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Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work
- Albright 11y ago…And on ones that do. Looks very useful for weeding out actual quality from the muddle. Would love to see someone doing this kind of work with other types of cables, too.
- synctext 11y agoClearly shows the need for a reputation system, not locked into 1 company. Reviews need sharing.
- guelo 11y agoReviews also need massive amounts of human and computer moderation, and that's not cheap.
- ctdonath 11y agoSounds like a Y-Combinator startup waiting to happen.
- ryan-c 11y agoI could see this as a browser plugin - professional reviews of popular products where there are many, many brands of wildly differing quality such as cables and chargers. The problem is it seems that it'd need to be a browser extension, and most shopping-related browser extensions are pretty shady, so reputation would be an issue. I suppose another option would be to just set up a site with reviews and make money with Amazon referral links. I end up buying cables on Monoprice when I can just because the stuff they sell is usually good quality.
- jarek 11y agoHow will any company, especially a VC funded company, avoid problems and dilemmas seen by other online-submitted-reviews companies like Yelp that basically turn the company into either a fake review haven or a protection racket?
- ctdonath 11y agoBy focusing on what makes this reviewer notable: he's a verified buyer, systematically reviewing products, and with a resume to show he's worth listening to. We don't want reviews from any & all yahoos who sign up, we want reviews from vetted people who have a professional interest in checking numerous products with appropriate knowledge, and can write meaningful descriptions suitable for general audiences. Personally, I'd very much like to see such a thing applied particularly to high-knockoff topics like USB cables (see lead post), camera batteries, printer ink, and other items where a lot of companies are providing a lot of low-price alternatives (some quality, some dangerously bad) to high-dollar brand-name accessories & consumables. For some there's WAY too many options, with HUGE variation of price & quality, to do anything other than either "buy cheap & popular and hope" or "pay thru the nose but it will work". FWIW: if you sign up as an advertising associate https://affiliate-program.amazon.com https://affiliate-program.amazon.com with Amazon you can get up to 10% from every link you provide that turns into an actual sale. Build a website featuring appropriately curated reviews linking to Amazon and you could make a good buck - IF you can get enough readers. Over the years I've made a couple hundred dollars doing so, just by posting links when relevant to blog comments. Focused as a business? I'd expect good returns if done right, plenty to hire good unbiased reviewers.
- jarek 11y agoI'm still not sure this would be a company suited for YC-expected massive growth, but thank you and respect for expanding on the idea.
- kevinpet 11y agoSounds like a dozen already failed start ups.
- Johnny555 11y agoA central review clearinghouse will never happen with cheap accessories like this. If model "1234-X" gets bad reviews, the same product will just be renumbered to model "9863-V2" and even the company name may change. So there's no way to keep reviews associated with the same product -- it's the same reason why there are no good review sites for mattresses across all retailers -- the manufacturers use a variety of names and product numbers for mattresses sold to different retailers, specifically to obfuscate them.
- vonmoltke 11y agoWhat's worse in the cheap accessories market is it is highly likely that groups of companies are buying and repackaging the exact same cables from the same manufacturer and slapping their own names and part numbers on them. So even if two companies are legitimately different, the product may not be.
- tetrep 11y agocompanies doding bad reviews means that companies with good reviews will stand out, making selection easier. as a consumer, i don't care about crappy products unless i end up purchasing them. i can avoid crappy products by only going for products with explicit positive reviews that i can trust. sure a grey area will continue to exist, but whitelisting is still effective for reviews, even if we can't blacklist.
- TillE 11y agoYeah, you'd need to cooperate with the manufacturer to "certify" only one exact product, and make sure that the certification is revoked when anything is changed. The mattress issue actually sounds like a solvable problem, if you're willing to put in the effort. It's just not really worth it when you can also buy mattresses from IKEA or various online retailers which don't engage in those tactics.
- mschuster91 11y ago> It's just not really worth it when you can also buy mattresses from IKEA or various online retailers which don't engage in those tactics. IKEA manufactures wherever possible for the lowest price. The difference is that IKEA employs quality control measures.
- pbhjpbhj 11y agoReevoo is quite good IMO. Example USB-2 cable: http://reevoo.com/p/startech-com-usb-2-0-active-extension-cable-usb-extender-4-pin-usb-type-a-m-4-pin-usb-type-a-f-5-m-usb-hi-speed-usb http://reevoo.com/p/startech-com-usb-2-0-active-extension-ca.... I've used ebuyer (UK computer retailer) quite a bit and they moved away from their own review system to use Reevoo (the ebuyer one was better IMO however). Still Reevoo seems to have useful reviews in the computer/tech space.
- noobermin 11y agoReading the headline, it sounded like astroturfing. Instead, he's being helpful and providing some very useful information from his experience as an engineer from google itself. What a thoughful fellow!
- joezydeco 11y agoFrom a engineering point-of-view, he's saving himself a lot of product support headaches down the road when people try using bogus cables and then contacting Google when they fail to operate (or, worse, destroy the hardware under warranty)
- amitnme 11y ago
- maxerickson 11y agoIn one comment thread he does suggest that buying cables from the Play store would be safer.
- mikeash 11y agoIt's probably true, since the Play store only sells one variety of cable, and Google has probably actually vetted it. In which case I can only see that suggestion as a helpful bit of advice for avoiding problems.
- maxerickson 11y agoYeah, no pitchfork in hand here, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Amazon didn't appreciate that sort of activity.
- mikeash 11y agoFor sure. I'd hope they'll be self-aware enough to realize that it would be crappy to yank the reviews or punish the reviewer for recommending another store where the products aren't broken when Amazon is full of broken products. But I wouldn't be very confident of that.
- legulere 11y agoYou don't have that issue with cables usually because they don't need to contain active components
- Splines 11y agoHere's a similar analysis for phone chargers: http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-apple-is.html http://www.righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb-chargers-in-lab-ap...
- smpetrey 11y agoGood to see that Benson is a Half-Life man.
- lips 11y agoIt would physically pain me to work at a company that sells defective equipment. I'd like to see amazon just develop in-house testing for certain types of stock. Cables, power supplies...
- Johnny555 11y agoHow much more are you willing to pay for that? If you're willing to pay a premium for tested and certified gear, why not just buy from your phone's manufacturer in the first place?
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoBecause a lot of the Nexus 6P/5X accessories are sold out or have long delays before shipping. Also, I don't need another wall wart charger, just the cable.
- Johnny555 11y agoYeah, well it's easier to make things by the million when you don't care about testing, certification or product damage. Part of the reason the cheap ones have so much availability is that they are cheap and easy to make and have little quality control -- even though they may not work.
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoNot really. I can buy super cheap micro-USB cables that work perfectly. This seems to happen all the time when there's a new standard out. The disreputable companies whip together something shoddy and try to get those early sales before more reputable companies can move in. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon do nothing to stop this obvious fraud. Amazon should be stopping these sales. Also, its disingenuous to pretend these are $2 cables. The only ones still available showing price are $14.99. These are much more than $2.
- 11y ago
- ScottWRobinson 11y agoAll areas of internet business (ecommerce, publishing, etc) need to be held more accountable. Kudos to this guy for doing his part
- amitnme 11y ago
- whistlerbrk 11y agoWhy two star reviews instead of one for the cables that fail to meet the spec? Does Amazon / do people view 1-star reviews as bitter / exaggerated? Are they less visible?
- Joeri 11y agoThey can still be used for data exchange, just not for charging.
- bosdev 11y agoThey probably work for charging as well in most cases. The issue with most of them is they could allow too much current to flow, more than a micro-usb cable is rated for. Some consumers might appreciate this though, trading an miniscule fire hazard for their device charging faster.
- mortehu 11y agoIt's not about what the cable can handle. Some of these cables can be plugged into an old device on the end that delivers power, while the cable (which isn't just wires) advertises the power delivery capabilities of a newer device.
- mikestew 11y agoPersonally, I filter out one and five star reviews. To me, five stars means when you use the product, Jesus appears before you. One star means I ordered a cable and received a dead crab instead (pretty sure there's an XKCD that covers the last one). But others don't agree with my rating system, so "ordered blue, but it was robin egg blue. Werst company evar!!!11" means one star. Five stars means "I work for the company that makes these, or I'm otherwise being paid to write this, or I simply didn't give a lot of thought to how rating systems work." In this case, the cable fulfills most of the requirements, misses a some of them, but might work for your use case, so two stars.
- larrybud 11y ago
- jwr 11y agoThis is such a great service to everyone! I wish more companies let their engineers do that. Too few knowledgeable people call out the crap we're being sold.
- andrewguenther 11y agoI don't think we know if Google "let" him yet. Most companies have very strong policies against things like this...
- yeukhon 11y agoHe's hired to look at "USB cables and adapters for compatibility with Pixel and Nexus devices." So the popular guess is yes he was told to. Sound alike the whole reason is to make their device owners able to make better choices.
- jrockway 11y agoGoogle doesn't have a strong policy against things like this. It mostly boils down to using your best judgement. "Would you like to read this on the front page of the New York Times?" is the usual question to ask yourself. I also like to ask myself, "is this factually correct, and am I providing proof?" On HN, I tend to limit my responses because I usually end up being attacked for something I have nothing to do with, by virtue of some grudge the commenter has with Google. If you want to call me out for my own work, go ahead, I value feedback greatly in areas that I can control. If you have useful commentary, I'll try my hardest to make sure that people with understanding in that area see your comments. But if you just want to yell at me by virtue of who pays my salary, I find that all very unenjoyable and would prefer to not be involved. I also notice that lurkers with blogs tend to like to take quotes from HN and convey them as the official word of Google out of context, which I also don't like being involved in. Learned that lesson my first week at Google :) Finally, one also ends up attracting the crazies that email me threats against other Google employees. All those get forwarded directly to Security Operations and don't get a reply from me. HN is a pretty big community these days and isn't quite the bastion of sanity that it once was. This limits how open many people will be with the community more than any policy.
- Johnny555 11y agoIs there a simple test that someone could do with a multimeter to test these cables themselves? Or is it more than just having a pullup resistor on the right pins?
- proee 11y agoThese are very high-speed cables, so there's a lot that can go wrong from a signal integrity standpoint.
- acqq 11y agoI've got an impression that he just checks if they are good for charging?
- Johnny555 11y agoI can't even remember the last time I used a USB cable on my phone for data, the only time I ever plug it in is for charging, so I don't care too much about signal integrity as long as it will charge my phone without damaging it. When I do care about signal integrity (i.e. connecting a USB hard drive to my computer, I use name-brand cables)
- acqq 11y agoHis reviews that I've read up to now do seem to be about if the resistor exists at all (if it doesn't the devices don't draw more current) or if it's of false resistance (and then the devices can try to draw more than the power source can provide, potentially damaging it).
- bkmartin 11y agoThe average consumer has no idea if one of these cables will actually do what they proclaim. The only way to really know is when other customers review the product, which we know is barely useful most of the time due to fraudulent reviews. Great job on the part of this Google engineer for writing such clear and technical reviews of the products. Now that an expert has called some of these cables out as not adhering to the spec shouldn't they be taken off of Amazon? Should they be reprimanded for false advertisement?
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoAmazon users do rely heavily on reviews, generally. I think with the Google engineers' reviews promoted to the top by the number of people who have marked them as helpful, market forces will finish the job. Few people will buy them, and those that do will have done so against solid advice. Amazon, of course, can delist things or not at their pleasure.
- poizan42 11y agoOr the seller creates a new account and keep selling the cables until another bad review. And then does the same again and so on.
- acveilleux 11y agoOr relists under a slightly different part number.
- ars 11y agoOnce a part gets a bunch of good reviews unless the other one is way cheaper people will just by the known good one.
- x0x0 11y agoExcept for a given review, you can't tell which seller sold that item. Anyone can list on a given item.
- Marcus10110 11y agoWe've done a similar analysis of USB 3.0 host controllers and the state of their drivers cross-platform. It's amazing how bad the state of USB 3.0 is, even 5 years after devices started shipping. Even the latest Intel host controllers (8 & 9 series) initially shipped with bad drivers. I look forward to getting our results posted.
- twy678 11y agoHaha, if it were only bad drivers. Try bad hardware: https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg131265.html https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg131265.html http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg122354.html http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg122354.html http://marc.info/?l=linux-usb&m=134861220631257&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=linux-usb&m=134861220631257&w=2 http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg63980.html http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg63980.html ...shit's so broken I could keep doing this all day long.
- Marcus10110 11y agoAbsolutely. Data corruption from VIA based host controllers was probably the worst issue we've seen, and the USB 3.0 ASMedia host controllers are probably the worst now that VIA was able to solve their issue with a driver update. Most hardware on the market today was released before the xhci spec 1.0 was finished, and I agree that ALL hardware on the market does not even properly implement the spec that was available during its design. Fortunately, most issues can be worked around using quirks. The hardware is the root of the problem, but I would also add that the xhci_hcd kernel module, even in the latest kernels, is well behind Microsoft in terms of handing these device-specific quirks. The Microsoft USB 3.0 stack introduced in Widows 8 solves just about every host-specific issue we've ever seen. ASMedia is the only host controller vendor that bothers to provide their own Windows 8/10 driver (both for their USB 3 Gen1 and Gen2 chips). No one else provides an alternative to the Microsoft provided usbxhci.sys. That said, all of our tests have been limited to bulk transfers, and we're only using existing user space libraries (WinUSB, LibUSB, IOKit). We do push throughput, we have tight latency requirements, and we keep a large number of buffers queued at all times, which does push the host controllers further than your typical storage device. (We make streaming data recording equipment for electrical engineers and embedded developers) I don't want to bash xhci_hcd though; their progress has been fantastic, despite the minefield of problems created by all these host controller vendors. I would like to say a special thanks to @sarahsharp, for all of the hard work put into the xhci host controller module. Without Sarah, I don't know who will answer when the xhci_hcd doorbell rings.
- munchbunny 11y agoIf only there were more of this stuff! The kind of information in his reviews is technically detailed but clear enough for the layperson, and it answers the real question I have in mind when I'm looking at the 1-3 star reviews: does it actually work for what I want it to do?
- phil21 11y agoThe strange part of these reviews though is that counterintuitively many of these cables would be considered to "work for what you want it to do" when a spec-compliant cable would not. Usually what people want is to "make my device charge fast" - in which case the cables not implementing the spec correctly work while compliant cables would not. Of course, there is a reason that compliance exists! Chances are you are plugging this cable into a wall-wart made in the past few years with higher tolerances than needed, and things will work out fine. Until they don't. Then you may burn out a PC USB port, or potentially I suppose catch a cheap chinese wall wart on fire. At least that is my current understanding having spent the past few days attempting to decipher how this all works. The correct way to go about this transition to USB-C is to toss out all your USB-A chargers, buy USB-C chargers, and if you need to adapt; adapt in the USB-C -> USB-micro/mini direction vs. the USB-A -> USB-C direction. The tldr on this is basically if you plug into a USB-A charger, you should not be able to "rapid charge" at 3A. If you are, you are out of spec and could potentially damage something you plug that cable into. Just give up on the dream of using your old chargers and expect to replace them with chargers that implement USB-C there. If you need to charge USB micro devices, invest in some USB-C -> Micro cables (or adapters) instead.
- pgeorgi 11y agoJust slapping the "the other end is 3A capable" resistor onto the cable isn't good enough, because a cable has no idea what's on the other end. You can still rapid charge with a compliant type-C/A cable, but it needs to be negotiated through one of the other specified mechanisms (that directly talk with the other end and thus can figure out what the type-A charging side can actually provide).
- melling 11y agoHas there been any uptick in USB-C adoption? Apple skipped it in their latest iMacs. I think they're waiting for the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 unification. https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-d... I've seen a couple Dell laptops but not much else. It's a much better form factor. Not to mention the elimination of USB superposition: :-) http://9gag.com/gag/6756457/usb-superposition http://9gag.com/gag/6756457/usb-superposition
- uzi 11y agoThe recently released Nexus 5x and Nexus 6p phones both have USB-C, as does the Chromebook Pixel.
- chrisBob 11y agoThe only physical USB-C device and cable I have seen are the ones on the new Apple TV. Apple even helpfully included the cable with the developer devices.
- vetinari 11y agoIt's the only port on the Macbook.
- radiorental 11y agoWhat I find interesting here is that Benson is essentially using his employer as a reputation guarantor. I guess depending on the company's HR that could fall either way of a) This is great, we're getting nice PR b) Mr Benson, we need to have a quiet word about what it is you do here and what Google is not in the business of. Really interesting. edit: I assumed this is part of his job. I just find the publishing of the result along with Google's name interesting. If/when I evaluate software for a solution as part of my job, I wouldnt dream of publishing my findings and referencing my employer - but I like what Benson has done.
- zymhan 11y agoI'm willing to bet he was assigned to test a variety of cables on the market, and probably to leave the reviews as well.
- merb 11y agoI think he needs to do this as his work. I mean seriously who would buy usb adapter cables worth more than 1000 USD just to write reviews?
- bdcravens 11y agoDepends on whose card he is using.
- ryan-c 11y agoMy assumption is that he's working on some sort of project where he's buying many cables on Google's dime to test them, then reporting his results on Amazon. My worry would be the cables that get good reviews being switched out for crappy cables down the line. I've had problems with this for cables and adapters before - I'll re-order from Amazon and get a slightly different product that is not 100% compatible with the old one.
- gaius 11y agoIt's tech support for Nexus customers.
- ScottWRobinson 11y agoAnd this exemplifies why (in my eyes) Google seems to have the best engineers - they're willing to go above and beyond in everything they do
- mikestew 11y agoOther companies have employees just like that. Sadly, if those folk pull a stunt like that, someone will be having a word with them. I say "sadly", but I've seen the flip-side of this, too. A properly-formed query on usenet will turn up some back-in-the-day posts from Microsoft employees (posting with a microsoft.com reply-to) who were real assholes. (And not to pick on Microsoft, though they certainly have it coming; just the first counter-example that came to mind.) So I guess I'm conflicted. Yeah, Benson's being really helpful and it looks good for Google, IMO. But with a different employee, it could turn really ugly if someone's back is turned.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoI've definitely seem some embarrassingly bad attitudes from Googlers on social media. (One recently which basically said every serialization protocol that wasn't Google's was inherently harmful, because Google didn't make them.) But obviously, there's many people like Benson who provide incredibly sagely advice that do a service not just to Google's own customers, but competitors' like Amazon's customers as well. Once a company reaches a certain size, they have way too many people to police all of them across the Internet, or ensure all of their hires contribute meaningfully online.
- alistproducer2 11y agoThe best engineers in the world work at Google.
- mahouse 11y ago[looks at his Android phone] hmmm...
- mindslight 11y agoIt would be good if he did resistance tests as well. I killed my phone's battery by absentmindedly using a shitty cable that was basically tinsel wire. (details: I was full-time tethering while plugged in. I assume the charge controller thought the battery was charging but it was actually slowly discharging)
- i336_ 11y agoThat info deserves being tied to the model of the phone, at least. Not because that phone's thus inherently bad, but because that's a buggy design. I understand you're saying that the cable fooled the charge controller into letting the battery fall completely flat? Wow. Getting said info to the right place so next version's charge controller is fixed would be nigh impossible, but dropping the info in lots of high-exposure places might be a start.
- mindslight 11y agoIt was an HTC EVO 4G (non-"LTE"). Quite old at this point. I can only surmise what actually happened. I was full-time wifi tethering for a month or two and the symptoms along the way seemed to point to this cause. The phone eventually stopped taking power at all, until I plugged it into a USB port instead of the OEM 1A charger. At which point I realized the higher current was the problem, and investigated the cable. It actually felt like a really nice cable - very robust and strain-reliefy. But apparently that's because the whole thing was mostly plastic and essentially headphone wires. Lesson learned! If my theory is correct , it's a pretty stupid design. But I feel like there's probably many weird corner cases in consumer electronics that don't matter because 99% of people won't find them, and the ones that do won't realize it's a bug, and by the time anybody could put it together that specific model has been obsoleted anyway.
- ck2 11y agoAmazon reviews become useless as Amazon allows third-party vendors from China and HK to flood the original listing with clones. So people buy based on the review and then they find out the vendor shipped a clone, so then they give a bad review but it's not for the original listing. Amazon made a huge mess with that, they should never allow third parties to sell on the original listing.
- jarek 11y agoAnother fun thing I saw on Amazon a few months back was items for sale with reviews for another product. Shopping for a small FM transmitter, I found a listing where every review more than a few months old was for a roof-mounted car antenna. I suppose there is a Ship of Theseus problem when trying to detect tricks like that automatically - surely sellers should be able to reword description, update product image, and change the product name slightly, but where do you draw the line and how do you handle that? Heh.
- vidarh 11y agoI've had a similar thing, where a vendor had clearly kept the same listing for many years. They were the same type of product (tablets) but the specs referenced for the oldest listings were quite hilarious. For a long time this seemed to have been fine, sort of, as the shipped products consistently were better than those described in older listings. Until they weren't. We bought one that was a substantial step down (screen resolution in particular, which was exactly why I'd picked it).. Got a refund, but Amazon simply didn't seem to care that the reviews had no relevance to the current model, which was a let down (though a lesson to read the reviews closely and pay attention to their age...)
- lsaferite 11y agoWeird. Any time I've pointed out an obviously wrong listing it has been pulled down almost immediately.
- ryan-c 11y agoI'm not sure why you're being downvoted (perhaps for singling out China/HK?), I've had problems like this on Amazon as well when buying chargers/cables.
- distantsounds 11y agoI wish someone would do this for micro-usb2 cables. I've bought so many different ones and found that they don't carry enough current from the charger to properly charge my Nexus 6.
- lucb1e 11y agoYeah I'm still not sure how that works. My phone will randomly charge really quickly on the wall adapter for weeks, and then at some point it decides it's going to charge slowly for the next few weeks. Same adapter, same cable.. it seems to be wacky. It's all original from Samsung. The micro-USB connection is also really loose with this particular cable<->phone combination (cable is fine with other phones; phone is fine with other cables). Used my old Nokia micro-USB for this reason and charging was always slow, then connected the Samsung one and it was a lot faster.. for a while. I never knew the cable could do something like this, unless it's something like being way too long. From your comment I take it that you do need a certain amount of copper in those wires to work? So more expensive cables might actually be better? (I always laughed at "gold plated extra quality HDMI cables of 30cm for 30 euros because HDMI is a digital signal.)
- digi_owl 11y agoWell there you have multiple "issues". One part is the wire gauge. You need something like 24awg (its the American system, don't ask me why) on the power pins (higher number, thinner wire, iirc). Most use 28 on both power and data pairs. Then the charger has to actually follow the USB spec, not the very similar Apple one. This means either a microchip that can handle the USB handshake, or a resistor across the data pins at the charger end to signal that this is a charger (Apple has one resistor on each pin, with a slightly different resistance). Now on top of that you have Qualcomm pushing their fast charge system that involves a chip at both ends, and higher voltage than the 5V that USB normally uses. The higher voltage allows for more watts without upping the ampere (V*A=W, iirc). Note that the Qualcomm system is similar (but i don't think they are interchangeable) with the USB3 system (the latter can go all the way to 20V, but that requires beefy cables). Frankly the more i think about it the more i expect to hear about someone getting electrocuted because they mistook their data cable for their dumb laptop charger.
- donatj 11y agoWell crqp. I just bought a couple of these for my Nexus 5X a week ago. I wonder if I could work an amazon refund.
- scottmp10 11y agoI bought the TechMatte 2x USB-C to Micro-USB item that he gave two stars for use with my 5X. At least one of the items I got was actually defective. The other worked but charged very slowly. I wish I had seen his post before buying! Now I am nervous because I subsequently bought a cable that he hasn't reviewed yet... This has me wondering if there is some way to incentivize good reviewers. There is Consumer Reports and some more tech-specific sites but there is still a long tail of products that you have to buy without good reviews.
- maxerickson 11y agoIt's probably more effective to try to weed out the reasonable brands. For instance, I don't think Amazon is going to sell broken crap using their AmazonBasics brand, and they still charge quite a bit less than Belkin (I don't think they sell USB C yet, but that's besides the point).
- tehwebguy 11y agoCableCreation Micro-B receptacle to Type-C plug adapter is out of spec. May cause damage to your USB charger, PC, or hub. Still gave it 2/5 stars?!
- khc 11y agoI have one of these, and it happens to work fine (seemingly anyway). Unfortunately he hasn't reviewed anything similar that is actually in spec, so I don't really have a choice here. (other than buying new cables/charger/car chargers, which I deem wasteful)
- cordite 11y agoSeems to be a consistent pattern.
- ryan-c 11y agoDidn't burn down Google campus or shoot my dog, +1 star. Joking aside, I'm somewhat more likely to read a two star review vs a one star review because a lot of the one star reviews are whiny rants and not actually helpful.
- criddell 11y agoPerhaps the 1 star reviews are for cables that actually do damage your charger, PC, and hub.
- DanBC 11y agoAn out of spec cable may still be useful for many people. Just not for Pixel owners.
- malkia 11y agoI just bought an HDMI "hub"/duplicator, and just now realized that now all HDMI cables are the same - some support 1.3, others 1.4 (or were these the numbers and such). Maybe it's okay, so far the Wii/PS4 and ChromeCast work fine through it... I'm just posting this here, as no one informed me about possibly complications at BestBuy, but the great folks at Staples actually forwarded me to BestBuy to look for such device. My father told me a story about service in Turkey, basically if you go to a store and they don't have right away what you need, they may go out find/buy it for you, just to please you. Or buy you a coffee, while waiting in s shoe shop. Whether he exaggerates a bit or not, I like this approach. Yes you might lose customers, but you'll always leave a smile in good customers. They might come back, just for that little appreciation...
- bryanlarsen 11y ago"USB" and the various USB logos are trademarks of the USB-IF. I was under the impression that non-compliant products can be sued for trademark infringement by the USB-IF. Sure, they could be sold without the logo, but not being able to put the word "USB" in their product description would make them unsearchable and kill their online sales...
- dspillett 11y agoThe trouble would be chasing all the cheap manufacturers, distributors, and resellers. It would be rather time consuming and costly.
- punnerud 11y agoI miss a simple page with information om how I can perform tests, like on the USB-C cables, myself. I find reading specs to take to much time to be able know how to perform them. Example is the 57MB zip-file for the USB-C-spec: http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/ http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/
- rdl 11y agoWow. I wish more companies would do this kind of small "public good" incidental to other work.
- lhl 11y agoI'm trying to think if there's anyone else that's doing something similar. I remember a while back I was really impressed by "NLee the Engineer"'s reviews[1] on lights/batteries. There's also a reviewer Sporty[2] who's done a fair number of reviews on SD cards. I took a quick look at Amazon's Hall of Fame/Top Reviewers, but sadly, it seems to prize volume vs quantified/focused cross-sectional reviews. [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOEAD7DPLZE53 http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOEAD7DPLZE53 [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Q6Z6MRTI2RJY http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Q6Z6MRTI2RJY
- justin66 11y agoI bought a real piece of garbage battery charger as a result of one of that NLee guy's detailed reviews. Super unimpressed.
- BorgHunter 11y agoYou haven't really qualified "piece of garbage", so I have no idea what actually happened, but I will note that charger manufacturers have pulled some bait-and-switch tactics in the past. I bought a battery charger based on an NLee review[0], and was very satisfied. A friend later asked for a battery charger recommendation, and I went back to that very review and found that they'd started selling a "revised" model under the same listing, that was basically worthless. Something similar may have happened to you. [0] http://www.amazon.com/review/RSYHTFQQYEGLG http://www.amazon.com/review/RSYHTFQQYEGLG
- justin66 11y agoOn mobile right now so I'm not feeling verbose. He noted serious problems in his subcomments after the initial review that strike me as quite serious, but didn't alter the item's rating accordingly. Whatever.
- MichaelGG 11y agoPerhaps the product changed? I often see reviews warning consumers that the new lot of product is deficient. Hell, the Pyrex brand did that, using the name on glass that can't actually hold up to temperature swings. (Lenovo's handing of ThinkPad might fall under this category too.) Best thing to do is return the item; Amazon will value this far more than a negative review.
- DiabloD3 11y agoI see no reason why to buy anything but Anker. I once tried to purposely destroy an Anker MicroUSB cable (bought a 5 pack that had three 3ft, one 6ft, one 1ft, didn't need the 1ft), by grabbing the head of it with clamping pliers and yanking the fuck out of it with the cable wrapped around my hand, and bending it to near 180 degrees repeatedly for about 5 minutes. I could not kill it without straight up taking wire cutters to it, which I decided not to do. The cable still works perfectly, and sits in my junk drawer for when I need to plug something into the front of my case and leave the thing sitting on top of the computer. Literally any other brand? Most I would have been able to rip the head off the cable after the first few yanks, the few that survived that would have broken the wire pairs inside either from that or from the repeated 180 degree bend. Remember those original Monoprice USB cables we all bought and loved back in the day? Those didn't survive that abuse, and Monoprice cables have only gotten worse then. And the AmazonBasics USB cables (that I recommend for non-MicroUSB cables (only because Anker doesn't make them, only MicroUSB, Type C, and Lightning))? Don't survive that level of abuse either. Anker also has the best damned USB chargers for walls and cars I've ever seen (heaviest USB chargers I've ever had, no coil whine, doesn't EZ-Bake itself, shuts off completely when nothing is plugged in), they're just perfectly glorious.
- post_break 11y agoAukey now rivals Anker, if not exceeds. Check them out.
- devit 11y agoLooks like Google is doing an amazing service for customers in this area. Not only they are using a standard plug and thus not locking you into buying accessories from them, which seem reasonably priced anyway, but they even test a lot of other cables in the market and tell you how compatible they are both with their own products and even with the products of competitors with quite different practices.
- lchengify 11y agoThese reviews took me back (and made me laugh). They have the same to-the-point-and-technically-correct tone as code reviews internal to Google. In all seriousness though, these are important for a non-obvious reason: Nexus 6x devices don't ship with USB2-USB3 adapters (they only have a USB3 cable with a wall charger). So ... anyone who wants to hook up their Nexus 6x to a laptop will almost certainly to Amazon to buy a cable. This is what I did last week, and just today I discovered that certain cables do not quick charge. Benson Leung, you are doing the lord's work. May future Nexus 6x owners benefit from your expertise.
- sliverstorm 11y agoMoment of irony when I realized my new Nexus is the only Android device I own, that I cannot develop apps on. Short of sending apk's over wifi to sideload. (Because of the USB) Looking forward to laptops with USB C connectors.
- pen2l 11y ago> Looking forward to laptops with USB C connectors. Surprisingly it's been slow! I was very sad to see, for instance, that MS Surface Book does not have a USB C port. It is the single reason that I'm not going to buy the Surface Book. At least Apple went all in with the Macbook air. Also, I think iPhone 7 will use the USB 3.1 type C port.
- mdlowman 11y agoIf I were trying to drive adoption of a connector that has objectively better performance characteristics (high current draw for fast charging), I too wouldn't provide a legacy cable that doesn't exhibit those benefits. I know the criteria for selecting my next laptop and monitor will involve USBC.
- voltagex_ 11y agoWhat I can't work out is am I going to damage my new 5X with any of these cables? There's a limited number that'll ship to Australia
- fpgaminer 11y agoThe current rhetoric when it comes to the failings of online reviews is to point at fraudulent reviews. I posit that, rather, it's the lack of weighting reviews by the expertise of the reviewers. Clearly the reviews of a hardware engineer at Google should have more weight to them than an average consumer (on products like this), because as bkmartin points out, the average consumer has no idea as to the true quality of a product. Perhaps the cable does work for them. Perhaps the cable mostly works, but the wire gauge is under spec and 1 out of 100 people end up with a fire. That won't be reflected in the overall rating of a product. Case in point, the Juiced Systems product that Benson reviewed as 2 stars is currently listed as an overall 5/5 stars. In Amazon's defence Benson's review is currently displayed at the top of the reviews. So any shoppers that go through the effort of reading the reviews will quickly see it. But this product shouldn't be rated 5/5 overall, and because it is, many consumers who can't be bothered to check the content of the reviews will be burned. This, to me, is a greater problem than fraudulent reviews. Fraudulent reviews can be solved by getting more regular customers to review products they buy. Uber is a great example of UX design that gets customers to review the quality of their service nearly every time. But even if Amazon or other retailers achieve a higher rate of reviews by actual costumers, the non-expert bias will remain. Of course the trick is, how do we determine which reviewers are experts? Most review systems have a helpfulness rating on each review which could be used to weight reviews in the overall average. But that's only a proxy for an expert rating, is easily cheated, and it's harder to get customers to rate reviews than it is to get them to at least review the product.
- semiel 11y agoWhen buying something online, I make a habit of reading a couple of the negative reviews. Sometimes they're, "I meant to buy a toaster, and misclicked on this television instead. Makes poor toast. 2/5." But sometimes they're more like, "It worked great for two years, and then became sentient and strangled my pet fish. 2/5" Rating distributions only tell you part of the story.
- asddubs 11y agoanother really common thing is people rating the shipping instead of the product in their negative reviews
- Roodgorf 11y agoMy favorite is the only other review on his profile from years ago of the Orange Box soundtrack.
- thomnottom 11y agoI was scrolling through the comments thinking "No one else here noticed his rave review for the Orange Box Soundtrack?"
- nuclearghost 11y agoSurprised none of the USB cables were a triumph
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoValve can now proudly display on their Orange Box soundtrack that it is Google Certified™.
- chrisBob 11y agoOne of his reviews brought up an interesting point. Version 3.1 of the spec does not limit the length of a cable, but version 2.0 does. Is a 4 conductor cable with a USB-C connector on one end only required to meet the USB 3.1 standards?
- mdlowman 11y agoReading the reviews, it looks like there's basically one complaint. Ports/devices with older connectors (USBA, mini-B, micro-B, B) aren't necessarily going to be able to (or supposed to be able to) handle a 3A current draw. A device that supports USBC should handle current draws this high. But to do so, it must be able to determine if it is safe to draw this much current. That's only doable with a USBC->USBC connection as per spec. So a USBC-USBA cable (or any other USBC->something cable) should use a resistor identifying that the USB3 current draw spec should not be exceeded. The cables he's reviewing misidentify as being capable of the full current load. This could cause damage to the device your USBC phone or laptop is being plugged into.
- digi_owl 11y agoWell that explains it, as i have yet to get up to speed with the C stuff. I do recall though that older stuff should have a resistor in the charger itself to note if it is a charger port or not (if it does not have the electronics to do proper handshake on the data pins). Sadly Apple have a variant of that floating around, resulting in confusion and devices that can do 500mah to anything, and 2400mah to Apple devices. Or anything if you fake them out via rigged cables etc, giving us the monstrosities called "charge only" cables.
- tytso 11y agoI've smoked a USB wall-wart that was spec'ed to be able to provide 2A. At the time I had assumed it was a dodgy USB charger, but I now believe that it was the cable which was dodgy. Benson has posted instructions if you want to test a cable yourself and you have a 2015 pixel: https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF The problem is that you'll need a sacrificial USB charger, and if you're lucky, you'll find out from the Pixel's diagnostics whether or not the cable is dodgy. If you're unlucky, you may also find out when the USB charger dies. In Benson's words, "Plug in the suspect USB cable and plug the other end into a DCP charging wall wart (preferably one you don't have any sort of sentimental attachment to)". Also read all the way through to the end. There are instructions for how to do this without needing to put the Pixel into dev mode, which is useful for those of us who need to use the Pixel in its enterprise enrolled mode to access our corporate accounts. :-)
- natch 11y agoCool but I don't think he understands how off-brand (meaning not big name brand) products like this change specs and quality on Amazon like Seattle changes weather. For cases where there is a big brand, and they have a reputation to defend, these reviews seem very valuable. For other cases, buyer beware.
- delecti 11y ago> like Seattle changes weather From the perspective of having grown up in the midwest, Seattle's weather might as well be Old Faithful.
- ossreality 11y agoSo uh, maybe they can explain why the DisplayPort USB-C adapter for the Chromebook Pixel only works in one orientation? Yes, that's right. You heard me. You have to flip it over 50% of the time to get the screen to come on. (This might be Linux specific, I don't have ChromeOS to check)
- jrockway 11y agoI don't have one of these adapters but that seems sub-optimal. Perhaps it's an issue fixed by a newer firmware (which CrOS will load to the dongle automatically, but probably not a stock Linux distribution)? Detailed design for the adapter is here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/dingdong https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/dingdong If you feel like it, please file a bug.
- ossreality 11y ago:) I don't come across a lot of ppl that know that one. Googler? Fan/user Anyway, yeah, I've actually had that thought in the back of my head. I've actually reloaded this laptop 3 times due to the exact situation you mention. (The HDD is too small to leave CrOS on there). It's been several months since I've let CrOS do it's thing and reflash the firmware... I should give it a shot. Many moths ago, I was reinstalling CrOS it to try to get it to reflash the adapter so that MST on DP1.2 would work. But it never worked and furthermore, the Dell monitors I have stop working when you enable DP1.2 so all around... it was disappointing. I wanted my Pixel to be my sole development machine... but when I'm sitting at my desk... I expect dual monitors... So I continue to sync my git repos between 3+ computers at a time. Woohoo. Whoever wants to make a laptop with 16GB RAM, HiDPI screen (and not the shitty Lenovo panels), and 2x mini-DP out.... boy, I'd sure love to see it. (And the Surface Pro 4 actually falls in that category, but is not Linux friendly) ---- edit: Checked the dingdong history... not seeing too much relevant but I might give it a shot when I have a slow weekend. Thanks again!
- hlmencken 11y agoI love that he had also reviewed the orange box OST
- JoshTriplett 11y agoRelated: has anyone written reviews of car USB ports, what devices they're capable of charging, and workarounds for charging higher-current devices? Many car USB ports have failure modes similar to those documented in these reviews, and they can't actually deliver high current for charging high-end smartphones, let alone tablets and laptops.
- tehstone8 11y agoBuy an Anker charger rated at 2 Amps. It will live up to it's promises.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoThe kind that plug in to the 12V "accessory" port, skipping the car's own USB entirely?
- jmiwhite 11y agoYes, for example: http://www.amazon.com/Car-Charger-PowerIQ-Technology-Motorola/dp/B00SSMRB9A http://www.amazon.com/Car-Charger-PowerIQ-Technology-Motorol...
- lucb1e 11y agoWait, you can charge/power a laptop over USB?
- JoshTriplett 11y agoUSB type C, yes. You can charge the current Pixel from a USB port. In the case of a type-A host port, you can do so slowly; in the case of a native type-C port, you can do so quickly.
- SwellJoe 11y agoThat's lovely, and exactly the sort of thing a good company would do. So many companies have a very short list of "approved" compatible devices and get ornery if you use something else; often those approved devices are unavailable under that exact product name or number and so you're left guessing as you replace stuff in two, three, or four years, which is actually when you're likely to find yourself needing to replace components like this. The very worst companies (ahem, Apple) only validate their own devices for inter-operation with their products, and act as though using something else would be the pinnacle of recklessness. Some even threaten it'll void the warranty (which is actually not legal in many cases, but companies do it anyway). The fact that someone from Google is doing this in a non-Google location for the benefit of the standard and of their customers is just really nice. Certainly, it is in their best interest to have their devices behave reliably and not be damaged by shoddy third party devices; and so Google does benefit. And, yet, many companies just don't see it that way and are willing to screw over their customers just to get that extra few bucks after the sale for accessories that could just as readily be provided by third parties (and often third parties offer more variety, making them more fit for purpose in some cases). In short, I've lost a lot of trust for Google over the years (mostly as marketing and violation of privacy became their primary revenue sources), but this is a good thing, for the consumer, for the industry (standards are great! implementing standards poorly is bad!), and for Google.
- st553 11y agoI'd like to see a technical review of the Nektech cables: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VIWE1ZY http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VIWE1ZY They have over 200 positive reviews but I don't think they've been tested to same degree that Benson has been checking.
- bgentry 11y agoI'm glad somebody is taking the time to do this. I'm going through and marking every one of these reviews as "helpful" so they float to the top of the Amazon reviews for these products.
- xixi77 11y agoThis is awesome, and I really hope more companies do this. I wonder though: from the few reviews I've looked at, it seems that the main complaint is that the cable does not identify itself as a legacy connector, and can result in the device drawing too much power from the port, potentially damaging whatever is on the other end. Definitely an unfortunate result, BUT: I wonder, is it still a common concern when the device on the other end is (for example) a wall plug-to-USB connector? Because if it's not too much of an issue in that case, and the device on the USB-C end is not at risk, wouldn't a non-compliant cable result in faster charging?
- tytso 11y agoI've smoked two wall warts because of trying to use a dodgy USB-C cable to charge a 2015 Pixel. In one case, the wall wart sim[ply stopped charging. In the second case the wall wart started charging my Nexus 6 REALLY FAST on one port and the other port has gone dead. I haven't had a chance to check it out with a volt meter, but I suspect it's now putting out substantially more than 5V on one port, and substantially less than 5V on the other. Fortunately the N6 supports Quick Charge 2.0, so as long as the voltage wasn't more than 9V, it probably didn't do any real harm to the phone (although it was actually charging faster than my normal QC charger). But since I also noticed the phone getting really hot, I've stopped using that charger, and it doesn't look like I've significantly damaged the N6 batteries. At least, the battery life hasn't been compromised and it hasn't burst into flames. Yet. :-)
- downandout 11y agoThis is cool, but being from the online marketing world, I can already see people copying this in bad ways. "Hi this is Tom, I am from iPhone Development Team 6 here at Apple and we have been testing [product] in our labs. In our opinion, [affiliate link to other releated product] is far better because this product [technical critique that few will understand but will serve to bolster reviewer's credibility, can be copied from random highly technical review site]". If this is going to be a thing, Amazon should offer the ability to certify that the user at least has an email address for the company they claim they are with (@apple.com, @google.com etc) and show a "certified Googler" or similar logo next to their name.
- ryandrake 11y agoYou can pretty safely bet your life this is going to happen if this guy gets any press for what he's doing. Within a month or so, every tech product on Amazon will have glowing reviews by "Josh from Microsoft" or "Brian from Intel"
- vxNsr 11y agoThis kinda already happens all the time on reddit. And I'm always left wondering if the person is just a really good bser or is telling the truth. I was thinking that for verification the person should link to their verified facebook/twitter/g+/etc page in the meantime. I agree that this is gonna head south very quickly no matter what amazon does.
- will_pseudonym 11y agoBenson is doing God's work. Because of him I was able to purchase a USB-C to USB-A cable (the iOrange cable he reviewed), and I learned that Google's own marketing materials were functionally incorrect, which led users to expect 3.0A charging out of the cable from Google (which is out of stock currently), when it technically only charges at 2.4A (if I understand things correctly). This in turn led people to (incorrectly) poorly review the non-Google cables.
- rakel_rakel 11y agoBenson obviously adds value to the content so I feel bad about whining, but this looks like a severe case of "how can you tell if someone works for google? -Don't worry, they'll let you know".
- darkstar999 11y agoReally, this is at the top of HN? Must be a slow news day.
- mynameishere 11y agoYou made that comment 6 hours ago and it's still at the top. I can't even figure out why it was posted in the first place. "Look, someone is writing reviews on Amazon!" Wow!
- andrewchambers 11y agoNow you know why apply made their own plugs and cables. You can't trust third part manufacturers. Google probably gets lots of complains about devices not charging properly, when it is the cable at fault.
- aerovistae 11y agoI don't understand why this is so fascinating that it has 724 upvotes, can someone explain?
- tempestn 11y ago1200something now. I agree; this seems interesting enough to be on the homepage for a bit, but not vastly more so than many other stories. Not sure what's going on!
- knodi123 11y agoThanks guys, I just bought $80 of assorted USB-C cables 5 hours ago. :-/
- voltagex_ 11y agoSome of these cables are downright dangerous: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B013XFANAA http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_aya_cmt?i...
- biot 11y agoI look forward to reading his review of this USB cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable/dp/B003CT08E4 http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-Cable/... I'm sure Google can afford the $1000+ price tag.
- billylindeman 11y agoCablegate 2015!
- nfriedly 11y agoBTW, he put instructions for how to test at https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF
- JadProfits 11y agoJust keep in mind that all these products are mass produced and are subject to imperfections.This may seem totally irrelevant and that's why a company like Inbox Dollars are growing.... http://www.jadeprofits.com/inboxdollars-reviews-2016/ http://www.jadeprofits.com/inboxdollars-reviews-2016/
- mrb 11y agoThe most shocking is that some vendors or manufacturers are blindly criticizing and rejecting Benson's reviews, completely ignoring his technical analysis. This makes me never want to purchase anything from "Cable Savage" for example: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&asin=B013XFANAA&cdForum=Fx2X5W623J3PRPU&cdMsgID=MxT9NT6916AU49&cdMsgNo=4&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx2O5XXKTTD2YAL&store=pc#MxT9NT6916AU49 http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_cr_rev_de... """ Benson I can say with confidence this cable has been tested and can provide up to 3AMPs of power. Since you are supposedly on the google team, then you will know that the Pixels original OEM charger actually has an output of 5 AMPS. (What 3rd party charger were you using to attempt to charge a pixel with a 3AMP cable, when the pixel demands 5amp output? These cables have been confirmed and work great with the Nexus 5x and 6P. It even can replace the 12" macbooks charging cable with a proper walll charger. The power output is relied on the actual wall charger. The cable with be able to provide ample power given that the wall charger is correctly powered. Also please note, that batteries charge at different mAh intervals depending on the percent full the battery is at. Our cables can charge the 5x and 6P units at the same speeds as the stock oem cables. """ Benson's counterreply explains that 3 A is actually a violation of the spec, and that the Pixel charger never outputs 5 A, etc.
- digi_owl 11y agoMust say it strikes me crazy that they put anything at all into the cable. How hard would it be to carry the existing A port charging spec forward, so that if a device detected the A form it would go no higher than 2.1A? Frankly cables should be as dumb as you can make them.
- hackuser 11y agoThis is just one side of an ancient debate: If component A doesn't work with component B, where is the problem? The manufacturer of A blames B, and vice-versa. (The truth is that they are simply incompatible and often it's nobody's fault.) If many USB-C cables don't work with Google devices, where is the problem? It suits Google to say the problem is with the cables, but maybe creating pressure for better cables or shifting consumer attention to them is just a less expensive solution than altering the devices. Regarding the violated specifications: 1) In the real world, nobody meets all published specifications and both sides can point to violations. Have you ever built anything that met all specifications? (I laughed a little when I wrote that) 2) If you design your product to work only with other systems that meet all published specifications, your product sucks. If your car only runs safely on roads that meet all specs, your customers are going to die. (Maybe there are exceptions when engineering critical systems components in things like airplanes, but I doubt it.) That doesn't make our Google engineer wrong; it just means we don't know (unless you know what realistic performance specs are for USB-C cables). However, if in the real world it's hard to find USB cables that work with Google devices then, ipso facto, there's something wrong with the devices.
- zyxley 11y ago"Realistic" performance specs should include "doesn't have a chance of literally setting something on fire by drawing too much current through it".
- ridiculous_fish 11y agoOh hey Benson! waves I worked a little with Benson. He's a fantastic guy with a penchant to veer into epic rants, which he seems to have kept in check on these reviews. Our loss! Anyways he is a kernel software engineer and surely has some assistance (or at least double checking) from the resident EEs. This feels like a bottom-up initiative, showcasing how Google can empower its engineers. Great stuff.
- colund 11y agoCan someone explain why this topic receives so many upvotes? Is it just a popular topic getting upvoters who vote for popular items or is there something genuinely interesting about this?
- i336_ 11y agoI was similarly curious too. You may find http://hn.algolia.com http://hn.algolia.com of interest to look through, to see the kinds of things HN tends to upvote, and the kind of things that tend to get passed by. Different things attract different levels of attention and fascination on here. It can actually be quite interesting to observe. This is just a fascinating artefact of the HN hivemind collective interest, I guess.
- jtha 11y agoGoogle screws up cables as well. My Chromecast (V1) came with a dud cable that will provide some charge to some devices, but won't power or charge anything I've tried it on. So my Chromecast is now powered courtesy of Lenovo. It's a statistic though, just as anything mass-produced. But I found his comment on the quality of 3rd party manufactured cables vs Google and Apple slightly amusing. Apple cables in my household and everywhere I've come across them are no prize pigs. Samsung Galaxy provided cables on the other hand have proved to be exceptionally durable in my experience. Nokia cables and chargers also seem to be made out of solid Kevlar or some flexible Titanium, seeing that every single one I've owned since the late '90s is still working. My blue LED modded Nokia 3310 is still going strong, battery and all, but that's another story.
- ricksplat 11y agoYou wouldn't get Apple doing this for third party lightening cables .. yeah I know it would be like them giving away their own lunch, but it further underlines that lightening is just a money-spinner not any real technical advance.
- legulere 11y agoActually they have the MFi program [1] and you just have to look for the logo when buying cables. Of course you can criticize the program, but it's just plain wrong that Apple isn't doing something about cable quality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program
- ramon 11y agoHis this is Benson again, Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V... Doesn't work! I just broke my keyboard keys! Stopped my reviews, damn..
- callumlocke 11y agoWhat's the "ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp" on the end of the URL? Is this an affiliate link?
- hydrogen18 11y agoThe title of this is a bit misleading. It looks like it just reviewing cables. Plenty of them are positive reviews and he recommends the product.
- mydpy 11y agoWhy is this one of the all-time most popular posts on HN about Google?