
SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package - coldpie
https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/
======
mkarr
As a hopeful note of optimism: I recently sent a large, expensive package
(worth around $1500) cross-country via USPS. The package was sent out mid-
December. According to the tracking it made it all the way to the destination
Post Office. After that...nothing. It just never progressed. I filed both a
mail search requests, and an insurance claim. I received nothing but radio
silence on those as well. Fast forward to about a week ago when the package
just shows up on my doorstep without notice. Hopefully byuu's package
eventually does show up.

~~~
huehehue
USPS is usually fantastic but, when they fail, they fail very
bureaucratically.

Ordered a gift with rush shipping on Dec. 20th. Arrives at the local post
office Dec. 22nd, marked undeliverable as addressed the next day.

I call them up and say, "Hey, I typed in 123 Sprig Street, but I meant 123
Spring Street. Can I just drive over and get the package?".

"No."

An employee told me all I could do was update my address with the shipper,
wait for them to fail 2 more delivery attempts, have them return the package
at their leisure, and have the shipper resend. So I checked the shipping
status every day and, sure enough, they tried redelivering to the same bogus
address twice. Predictable, at least. Got the package last week.

~~~
dtparr
So, the USPS has a pretty strict set of rules for ensuring that mail is only
delivered to the address it was mailed to, and it's all based on what's on the
package.

One interesting bit: if you mail something to an address that is valid,
defined overly simplistically as "zip matches city/state, street exists,
street number exists within the valid numerical range for that street
regardless of whether there's actually a box there", it doesn't matter what
the name is on it, it will go to that address. Even if their own records show
no one by that name has received mail there and that someone by that name
lives across the street.

On one hand, it's frustrating from a common sense type issue like yours. On
the other, it at least blocks one class of social engineering type issues and
lets the shipper's intent be fully represented by the package itself (even if
it's wrong).

Out of curiosity, was the actual "Sprig" street a real street name or not? I
can't remember at what point the name comes into play with a bad address.

~~~
huehehue
"Sprig" was not a real street name; it was a bad address.

------
scott_karana
> I've already maxed out my 401K loans on the Japanese game set, and it will
> probably be 2-3 years before I finish dumping and scanning all of those
> games to sell them for money.

I always feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read things
like this.

Is _any_ labour of love worth your potential future? As much as I admire his
dedication, it's not a choice I'd make... :(

Maybe it's just because I'm a bit of an ops guy, and it feels like leveraging
a single point of failure. :P

~~~
byuu
I'm only 33, and the 401K loan automatically takes money out of each paycheck
until it's repaid. I believe it was a 72 month loan? Might've been shorter.
So, pretty sure it won't be a problem before I retire.

Of course, if an exigent circumstance comes up, and I can prove it (medical
emergency, bankruptcy), it's possible to borrow the other half of the 401K.
But if I'm short on the mortgage, it's not going to help me, so it was still
somewhat irresponsible of me.

~~~
derekp7
The problem is for people that take out a loan, then decrease their monthly
401k contributions to cover the loan payments. Also, while your money is out
on loan, it isn't gaining value from the market (on the other hand, it is at
least gaining the percent interest that you are paying back in -- so from the
fund's perspective, it isn't too bad).

~~~
byuu
Ouch, that's a good point.

If you don't mind a question ... I was thinking about taking out a loan again
once it was paid off in order to pay my house mortgage down to 78% so that I
can knock off the $200/mo PMI. If I then contributed $200/mo toward the loan +
401K, do you think that would be better or worse than just leaving the 401K
alone and paying the PMI? The PMI will probably take another 6+ years to fall
off on its own, due to the criminally lopsided interest-to-principal amounts
that 30-year mortgages start off at.

(I realize the absurdity of asking financial advice here, but you seem to know
your stuff, so why not? ;)

~~~
derekp7
I was actually thinking the same thing for myself (similar situation with
PMI). But there is one additional danger with 401K loans. If you lose your job
or quit, your loan is due within 60 days. Otherwise it is counted as an early
withdrawal, so you owe a 10% penalty to the IRS, plus you get to pay taxes on
the loan balance.

Also, check with your bank -- in my case, PMI will automatically stop at 78%,
but once you get down to 80% you can initiate a request to remove PMI. Another
option is if the housing market has improved, your house has more value. So if
you are at least one year into your loan you can go through a refinance
process where your PMI loan to value is assessed based on the current market
value of your home. But again this can backfire, as the market value is based
on the appraisal that the bank does. So you will have to make sure your house
is in shape to sell to get a good appraisal.

------
bane
I'm very sorry to hear about this. Shipping stuff internationally can be hair
raising when it goes wrong. I used to regularly ship about $500k worth of
computer equipment all over the place and it one time got caught up in German
customs. A colleague of mine in Germany had to drive from Munich to Frankfurt
and back many times over the course of several weeks to get it sorted out. IIR
the problem was some minor form had been filled out incorrectly (by me). Huge
mess. Hopefully this collection will turn up soon.

One thing

>Although I can't afford to host this content (it weighs in at hundreds of
gigabytes)

I really urge you to get in contact with Jason Scott about getting a copy of
your archive to the Internet Archive. These scans and dumps could be priceless
and it makes sense to have as many backups of it as you can.

At any rate, thank you very much for all your hard work, time and expense in
doing what it is you do byuu.

~~~
mynewtb
An Atom with 1TB disk is just about 10 bucks at ovh/kimsufi. Alternatively
there would be many people able and willing to mirror such collection on their
own servers.

~~~
orf
The bandwidth is the issue I'm guessing. Servers from Hetzner (in Germany)
come with 10TB of traffic included

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
BitTorrent?

------
chrishacken
I'm a developer at USPS; if you send me the tracking number I can try to pass
this along to someone.

------
froh42
I was just checking DHL web site over here in Germany for the cost but found
something that may be interesting:

Aufgrund der Streiks bei Lufthansa im Dezember 2016 wurden für Sendungen in
die USA Ableitungen über alternative Transportrouten notwendig. Unter anderem
über den Seeweg. Das führt aktuell noch zu stärkeren Verzögerungen bei der
Zustellung von Economy Paketen in die USA.

Translation:

Due to a strike at Lufthansa in december 2016 packages with destination USA
need to be redirected using alternate transport routes, amongst other by ship.
This results in even bigger delays delivering economy packets into USA.

Source: [https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-
versenden/weltweit...](https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-
versenden/weltweit-versenden/laenderseiten/vereinigte-staaten-von-
amerika.html)

If you have the DHL tracking number you should try tracking.

There's also the DHL facebook page where you can start a facebook chat, with
good luck your supporter will speak english. (Just try!)
[https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/](https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/)

From what it looks there's a high chance your package is on a ship somewhere.
And even more importantly, the sender should create a "Nachforschungsauftrag"
with DHL (ha, one of our bureaucratic german words I can't even find a
translation for - it's a request for inquiry of a lost package). Even with
domestic packages over here the tracking information sometimes is plain wrong,
and I expect it even more so to be wrong if they don't use their usual ways of
transport. (No tracking of all those packages in a shipping container on a
freighter.)

Good luck. (Btw, once I have given up on a package from the US to Germany
after 6 months. The day after I gave up and purchased an alternative product
my packet arrived ... UGH).

~~~
crystalmeph
DHL says the package is already in USPS' hands stateside, so it's not on a
ship.

~~~
mannykannot
One thing these comments show is that tracking is not accurate.

------
userbinator
_Why didn 't you send the dumping hardware to the PAL donor?_

This makes me think of another idea to avoid shipping the cartridges
themselves around: an interface that allows eventually accessing them over
TCP/IP. It could be exposed as a block device or a custom protocol, it doesn't
matter as long as you can essentially send an address and get some bytes back,
allowing to read the entire address space.

~~~
byuu
A lot of the pain comes from cleaning every single cartridge. Many old games
look like this:

[http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg)

And you need them to look like this:

[http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg)

That takes about a half hour's work. Then you get to open the cart and clean
the contacts, another five minutes. Then once it's connected to an SNES and
powered on, you have to wait 5-10 minutes to dump it, and then move on to the
next cart.

It's a full-time job for several months to do a complete PAL set. And that's
not even counting scanning the boxes, manuals, cartridges and PCBs :/

It's a lot less effort for the donor to send me his games, and I send them
back, and reimburse him on his shipping charges.

~~~
Arelius
I don't know why you are getting so much crap. It seems entirely reasonable to
me that mailing the games to you is a suitable way to solve this problem. And
entirely reasonable to expect said packages to not get lost in transit.

~~~
byuu
Yeah. Truth be told, I've had around 400 mail shipments to complete my US set,
and another 900 or so to complete my Japanese set. Even the last 100 games
made it just fine. Never lost a package of any importance until now.

I honestly didn't expect this package to go missing.

------
tudorw
Good luck, I appreciate your archiving efforts.

------
filmgirlcw
Would physically visiting the facility in Jersey City help at all? I don't
know how far byuu lives from there, but perhaps he could send a surrogate in
his place to try to get information face to face. That might be grasping at
straws (theoretically they should have location information available over the
phone), but it might be worth a thought.

~~~
rickyc091
Seeing as I've had a fair share of packages being "lost" by USPS I can shed
some light on this matter. You typically get the round about from USPS. You
can visit the post office where it's suppose to be, the workers and customers
waiting in line will get annoyed at you. USPS will end up telling you that
they'll take down your info and give you a call. When you receive the call,
it's a courtesy call to give you a case number and tell you that they will
look into it. Do they ever? Who actually knows...

The problem typically lies with the drivers and the sorting phase (getting
onto a truck). Sometimes the workers will cut corners and forget to scan the
package. It's faster to throw it on the truck than individually scan every
box. As you can imagine some barcodes are messed up so they have to type it in
manually. I've had packages show up for with an initial scan at the point of
delivery location. I will say it's gotten a lot better these days, but it
varies depending on facility.

So back to the problem... if they don't scan it from the sorting to the truck
phase. The driver could just "lose" it on the truck or during the route.
Sometimes it's accidentally and falls in a crevice somewhere. I've had a
package show up a year letter. Other times it's blatant tampering.

I was shipping out an used iPhone, stupidly use the same Apple shipping box my
new one came in, and it was MIA on the tracking for two days. The tracker just
stated "enroute", then the package magically started moving again. A one day
shipment took four days to complete. When my customer received the item, the
phone was gone, but everything else was intact. I mean there was no doubt that
the driver had stolen the phone. Resolution? None. USPS called me and said
they would look into it. Never really learned what happened, but I'm guessing
the driver is still out there somewhere plucking away at packages.

I've lost my fair share of packages with USPS. If I've learned anything, it's
to ship with UPS if you really want to make sure it arrives at the
destination. If you look at the shipping rates, USPS is the cheapest, followed
by FedEx, then UPS.

~~~
slavik81
If you are shipping to Canada, the only decent option is USPS. Everyone else
charges outrageous brokerage fees for handling customs.

------
tiglionabbit
I love the Super Nintendo. So it's good to see someone is aiming to preserve
it perfectly. I thought existing ROM dumps were good enough, but seeing as he
already has this "icarus" program to read them, there's something more he
needs for perfection?

Since he's handling the cartridges personally, it's a bit of a shame he has to
give them all back. Wouldn't it be kinda neat to make an uber-cartridge that
contains all chip configurations from every Super Nintendo cartridge in
existence, so it could play any game on the hardware that game expects?

------
gargravarr
Last year, I tried to buy a very-difficult-to-find bluetooth adapter for my
car stereo. I found one on eBay in the US, won the auction for slightly more
than I wanted and then paid to have it shipped to the UK. After a week, the
tracking information stopped being updated, right after USPS took over the
package. After a month, I tried to get in contact with the couriers. This was
difficult, because the package was shipped with the eBay Global Shipping
Program, which does a fair job of obfuscating which carrier is actually taking
it. USPS didn't want to know, the tracking number wasn't valid as far as they
were concerned. Eventually I contacted eBay asking where the package was.
Overnight, I was refunded, saying the package had obiviously been lost.

I did my best to contact them and ask for the package to be found, but nobody
wanted to know. I eventually spoke to a woman in eBay's customer services, but
nothing ever came of it. In my situation, at least I got my money back, and I
know it's not quite the same as this poor guy's, but I can understand the
frustration of dealing with tracked shipments. Especially for rare items that
are difficult or impossible to replace - all you want is the package itself.
Shipment tracking is supposed to prevent this happening - after all, if the
package gets lost, it's likely in the same place as the last scan! You'd think
the money the couriers have invested in the tracking system would incentivise
them to use it to find lost packages.

------
rewrew
I'm confused -- has it been verified that this package cleared customs?
Because if not that could be the delay here.

~~~
byuu
Yes, after sitting for 21 days in US customs, it's now stuck in Jersey City,
NJ:

[http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png](http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png)

Note the "in transit to destination" is a fake event automatically added 24
hours after no scans. Assuming it wasn't stolen, it's still in NJ. Sitting in
a pile for 10+ days for no apparent reason despite being priority mail.

~~~
martinald
21 days seems pretty excessive to be stuck in customs. I've sent a fair bit of
stuff between UK and US and I've never had it take so long to clear customs.
Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs.

It seems very odd that it would take that long.

Did you pay the right duties and tax on this? It may be that it's still with
customs and they have absolutely no idea what a giant box of old SNES games is
worth?

~~~
byuu
> Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs.

It didn't on the last package delivery, at least.

> Did you pay the right duties and tax on this?

I don't know, sorry. I'm the recipient.

> It may be that it's still with customs and they have absolutely no idea what
> a giant box of old SNES games is worth?

I would truly love it if someone from USPS would tell me that, if that were
the case. I'd pay their ransom to get the package.

~~~
rewrew
Not sure if this could help:
[https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/16095598...](https://www.etsy.com/teams/7722/discussions/discuss/16095598/)
\-- seems like there's quite a few good tips in that thread.

------
Neliquat
Had some shoes ordered that got hung up in the NJ hole for nearly a month. The
company had already started a claim by the time they got here. Also DHL to
USPS, which the shipper said was the only practical option from their region
(poland). I can relate. Hoping his shows up late like mine, but googling the
issue did not leave me with much hope. A lesson to insure your valuable
shipments at the least.

------
sethx
DHL from the US to Germany or Eurpope is absolutely rubbish. The problem is
that you most likely used DHL Global Mail, which is not the same as DHL
Express. DHL Global Mail delegates the shipment to the cheapest carrier
possible, which in this case is USPS. Once they do the handover, you
effectively lose all tracking ability.

My story with them:
[http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=G...](http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=GM275325376500362251)

That's more than one full month for a package that contained nothing more than
a teeshirt. On top of that, the package never arrived at the final
destination, and might be stuck in customs, for all i know. I never got a
notification, and will actually contact DHL soon myself, because their service
is absolutely laughable.

As a logistics company, they had one job. And they failed.

~~~
throwanem
I haven't had notable difficulty with them, but I also only use them for
shipments from overseas that require customs clearance and ID verification at
pickup time - an odd set of requirements for SBCs, but there you go. Their
depot in my town is at the airport, and the airport is on the light rail line,
so it's no real inconvenience to just pick up packages there.

------
anonymous_iam
I suppose that you have now learned to not trust the United States Postal
Service with your $10,000 package. FedEx or UPS do cost a little more, but in
this case I think you would agree that it would have been worth it.

~~~
walrus01
If you read, it was sent by DHL from Germany. Within Germany, DHL is the
defacto choice for courier. The problem is where DHL hands it off to USPS for
US delivery, since DHL has pretty much pulled back from trying to compete
directly with Fedex and UPS in the US48 market.

~~~
ac29
I get packages from Europe via DHL every week at work. They are never handed
off to USPS, they come in a DHL van. However, they certainly might use USPS
for some residential deliveries.

What DHL doesnt do anymore is US->US (domestic) shipments. International
delivery is still definitely handled in the US by DHL themselves.

~~~
walrus01
I think this might depend on what city you're in. DHL has definitely pulled
back from the US:

[http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-
dh...](http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-dhl/)

[http://www.economist.com/node/12607051](http://www.economist.com/node/12607051)

There is still a direct DHL presense in larger areas/markets like Seattle, San
Francisco or Dallas. But not so much in other parts of the country.

------
Larrikin
>First, because I don't speak any German, and feel very uncomfortable
traveling to a foreign country on my own. I know most Germans speak English,
but that doesn't ease my concerns all that much. It's scary to me to travel
alone, sorry.

Found this odd. What is scary about traveling to a presumably a big city in
one of the richest countries in the world?

~~~
throwanem
> What is scary about traveling to a presumably a big city in one of the
> richest countries in the world?

Not everyone enjoys, or is comfortable with, travel in its own right. It
doesn't have to be about the destination, or even the journey - some folks are
just homebodies, and that's okay.

In fact, I'm one of them! My trip to Manhattan last year was pretty much the
first time I'd been out of Baltimore in half a decade, unless you count
camping as travel, which I don't. It was rewarding but initially nervousmaking
as well, especially when it took a quarter hour just to get to ground level
from the deeply subterranean arrival platform. In the event, people there were
uniformly lovely to me, and I had a great time. But it also helped to know
that, if things went badly, I could just change my return ticket, get on
another train, and be home again in a few hours. The same wouldn't be true in
Germany, and I would face the prospect of a journey there with considerably
more trepidation therefore.

~~~
phonon
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6EpfCzdMoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6EpfCzdMoY)

~~~
throwanem
Like so much of _The Wire_ , that's exaggerated for dramatic effect. And I'm
Mississippi born and raised, in any case. But I do dearly love this town, and
I don't expect or intend ever to leave for good.

------
prirun
I sent a laptop from IN to TN, with tracking (back in the 90's) and insurance.
It never got there. After several weeks, I filed a claim with the USPS, and
they weren't going to honor it. Their records showed that I turned it in to
the local post office, then nothing - no further tracking whatsoever. I had to
threaten to escalate things before they would pay, and then it took forever to
get the money.

They said in the future, if you want to be sure of a delivery, you have to
send it registered mail: with that, every time a transfer of any kind occurs,
it is done with paperwork, signatures, tracking, and under lock and key. Of
course it costs an arm and a leg too.

------
ryanlol
>Obviously, it should have been insured for the full value. But please
understand that hindsight is 20/20\. The sender chose the insurance amount,
and had no _reason to suspect the package would be lost_ , and that we would
be given no help on the matter. It's _not unreasonable to believe a mail
carrier would try to avoid the need to pay out 1000 Euros worth of insurance
by not losing said package_.

That's some really high expectations there.

If you want to send something to another country and aren't willing to lose
it? Buy a plane ticket.

It's essentially impossible for the carriers to prevent this from happening
given their volumes.

~~~
brink
> that's some really high expectations there.

The USPS is easily on my top 5 list of incompetent companies.

~~~
legohead
Why is that? They deliver more mail than all the other US carriers combined,
and deal with almost half of the worlds mail traffic. For the truly massive
amount of traffic they deal with, they are incredibly accurate and fast. If
you have lived in another country like I have, you will quickly learn to
appreciate the USPS.

~~~
brink
I'm sure it could be worse, but out of the 3 main providers we have in the US
here, they're the most unreliable. I'm not trying to just rip on them, but
from my experience, they don't think much of delivering packages a day or more
late as it happens fairly consistently.

~~~
justin66
> I'm sure it could be worse, but out of the 3 main providers we have in the
> US here, they're the most unreliable

Yeah, I don't know. Fedex Ground seems to be focusing their efforts on package
delivery via t-shirt cannon or something, lately.

~~~
eridius
In my experience DHL is the absolute worst (I know others have said they're
pulling back from the US, but they certainly still do a lot of deliveries here
in San Francisco, especially Amazon deliveries).

One time DHL literally threw a package containing a hard drive over my gate to
land on my concrete steps. Thankfully the shipper had put a ton of bubble wrap
in there so the hard drive itself ended up without any damage, but I still
count myself lucky. That was actually the third time they'd done that sort of
thing, and after calling to complain (for the third time) they finally told me
they were putting a note "don't throw packages over the gate" on my address.
I'm shocked that's even something that they have to say.

------
rayrod2030
I live in Jersey City and once had a $4200 apartment deposit check stuck in
the USPS system for about two weeks before it finally turned up at its final
destination. It was mailed from Jersey City to a Hoboken address so literally
should have taken two days tops. Hopefully this is a similar situation and
this package shows up soon.

------
jasonkostempski
Maybe it blew over to the neighbors front law, I just found my $130 package
over there.

------
BrianT
What about contacting the postal inspectors?

[https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/](https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/)

They maybe able to open a case for you

------
rasz_pl
>The package was insured for 1000 Euros.

end of story.

------
phonon
Why not sue DHL? (USPS has sovereign immunity.)

~~~
eridius
Sue them over what? DHL didn't lose the package.

~~~
ajb
No, but the sender had a contract with them, to deliver the package, not USPS.
USPS were acting as a subcontractor in this instance. So legally DHL are
liable if anyone is.

~~~
eridius
I guarantee you the contract you have with shipping companies doesn't let you
(successfully) sue them simply because the package didn't get delivered. No
shipping company would still exist today if that were the case, they would
have been sued into the ground long ago.

