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Comment by memalign | Hacker News Reader

Interesting video. I can’t believe this guy is just live x-raying his fingers like this though…

Sleep soundly, for Ben is no stranger to radiation and imaging and is surely well aware of the risk profile. He mentions it briefly at 10:55 as roughly equivalent to a dental X-ray, which is pretty minor as seen on the excellent XKCD radiation dose visualization: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

If I recall correctly Ben's side hustle before YouTube was making non-ferrous computer peripherals for MRI machines, and his portfolio on YouTube is incredibly extensive including this one from 10 years ago where he made a CT scanner from scratch!

https://youtu.be/hF3V-GHiJ78

I was amazed with the lcd and the vacuum metal evaporation coat applying thing

Always amazed at the order of magnitude jumps in that chart. Why are mammograms 20x stronger than chest x-rays? Who would guess how much safer the nuclear energy stuff is than so many common activities? And brick/stone house doses are kind of astounding.

Even after examining that chart every few years, my intuition still isn't tuned to reality.

Always wondered about that too. Once got a contrast solution injected into my shoulder (they were going for the tissue around the joint) under a live x ray feed and I could watch them on a screen. I was padded with lead wherever possible, but still, cool experience.

Anyone know if this can realistically cause cancer or skmething?

Presumably they've refined the equipment by now, but this guy seriously injured his hands with x-rays around the turn of the previous century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihran_Kassabian

they come in packs of ten for a reason yaknow!

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