[HN Gopher] They make USB-C cables with displays now
___________________________________________________________________
They make USB-C cables with displays now
Author : transpute
Score : 181 points
Date : 2024-06-17 00:37 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ounapuu.ee)
(TXT) w3m dump (ounapuu.ee)
| moneywoes wrote:
| How do we know if these are doing something else?
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| The same way you know whether or not anything is doing
| something else
| imoverclocked wrote:
| ie: you probably don't.
| whycome wrote:
| How do you know for the cables without displays?
| metaphor wrote:
| The USB-IF publishes a list of member companies[1]; purchase
| products from these qualified manufacturers, and perhaps more
| importantly, from authorized distributors.
|
| This is a good enough "policy control" for the average
| consumer.
|
| [1] https://www.usb.org/members
| pbronez wrote:
| Surprised that Anker isn't obviously on there.
| mceachen wrote:
| Unsurprising considering Anker doesn't pay for basic UL
| listing for many of their AC power taps.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Also at least some of their products are just ODM
| rebrands. A bit disappointing but probably shouldn't have
| been surprised.
| metaphor wrote:
| It appears Anker Innovations Ltd was last listed[1] circa
| 2020 under VID 10522 (0x291A).
|
| Tread with caution...the prospects of zombie grift tend
| to be real when brand recognition is established.
|
| [1] https://usb.org/sites/default/files/vendor_ids051920_
| 0.pdf
| k8svet wrote:
| Erm. I fail to see how this moves the needle unless usb-if
| is doing extreme firmware level source analysis and
| deterministic compiles and checking them against shipped
| firmware. Which I doubt is happening, with every atom in my
| body.
| metaphor wrote:
| It's a _policy control_ suggestion that 's both low
| effort and immediately actionable by the typical tech-
| literate types sleuthing these channels.
|
| When baseline consumer behavior is sort-by-price-low-to-
| high and select the cheapest item from random pop-up
| white label chinesium third-party vendor on Amazon,
| exercising an ounce of supply chain due diligence where
| none previously existed can go a long way.
|
| To be sure, if you think you can economically defend
| against a coordinated supply chain attack by a
| speculative adversary willing to pony up real capital
| operating an otherwise legitimate facade for years
| building market goodwill only to burn it all down in one
| shot against a single worthwhile target...well, I've got
| a bridge to sell you.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| USB testers are cheaper now, I'd advise anyone to buy one
| preemptively.
|
| It's nice to one-off check a new cable to know what it can be
| used for, with the additional benefit of seeing the power
| curves for the higher models (e.g. see a charger's power
| output drastically drop down as it overheats)
| EnergyAmy wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I'm using a super cheap Ali-express one I checked against
| well know and stable brands of cable/chargers (e.g. Apple
| and Anker's power bricks and cables).
|
| Otherwise AVHzY is I think the recommended brand, with
| two levels or pricing depending if you want external
| output.
| milesvp wrote:
| Fun fact. Any USB-C cable that needs to handle higher wattage
| than 5V@3A has circuitry that talks on the CC line to let the
| source know it's not going to melt.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The threshold is higher than that. Passive USB-C cables can
| do up to 20V @ 3A (60W). Electronically marked cables are
| only required for higher power profiles.
| crote wrote:
| To be pedantic, the eMarker is required in a USB 2 cable
| conducting over 3A, and in _any_ USB 3+ cable.
| infectoid wrote:
| If power is all you are looking for you can always play it safe
| with a USB Condom.
|
| e.g https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=PortaPow
| stavros wrote:
| Keep in mind that this will limit you to 5V at 0.5A, if I'm
| not mistaken.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| And realize that if you're distrustful of the cable, you
| should be even more distrustful of that gadget which has
| even more space to add malicious parts and you're still
| unable to check it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| https://mg.lol/blog/data-blocker-teardown/
|
| The normal PortaPow tells the device that it's a charger.
|
| The extra paranoid version with no components on the board
| will often limit charging, it depends on how the device
| treats a complete lack of data pins.
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, but if you use a data blocker with a microcontroller
| on it, you've just exchanged one company you need to
| trust for another.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Not exactly. You now have to trust one entity instead of
| many, and it's an extremely small chip that can't do
| much, and the hack would have to be built in at purchase
| time, and the hack would have to take over your phone to
| exfiltrate.
|
| But if you're worried then get one that has a resistor
| and only a resistor.
| stavros wrote:
| Aren't all these considerations exactly the same as for
| the cable with the screen?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It depends on what kind of attack you're trying to block.
|
| If you want to block attacks that use the external data
| pins, then a USB condom will keep you safe. Regardless of
| whether it has a chip in it.
|
| If you want to block standalone attacks from a malicious
| cable, then a USB condom wasn't going to help in the
| first place. For standalone attacks in particular, the
| risk from a chip-having condom is similar to the risk
| from a cable, but a cable can use bigger and scarier
| chips than the one in the PortaPow.
| kmoser wrote:
| Assuming you trust that device to not be malicious. It's
| turtles all the way down.
| transpute wrote:
| Minimal Portapow for visual verification,
| https://www.amazon.com/PortaPow-Pure-USB-Data-
| Blocker/dp/B07... Transparent casing, no-
| chip design and custom made USB connector with data pins
| visibly removed means you can be sure the blocker is
| secure.
| kennethrc wrote:
| I have a couple of these, one's in my laptop case, the other off
| a charger I carry everywhere. No less durable than a regular
| cable for a couple of years so far.
| justinator wrote:
| Any good ones that would essentially replace a USB load tester?
| I'm thinking applications where I want to monitor power draw from
| a battery pack to say: a phone, or power being produced from a
| small solar panel (small, off the grid stuff)
| theamk wrote:
| I've been using the cheapest aliexpress cable ($1.79 for "100W"
| model) for a few month, and it seems to work fine for 40W
| charging of my laptop. The display is extremely useful, as the
| charge light is hard to see when the laptop is in the bag.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > $1.79 for "100W" model
|
| The quotes made me laugh. So true. I can just imagine talking
| with a friend and they use air-quotes to describe the
| technical specs of any random item from AliExpress. Well
| said!
| transpute wrote:
| For comparison, a "something else" cable without display:
| https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable
|
| _> The O.MG Cable is a hand made USB cable with an advanced
| implant hidden inside. It is designed to allow your Red Team to
| emulate attack scenarios of sophisticated adversaries. Until now,
| a cable like this would cost $20,000 (ex: COTTONMOUTH-I). These
| cables will allow you to test new detection opportunities for
| your defense teams. They are also extremely impactful tools for
| teaching and training. Thanks to continual firmware updates, the
| resulting power, flexibility, and ease of use have made the O.MG
| Cable a favorite._
| xfitm3 wrote:
| This now has wifi in the elite version. I have one for research
| purposes.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > Due to the advanced capabilities of the O.MG Cable,
| regulations require that they are shipped "deactivated"
|
| Which "regulations" might those be?
| doe_eyes wrote:
| Probably some Paypal or AdWords ToS with their vague
| prohibitions on "hacking tools".
| hackernewds wrote:
| those are not regulations
| infogulch wrote:
| Payment processors are de-facto regulators.
| mopenstein wrote:
| That answer to various governments.
| transpute wrote:
| _> not regulations_
|
| merely existential threats for small business
| cosmojg wrote:
| Industry-imposed regulations (as opposed to government-
| imposed regulations) are still regulations, and payment
| processors have teeth.
| blowski wrote:
| "Blue tape", rather than "red tape".
| nopcode wrote:
| You'd need a license to export to most countries and show
| that you have controls in place that they are not sent to
| countries/companies/people on a blacklist/watchlist.
|
| This is true for anything cybersecurity related and more
| strict for "intrusion" tooling.
|
| Not sure about domestic sales though...
| karunamurti wrote:
| can't even reuse cable anymore, will increase cost and e-waste.
| smh.
| twostorytower wrote:
| And somebody will have Doom working on it soon!
| i_have_to_speak wrote:
| > The paranoid side of me suspects that a cable like this one
| would be an ideal place to hide a malicious chip.
|
| Why hide a malicious chip in a cable with display -- why not in
| one without a display? Wouldn't that be more, uh, malicious?
| gonesilent wrote:
| You can find them with full cell modems hidden in the cable end
| molding.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| It's hard to discern if you're serious or joking. Is that an
| actual thing? I couldn't find anything by googling
| verandaguy wrote:
| I haven't heard of cell modems in particular, but I've used
| O.MG cables (described and sold here:
| https://shop.hak5.org/products/omg-cable; I am unaffiliated
| with either Hak5 or the team behind O.MG cables) which can
| create an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network for management/C2 reasons.
|
| It's actually really easy to use (and almost scary, coming
| from never having used one of these).
|
| They _are_ quite pricey, but way less so than older cables
| used by security and jailbreak researchers in years past,
| which would run into the five figures.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| I'm aware that there's are local keylogger/payload cables
| around which let you transmit data short range.
|
| My surprise was specifically about the supposed cell
| modem within a 6EUR cable
| fencepost wrote:
| It's not that they're cheap cables - it's that they _look
| like_ cheap cables (or better, middling expensive higher-
| quality ones).
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| Yep - have a look at
| https://ha.cking.ch/s8_data_line_locator/
| kristopolous wrote:
| Someone selling $200 cables for $2 just to spy on people
| reminds me of those stories of people supposedly giving out
| $10 pot lollipops to random children on Halloween
| crote wrote:
| You're not going to sell them for $2 to random people on
| the street. You're going to sneakily replace the charging
| cord of some targeted $BIGCORP employee working in a
| Starbucks.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Since US doesnt have GDPR it would be the fiduciary duty to
| install mic's in all cables and record all conversations
| hansvm wrote:
| I'm all for some privacy protections, but doesn't 2-party
| consent cover that particular use case already? In CA, it
| swings a bit far the other way, and if you have a hidden
| mic recording a business lying through their teeth with the
| intent to defraud you, you might have a little wiggle room,
| but the recording is likely to be thrown out of any civil
| actions (and some criminal actions).
| jmhammond wrote:
| In Kansas, we're a 1-party consent state, which gets us
| back to the previous commenter.
|
| Now pardon me while I scoot these potted flowers closer
| to you...
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Don't you have to be party to the conversation to be
| 1-party? Should still be illegal to record one you're not
| a part of. (if such laws even apply in person rather than
| just over phones)
| creatonez wrote:
| I guess you can exfiltrate any data to nearby security cameras
| by randomly flashing sensitive bits every once in a while :)
| vasco wrote:
| Why would you do that with a display and visible light
| instead of a tiny antenna using basically any other part of
| the spectrum
| creatonez wrote:
| Good thing the FCC doesn't regulate the visible spectrum.
| (We are assuming these malicious people also face the wrath
| of the FCC but somehow not the CFAA... right? :P)
| vasco wrote:
| There's more parts of the spectrum you can freely use
| that would work here.
| godelski wrote:
| I believe their point was that if it is small enough to place a
| display it would be small enough to put a malicious chip
| inside.
|
| Then again, this person discovered these cables this year and
| they've been out for awhile. And the OMG cable has been out for
| a few years now, which does exactly what they are afraid of.
| Which of course could be done by state actors for much longer.
| torginus wrote:
| This reminds me of the time when I held a cookout in my
| backyard and one of the guests came in through the supposedly
| locked back door. I realized that my lock was broken as the
| bolt didn't engage, and hadn't for years.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Complexity usually makes it easier to hide stuff. Especially if
| the thing you want to hide and the thing you want to hide it in
| are highly similar.
| gumby wrote:
| > a cable like this one would be an ideal place to hide a
| malicious chip.
|
| USB cables already have an mpu in them unless they are simply USB
| 2 cables with a type C connector.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Due to the way the standards for power have gone there is
| substantial need for owning such a cable! Maybe when everything
| is USB C PD compatible and tested and works then devices might
| just charge at the right wattage as they are specified to. Alas
| so far I have had a lot of devices that refused to charge at
| anything higher than 7 watts despite USB C on both ends and a
| modern GAN 100W charger. The power standards for USB are a
| complete mess.
| rramadass wrote:
| > Due to the way the standards for power have gone there is
| substantial need for owning such a cable!
|
| More than this everybody (and in particular; "the common non-
| tech person") needs a powerful and feature rich "USB Power
| Meter". This and knowledge of a couple of equations (eg. P=IV)
| goes a long way in understanding how good a charger/battery is,
| how to prevent overheating problems during charging, whether
| fastcharging can be used and at what capability or not etc.
| Izkata wrote:
| Look for "power meter" if you want stuff like this. I bought this
| one a year ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B99Z2GJK/
|
| And this one for USB 3.0 four years ago:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019RHJRM8/
|
| Modern ones give a whole lot more information than the one in the
| article.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Yea I got one of these and found it very useful. So easy to get
| a USB cable that is secretly not to spec or otherwise
| dysfunctional and is making things charge slow. (Most common:
| 5W when it should be ~20W.)
| geepytee wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why did you buy a power meter? Does it help
| with troubleshooting hardware?
| accrual wrote:
| They can be handy. One situation where it saved the day - my
| friend has a partially broken USB-C port on their phone that
| only charges when the cable is _just right_. The battery had
| died so there was no way to see if it was charging or not.
| Plugged in a USB-C inline power meter and we moved the cable
| around until the meter showed current, then we carefully set
| it down so it would finish charging. :)
| gizmo686 wrote:
| I've had issues with USB devices drawing more current then
| the port could put out. Without a power meter, it looks like
| the device just doesn't work (although the Linux kernel logs
| typically show a device disconnect event).
|
| With the meter, you can see a current peak up to a nice round
| value, followed by a voltage drop. The low refresh rate makes
| it not nearly as clear as with an oscilloscope, but once you
| know what to look for, it is easy enough to pick up. (And if
| you really want to, you can get one with a breakout to
| connect scope probes).
|
| If this is an issue you run into often, I'd also suggest a
| usb variable load tester to check exactly how much current a
| port will output.
| tedunangst wrote:
| I have a gaming laptop for which noise and heat are directly
| correlated with power draw, but not always so obviously
| correlated with graphics settings, and having a power readout
| on the cable let me see what different low vs medium shadows
| had, etc.
| rramadass wrote:
| Suppose you plugged in your Phone/Tablet and it is not
| charging or charging very slowly etc. Problems might be;
|
| 1) The battery is dead and cannot be charged.
|
| 2) The cable is a non-charging one or internally damaged/dead
| or non-fastcharging or with limited fastcharging capability.
|
| 3) The charger is not capable enough to supply the max
| current that the device can use to charge itself.
|
| To troubleshoot the problem, first check the Voltage/Current
| specs for your device, make sure that the charger
| plug/battery can provide the same voltage but same or higher
| amount of current. Then use a USB power meter to see what is
| actually being drawn (or not) to figure out where and what
| the problem might be. One key point to note is that for
| fastcharging all the links in the chain i.e. charger, cable
| and device should support it.
| Izkata wrote:
| I don't remember why I got the older one, but the USB-C one
| was mostly just curiosity - I'd heard that wireless charging
| was inefficient compared to wired charging and wanted to see
| how much.
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| Some? Most? All? of them have extensible/externalizable Lua
| logging/scripting capabilities?
|
| https://www.avhzy.com/html/product-detail/avhzy-c3-usb-c-3-1...
|
| >PC suite for advanced online data logging, PD listening,
| online fast-charge trigger, and firmware upgrade.
| rramadass wrote:
| +1.
|
| This is a great and powerful USB power meter which is highly
| recommended. Make sure that you read and keep the manual
| handy since there are so many functions (and heed the
| warnings listed there). There are other cheaper
| versions/clones of this on Aliexpress which may also be good.
|
| Another great gadget (no USB-C though) is "PortaPow Premium
| USB + DC Power Monitor/Multimeter/DC Ammeter" which is a neat
| little device - https://lygte-
| info.dk/review/USBmeter%20Portapow%20UK.html Checkout the
| reviews on Amazon too for further details.
| Animats wrote:
| The original USB-C spec called for cables to have optional
| displays to show why the cable had problems connecting. Did
| anyone every see one of those?
| LegitShady wrote:
| Never in my life.
| toast0 wrote:
| Could just print 'the spec is too complex' on all cables. And
| save the expense of a display.
| crote wrote:
| Did they?
|
| The only thing which comes to mind is the mandatory "Billboard
| Class" support for USB-C adapters, which allows them to inform
| the device they're attached to that negotiation has failed. But
| that's not really anything physical on the adapter itself, it's
| essentially a super-simple read-only micro flashdrive.
| omgtehlion wrote:
| Couple years ago I have ordered a charger from ali, and similar
| cable was added "as a gift". Pretty neat to quickly identify
| charging issues with various devices.
|
| Seems like these cables are (were) dirt-cheap.
| lallysingh wrote:
| So shall we expect the USB protocol to go encrypted? The USB
| committee (I don't know their actual name) can act as a root CA.
|
| It doesn't take a lot of compute to encrypt at my typing rate.
| I'd expect high transfer rate devices to probably already have
| the hardware (e.g everyone at rest).
| transpute wrote:
| There was a 2016 draft proposal for USB-C authentication,
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/10251/usbc-authentication-ann...
| crote wrote:
| It's not just a draft, the data required for a lot of this is
| already being included in cables currently being sold. I'm
| not aware of it actually being _used_ , though.
| lkois wrote:
| I had one of these and quite liked it. Then one day I plugged my
| phone in before bed as a million times before and the cable
| display popped and started emitting smoke.
| metadat wrote:
| Bummer, guess it was only rated for 1 million plug-ins. (:
| Helithumper wrote:
| You're not alone, this is the only type of USB cable i've had
| that has smoked out. Loud noise, little plume.
| dnpp123 wrote:
| Same here. Those killed a couple of my (expensive) devices.
| Strongly advise against it.
| jajko wrote:
| Chargers, cables, batteries - you literally get what you pay
| for. In this category, the ultimate risk is nothing less than
| burning down whole house. I ain't rich enough for that cheap
| crapware. Anker it is for me.
| zygentoma wrote:
| Isn't Anker the definition of cheap crapware (sold under a
| brand name)?
| bzzzt wrote:
| They are not that cheap, and most stuff I've seen from
| them works as advertised.
| jajko wrote:
| This is news to me and doesn't confirm my own experience.
| Ie their pretty basic 65W wall charger is much better
| than 65W usb-c chargers from both HP and Dell they give
| to their laptops - much smaller and doesn't heat up at
| all with full day work from it, plastics are really solid
| so whole device just oozes quality, compared to
| _properly_ cheap stuff from say aliexpress claiming the
| same.
|
| Their 20,000 mah battery charger works exactly as
| advertised, has exactly the charge we expect, keeps
| working few years after purchase just as new.
|
| So, to end suspense - what are actually high end
| manufacturer(s) in this area? I don't mean gucci-style
| appearance or some useless branding inflating the price,
| I mean actual internals.
| andenacitelli wrote:
| I don't closely follow the space, but Anker has always
| seemed like reasonable quality at a reasonable price.
| Maybe I'm easily marketed to or something. But I've had
| quite a few adapters and cables and such from them and
| have never had an issue.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This comment needs to be higher up. Yikes.
|
| Did it destroy peripherals for you too?
| hddherman wrote:
| Thanks for the heads-up, I'll look at mine in a different light
| from now on.
| oniony wrote:
| Yeah, darkness, as the screen's blown.
| ruph123 wrote:
| What I like for USB-C cables is not only a tester that tests how
| much power it can transmit but also what data rates. I wish I
| could get a device where I could plug in all my cables and it
| would rate them for me. Such a device probably exists and it
| probably costs thousands of dollars.
| exikyut wrote:
| You might be able to get partway there by setting up
| thunderbolt networking between two endpoints. The caveat is
| that USB 4.x is still new enough it may require a significant
| time sink to get working at ~40Gbps et al, so your testing
| wouldn't be able to scale that high. But you can go to 10Gbps
| without too much effort:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39003469
|
| USB is quite the rabbithole, with a lot of functionality often
| hidden: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39470381 - my
| takeaway from this is that "the PHY in the controller is 99% of
| the SERDES you wish you had, you just have to figure out how to
| make it cooperate"
|
| The chipsets found attached to ARM devices and SoCs etc may be
| easier to poke around at, but they are likely to either be
| expensive or just USB 3.0. :)
|
| Then there are devices like the FNB58 and the Power-Z KM003C
| that interrogate the controller chip in the cable and tell what
| charging protocols the cable supports, and also measure
| practical charging voltage and current (and you can acid test
| chargers using USB charger dummy loads). These devices don't
| test the cable's speed though. (On that note,
| https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1b5wgc6/how_t...
| - that subreddit may also be interesting)
| nimbleal wrote:
| Would plugging in your fastest external SSD and then using a
| hard drive read/write tester achieve some of the same ends?
| I've done that before with Blackmagic's disk speed test app and
| found it useful
| idatum wrote:
| > It is a bit stiff and hard to work with,
|
| Current USB-C cables that connect to my docking station have a
| rigid connector end that puts mechanical stress on my laptop's
| port. I have the habit of moving my laptop around on my desk, and
| that connector end is a lever that pulls it out of the port.
|
| Worse, it physically wore out one of the ports where it became
| almost unusable (replacing requires an entire new board).
|
| Let's not put more stuff on these cables so they don't act more
| like like pliers instead of actual cables.
| calini wrote:
| I think reliability is the Achilles heel of USB C regardless. I
| don't see those having a much bulkier head than a normal USB C
| power cable though.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I hope it stops there and we will have no cables standard with
| giving a tune when connected and disconnected, perhaps beeping at
| each 100M transferred or such. Too many gadgets and appliences
| want to be in the center of our attention and notifying us about
| all more or less significant actions of their life - like people
| on Facebook - by giving sound, flashing, sending messages to the
| phone and my wife's email and whatnot. I prefer my cables staying
| in the attention background by doing their job.
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" That's when I found out that there exist cables that have
| little screens on them that show the power consumption of the
| connected device."_
|
| Useful to get an idea how much your USB light draws and to check
| if your phone is really fast charging. I'd be careful with the
| numbers when the USB drives a more complicated load. Measuring
| the true power consumption of a microcontroller is surprisingly
| hard.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| How can measuring a DC load be complicated?
|
| Sure the load can be very spiky and you have to sample fast
| enough to accurately integrate them. but that's doable given
| sufficient caps. Of course you'd end up with some filtered
| average instead of the instantaneous power, but that would be
| no good for a text display anyway.
| weinzierl wrote:
| When your range is from nano amps during sleep to spikes of
| several tens of amps you will not find a voltmeter with a
| range big enough to work with a single shunt. You need
| several shunts and switch between them very fast. That's what
| devices like the Joulscope do and why they are expensive.
| matsemann wrote:
| Does it actually measure load, or just display the negotiated
| power?
| calini wrote:
| It seems to measure load, it instantly responds to me hitting
| the boost button on my soldering iron.
| theogravity wrote:
| I went through two of these kind of USB-C cables bought from
| Amazon. They both broke within a matter of months. I'd wait until
| a reputable brand sells them.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well... Data are useful if we can collect and process them
| automatically, a display means you can read instantaneously
| (essentially useless 99% of the time) but not store and analyze.
|
| Some instantaneous data are useful, for instance before going out
| in the morning a quick look at the thermometer might be useful.
| Many others are not. For me a more expensive cable just to have a
| display on it is useless, eventually collected consumption data
| per device and makes a nice Grafana dashboard of them might be
| useful or just wasted resources, but at least they go on a
| flexible machine I already own so it's not an extra hw costs.
| theodric wrote:
| These power meter cables have been out for a couple years, but
| it's only recently that manufacturers have caught on that
| previously the display would be upside down for most(?) people
| (or 100% of people who are me, anyway) when plugged in on the
| left side of the machine. Which I find hilarious, because the
| pictures in the AliExpress listings always showed the cable
| plugged in on the left, display upside down, like it was meant to
| be that way.
|
| My ThinkPad only has left USB-C, my M1 Air only has left USB-C,
| and I'm accustomed to left power from years of MacBooks.
| rjh29 wrote:
| USB-C has no orientation so I don't understand. You can just
| flip the cable.
| udevrandom wrote:
| Flipping the cable would put the cables power display on the
| underside of your machine.
|
| The little built-in screen on the cable is only on one side.
| MissTake wrote:
| And? The GP talks about it being upside down when plugged
| in to the left hand side of a device.
|
| Given that USB-C is Bi-directional, flipping it over would
| show the screen...
| theodric wrote:
| You're suggesting I plug it in upside down so I can't
| read it, or plug it in on the right side of my machines
| which have no ports on the right side?
| rjh29 wrote:
| I own this cable. You literally put the cable in the left
| side at an orientation that has the display facing
| upwards. I feel like I'm missing something!
|
| It's bidirectional so you can just twist the cable so the
| display is facing up..
| technofiend wrote:
| The cables have an led which assumes a single orientation for
| text. You can only read the text right side up if it's
| plugged in one specific way.
| nottorp wrote:
| I might eventually get some of these from the toy budget.
|
| However, how bright is that display? Enough to read in bed while
| your phone is charging on the nightstand? :)
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's super bright, I have to put cloth over it to help me
| sleep.
| sligor wrote:
| If only device vendors clearly displayed the rate of charge
| making such cable useless...
| rjh29 wrote:
| Useful for lots of things - my earbuds have a really vague
| charging light, but if it says 0.00w I know it's done. I have a
| Nintendo Switch Pro Controller with a dodgy connection too, and
| it lets me know it's actually charging.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I'd be very wary of a $7 cable that claims to be USB4.
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| Does usb4 require any circuitry in the cable? I'd expect a
| 20-odd connector cable to be available for $7 (direct from
| china) pretty easily. I haven't bought many, but the best type
| C cables (usb3) I ever bought were EUR2.12 each.
| Havoc wrote:
| Rather buy a usb c power meter. They show amps voltage and watt
| so helps troubleshoot usb c stuff
| calini wrote:
| I have both and I find the cable just as useful. Also, if for
| some reason you don't want it there, for example it is a bit
| bright for a nightstand, you can run it in reverse and it stays
| off.
| skywhopper wrote:
| In terms of the risk of a "malicious chip", that has nothing to
| do with the display or USB-C. Any cable could have a malicious
| chip in it at this point. USB-C cables require some chips to
| function so even if you take it apart you won't know for sure
| what its little chips are doing. Good luck out there!
| yismail wrote:
| Neat I remember seeing these on Marques Brownlee's channel a
| couple times too.
|
| [0] https://x.com/MKBHD/status/1478413987259822081
| calini wrote:
| I've used some by an Aliexpress brand called Soopii for some time
| now. I broke one myself, the rest are still going strong after ~2
| years, and power testing with an actual USB C tester, they're
| quite accurate.
| doubleg72 wrote:
| Is this really that innovative? I have been using one of these
| cables with a display in it for like three years now. I wouldn't
| say it's a new thing.
| butz wrote:
| If only USB-C port was more sturdy.
| JohnFen wrote:
| So they can make these, but manufacturers can't seem to figure
| out how to put a clear label on a cable that will tell you what
| flavor it is.
| connerchyung wrote:
| they make disposable vapes with display now too
|
| https://vapejuice.com/blogs/vape-juice-news/disposable-vape-...
| TwoNineFive wrote:
| These have been on the market for years. I have a bunch of them.
|
| They are a bad gimic in every way.
|
| They generate heat. They waste power. They create light
| pollution. They are distracting. Their measurement capabilities
| are often very limited or mediocre or don't update quickly. And
| finally they often burn out and stop working anyway.
|
| If you want a USB power meter, buy one for $10 or less.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-17 23:01 UTC)