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Comment by Cloudef | Hacker News Reader

Literally every other device is usb-c, thats why

I'm a big fan of this change, however, I think to a black mirror episode [0] where essentially little robot dogs could interface with everything they came into contact with because every connection was the same, it may be trivial to have multiple connections for a weapon like this but the take away I had from this is that 'variety' may be better than a single standardized solution. Partly because it is more expensive to plan for multiple types of inputs and making the cost of war go up will make it more difficult which I think inherently is the idea behind some of the larger cybersecurity companies, a hack can only work once then everyone has defenses for it after that single successful attack, this makes it more expensive to successfully stage attacks. Huge digression from this convo... but I think back to this constantly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)

Proprietary ports are textbook security by obscurity.

Many defensive are a trade off between the convenience of non attackers, and the trouble created for attackers.

Given the sheer number of devices we interact with in a single day, USB-C as a standard is worth the trade off for an increase in our threat surface area.

1000 Attackers can carry around N extra charging wires anyway.

10^7 users having to keep say, 3 extra charging wires on average? That’s a huge increase in costs and resources.

(Numbers made up)

Two thoughts:

1) Surely the world conquering robo-army could get some adapters.

2) To the extend to which this makes anything more difficult, it is just that it makes everything a tiny bit less convenient. This includes the world-conquering robo-army, but also everything else we do. It is a general argument against capacity, which can’t be right, right?

So I suppose Lightning's abysmally slow transfer speed is also a security feature? No way you can exfiltrate my photo roll at 60 MBps :)

All of my devices are lightening. Now I have to carry around 2 cables.

What should I say with an iPod classic? 3!

why do I need to replace my devices every year?

There's simply more people with the opposite problem, especially in markets where Apple is less prevalent, which is most of them around the world. When there's more than one type of cable, plenty of people are going to be inconvenienced when one is chosen as the cable to rule them all, but in the end everyone wins, it's just annoying to get there.

> plenty of people are going to be inconvenienced when one is chosen as the cable to rule them all, but in the end everyone wins

That's not everyone wins. The people that actually bought these devices now have cables that don't work and need to replace with a lower quality product, and the people who were already using something else are continuing to not need cables for these devices. The majority breaks even, a significant minority loses.

Simply not choosing one cable to rule them all lets everyone win. There is no compelling reason for one size to fit all.

It's a temporary drawback; everyone wins in the long term because there's only one standard.

Again, that's not a win for anybody. No one winds up in a better position than where they started, there is no payback in exchange for the temporary drawback, which also isn't temporary if the final standard is inferior.

If some people like hip hop but more people like country, it's not a win for everybody to eliminate the hip hop radio stations so we can all listen to a single country station.

This is closer to having a common railway gauge, though.

Not at all. A common railway gauge is necessary for different parts of the rail network to be joined together. If one section of the network has a different gauge, it is cut off and can not be joined without being completely replaced, leaving you with two less capable rail networks. Everyone does benefit from a more capable rail network.

Further, rail gauge is not a consumer choice. If there were two rail gauges and your local rail station happened to have a different gauge than your destination, you'd be SOL. A different rail gauge may provide benefits for people with specific needs, but you don't get to take advantage of those benefits except by blind luck.

There is no such benefit from standardizing cable connectors. If someone charges their phone with the same style cable as you, you gain nothing. If someone uses a different cable, you lose nothing. There is no reason for anyone not to use their preferred cable which is optimal for their use case.

Everyone, but the environment wins. Once I upgrade my phone and Airpods, I will have to throw out my pack of perfectly working lightning cables.

I'm sure there are more than a few people that would end up throwing out their perfectly functional accessories, only for the convenience of carrying less cables.

Why don’t you donate them to a thrift store or educational charity? Are there no non-profits who refurbish and reuse electronics in your community?

I don't want to burn fuel trying to find a place to accept used 5 year old Airpod Pros with yellow earbud plastic.

I don't want to ship another cable across the Pacific Ocean from China so I can have a cable that works on my devices.

I want to keep using them until they don't work and I can't repair them any more.

All of mine are USB C and now I only carry around one. All of the lightning cords and micro USB cables are in a drawer somewhere with the DVI, component cables, etc.

neat. I get to throw out my perfectly working apple products that have years left in them and switch re-sync my cables.

That is great you spent the money for this, but I'm not ready to throw away my perfectly fine devices.

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