[ivegotnoaccount]

For the case of those USB keys: Would you prefer for everyone to bear the seemingly high cost of having such a system, whereas you probably never had a thumb drive fail nor know someone that has ? (You may, but if that's the case you are sadly part of the outliers)

[cosmotic]

I've had 6 or so USB disks fail inexplicably. Sounds like the proposal is a heater and a timer that are embedded on the stick. That doesn't sound like high cost. I suspect theres a timer and thermometer already on the sticks, that leaves just a heater, which are super cheap.

[ivegotnoaccount]

Failing inexplicably does not mean that it failed because of the issue talked about here. It could as well be bad contacts or soldering whiskers. I'd prefer a USB stick that does not fail too, but in fact, I have never had any fail on me so I don't know the prevalence, and know even less which parts come from this specific issue. Also, if your USB drive starts having a heating element, you need to trust it to not fry everything due to a regulation failure in badly designed units that fail closed. I also doubt a process of heating "at 250 degrees for hours" could be done at 50°. Even of it could, it would literally take days at a time.