Resolves to Yes if I get my laptop with the data intact, or, at least, the SSDs from it.
Last night, my laptop was stolen from a house in London. (I’ll split $1500+ bounty between people suggesting ideas that lead to me recovering the laptop, if it's recovered.)
The laptop’s primary disk was encrypted with VeraCrypt, so it should be impossible to turn on.
By the end of the day:
- The police basically didn’t do anything useful.
- From an ISP, we know that it happened around (possibly after?) 10:54pm.
- I couldn’t get hands on any camera footage, although it likely existed. Owner of one car with a camera pointing straight at the door gave me his email but didn't send anything. The camera ran out of battery at around 11-11:30pm, IIRC.
- Talked to a couple of homeless people in a nearby area, saying I’m happy to give a reward to however returns the laptop. One asked around (including a couple of people “who buy stuff” and later told me that “they can’t get in there [can’t turn on the laptop?], can’t they? Because of a password/key thing”. I confirmed this. She told me that they can’t sell it because of it.
At that point, I became >50% certain that she got in contact with people who have the laptop: the laptop is encrypted and asks for a password before launching Windows.
This happened at around 4:40pm. She told me to meet at 6pm (and that she’s going to buy some weed in the market). I got slightly optimistic. At 6pm, no one showed up (except for me and a housemate). I lost some of the optimism.
This would’ve been a great story to tell if it ended in a laptop recovery. It hasn’t, so instead it’s kinda sad.
I’ve put a couple of posters about a reward for the laptop, with my contact info, but I’m not optimistic.
(Ideas and thoughts are welcome. Please don't manipulate this market in ways that reduce the probability of me getting my laptop back. I'm betting on No to encourage people to bet Yes and be incentivised to help me)
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Got a call from the police detective that they couldn’t triangulate the router. Apparently they haven’t even tried getting the CCTV footage
@ms Sorry you didn't get your laptop back yet! I lost a laptop too, last year. What's your plan B?
No updates from the police; in a couple of days, the CCTV footage might get deleted, if they haven’t retrieved it. I’m not hopeful
People who buy Yes, where’s your hope coming from? Any ideas for what I might do?
A reminder that if the data on the laptop is not intact, this resolves to No even if I get it back.
The thieves would probably sell the laptop by parts, if they haven’t already done so.
I might leave the UK in a couple of days for EAGxBerlin.
@cloudprism Could’ve been us, but we didn’t have AirTags and even when we found a location, the police were too slow to arrive
After DMing the police on Twitter, yesterday, I got a call from the detective who was finally assigned to the case. She told me she’ll try looking for the CCTV footage next week
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Rne3jIYzYSc9xQKr_YqV_t3xJowkb-FLjoizo_6GA8/edit
There might be inaccuracies, we might edit this, but it is more or less what happened. Lmk if anyone is interested in the audio recordings for some reason (the police told me to hang on to them, but mostly, they’re not interested)
An update from the ISP: apparently, the router has last been connected at 23:48 on August 26; but then the SIM card (I just learned the router was a 5G wifi router) was connected again on August 27 at 19:00. It might be possible to get the approximate location from the cell towers?
Also update: I talked to a housemate who’s been absent for a couple of days and offline. The thieves have stolen her bike, an Apple keyboard, an Oura ring charger, and some kind of a tv thing that was near the wifi router.
This means the thief has probably been quite visible. Will update the police tomorrow (during the working hours)
I talked to the homeless lady again. She told me she meant that generally, if “they” can’t get into the laptops, they have to sell them by parts.
Now my impression is that either I was wrong and she wasn’t actually in contact with someone who knows where the laptop is, or she’s now lying for some reason
I was pointed at dodgy people “on the bench”, they told me if they get the laptop they’ll call me
the camera pointing at the door doesn’t have the recording now :( I should’ve acted faster
Are private investigators a thing in the UK? Can I hire them to help recover the laptop?
Got M$250 for someone signing up on Manifold because of this question, added to the No bets to encourage people to buy Yes and help me
