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It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

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Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#221

Post by yeetsfromhellL2 »

Aeolun wrote: post #219
yeetsfromhellL2 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If somebody pulls strings like that for you, you need to use the aluminum wheels.

Depends on whether Chuck confirmed they wanted to do a thing like that first.

Fair enough, but I think I still would have used the Al wheels. They used known defective wheels, wrecked their project, didn't cross the finish line and potentially upset a big supporter. Not the kind of thing I'd do in a startup, at least.

Look at me though, judging people's decisions on the internet through a second hand story.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#222

Post by jraph »

jl6 wrote: post #186

Reminds me of AOL CDs offering 1000 hours a month of free internet.

Ah 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)

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#223

Post by butlerm »

SergeAx wrote: post #192

Can't we increase the density of a metal by forging or high-pressure casting?

The 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.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#224

Post by chiph »

lordnacho wrote: post #205
jmyeet wrote: post #78

What 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 g…

> What 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. So someone out there must have made a courier-as-a-service website for this? Sign up some people to be on standby, with a passport and a list of countries they have visa for, list them with their current location. Person signs up to potentially make a few grand if the…

Delta Airlines has their DASH service. Under 16 ounces, anyone can ship with them. Under 100 pounds, you will need to be a known shipper with the TSA. It's available on basically any regularly scheduled flight of theirs.

We used it on a contract job in Tennessee once, to get a replacement UPS sent. Expensive, but worth it.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#225

Post by jononor »

dang wrote: post #113
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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?

That 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…

The described practice sounds like it would make HN an excellent source of training data for a machine learning model to generate appropriate titles for a piece of long-form content.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#226

Post by bdavis__ »

chiph wrote: post #224
lordnacho wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What 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. So someone out there must have made a courier-as-a-service website for this? Sign up some people to be on standby, with a passport and a list of countries they have visa for, list them with their current location. Person signs up to potentially make a few grand if the…

Delta Airlines has their DASH service. Under 16 ounces, anyone can ship with them. Under 100 pounds, you will need to be a known shipper with the TSA. It's available on basically any regularly scheduled flight of theirs. We used it on a contract job in Tennessee once, to get a replacement UPS sent. Expensive, but worth it.

all airlines have something like this. it used to be called "counter to counter"; drop off and pick it up at the airport.

my story, about 1988. we had a system in Omaha with a broken power supply (it was big, say 6U, custom voltages). there was a spare in Rapid City, and downtime was charged by the hour.

no problem, took the spare in a box to the airport. they told us it was too big for counter to counter; but a ticket could be purchased and it would be put on the plane. No, problem.

"Give me a coach ticket to Omaha." "Sorry sir, those are all sold. We do have a first class ticket available." "In that case, OK"

The box went in the cargo hold.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#227

Post by 988747 »

elihu wrote: post #155
akvadrako wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tungsten doesn't seem especially heavy; it's a little less than gold.

Tungsten is 19.25, gold is 19.3, and osmium is 22.59 g/cm^3. Tungsten isn't quite the densest material around, but it's in the general ballpark.

Also, since the density of tungsten and gold are so close I guess tungsten gets ordered a lot by people intending to forge the counterfeit gold bars...

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#228

Post by webmaven »

needle0 wrote: post #190

This 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.…

This is why we can't have nice things.

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#229

Post by mcsniff »

iancmceachern wrote: post #160
jmyeet wrote: post #78

What 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 g…

I once worked on a project with a steep late delivery penalty. We had already scheduled a "hit shot" truck, which is a dedicated semi, usually a team of 2 drivers, that drives directly, no stops, to the destination. We had scheduled it and it was 3 or 4 days to get from Denver to NYC. We were late, frantically building and assembling hardware and so just weren't ready when the truck came. We shipped the large pieces,…

Just to clarify, this is "hot shot".

Re: It is physically impossible to exceed the weight limit for a Small Flat Rate Box

#230

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

mattlondon wrote: post #188
lakis wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminded me of "Police Camera Action - The Liver Run" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU 30 Minutes to travel 27 miles across London in the middle of the day ! Stansted Airport, Essex to Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London

Interesting. I've seen similar "convoys" of police cars with a motorcycle platoon etc with them many times. I assumed it was some VIP. I never considered it might be a organ transplant! I do wonder if they'd do that today - save one person's life by ploughing through central London at 70mph? There are so many cyclists and pedestrians not paying attention - it would feel safer to just helicopter it over?

They would normally have used the police helicopter back then too, but it was grounded due to a recent crash.

London now has an air ambulance service, which it didn't at the time- though the air ambulance also have some impressively fast cars (Skoda Octavia vRS IIRC) for when conditions don't allow the helicopter to fly.

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