Hacker News Reader

I was surprised about the symbol as well. It's just a matter of time until someone gets hurt while trying to connect their peripherals to a transformer.

View on HN

Perhaps true, but how exactly would you mate the connector with a high voltage power source without a massive amount of kludgery?

my sister recently plugged a usb cable into an ethernet port. don't assume that because something seems like a massive amount of kludgery to you that a user won't do it anyway.

I plugged a USB cable into an Ethernet port many times! Not intentionally, obviously, but I did it because the USB plug has just the right width to fit snugly in an Ethernet port. It’s easy to do when you are not looking. You should try it, it even feels sort of right in a very wrong way.

There is no kludgery involved when plugging USB cables into Ethernet ports. They just fit perfectly.

I once plugged an Ethernet cable into a USB port...I was a lot younger, and I took a file to it because I was absolutely convinced I'd been shipped a cable that was too big.

If you've ever done field tech work, freelance or otherwise, you'd know that mere physical incompatibility isn't going to stop some people from plugging nearly any connector into nearly any port.

Sad, but true.

No it will work exactly as intended. They'll experience a thunderbolt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com