17 ms·
It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box
- SergeAx 4y agoCan't we increase the density of a metal by forging or high-pressure casting?
- butlerm 4y agoThe only way to produce a higher density metal at standard pressures and temperatures would be to get it to go through some sort of allotropic transformation to a crystal structure that is more tightly packed, but the ordinary solid phase of most metals is usually (relatively) close to its limits due to atomic structure already. Most of these alternatives are only stable at high pressures or unusual temperatures or both, and they may very well be less dense than the common form.
- rondrabkin 4y agoDid in person deliveries via plane quite a bit in the 90s. Was working for the worlds largest semiconductor company. Most staggering example was trying to get a very very small box of engine controller CPUs from Penang Malaysia to an auto plant outside of Philadelphia to get there before 8am shift start. Only way to make it work was hand carry from Penang through Singapore to Anchorage, clear customs and then rented Learjet to Philly. Penalties for late delivery were massive. In this case had we been a couple hours later would have resulted in cascading loss of production resulting in auto union people needing to work during their summer shutdown and quite large cost. Semiconductors are different from other parts. They take a long time to manufacture. And, sometimes you think you've made them but they just die for whatever reason. If you want to make a new factory it takes years too. I wonder if the auto companies have learned to keep some semiconductors around just in case. Oh wait. No.
- nkurz 4y agoWhile the tweet is correct ("It is physically impossible to exceed the 70-pound domestic weight limit for a small flat rate box") the shortened title here which omits the word "small" is very misleading. The USPS offers a variety of sizes of flat rate boxes (https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail.htm#flatrate https://www.usps.com/ship/priority-mail.htm#flatrate), all of which have the same 70 lb weight limit. It's only the "small" that cannot be overweight. The two mediums and the large can exceed the limit with dense contents. Perhaps the title could be changed to omit "physical" and add back "small"?
- dang 4y agoOk, we've removed the (redundant, I suppose) word 'physically' and squeezed in 'small' in the title above.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoI don't think "physically" is redundant. It could be legally impossible, or practically impossible. I played around with the title and character limit for a minute, and managed to get: "A small flat-rate USPS box's weight limit is physically impossible to exceed". How's that?
- dang 4y agoThat sounds awkward to me. The best way to shorten titles is to omit words - then you keep the prosody of the original. I've taken another crack at it. Now someone will complain about USPS being missing, but "flat rate" implies someone's rate, and it's not as if USPS is a misleading surprise. (Submitted title was "It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a USPS flat rate box". First edit was "It is impossible to exceed the weight limit for a small USPS flat rate box".) p.s. If anyone wonders why HN spends so much obsessive energy getting titles right - I wondered that for years, too. Then it eventually made sense: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20429573. It's like this tiny corner of the universe where one's voice can be heard and correctness actually matters. That's my theory anyhow. All I know for sure is that the beast likes it if you soothe it about titles.
- ajju 4y agoAn ode to @dang (fueled by three amazing strong coffees in Ginza and the first idle moments on the interwebs I've enjoyed in a long long time) HN: one of the last remaining Great Good Places of the Internet, a lone tavern in an iconic gateway town to the now not-so-wild west. Beyond the western borders of this little town, the tech gold rush has both expanded to epic proportions, affecting all the economies in the world, and also gone through enough booms and busts that the phrase "gold rush" seems somehow off. As more and more young'uns join and jaded veterans return to throng the tavern alike, it often seems to be on the brink of either exploding with the largest gun fight in history, or jumping the shark [1]. And yet, against all odds, it retains its original magnetism - drawing throngs that grow in number and diversity while seers like https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11 and https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tptacek continue to return - dispensing worldly wisdom worth its weight in gold from corner tables. The secret is the man at the corner of the bar @dang, always around with a friendly smile and a towel on his shoulder. The only sheriff in the west who still doubles as the friendly bartender: always polite, always willing to break up a fight with kind words and clean up messes himself. Yes a cold-hard look from him is all it takes to get most outlaws to back down, yes, his Colt-45 "moderator" edition is feared by all men, but the real secret to his success: his earnest passion (some call it an obsession) for the seemingly sisyphean task of sustaining good conflict - letting it simmer but keeping it all times below the boiling point based on "the code": "Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." May the last great tavern in the West and it's friendly bartender-sheriff live long and prosper. ---- [1] - I hope I didn't jinx this by writing this "ode" :)
- TheJoeMan 4y agoI once purchased lead weights online, and they came packed tessellated in a flat rate box. Shipper definitely got their money’s worth.
- radicality 4y agoOut of curiosity, what kind of weights were they? I was under the impression that it has been phased out of many uses because of high toxicity (including via skin absorption when handling it)
- travisporter 4y agoExactly what I was thinking. Bet they're iron, about 70% less dense and a good supplement for your blood cells. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=densiy+of+iron%2Fdensity+of+lead https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=densiy+of+iron%2Fdensit...
- aix1 4y agoLead weights continue to be widely used in diving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_weighting_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_weighting_system (there's a section on materials and toxicity).
- halfdan 4y agoThey are, but as a diver I will never touch them unless they look in proper shape and are the types wrapped in some other material. Some fishy dive centers will have the old style raw lead blocks..
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoYou breath TEL whenever you go near an airport. That's a far more pressing concern than incidental exposure through contact. If that's your threshold you may as well isolate from zinc and copper too.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago"for those of you who have seen those firsthand" I feel old.
- radicality 4y agoSemi related - a few months ago, while not fully sober, I was aimlessly browsing through Amazon and ended up owning a set of two 1.5inch cubes - one aluminium, one tungsten. It’s kind of a silly purchase considering it’s a lot of money for 2 metal cubes, but it’s honestly very impressive just how heavy that small cube is - both objectively, and when compared to the aluminium cube. Also makes for a great talking point when having guests over.
- chiph 4y agoWhen I heard that the crypto millionaires were buying Tungsten cubes for fun, I checked into the prices. Amazon lists a 1.5" cube (weighs 1 kg) at $199 and a 4" cube (that weighs 18.9 kg [0]) at $3499. There's no way I'm spending that, but I will admit to wanting to experience their density for myself. [0] free Prime shipping for the win
- akvadrako 4y agoTungsten doesn't seem especially heavy; it's a little less than gold.
- valbaca 4y agoright, just buy 1kg of gold instead
- mminer237 4y agoIt's not the heaviest thing in the world, but it's probably the heaviest thing a person could buy a practical cube of. The main metals heavier than lead are gold, iridium, mercury, platinum, tungsten, and uranium. Uranium is a comparable price and density to tungsten, but buying iridium is gonna be at least 50x the price for something 10% denser.
- idiotsecant 4y agoUranium at it's elemental density is a comparable price to tungsten??
- mc4ndr3 4y agoDon't forget the packing peanuts. About a ton per cubic centimeter of product.
- bombcar 4y agoThe flat rate envelope used to be a bit cheaper than that small box - and the small box fits inside the envelope with a bit of work - no tape!
- TMWNN 4y agoThe USPS 1096L box (<https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/priority-mail-box---1096l-P_O_1096L https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/prior...>) fits perfectly inside the USPS padded flat rate envelope (<https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/priority-mail-flat-rate-padded-envelope-P_EP14PE https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/prior...>). Great for giving an item slightly more protection.
- rawling 4y agoAre those actually free? They recoup the cost when you post it?
- TMWNN 4y agoYes, USPS offers a range of free Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express boxes and envelopes. You only pay postage when using them; sometimes flat rate (as in the box being discussed here), and other times by some combination of distance and dimensions/weight. Flat rate is particularly interesting because the single rate applies, as implied, regardless of weight or distance. I sell a product that is 3 lb and fits into the aforementioned padded flat rate envelope. This means that I can ship it to the farthest reaches of Alaska or Guam for the same $8.45 (USPS commercial rate) as to any other US address.
- rawling 4y agoCool, thankyou for the insight.
- a9h74j 4y agoOn Earth.
- Hamcha 4y agoDepends how you measure it. Any X kg/lbs of matter here on earth is still that same X kg/lbs everywhere in the universe. Assuming the scale being used to weight is correctly calibrated to whatever planet it's in, it would still show up as the same amount of kg/lbs.
- a9h74j 4y agoDepends upon what you set out to measure. lbs is specifically a unit of force. kg is specifically a unit of mass. It is a category error to equate these as measures, although (in many places) an everyday convention to do so on Earth. IIRC the English unit for mass is the slug. If the tecnical limit is 70lbs or so, that is must technically be read as lbs force -- aka force of gravity which varies with location.
- rzzzt 4y agoKilopond or kilogram-force is the force with which a 1 kg object is pushing on its base: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram-force
- dragonwriter 4y ago> lbs is specifically a unit of force Incorrect. The avoirdupois pound (lb) is historically a unit reflecting the long conflation of mass and force, but the modern unit of that name is expressly a mass unit that is a derived unit of the kilogram. The corresponding unit for force is the pound-force, (lbf).
- zmgsabst 4y agoWikipedia lists it as a unit of mass — as defined by the amount that exerts a certain force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(mass) The pound unit of force is abbreviated ‘lbf’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_(force)
- tyingq 4y agoOn the other end of the spectrum is lightweight, but bulky stuff. I sold things like this for a time, some time ago. Would get a fair amount of grief from customers who would use the simpler UPS/Fedex calculators on the weight only and complain that I padding shipping prices. But UPS and Fedex charge "dimensional weight" for these types of shipments, and you have to use a more complicated formula.
- spindle 4y ago> padding shipping prices Pun of the day.
- Blackthorn 4y agoThat said, it sure wasn't fun for the mail person when they had to deliver me those two boxes of lead ingots.
- jotm 4y agoI got a pair of dumbbells once (30KG total) that were very efficiently packed in one small box and felt kinda bad about the guy
- mikestew 4y agoI'll raise you a 114lb/52Kg battery (not USPS, though; FedEx, IIRC): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RPOI7F4/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RPOI7F4/ I, too, felt bad for the guy until I saw him toss it on his shoulder like it was nothing, carried to the garage and gently set it down. Not a big guy, either. :-)
- athenot 4y agoThe UPS person who delivered my full size punching bag was not super thrilled. 100 lbs and 150cm tall odd shape. I wish I was there when delivery happened as I was prepared to tip them for the inconvenience.
- mynameisash 4y agoMy dad made a black walnut coffee/end table for me, and instead of waiting for the next time he drove out here, he decided to ship it via FedEx. It was like 100 lbs, but due to the very large size and somewhat wonky shape, he then built a plywood encasement for it with some used carpet to keep the epoxied table from getting scratched. It was quite a sight to behold. The FedEx guy had no problem hauling 100+ lbs of large, awkward object, but he was curious as can be as to what on earth he was delivering.
- postalrat 4y agoI ordered a couple 70 pound blocks of tungsten. They were each double boxed and still somehow managed to slip through the first box. Might have been both amusing and annoying to handle those boxes.
- ortusdux 4y agoI have a 115lb shipment of small metal parts that needs to be across the country before Wed. Both FedEx and UPS quoted me ~$750 to ship it in a 12"x8"x8" OSB box via 2-day shipping. Fedex one rate boxes have a weight limit of 50lbs. The small boxes are $31/ea to ship. I just finished breaking the shipment up into 3 parts. Heck, next day would be ~$300.
- treeman79 4y agohttps://www.deseret.com/2014/11/24/20553427/legend-of-vernal-bank-built-by-bricks-sent-through-post-office-partly-true?_amp=true https://www.deseret.com/2014/11/24/20553427/legend-of-vernal... One guy mailed a bank. One brick at a time.
- jeffbee 4y agoNegotiated FedEx and UPS rates are often 90% off the retail price or better. If you can get the box sent from a shipper that has a daily pickup from UPS and reimburse them, you may save a great deal of money.
- BenjiWiebe 4y agoCheck UPS's new flat rate options for this. They call it "Simple Rate".
- paxys 4y agoThere's a reason for it. Package sizes and weight limits are optimized for workers who are going to carry them. So yes in your case the total weight loaded on to the truck or plane may be the same, but loading/unloading 3x40 lb boxes and carrying them to your front porch is very different from doing the same with a single 115 lb box. Airlines work the same way. 2x50 lb bags cost $30 each. One single 100lb bag has a $200 surcharge.
- Closi 4y agoUsually large items go through an entirely different delivery network because the whole parcel delivery chain will be designed around weight limits - I.E. that weight might not be able to go through the automated sorter, and there is very limited capacity for manual workarounds for individual parcels.
- PaulHoule 4y agoA laser fusion system can compress materials to a density higher than Osmium but it doesn't stay that dense for very long.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deepspace 4y agoSince I discovered the availability of anvils on Amazon, I have always wondered about the economics of shipping them. Right now, I can order a 66lb "Happybuy" anvil for $153 with free prime shipping. One assumes that the $153 includes the cost of shipping it all the way from China in the first place. For comparison, a similarly sized anvil from a reputable local dealer costs $949 plus tax and shipping at the lowest rate (UPS standard) is $93.
- peterlk 4y agoMy friend once ordered a hot tub with 2 day shipping on Amazon Prime, and has often wondered about the economics of that purchase.
- ceejayoz 4y ago"Free" shipping of that sort of thing tends to be factored into the selling price. I'll occasionally find large, heavy items on Amazon that are 20-30% more than in a local store for this reason.
- Dylan16807 4y agoIt also means that your average sub-25-cent part on Amazon costs $5.
- elihu 4y agoI once bought a band saw from Amazon with free shipping. (I didn't have Prime, it was just regular free shipping.) I could have bought it locally, but I didn't have a convenient way to get it home. In my case, free shipping didn't turn out all that great; it was damaged when it got to me. Fortunately I was able to get free replacement parts from the company. I suspect Amazon probably lost money on that deal since they had to hire specialty movers, but who knows?
- apricot 4y agoThat's the best name I can imagine for an anvil.
- xg15 4y ago
- perihelions 4y agoAn implosion-type nuclear weapon can compress matter to some multiple of the density of osmium. This isn't useful for USPS box packaging; I just think it's neat. edit: Also, inertial confinement fusion plasmas go up to about 1,000 g/cm³, https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0008231 https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0008231 ("Unified first-principles equations of state of deuterium-tritium mixtures in the global inertial confinement fusion region")
- andersco 4y agoThanks for that tip. I am about to ship an implosion-type nuclear device and my first thought was if I could use a USPS flat rate box.
- ilyagr 4y agoCan this overcompressed material continue to exist at room temperature and pressure? It would be remarkable, but I guess it's hard to imagine how that could work.
- jmyeet 4y agoWhat many may not realize is that there's a thriving industry in sending passengers on planes for the sole purpose of them taking things from A to B. Years ago, you could get discounted flights to Europe where you couldn't check in any luggage. Why? That allowance was taken up by documents for various clients. This was usually quicker than any courier services at the time. I've had friends who worked in the oil and gas industry. One story I was told was where parts were desperately needed to repair a drill bit on a gas platform. The best option? Someone would fly halfway around the world, drive to a particular factory, wait for the parts and then fly back. This was cheaper and faster than any courier service, even if you spent $10,000+ on the ticket. This was exacerbated because a person with 200lb of machine parts could walk through customs where a shipment might get stuck in customs for weeks. And each day of non-operation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- kingcharles 4y agoSuper secret things often go this way too, to avoid potential loss or theft. I was working on the demo software for the on-stage reveal of a certain super secret cell phone from a certain manufacturer. Every time the phone had to have its firmware updated or the hardware switched out some guy had to come to my office and carry it back in-person to the HQ. I remember one time I wrote the codename of the device on the outside of the anonymous box because I was worried the courier person might end up just leaving it at the reception at HQ and then the box would get opened by someone who shouldn't be seeing it. I thought having the codename on the outside would at least let it get routed internally to the team working on it. I got a very, very angry phone call from someone at certain manufacturer swearing and cursing at me saying that someone could have seen the name and everything would have been exposed, blah blah. Total bullshit. In the end the demo went ahead successfully in front of a world-wide audience. The live demo was supposed to be loaded onto some certain servers, but time ran out and it ended up running off a PC in my business partner's closet over his home DSL. A certain CEO was not aware of this as he held the device on stage. Watching the event on a stream from the BBC was a pants soiling moment.
- eashman 4y agoBack in the day I upped the RAM and put a set of virtual machines on our VP of Marketing’s laptop with copies of our staging server, db, data… the works. He just started it up and browsed away. He loved doing demos without a network connection etc. Back then WiFi was always restricted and hot spots too slow.
- post_break 4y agoThese are amazing for shipping bullets. Not loaded, but for reloading. My mailman hates me but they keep the costs down.
- edgyquant 4y agoIt’s always been strange to me that people ship bullets Willy nilly, my dad buys his yearly supply at once and this last year they delivered them to the wrong address. The people brought them to him but it just seems weird to allow shipping weaponry and not even verifying that it’s delivered to the correct person.
- post_break 4y agoThey are bullets, not ammo. Just the lead part.
- kzrdude 4y agoAnd the explosive
- post_break 4y agoNo. The bullet, the part I load into the brass. If you ship a completed cartridge you have to pay hazmat. Just the lead, aka the bullet.
- Dove 4y agoFunny story, I had the opposite experience this morning. I was putting together a care package for a friend, which included a box of ammo for a rifle we'd enjoyed shooting together. I was just about to take it by the post office when I thought I'd check if I was supposed to mark it in some special way or something, and promptly discovered that this was ILLEGAL. With rather frightening penalties. But UPS would cheerfully take it. This struck me as the most frighteningly bizarre, arbitrary and pointless rule I had heard in a long time, and I spent a while trying to fathom the logic of it. I suppose it isn't really a surprise - laws surrounding weapons reflect two conflicting views and intuitions, on the one side that they are inherently scary and suspicious, on the other that they are unremarkable if handled responsibly. I wish our laws reflected a neighborly attempt by the two groups to live together and avoid unsettling the one and persecuting the other. Alas, they flip randomly between the one view and the other, managing to cause these issues for BOTH groups!
- anonymousiam 4y agoCouldn't read the Twitter post with NoScript, and didn't want to turn it off, but I verified the claim. Forgive me for working in cubic inches, but those are the unit measures specified on the USPS web page: https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/priority-mail-flat-rate-small-box-P_SMALL_FRB https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/prior... So the volume of the box is 82.6669921875 cubic inches. Assuming we're shipping a block of Tungsten at 0.7 lb/in^3, then our shipment would weigh 57.86689453125 lbs, which is less than 83% of the maximum allowed weight of 70lbs. I wonder how closely my results agree with the Twitter post...
- krallja 4y ago« It is physically impossible to exceed the 70-pound domestic weight limit for a small flat rate box. The interior dimensions (8 5/8" x 5 3/8" x 1 5/8") are ~75.333 in^3. If you filled the box with pure osmium, the densest substance known to man, it would weigh ~61.48 lbs.»
- meinersbur 4y agoFollowup Tweets: Should have said densest substance on Earth. Fill it with neutron star and you’ll be approx. 30 trillion kg overweight. Had to post this correction before @neiltyson popped in with an "Actually..." I don't have anything to plug, so just try to be a little bit better than normal if you happen to think of it, but don't make a big deal out of it--no one's asking you to be a saint.
- deleted 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- planetsprite 4y agoOne could add material from neutron stars and exceed the weight limit easily
- lsh123 4y agoHassium has higher density and would exceed the limit but only for 10 secs or so ;)
- Knight69 4y ago[dead]
- jl6 4y agoReminds me of AOL CDs offering 1000 hours a month of free internet.
- jraph 4y agoAh ah. But 745 hours of free internet is a bit less impressive and catchy. (edit: changed from 744 to 745 to take long October months with winter hour changes in account, add a second to that if you want to be sure about leap seconds)
- Taniwha 4y agoBut I need to shop a small neutron star .....
- needle0 4y agoThis reminds me of a guy in 2007 whose curiosity got him to cram around 34kg (75lbs) worth of lead bricks into the Japanese postal service's ExPack 500 flat-rate envelope, which had a supposedly 'impossible' limit of 30kg (66lbs) and were usually not checked for weight when sending. The post office clerk wrestled with it and eventually agreed to ship the thing. He didn't actually send it though. https://sites.google.com/site/fluordoublet/%E3%83%98%E3%83%B3%E3%81%AA%E7%A7%91%E5%AD%A6/expack500-%E3%81%AB%E9%89%9B%E3%81%AE%E5%A1%8A%E3%82%92%E8%A9%B0%E3%82%81%E3%81%A6%E3%81%BF%E3%81%9F https://sites.google.com/site/fluordoublet/%E3%83%98%E3%83%B... A few years later, the ExPack was deprecated and replaced with the LetterPack envelope, which now has a limit of...only 4kg (8.8lbs). Hah!
- webmaven 4y agoThis is why we can't have nice things.
- yeetsfromhellL2 4y agoJesus reading this thread makes me think I should go into the courier business.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]