Comment by TACIXAT | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TACIXAT | Hacker News Reader

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I had one in my left ring finger for a while. It was neat, totally impractical, and way too sensitive to touch. I could feel EM fields. This might be really useful if you work with electricity, but as a developer, it was only every so often that I noticed something. It lost a lot of its power to pick up small stuff after a while.

The procedure wasn't painful because the person I went to had some numbing agent that I'm almost certain they weren't supposed to have (by saying this I can't say where I got it done so the body mod artist doesn't get in trouble). I opted for super glue instead of a stitch which also helps in the pain department.

The biggest drawback, as someone who is active, was how sensitive it was to touch. You basically have a hard lump right under some thin skin. I would end up doing push ups with that finger off the ground for a couple of years. If you banged it, it hurt like hell. I got mine removed and my girlfriend got one put in. She got hers removed a few years later. The coating on hers did end up breaking and her skin got a bit discolored where it was.

Yeah, I also had one for a few years and wouldn't really recommend it. It's cool to feel fans and microwaves spin up or pick up small parts, but the magnet lost strength over time and I got it removed because it wasn't worth the sensitivity and constant worrying about hitting it too hard. I also had to be careful not to hold it against strong magnets for too long; I was told if the skin got pinched too much/too long, bad things could happen.

But hey, want to try it without having to cut a finger open? Try super-gluing a small neodymium disc magnet to a fingernail. Just be careful with your phone.

I'm imagining a bemusing hypothetical scenario where every night before you go to bed you could plug in your finger into a finger-shaped magnetizer, as if you were charging a phone or something.

> It's cool to feel fans and microwaves

Feel like it should be possible to have a bracelet that buzzes in response to magnetic fields as a less extreme alternative to this?

or just get a magnetic bracelet?

The magnetic fields from those items don't produce much force, so you need a small thing on sensitive skin to notice the effect. A bracelet is probably too heavy to notice fields that don't also come with a "warning: strong magnetic field" sign.

I mean I guess I was thinking of something to amplify the effect, probably with a small battery in it. All the sated curiosity with none of the questionable body modification :-P

Sadly, you can't beat the physics with today's magnets. Magnetic monopoles are still sci-fi, so the strength of a magnetic field over distance falls of with an inverse cube law; the field strength is proportional to 1 / (distance ^ 3).

For the same reason, electromagnets need to use an enormous amount of power to be effective over long distances.

That's why people get these magnets implanted; because they sit right against the nerve, and the distance is on the order of nanometers. Hurts like heck to get it in, though.

How about a ring with magnetic material in it? I can easily pick up very small vibrations and movements in my wedding ring. I can imagine that a magnet in another ring would respond in a similar way, and felt much in the same was as a magnet in the finger.

From other comments in this thread I think facts of the matter is that the vibrations you sense in your ring aren't that small comparing with what you can feel with your fingertips.

Which to me makes sense, I wouldn't put the sensitivity at the base of my finger above what I have at the tip.

Powerful neodymium magnet rings are readily available and widely used by close-up magicians (search "PK ring" or "kinetic ring"). They don't palpably react to common electromagnetic fields.

By the way be very careful with the injection of novocaine etc into fingers. The proper application of a ring block is tricky, and if you get it wrong (which is easy to do) you can end up with necrosis -> loss of the digit. It's due to the cramped anatomy of the digits; other regions (apart from the head) are much easier.

All that being said I've long been interested in trying this.

Injections of local anaesthetics into end arteries like fingers are only dangerous if the formulation contains a vasoconstrictor (adrenalin/epinephrine) in addition to the anaesthetic agent.

Which almost all injectable will as it's a potentiator and improves locality of effect.

The ones you can get at some dentists vastly improved with my dentist anxiety

One day I was watching The Thought Emporium, the host did the same thing[0].

It was cool to watch, but then I was starting to worry what if one day my doctor want to put me through a MRI machine ...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aVwvJn7vpo

It's far more dangerous than useful if you work with electricity I'm afraid.

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