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Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

riedel.wtf

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Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#141

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Animats wrote: post #6
yosito wrote: post #2

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.

Why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby. Magnet fishing is a thing. There are web sites for it. Amazon sells kits with very strong magnets and ropes.

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.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#142

Post by DrSiemer »

vonWegen wrote: post #109

50% chance that this story was staged... ... there is a pretty "hip" German pop song, that makes fun about dropping an iPhone into the Landwehrkanal... https://www.lyrics.com/track/33176002/Von+Wegen+Lisbeth/Ch%C...

That song is 4 years old, it's not exactly hip and happening

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#143

Post by GhostVII »

mschuster91 wrote: post #112
GhostVII wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Median disposable income (after healthcare, taxes, housing, etc.) in the US is the highest in the world aside from Norway I believe.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#144

Post by jdavis703 »

ixacto wrote: post #138
walrus01 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The tax rate for $100,000USD/yr is roughly the same between California and British Columbia. But you only get healthcare in one of those.

Jobs paying $100k in California generally come with health insurance though.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#145

Post by bombcar »

pvaldes wrote: post #21
Animats wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why people don't use magnets on strings to search for lost things in European canals more often. Could be an interesting hobby. Magnet fishing is a thing. There are web sites for it. Amazon sells kits with very strong magnets and ropes.

Maybe is the combination of rust iron, salmonella, chilling cold water and skin cuts. Aren't such big magnets an hazard for anything digital near them? Everything has a computer inside now, starting by cars.

I think the real reason it’s not a bigger hobby is that what you get 99% of the time is just junk.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#146

Post by lifeformed »

capableweb wrote: post #13
yosito wrote: post #2

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.

Top 10%? More like top 1%.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#147

Post by ixacto »

jdavis703 wrote: post #144
ixacto wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tax rate for $100,000USD/yr is roughly the same between California and British Columbia. But you only get healthcare in one of those.

Jobs paying $100k in California generally come with health insurance though.

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.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#148

Post by Dylan16807 »

lifeformed wrote: post #146
capableweb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Top 10%? More like top 1%.

The global 1% are people with about $900k in wealth.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#149

Post by Dylan16807 »

driverdan wrote: post #60
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are making €200,000 per year, your time is worth around €100 per hour. Thus if this is going to take more than 10 hours, it is not worth your time.

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.

Re: Using a magnetic string to fish for a lost iPhone 12 in a Berlin canal

#150

Post by adrianN »

yosito wrote: post #2

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.

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.
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