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Comment by dtx1 | Hacker News Reader

This is such a bad idea it's beyond words. Why would you implant something that will 100% be outdated within the span of a few years and and can be done just as easily with a watch, a phone or a plastic card, things you very, very likely carry on you anyway. Even if you don't have a wallet because your minimalistic or whatever and you don't have a watch because you have a phone that shows the time YOU STILL HAVE A FREAKING PHONE FOR THAT.

Don't take this the wrong way i had a magnet implanted in my finger for a while so i am not against body mods but this is just plain stupid.

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It's "dangerous things"

I think it pays (money) to post about doing stuff that would make people like it and cringe at the same time.

(I wonder how much simone gertz made from her Truckla videos, which included sawzalling into a brand new model 3?)

There's a real difference between chopping a car in half and injecting stuff into your body.

There's also a similarity, which is that they are both publicity stunts that draw their attention-getting power from "cringe" reactions in people who hear of them.

I went to something called a bio hacking village at a conference called "DefCon" a few years ago. I thought it sounded pretty neat but the thrust of whole thing seemed to be implanting various things like this, from key fobs to RFID tags to payment cards. Seemed pretty out there to me under the same argument you're making. The general feel seemed to be that the implants wouldn't go obsolete but I want so sure. Left me very skeptical of bio hacking. This was a relative large conference too, so I don't attribute it to just being a small fringe conference.

You can use the exact same argument for carrying a small magnet in your pocket. The satire might be going over my head though.

The argument that magnetism will inevitably shut down its attraction and repulsion services within a few years, rendering your implant useless?

The implanted magnets actually do tend to lose their magnetism over a few years, or at least I've read multiple accounts indicating so, eg https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/15999544/biohacking-finge...

No Satire here. The thing about the magnet in the finger is that you can not only feel metals or other magnets but with it beeing implanted near a very sensitive nerves you can feel alternating magnetic fields, for example transformers, electric powerlines etc. Thats something a magnet in my pocket cannot do. That beeing said, my magnet got rejected pretty fast and i chose not to reimplant it after that since i also had problems typing with it.

My argument for a magnet, even though it might lose magnetic power over time, compared to an RFID Chip is that the magnet implanted gives you a new sense that you cannot get without implanting it. Compared to a rfid for paying which can be replaced by a phone/watch/card without losing functionality and magnets aren't going to become obsolete by the whimps of a bank or cc provider.

>with it beeing implanted near a very sensitive nerves you can feel alternating magnetic fields, for example transformers, electric powerlines etc.

That sounds like the worst experience ever, it would be like giving yourself touch tinnitus.

Oh no it's super harmless. You can only feel it close to a source like when you feel your hand along a wall with an embedded wire running main AC. The only time I was genuinely surprised by it was when i walk past a motor in a train that was starting up but even then it wasn't annoying.

I prototyped a glove with hall effect sensors and vibration motors to allow sensing magnetic flux without needing to implant a magnet in your finger.

Also because you might be broadcasting some kind of ID all the time.

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