@vwestlife Yes they did, and I saw them #retail in #Germany at #ConradElectronic but they quickly flopped for two reasons:

1. The #hinge mechanism made them fiddly to insert into devices, as that design isn't up to #SD spec which expects a ridgid body.

2. They costed more than an equal-capacity & speed card plus a #cardreader.

3. Basically everyone who used #SDcard already had a #CardReader and #USB #flashdrives were also cheaper than these things.

The only person I knew that used one was someone who fiddled with an original #RaspberryPi|s a lot and they used it with a USB cable permanently plugged in so they can quickly access the files when the Pi is shut down.

• Once I showed them that they can also access files and transfer them via #SSH instead of having to setup #Samba for #SMB shares they ditched that.

@azonenberg I did.

In fact, I've seen #Flashdrives in the form factor of a credit card including a real chipcard!

@teajaygrey @halva @lynn @signalapp @deilann @monocles @Mer__edith @torproject

I remember #SLIC but sadly it never got traction.

• Needless to say #XMPP with #OMEMO & #PGP/MIME nowadays has excellent support by clients for every relevant platform and there are various other options depending on the use case, threat model and scenario.

I do gladly advice clients/employers directly...

• So far only #Tor and #Monero have reached a level of #decentralization that makes it basically impossible to shut them down even if (key) people working on it were to be arrested/forcibly disappeared/murdered (as had been the case!), with #SelfHosting-capable projects being close behind.

For example, #Briar as a "#airgapped" (or rather '#offline-capable') messenger may be the hottest thing if one needs to #chat with someone stuck exactly in the middle of North Korea and out of reach for Chinese, Russian or South Korean phone networks, tho that still relies on the local #SneakerNet (or rather #TrampingNet) to facilitate the transfer, which is rather common given the fact that #USB #flashdrives and #microSD cards are smuggled there en masse...

@HoustonDog and yes, I remember those #WinPE #hacks with rramdisk.sys to make #Windows run from #RAMdisk.

• In fact, @OS1337 literally does that when booting by loading itself into #RAM...
  

The idea of using #ROM chips is to have something long-lasting that is designed to be read-only without mechanical parts and not trivial to fiddle with compared to #USB #flashdrives.

@geraldew #Flashdrives having often no #WearLeveling is why they are cheap.

• As for #PortableComputing I recommend from experience to use a M.2 or 2,5" SSD in an external case (the M.2 will likely just be like a chonky flashdrive) instead, as they have better and more consistent performace and can handle a lot and randomized I/O way better.

In fact, I se that all the time...

Also it's not as if #Flashdrives are expensive...

• Even a reputable brand is cheap if one doesn't need speed or capacity...

4GB for €2,57, 8GB for €3,09 & 16GB for €3,59 and those are like retail prices and not buying a 100-pack in bulk...

• OFC don't buy cheap #USB #Sticks in bulk, because if you buy cheap no-name crap you get often 10+ year old counterfeilt garbage that doesn't even work half the time new out of the box.

Ask me how I know...

@SweetAIBelle Needless to say I'm convinced I can just boot @OS1337 from either a #USB-#Floppy(-#Emulator via USB Adaptor) or regular #flashdrive using #Ventoy, as #ISOLINUX distro...

• I've been using that for a while to do #multiboot - #flashdrives to replace #YUMI and not rely on the expensive #IODD hard drive / SSD cases...

I'll test it out today...

Luckily I have some "bare metal" to test against:

• Sony Vaio P11Z (Atom Z520 / i586 & sse3_atom)
• hp t530 (AMD GX-212 / i686, amd64 & sse4.1 )
• Zotac IONITX A-E (Atom 330 / i586, amd64 & sse3_atom)

Sadly I don't have much more "lower end" or "legacy" systems as a significant collection of mine got stolen from storage years ago and I don't have the money flying around to build @rasteri 's #Wee86 / #WeeCee... I was thinking about getting one of those Dell Wyse 3040 which AFAIK come with a #cursed #32bit #UEFI...

Sadly "Potato-level" #Netbooks running #VIA #C7 chips are nowadays rare and absurdly expensive and targeting those would be good as they already get too slow for mainstream 32bit distros like #BunsenLabsLinux so repurposing those as #OS1337 testing machines and target hardware may be a good option...
Tho just clocking down a #ThinClient with VIA Edenwould be sufficient to test out.

One of the machines that stolen from me was a Futro S300 with a #Transmeta CPU that I originally intended to use as #Windows95 box...

• Like with #Android - #ROMs I've to likely do custom .config files to target such hardware and stay within the 1440kB size Limit for or the "CORE Edition"...

OFC these #Scams with #FakeTech are as old as #flash media are....

I remember #bootleg #USB #flashdrives and #SD cards since the mid- to late 2000s...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjVvlaCGGhA

@kaia Personally, I prefer real #SSDs over #USB #flashdrives since they have #TRIM, #WearLeverling and #GarbageCollection...