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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

Won't (I hope) be long 'til someone offers the 1TB "thumbdrive"* without the baggage (already carry a Benchmade, don't need another in-pocket toybox). Esp. nice having the writable display.

* - am amazed that nobody has yet come up with a suitable, consistent, catchy, universally-accepted name for "tiny solid-state data storage device with ubiquitous interface". Anything with "drive" in the name is an anachronism.

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I call anything that hangs out of a computer from a port a dongle, but I suppose that's too generic.

It says the drive can be "easily changed" between two bodies, which means it can also be removed and just stuck in your pocket without a "body".

I vote for `memorycard`

Memory card is trademarked by Sony.

I've heard the horrible "usb key" used a lot (even though it's not a key). I prefer usb stick.

But "usb stick" is so semantically loose, no mention of data, storage, retention, persistency, memory. Also non persistent, when nobody remembers what USB is, there will be another new lingo like holothumb (yeah cause it will project data holographically right onto your thumbnail so why not).

Too bad for memorycard though it was simple and generic enough. Can't we opensource it ~_~ ?

From an (incredibly) brief skim of http://www.sony.co.uk/product/rec-memory-stick, it looks like they have a mark on "Memory Stick", but not necessarily "Memory Card".

Oops you're right.

I have heard just "usb" from many people. "Do you have a usb I can borrow?" It's grating.

almost tops the 'iTouch'.

Wikipedia redirects to "USB Flash Drive", the article has a section about naming, too (with names I've never heard).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb_stick#Naming

In my school we call them 'flash drives', which I like.

a lot of people use some variant of 'stick', eg 'thumbstick', 'usb stick'.

Around here, we just call them "thingies".

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