times, left my wallet on an airplane, and had multiple airlines misplace my luggage. In that same time I've not had anything stolen.

Your anecdata is not data

But it serves to counter a ridiculous sweeping generalization.

Anecdata suffices to counter anecdata.

It is when it's countering other anecdata. If anyone has actual data then by all means show it and that will trump the anecdata, but without that, anecdata is all we have.

Not for me. It’s cure for forgetfulness.

I don't know where you live but that isn't at all true anywhere I've lived.

I've had two reasons to need to "find" things with AirTags where I specifically didn't know where they were:

- airline bungle, so luggage was left at a transit airport.

- forgetting where something had been put down.

But the most common usage is the opposite, positive confirmation: we've just left for the airport, check if everything says "with you" once you're a few hundred meters down the road.

If the most likely reason for something to be "lost" is that it was stolen, maybe you should move somewhere with a less than apocalyptic level of petty crime.

I was told airtags stop working when the tag moves along with an iphone (for privacy reasons). This would happen on an airline.

Nonsense.

- https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/681961/Common-lost-items-k...

- https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lost-and-found-the-...

The most likely reason to lose things is you're distracted, and fun fact: if you're a man you're more likely to blame someone else for it.

> The most likely reason to lose things is because they are stolen.

you should probably move

There’s not many places in the world where theft isn’t a concern. Just small villages where everybody knows each other, and repressive countries.

Singapore is the only place I’ve been where I didn’t worry about theft.

There's a big difference between "theft isn't a concern" and "theft is the main reason things are lost". A place where you're more likely to get your things stolen than you are to misplace them is definitely a place with above-average crime rates.

And while I don't know where you've been and what your tolerance level for "worrying about" theft is, I've never worried about theft anywhere but very touristy places in huge cities.

Theft is a concern where I live in Brooklyn but its an order of magnitude less likely that I lose something to theft vs me misplacing it

Perhaps zarzavat just isn't prone to losing things.

Personally, I'm careful enough with my keys etc (and lucky enough) that I don't lose them - I lived for several decades before the invention of the airtag, and developed habits not to lose things.

On the other hand, bicycles getting stolen? That happens.

> The most likely reason to lose things is because they are stolen.

That gave me a good laugh.

It sounds silly, but I understand where he's coming from. I used to live in Philadelphia. You couldn't leave your bag down on the subway without someone running off with it right before the doors closed.

Wild. a family member of mine has paranoid schizophrenia and if something isn't where she thinks it should be she immediately jumps to "it was stolen." Even if the glasses are on her head or the phone is literally in her hand, she'll declare it was stolen and get upset.

It makes me wonder if she lived in one of those places earlier in her life (before I knew her) and might be more justified than it seems... ?

I know lots of people think that when they can't find something; it doesn't mean it is schizophrenic behavior in and of itself. I remember as kids discovering that other friends of mine also jumped to that conclusion. To my knowledge, none of us then or are now schizophrenic.

Sure. I also live in a place where you can't leave your belongings unattended even for a short time without a high risk of them getting stolen. But there's a simple solution to that: don't leave your belongings unattended, ever. Everyone I know who lives where I live knows that, and the incidence -- at least among my friends -- losing things to theft is super low.

I don't think this is a good situation, mind you, but I think people in my circle still misplace things orders of magnitude more often than their stuff gets stolen.

I've lost my car keys hundreds of times and they were stolen exactly 0 of those times.