14 ms·

The USB Situation

161 points by herbertl 5mo ago

sandworm101 5mo ago
Yup. I have a work laptop that is meant to charge via USB ... But only one of the two ports will charge ... They are right beside each other! An evil trick at the office is to move someone's USB cable from one port to the other.
- i_am_a_peasant 5mo ago
  thinkpad?
- benj111 5mo ago
  Of course there's also the issue of whether your cable is suitable and your charger suitable too. We appear to have taken a good idea and made it shit very quickly.
  - nottorp 5mo ago
    > made it shit very quickly What? The USB mafia has been at it since usb 1.1 or at best 2.0...
  - jeroenhd 5mo ago
    A suitable USB cable for all features is ten times the price of a normal cable. That's why many smartphones come with USB-C cables and not actually rated Thunderbolt cables. If the USB forum enforced their specifications, everyone would be complaining that their cables are now ten times the price, and people would still buy knock-off cables. Same goes with chargers: I bought a 100W charger that stops delivering 100W after it overheats about half an hour into a session. I could spend twice as much on a charger that sustains the charge, but I probably wouldn't have bought that charger at all for that price. USB-C would either be branded a bullshit expensive standard (like Apple's Thunderbolt cables are generally regarded) or an incomplete standard that gives manufacturers too much leeway. I, for one, am quite happy that I can just buy a USB C charger now rather than spend 180 euros on an OEM replacement, even if I ocassionally need to throw a cable into the "garbage that came with an accessoire" bin.
  - izacus 5mo ago
    Nothing is stopping you from buying those 100$+ USB4/Thunderbolt5 cables that can do everything all at once. I mean, it's dumb to charge a phone with it, since you don't need 80Gbps capability, but it'll fit your requirement of not being confusing :P
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago
  Mine work at both but connecting dock to different port re-names every monitor output
- cassianoleal 5mo ago
  Not exactly the same situation but some older MacBooks had an issue where you had to charge from one side of the laptop and not the other. Technically, the wrong side would charge it just fine but it would also make the computer quickly overheat and throttle until it was unusable, frozen or until it crashed.
- red369 5mo ago
  I find this immensely frustrating. My work laptop (HP ZBook Studio 16 G11 - the current model) will will only charge from the USB C ports on the left side, not the right side. Unfortunately, that is low down my list of charging complaints for that laptop. It will not charge from USB C unless it is given a power supply that is at least 100W, even if it then only draws a fraction of that. There is an exception, where it will charge from a lower wattage power supply (like 60W) when in standby or turned off. Often, it is happily charging away, and as soon as you wake it up, it stops taking any power. As soon as I need more, it takes less. And it is definitely not the case that it is draining faster than it is charging. It just stops charging. Presumably, the justification for all this mess is that it is only supposed to be charged from the barrel plug 180W power supply, but with a weight starting at 1.73 kg, I would rather not lug a 1/2 kg power supply too. Perhaps in all their efforts to make it slim and lightweight, they wanted to avoid extra power circuitry. After all, in their efforts to slim it down, they also cut an HDMI/DisplayPort, a camera cover - everything in fact except 3 USB C (not all thunderbolt), a USB A and a 3.5mm audio port. Our office meeting rooms are nicely wired with HDMI and USB-C chargers, but people are still forever trying to locate an HDMI adapter, or going back to their desks to get their power supply.
amelius 5mo ago
Just switch to a different brand then.
- josephg 5mo ago
  Are other brands any better?
  - PunchyHamster 5mo ago
    no
    - amelius 5mo ago
      But one thing is certain: if we keep buying massively from the top-dog, the underdogs will never get a chance.
userbinator 5mo ago
In an alternate world, Ethernet took on the role of the universal serial bus, and we have laptops that charge via PoE, but only possible on one of their ports (the others are usable for peripherals --- with protocols running over Ethernet too, of course.) But the same confusion regarding power and speed capabilities exists.
- dale_glass 5mo ago
  We'd have to invent a new connector first. It's too thick for modern laptops, not to speak of cell phones. Also, RJ45 is terribly fragile if you keep plugging and unplugging it, eventually that latch will break. And copper can barely support 10G and is terribly power hungry when it does that. And the cables get thick and inflexible.
  - somat 5mo ago
    The 8 pin modular connector as found in most ethernet does have several sins but it has one huge redeeming feature, A feature I wish was found in every cable. It is easy to field terminate. Have fun putting a new end on nearly any other cable.
    - tlb 5mo ago
      Field termination is necessary when the connectors are too large to pull through a conduit. But if they were USB-C sized, you could just pull fully assembled cables.
      - goalieca 5mo ago
        It’s also about managing length and slack.
      - Someone 5mo ago
        It also comes in very handy when you need a 8m cable, but only can buy them in lengths of 5m and 10m, or when you’re wiring an entire building, and figuring out which lengths to order up front is a major pain in the ass, certainly compared to ordering a few hundred meters of cable, a few hundred connectors and tools to put the two together. And that’s ignoring the price difference.
isodev 5mo ago
And on top of that, Apple has that thing where only some devices can charge from their adapters. I have a special adapter just for non-Apple things because the white bricks (despite the usb-c) sometimes just refuse to give power to things. So frustrating.
- Filligree 5mo ago
  Mostly, that's non-compliant devices. Doesn't make it work any better, but I wouldn't assume Apple is doing it wrong here. USB-C ports aren't allowed to provide power until after configuration, but a lot of USB-C chargers provide 5V regardless. This is wrong, but it does mean you can use a dumb C-to-micro cable which doesn't include the necessary electronics. (A pull-down resistor at least.) And of course there's no way to tell by the looks of the cable.
  - josephg 5mo ago
    Yeah this is right. I bought a cheap wireless mouse, with a USB-C port for charging. None of the USB-C chargers in my house would charge it, so after awhile it inevitably went flat and I took it back to the shop - since it was faulty. The guy in the shop plugged it in to a USB-A port via a cheap A-to-C cable, and the mouse immediately came to life. Of course. I felt like an idiot. I didn't get a faulty unit. Whoever designed the mouse was treating the USB-C plug like a newer micro-usb port. The mouse just expected 5V over the port. They clearly didn't bother testing it with a proper USB-C charger. I returned it anyway and got a mouse that wasn't broken.
    - javawizard 5mo ago
      It annoys me so much when new electronics do this because the fix is both well known by now and only requires 2 dirt cheap components on the circuit board (5.1k resistors to ground on the CC lines). As a hardware engineer among other things, that was one of the first things I learned about interfacing with USB C. How do so many consumer devices keep getting this wrong in the year of our lord 2026?
    - jeroenhd 5mo ago
jonplackett 5mo ago
It would help if computers / phones had an easy way to just identify a cable when you plug it in. Is this hard to do or just something normal people never care about?
- dijit 5mo ago
  it violates every products person wish to be “simple”. There’s a reason that Windows barely shows any errors until the system fully halts.
  - ohnei 5mo ago
    They now have the option to silently add this kind of detail to logs and have clippy find answers to why is my computer odd/slow only when asked. For a long time I felt like companies leaving product decisions to the Occamist (or the closely related lazy programmer) was a superpower to compete against larger organizations that usually don't, but we may get a run for our money from emulated simplicity.
  - jeroenhd 5mo ago
    Windows will throw up warnings when the disk space is nearly empty, when it detects driver instability, when RAM is full and page files can't keep up, when a specific application is draining your battery, when your files aren't backing up right, and all other kinds. The problem with most of those is that either users don't care until it's too late ("I need to get this done now, I'll delete files later"), third party applications are the cause and Windows can't/shouldn't interfere (did a program memory leak or is the user pushing the boundaries of what the system can handle?), or because there's not much the user can do about it ("your GPU driver crashed", well gee, my drivers are up to date, let me spend half a month's wages on a new GPU then, shall we?). The only "too late" errors I've seen on Windows are when something very important has crashed and the system needs to shut down for data integrity (crss.exe crashing on school computers comes to mind, though I doubt that was the fault of Microsoft), or when something unpredictable went wrong, like a file ending up corrupt because of a failing hard drive or flipped bit in memory. Microsoft actually created a dedicated screen to monitor errors and failures of all kinds (https://www.elevenforum.com/t/view-reliability-history-in-windows-11.5791/ https://www.elevenforum.com/t/view-reliability-history-in-wi...) that's been around since Vista. It used to open up automatically if you clicked a popup after certain errors, but it appears Microsoft eventually stopped doing that. Going by how many "today I learned" posts I find when I look up the feature, I'm guessing nobody who actually understands what the screen does ever used the feature.
applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
> The USB situation. > The lie. > The gap. > The names. > The age. > The trap. > The buy. > The truth. > The chain. > The lunacy. > The cheat sheet. Fucking LLMs have literally ruined the word "the" for me.
- cindyllm 5mo ago
  [dead]
- zombot 5mo ago
  It's not ruined, it's corrupted.
- StilesCrisis 5mo ago
  This person is apparently writing a book! I hope they put more care into it than this.
  - tom_ 5mo ago
    They've always written at least a little bit like this.
- odyssey7 5mo ago
  It read okay to me? Also, I encourage people not to change their writing style just to avoid patterns that AI likes to use. I'm going to continue my em dashes.
  - grey-area 5mo ago
    This article is generated slop, and the reason to avoid it is that it’s terrible writing. The discussion here is much more interesting IMO.
9cb14c1ec0 5mo ago
Feels like the appropriate place to put this link: https://www.lttstore.com/products/ltt-truespec-cable-usb-type-c-to-c https://www.lttstore.com/products/ltt-truespec-cable-usb-typ...
grey-area 5mo ago
Having a standard plug is great, I hope we stick with it for decades and gradually the situation will improve as everyone gets used to the standard. USB-C gets rid of all the stupid previous decisions on the physical connectors (orientation required but not obvious, fragile clips, too large, too small), the physical side of things is now set and hopefully all devices, chargers and outlets will now converge on usb-c. Yes getting the right cable can make a difference but the situation is so much better than before, partly because phone manufacturers were forced by the EU to adopt one connector early one. I’m so glad Apple’s proprietary connector is gone.
- nixpulvis 5mo ago
  Lightning remains a better physical connection. So many USB-C connections I have are flimsy as hell.
  - fao_ 5mo ago
    Hmm. I don't see how. I'm poor so the quality of cables I can afford or buy is much worse than the average tech worker — I'm limited to either the cable that comes with e.g. my phone, or some 1.5m cables I bought from Amazon four years ago, and I've never had a flimsy or dodgy USB-C connection, even though those cables were put through hard work while I was homeless (and honestly I'm really, really surprised — they should be breaking by now). Now, HDMI, on the other hand... yeesh
  - torben-friis 5mo ago
    Can't say why, but in my personal experience USBC is far less likely to stop working due to lint in the socket, which is fixable but annoying.
  - Aboutplants 5mo ago
    I really have never had any issues with USB-C, lightning on the other hand was the complete opposite. Fascinating we have had the exact opposite experiences
    - 5mo ago
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
jmclnx 5mo ago
Yet another interesting article wit grey text on white background, making it very hard for me to read. I wish people would realize doing this can lockout people with some eye issues.
- filament 5mo ago
  Fixed, thanks for the feedback.
forsatellite 5mo ago
No need to overthink it. USB cables should just label themselves with their bandwidth - it's not rocket science. Lots of other kinds of cables have a similar requirement. And I guess their maximum watts too. Admittedly I'm not sure why so few USB cables do this. I'd very much rather not have a new connector shape every time the technology improves and devices and cables gain new capabilities. The benefit of where USB-C is at, is the new stuff is backwards compatible with previous generations. The complaints in the early years - about one connector, unpredictable capabilities - were wrong. It took time for this benefit to accrue. Also all the version numbers and brand names have been confusing, but the bandwidth is just a single number that goes up each generation and covers most of the issues now. There are just a few edge cases this doesn't cover these days.
- luma 5mo ago
  Most USB C cables do have a label, but it's an electronic one. Desktop and mobile OSes could do a better job of surfacing this information for the user.
  - ssl-3 5mo ago
    Or they could simply be labelled. In this way, I would be able to see (using the advanced, integrated bionic vision system that I've carried with me and used every day I've been alive) what it is that I have before me instead of plugging them in one at a time to some electronic oracle to try to discern the details of the invisible magic inside.
  - zaptheimpaler 5mo ago
    Do they really? Even on linux, I can look at what bandwidth a device is connected with using lsusb, but there is no way to tell if a low speed is a limitation of the device or the cable. It just displays the speed that was negotiated considering all factors. I've never found a way to get information about a cable digitally.
    - luma 5mo ago
      There are a handful of dedicated devices that will read the eMarker, eg https://www.amazon.com/s?k=USB+emarker https://www.amazon.com/s?k=USB+emarker A recent HN thread announcing a Mac app that can read them along with discussion on alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972511
the__alchemist 5mo ago
I get the frustration over standards for high speed and high power applications. I note this: For many/most applications, 5V/1A power + 480Mbps USB 2.0 data is supported on every or almost every USB cable and device, and exceeds requirements. USB C being ubiquitous and capable of these makes it a the most consolidated/universal power + data standard I have experienced in my life. It's also a small connector that's easy to plug in. There are exceptions: Charging your laptop or phone benefits from higher current. External drives or other mass data transfer benefits from high speed. I look at the electronics devices (Computer peripherals and otherwise), and most are fine with USB-C for power and data, not coming close to the limits on either.
- masklinn 5mo ago
  > Charging your laptop or phone benefits from higher current. And voltage. Mostly voltage.
jmyeet 5mo ago
Unfortunately, the USB label is trying to capture too many things and they really should've learned their lesson with USB 2.0 but they didn't. So USB 1.1 was 12Mbps (theoretical). USB 2.0 as 480Mbps (theoretical)... kind of. It got complicated because a distinction was made between USB 2.0 Full Speed and USB 2.0 Hi Speed. "Full" Speed was just USB 1.1 (12Mbps). USB 2.0 Hi Pseed was the 480Mbps. I assume they didn't want to confuse consumers who might wonder if they can plug USB 1.1 and 2.0 together but they just created more confusion. Nikon famously started saying USB 2.0 for Full speed, as just one example. So the version number is useless to consumers and should never be used. This got a whole lot worse with USB 3.0+ because more capabilities got added to the standard but not all cables supported them so you could look at a cable and have no idea what it could do. Capabilities include: - Data. This started at 5Gbps for SuperSpeed but has gone higher with subsequent versions. - Power (max wattage varied) - USB Alt Mode (DP, HDMI or TB over USB-C) So how do you capture at least 5 capabilities of a cable? You can't make a cable do everything. That's prohibitively expensive and also massively limits cable length. Whatever the case, saying things like "USB 3.2 Gen 2" was not the answer.
- masklinn 5mo ago
  Afaik alt mode is a data stream, so as long as your cable is not gimped (e.g. charging only) and supports USB3 data streams at sufficient speeds it ought work? Which just gives two properties to care about: data rate and power. I can’t remember a usb plug which didn’t have the space to add 2 numbers / 8 characters.
larodi 5mo ago
https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/usb-guide.html https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/usb-guide.html this is 100% Claude-generated,and without citations I'd be very careful at trusting it. wonder why whoever prompted this in existence would not include actual references and sources of information. disclaimer: me -> everyday CC user, so trust me, this thing loves to spit nonsense.
- filament 5mo ago
  https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/sources.html https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/sources.html — every single fact is sourced.
  - refulgentis 5mo ago
    Written by Claude, too. (well, "Grumbles", as the footnote says) I don't particularly care if it's right or not but this is ...weird. Especially from Rands. I can't parse what the idea is here, like, what's being communicated and why. The "minimal writing" version says too little, the "throw everything and the kitchen sink version" says too much. And enough of both is slop (meaning, unneeded) that it's hard to orient yourself and find a guidepost, if there is one. And I love using AI, and my reading comprehension scores have never been below 99.9%. Idk why I'm even sharing that. It's just, it's not me, it's not some battle I'm fighting, it really is a real problem, not just "oh it's Claude", it's bad writing in an alien way from an author I've always loved. EDIT: After my 11th minute and 4th read on this, it has become clear to me that the idea is, you don't want to use the cable that comes with your iPhone for general USB data transmission because it is slow. The noise in the short version is USB IF, 5gbps, MacBook Neo.
    - fnordpiglet 5mo ago
      Yeah the language is bizarre and clearly artificial. It was made by an openclaw agent almost certainly. It took me a long time to understand their point amongst points.
    - justinator 5mo ago
HotGarbage 5mo ago
Never forget Rands was in Jerkcity (now Bonequest) and had them retroactively replace his character with atandt: https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052437/http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity715.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052437/http://www.jerkci... https://bonequest.com/715 https://bonequest.com/715
- zeafoamrun 5mo ago
  I thought I recognized the name rands somewhere! Wow he was totally replaced, how weird, here's another example and they totally changed the strip: https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052444/http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity712.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052444/http://www.jerkci... https://bonequest.com/712 https://bonequest.com/712
staplung 5mo ago
Per Dave Barry "The plug on this device represents the latest thinking of the electrical industry's Plug Mutation Group, which, in a continuing effort to prevent consumers from causing hazardous electrical current to flow through their appliances, developed the Three-Pronged Plug, then the Plug Where One Prong is Bigger Than the Other. Your device is equiped with the revolutionary new Plug Whose Prongs Consist of Six Small Religious Figurines Made of Chocolate. DO NOT TRY TO PLUG IT IN! Lay it gently on the floor near an outlet, but out of direct sunlight, and clean it weekly with a damp handkerchief."
avazhi 5mo ago
What in the slop is this.
turtlebits 5mo ago
IME, having the right cable is 100x more useful than having a fast one. That said, the only weirdness I've experienced is a device that came with a USB C to A cable that would not take power from a C to C
- masklinn 5mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47984833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47984833 ?
JSR_FDED 5mo ago
“The lie”, “The Gap”, “The Trap”… Ugh.
- IshKebab 5mo ago
  I'm hoping someone makes a HN frontend with a slop detector at some point. It's getting ridiculous.
SeriousM 5mo ago
@dang, can we please get a flag function for ai slop? "The lie, the age, the gap, the trap, the names, the buy, the ..." I really don't come to HN to read such a stuff and HN is full of it since months. Please let us flag it and filter it out.
- vachina 5mo ago
  Seconding this. The lack of downvote button makes burying low quality posts like this impossible.
- IshKebab 5mo ago
  I agree. AI slop is clearly a huge category of HN content now and lots of people don't want to read it. Maybe it can be a different thing to flagging so instead of just being removed it gets an "AI generated" label?
cycomanic 5mo ago
One of my pet peeves with USB C is that many laptop manufacturers went "great less space occupied we can push the porta closer together to make space for something else", but many USB C devices (particularly USB Sticks ...) have inherited the dimensions of USB A. So there is not enough space for a plug and cable, e.g. I can't use my yubi key while my monitor is connected to the laptop.
- throwaway2037 5mo ago
  A short USB-C extension cable won't do the trick? Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Extension-Extender-0-65ft-Thunderbolt-Transfer/dp/B09VKZNS6Z https://www.amazon.com/Extension-Extender-0-65ft-Thunderbolt...
  - vintagedave 5mo ago
    It would, but that's the Apple solution, a dongle. Better to design it right the first time, which I think is the OP's point.
  - jimbobjim 5mo ago
    Those are out of spec though so should be used with caution.
    - throwaway2037 5mo ago
      Agree, but a 2FA dongle is extremely low risk.
- crote 5mo ago
  The USB-C specification[0] recommends a minimum 12.85mm heart-to-heart distance between ports. Fine for cables, probably not fine for dongles. USB-A mandates[0] a maximum overmold size of the plug of 16mm, so the minimum heart-to-heart distance is going to be a hair above that, although I don't think anyone is placing them that tightly together in practice. [0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%20R2.0%20-%20August%202019_0.pdf#page=136 https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%... [0]: http://www.poweredusb.org/pdf/usb20.pdf#page=127 http://www.poweredusb.org/pdf/usb20.pdf#page=127
TipsForCanoes 5mo ago
The two things every IT person now needs, a USB-C cable tester[0] and a USB Charger tester[1]. 0. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3014680/your-usb-c-cables-arent-broken-this-14-tester-shows-whats-really-going-on.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3014680/your-usb-c-cables-ar... 1. https://www.fnirsi.com/products/fnb58 https://www.fnirsi.com/products/fnb58
roywashere 5mo ago
I hate obviously AI written posts so much. Not spending my time with reading
dbg31415 5mo ago
Was HDMI any better? =P And somehow, we survived.
- kalleboo 5mo ago
  Yeah people complain about USB-C but I'm struggling to think of any port that has managed the spec evolution any better. Nightmares of null-modem cables and hardware handshaking still haunt me.
crispyambulance 5mo ago
I think USB-C is certainly a step in the right direction. The remaining problem is the lack of CLEAR, easy to understand markings on the cable that indicate whether it’s intended as power delivery cable or as a 10Gbps data cable or as a thunderbolt-capable cable or any of many combinations in between those. This should not be limited to physical markings on the cable itself but also in the form of electronic self-identification so that you could plug in a cable and have the OS tell you exactly what cable you plugged in. Why not? We have power-delivery protocols, adding cable self-id would be a trivial addition. I suspect the vendors of these, and perhaps the designers of the spec too, have deliberately made this confusion an integral part of the standard. It creates churn and consumers buying more cables than they need.
steveBK123 5mo ago
The problem with USB-C is more in explaining it to the non-technical than it is a problem for HN crowd. The most straightforward solution is to buy the highest speed/power rated cables from Apple/Anker and throw away whatever slop comes with your devices. As far as I can tell, there is generally no downside to using the best cable for everything, aside from cost. But then you are spending $70 at Apple or $45 with Anker per cable. Short of doing that I have dealt with every stupidity between brand new 2026 cables that are USB-2 speed, power cables that do not move data, data cables that do not offer power, and even cheapo cables that are directional and do not work if plugged in the other way. Another problem with USB-C is the non-standard connector plastic shapes/sizes. Some percent of my cables don't fit into my personal and/or work iPhone cases because they have an oddly sized plastic connector. None of this seems optimal for explaining to my senior parents why [Device A] won't plug into [Device B] via [Cable C].
zx8080 5mo ago
It's not about USB, it's cry about Apple. Don't cry, just throw all bad apples away.
gorjusborg 5mo ago
I would love it if newer revisions of USB specified standard colors for indicating negotiated mode and cable support. The main issue I have is the lack of visibility.
fl0ki 5mo ago
To be fair, even state of the art of high-speed data cables are thick and relatively inflexible. I simply wouldn't want every cable to be a high-speed cable if that meant they were all chunky. I do agree that it should be clearer at a glance what you can expect from a port or cable.

161 points by herbertl 5mo ago

Yup. I have a work laptop that is meant to charge via USB ... But only one of the two ports will charge ... They are right beside each other! An evil trick at the office is to move someone's USB cable from one port to the other.

i_am_a_peasant 5mo ago
thinkpad?
benj111 5mo ago
Of course there's also the issue of whether your cable is suitable and your charger suitable too. We appear to have taken a good idea and made it shit very quickly.
- nottorp 5mo ago
  > made it shit very quickly What? The USB mafia has been at it since usb 1.1 or at best 2.0...
- jeroenhd 5mo ago
  A suitable USB cable for all features is ten times the price of a normal cable. That's why many smartphones come with USB-C cables and not actually rated Thunderbolt cables. If the USB forum enforced their specifications, everyone would be complaining that their cables are now ten times the price, and people would still buy knock-off cables. Same goes with chargers: I bought a 100W charger that stops delivering 100W after it overheats about half an hour into a session. I could spend twice as much on a charger that sustains the charge, but I probably wouldn't have bought that charger at all for that price. USB-C would either be branded a bullshit expensive standard (like Apple's Thunderbolt cables are generally regarded) or an incomplete standard that gives manufacturers too much leeway. I, for one, am quite happy that I can just buy a USB C charger now rather than spend 180 euros on an OEM replacement, even if I ocassionally need to throw a cable into the "garbage that came with an accessoire" bin.
- izacus 5mo ago
  Nothing is stopping you from buying those 100$+ USB4/Thunderbolt5 cables that can do everything all at once. I mean, it's dumb to charge a phone with it, since you don't need 80Gbps capability, but it'll fit your requirement of not being confusing :P
PunchyHamster 5mo ago
Mine work at both but connecting dock to different port re-names every monitor output
cassianoleal 5mo ago
Not exactly the same situation but some older MacBooks had an issue where you had to charge from one side of the laptop and not the other. Technically, the wrong side would charge it just fine but it would also make the computer quickly overheat and throttle until it was unusable, frozen or until it crashed.
red369 5mo ago
I find this immensely frustrating. My work laptop (HP ZBook Studio 16 G11 - the current model) will will only charge from the USB C ports on the left side, not the right side. Unfortunately, that is low down my list of charging complaints for that laptop. It will not charge from USB C unless it is given a power supply that is at least 100W, even if it then only draws a fraction of that. There is an exception, where it will charge from a lower wattage power supply (like 60W) when in standby or turned off. Often, it is happily charging away, and as soon as you wake it up, it stops taking any power. As soon as I need more, it takes less. And it is definitely not the case that it is draining faster than it is charging. It just stops charging. Presumably, the justification for all this mess is that it is only supposed to be charged from the barrel plug 180W power supply, but with a weight starting at 1.73 kg, I would rather not lug a 1/2 kg power supply too. Perhaps in all their efforts to make it slim and lightweight, they wanted to avoid extra power circuitry. After all, in their efforts to slim it down, they also cut an HDMI/DisplayPort, a camera cover - everything in fact except 3 USB C (not all thunderbolt), a USB A and a 3.5mm audio port. Our office meeting rooms are nicely wired with HDMI and USB-C chargers, but people are still forever trying to locate an HDMI adapter, or going back to their desks to get their power supply.

amelius 5mo ago

Just switch to a different brand then.

josephg 5mo ago
Are other brands any better?
- PunchyHamster 5mo ago
  no
  - amelius 5mo ago
    But one thing is certain: if we keep buying massively from the top-dog, the underdogs will never get a chance.

userbinator 5mo ago

In an alternate world, Ethernet took on the role of the universal serial bus, and we have laptops that charge via PoE, but only possible on one of their ports (the others are usable for peripherals --- with protocols running over Ethernet too, of course.) But the same confusion regarding power and speed capabilities exists.

dale_glass 5mo ago
We'd have to invent a new connector first. It's too thick for modern laptops, not to speak of cell phones. Also, RJ45 is terribly fragile if you keep plugging and unplugging it, eventually that latch will break. And copper can barely support 10G and is terribly power hungry when it does that. And the cables get thick and inflexible.
- somat 5mo ago
  The 8 pin modular connector as found in most ethernet does have several sins but it has one huge redeeming feature, A feature I wish was found in every cable. It is easy to field terminate. Have fun putting a new end on nearly any other cable.
  - tlb 5mo ago
    Field termination is necessary when the connectors are too large to pull through a conduit. But if they were USB-C sized, you could just pull fully assembled cables.
    - goalieca 5mo ago
      It’s also about managing length and slack.
    - Someone 5mo ago
      It also comes in very handy when you need a 8m cable, but only can buy them in lengths of 5m and 10m, or when you’re wiring an entire building, and figuring out which lengths to order up front is a major pain in the ass, certainly compared to ordering a few hundred meters of cable, a few hundred connectors and tools to put the two together. And that’s ignoring the price difference.

isodev 5mo ago

And on top of that, Apple has that thing where only some devices can charge from their adapters. I have a special adapter just for non-Apple things because the white bricks (despite the usb-c) sometimes just refuse to give power to things. So frustrating.

Filligree 5mo ago
Mostly, that's non-compliant devices. Doesn't make it work any better, but I wouldn't assume Apple is doing it wrong here. USB-C ports aren't allowed to provide power until after configuration, but a lot of USB-C chargers provide 5V regardless. This is wrong, but it does mean you can use a dumb C-to-micro cable which doesn't include the necessary electronics. (A pull-down resistor at least.) And of course there's no way to tell by the looks of the cable.
- josephg 5mo ago
  Yeah this is right. I bought a cheap wireless mouse, with a USB-C port for charging. None of the USB-C chargers in my house would charge it, so after awhile it inevitably went flat and I took it back to the shop - since it was faulty. The guy in the shop plugged it in to a USB-A port via a cheap A-to-C cable, and the mouse immediately came to life. Of course. I felt like an idiot. I didn't get a faulty unit. Whoever designed the mouse was treating the USB-C plug like a newer micro-usb port. The mouse just expected 5V over the port. They clearly didn't bother testing it with a proper USB-C charger. I returned it anyway and got a mouse that wasn't broken.
  - javawizard 5mo ago
    It annoys me so much when new electronics do this because the fix is both well known by now and only requires 2 dirt cheap components on the circuit board (5.1k resistors to ground on the CC lines). As a hardware engineer among other things, that was one of the first things I learned about interfacing with USB C. How do so many consumer devices keep getting this wrong in the year of our lord 2026?
  - jeroenhd 5mo ago

jonplackett 5mo ago

It would help if computers / phones had an easy way to just identify a cable when you plug it in. Is this hard to do or just something normal people never care about?

dijit 5mo ago
it violates every products person wish to be “simple”. There’s a reason that Windows barely shows any errors until the system fully halts.
- ohnei 5mo ago
  They now have the option to silently add this kind of detail to logs and have clippy find answers to why is my computer odd/slow only when asked. For a long time I felt like companies leaving product decisions to the Occamist (or the closely related lazy programmer) was a superpower to compete against larger organizations that usually don't, but we may get a run for our money from emulated simplicity.
- jeroenhd 5mo ago
  Windows will throw up warnings when the disk space is nearly empty, when it detects driver instability, when RAM is full and page files can't keep up, when a specific application is draining your battery, when your files aren't backing up right, and all other kinds. The problem with most of those is that either users don't care until it's too late ("I need to get this done now, I'll delete files later"), third party applications are the cause and Windows can't/shouldn't interfere (did a program memory leak or is the user pushing the boundaries of what the system can handle?), or because there's not much the user can do about it ("your GPU driver crashed", well gee, my drivers are up to date, let me spend half a month's wages on a new GPU then, shall we?). The only "too late" errors I've seen on Windows are when something very important has crashed and the system needs to shut down for data integrity (crss.exe crashing on school computers comes to mind, though I doubt that was the fault of Microsoft), or when something unpredictable went wrong, like a file ending up corrupt because of a failing hard drive or flipped bit in memory. Microsoft actually created a dedicated screen to monitor errors and failures of all kinds (https://www.elevenforum.com/t/view-reliability-history-in-windows-11.5791/ https://www.elevenforum.com/t/view-reliability-history-in-wi...) that's been around since Vista. It used to open up automatically if you clicked a popup after certain errors, but it appears Microsoft eventually stopped doing that. Going by how many "today I learned" posts I find when I look up the feature, I'm guessing nobody who actually understands what the screen does ever used the feature.

applfanboysbgon 5mo ago

> The USB situation. > The lie. > The gap. > The names. > The age. > The trap. > The buy. > The truth. > The chain. > The lunacy. > The cheat sheet. Fucking LLMs have literally ruined the word "the" for me.

cindyllm 5mo ago
[dead]
zombot 5mo ago
It's not ruined, it's corrupted.
StilesCrisis 5mo ago
This person is apparently writing a book! I hope they put more care into it than this.
- tom_ 5mo ago
  They've always written at least a little bit like this.
odyssey7 5mo ago
It read okay to me? Also, I encourage people not to change their writing style just to avoid patterns that AI likes to use. I'm going to continue my em dashes.
- grey-area 5mo ago
  This article is generated slop, and the reason to avoid it is that it’s terrible writing. The discussion here is much more interesting IMO.

9cb14c1ec0 5mo ago

Feels like the appropriate place to put this link: https://www.lttstore.com/products/ltt-truespec-cable-usb-type-c-to-c https://www.lttstore.com/products/ltt-truespec-cable-usb-typ...

grey-area 5mo ago

Having a standard plug is great, I hope we stick with it for decades and gradually the situation will improve as everyone gets used to the standard. USB-C gets rid of all the stupid previous decisions on the physical connectors (orientation required but not obvious, fragile clips, too large, too small), the physical side of things is now set and hopefully all devices, chargers and outlets will now converge on usb-c. Yes getting the right cable can make a difference but the situation is so much better than before, partly because phone manufacturers were forced by the EU to adopt one connector early one. I’m so glad Apple’s proprietary connector is gone.

nixpulvis 5mo ago
Lightning remains a better physical connection. So many USB-C connections I have are flimsy as hell.
- fao_ 5mo ago
  Hmm. I don't see how. I'm poor so the quality of cables I can afford or buy is much worse than the average tech worker — I'm limited to either the cable that comes with e.g. my phone, or some 1.5m cables I bought from Amazon four years ago, and I've never had a flimsy or dodgy USB-C connection, even though those cables were put through hard work while I was homeless (and honestly I'm really, really surprised — they should be breaking by now). Now, HDMI, on the other hand... yeesh
- torben-friis 5mo ago
  Can't say why, but in my personal experience USBC is far less likely to stop working due to lint in the socket, which is fixable but annoying.
- Aboutplants 5mo ago
  I really have never had any issues with USB-C, lightning on the other hand was the complete opposite. Fascinating we have had the exact opposite experiences
  - 5mo ago

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

jmclnx 5mo ago

Yet another interesting article wit grey text on white background, making it very hard for me to read. I wish people would realize doing this can lockout people with some eye issues.

filament 5mo ago
Fixed, thanks for the feedback.

forsatellite 5mo ago

No need to overthink it. USB cables should just label themselves with their bandwidth - it's not rocket science. Lots of other kinds of cables have a similar requirement. And I guess their maximum watts too. Admittedly I'm not sure why so few USB cables do this. I'd very much rather not have a new connector shape every time the technology improves and devices and cables gain new capabilities. The benefit of where USB-C is at, is the new stuff is backwards compatible with previous generations. The complaints in the early years - about one connector, unpredictable capabilities - were wrong. It took time for this benefit to accrue. Also all the version numbers and brand names have been confusing, but the bandwidth is just a single number that goes up each generation and covers most of the issues now. There are just a few edge cases this doesn't cover these days.

luma 5mo ago
Most USB C cables do have a label, but it's an electronic one. Desktop and mobile OSes could do a better job of surfacing this information for the user.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  Or they could simply be labelled. In this way, I would be able to see (using the advanced, integrated bionic vision system that I've carried with me and used every day I've been alive) what it is that I have before me instead of plugging them in one at a time to some electronic oracle to try to discern the details of the invisible magic inside.
- zaptheimpaler 5mo ago
  Do they really? Even on linux, I can look at what bandwidth a device is connected with using lsusb, but there is no way to tell if a low speed is a limitation of the device or the cable. It just displays the speed that was negotiated considering all factors. I've never found a way to get information about a cable digitally.
  - luma 5mo ago
    There are a handful of dedicated devices that will read the eMarker, eg https://www.amazon.com/s?k=USB+emarker https://www.amazon.com/s?k=USB+emarker A recent HN thread announcing a Mac app that can read them along with discussion on alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972511

the__alchemist 5mo ago

I get the frustration over standards for high speed and high power applications. I note this: For many/most applications, 5V/1A power + 480Mbps USB 2.0 data is supported on every or almost every USB cable and device, and exceeds requirements. USB C being ubiquitous and capable of these makes it a the most consolidated/universal power + data standard I have experienced in my life. It's also a small connector that's easy to plug in. There are exceptions: Charging your laptop or phone benefits from higher current. External drives or other mass data transfer benefits from high speed. I look at the electronics devices (Computer peripherals and otherwise), and most are fine with USB-C for power and data, not coming close to the limits on either.

masklinn 5mo ago
> Charging your laptop or phone benefits from higher current. And voltage. Mostly voltage.

jmyeet 5mo ago

Unfortunately, the USB label is trying to capture too many things and they really should've learned their lesson with USB 2.0 but they didn't. So USB 1.1 was 12Mbps (theoretical). USB 2.0 as 480Mbps (theoretical)... kind of. It got complicated because a distinction was made between USB 2.0 Full Speed and USB 2.0 Hi Speed. "Full" Speed was just USB 1.1 (12Mbps). USB 2.0 Hi Pseed was the 480Mbps. I assume they didn't want to confuse consumers who might wonder if they can plug USB 1.1 and 2.0 together but they just created more confusion. Nikon famously started saying USB 2.0 for Full speed, as just one example. So the version number is useless to consumers and should never be used. This got a whole lot worse with USB 3.0+ because more capabilities got added to the standard but not all cables supported them so you could look at a cable and have no idea what it could do. Capabilities include: - Data. This started at 5Gbps for SuperSpeed but has gone higher with subsequent versions. - Power (max wattage varied) - USB Alt Mode (DP, HDMI or TB over USB-C) So how do you capture at least 5 capabilities of a cable? You can't make a cable do everything. That's prohibitively expensive and also massively limits cable length. Whatever the case, saying things like "USB 3.2 Gen 2" was not the answer.

masklinn 5mo ago
Afaik alt mode is a data stream, so as long as your cable is not gimped (e.g. charging only) and supports USB3 data streams at sufficient speeds it ought work? Which just gives two properties to care about: data rate and power. I can’t remember a usb plug which didn’t have the space to add 2 numbers / 8 characters.

larodi 5mo ago

https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/usb-guide.html https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/usb-guide.html this is 100% Claude-generated,and without citations I'd be very careful at trusting it. wonder why whoever prompted this in existence would not include actual references and sources of information. disclaimer: me -> everyday CC user, so trust me, this thing loves to spit nonsense.

filament 5mo ago
https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/sources.html https://randsinrepose.com/guides/usb/sources.html — every single fact is sourced.
- refulgentis 5mo ago
  Written by Claude, too. (well, "Grumbles", as the footnote says) I don't particularly care if it's right or not but this is ...weird. Especially from Rands. I can't parse what the idea is here, like, what's being communicated and why. The "minimal writing" version says too little, the "throw everything and the kitchen sink version" says too much. And enough of both is slop (meaning, unneeded) that it's hard to orient yourself and find a guidepost, if there is one. And I love using AI, and my reading comprehension scores have never been below 99.9%. Idk why I'm even sharing that. It's just, it's not me, it's not some battle I'm fighting, it really is a real problem, not just "oh it's Claude", it's bad writing in an alien way from an author I've always loved. EDIT: After my 11th minute and 4th read on this, it has become clear to me that the idea is, you don't want to use the cable that comes with your iPhone for general USB data transmission because it is slow. The noise in the short version is USB IF, 5gbps, MacBook Neo.
  - fnordpiglet 5mo ago
    Yeah the language is bizarre and clearly artificial. It was made by an openclaw agent almost certainly. It took me a long time to understand their point amongst points.
  - justinator 5mo ago

HotGarbage 5mo ago

Never forget Rands was in Jerkcity (now Bonequest) and had them retroactively replace his character with atandt: https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052437/http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity715.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052437/http://www.jerkci... https://bonequest.com/715 https://bonequest.com/715

zeafoamrun 5mo ago
I thought I recognized the name rands somewhere! Wow he was totally replaced, how weird, here's another example and they totally changed the strip: https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052444/http://www.jerkcity.com/jerkcity712.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170918052444/http://www.jerkci... https://bonequest.com/712 https://bonequest.com/712

staplung 5mo ago

Per Dave Barry "The plug on this device represents the latest thinking of the electrical industry's Plug Mutation Group, which, in a continuing effort to prevent consumers from causing hazardous electrical current to flow through their appliances, developed the Three-Pronged Plug, then the Plug Where One Prong is Bigger Than the Other. Your device is equiped with the revolutionary new Plug Whose Prongs Consist of Six Small Religious Figurines Made of Chocolate. DO NOT TRY TO PLUG IT IN! Lay it gently on the floor near an outlet, but out of direct sunlight, and clean it weekly with a damp handkerchief."

avazhi 5mo ago

What in the slop is this.

turtlebits 5mo ago

IME, having the right cable is 100x more useful than having a fast one. That said, the only weirdness I've experienced is a device that came with a USB C to A cable that would not take power from a C to C

masklinn 5mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47984833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47984833 ?

JSR_FDED 5mo ago

“The lie”, “The Gap”, “The Trap”… Ugh.

IshKebab 5mo ago
I'm hoping someone makes a HN frontend with a slop detector at some point. It's getting ridiculous.

SeriousM 5mo ago

@dang, can we please get a flag function for ai slop? "The lie, the age, the gap, the trap, the names, the buy, the ..." I really don't come to HN to read such a stuff and HN is full of it since months. Please let us flag it and filter it out.

vachina 5mo ago
Seconding this. The lack of downvote button makes burying low quality posts like this impossible.
IshKebab 5mo ago
I agree. AI slop is clearly a huge category of HN content now and lots of people don't want to read it. Maybe it can be a different thing to flagging so instead of just being removed it gets an "AI generated" label?

cycomanic 5mo ago

One of my pet peeves with USB C is that many laptop manufacturers went "great less space occupied we can push the porta closer together to make space for something else", but many USB C devices (particularly USB Sticks ...) have inherited the dimensions of USB A. So there is not enough space for a plug and cable, e.g. I can't use my yubi key while my monitor is connected to the laptop.

throwaway2037 5mo ago
A short USB-C extension cable won't do the trick? Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Extension-Extender-0-65ft-Thunderbolt-Transfer/dp/B09VKZNS6Z https://www.amazon.com/Extension-Extender-0-65ft-Thunderbolt...
- vintagedave 5mo ago
  It would, but that's the Apple solution, a dongle. Better to design it right the first time, which I think is the OP's point.
- jimbobjim 5mo ago
  Those are out of spec though so should be used with caution.
  - throwaway2037 5mo ago
    Agree, but a 2FA dongle is extremely low risk.
crote 5mo ago
The USB-C specification[0] recommends a minimum 12.85mm heart-to-heart distance between ports. Fine for cables, probably not fine for dongles. USB-A mandates[0] a maximum overmold size of the plug of 16mm, so the minimum heart-to-heart distance is going to be a hair above that, although I don't think anyone is placing them that tightly together in practice. [0]: https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%20R2.0%20-%20August%202019_0.pdf#page=136 https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/USB%20Type-C%20Spec%... [0]: http://www.poweredusb.org/pdf/usb20.pdf#page=127 http://www.poweredusb.org/pdf/usb20.pdf#page=127

TipsForCanoes 5mo ago

The two things every IT person now needs, a USB-C cable tester[0] and a USB Charger tester[1]. 0. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3014680/your-usb-c-cables-arent-broken-this-14-tester-shows-whats-really-going-on.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/3014680/your-usb-c-cables-ar... 1. https://www.fnirsi.com/products/fnb58 https://www.fnirsi.com/products/fnb58

roywashere 5mo ago

I hate obviously AI written posts so much. Not spending my time with reading

dbg31415 5mo ago

Was HDMI any better? =P And somehow, we survived.

kalleboo 5mo ago
Yeah people complain about USB-C but I'm struggling to think of any port that has managed the spec evolution any better. Nightmares of null-modem cables and hardware handshaking still haunt me.

crispyambulance 5mo ago

I think USB-C is certainly a step in the right direction. The remaining problem is the lack of CLEAR, easy to understand markings on the cable that indicate whether it’s intended as power delivery cable or as a 10Gbps data cable or as a thunderbolt-capable cable or any of many combinations in between those. This should not be limited to physical markings on the cable itself but also in the form of electronic self-identification so that you could plug in a cable and have the OS tell you exactly what cable you plugged in. Why not? We have power-delivery protocols, adding cable self-id would be a trivial addition. I suspect the vendors of these, and perhaps the designers of the spec too, have deliberately made this confusion an integral part of the standard. It creates churn and consumers buying more cables than they need.

steveBK123 5mo ago

The problem with USB-C is more in explaining it to the non-technical than it is a problem for HN crowd. The most straightforward solution is to buy the highest speed/power rated cables from Apple/Anker and throw away whatever slop comes with your devices. As far as I can tell, there is generally no downside to using the best cable for everything, aside from cost. But then you are spending $70 at Apple or $45 with Anker per cable. Short of doing that I have dealt with every stupidity between brand new 2026 cables that are USB-2 speed, power cables that do not move data, data cables that do not offer power, and even cheapo cables that are directional and do not work if plugged in the other way. Another problem with USB-C is the non-standard connector plastic shapes/sizes. Some percent of my cables don't fit into my personal and/or work iPhone cases because they have an oddly sized plastic connector. None of this seems optimal for explaining to my senior parents why [Device A] won't plug into [Device B] via [Cable C].

zx8080 5mo ago

It's not about USB, it's cry about Apple. Don't cry, just throw all bad apples away.

gorjusborg 5mo ago

I would love it if newer revisions of USB specified standard colors for indicating negotiated mode and cable support. The main issue I have is the lack of visibility.

fl0ki 5mo ago

To be fair, even state of the art of high-speed data cables are thick and relatively inflexible. I simply wouldn't want every cable to be a high-speed cable if that meant they were all chunky. I do agree that it should be clearer at a glance what you can expect from a port or cable.