3 ms·

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

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.

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.