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How to mail an SD card with gummy glue
- jiehong 2y agoI would have just used some sticky tape, but what do I know.
- zkirill 2y agoWhat about residue?
- jiehong 2y agoThere are thousands of sticky tapes, some designed to have no residue. Here is one I’ve found for example [0], although a double sided one might “look more professional”. [0]: https://www.mcmaster.com/product/1756N101 https://www.mcmaster.com/product/1756N101
- zkirill 2y agoCool find, thanks! If gummy glue fails or is hard to source then I will definitely try this.
- eighthourblink 2y agoWhen i ship out collector / trading cards, common practice is to tape the card in between 2 slabs of cardboard to prevent bending (this ofcourse being inside of a sleeve / top loader plastic liner). Usually the protective case is taped to the cardboard with blue painter tape. It doesnt leave residue behind on the cardboard nor the plastic holder
- philsnow 2y agoI have bought ink-on-calfskin art and had it shipped to me, the artist wrapped it in parchment paper and taped the parchment envelope to the inside of a cardboard sandwich. But for SD cards, I would expect affixing it to the inside of a cardboard sandwich with masking / painter's tape to be perfectly adequate, though not by any means pretty.
- MisterTea 2y agoPainters tape.
- metadat 2y agoGood idea, the microSD cards could be easily be affixed to the invoice / instructions sheet with a square of blue painters tape. I wouldn't fault a manufacturer / vendor for doing this. Sure, it's not "wow", but exceedingly practical which is commendable.
- RockRobotRock 2y agoI googled and saw gummy glue is used to stick credit cards to paper. That led me to think it's a great choice for this.
- crawfishphase 2y agoits sometimes called booger glue or snot glue. Apple uses cut flaps to hold their sim tools without the need for chemical glue. same concept will work fine here. I buy all my sd cards directly from a manufacturers site, only from the manufacturer, such as samsung or westerndigital dot com, avoiding any affiliate or 3rd party vendors that can sneak onto sites like which do on the apple store. 0 fake cards this way
- robocat 2y agoI thought sticky tape had the risk of creating high voltage static - not the best for electronics. Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence Edit: I couldn't find a good video but skip to 4 minutes in this is perhaps relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQBjRF9mX1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQBjRF9mX1Y Cheesy cheesy video but kinda sciency.
- throwway120385 2y agoSomeone once related a story from working in a 3M factory that made tape dispensers from bulk tape in the factory. The rolling machines to unroll the tape from the bulk rolls generated so much static electricity that walking through the aisle underneath would make your hair stand on end.
- temp0826 2y agoIt was a bit stronger than just affecting hair- http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _joel 2y agoIsn't that solved using kapton tape?
- ianburrell 2y agoWhy not put in a plastic ziploc bag? Lots of stuff from Amazon comes in plastic bags. I got a pack of 2x3" recently, that size would be perfect for this. I bet it is enough not to move around in the envelope. I guess there are anti-static bags if paranoid.
- NikkiA 2y ago> Nowadays, SD cards come in three physical sizes. The size that I need has the smallest format called microSD 4, and NanoSD is the smallest, although the size difference isn't as big as between the other 3
- zkirill 2y agoLooks like it's a similar standard by Huawei. [1] Very cool. I can see this being useful for tablets that have the SIM port but lack the cellular module. Wonder if this would ever make sense on an SBC. [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-nano-memory-968723/ https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-nano-memory-968723/
- ryanmcbride 2y agoIf you're gonna count Nano Memory you might as well throw in Sony Memory Stick
- nalzok 2y ago> I began my research by looking for some kind of hard plastic case. While these are common for standard SD cards, they are quite rare for microSD. What about putting the microSD into an adapter [1] first? I imagine you can find a much better deal when ordering in bulk. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSD-Memory-Adapter-MICROSD-ADAPTER/dp/B0047WZOOO?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=AK0X39W9935WX https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-microSD-Memory-Adapter-MICROS...
- n_plus_1_acc 2y agoEvery micro SD card I've bought came with an Adapter. I have a box full of those.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoBought a SanDisk microSD card recently. Came in a nice little transparent plastic case... but with no adapter!
- Fnoord 2y agoI bought ten small microSD cards, 32 GB, for 3 EUR each. Very likely they're counterfeits. But they did come in a small plastic case. You could reuse these for mail. They also all come with an adapter. I have tons of these adapters, usually throw them away. As for the article, it mentions: > It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD cards in transit, but I have never seen bubble wrap inside a normal envelope which made me suspect that this would elevate the rate of delivery failure. Bubble wrap envelopes exist, obviously. The envelopes are a bit larger but would work. When I order small items from Ali, this is often the packaging they used.
- stavros 2y agoI don't understand why they sell them as counterfeits. I just want 3 EUR cards, I'm not fussed about the size (they're for things that need a few MB, usually). However, nobody will sell me cheap cards, unless they're counterfeits that claim to be 32 GB but are actually 16 GB instead. I would have been happy with 8 GB!
- ramses0 2y agoComplicators gloves. CriCut some card stock to have an SD-card shape and stick some post-it paper over both sides. "Lift to Experience"
- crawfishphase 2y agoYou can do it without tape if the correct sized corner or edge flaps are cut into the card stock. Think "apple sim tool unboxing card stock flaps". could cut some cool design also or note that professional vinyl cutting shops have expanded so they can print and cut same time on cardstock to make a cool card- super cheap and likely with near-on-demand turnaround
- pimlottc 2y ago> Complicators gloves. Er, what?
- imchillyb 2y agoComplicators gloves are a tongue-in-cheek reference to making problems for solutions instead of the other way around. The specific reference to the gloves, were from a, way back, article. A person was riding their bicycle and had cold hands, as they rode with cold hands they pondered why no one had ever created heated grips for bicycles. They reach out to others, and a project begins. The momentum builds until someone mentions to the group that no one had done this because gloves were a perfectly viable solution to cold hands. Gloves. > https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_gloves https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_complicator_0x27_s_glov...
- karlgkk 2y agoAh, typical short sightedness. Heated grips are reasonably common… on motorcycles.
- echoangle 2y agoBut only in addition to gloves right? You probably don’t need that on bikes because gloves are enough at the speed you normally ride a bike at. You only need heated grips on motorcycles because you are sometimes going very fast and gloves are too cold, right? I have never ridden a motorcycle but that’s what I imagine it’s like, correct me if I’m wrong.
- liminalsunset 2y ago[flagged]
- tjohns 2y agoDon't try to play games with customs in the mail. It's a terrible idea. If you get caught, you and the person you're shipping to will both end up having your name flagged in the CBP database. You'll be scrutinized at the border for all future international travel. You'll also both be ineligible for trusted traveler programs going forward. There are threads on Reddit where somebody bought an item online from overseas, the seller lied on the customs form, the USPS noticed and seized it... and the unwitting buyer had their Global Entry membership permanently revoked because it counted as a customs import violation. Just don't.
- zkirill 2y agoThank you for writing this. I was wondering how to price things during the market validation stage and this gave me some ideas. Blog post incoming!
- ThrowawayTestr 2y agoI would ship the micro SD in a micro to full sized adaptor. You get protection and the customer gets an adapter if they don't already have one. Easier to apply the glue as well.
- metadat 2y agoAuthor: Why must a physical SD card be mailed? Is it infeasible to provide a download link and instructions on how to use Rufus / dd / tool-of-choice to create the appropriately formatted card? Mailing SD cards in their final form in a regular envelope is not secure. An adversary can intercept and reformat, and folks will be none the wiser unless you provide some kind of tedious 3rd party integrity-check tool. I realize this is probably unlikely, but still, like.. why? Flashing from a reliable source is the gold standard.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
- tjohns 2y agoAnd just how are you delivering the key material for your one-time pad?
- shermantanktop 2y agoIt's OTPs all the way down.
- Jerrrrrrry 2y agoDoesn't matter. Literally, could be entangled quantum photo-carrier pigeons. x ⊕ y = z z ⊕ x = y y ⊕ z = x Assuming another Out-of-Bound communication channel, all communication channels are provably safe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#Perfect_secrecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad#Perfect_secrecy
- echoangle 2y agoIf you have the Out-of-Band communication channel to transmit your OTP (which has to have the same size as the data itself), you can just transmit the data using this method and skip the other channel.
- somat 2y agoLike the article said counterfeit items always worry me. I wish more companies sold directly to the end user. I mean, I understand why they don't like to do this, dealing with the end user is a huge pain, it is much easier to deal with the distributors and have them deal with the end user. So barring direct sales I wish supply chain auditing was easier for for us end users. the best you tend to get is a "distributers" link on the manufacturers website, most of whom are b2b only distribution that are not happy selling low volume directly to you ether.
- bityard 2y agoI guess you can just buy from a reputable electronics distributor such as Mouser or Digikey. They have to keep their supply chains clean due to having larger customers that would abandon them in a heartbeat if they did not. Yes, you will pay more for an SD card from one of these places than on Amazon. But not insanely so. That is the price of assurance.
- ssl-3 2y agoUntil someone poisons the well by returning "unused" counterfeit cards to places like Digikey, anyway. It's dirty and rotten and illegal to convert fake cards into genuine cards like this, but criminals are gonna criminal. (My own trick is to just buy cards from one of Microcenter's house brands. Their buyers know what they're doing (Microcenter's flash memory products are both excellent and priced right), and nobody is going to bother making counterfeits of them due to a lack of broad market appeal.)
- rocketvole 2y agoI'd be surprised if digikey didn't have checks in place to mitigate your concern, for the reasons in the above comment. Businesses would leave if they got a hint of chicanery.
- buescher 2y agoOr you can buy in person from Walmart. For the volume he's probably doing, that's not as impractical as it might sound.
- rafram 2y agoNot sure if I really understand what this project is doing. A NetBSD distro for (specific) crappy hardware, named after a Peter Thiel quote?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- metabagel 2y agoWhich can’t play movies, music, or games; and doesn’t have WiFi or come with a monitor. But, it does have a GUI OS, so it’s intended to be connected to a display.
- mojosam 2y agoThe oroduct description in the FAQ is entirely based on what it doesn’t or can’t do, but doesn’t say anything about what it will be able to do, except run an off-the-shelf window manager on an off-the-shelf OS. Are any apps going to be available, And how do customers install third-party apps without the dreaded Cloud? They are aiming this at someone with: > a high discretionary budget for personal electronics and willingness to pay a premium for novel ideas. But what are those novel ideas that would justify the “quite high” price? And if I wanted a BSD-based desktop computer with “No AI. No Cloud. No Distractions”, I would just buy a Mac Mini, not log into an Apple ID, disable Siri, out it into Do Not Disturb. And Mac OS has never been a “walled garden”. So from a customer’s perspective, why wouldn’t this be an easier, cheaper, and superior solution?
- justusthane 2y agoThis is not entirely on topic for this post, but I wish the website had even a brief paragraph about what this is, or more importantly what the vision is. Even the initial “Q&A” post seems to assume some basic existing knowledge of the project.
- bityard 2y agoI got the impression you have to give them your email address to be put on their newsletter mailing list in order to find out.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoAt least have some selling point? I see that it is supposed to be distraction and bloat free, but what would the selling point be over say something like Linux?
- SamBam 2y agoI can't help but think that the idea is very pie-in-the-sky at this point, and the author is bike-shedding by thinking about how to deliver SD cards before having a product. This is probably uncharitable. But it would be an explanation for the hand-wavy copy.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoYeah it is hard to imagine any person not willing to flash the SD themselves to try out an OS like this. I can imagine building a hobby, niche unique OS and then other hobbyists installing it themselves, but not what OP is seemingly trying to do. He is spending time trying to figure out how to send an microSD and all the regulations of selling an electronic device instead of simply building the OS. It seems quite backwards to me. Based on the articles it seems like he has been spending months on this. I don't know... just build the OS and develop selling points...
- 2y ago
- giantg2 2y agoJust use 1mm foam sheet and tape. Seems like that would be economical and provide better protection.
- jdietrich 2y agoRigid PP cases for SD/MicroSD are readily available for pennies each. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006330399282.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006330399282.html
- giantg2 2y agoThe impression I got from the article is that it's a bit thick and they thought it was flimsy based on the reviews (not saying they're right, but that was what they thought).
- Animats 2y agoSD card mailers exist.[1] You can even get them custom-printed. Since all this guy is actually selling is an SD card, he probably should get custom SD cards printed with his own logo on the SD card itself, packed in his own custom packaging. His marketing claim is that this is a premium product, so it needs premium-looking packaging. This is cheap from China. The setup fees are low. (I once sold a boxed software product. $4000 for the first custom box, $0.25 thereafter, made in Silicon Valley. Visited the printing plant and went over the files with their prepress person, who had a Mac connected to an offset platemaking machine the size of a small car. She said "You want to see the press"? So I put in earplugs and went to look at the press, which was about a hundred feet long. It was turning out "museum quality" art prints at about three prints per second at the time. That shop did those as a sideline between box jobs.) [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Camera-Sd-Card-Micro-TF-Card_1601196947842.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Camera-Sd-Card-Micro-... [2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Custom-5G-Paper-SIM-Card-Envelope_62341312911.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Custom-5G-Paper-SIM-C...
- stevage 2y agoWhat are they actually shipping?
- dankwizard 2y agoSlow news day, huh?
- whycome 2y ago> Nowadays, SD cards come in three physical sizes. Wtf. I had no idea there was a 'mini' size between standard and micro. Never seen them in the wild.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoIt was more common like 15-20 years ago when some cellphones required one for internal storage
- gnicholas 2y agoKind of like mini-USB, which was briefly popular but quickly supplanted by micro-USB. I think my only surviving mini-USB device is a bike light battery.
- blahedo 2y agoMy Happy Hacking Keyboard—which I bought comparatively recently, maybe 2017 or so—uses a mini-USB connector! Really solid piece of hardware, and I guess they just didn't see a need to update a design that worked.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI much prefer mini usb over microusb, what a crap connector that one is. You look at it wrong you've bent the male end and hollowed out the connector.
- tracker1 2y agoI have a 3tb external drive that used mini... I'd need to find, or buy a new cable if/when I ever try to use it again.
- whycome 2y agoMini usb is actually more physically robust than the thinner microusb. I've never had a mini bend, but many micros. And it was much easier to get it right on first insert.
- nashashmi 2y agoPaper. Origami paper artists would know. Paper with cut slots. A paper folded in three. With cut slots. I am sure someone could make it. The same slots used to hold iphone sim tray pins.
- nubinetwork 2y agoWhy an SD card? It may be more bulky to mail a flash drive, but at least it wouldn't get lost inside an envelope...
- rdlw 2y ago> Flashing the SD card correctly is pretty challenging even for me. I can’t imagine a customer figuring it out. So I will flash it for them! From the post he links in the first sentence, about "how [he] decided to [...] mail SD cards to [his] customers"
- nubinetwork 2y agoBalena Etcher is hard to use? Seemed pretty braindead to me. /shrug
- supertrope 2y agoA person has to have the mental model of knowing they need to use this type of tool, know what specific tools exist, and how to operate the tool. If they're missing any one of those prerequisites, or they are not familiar with executing any part they will get lost. A lot of Windows software download websites have predatory fake download button ads. Smartphones have reduced the steps needed by centralizing software acquisition into app stores, hiding files and the file system, and obviating or automating housekeeping tasks like updates, anti-virus, restarts, and disk defragmentation. When I bought a PowerMac 30 years ago it came with a manual. It assumed zero computer operating knowledge. That the mouse had to be slid across a mouse pad, and not pressed against the screen.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- was_a_dev 2y agoBuy an microSD card from Amazon, use the packaging the microSD card originally came in [1] - it is a solved problem. Plenty of scope to add your own branding [1] https://postimg.cc/Lq8K1MYt https://postimg.cc/Lq8K1MYt
- trm64qog 2y agohttps://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-usb-drives-with-inflated-capacity https://www.tomshardware.com/news/new-freeware-detects-fake-... It is tiny too! 104K. Lucky all my drives passed.
- amelius 2y agoI'd use nano tape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nano_tape
- hbossy 2y ago> It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD cards in transit, but I have never seen bubble wrap inside a normal envelope which made me suspect that this would elevate the rate of delivery failure. There are envelopes with bubble wrap lining. All the Chinese stores use them and I see them more often than cardboard boxes.
- gravitystorm 2y ago> I began my research by looking for some kind of hard plastic case. I used to ship micro-sd cards in plastic cases through the mail, here in the UK. At first I used standard DL (letter) envelopes, since they are cheap and the case inside the envelope didn't push it over any depth size limits. However, when I got two angry support emails for having sent them "empty envelopes", I had to ask them for photos, which both showed a small sd-card-case sized hole along one short edge, with some tell-tale marks. What was happening was the leading edge of the envelope was going through some kind of thinly-spaced rollers, pushing the case to the rear end of the envelope, and then the rollers had such a grip on the envelope that they squeezed the sd card out through the corner of the envelope like a squeezing a pip out of a lemon. So I had to move to padded envelopes, which were then a more consistent depth over the whole length of the envelope, and so they worked fine in the mail machines. But that upgrade ate into my margins since I was only working on a small scale. It's little details like these cause vague statements like "It is normally recommended to use bubble wrap to protect SD cards in transit" - lessons learned the hard way!
- BizarroLand 2y agoWhy not put them in a plastic bag or Electrostatic bag and then tape them to cardboard? That seems like it would solve most of the problems cheaply without adding a lot of thickness to the envelope?
- birdman3131 2y agoI would look at toploader sleeves from the collectible card scene. Thin enough to not trip the 1/4" envelope rule.
- crispyambulance 2y agoI've handled a lot of micro-SD cards. index card + scotch tape The easiest way to distribute these was to scotch tape the micro-SD to an index card and then write something about the content on the index card. Of course, that's not an option for customers-facing stuff, but then you really don't want to be in the business of distributing micro-SD cards to customers!
- implements 2y ago> index card + scotch tape Tip: If you fold over the index card and join the edges with Scotch tape it makes a handy little envelope to store a USB stick or SD card in - and you can add some written notes for contents, date, etc.
- delichon 2y agoDo it like banks do. Put a full sized sheet of paper in the envelope with anything you need to say on it, with the SD card gummied to the appropriate position. It's very well tested and I've never had a problem with it.
- jdlshore 2y agoThat’s the exact point of the article..?
- karaterobot 2y ago> The plan is to permanently affix a thicker piece of paper somewhere on the letter with regular glue, and then use “gummy glue” to temporarily attach the microSD card on top of it. I'm with the person you're responding to. It's not clear from this description what he's doing, but it sounds like he's gluing paper to something (the envelop itself?) and then using gummy glue to attach the card to the thicker piece of paper. Credit cards just come attached to a piece of paper that is not, itself, attached to anything else. It's not obvious to me why he'd do it this way.
- shlant 2y agosomeone's here to give their opinion without reading the post. Classic internet
- Sporktacular 2y agoWhy does this require an article?
- masukomi 2y agoinstead of dealing with folding and glue and such you could 3d print a custom case that was really thin, but had a wider "frame" around it that held it in place in the letter. Could fit a bunch on a single print bed, especially if you used those shorter width envelopes and got creative with the "frame" shape so that they were interleaved on the print bed.
- kazinator 2y agoI would just use masking tape. It's designed to come off surfaces without leaving a residue. Never write an article promoting some solution, without discussing some alternative! There are possible issues with gummy glue; it can be stubborn in adhering to cards. Getting stubborn piece of gummy glue off the back of a tiny Micro SD card could be not fun. You don't want to require the user to excessively handle the card or put mechanical any stress on it. They are thinner and more delicate than credit cards (and the bulk of those is just plastic. Only the chip and the magnetic stripe are sensitive). Some users could end up trying to use a MicroSD with a piece of the gummy glue on it. I wouldn't want to put anything across the contacts of the SD card, which would mean that the adhesive would be on its back. But in that case, the contacts stick out of the page, inviting damage. Imagine the user clumsily shaking the letter out of the envelope, such that it it fall out, opens, lands with the SD card down, and is immediately stepped on by their five-year-old. If you put it on the paper contacts-down, you can tape over the back.
- audunw 2y agoI’ve had masking tape that leaves residue when left for a long time, so could be challenging to source the right kind of masking tape.