alt Hacker Newsreading the flash causes the row to be rewritten with the values just read
DRAM works that way but flash doesn't. Read disturb is a different issue.
pretty much all USB drives now use NOR flash
Nope, NOR flash is much more expensive than NAND so NOR is only used for firmware and everything else is NAND.
But the firmware might have the logic to rewrite the block when it reads it in case it hasn't been written in a while.