8 ms·

A macOS terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

328 points by freetonik 1y ago

Someone 1y ago
> The script parses macOS’s system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType2 command, which produces a dense, hard-to-scan raw output I couldn’t find source (the link in the article points to a GitHub repo of a user’s home directory. I hope for them it doesn’t contain secrets), but on my system, system_profiler -json produces json output. From that text, it doesn’t seem they used that.
- sorcercode 1y ago
  internally uses the same root command btw. in fact this recently changed for Tahoe (as the article mentions). started out as a shell script but switched to a go binary (which is what is linked).
  - procaryote 1y ago
    I hope this doesn't become a trend. Moving it to go means you need to compile it before you run it, or blindly run an uninspected binary from some random guy It's not like the performance of this could have motivated it
    - lxgr 1y ago
      I'll take the minimal hassle of having to compile a go program over a complex shell script that only the author understands (if that) any day. Performance isn't everything; readability and maintainability matter too.
      - timeon 1y ago
        > Performance isn't everything; readability and maintainability matter too. Is that case for this vibe-coded thing? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513562
        lxgr 1y ago
        No idea, I haven't had a look at this code in particular. I'm just saying that I've seen several "small tools that could have been shell scripts" in Go or another more structured language and never wished they were shell scripts instead.
    - tensor 1y ago
      I mean, you shouldn't blindly run a shell script anymore than a binary anyways. And if you're reading the code I'd rather read Go than bash any day. That said, yes there is an extra compilation step.
- JdeBP 1y ago
  Correct. But you didn't see that the source was one level up in the directory tree from the untrustworthy binary blob? * https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/usbi.go https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/usb... Presumably there is a sensible way to do this in go by calling an API and getting the original machine-readable data rather than shelling out to run an entire sub-process for a command-line command and parsing its human-readable (even JSON) output. Especially as it turns out that the command-line command itself runs another command-line command in its turn. StackExchange hints at looking to see what API the reporter tool under /System/Library/SystemProfiler actually queries.
  - Someone 1y ago
    > But you didn't see that the source was one level up in the directory tree from the untrustworthy binary blob? No, silly me. Shortly searched for a src directory, but of course, should have searched for a bin directory, as that’s where vibe coding stores sources /s.
- lloeki 1y ago
  Last bash source: https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/7f37454a8879891709ce16409e78a36ec00fdd84/bin/usbi https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/7f37454a887989... First Go source: https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/f0f158398b5e4d126c65220c4e609dda81b231e0/bin/usbi.go https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/f0f158398b5e4d...
bediger4000 1y ago
Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. This aligns with the hypothesis that we should see and lots lots of "personalized" or single purpose software if vibe coding works. This particular project is one example. Are there a ton more out there?
- ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
  I've used chatgpt to make custom userscripts for neopets but I've never published them.
- Hasnep 1y ago
  Simon Willison's list has a few: https://tools.simonwillison.net/ https://tools.simonwillison.net/
  - sorcercode 1y ago
    nice! thanks for sharing this. as always, Simon seems to be multiple steps ahead on this game.
- AceJohnny2 1y ago
  I have a bunch at work, yes. Can't publish them. Just an hour ago I "made" one in 2 minutes to iterate through some files, extract metadata, and convert to CSV. I'm convinced that hypothesis is true. The activation energy (with a subscription to one of the big 3, in the current pre-enshittification phase) is approximately 0. Edit: I also wouldn't even want to publish these one-off, AI-generated scripts, because for one they're for specific niches, and for two they're AI generated so, even though they fulfilled their purpose, I don't really stand behind them.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    Who's the third? I'm assuming OpenAI and Anthropic are 1 and 2.
Izkata 1y ago
It's more complicated than "this cable is good/bad". I had a suspicion about one of my cables for months, but just last week I confirmed it with a device that shows the volts/amps/watts/total kwh passing through it: I have a USB-C cable with orientation. Plugged in one way it transfers about 5x more power than the other way, and in the lower orientation it's low enough for the earbud case I use it with to not charge.
- duttish 1y ago
  Wait what. I thought half the point of usb c was to not rely on orientation. Is there any way to check this other than experiment? My "solution" so far has been to not buy cheap cables and just hope I get quality in return.
  - tennysont 1y ago
    I think that I have a specific cable-device-orientation that is broken. Meaning, I think a particular USB C cable won't charge my phone if it's plugged in 'backwards'. I always assumed that USB C cables use different pins depending on orientation, and that some pins on the cable wore down. Maybe that's what happened here?
    - Waterluvian 1y ago
      I think a more distressing thought is that it’s quite possible that your cable won’t charge your phone if it’s plugged in forwards.
    - consp 1y ago
      My guess would be they used a one-sided pcb to connect the cable to and used half the wires. Some sockets internally link the power and ground pins, so it works both ways, but you get no resistor network and thus only standard 5v which gives you 500ma max (at best). With the resistors connected by the cable it's about 900ma to 3a which is probably what happens plugged in "correctly". Or some other magic happens on one side of the PCB to fool the charger into pushing the full 3A.
rmunn 1y ago
Please update the title to mention that this is MacOS only; I got excited to try this out, but I only have laptops running Linux and Windows.
- sorcercode 1y ago
  yeah sorry about that. I don't have access to a Linux/Windows machine. if I got a hold of the output and commands run, would gladly modify it.
  - kenperkins 1y ago
    fwiw, it would take 10 minutes to download a linux docker image and build it in go to test. The harder part is getting the information from a different API on Linux.
    - RKearney 1y ago
      This post is 12 minutes old. Have you finished yet?
    - febusravenga 1y ago
      ... and orders of magnite more time to properly access USB devices to some arcane VM not in your control
    - skissane 1y ago
      A Linux Docker image, probably doesn’t have any USB devices exposed to it-well, it depends on exactly how you run it, but e.g. if you use Docker Desktop for Mac, its embedded Linux VM doesn’t have any USB passthrough support. This is the kind of thing where a physical Linux host (laptop/desktop/NUC/RPi/etc) is much more straightforward than running Linux in a VM (or as a K8S pod in a datacenter somewhere)
  - jasonjayr 1y ago
    > lsusb -v On Linux that produces a lot of info similar to the macos screenshots, but with values and labels specific to the Linux USB stack. I wonder if AI could map the linux lsusb output to a form your tool can use...
thefz 1y ago
Vibe coded, no thanks.
nubinetwork 1y ago
They make a hardware device for this, it has several usb plugs on it, and two rows of LEDs that light up if the wires are all connected.
- basepurpose 1y ago
  yes. not that expensive.
- altairprime 1y ago
  See above thread for more details and links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513256
citizenpaul 1y ago
Cross compiling is not unique to golang. It does make it pretty easy though.
- consp 1y ago
  Why cross compile if it's made specifically for macos?
  - procaryote 1y ago
    Why compile it when it could be a bash script?
    - dotancohen 1y ago
      Why a bash script when it could have been a one-liner?
self_awareness 1y ago
Vibe coding. Producing code without considering how we should approach the problem. Without thinking where exactly is the problem. This is like Electron, all over again. Of course I don't have any problems with the author writing the tool, because everyone should write what the heck they want and how they want it. But seeing it gets popular tells me that people have no idea what's going on.
- basepurpose 1y ago
  if the author knows what they're doing and understand the model of the code at least, i don't understand the reason mentioning that it was vibe coded. maybe declaring something is vibe coded removes part of the responsibility nowadays?
  - self_awareness 1y ago
    Someone once told me that their mistake wasn’t theirs, but rather it was ChatGPT being wrong. I think you have a good point about why people say it was vibe coded. It might also be because they want to join the trend -- without mentioning vibe coding, I don't think this tool would ever reach #1 on Hacker News.
    - drcongo 1y ago
      HN guidelines say one shouldn't question whether another commenter has read TFA, so I won't do that. But TFA explains exactly why it was vibe coded, and exactly why they're mentioning that it was vibe coded, which is that that was the central point of TFA.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  And why should they care what's going on ? Do you care about your binary code inside your application, or what exactly happen, in silicon level, when you write "printf("Hello World")" ?
  - self_awareness 1y ago
pmlnr 1y ago
Imagine if we printed the capabilities on the cables, like we used to.
- threatripper 1y ago
  That would only confuse potential buyers. You have to design everyday products for non-technical people.
  - withinboredom 1y ago
    Not only that, it doesn’t stop unscrupulous manufacturers from just printing whatever they want.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    How could a max speed rating possibly be worse than a blank plug end?
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  Capabilities are printed on the side of ethernet cables and the text printed on the cable rarely seems related to the actual capabilities of the ethernet plug. Some cat5e cables are rated for 1000mbps but will happily run 5000mbps or 2500mbps (because those standards came after the text on the cable was last updated), other "cat6" cables are scams and struggle achieving gigabit speeds without packet loss. Plus, it doesn't really matter if you put "e-marker 100W USB3 2x2 20gbps" on a cable when half those features depend on compatibility from both sides of the plug (notably, supposedly high-end devices not supporting 2x2 mode or DP Alt mode or charging/drawing more than 60W of power).
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    USB cables push the boundaries of signal integrity hard enough that unless it's a 1 foot passive cable you're not really going to get any surprise speed boosts. And when they upped the max voltage they didn't do it for preexisting cables, no matter what the design was. > those features depend on compatibility from both sides of the plug That's easy to understand. Cable supports (or doesn't support) device, it can't give new abilities to the device. It doesn't make labeling less valuable.
edarchis 1y ago
A similar tool, open source and portable Linux/Mac/Windows is Cyme. It works wonderfully well. https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme
- Slartie 1y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this, I spontaneously love it!
deleted 1y ago
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SomeoneOnTheWeb 1y ago
Side question : what font are you using in your screenshots? I find it really nice looking
- spondyl 1y ago
  Commit Mono apparently: https://kau.sh/blog/commit-mono/ https://kau.sh/blog/commit-mono/
madethemcry 1y ago
Content wise a nice idea, but I also like the conclusion about how AI made this possible in the first place. The author itself mentions this motivation. AI is undoubtedly perfect for utilities, small (even company internal) tools for personal use where maintainability is secondary as you can ditch the tool or rebuild it quickly. > Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time.
- sersi 1y ago
  I've found that to be very true. For bigger projects, I've had rather mixed results from ai but for small utility scripts, it's perfect. But like the author, I've found that it's usually better to have the llm output python, go or rust than use bash. So I've often had to ask it to rewrite at the beginning. Now I just directly skip bash
- atonse 1y ago
  Came here to say exactly this. That all the naysayers are missing the tons of small wins that are happening every single day by people using AI to write code, that weren't possible before. I specified in a thread a few weeks ago that we manage a small elixir-rust library, and I have never coded rust in my life. Sure, it's about 20 lines of rust, mostly mapping to the underlying rust lib, but so far I've used claude to just maintain it (fix deprecations, perform upgrades, etc). This simply wasn't possible before.
NelsonMinar 1y ago
lsusb will get you this info in Linux, but I like the idea of a little wrapper tool to make the output easier to parse. 480 vs. 5000 Mbps is a pernicious problem. It's very easy to plug in a USB drive and it looks like it works fine and is reasonable fast. Right until you try to copy a large file to it and are wondering why it is only copying 50MBytes/second. It doesn't help that the world is awash in crappy charging A-to-C cables. I finally just throw me all away.
- lxgr 1y ago
  I remember hearing it’s even possible to plug in a USB-A plug too slowly, making the legacy pins make contact first, which results in a 480 Mbps connection – despite the cable, the host, and the device all supporting superspeed!
  - lloeki 1y ago
    Can confirm, was victim of this. Couldn't figure out why my 5-disk USB enclosure was so ungodly slow. Quickly I saw that it was capping suspiciously close to some ~40MB/s constant, so 480Mbps. lsusb -v confirmed. As it happened I did some maintenance and had to unplug the whole bay. Since the port was nearly tucked against a wall I had to find the port by touch and insert somewhat slowly in steps (brush finger/cable tip to find port, insert tip at an angle, set straight, push in) but once in place it was easy to unplug and insert fast... This was driving me "vanilla ice cream breaks car" nuts...
  - andrewmcwatters 1y ago
    Destroy the whole standard. That's literally insane.
    - lxgr 1y ago
      That's the price of strong backwards compatibility. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to use a USB 3 (superspeed) device on a USB 3 host port with a USB 2 cable at all. And if you hate this, you should probably never look into these (illegal by the spec, but practically apparently often functional) splitters that separate the USB 2 and 3 path of a USB 3 capable A port so that you can run two devices on them without a hub ;)
Tepix 1y ago
Why does it mention USB 3.2 (i.e. 20 Gbps) at all if it's for Macs? I thought Macs only support 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps, but nothing inbetween? (which is inconvenient because USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps external SSD cases are much cheaper than USB 4 cases for now). Also, he is calling a binary a script, which i find suspicious. This task looks like it should have been a script.
- gattr 1y ago
  On a somewhat related note, I like the IO shield of my new MSI motherboard - the USB ports are tersely labeled "5G", "10G", "40G" (and a few lingering "USB 2.0").
- cozzyd 1y ago
  One of my pet peeves is when people call a binary a script
- gruez 1y ago
  >Why does it mention USB 3.2 (i.e. 20 Gbps) at all if [...] USB-IF in all their wisdom used "USB 3.2" to refer everything from 5 gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 ) to 20 gbps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#USB_3.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#USB_3.2
  - Tepix 1y ago
    Yes but i think in this context it means 20Gpbs, doesn‘t it?
basepurpose 1y ago
i don't understand why do competent people need to mention that they vibe coded something.
- stefanfisk 1y ago
  I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually a plus in the eyes of possible new employers these days.
  - basepurpose 1y ago
    vibe coding in my understanding is losing/confusing the mental model of your codebase, you don't know what is what and what is where. i haven't found a term to define "competently coding with ai as the interface".
    - stefanfisk 1y ago
      I agree. But management types bedazzled by AI probably see these kids as the future leaders of our profession.
- raincole 1y ago
  "My static blog templating system is based on programming language X" is the stereotypical HN post. In theory the choice of programming language doesn't matter. But HNers like to mention it in the title anyway.
- sharkjacobs 1y ago
  I mean, they seem to address that pretty directly in the post > Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time.
- jasode 1y ago
  It's just because vibe coding is still "new" and various people have mixed results with it. This means that anecdotes today of either success or failure still carry some "signal". It will take some time (maybe more than a decade) for vibe coding to be "old" and consistently correct enough where it's no longer mentioned. Same thing happened 30 years ago with "The Information Superhighway" or "the internet". Back then, people really did say things like, "I got tomorrow's weather forecast of rain from the internet." Why would they even need to mention the "internet" at all?!? Because it was the new thing back then and the speaker was making a point that they didn't get the weather info from the newspaper or tv news. It took some time for everybody to just say, "it's going to rain tomorrow" with no mentions of internet or smartphones.
self_awareness 1y ago
Guys, please, don't upvote this. If this topic will beat the "Physics Nobel Prize 2025", I will lose my faith in HN.
BrandoElFollito 1y ago
I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for
- deleted 1y ago
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- Nition 1y ago
  https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-caberqu/ https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-...
- bariumbitmap 1y ago
  I have the Treedix cable tester, it works well. https://treedix.com/collections/best-seller/products/treedix-usb-cable-tester-usb-c-cable-tester-usb-tester-for-data-transmission-and-power-transmission-cable-testing-resistor-testing-type-c-emarker-for-usb-a-micro-b-micro-b-3-0-type-c-lighting-mini-b https://treedix.com/collections/best-seller/products/treedix...
- moray 1y ago
  On aliexpress for very cheap search for "DT3 Data Cable Detection Board Type-C". I got the one below and seems to work fine for what I needed. https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007509475055.html https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007509475055.html Edit: This will test whether the cable is functioning properly. It will show the connections and indicate whether the cable supports only power or also data transfer. However, it won’t provide information about the USB-C cable type or its speed capabilities.
- lxgr 1y ago
  The reason is probably that anything faster than USB 2.0 (480 Mbit/s) and supporting power over 3A/60V will need to have an active marker, and to read that, you'll need something slightly more complex than a connection tester. That said, these things do seem to exist at this point, as sibling comments have pointed out. As an aside, it's a real shame devices with USB-C ports don't offer this out of the box. They need to be able to read the marker anyway for regular operation!
simianparrot 1y ago
This is a vibe coding Trojan horse article. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time. Looking at the github source code, I can instantly tell. It's also full of gotchas.
- wcrossbow 1y ago
  I'm not a go developer and this kind of thing is far from my area of expertise. Do you mind giving some examples? As far as I can tell skimming the code, and as I said, without knowledge of Go or the domain, the "shape" of the code isn't bad. If I got any vibes (:))from it, it was lack of error handling and over reliance on exactly matching strings. Generally speaking, it looks quite fragile. FWIW I don't think the conclusion is wrong. With limited knowledge he managed to build a useful program for himself to solve a problem he had. Without AI tools that wouldn't have happened.
  - alias_neo 1y ago
    There's a lot about it that isn't great. It treats Go like a scripting language, it's got no structure (1000+ lines in a single file), nothing is documented, the models are flat, no methods, it hard codes lots of strings, even the flags are string comparisons instead of using the proper tool, regex compiles and use inlined, limited device support based on some pre-configured, hard-coded strings, some assumptions made on storage device speeds based on its device name: nvme=fast, hdd=slow, etc. On the whole, it might work for now, but it'll need recompiling for new devices, and is a mess to maintain if any of the structure of the data changes. If a junior in my team asked me to review this, they'd be starting again; if anyone above junior PRd it, they'd be fired.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    > Generally speaking, it looks quite fragile I have a usb to sata plugged in and it's labeled as [Problem].
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Ugh. I appreciate the tool and I suppose I can appreciate AI for making the barrier to entry for writing such a tool lower. I just don't like AI, and I will continue with my current software development practices and standards for production-grade code - code coverage, linting, manual code reviews, things like that. At the same time though I'm at a point in my career where I'm cynical and thinking it really doesn't matter because whatever I build today will be gone in 5-10 years anyway (front-end mainly).
bapak 1y ago
Fun fact: this information is already available in the System Information app on your Mac. Hardware -> USB I also use the app to check what wattage my cables are when charging my MacBook (Hardware -> Power)
- angulardragon03 1y ago
  Yes, system_profiler is just a terminal version of System Information.
- lxgr 1y ago
  This only shows you the minimum of what the cable and adapter support together, though. I believe this is a fundamental limitation of the protocol; the source won't tell you about voltage/current combinations not supportable by the cable.
coldtea 1y ago
> Go also has the unique ability to compile a cross-platform binary, which I can run on any machine. Huh? Is this true? I know Go makes cross-compiling trivial - I've tried it in the past, it's totally painless - but is it also able to make a "cross platform binary" (singular)? How would that work? Some kind of magic bytes combined with a wrapper file with binaries for multiple architectures?
- heinrich5991 1y ago
  Not what OP meant, but there's a project doing what you ask for: https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/ https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/. It's quite interesting. :)
mnw21cam 1y ago
No, I don't get it. Firstly, the normal system command output is not hard to read, but secondly, this output doesn't list any of the capabilities of the cables, just the devices at the ends of them. Perhaps showing an example of the output when the device is plugged in through the wrong cable would have helped. Does the tool produce a similar warning to the system popup, that is "this cable and device are mismatched"?
- lxgr 1y ago
  As far as I understand, the idea is to determine whether the cable is the bottleneck from a hardcoded list of theoretical device capabilities with actually observed connection speeds as reported by the OS. It would be nice to just compare with the device's reported maximum capability, but I'm not sure whether macOS exposes that in any API.
larodi 1y ago
> Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. adding to the theory that soon we gonna prefer to write, rather download ready-made code, because the friction is super low
- usrusr 1y ago
  Arguably a one-off written by the cloud would still be downloaded to the place where it eventually runs.
- deleted 1y ago
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diodoe 1y ago
Interesting. Is there a way to adapt this for Linux or Windows? Many users, not just Mac users, face issues with USB-C cables. Practical cross-platform tools could be very helpful.
- deleted 1y ago
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- razakel 1y ago
  Linux: lsusb -tv Windows: There's an example in the WDK here: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/usb/usbview https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/mai...
- vel0city 1y ago
  A useful tool for debugging USB devices on Windows: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/usbview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...
crewcuthair 1y ago
[dead]
cratermoon 1y ago
"yes, vibe coded. Shamelessly, I might add" I wouldn't trust this as source code until after a careful audit. No way I'm going to trust a vibe-coded executable.
jedbrooke 1y ago
I feel like we kind of got monkey’s paw’ed on USB-C. I remember during the 2000’s-2010’s people were drowning in a sea of disparate and incompatible connectors for video, audio, data, power, etc. and we’re longing for “One Port To Rule Them All” that could do everything in one cable. We kind of got that with USB-C, except now, you see a USB-C cable/port and you have no idea if it supports data only, data + charging, what speeds of data/charging, does it support video? maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. at least it can plug in both ways… most of the time
- bluedino 1y ago
  I was just thinking the other day, if the connectors had been USB-C from the start. No Type-A, no Type-B, no Mini, no Micro...
  - alanh 1y ago
    And?
  - op00to 1y ago
    insert futuristic city picture with flying cars here
- op00to 1y ago
  I bought the coolest, fattest USB-C cables, and I failed to read the description enough to hear they only support USB 2 speeds! They work fine for the specific use I have for them, but I wish I could use ‘em for everything!
- deleted 1y ago
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eikenberry 1y ago
> I was punching through my email actively as Claude was chugging on the side. I wonder how much writing these scripts cost. Were they done in Claude's free tier, pro, or higher? How much of their allotted usage did it require? I wish more people would include the resources needed for these tasks. It would really help evaluate where the industry is in terms of accessibility. How much is it reserved for those with sufficient money and how that scales.
- deleted 1y ago
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- wingworks 1y ago
  You could do this with the free tier. It's fairly generous.
_carbyau_ 1y ago
Is there a reason we can't plug a usb c cable with BOTH ends into the same computer and then get a full diagnostic on just the cable itself?
- fnord77 1y ago
  I was able to charge my macbook from itself using that technique.
  - ddalex 1y ago
    On this site we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
    - _carbyau_ 1y ago
      The pedant in me says it's more "In this universe..." thing. :-) I understood their statement to be that the device didn't correlate outgoing power vs incoming power. So it would indicate that it is charging, because power is coming in - but not tell you that a similar or more power is leaving. I do find it frustrating in a world of battery management that we have indicators for charging and quick/fast/rapid charging. But near nothing for discharge or comparisons between incoming vs outgoing.
      - ddalex 1y ago
        I get what you're saying, I was making a joke referencing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg
Dieuetmondroit 1y ago
I feel like I need to point out that this tool does not do, in any way, what the title claims. Parsing the output of the system profiler tool will not tell you whether your cable is "good", which in practice tends to mean that it supports the protocol the user cares about at that moment. For some examples: If you connect a Thunderbolt only cable to a USB4 only device, this approach will give you no information about why things are not working. If you connect a USB2 only cable to a Display-Port Alternate Modal display, this approach will not tell you anything about why your display is not turning on.
alsetmusic 1y ago
I supported this kickstarter and got the device. It works well. I think they might still be producing them commercially, if I remember correctly. Great for identifying not just bad cables, but also data rates. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/electr/ble-caberqu-a-digital-usb-c-to-usb-c-cable-tester/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/electr/ble-caberqu-a-di...
coin 1y ago
> So I “built”1 usbi, a script to check your USB connections. So it’s not a built-in command as the titles eluded

328 points by freetonik 1y ago

> The script parses macOS’s system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType2 command, which produces a dense, hard-to-scan raw output I couldn’t find source (the link in the article points to a GitHub repo of a user’s home directory. I hope for them it doesn’t contain secrets), but on my system, system_profiler -json produces json output. From that text, it doesn’t seem they used that.

sorcercode 1y ago
internally uses the same root command btw. in fact this recently changed for Tahoe (as the article mentions). started out as a shell script but switched to a go binary (which is what is linked).
- procaryote 1y ago
  I hope this doesn't become a trend. Moving it to go means you need to compile it before you run it, or blindly run an uninspected binary from some random guy It's not like the performance of this could have motivated it
  - lxgr 1y ago
    I'll take the minimal hassle of having to compile a go program over a complex shell script that only the author understands (if that) any day. Performance isn't everything; readability and maintainability matter too.
    - timeon 1y ago
      > Performance isn't everything; readability and maintainability matter too. Is that case for this vibe-coded thing? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513562
      - lxgr 1y ago
        No idea, I haven't had a look at this code in particular. I'm just saying that I've seen several "small tools that could have been shell scripts" in Go or another more structured language and never wished they were shell scripts instead.
  - tensor 1y ago
    I mean, you shouldn't blindly run a shell script anymore than a binary anyways. And if you're reading the code I'd rather read Go than bash any day. That said, yes there is an extra compilation step.
JdeBP 1y ago
Correct. But you didn't see that the source was one level up in the directory tree from the untrustworthy binary blob? * https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/usbi.go https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/usb... Presumably there is a sensible way to do this in go by calling an API and getting the original machine-readable data rather than shelling out to run an entire sub-process for a command-line command and parsing its human-readable (even JSON) output. Especially as it turns out that the command-line command itself runs another command-line command in its turn. StackExchange hints at looking to see what API the reporter tool under /System/Library/SystemProfiler actually queries.
- Someone 1y ago
  > But you didn't see that the source was one level up in the directory tree from the untrustworthy binary blob? No, silly me. Shortly searched for a src directory, but of course, should have searched for a bin directory, as that’s where vibe coding stores sources /s.
lloeki 1y ago
Last bash source: https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/7f37454a8879891709ce16409e78a36ec00fdd84/bin/usbi https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/7f37454a887989... First Go source: https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/f0f158398b5e4d126c65220c4e609dda81b231e0/bin/usbi.go https://github.com/kaushikgopal/dotfiles/blob/f0f158398b5e4d...

bediger4000 1y ago

Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. This aligns with the hypothesis that we should see and lots lots of "personalized" or single purpose software if vibe coding works. This particular project is one example. Are there a ton more out there?

ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
I've used chatgpt to make custom userscripts for neopets but I've never published them.
Hasnep 1y ago
Simon Willison's list has a few: https://tools.simonwillison.net/ https://tools.simonwillison.net/
- sorcercode 1y ago
  nice! thanks for sharing this. as always, Simon seems to be multiple steps ahead on this game.
AceJohnny2 1y ago
I have a bunch at work, yes. Can't publish them. Just an hour ago I "made" one in 2 minutes to iterate through some files, extract metadata, and convert to CSV. I'm convinced that hypothesis is true. The activation energy (with a subscription to one of the big 3, in the current pre-enshittification phase) is approximately 0. Edit: I also wouldn't even want to publish these one-off, AI-generated scripts, because for one they're for specific niches, and for two they're AI generated so, even though they fulfilled their purpose, I don't really stand behind them.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Who's the third? I'm assuming OpenAI and Anthropic are 1 and 2.

Izkata 1y ago

It's more complicated than "this cable is good/bad". I had a suspicion about one of my cables for months, but just last week I confirmed it with a device that shows the volts/amps/watts/total kwh passing through it: I have a USB-C cable with orientation. Plugged in one way it transfers about 5x more power than the other way, and in the lower orientation it's low enough for the earbud case I use it with to not charge.

duttish 1y ago
Wait what. I thought half the point of usb c was to not rely on orientation. Is there any way to check this other than experiment? My "solution" so far has been to not buy cheap cables and just hope I get quality in return.
- tennysont 1y ago
  I think that I have a specific cable-device-orientation that is broken. Meaning, I think a particular USB C cable won't charge my phone if it's plugged in 'backwards'. I always assumed that USB C cables use different pins depending on orientation, and that some pins on the cable wore down. Maybe that's what happened here?
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    I think a more distressing thought is that it’s quite possible that your cable won’t charge your phone if it’s plugged in forwards.
  - consp 1y ago
    My guess would be they used a one-sided pcb to connect the cable to and used half the wires. Some sockets internally link the power and ground pins, so it works both ways, but you get no resistor network and thus only standard 5v which gives you 500ma max (at best). With the resistors connected by the cable it's about 900ma to 3a which is probably what happens plugged in "correctly". Or some other magic happens on one side of the PCB to fool the charger into pushing the full 3A.

rmunn 1y ago

Please update the title to mention that this is MacOS only; I got excited to try this out, but I only have laptops running Linux and Windows.

sorcercode 1y ago
yeah sorry about that. I don't have access to a Linux/Windows machine. if I got a hold of the output and commands run, would gladly modify it.
- kenperkins 1y ago
  fwiw, it would take 10 minutes to download a linux docker image and build it in go to test. The harder part is getting the information from a different API on Linux.
  - RKearney 1y ago
    This post is 12 minutes old. Have you finished yet?
  - febusravenga 1y ago
    ... and orders of magnite more time to properly access USB devices to some arcane VM not in your control
  - skissane 1y ago
    A Linux Docker image, probably doesn’t have any USB devices exposed to it-well, it depends on exactly how you run it, but e.g. if you use Docker Desktop for Mac, its embedded Linux VM doesn’t have any USB passthrough support. This is the kind of thing where a physical Linux host (laptop/desktop/NUC/RPi/etc) is much more straightforward than running Linux in a VM (or as a K8S pod in a datacenter somewhere)
- jasonjayr 1y ago
  > lsusb -v On Linux that produces a lot of info similar to the macos screenshots, but with values and labels specific to the Linux USB stack. I wonder if AI could map the linux lsusb output to a form your tool can use...

thefz 1y ago

Vibe coded, no thanks.

nubinetwork 1y ago

They make a hardware device for this, it has several usb plugs on it, and two rows of LEDs that light up if the wires are all connected.

basepurpose 1y ago
yes. not that expensive.
altairprime 1y ago
See above thread for more details and links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513256

citizenpaul 1y ago

Cross compiling is not unique to golang. It does make it pretty easy though.

consp 1y ago
Why cross compile if it's made specifically for macos?
- procaryote 1y ago
  Why compile it when it could be a bash script?
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    Why a bash script when it could have been a one-liner?

self_awareness 1y ago

Vibe coding. Producing code without considering how we should approach the problem. Without thinking where exactly is the problem. This is like Electron, all over again. Of course I don't have any problems with the author writing the tool, because everyone should write what the heck they want and how they want it. But seeing it gets popular tells me that people have no idea what's going on.

basepurpose 1y ago
if the author knows what they're doing and understand the model of the code at least, i don't understand the reason mentioning that it was vibe coded. maybe declaring something is vibe coded removes part of the responsibility nowadays?
- self_awareness 1y ago
  Someone once told me that their mistake wasn’t theirs, but rather it was ChatGPT being wrong. I think you have a good point about why people say it was vibe coded. It might also be because they want to join the trend -- without mentioning vibe coding, I don't think this tool would ever reach #1 on Hacker News.
  - drcongo 1y ago
    HN guidelines say one shouldn't question whether another commenter has read TFA, so I won't do that. But TFA explains exactly why it was vibe coded, and exactly why they're mentioning that it was vibe coded, which is that that was the central point of TFA.
mrheosuper 1y ago
And why should they care what's going on ? Do you care about your binary code inside your application, or what exactly happen, in silicon level, when you write "printf("Hello World")" ?
- self_awareness 1y ago

pmlnr 1y ago

Imagine if we printed the capabilities on the cables, like we used to.

threatripper 1y ago
That would only confuse potential buyers. You have to design everyday products for non-technical people.
- withinboredom 1y ago
  Not only that, it doesn’t stop unscrupulous manufacturers from just printing whatever they want.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  How could a max speed rating possibly be worse than a blank plug end?
jeroenhd 1y ago
Capabilities are printed on the side of ethernet cables and the text printed on the cable rarely seems related to the actual capabilities of the ethernet plug. Some cat5e cables are rated for 1000mbps but will happily run 5000mbps or 2500mbps (because those standards came after the text on the cable was last updated), other "cat6" cables are scams and struggle achieving gigabit speeds without packet loss. Plus, it doesn't really matter if you put "e-marker 100W USB3 2x2 20gbps" on a cable when half those features depend on compatibility from both sides of the plug (notably, supposedly high-end devices not supporting 2x2 mode or DP Alt mode or charging/drawing more than 60W of power).
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  USB cables push the boundaries of signal integrity hard enough that unless it's a 1 foot passive cable you're not really going to get any surprise speed boosts. And when they upped the max voltage they didn't do it for preexisting cables, no matter what the design was. > those features depend on compatibility from both sides of the plug That's easy to understand. Cable supports (or doesn't support) device, it can't give new abilities to the device. It doesn't make labeling less valuable.

edarchis 1y ago

A similar tool, open source and portable Linux/Mac/Windows is Cyme. It works wonderfully well. https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme https://github.com/tuna-f1sh/cyme

Slartie 1y ago
Thanks for mentioning this, I spontaneously love it!

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SomeoneOnTheWeb 1y ago

Side question : what font are you using in your screenshots? I find it really nice looking

spondyl 1y ago
Commit Mono apparently: https://kau.sh/blog/commit-mono/ https://kau.sh/blog/commit-mono/

madethemcry 1y ago

Content wise a nice idea, but I also like the conclusion about how AI made this possible in the first place. The author itself mentions this motivation. AI is undoubtedly perfect for utilities, small (even company internal) tools for personal use where maintainability is secondary as you can ditch the tool or rebuild it quickly. > Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time.

sersi 1y ago
I've found that to be very true. For bigger projects, I've had rather mixed results from ai but for small utility scripts, it's perfect. But like the author, I've found that it's usually better to have the llm output python, go or rust than use bash. So I've often had to ask it to rewrite at the beginning. Now I just directly skip bash
atonse 1y ago
Came here to say exactly this. That all the naysayers are missing the tons of small wins that are happening every single day by people using AI to write code, that weren't possible before. I specified in a thread a few weeks ago that we manage a small elixir-rust library, and I have never coded rust in my life. Sure, it's about 20 lines of rust, mostly mapping to the underlying rust lib, but so far I've used claude to just maintain it (fix deprecations, perform upgrades, etc). This simply wasn't possible before.

NelsonMinar 1y ago

lsusb will get you this info in Linux, but I like the idea of a little wrapper tool to make the output easier to parse. 480 vs. 5000 Mbps is a pernicious problem. It's very easy to plug in a USB drive and it looks like it works fine and is reasonable fast. Right until you try to copy a large file to it and are wondering why it is only copying 50MBytes/second. It doesn't help that the world is awash in crappy charging A-to-C cables. I finally just throw me all away.

lxgr 1y ago
I remember hearing it’s even possible to plug in a USB-A plug too slowly, making the legacy pins make contact first, which results in a 480 Mbps connection – despite the cable, the host, and the device all supporting superspeed!
- lloeki 1y ago
  Can confirm, was victim of this. Couldn't figure out why my 5-disk USB enclosure was so ungodly slow. Quickly I saw that it was capping suspiciously close to some ~40MB/s constant, so 480Mbps. lsusb -v confirmed. As it happened I did some maintenance and had to unplug the whole bay. Since the port was nearly tucked against a wall I had to find the port by touch and insert somewhat slowly in steps (brush finger/cable tip to find port, insert tip at an angle, set straight, push in) but once in place it was easy to unplug and insert fast... This was driving me "vanilla ice cream breaks car" nuts...
- andrewmcwatters 1y ago
  Destroy the whole standard. That's literally insane.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    That's the price of strong backwards compatibility. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to use a USB 3 (superspeed) device on a USB 3 host port with a USB 2 cable at all. And if you hate this, you should probably never look into these (illegal by the spec, but practically apparently often functional) splitters that separate the USB 2 and 3 path of a USB 3 capable A port so that you can run two devices on them without a hub ;)

Tepix 1y ago

Why does it mention USB 3.2 (i.e. 20 Gbps) at all if it's for Macs? I thought Macs only support 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps, but nothing inbetween? (which is inconvenient because USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps external SSD cases are much cheaper than USB 4 cases for now). Also, he is calling a binary a script, which i find suspicious. This task looks like it should have been a script.

gattr 1y ago
On a somewhat related note, I like the IO shield of my new MSI motherboard - the USB ports are tersely labeled "5G", "10G", "40G" (and a few lingering "USB 2.0").
cozzyd 1y ago
One of my pet peeves is when people call a binary a script
gruez 1y ago
>Why does it mention USB 3.2 (i.e. 20 Gbps) at all if [...] USB-IF in all their wisdom used "USB 3.2" to refer everything from 5 gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 ) to 20 gbps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#USB_3.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0#USB_3.2
- Tepix 1y ago
  Yes but i think in this context it means 20Gpbs, doesn‘t it?

basepurpose 1y ago

i don't understand why do competent people need to mention that they vibe coded something.

stefanfisk 1y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually a plus in the eyes of possible new employers these days.
- basepurpose 1y ago
  vibe coding in my understanding is losing/confusing the mental model of your codebase, you don't know what is what and what is where. i haven't found a term to define "competently coding with ai as the interface".
  - stefanfisk 1y ago
    I agree. But management types bedazzled by AI probably see these kids as the future leaders of our profession.
raincole 1y ago
"My static blog templating system is based on programming language X" is the stereotypical HN post. In theory the choice of programming language doesn't matter. But HNers like to mention it in the title anyway.
sharkjacobs 1y ago
I mean, they seem to address that pretty directly in the post > Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time.
jasode 1y ago
It's just because vibe coding is still "new" and various people have mixed results with it. This means that anecdotes today of either success or failure still carry some "signal". It will take some time (maybe more than a decade) for vibe coding to be "old" and consistently correct enough where it's no longer mentioned. Same thing happened 30 years ago with "The Information Superhighway" or "the internet". Back then, people really did say things like, "I got tomorrow's weather forecast of rain from the internet." Why would they even need to mention the "internet" at all?!? Because it was the new thing back then and the speaker was making a point that they didn't get the weather info from the newspaper or tv news. It took some time for everybody to just say, "it's going to rain tomorrow" with no mentions of internet or smartphones.

self_awareness 1y ago

Guys, please, don't upvote this. If this topic will beat the "Physics Nobel Prize 2025", I will lose my faith in HN.

BrandoElFollito 1y ago

I was looking for a USB cable tester (where I would plug in both ends of my cable and it would test it (power, data, ...). There are plenty for Ethernet, but none such ones for USB. Was I looking with the wrong keywords or such device does not exist? Note: I have a dongle that measures the power when inserted between the laptop and the charger, this is not what I am looking for

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Nition 1y ago
https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-caberqu/ https://www.tindie.com/products/petl/usb-c-cable-tester-c2c-...
bariumbitmap 1y ago
I have the Treedix cable tester, it works well. https://treedix.com/collections/best-seller/products/treedix-usb-cable-tester-usb-c-cable-tester-usb-tester-for-data-transmission-and-power-transmission-cable-testing-resistor-testing-type-c-emarker-for-usb-a-micro-b-micro-b-3-0-type-c-lighting-mini-b https://treedix.com/collections/best-seller/products/treedix...
moray 1y ago
On aliexpress for very cheap search for "DT3 Data Cable Detection Board Type-C". I got the one below and seems to work fine for what I needed. https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007509475055.html https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005007509475055.html Edit: This will test whether the cable is functioning properly. It will show the connections and indicate whether the cable supports only power or also data transfer. However, it won’t provide information about the USB-C cable type or its speed capabilities.
lxgr 1y ago
The reason is probably that anything faster than USB 2.0 (480 Mbit/s) and supporting power over 3A/60V will need to have an active marker, and to read that, you'll need something slightly more complex than a connection tester. That said, these things do seem to exist at this point, as sibling comments have pointed out. As an aside, it's a real shame devices with USB-C ports don't offer this out of the box. They need to be able to read the marker anyway for regular operation!

simianparrot 1y ago

This is a vibe coding Trojan horse article. > That’s the real story. Not the script, but how AI changes the calculus of what’s worth our time. Looking at the github source code, I can instantly tell. It's also full of gotchas.

wcrossbow 1y ago
I'm not a go developer and this kind of thing is far from my area of expertise. Do you mind giving some examples? As far as I can tell skimming the code, and as I said, without knowledge of Go or the domain, the "shape" of the code isn't bad. If I got any vibes (:))from it, it was lack of error handling and over reliance on exactly matching strings. Generally speaking, it looks quite fragile. FWIW I don't think the conclusion is wrong. With limited knowledge he managed to build a useful program for himself to solve a problem he had. Without AI tools that wouldn't have happened.
- alias_neo 1y ago
  There's a lot about it that isn't great. It treats Go like a scripting language, it's got no structure (1000+ lines in a single file), nothing is documented, the models are flat, no methods, it hard codes lots of strings, even the flags are string comparisons instead of using the proper tool, regex compiles and use inlined, limited device support based on some pre-configured, hard-coded strings, some assumptions made on storage device speeds based on its device name: nvme=fast, hdd=slow, etc. On the whole, it might work for now, but it'll need recompiling for new devices, and is a mess to maintain if any of the structure of the data changes. If a junior in my team asked me to review this, they'd be starting again; if anyone above junior PRd it, they'd be fired.
- nottorp 1y ago
  > Generally speaking, it looks quite fragile I have a usb to sata plugged in and it's labeled as [Problem].
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Ugh. I appreciate the tool and I suppose I can appreciate AI for making the barrier to entry for writing such a tool lower. I just don't like AI, and I will continue with my current software development practices and standards for production-grade code - code coverage, linting, manual code reviews, things like that. At the same time though I'm at a point in my career where I'm cynical and thinking it really doesn't matter because whatever I build today will be gone in 5-10 years anyway (front-end mainly).

bapak 1y ago

Fun fact: this information is already available in the System Information app on your Mac. Hardware -> USB I also use the app to check what wattage my cables are when charging my MacBook (Hardware -> Power)

angulardragon03 1y ago
Yes, system_profiler is just a terminal version of System Information.
lxgr 1y ago
This only shows you the minimum of what the cable and adapter support together, though. I believe this is a fundamental limitation of the protocol; the source won't tell you about voltage/current combinations not supportable by the cable.

coldtea 1y ago

> Go also has the unique ability to compile a cross-platform binary, which I can run on any machine. Huh? Is this true? I know Go makes cross-compiling trivial - I've tried it in the past, it's totally painless - but is it also able to make a "cross platform binary" (singular)? How would that work? Some kind of magic bytes combined with a wrapper file with binaries for multiple architectures?

heinrich5991 1y ago
Not what OP meant, but there's a project doing what you ask for: https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/ https://justine.lol/cosmopolitan/. It's quite interesting. :)

mnw21cam 1y ago

No, I don't get it. Firstly, the normal system command output is not hard to read, but secondly, this output doesn't list any of the capabilities of the cables, just the devices at the ends of them. Perhaps showing an example of the output when the device is plugged in through the wrong cable would have helped. Does the tool produce a similar warning to the system popup, that is "this cable and device are mismatched"?

lxgr 1y ago
As far as I understand, the idea is to determine whether the cable is the bottleneck from a hardcoded list of theoretical device capabilities with actually observed connection speeds as reported by the OS. It would be nice to just compare with the device's reported maximum capability, but I'm not sure whether macOS exposes that in any API.

larodi 1y ago

> Two years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered with the rewrite, let alone creating the script in the first place. The friction was too high. Now, small utility scripts like this are almost free to build. adding to the theory that soon we gonna prefer to write, rather download ready-made code, because the friction is super low

usrusr 1y ago
Arguably a one-off written by the cloud would still be downloaded to the place where it eventually runs.
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diodoe 1y ago

Interesting. Is there a way to adapt this for Linux or Windows? Many users, not just Mac users, face issues with USB-C cables. Practical cross-platform tools could be very helpful.

deleted 1y ago
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razakel 1y ago
Linux: lsusb -tv Windows: There's an example in the WDK here: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/main/usb/usbview https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples/tree/mai...
vel0city 1y ago
A useful tool for debugging USB devices on Windows: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/usbview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/d...

crewcuthair 1y ago

[dead]

cratermoon 1y ago

"yes, vibe coded. Shamelessly, I might add" I wouldn't trust this as source code until after a careful audit. No way I'm going to trust a vibe-coded executable.

jedbrooke 1y ago

I feel like we kind of got monkey’s paw’ed on USB-C. I remember during the 2000’s-2010’s people were drowning in a sea of disparate and incompatible connectors for video, audio, data, power, etc. and we’re longing for “One Port To Rule Them All” that could do everything in one cable. We kind of got that with USB-C, except now, you see a USB-C cable/port and you have no idea if it supports data only, data + charging, what speeds of data/charging, does it support video? maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. at least it can plug in both ways… most of the time

bluedino 1y ago
I was just thinking the other day, if the connectors had been USB-C from the start. No Type-A, no Type-B, no Mini, no Micro...
- alanh 1y ago
  And?
- op00to 1y ago
  insert futuristic city picture with flying cars here
op00to 1y ago
I bought the coolest, fattest USB-C cables, and I failed to read the description enough to hear they only support USB 2 speeds! They work fine for the specific use I have for them, but I wish I could use ‘em for everything!
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eikenberry 1y ago

> I was punching through my email actively as Claude was chugging on the side. I wonder how much writing these scripts cost. Were they done in Claude's free tier, pro, or higher? How much of their allotted usage did it require? I wish more people would include the resources needed for these tasks. It would really help evaluate where the industry is in terms of accessibility. How much is it reserved for those with sufficient money and how that scales.

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wingworks 1y ago
You could do this with the free tier. It's fairly generous.

_carbyau_ 1y ago

Is there a reason we can't plug a usb c cable with BOTH ends into the same computer and then get a full diagnostic on just the cable itself?

fnord77 1y ago
I was able to charge my macbook from itself using that technique.
- ddalex 1y ago
  On this site we obey the laws of thermodynamics.
  - _carbyau_ 1y ago
    The pedant in me says it's more "In this universe..." thing. :-) I understood their statement to be that the device didn't correlate outgoing power vs incoming power. So it would indicate that it is charging, because power is coming in - but not tell you that a similar or more power is leaving. I do find it frustrating in a world of battery management that we have indicators for charging and quick/fast/rapid charging. But near nothing for discharge or comparisons between incoming vs outgoing.
    - ddalex 1y ago
      I get what you're saying, I was making a joke referencing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuxbMfKO9Pg

Dieuetmondroit 1y ago

I feel like I need to point out that this tool does not do, in any way, what the title claims. Parsing the output of the system profiler tool will not tell you whether your cable is "good", which in practice tends to mean that it supports the protocol the user cares about at that moment. For some examples: If you connect a Thunderbolt only cable to a USB4 only device, this approach will give you no information about why things are not working. If you connect a USB2 only cable to a Display-Port Alternate Modal display, this approach will not tell you anything about why your display is not turning on.

alsetmusic 1y ago

I supported this kickstarter and got the device. It works well. I think they might still be producing them commercially, if I remember correctly. Great for identifying not just bad cables, but also data rates. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/electr/ble-caberqu-a-digital-usb-c-to-usb-c-cable-tester/ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/electr/ble-caberqu-a-di...

coin 1y ago

> So I “built”1 usbi, a script to check your USB connections. So it’s not a built-in command as the titles eluded