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Someone Is Trying to Sell Those Stolen Three-Screen Razer Laptops in China (geek.com)
Just a few days ago, Razer's awesome Project Valerie laptops -- the one with three 4K displays -- were stolen. Now it looks like whoever stole them is trying to sell them. From a report: It turns out that the thief (or thieves) didn't just nab one Project Valerie prototype. They actually got ahold of a pair. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan understandably wants them back, really, really badly. The company was willing to offer $25,000 to anyone who could offer information that led to the prototypes' return. So where did the laptops end up? Somewhere behind the Great Wall, apparently. Whoever has them isn't trying to quietly fence them in some dark Beijing alleyway, either. They've actually been listed on the immensely popular Chinese e-commerce site Taobao -- where they were spotted by writers at Engadget Chinese and Wccftech.
So it's only natural that the whole situation is absurd. Next thing, it gets in ISIS hands and it gets used to bomb the president of USA and Somalia to outer space where they meet the aliens that tell them that God is Putin.
Pay the guy in China the $25k you're offering.
Already!
It might also be a scam, of course.
I think we all know who took the prototypes, if dbrand starts making skins for them very soon don't be surprised
Taobao is ISIS
[cough] fake news [cough]
In Soviet Russia, parts stamp you.
Posting only photos taken at CES before theft. Hilarious price. Totally looks legit. Not.
They are pretty much only offering what these would cost if manufactured regularly. That means they go through a synthetic show of outrage, but in actual reality they could not care less and may even like the additional exposure this gives them. Basically these two devices had one single purpose, namely to be shown off. In engineering circles, this is known as a "stunt". It does not mean anything and is basically a form of posturing. As CES is over, these two monsters have served their purpose and the only thing they had in their future was collecting dust somewhere, because they are not actually useful for anything. For an industry that does a lot more of these, look at all the "cars of the future" that never make it into production, ever, because they are actually not practical.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Are they Razer Laptops or Lazer Raptops?
There has also been at least one instance of the Razer laptop being listed on eBay.
I'll take the listing on Taobao with a grain of salt.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I'm surprised that no one here has pointed out that this is likely a hoax listing.
The photo in the listing is from Razor's CES suite. There's no proof, photographic or otherwise, that the seller actually has the laptops.
This is a hoax listing; a bored nerd having a giggle. Which shouldn't surprise anyone given that even after 20 years, yahoos are still putting up listings like the Ark of the Covenant on eBay.
nobody can just walk in and pick something out of a booth, without ending up on camera. Their claim that the machine was stolen was a hostile business maneuver designed to create a pretext where Razer could accuse any competitor selling a similar machine, of having carried out the theft.
Also: the listing is fake, but msmash is doing a real good job fueling the fires here, which is what matters I guess.
Hired Mercs to get it back and the hands of the thieves! Or this is a chance to start a competing show! Put CES out of its misery.
I'll give you, one dollar...
Okay, two.
There is something wrong with so many C level executives when it comes to giving people other than C level executives money. Not that the thieves deserve it in this case, but quite simply those laptops must be worth at least a million or more to get back.
Even when crime isn't involved I have seen companies self destruct rather than pay engineers what they are worth. I can name specifically two companies where they had a person with 3D skills that were in the top 1% of the top 1%. They were paying him something under 50K while the execs at the company took around 200k each (4 of them). So he goes off to a conference (that when they found out what he was doing on his vacation they pretty much told him that there would be no job waiting if he went) and gets a crap tonne of job offers. The one he took had a damn good salary plus bonuses for performance that were measurable and could easily double his salary. The company he worked for offered to come close to the salary but said no way to the bonus. Needless to say they were losing him even if they matched the salary as he was so pissed off for being underpaid. Company died less than a year later as they couldn't meet the quality and other requirements in a few contracts that he had been doing.
Another case resulted in an engineering company having to have an engineer with a very specific qualification. The engineer went and got the qualification on his own. Then the engineer left the company with a small group of other "junior" engineers and bid against their old company on the contract that had been coming up that required they have an engineer with that qualification. The old company lost their shit when they realized that they were losing a crazy critical contract to someone they had felt they could abuse and barely pay. The key was that he had tried and tried to get the company to pay for the training for the certification but instead chose to send one of the partner engineers instead along with his wife in first class style months before his retirement. But then medical issues prevented him from going. This junior engineer just took vacation, stayed in crap hotels, and got certified. Again to massive layoffs at the old company because that contract had been a "sure thing".
So where this company is offering 25K to get their product back, it just tells me that they don't understand the value that other people have (even if it is extortionate) and probably pay their engineers shit pay. Thus I hope their product is ripped off 100 ways from Sunday.
The price for razer should be less than the bounty. And thy have a target account to track. How hard can it be?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Move along