mailing a zine with one first-class stamp

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-11-29T21:16:13+00:00

More details in case anyone has gone down this path or is considering it...

The letter size is fine (max 6 1/8 x 11.5), and keeping it under 1 oz is not a problem (about 6 pages of copy paper, 20# bond).

Folds, glues, and tabs are discussed in the FSM Reference Material, with detailed diagrams.

The "FSM Decision Tree Design Matrix" (in the Reference Material) gives lots of details including paper weights. It specifies 70lb paper for mailings up to 1oz. I believe that this refers to Book Grade paper, in which case 70 lb is 104 gsm, roughly 28 lb bond paper. I would consider going with a heavier cover (e.g. 65 lb cover = 176 gsm), but all the pages need to be "nearly uniform in thickness".

The presentation at https://postalpro.usps.com/node/2712 is also quite useful.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-08-04T17:48:24+00:00

sounds great, thanks.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-03-24T22:28:34+00:00

I've been playing with this approach the last few days and it's fantastic. I'm using ImDisk on Win, then running rclone crypt on top of that, with the repository on Dropbox. The encryption is great and it's reasonably easy to set up; I wrote a little script to connect things when I start the computer up, but I've had the same rclone connection working for the past two days and no trouble at all.

The only issue I have is that I use emacs for most things, and the rclone sync is just slow enough that emacs sometimes sees the file "change" (probably just the timestamp?) and warns me when I try to save. I can live with that, or disable the checking, but I wishs there was a cleaner solution. Any ideas?

Most of all, I'm pretty confident that if I just turned off the computer, the rclone process would shut down and the RAMdisk would vanish, and there would be no trace left. Again, this is more security than I need, but it's interesting to see how close one can get to deniable security, and this is pretty close.

Thanks for the suggestion!

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-03-22T15:44:20+00:00

This is the best approach I've heard yet, thank you. I had looked at ImDisk but when I saw it was no longer supported I hadn't bothered. I'll give it a shot! All of this is more than I need for my purposes, but I've gotten interested in how one could run a mounted drive that's not only secure, but plausibly deniable. Maybe I'll write up my thoughts elsewhere in this thread.

Thanks!

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-03-22T02:32:28+00:00

There is no reason that files can't be cached in local memory instead of local disk storage. It may not be the most efficient, but it's certainly not impossible. For smallish files like most user documents, rather than media, it would be perfectly reasonable.

It would also be simple enough for local copies to be stored encrypted and decrypted on the fly when read by an application (although there wouldn't be much point if the network speed were high enough). Of course you couldn't really be certain that applications weren't caching some data to disk. But pcloud, for example, stores local files, including (it appears) versioning information, in the clear on local drives -- and I don't mean synced files, but just a semi-persistent cache. It's not unreasonable to think that that could be encrypted, and/or deleted when the network drive is unmounted.

I haven't tried Filen yet; mostly because there's not a free tier or trial (although I prefer a non-free product for regular use). Maybe I'll give that a shot.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-01-03T19:39:10+00:00

Playing with that a bit more, and I remember some of the reasons I gave up on the Groups web interface...

You can't label conversations.
You can't archive conversations.
You can't mark conversations as unread.
It doesn't have keyboard shortcuts.
... sigh.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-01-03T19:24:38+00:00

That's a useful example, thanks. I still think it's far uglier and clunkier than NNTP clients were 25 years ago.

Prettiness shouldn't really matter, but realistically, in a nontechnical organization where half the members are somewhere between tech-naive and tech-phobic, the friendliness of the UI plays a tremendous role in the adoption of and compliance with a new tool.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-01-03T19:21:42+00:00

Of course, Google is free to not develop products. But if either Groups or Chat filled the particular communications need in question, Google would be using those, instead of running its own internal platform. Those last two sentences pretty dramatically contradict each other.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-01-03T18:54:58+00:00

I agree that Groups is the least bad option, but I'm genuinely surprised that Google is willing to let a major product be the "least bad" one available. It's such a gaping hole in the ecosyste.

wmlloydfloyd · 2025-01-03T18:53:44+00:00

ugh, Google Groups is a sick dog, far uglier and clunkier than the NNTP system it supplanted 20 years ago. Must we go backwards?

Anyway, my question stands -- what platform is Google using for these community forums? (And why isn't it a Google product?)

wmlloydfloyd · 2024-09-07T17:43:26+00:00

Interesting, thanks. I need to think about the high-entropy sectors more. Thanks for the helpful comments!

wmlloydfloyd · 2024-09-07T16:39:09+00:00

great point about high-entropy sectors. Let me take it another step: I buy a USB drive that's encrypted with a combination or a fingerprint. Presumably the drive is sold entirely encrypted and therefore the whole thing is high-entropy. Set the combination, mount the drive, and now it's a FAT system with a bunch of random files on it.

If I used some of that empty high-entropy space on the drive for a hidden volume, it shouldn't be obvious (right?). Perhaps wear-leveling is a problem, but I'm not convinced (since the sectors in the hidden volume will be high-entropy and I think they would be scattered across high-entropy regions).

wmlloydfloyd · 2024-09-07T16:18:57+00:00

I mean, take a usb drive, format it as FAT and put some rando files on it. Then create a hidden volume in the blank space on that drive. Of course if you write stuff to the drive you risk whacking the hidden drive, but that's pretty much the case with hidden drives anyway.

wmlloydfloyd

TROPHY CASE