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Comment by thijsvandien | Hacker News Reader

Reminder to self: being an early adopter sucks virtually always.

Edit: Sure, the issue is rather easy to circumvent, but anyone would have preferred not to have it. At the very least, it affects the resale value. My point is that whenever the answer to the question 'do I need it absolutely right away?' is no, it's better to wait a bit, no matter how much you intend to buy it at some point.

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There is an old joke about the American West which goes, "Q: How do you know which people were pioneers? A: They are the ones with arrows in their back."

USB-C is a phenomenally complex system from an engineering perspective, serving at least three masters (compatibility, power delivery, and enhanced performance). As these systems go through the standards process you have vendors designing silicon in anticipation and engineers designing circuits. Not surprisingly, I have met just as many EE's who 'design by looking at something that does something similar' as software engineers who start with code that does something close and hack it into compliance.

Actually taking the time to develop an understanding of the complex system after it has made it through its final standards ballot, and then build systems with it take too long in today's market. You would bring something to market 3 to 5 years after the first products hit and were probably establishing defacto standards.

So the business side pushes to get something out, the engineering side learns just enough to get it to work in their lab, and the trademark validation/usage process is new/non-existent. As a result you will see early products that are broken in various ways until the collective knowledge and number of correct examples reaches the tipping point. After you reach that point future designs will likely work reliably because the chance of everyone involved having enough examples to start from is high, and compatibility issues will have been publicized and thus written into the book of "things not to do."

Wouldn't true pioneers have arrows in their front?

The arrows are a metaphor for "friendly fire" from former compatriots they have angered, not the enemy forces.

I wonder if something is to be said for the third generation of people who suddenly find themselves facing musket balls to the front from a hostile population now more heavily armed by previous pioneers.

In the UK House of Parliament the two main parties sit in rows and face each other across the house. It's said that the politicians on the front bench (the party leaders) have their opponents in front of them and their enemies behind.

They should have bought arrows with appropriate IFF circuitry.

I simply ordered one with the official power supply(at £8 it's cheaper than literally any branded USB-C charger) and would never even know there was an issue if not for the articles here.

Same here. For that price, anything else I could get would probably turn out to be a half-broken counterfeit garbage that might burn my house down. I'm considering buying an additional charger from them just to have a spare for my other USB-C devices.

Only downside of the official power supply (if you are not British) is that it tends to cover some of the neighboring plugs on the extension cord. They could have gone with a slightly narrower and taller one but I assume this is what fits best on the British 3-prong.

Doesn't this mean that you can't use the Branded power supply with anything else? I'm so used to all my micro-usb (and hell, even mini and normal USB) based power delivery systems being 100% compatible, save using a 0.5amp supply simply won't charge my old phone as quickly as a 1.8 or whatever amp supply.

Is this untrue in the world of USB C? I haven't experienced any oddities yet with my Pixel 2

>Doesn't this mean that you can't use the Branded power supply with anything else?

No, check the article for an explanation.

The design mistake is on the RPi side, not the power supply side; their branded power supply should work with anything that needs at most 15W (3A @ 5V).

Eh, it’s not too bad. I found a cable that works and I’ll stick to it. Even with previous-gen Pis there was always a bit of futzing with cables to find one that has small enough voltage drop to not get power warnings (even some otherwise “good” cables really cheap out on copper). The USB C thing is still an issue, and I’m glad it’ll be fixed, but it’s really not that big of a deal.

Having chopped up quite a few USB cables to power Pi's from fixed supplies (for professional use), I can totally relate to this. Even thick 'quality' cables commonly have dinky little copper wires inside, wrapped in lots of plastic. The only cables we found that were decently made were Molex ones which cost around 10UKP each at the time (a price we were happy to pay).

For me, the USB cable that came with the 5V/2A charger that came with my phone did the trick. A fairly common source of high current capable USB cables.

I'm not sure I understand the concept of "resale value" when it comes to a Raspberry Pi... they're dirt cheap boards, who's going to look at one and go "this is a wise investment that I will be able to sell on a year from now at a good price"?

There's always a risk/reward going on being an early adopter, in this case it's far from the worst though. It's a 35$ purchase, and at worst you have to get a new cable.

Lucky me I didn't have any problems with mine because I:

- Bought the most basic kit that included a power supply and heat sinks

- Bought a $10 acrylic case with a fan so cooling also is not an issue for me

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