7 ms·

> There just isn't any evidence whatsoever to support there's a real problem. There are hundreds of product recalls every year, involving phones and accessorie

> There just isn't any evidence whatsoever to support there's a real problem. There are hundreds of product recalls every year, involving phones and accessories, because of electrical shock risks and/or fire hazards [0]. Also, there is little to no enforcement of PD standards, so you could be using an USB-C shaped cable, connected to a perfectly looking USB-C power adapter, and the manufacturer could claim it to deliver 2V and 7.5A, to make 15W. You may not have any issues with that, because you know that does not look right. The vast majority of people wouldn't think twice to buy it if it were cheap enough. [0] https://www.cpsc.gov/search?search_api_fulltext=usb&f%5B0%5D=content_type%3Arecall_product https://www.cpsc.gov/search?search_api_fulltext=usb&f%5B0%5D...

rektide 4y ago
Actual news of harm though seems incredibly minor/infrequent. What you show as risk seems to me like a society extremely good at managing risk & cooperatively improving. Our margin-of-safety is high everywhere & violations get dealt with. USB-C's minimum requirement is 20V3A, 60W. It's really not a difficult standard to meet. Your insane example of 2V 7.5A is poppycock... it would be hard as heck to make a cable that could carry 2V but not 3V or 5V. 20V is a tiny amount of voltage, the shittiest insulation will be fine. And no one wants or needs that. A 7.5A cable on the other hand would be considerably more expensive & thicker than most. It's so hard to imagine a real scenario where someone would ever make a wildly out of spec oddball cable that wouldnt just work in any circumstance. 20V is more a factor of the connector than the cable, and 3A is probably not going to be enough real current to do anything scary. Chargers might possible catch on fire, are a fire hazard themselves, since they deal with mains power, but in this shockingly rare circumstance, i'd guess it will usually not harm a phone; it will self destruct, and the phone will disconnect ahead of time. This sounds more more searching desperately for FUD. And more lacking any real evidence that the rest of the world is actually all catching on fire & burning down all the time.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  > What you show as risk seems to me like a society extremely good at managing risk & cooperatively improving. Our margin-of-safety is high everywhere & violations get dealt with. This seems dismissive. What you are saying is that, since product recalls exist, there is no point in enforcing higher standards, not even for safety reasons. > USB-C's minimum requirement is 20V3A, 60W. It's really not a difficult standard to meet [...] 20V is more a factor of the connector than the cable. The literal problem here is that there are manufacturers that would not meet the minimum standards, and USB-IF and sellers do not seem to be in the mood of enforcing them either, so we are left with the other end, hardware vendors. > This sounds more more searching desperately for FUD. And more lacking any real evidence that the rest of the world is actually all catching on fire & burning down all the time. I don't think you understand the issue at hand. Safety standards, generally speaking, aren't in place to avoid a 100% prevalence of accidents and/or deaths in their context, but the very low percentage of cases when the preconditions may lead to accidents and/or deaths. In Canada last year, there were just over 140 house fires caused by phone accessories, which admittedly is not a lot, but in optimal conditions, there should be none. If the USB-IF did their job, standards were actually enforced, and sellers and manufacturers were actually liable for the crap they sell, there should not be any discussion around this. Instead, every time a phone catches fire while charging, instead of mentioning the off-brand cable or charger, it's the phone manufacturer making the headlines, so here we are.
  - rektide 4y ago
    USB-IF does do their job, quite well. It's the authoritarian mindset, it's Apple-istic to demand there be some strict top-down system demanding compliance, collecting money, and relentlessly pursuing everyone else legally. So USB-IF certification is not required. There are a variety of cables out there, of various quality, huge numbers uncertified but also more than adequate. Few even sub-par cables pose real risk. With the safeguards USB has builtin risk is tiny. I would greatly doubt the cable was a cofactor in even 2% of these 150 house fires/year. In return, we get the benefit of much cheaper cables, that folks do review quite heavily. We also get really interesting & really useful non-compliant products, that I make use of & enjoy regularly: tiny little usb-a to usb-c female adapters[1] that are out of spec because you could concievably make a nonsense circuit & injure a product, but which are again wildly useful. Building this world where authority & control are wired in everywhere, where we use the state & the legal system to hunt down & enforce folks on a narrow prescribed track sounds awful. There are some shitty shitty products folks can run into- yes- but mostly we're already well protected, and the market pretty quickly identifies the truly wretched; thr trade-off here, to allow an open world versus insisting on control, seems apparent to me, and those folks with the desire to use certified gear will be in great hands with usb-if gear (the idea that apple certification is "more safe" seems like a joke to me). I fail to see the case for adversarialism, that you seem to clutch for.
yencabulator 4y ago
How common do you think it is for Android phones, tablets (including ipads), or computers (including macbooks) to actually be damaged by this? In the real world, bad cables just don't transfer data fast enough, or don't charge fast enough, and anything else is so rare that you might as well worry about accidentally puncturing the battery.

rektide 4y ago

Actual news of harm though seems incredibly minor/infrequent. What you show as risk seems to me like a society extremely good at managing risk & cooperatively improving. Our margin-of-safety is high everywhere & violations get dealt with. USB-C's minimum requirement is 20V3A, 60W. It's really not a difficult standard to meet. Your insane example of 2V 7.5A is poppycock... it would be hard as heck to make a cable that could carry 2V but not 3V or 5V. 20V is a tiny amount of voltage, the shittiest insulation will be fine. And no one wants or needs that. A 7.5A cable on the other hand would be considerably more expensive & thicker than most. It's so hard to imagine a real scenario where someone would ever make a wildly out of spec oddball cable that wouldnt just work in any circumstance. 20V is more a factor of the connector than the cable, and 3A is probably not going to be enough real current to do anything scary. Chargers might possible catch on fire, are a fire hazard themselves, since they deal with mains power, but in this shockingly rare circumstance, i'd guess it will usually not harm a phone; it will self destruct, and the phone will disconnect ahead of time. This sounds more more searching desperately for FUD. And more lacking any real evidence that the rest of the world is actually all catching on fire & burning down all the time.

manuelabeledo 4y ago
> What you show as risk seems to me like a society extremely good at managing risk & cooperatively improving. Our margin-of-safety is high everywhere & violations get dealt with. This seems dismissive. What you are saying is that, since product recalls exist, there is no point in enforcing higher standards, not even for safety reasons. > USB-C's minimum requirement is 20V3A, 60W. It's really not a difficult standard to meet [...] 20V is more a factor of the connector than the cable. The literal problem here is that there are manufacturers that would not meet the minimum standards, and USB-IF and sellers do not seem to be in the mood of enforcing them either, so we are left with the other end, hardware vendors. > This sounds more more searching desperately for FUD. And more lacking any real evidence that the rest of the world is actually all catching on fire & burning down all the time. I don't think you understand the issue at hand. Safety standards, generally speaking, aren't in place to avoid a 100% prevalence of accidents and/or deaths in their context, but the very low percentage of cases when the preconditions may lead to accidents and/or deaths. In Canada last year, there were just over 140 house fires caused by phone accessories, which admittedly is not a lot, but in optimal conditions, there should be none. If the USB-IF did their job, standards were actually enforced, and sellers and manufacturers were actually liable for the crap they sell, there should not be any discussion around this. Instead, every time a phone catches fire while charging, instead of mentioning the off-brand cable or charger, it's the phone manufacturer making the headlines, so here we are.
- rektide 4y ago
  USB-IF does do their job, quite well. It's the authoritarian mindset, it's Apple-istic to demand there be some strict top-down system demanding compliance, collecting money, and relentlessly pursuing everyone else legally. So USB-IF certification is not required. There are a variety of cables out there, of various quality, huge numbers uncertified but also more than adequate. Few even sub-par cables pose real risk. With the safeguards USB has builtin risk is tiny. I would greatly doubt the cable was a cofactor in even 2% of these 150 house fires/year. In return, we get the benefit of much cheaper cables, that folks do review quite heavily. We also get really interesting & really useful non-compliant products, that I make use of & enjoy regularly: tiny little usb-a to usb-c female adapters[1] that are out of spec because you could concievably make a nonsense circuit & injure a product, but which are again wildly useful. Building this world where authority & control are wired in everywhere, where we use the state & the legal system to hunt down & enforce folks on a narrow prescribed track sounds awful. There are some shitty shitty products folks can run into- yes- but mostly we're already well protected, and the market pretty quickly identifies the truly wretched; thr trade-off here, to allow an open world versus insisting on control, seems apparent to me, and those folks with the desire to use certified gear will be in great hands with usb-if gear (the idea that apple certification is "more safe" seems like a joke to me). I fail to see the case for adversarialism, that you seem to clutch for.

yencabulator 4y ago

How common do you think it is for Android phones, tablets (including ipads), or computers (including macbooks) to actually be damaged by this? In the real world, bad cables just don't transfer data fast enough, or don't charge fast enough, and anything else is so rare that you might as well worry about accidentally puncturing the battery.