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In their infinite wisdom, engineers replaced a large number of incompatible, different looking cables (HDMI, USB, power, etc) with a ton of incompatible, identical looking cables.

At least in the past it was easy to eyeball the connectors and pick the right cable.

Its friggin unreal. I'm trying to do a cable order and have no clue what the heck to buy. I just want something that works. I swear these alternate modes and charging-only cables are going to be the end of me.

It might be worthwhile to check out Benson Leung's (Google engineer) reviews on USB-C cables: http://amzn.to/2hX3cMZ

Previous post from last year on the subject about his work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508494

Things have changed a bit, now I have to worry about Thunderbolt 3.

Do you have an appropiate charger? I was researching usb-c charging for my XPS 13 (9350) and apparently the charging standard allows for different voltages so it's not all 5V as you'd expect from good old usb and therefore requires a specific charger capable of delivering the right voltage (19V in my case from what I could gather).