Today, I noticed that my glasses case sticks to my work laptop like a magnet.
I played around with it for a few seconds, then the thought struck me, that it might be my glasses case that's magnetic, and I might be fucking up the electronics or the HDD or something by holding it close to my laptop. Pulled away real quick then. 😅

I did try with my keys later, and well, turns out that it's my work laptop that's magnetic, so I guess, I wasn't fucking anything up after all...

[–] TwilightKiddy@programming.dev 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's probably integrated speakers. Those can have quite powerful magnets. If it has old spinny hard drives, those have magnets, too. Sometimes the lid also has a magnet if there is a hall effect sensor for detecting if it's closed.

Usually it's hard to find a magnet that'd be strong enough to make electronics inside a laptop malfunction without breaking the case open. Your regular fridge magnets are too weak for that kind of application, so are the ones usually found in glasses cases. And if you happen to be an owner of a chonky magnet, you probably already know the thing is dangerous.

[–] bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some laptops use magnets to help the lid snap closed. I took the back off an old Lenovo and could see the magnets clipped inside.

[–] ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or magnets for hall effect sensors to tell when the lid is closed.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

Ah yeah, that seems to be it. When I drop my keys in the right place, it goes into suspend. If I lift them back off afterwards, it wakes back up.

Neat. 🙃