Product Idea: USB Flash Drives

[dsimic]

Not surprised at all - even the most mature companies can end up doing these last minute bodges. I've seen top-end hardware with sticky foam to overcome some dry solder joints for example!

I'm curious, how does sticky foam mitigate a dry/cold solder joint?  Perhaps by applying additional pressure to the joint?

Ah yes, I understand. This may be a rabbit hole, but there is a type of computation being developed by ?IBM? that means you can run code on non-trusted machines, and it's impossible to tell what is being computed. The idea being that you don't even need to trust that the silicon operates correctly in order to be able to use it - might be useful for your project. Checkout homomorphic encryption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption (To be warned, I think the instruction set is still very young.) Combine this with some proof-of-work and you could be well on your way.

This is very interesting, thank you very much for pointing it out!  I'll take some time to become acquainted with various homomorphic encryption schemes.

And yeah, testing would most definitely be required. At those sorts of numbers it would even make sense to have somebody in the Country where the parts are manufactured to do such testing, rather than shipping around the world multiple times.

My only concern would be that getting someone doing the final testing remotely at the required level of quality and attention would end up costing the same (or even much more) as shipping the devices around the world more than once.  Plus, in that case the entire order fulfillment system, including the customer support, would have to be performed on a remote site as well, which would probably become really messy really fast.

Haha, and the price of coffee is likely to go up due to that ship blockage!

That accident will surely produce a ripple effect.   It seems that the ship still remains stuck in the Suez Canal?

Yep, sounds right to me. I think with security features, people would even be willing to put up with a certain amount of slow-ness, even if we don't meet target speeds. You wouldn't want it as a primary drive, but transferring it from one location to another would still look attractive.

I agree.  To put it simply, the primary goal of the open storage device is not to be the fastest USB flash drive around.  Instead, the goal is simply to make it available as an open device that transfers data at a reasonable speed.  Once that is achieved, faster speeds could come into focus.

That sounds quite harsh - at that point what is Pine offering? If we do all the R&D and even make the manufacturing a viable process, then we may as well just go down the crowd-sourcing route (even if it is a pain).

I am really sorry that I cannot find that forum thread again so you can read it yourself.  However, once a device becomes commercially viable, it has already become profitable and self-sustaining.  At that point, it would be rather questionable to pretty much hand off the device to somebody else?

At this point I think that's a sad truth. I have no idea what we would need to do in order to get their attention.

I also have no idea, really.  I've already exhausted all options known to me.