4 ms·

It's a lot of energy. And close to signalling wires. Controlled by computers (What you describe is done by a CPU, not some simple foolproof system, I guess?) wh

It's a lot of energy. And close to signalling wires. Controlled by computers (What you describe is done by a CPU, not some simple foolproof system, I guess?) which can go wrong. In a small plug that can get yanked out easily and damaged. That kind of thing. Am I being paranoid? It just smells like a house fire in the offing.

jsheard 3y ago
There's a lot of moving parts yes, but in practice it's proven to be pretty safe. Issues usually manifest as charging being too slow, rather than going too fast and causing a fire. Whenever you charge a device you're already trusting a complex computer-controlled system not to turn the lithium ion pack into an incendiary device, trusting a computer not to overload a copper cable is small stakes relatively speaking.
- ilyt 3y ago
  in practice we don't have all that many devices pushing it that much that are not "a vendor charger connected to vendor power supply". I expect there will be some surprises with cheap cables pretending they can handle full power.
  - pdpi 3y ago
    Never mind “pretending they can handle full power”. Remember this story? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds-usb-type-c-cable-thats-so-bad-it-fried-his-chromebook-pixel/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...
  - Avamander 3y ago
    Unless the other end lies about what voltage they're getting, a cable can't lie about its ability to carry current.
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Of course it can. It is not tested by any of the devices, it is returned by cable itself. Cheap cable maker can just program cable to pretend to be more powerful one but not have wiring up to spec: > Sources Shall detect the type of Attached cable and limit the Capabilities they offer based on the current carrying capability of the cable determined by the Cable capabilities determined using the Discover Identity Command (see Section 6.4.4.2) sent using SOP’ Communication (see Section 2.5) to the Cable Plug. The Cable VDO returned as part of the Discover Identity Command details the maximum current and voltage values that Shall be negotiated for a given cable as part of an Explicit Contract. Please don't talk about stuff you have no idea about.
rootw0rm 3y ago
higher voltage makes it a lot more sane, imo. if anything increasing the voltage a long time ago would've probably helped us avoid the plague of all these shitty under spec USB cables. the cynic in me says they would've just shifted to even thinner gauge wires, but hey, a guy can dream, right?
hengheng 3y ago
No worse than an Apple power cable, and have those ever gone up in flames
lxgr 3y ago
Given that Apple users have been charging their laptops this way [1] for more than five years, maybe you are :) [1] To be fair, it's more like 60-80 Watt for most models, but these days it can be up to 140 Watt, as far as I know.

jsheard 3y ago

There's a lot of moving parts yes, but in practice it's proven to be pretty safe. Issues usually manifest as charging being too slow, rather than going too fast and causing a fire. Whenever you charge a device you're already trusting a complex computer-controlled system not to turn the lithium ion pack into an incendiary device, trusting a computer not to overload a copper cable is small stakes relatively speaking.

ilyt 3y ago
in practice we don't have all that many devices pushing it that much that are not "a vendor charger connected to vendor power supply". I expect there will be some surprises with cheap cables pretending they can handle full power.
- pdpi 3y ago
  Never mind “pretending they can handle full power”. Remember this story? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds-usb-type-c-cable-thats-so-bad-it-fried-his-chromebook-pixel/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-find...
- Avamander 3y ago
  Unless the other end lies about what voltage they're getting, a cable can't lie about its ability to carry current.
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Of course it can. It is not tested by any of the devices, it is returned by cable itself. Cheap cable maker can just program cable to pretend to be more powerful one but not have wiring up to spec: > Sources Shall detect the type of Attached cable and limit the Capabilities they offer based on the current carrying capability of the cable determined by the Cable capabilities determined using the Discover Identity Command (see Section 6.4.4.2) sent using SOP’ Communication (see Section 2.5) to the Cable Plug. The Cable VDO returned as part of the Discover Identity Command details the maximum current and voltage values that Shall be negotiated for a given cable as part of an Explicit Contract. Please don't talk about stuff you have no idea about.

rootw0rm 3y ago

higher voltage makes it a lot more sane, imo. if anything increasing the voltage a long time ago would've probably helped us avoid the plague of all these shitty under spec USB cables. the cynic in me says they would've just shifted to even thinner gauge wires, but hey, a guy can dream, right?

hengheng 3y ago

No worse than an Apple power cable, and have those ever gone up in flames

lxgr 3y ago

Given that Apple users have been charging their laptops this way [1] for more than five years, maybe you are :) [1] To be fair, it's more like 60-80 Watt for most models, but these days it can be up to 140 Watt, as far as I know.