IPad found through craigslist | Hacker News Reader

IPad found through craigslist

cnewmark.com

52 pointsderekc13 comments

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

I moved to the Bay Area from Lake Tahoe. It was the second or third day of my new job, and I had to bring in my paperwork for human resources. Took BART downtown from the East Bay, then rode my bike to the office. I must have missed a zipper in my backpack, and my wallet (along with my social security card, credit cards, and some cash) decided to bail out somewhere downtown.

I didn't realize it right away, but rather that night when I actually needed to get everything to HR. I immediately called to get my cards turned off, but was pretty worried having my social security card and drivers license out in the wild. I was able to plead my case with an AC Transit bus driver, get a free ride back to the East Bay, and planned on drinking one of the few beers I had in my fridge.

Some point during that beer, there was a knock on the door. The person on the other side was from the south bay, had a meeting in the city, and had my wallet in hand. He took the time to go well out of his way to return my identity. Only thing he asked for?

Pass it on.

So happy to hear another story like this.

Pay it forward, is what they say.

I've seen one too many instances of these happening despite the cynicism all around us. I still believe in human compassion.

Well, did you?

A few days ago, my wife's boss found a backpack with a cell phone, camera, and iPod in it. The pack was covered in leaves and sitting near a small stream. My wife called the "Mom" entry on the cell phone. The mother lives out-of-state, and hadn't heard anything, but said her son is diabetic.

She put my wife in touch with the owner's cousin, who went up to look near where the backpack was-- and found the owner in the stream, looking pretty beat-up. We haven't heard the denouement yet, so we don't know whether the owner was robbed and left in the stream, or fell in as the result of a diabetic attack.

"Do good deeds lavishly without limit". It affects people. :) Even the small things. We don't need to make apps that change the world do make it a better place.

Not just other people, it also comes back to you. So even for the purely self-interested remember karma!

Just do good things for nothing. Karma doesn't exist; what goes around doesn't necessarily come around.

I don't think you understand what I mean by karma. It's not a magic force. It's the simple concept of cause and effect. Simply believing in doing good things for no reason is illogical, and not much different than the reasoning in having blind faith in religion. And even if you have no problems simply doing good for no reason at all, there will be others who cannot latch on to that reasoning, and thus karma is a practical reason for doing good that everyone can latch on to.

Think butterfly effect. That's what karma is. You do something nice it WILL have an effect, even if really small. However these small things will add up. If you're an asshole, I don't care how smart you are, given time = infinity you won't be able to keep it up forever, and the longer you persist the harder it will be to maintain your ass-holeness without retribution. You do something nice to someone else they will be nicer. And if you reason it out, then if you do nice things to everyone, and everyone you do nice things to does the same thing, then it will exponentially spread. It will counteract the people who spread bad things in the same way. But eventually it comes back to you right?

I never had the passcode + data wipe feature turned on on my iPhone (I've never lost a phone in my life and it is such a schlepp to enter a passcode when all you want to do is skip to the next track).

However, when I got my iPad, I immediately realized the chances of it going missing are probably higher (no slip-into-pocket convenience) so I activated passcode + data wipe on it (and also on my iPhone).

A great feature would be that the devices know when I'm in my apartment and in that case not require the passcode.

Maybe they were bloggers just afraid the police would have knock down their door...

This lost-and-found marketing ploy is certainly working out well for BP. ;)

The general topic reminds me of the book "The selfish gene" by Richard Dawkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene).

Oh. I thought someone was able to find an iPad to buy on Craigslist (that wasn't a scam).

I was skeptical until reading this scenario. It is much more believable.

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