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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

  The fact that no QA team inside of
  Raspberry Pi’s organization caught
  this bug indicates they only tested
  with one kind (the simplest) of USB-C
  cable.

  Raspberry Pi, you can do better.

I'd say at least 20% of the blame lies with whatever genius decided to have multiple types of USB-C cable

I mean, cables already suffer from having A, Type A SuperSpeed, B, B SuperSpeed, Mini-B, Micro-B, Micro-B SuperSpeed, C, and lengths from 10cm to 5m. Who'd expect adding a complete extra dimension of difference to be trouble-free?

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I believe the original plan was the opposite - one port and one cable type that can do everything - 100W of power, 5K video, USB devices, analog audio, Ethernet and more.

But it was naive to think that manufacturers will ship a $30 cable for a phone charger when a cheaper hack will do.

At least there should have been mandatory color coding of the "full" and "limited" ports and cables, just as USB 3 ports were blue to distinguish them from older versions.

Until cheap knockoffs heard they could charge 4x their normal price by changing the coloring.

... You can't trust the coloring either if you're buying off of Amazon, eBay or any Chinese site like Alibaba

Coloring appears to have worked for distinguishing between USB 2 and USB 3, at least in my experience.

With USB 3 isn’t the other end of the cable usually different as well?

USB-B for USB 3 is physically quite different, yes — looks like two stacked connectors.

It’s a micro usb plus another kind of adapter. This gives you backwards compatibility for devices if you want to expose usb 2 via usb-a -> micro

I was actually thinking about B rather than micro-B, though I guess both my description and your explanation apply either way!

The physical contacts are different though. You can look down into a USB 3 plug and see the new 5 contacts just as you can look at a USB 3 socket and see the new contacts right up front. Also I don't always see blue in new USB 3 cables and sockets, sometimes it's just black.

> Also I don't always see blue in new USB 3 cables and sockets, sometimes it's just black.

True, but if the cable is blue, that always indicates USB 3, at least in my experience—I've never seen a blue USB 2 cable. I think this is sufficient given backwards compatibility—how often do you specifically need a USB 2 device?

I very much doubt many "normal" people know to check the contacts.

Blue or Green if it's a Razer device, or Red to indicate Gen2 vs Gen1 ports on gaming motherboards.

Amazon fraud is not the problem some people on HN make it out to be...

Okay... pull up a list of USB3 chargers and tell me which ones on the first page of results are not counterfeit or poor quality knockoffs, even with 4+ stars... now do it for cables, including those labelled as "Amazon Basic" ...

It's a pretty big issue. I paid a lot more and ordered a spare USB3 charger from Google it's so bad in my own experience.

You have found AmazonBasics that were counterfeit of fake? If so, that's a pretty big deal. Amazon is slapping their logo on those products and presumably doing QA. They are also the only company allowed to sell them on Amazon.

Not to be confused with Amazon's Choice. Which means jack squat.

I've had Amazon Basics cables that weren't up to spec, yes. In fact most Amazon Basics electronics products have been poor quality of those I've purchased (mostly cables and a couple sets of speakers) so much that I won't even buy anything labelled as such now.

Interesting. I've always found AmazonBasics to be fine. Not great, but usually gets the job done.

Not directly addressing your question, but Amazon did a recall on their own chargers included with UK and Ireland Fire tablets, and recalled over quarter of a million portable AmazonBasics chargers.

Then buy from Walmart or best buy.

And then we end up paying $60 for a phone charger cable that will never be used for any of these things. (100W of power, 5K video, USB devices, analog audio, Ethernet)

The whole thing is a mess but both solutions are equality ridiculous if you ask me.

There's a pretty simple solution. Use different form factors depending on capability, like we'd been doing for decades before this madness.

USB C is fantastic. Standardization is way better than needing several different types of cables for all your devices.

Only if you require all those different functionalities to be included.

Otherwise, you have a bunch of mystery cables that all fit but may or may not do what you think they do.

Making every cable look the same, making it a guesswork which cable is working for which use case is better than having separate cables?

Except we still have several different types of cables, now it's just not obvious what there different capabilities are

Standardization is great when it actually happens. USB C cables are anything but standardized.

The biggest issue with what USB-C has caused is that now instead of it being a port you can easily identify you have a port that can do anything and an anonymous cable that may or may not support the actual functionality of the port! The only real solution is to buy your own expensive cables stock and only really use the cord a device came with if you want to be 100% sure it will work.

Though even that isn't a complete fix because there are some hidden gotcha's like length limits for external docks, to get full speed out of an external GPU enclosure for example you're pretty much stuck either using a very nice cable (good luck determining which actually support it and which are just lying to you since manufacturers can claim any capabilities) or sticking with a very short cable limiting the utility.

Where are you getting the figure "$30"?

The components of an active cable are not that expensive. You and I may pay premium markups at retailers because of parasitic incentives, but that doesn't mean folks sourcing their own cables would.

There’s no way to make a physical cable that carries 100w and hundreds of gigabits as cheap as a cable that carries 1 amp at 5 volts.

GP didn’t say they’d cost the same. They said $30 is too expensive

That doesn’t mean the cable that can will cost $30

Considering the way the middle of the market (for lots of products, not just cables, and not just electronics) seems to evaporate and the options become "cheap and shitty and may not work at all", "mid-priced but still shitty", and "actually built correctly and will actually survive normal use but way more expensive than it seems like it should be, thanks to a combination of economies of scale and price discrimination" I wouldn't be surprised if a full-capability USBC cable that doesn't break the first time you unplug it "wrong" or trip over it, and doesn't glitch out or fail to work correctly in some situations, and is of a useful length, does end up around $30.

A large part of cables is patents, licensing, research and R&D. All those costs don't have to scale with the number of cables produced.

Right now you can pay:

* $40 for an Apple 40 Gbps 100W 2.6ft cable [5]

* $30 for an Anker 100W 40Gbps 1.6ft cable [1]

* $20 for a Nekteck 100W 40Gbps 1.6ft cable [4]

* $12 for an Anker 60W 5Gbps 3ft cable [2]

* $9 for an Anker 60W 480 Mbps 3ft cable [3]

So, $30 isn't the cheapest full spec cable on Amazon, but it's not too far off.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076D76DRQ/ [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EMIIFCU/ [3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A6G0CTQ/ [4] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072HMHZ7D/ [5] https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQ4H2AM/A/thunderbolt-3-u...

But these are retail prices in a discussion of manufacturers and distributors deciding what to include?

Having cut open such a cable recently to help me understand the spec and having ordered parts and integrated a USB-PD board into my project recently, I can tell you the actual costs if you're not in retail-markup land are substantially less.

We're more or less past the point where "USB-C smart cables are $40" is informed by anything but retail markup, in my opinion.

But I guess I'm only doing the bare minimum on the data side?

Are these all reliably full-spec? I'd like to know so I can purchase accordingly. Honestly before this I didn't even know some were not full spec.

The port and cable can do all that, i think the problem here is more about the electronics on either side of the ports and cables

I would be so happy if there were some sort of color coding to just be rid of the hassle of switching twice ("I'm sure it's this one, nopes, it's the other one").

There is zero chance that alone would pass as a solution in the EU, not accessible. Colour blindness is extremely common too.

True color blindness is very rare. Most "color blind" people are red-green color blind and can still distinguish between e.g. red and blue.

yes and that is extremely common, that doesn't count as colour blindness? what else would you call it.

Either way the "incomplete" forms of colour blindness are one of the most common forms of disability, so using color as the only distinguishing factor in consumer cable types is pretty exclusionary.

It sure beats having _no_ distinguishing factor.

It's not better than the more obvious solution, symbols, which all other "universal" things use... that is what the U in USB stands for isn't it.

I'd be happy to have both.

Why is it exclusionary if you use the colors they can still distinguish between?

What do you do magically change the colour depending on the person?

You use colors that the largest number of people can distinguish between.

At some point there will always be someone who something doesn't work for. You suggest using symbols, but what about people who are completely blind?

So you use something like a combination of color and braille, and then the rare person who is monochromatic can use the same solution as someone who is completely blind.

> At some point there will always be someone who something doesn't work for.

So your basically saying screw them all since it's impossible to include everyone? I just outlined for you the most common disability, it's particularly easy to avoid since they can still actually see.

> the rare person who is monochromatic can use the same solution as someone who is completely blind.

...how would you like to be told to learn brail in old age just cos your eyesight isn't quite good enough to read some small print?

No, that's just awful. Shape first, colour purely as an extra, then brail if the symbol is not relief or discernible enough, this is absolute basics of accessibility. This also helps everyone and functions in very low light since we all have low sensitivity to colour compared to luminescence, more so the older you get

> So your basically saying screw them all since it's impossible to include everyone?

Your disposition is needlessly antagonistic.

Moreover, regardless of what is common to every standard cable, anyone is free to put their own labels on their own cables to suit their needs. Not every solution has to be complex bureaucratic uniformity.

> I just outlined for you the most common disability, it's particularly easy to avoid since they can still actually see.

Are you even sure that color blindness is more common than blurred vision that makes it hard to discern small symbols?

This usually does not come up until you are 45-50, so tech people tend not to know about it. I was lucky to have a teacher that warned about this in school already. Watch out for when it takes several seconds to switch between close and far focus :)

> Your disposition is needlessly antagonistic.

If you say so, but it seems necessary to counter your apparent lack of empathy for people without perfect vision. I don't feel bad at all about that.

> Moreover, regardless of what is common to every standard cable, anyone is free to put their own labels on their own cables to suit their needs.

Now you're just bending the discussion to your will.

> If you say so, but it seems necessary to counter your apparent lack of empathy for people without perfect vision.

How is that any more helpful than me accusing you of an apparent lack of empathy for people with vision that can discern colors better than small symbols?

> Now you're just bending the discussion to your will.

Your argument was that not making all cables in a way that addresses all needs is saying "screw them all" to anyone else. But nothing has to work that way because total uniformity is not actually mandatory. It's completely reasonable to have a default that works well for most people and use something different for the people who need something different.

This is not about uniformity, you basically suggested colour blind people should learn brail rather than simply chosing a different method of differentiation... It's pretty hard not to interpret that as "screw them all". Yes you can't make everyone equal but it takes very little effort to accommodate the vast majority of issues.

In attempting to defend Color blind people, you go too far in painting them as helpless. The use of color to distinguish thing is not in-and-of-itself exclusionary. Color blind people are still perfectly capable of distinguishing shades.

As long as you use fairly different shades of red and green, they can still match the cable to its matching color shaded port. Much UI accessibility is based on this fact.

Speaking as an only mildly colorblind person, I still tend not to use color to differentiate things. Even when it's two colors I can easily tell the difference between, I don't reach for color as a disambiguating feature unless I consciously try to.

Having to go even further than that and use shades of the colors I do have trouble with would be far more onerous.

Had you used a monochrome filter on software while adding accessibility you probably wouldn't suggest using shade as method of differentiation (it's simple to try, i recommend it). We already use luminescence mainly for discerning shape, when you throw "shades" into the mix it's usually too subtle for the purpose of differentiation.

Additionally in the physical world how are you going to determine the shade of something relative to something that is not present? i.e if you only have one cable in front of you. We don't have absolute perception, it tends to be affected by context, additionally the lighting now seriously affects your judgement... The reason this is so different to colour is because luminescence is a single receptor type (rods), with which you are trying to compare intensity of an area of one type of signal filled with other detailed information; whereas with colour you have three signal types (cones), in combination and at a lower detail than rods, so it's effectively separate information with at least 2^3 completely distinct permutations to differentiate in almost any lighting or context. This also explains why the absence of only a single cone receptor type has a significant impact on perception since it drops to 2^2 halfing the completely distinct permutations, of which two are merely black and white, so you actually drop from 6 to 2 non-monochromatic permutations - so you see it is far more challenging using either shade or partial cone types.

If it's additive (as in you can get by without it, but it helps), it may well be OK.

Yes, it's fine if it's not the primary differentiating feature, i.e if symbols are used.

Seconding that. Type C is a nightmare. I have a tablet that supports USB 3.1 over its Type C port but has to charge via a MicroUSB port. I have a phone with a Type C port that's limited to USB 2.0 but supports HDMI out via DisplayLink. Wife has a phone with USB 3-supporting Type C but doesn't support HDMI out. I have another tablet with a dedicated charging dock with pogo pins and a Type C port that supports input charging but only does so at 5v/800mA.

Five years ago everything had a MicroUSB port that at least supported 5v/1.5A charging and almost everything did video-out via MHL or SlimPort adapters. It's 2019 and I have to buy a specific $900 phone and $200 dock to be able to charge and output video at the same time. I hate it.

Didn't know that the colour means something here. I always thought it was marching

>> USB 3 ports were blue

This would only be useful if you know the colour means something.

I think for the layperson, with many potential ports available, one that colour matches the cable in hand seems a fairly obvious first choice.

And even if that fails, it's at least something "support" can add to their check list when a customer calls with issues.

Back in the day, I heard horror stories of people trying to cram 15-pin VGA cables on 9-pin CGA ports, just because they looked the same. Never underestimate idiots.

> just as USB 3 ports were blue to distinguish them from older versions

... unless you're Apple and the blue took away from your aesthetic...

> one port and one cable type that can do everything

As with politics ("freedom", "justice") the problem is that "everything" is ambiguous.

(and corporations have anti-standards goals: to differentiate their products, prevent unallowed access to their devices, continue using outdated protocols, etc...)

Yeah, this wasn't thought out the greatest. I have a bunch of USB-C to USB-C cables for my computer to phone (mobile dev, so use it a lot). Some of my cables actually automatically force my phone to charge my laptop (who would want that...), but Android lets you change the options.

USB-C is not a standard, USB-C is a combination of a dozen different standards, some of which you mention. There's electrical standards, optical standards, slow, fast, using 2, 4, 5, 6 and/or 8 electrical conductors.

So no, there's not one cable, there's a boatload of them.

The problem seems to be identifying.

I get not physically keying: that's the whole point of the USB-C idea.

What I don't get is why the hell they didn't mandate standardized identification (at least in manuals) regarding port / cable feature compatibility. The entire point of the trademark is to use it to make things easier for the customer and promote adoption.

Make a logo for every feature (4k 60hz!), trademark them too, then mandate implementers advertise featuresets via the logos. Problem solved.

This is especially needed as with so many possible variations full feature cable can have problem listing all the features.

> with so many possible variations full feature cable can have problem listing all the features

There are only six variants: https://people.kernel.org/bleung/how-many-kinds-of-usb-c-to-...

And it's actually the product of three variants (2.0 only, 5 Gb/s, 10 Gb/s) by two maximum current ratings (3A, 5A), so a pair of logos would be enough.

And they couldn't limit it to two for cables, one with the lowest specs (low power chargers/data), one with the highest support (anything else)?

Where do you put this variety of a dozen or so features... the end of the USB cable is already really small, and varying logos on that end? I'm not sure I'd even be able to distinguish.

The fact is, it really sucks and they should have limited it to maybe a subset of two... one that can only deliver basic charging and data, and one that can deliver all features. A $5 sku and a $25 sku (or close to). Unfortunately, it's all a mess.

> Where do you put this variety of a dozen or so features

> (at least in manuals)

... and come to think of it, why not colored rings around each end of the cord? There aren't that many features.

From a couple other comments... the combination is 6 distinctions on two feature classes. Shoot, do I need red, or yellow for this device? It'd be worse than mini/micro usb transition.

Well now you still need to know, or else it doesn't work. How do you choose if they all look the same?

Two rings, one with 3 colors and one with 2 colors? Seems pretty simple.

"2018 MacBook Pros support green-purple for the highest feature set"

Far simpler than things people use every day: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code

When you're making an electronic device that you will be selling millions of, the onus is on you to do your homework in verification testing.

I have to agree with the quoted text. As a purchaser of the pi4 how could you not have tested it with arguably the most popular usb-c charger and cable on the planet?

This. Make that 50%. Had a similar issue happing with Anker external battery in combination with expensive Apple 30W USB-C charger, not compatible.

whenever they will come up with a USB standard with a round connector, they will find yet another level of complexity to add... because it can't be that easy.

Plot twist: It will be exactly the same physical design as a 3.5mm headset jack.

3.4mm would be perfect... next gen would be 3.3mm... and apple will of course make their own. USB-R ... or USB-Round

meh - this is a temporary issue that'll be resolved with time and manufacturing scale. I'm glad to have the tech a few years earlier.

What about the last 30 years of IT history gives you cause to think that?

Why only 30?

Lisp s expressions were supposed to be an intermediate representation, that they were going to develop a front end for. I'm sure it'll be ready any day now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression

Almost 5? years later and it’s not gotten much better from what I can see.

I’m sure this is sarcasm. It has to be.

I'm not quite so confident. USB-C should have required a trademarked stamp on the connector to show that it was compliant. Any cable that wasn't could have been forced off the market for trademark violation. Similar to how CD-ROM, DVD, etc... was done in the past.

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