This seems a pretty unhealthy attitude. Basically you're saying to never, ever attempt to protect your belongings from a petty criminal.
Well now, we are going in an interesting direction. I live in Toronto. I am happy that we do not have as many firearms as you might find in Texas. There is a massive and somewhat difficult chasm to cross between the two cultures around the question of "Protecting your belongings from petty criminals."
I'm willing to engage you on this question, but I fear that the HN server will run out of disk space before we can find a common ground.
Whether you're in Texas or Toronto, the situation described in the article is unlikely to result in death or injury. Even in a situation where the criminals have guns, they are extremely unlikely to shoot you in the middle of a Starbucks for no reason.
And yes, I do mean "no reason". There is literally nothing for the criminals to gain by shooting you. They would change from petty thieves who simply lose the laptop and may yet go unpunished to murderers with many witnesses to the crime. This is a major loss, with no upside. Being a petty criminal indicates that they aren't the smartest, but it doesn't indicate that they are completely insane.
I feel that you must be drastically overestimating the danger in this situation to justify simply surrendering the laptop. There's not even a threat of violence here. You're making a chain of assumptions that takes you from "petty thieves" to "willing murderers". That's a hell of a leap.
Well now, we are going in an interesting direction. I live in Toronto. I am happy that we do not have as many firearms as you might find in Texas. There is a massive and somewhat difficult chasm to cross between the two cultures around the question of "Protecting your belongings from petty criminals."
I'm willing to engage you on this question, but I fear that the HN server will run out of disk space before we can find a common ground.