I've gotta give them props for the persistence. I would have just given up and bought a new iPhone. It's impressive that the iPhone survived the whole ordeal, without even turning off. And the amount of stuff they found makes me wonder why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby.
> I would have just given up and bought a new iPhone
If people didn't already realize that most of people hanging around on HN have the top 10% of the world's wealth, this made things clearer than ever (the phone in question costs around 1000 EUR)
Makes all the conversations around finance here make so much more sense.
I suspect the vast majority of people on HN are in the top 1% globally. People don't realise how high incomes in the US are relative to the rest of the world.
> People don't realise how high incomes in the US are relative to the rest of the world.
Gross definitely, but net (after taxes, healthcare, housing and other fixed costs)... not so sure. High CoL - seriously even as someone who lives in Munich, US housing prices are utterly incomprehensible, just how the fuck do y'all even manage to survive?! -, high costs for transportation, the utter madness that is US healthcare, hundreds of dollars for cable TV, having to save for your pension or student loans.
I'd wager that even after accounting for taxes, most Europeans have more money in their pocket than Americans working in the same field.
(And obviously, all of us have it vastly better than 99% of people in Africa)
Tax rates might be similar but income is way higher. It is relatively common to earn 6 digits in tech in USA. In Western Europe, not so much. Besides cost of living, which might be higher in US, finding 1000 for a new iPhone is way easier there.
> I'd wager that even after accounting for taxes, most Europeans have more money in their pocket than Americans working in the same field.
Having worked in SF and Berlin... SF was definitely better paid overall and I made enough money to buy a nice apartment in Berlin, something which seems unachievable by working in Berlin all your life.
Actually it looks like the calculation goes the opposite direction, basically disposable income is calculated by adding your income in dollars to other benefits you get (healthcare, food stamps, etc.), and subtracting taxes. So that is kind of accounted for, since in countries other than the US their healthcare benefits year-over-year will be added to their measured income.
For the average person though there isn't much risk of having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for cancer treatment. The vast majority of Americans have health insurance, and your costs are limited by the out of pocket maximum.
> your costs are limited by the out of pocket maximum.
“Limited”, ha, ha, ha, to $8k for an individual/$16k for a family. (Very generous of them to assume a family has two wage earners making equally as much.)
Better hope your cancer treatment doesn’t span two calendar years.
If I had a dollar for every American I've seen working at the same companies that was spending $800+ a month for healthcare insurance coverage for themselves, their spouse, their two kids... And then over the course of a year probably a few-thousand in "co-pays" for doctors visits and minor things where the insurance doesn't pay 100% of the doctor visits. And then they still would have a $8,000+ deductible for many categories of expensive medical costs per year, if they ever have to use it, before full coverage kicks in.
I am fortunate enough that my spouse has her own very good medical coverage and we do not have kids, so our monthly outlays are somewhat less.
If you consider that $800 to be equivalent to a tax, the person's take home net income was actually less than if they were an equivalent-of-a-W2 employee in Canada or another place with a social healthcare system.
Exactly, although healthcare and taxes aside, the market ratio of gross salary (as measured in USD) for a certain position relative to cost of real estate and cost of living is a lot higher in many places in California than in BC. The same job might pay the equivalent of $130k USD/year in a big city in CA but would be $105k CAD/year (equivalent to $87k USD/year) in Vancouver.
Not that housing costs in many big cities in CA aren't also ridiculous - but BC seems to be setting new records in unaffordability.
They do but what happens when life happens and you have to quit or you get divorced and you’re a stay at home parent. Lots of edge cases, although of course there are a lot more jobs paying >=$100,000USD in CA than BC or much of Canada.
This tax just comes with no guarantees - you're out of the job means all that you've spent is gone. In contrast a decent healthcare system will take care of you even when you're out of a job. A hospital in UK or Germany won't leave you on the street, even if they know you don't have insurance.
In Germany, it's even better: if you're out sick for longer than 6 weeks, health insurance takes over paying your wages, although at a reduced rate (~70% or such, got changed two years or so ago).
I keep trying to make this point to people when these topics come up, and it never quite seems to sink in. The whole "don't mess why my private insurance! We all love it!" sort of defense... Employer-provided insurance only benefits people who are in employment. Get fired? You're hosed. Need to move someplace and have to leave the employer? You're hosed. Get sick and can't work? Eventually, you'll be terminated from the employer and then... you're hosed.
I can’t speak for other fields but tech scene in Germany and EU is a joke and there is no way one’s compensation matches US. I had a job offer in Munich and considering how low the quality of housing is you end up still paying more than €1300 for a 1 bed flat. (This was my market search back in 2018)
What the fuck, were you searching at Marienplatz in the city center? I mean, I'm a born and raised Munich dude, 1300€ for a 1BR sounds like someone attempted to rip you off - or you were on the hunt for a fully furnished apartment which is ... a questionable decision in itself.
There are a lot of people in the US who buy iPhones (or comparable Android equivalents) on 2-year payment plans with carrier lock-in. Many can afford an extra $40 per month, but don't have the savings to drop $1000 in one go.
> In 2018, the median earnings for full-time, year-round cashiers were $22,109, compared with $35,301 for retail salespersons and $42,421 for first-line supervisors of retail salespersons.
> In contrast, the median earnings for all full-time, year-round workers was $48,565 in 2018.
I've spent ten years working retail here in California, and I'll offer my anecdata: a great number of even those cashiers own iPhones! Ten million people work retail in the US making no more than ~$40k, and that's a population that demonstrably owns iPhones but is hard-pressed to replace them on short notice.
Good numbers/experience. I've usually seen people in such situations buy refurb or a cheaper model for the rest of that period if their insurance policy doesn't give them a refurb. That's moving the goalposts a bit from buying another iPhone 12, admittedly.
Yes that phone would cost me about 2 weeks pay. Sounds pathetic compared to some of the people around here but I actually have a very high quality of life in my opinion, just no iPhone 12. For 2 weeks pay I am going to make a solid effort for sure. On top of the cost, most people these days despite knowing the importance of regular backups, will not do so and most likely have some photos on the photos or information on the phone they can not lose so getting the phone back would be important in that aspect as well.
> And for a properly demoralising angle, that level of wealth is still a far cry from being fully financially independent.
Really? I feel like if you had 900k in cash, and no debts, you could easily live freely. Maybe not the ultimate lifestyle, but pretty comfortably, even in the US. That's around 50k a year in investments. Even with a partner and maybe even a kid or two, you could get by and have the time to build up your own independent income sources, unless I'm wildly overestimated how much the average person wants to spend to live decently.
> feel like if you had 900k in cash, and no debts, you could easily live freely. Maybe not the ultimate lifestyle, but pretty comfortably, even in the US. That's around 50k a year in investments.
It's still cutting it very close. 900k in cash will go by faster than expected due to inflation. A single person in a rural or low COL area for under $2k/month between rent/food/utilities. This isn't really leaving much room for hobbies/enjoyment. I would say that's a bit above subsistence level. Rounding up, that might be $30k/year in basic living, which, in theory would last 30 years. Inflation's going to eat in to that - I can't say how much for sure, but I have a hard time seeing most people make $900k in cash last more than 10-15 years. There will be too many temptations to spend chunks, and there will be legitimate emergencies (thinking primarily of unexpected health stuff).
"50k year in investments" - that 900k would have to be invested moderately aggressively to ensure 50k/year coming off while maintaining most of the principal.
What may be more interesting is seeing what other people might view as "low bar" COL numbers. My mental model for much of the low COL areas of the US would be around $2k/month for a single person to live without being at 'rock bottom', basing mostly on what I see around me as lowish rent, food and utility numbers. I've no doubt some people stretch that number lower, and two people sharing a space would cut the number lower as well. I'd think 2 adults could get by on $3k at 'above subsistence levels' in many areas for a long time. Rounding up a tag, that might put you closer to $40k/year, but you'd still not make that $900k last a long time, between inflation and emergencies.
Since my comment triggered a real discussion, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the subject. For what it's worth, my own views are probably on the fringe side.
To start with, when I say "financially fully independent", I'm not talking about a fixed amount. Instead I'm eyeing a figure that allows you to live comfortably (but not lavishly) with a family, in the place of your choosing, and not have to ever touch the principal. Even in the face of a devastating decade-long recession.
Let's work backwards from that. In case of a massive global downturn, looking down the barrel of a universal lost decade, it is still possible to invest your money so that you can get a reliable 1.8% above inflation from dividends alone. That's pre-tax. Assume capital gains are taxed at 35%, and we're talking about ~1.2% annual real return on investment.
If you expect your family's annual, comfortable living expenses (with assorted housing maintenance costs factored in) to be about 110k net, then you'll need 110/0.012 = 9.16M to invest. Let's round that up to 9.2M.
In case you want to retire to a relatively lavish lifestyle, so you can get a large estate and enough liquid cash to pay for helping staff even under the most drastic but still realistic scenarios, we're talking about post-tax net income of >200k a year, and a principal of at least 17M.
And as a comparison point, if you take the term 'millionaire' from when it became popular and try to adjust for inflation you get a threshold of around 30M. Which seems about right for "permanent lavish lifestyle, times two".
Oh true, I forgot to account inflation, and also healthcare. While I don't think you could retire at 30 with it, 900k would give you a comfy runway to build your own income sources (like an online business or something), while living freely for many years. I guess that's what I meant by financial freedom, not necessarily not having any other income forever. And building online income streams isn't for everyone of course, but it's probably a desire of many here.
On the other hand, 900k will let you comfortably retire and live like a king if you move to a lower cost of living country.
If you're interested, you can look into "Financial Independence / Retire Early" discussion forums and read about people's plans for retiring and living off their investments. Most that I've seen that retire in USA are aiming for much more than $1m and still live rather frugally, though it depends on their plan, how much longer they plan on living, if they are planning on giving anything away as inheritance, and where they plan on living.
This doesn't make sense. You don't work 24h a day. I highly doubt they went a day without pay to get the phone back. Even then it would still be more than a full day's worth of pay at €200,000 per year.
It makes sense on average, assuming 1) that the activity is at least as unpleasant as going to work, and 2) that you negotiated your job hours to your satisfaction.
If I spend enough days on annoying wastes of time, I don't want to lose all my free time, so I'm going to need to reduce how many days I go to work. And since that means doing less work, I can only push that so far before I have to start taking those days unpaid.
("It's more important to get the money than to have those days off" would mean I should have just negotiated more pay and less vacation from the start, so that's incompatible with the premise.)
Maybe I could have taken this one day in stride and ignored it. But maybe I was already on the edge of needing a break, and this pushes me to take a multi-week sabbatical. On average, in a situation like this, 1 day wasted on annoying tasks gets traded for about 1 day of labor.
And this idea doesn't require you to be able to control your hours as much as you want, just a few percent is enough to make the logic work.
And even if you could, you should be billing them at a substantially higher rate than your normal salary already consuming your full-time bandwidth. These extra hours are precious and increasingly scarce bandwidth for self, and fast overlap into exceedingly inconvenient territory.
Going to the toilet is inefficient, that's why I only eat precisely the calories and nutritional content that my body needs without anything left over to produce waste
Unfortunately that’s not how the body works. Waste isn’t produced because of excess intake. That’s what causes far buildup. Anything you eat and drink will create waste.
Oh god yes. Imagine being able to go to a concert and instead of having to go to the port-a-potty you could just deduct a couple dollars from your bank account. That sounds amazing.
Also over half? of people wake up to pee at least once. That'd be nice to make unnecessary.
You've got some weird comparisons here. Aside from not seeming relevant, of the three two are ones we definitely pay other people to do sometimes (ever got on a bus?). The last, breathing - you mean I could pay someone to breathe instead of me doing it? And go diving with no tank? Sounds incredible.
The goal of the monetary view is still to increase your enjoyment. If you have fun doing something, it won't tell you to stop. It only steps in to say "If this is an unfun obligation, maybe you should treat it like a job."
You're not going to miss out on much of life that way.
Yes, and the guys in the article had fun, recovered their expensive phone - and got some fame - I originally replied to the comment who stated the whole thing would be nothing for him, simply because of the amount of time invested vs. his hourly wage. That sounds like a more money centered philosophy to me, but each to his own.
Why? I’m not saying you’re wrong per se but you offer a stern dismissal without any reason nor alternative.
For what it’s worth, I think the GP makes a pretty common opinion. For example people on lower incomes will do more household jobs themselves because it saves them money, whereas people on higher incomes will pay people to do things because it saves them time. The opinion might be dressed up differently when I state that but it’s still the simple act of a person putting a value on their free time. It’s why we have house cleaners, windows cleaners, gardeners, car washers, and so on and so forth. The only different is people don’t usually casually post precise numeric values against their time. But it’s still a sentiment shared by many.
Putting a valuation on one’s time is not unreasonable but assuming every hour of your life is worth the same as the equivalent hourly rate of your salaried job kind of is? Or at least it’s overly simplistic. Not every hour of your life is fungible like that.
It is overly simplistic. But equally if you’re paid less then a car wash you’d probably want to wash the car yourself.
There is going to be a line drawn somewhere that equates to “yes this is worthwhile expense” and “no, I’m better off doing that myself”. While I acknowledge that line is going to be variable depending on how much one likes or loaves a particular activity, equating the cost of outsourcing to your own rate of pay isn’t an unreasonable approximation for where that line should reside.
It's pretty big on YouTube. There's also a fair amount of underwater metal detecting and phone recovery/lost stuff discovery. It's oddly entertaining! Unfortunately a complete waste of time, too. Haha.
A phone or iPad will take 3T and work ok afterwards.
I’ve seen engineers photograph the cold head on an MR scanner and the phone has held up just fine.
Sometimes they turn off for a bit and need a little rest.
Unless they are taking the photo from near or in the bore, the camera isn't seeing anything like 3T (or, for that matter 1T).
Most such photos are taken from outside the 5G line which is a very different kettle of fish.
You are right that lots of electronics will be safe in the sense that it will not function in the field but be ok afterwards outside the room - so long as you don't move it around too fast.
On the other hand, most consumer electronics would likely fly out of your hand and smash into the bore well before you get anywhere close to the peak strength.
Ah, service tech makes sense. Most others aren't going see anything interesting in the photo that close.
Laptop is pretty crazy, what where they (not) thinking? I guess was imagining "normal" camera not phone, but you are right that modern attempts to make phones light have removed most of the magnetic material.
It doesn't take much to make it a problem (e.g. steel screws). Typical rooms are going to over 20g acceleration on ferromagnetic components in the highest gradient regions.
Absolutely. The engineer with the laptop had a brain fade - his area was usually CT.
As magnets have got better control over their fringe fields, the issue has got worse. The field goes from nothing to 3T in a very short distance, so 10+ T/m rate of change is not uncommon.
Not everybody has access to Computer Tomography machines but lets examine a more common situation. Moving our magnet to the fishing area.
Lets imagine that we put, not a magnetic string, a standard size neodymium magnet for fishing in the front seat of our car... or we move it in the car trunk (but forgot that our car has the battery located inside the trunk (as several BMW or VOLVO models do, for example).
There are basically two purely EM mechanisms at work for large static fields. First, if the field is big enough, it will saturate components that rely on EM effect to work - these will stop functioning until they are removed from the field. Permanent damage possible if other components behave badly in this situation.
The other thing is if you move in the field you will induce currents on anything like a conductive loop in your device. Damage potential is really dependent on the strength, speed of motion, and how sensitive your device is.
Of course, if you have magnetic materials, mechanical damage is also possible.
I suspect those fishing magnets fall off fast enough you'd have to get it lined up just right to a control board to see any effect, if then.
When I did riversurfung in European rivers and canals we always had a cleanup day at the begin of the season, and we pulled out a lot of gear. Bicycles, chairs, various stuff, but never a laptop, watch or phone.
We jumped into it and dived. Magnets are only for tiny things. Only the big things block the way and are dangerous.
> …makes me wonder why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often.
You may be interested in “Below the Surface”, an exhibition of objects found in Amsterdam canals that have been dated from 2005 (phones, coins) back to -119000 (sea shells).
Nah, stolen safes end up in canals very often, guns and knives too. They are easy places to dispose of small heavy items and they usually stay hidden for a long time.
The classic usage for Brits is the 'ordnance survey' (maps) which originate in the need for accurate maps when calculating angles for artillery!
Also, while I'm a native speaker who does know this one I think it's obscure enough that most don't. In fact I suspect it's obscure enough that the mis-spelling will replace it eventually anyway.
Incidentally the products of magnet fishing often turn up on Reddit's /r/whatisthisthing sub. You also see quite a few munitions. Often enough, in fact, that they have a munitions bot that warns people to contact the authorities (and not, e.g., twist the end to see if it comes off...)
Also, at least in American English, “ordinance” is not a mass noun. An ordinance is a piece of legislation. So I would say “an old ordinance can also be troublesome…”
Same in Germany. I never considered magnet fishing growing up there and now I remember why: it was super common for WW2 explosives to be found that didn't explode on impact but had corroded over time.
If you got an email in your inbox that said to click a link to find out what personal item of yours somebody had found with a magnet, would that be considered magnet phishing?
> It's impressive that the iPhone survived the whole ordeal
My SE just survived a trip through the washing machine. It got very mildly scuffed by buttons and zippers, but you couldn't tell it spent 30-40 minutes sloshing around in dirty water.
It's become quite popular in the UK. People frequently pull out guns or munitions like grenades and cause streets to be closed by the police. I'm not sure if they ever pull anything useful.
Magnet fishing in Germany is of questionable legality. In any case you have to dispose of everything you pull out, leaving it or throwing it back in is definitely illegal.
Interesting. On the one hand the bikes and miscellaneous scrap people leave on the sides in the UK is an eyesore, but on the other hand it was already there, it was just hidden. Is scrap metal harmless at the bottom of a canal or river? Are they not doing a public service by exposing it and allowing more easy disposal by local authorities?
but certainly less conductive in terms of total dissolved salts than the ocean. I meant "fresh" water in the sense of, not ocean water, not something you'd want to drink :)
The phone is IP68, so I would think the conductivity of the water is not a major concern unless there is some mechanical damage that impacts the waterproofing
The lightning or USB-c connector on a phone has voltage present, and exposed copper like that plus salt water surely isn't a good combination. Without making an ip68 rated twist lock huge charger connector I don't see how the port itself can be waterproofed.
The IP68 rating applies to the entire device, it doesn't exclude the charging port.
These connectors are well-protected against complete shorts (e.g. people sticking a piece of metal into the port). Both Lightning and USB-C have protocol negotiation at low-voltage/low-current before any meaningful current will be delivered by either side.
