Find a USB stick in the parking lot? Don't plug it into your PC and probably destroy it with fire.
Find a USB stick while digging in the park? Plug that baby in, jam to some Back to Black, and watch some vintage porn.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
626 points (99.5% liked)
Science Memes
19612 readers
1395 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Some VMs are created only to be burned.
I chuckled. You could also plug it into a system win only a Linux live dvd, no storage, no speakers.
Safer from malware, but not safe from usb “pranks.” I doubt anyone is leaving a port killer out, but getting your port gunked up, or partly disassembled via locks is a thing.
Disposability is worth considering as well
So are hubs and extensions.
No speakers? How will you and your archeologist friends hear the porn?
Return the speakers once you determine safety.
headphones
Some used PCs with no disks are bought only to be booted into a live Linux distro and then some time later resold in the same condition.
USB killer
USB Kill Shield
A female to A male adapter with a replaceable fuse? Sounds like a hundred-dollar idea!
There's always a bigge USB killer
But what if I have a USB Kill Shield Kill Shied Kill Shield
🤔
What are you talking about? I've stux every parking lot USB drive I've ever found into my pc and I've net to have a problem
It burns when I pee, just from reading this
I see what you done there… well played.
Nah use a vm on a computer which you dont care about
May i suggest a library pc?
One day, an archeologist will find that one thumb drive I lost in 2016 and could never find again
At least you are not the guy who threw away his bitcoin wallet, are you?
James Howells, a Welsh IT engineer, mistakenly threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoin (worth over £500 million/$900M+ as of 2025) in 2013
Dude's gone full tilt psychotic as a result and is selling shares to excavate the landfill it's in (he'll never find it intact and usable, but his life is forever ruined by his refusal to give up)
Yep, kinda sad, his life being consumed by that one mistake and not getting therapy and moving on.
Seriously, when he probably could have used that energy to grift like all the other shitcoin rug pulls.
So true. It's so insidious because there's that vague hope that there's a tiny chance he finds it and never goes back to work, or whatever.
It's right there, balanced just at the end of his fingertips over the gaping maw of madness, like Indie in the Last Crusade reaching for the Holy Grail.
He needs that kindly father figure to tell him
"Lett et gohh, shon..."
I had binders full of Pokemon cards as a kid. Just collected em. They just disappeared after a few moves. It bothers me intensely to this day, what I could sell them for and what that could solve, or even just knowing what the heck happened. I wish I never bothered with them...
You found a random usb stick and plugged it in?
Listen, not all of us are proud of everything we plug our holes with.
One of the classic blunders!
... Unless they're using an airgapped device or carefully sandboxed VM (even still lol) to satisfy that curiosity.
Ugh I admit I'd be curious lol.
I'll have you know that I put my entire OS installation on a broken USB stick that I found on a parking lot.
The plastic case keeps falling off, but it works fine.
...yes? What did you think it could be? A larval hidden unvaccinated Russian that will activate and drink your blood?
Some day, a lucky archeologist will unearth the one true archive from an innocent-looking tarball.
(X) Doubt.
They won't know what to do with a tarball anymore than I do
as long as a paper manual exists...
(tar -xzvf btw, the dash before xzvf is optional)
If I tarred it it'll be tar -xjvf tarball.tbz
I prefer bzip2
Funny coincidence.
I love mystery flash drives
I once found one near a high school loaded with hilariously terrible naruto x pokemon romantic fanfics
and one that had like $150 in dogecoin
Indeed, archaeology is created all the time. I just did an archaeological work a couple of days ago, when I decided to tidy my room
I think that’s just finding a usb stick from around a decade ago
You could get lucky and find gold AKA bitcoin.
time to buy a few hundred usb sticks, fill them with zip bombs, and bury them in random place.
FUCK YOU future archeologists
At what point does it stop being archaeology and starts becoming computer science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_archaeology
The computational archaeologists run archaeo.social for Mastodon/Matrix. :) They are a rad group.
When some rich, Walt Disney-type buys an island and fills it with supercomputers in order to clone a park full of extinct Amy Winehouses?
I lost a thumbdrive full of adult furry content in Auckland. Gotta wonder how that story turned out.
SHIT! Somebody finally found it! Man, I hope I didn't have anything on there with my personal info!
Mmmm forbidden chocolate bar.
when I was in highschool after a bad storm an iPod charger was sticking out of some dirt half buried. Wonder how long ago it was dropped, how different schools were back then