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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe this legislation is actually being seriously considered, why would you want the government forcing you to have a certain port on your phone. By all means have regulations for things like electrical outlets and radio frequencies and other protocols that interfere with each other, but when it comes to individual devices it is just going to completely stall any innovation. I don't want a manufacturer to have to lobby the government every time they want to start using some improved charging cable, or when they want to make a device where USB-C doesn't make sense, that's how we end up stuck on old standards for forever. Doesn't seem like the government's business anyways, you are really going to make it illegal for me to produce and purchase devices without USB-C? Seems insane to me, if people don't want a device because it doesn't have USB, they don't have to buy it.

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why do you think it's a bad idea that all small appliances with power requirements <100w have single type connector? (ie. usb-c)

What is you benefit as a consumer to have each appliance have it's own unique cable, generally providing same functionality?

The benefit is that I prefer the lightning cable. It’s lightweight, small and looks nice. That’s the only reason I should need, but also competition means that in the future we will be able to have better chargers.

Cheaper and/or better products in the future that can't use USB C to deliver the same product at that price/performance.

For example say I have a small < 100W device that needs to be powered and send data and I'd like to use the same connector for it. But wait, I'm going to put this gadget in an environment where people might knock the cable out so I'm going to use a different connector with a latching mechanism to prevent the cable from coming loose.

Oh no, I can't do that because the government says I can't.

Like OP said if it bothers you don't buy it. That's the market working for you. Diversity is good for the market and connectors aren't one size fits all, no regulation will change that.

> I'm going to put this gadget in an environment where people might knock the cable out so I'm going to use a different connector with a latching mechanism to prevent the cable from coming loose.

Lockable USB C connectors exist. Why do you think these would be banned?

https://uk.farnell.com/neutrik/nmc-c-hr/usb-c-chassis-with-r...

The point is future use cases might not be covered by USB C today and it's not the role of government to dictate which components I select for my design. This was just an example.

fwiw the latch on those things is pretty terrible. What if I needed something like a Speak-On connector which twists? Can't do that with USB-C.

I don't think that is a bad idea, I think that is a great idea in most cases. I think it is a bad idea to legally enforce it and make companies go through the government when they want to introduce an improved type of connector. In the short term it is likely better for consumers, in the long term I think it will lead to us being stuck on USB-C indefinitely, as no one is incentivized to come up with something better.

I think it's a bad idea because if this legislation had been in place in, say, 2001, we'd all be stuck with terrible USB-mini connectors, not even terrible USB-micro connectors. If 2007, we'd be stuck with terrible USB-micro connectors instead. Now, post-2014, USB-C seems like a winner (too bad they didn't do this in 2012, when it could have been Lightning with a forced-free license!).

So now it's USB-C, and... that's it? Forever? No point in innovation in the cable space, because nobody will be allowed to use anything else.

And "all small appliances < 100w?" So either I'm paying for a cable capable of carrying data at high speed to power a lamp, or I have separate cables for lamps and phones, but using the same connector, and how do I tell the difference?

Hard pass.

> how do I tell the difference?

Ideally you won't need to in most cases. That being said, USB used colors to match cables to sockets, with black being the old cable and blue being the newer, faster interface. You could use the old cable on new devices, but you're stuck with slower transfer.

For something like a lamp, it likely wouldn't matter what cable you use, so just use whatever is laying around. If it's for something high speed, just keep the cable separate.

Being able to use a device with a backup cable at degraded performance is better than not being able to use a device. I had a lamp that used a bespoke cable and connector, and when we lost one part, we threw the lamp away. We later found the part, but nothing else used the connector, so we threw that away as well. If it used a USB-C cable, I could just use one of the several I have laying around.

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