Does anyone else harvest the magnets and platters from old drives as a monument to selfhosting history?
Does anyone else harvest the magnets and platters from old drives as a monument to selfhosting history?
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A common public toilet till machine has a keyhole that looks like a coin slot. Turns out, HDD magnets are the perfect shape to fish out any coins mistakenly thrown in there.
Public toilet till machines - we don't have that in the US. Can you show a example - potentially even fishing out some coins? Super curious!
Here is a datasheet of one / photo. I don't have the video of me fishing coins, I probably deleted it because it was unwatchable (it's hard to fish coins while filming covertly!) but about 5 coins fit into the space behind the keyhole before they start being visible. The front panel is non-magnetic, unlike CZK coins, and the sound of fishing them out is very similar to throwing them in, so there is little suspicion unless you are at the wrong-gender toilet. Unfortunately, 10 CZK coins take effort to jam into the slot, so almost only coins up to 5 CZK ($0.25) get accidentally thrown in. Still, pays for my bus home.
Incredible! Thanks for sharing this. I now need to keep a look out when I visit Europe to see if I can attempt this.
They are also used as parking ticket machines (in Europe we don't have parking meters, you buy a ticket and display it on the dashboard, or in some places get a virtual ticket for your license plate). I don't think the company exports these outside the Czech Republic, and Euro coins are not magnetic. So I’m afraid you'll have to find another magnet-related exploit (maybe this)?
And the coins aren't magnetic
