
Google engineer finds USB Type-C cable that’s so bad it fried his Chromebook - luastoned
http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/02/google-engineer-finds-usb-type-c-cable-thats-so-bad-it-fried-his-chromebook-pixel/
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uptown
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11021665)

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dawnbreez
I'm not an electrical engineer, but wiring something other than ground to the
ground pin is...well, I suspect it's straight-up malicious, although why you'd
want to do something like this, I don't know.

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Someone1234
> I suspect it's straight-up malicious

Hanlon's razor: "never assume malice when stupidity will suffice."

It doesn't even make rational sense for a business creating cables to
intentionally damage equipment. They'd just get sued, tons of bad PR/reviews,
and gain nothing obvious.

More likely they just had production line issues, lack of QA, and poor
training for staff. Resulted in malfunctioning equipment being sold. Most
people that build cables don't understand how the cable works, they just
follow instructions they're given (e.g. "red cable into position #1,
white/black cable into #2, yellow into #3," etc).

Ultimately this might just be one incorrectly assembled cable; but the issue
here is that they don't QA cables before they leave the shop. Electrical
testing on most cables is quick, inexpensive, and automatable. They likely
saved a few cent per cable by skipping it, but in the cable industry that
might be significant savings.

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latj
My money is on incompetence too, but it certainly could be malicious. For
example, imagine a small company run by two frat brother entrepreneur guys.
They bribe some factory supervisor in Taiwan for the designs to a product.
They cant understand anything about it but they decide to tweak it to make it
cheaper. Their greatly underpaid sole engineer discovers his girlfriend is
cheating with the main entrepreneur guy. This is pretty disgusting because
engineer man is a good guy and main guy has an underage girlfriend living in a
plywood loft built inside a storage unit. One day engineer man says "fuck this
I'm going to be a fucking farmer now". He modifies the designs to suck before
grabbing a check from the middle of the stack in the printer and heads out the
door. Six months later the factory in Taiwan wants the designs for the new
product. Main guy digs around on the file system and finds the modified stuff.
His new engineer just started and isnt really an engineer but rather an
engineering student- he says he will "do the needful". Instead of looking over
the designs new engineer plays rocket league and smokes weed. Another six
months later engineer guy is growing organic carrots and heritage lambs with
his new gf who has kind of fucked up feet and not great teeth but she's nice
to him and is good at farm chores. At night he goes to read
/r/girlsgoodatfarmchores and at some point sees a link to a video of a cable
frying the shit out of the thing its plugged into. "Huh, I really ought to
clean this shit out from under my fingernails" he thinks.

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obelisk_
>This is pretty disgusting because engineer man is a good guy and main guy has
an underage girlfriend living in a plywood loft built inside a storage unit.
One day engineer man says "fuck this I'm going to be a fucking farmer now".

If engineer man does that, then he is _not_ a good guy.

If engineer man does that, then he is a scummy asshole.

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rrauenza
You've mis-parsed the parent. His ...story contains an 'engineering man' and a
'main man.'

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obelisk_
Ah, yes, I see that now. Thanks for pointing that out.

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josteink
Does anyone else find it concerning that our new and best technology is so
fragile that even the slightest fezz-up in what should be a passive signal-
cable can cause our otherwise state of the art equipment to fry itself?

Is reliability, durability and robustness _nowhere_ to be found in any single
spec for our new standards?

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sharpneli
It was not a slight fezz-up. It was miswiring in a power cable. It's like
electrician wiring the live pin into ground pin and then wondering why one
gets electrocuted by so many devices.

No specification can defend against a hostile, or sufficiently incompetent,
implementer.

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nemik
It's what fuses and diodes are used for. You know how when you write a program
you never trust user-input? This should be the same thing, but physically. A
well-designed USB port wouldn't fry the computer like it did.

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sharpneli
There is a limit on how much user malice should be tolerated vs the cost
(additional components used, larger devices etc etc) to implement all of that.
Especially as someone can always just rip the device open and circumvent all
that causing breakage. How many stops there should be versus malicious usage?

USB devices can handle things like the ground and voltage being shorted, as
that can happen in normal use through wear and tear. However the flip of
ground and voltage lines can only happen if it is done intentionally. As an
example either by malicious user or by a factory just randomly mashing wires
together and then lying to the customers that they're selling an USB cable.

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fnordfnordfnord
Or an untrained or too-tired worker puts the assembly in the jig upside-down
and pushes the button. ker-chunk. Then the worker throws the cable in the good
bin because he gets paid by the kg of cables produced, and fired if the bad
bin fills up.

It's 5A, they could install a polyfuse, or they could monitor the current and
turn it off with a transistor.

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qb45
As I already explained in the previous thread about this cable, current
limiting _is_ implemented in USB hosts and chargers and it _doesn 't_ help in
this case. If the powered device sinks more than 5A of reverse current, it
already is dead.

For protection from reverse voltage, the powered device needs a circuit which
detects negative voltage and disconnects power (which would easily consume few
cm² of PCB area) or a very beefy clamping diode to shunt the negative current
into ground before it reaches other circuits and pray that charger's current
limiter trips before the diode overheats and vaporizes.

And even if you do that, some idiot can still make a cable which applies -5V
to some data line instead of the power line, so that your whole unobtanium
Intel southbridge chip goes poof. Are you going to multiply the protection
circuit by the number of wires in USB3 cable and at the same time make it pass
insanely fast signals without distortion?

At some point you have to give up and simply assume that cable vendors are at
least _minimally_ competent.

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pmarreck
[https://usbccompliant.com/](https://usbccompliant.com/) is one output of the
engineer's work, for anyone curious

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hagope
I find my micro USB type-B connectors all eventually fail, and I've been
combing through Amazon to find a reliable cable manufacturer, any suggestions?

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coffeedrinker
Anker.

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hagope
I like their charging products, but the cables have been failing at the
connector...

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kimdouglasmason
Which kind of cable? If it's micro USB, they're designed to fail under low
amounts of stress (thus sparing the much more difficult to replace port).

Unless handled with kid gloves, Micro USB cables from all manufacturer break
easily.

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Kiro
I'm trying to find info about SurjTech with no luck. Does this company even
exist?

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paulgb
I've noticed that a lot of "brands" on Amazon, especially for cheap
electronics, seem to only exist on Amazon. I assume people are buying things
in bulk from Alibaba or similar and sticking their label on it.

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jacobolus
Not necessarily. Here’s a fascinating story about one Amazon retailer:
[http://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-
amazon...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-amazon-
whisperer)

~~~
edc117
This is kinda cool. At first I thought 'ugh, bottom feeder, must be cheap
knockoff crap', but the more I read about the business the more respect I got
for how he runs it. The fast feedback loop, the quick product iteration...he's
going to eat more than one big name's margins. Thanks for sharing.

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jonawesomegreen
I wonder if he will be able to recover any of his losses from this company? I
know he is reviewing these cables, so hes taking a certain amount of risk, but
imagine if someone bought this cable for their new device. I would be pretty
pissed if I bought a new device and a new USB cord to charge it and poof out
goes the magical smoke and my USB didn't work anymore.

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sharpneli
He might have a case. It was sold as an USB cable but clearly it is not
actually an USB cable. False advertisement if not anything else.

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mikeash
Establishing liability seems easy. Winning a judgment in small claims court
ought to be straightforward. Actually collecting on that judgment could be a
challenge depending on where the company is located and how they do business.

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jonawesomegreen
I agree. That is really what I was wondering. Will he be able to see any money
from this.

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DannyBee
I think this is a little far to go to try to get a new laptop outside of
whatever Google's laptop upgrade/refresh policy is.

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yaur
I wonder how many of the other products using the exact same marketing copy[1]
are the same part.

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+combination+of+sturdy...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+combination+of+sturdy+construction+with+a+flexible+jacket+and+USB+3.1+Type+C+connector+with+molded+strain+relief+provides+a+cable+with+reliable+performance+and+long+life.%22)

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bb88
Surjtech. Aka surge-tech.

It sounds like they were trying to be honest at least.

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sergiotapia
I thought type-c was supposed to be the end-all compatibility design. You buy
any type-c and it works to spec.

What gives?

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mikeash
What gives is that this was not actually a type C cable, but an evil, broken
cable mislabeled as a USB-C cable.

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Arnt
Right... but two questions stick their head up and want answers:

First, USB outlets are supposed to have a bit of a fuse. Why was _this_
upfuckage so spectacular?

Second, why do USB type C ports/cables have 24 pins if there are only 4 wires?
I can understand having a couple of extra ones for type/orientation detection
and a doubling to support reversion, but 24 is a lot.

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zyxley
> Why was this upfuckage so spectacular?

Because it had power wired to ground. This would be incredibly absurd in ANY
variety of powered cable.

This is not merely "noncompliant with spec", it's "actively dangerous because
it could start a fire and kill somebody".

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Arnt
I see. Of course it would be very difficult to defend against that. Thanks.

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Sami_Lehtinen
Sounds strange. AFAIK USB shouldn't get fried without external power source.
So the Chromebook was bad, not the cable? Down votes? Did I misunderstand
something? Just comment with reference that I'm wrong and I'm very happy. Why
bother building 'USB Killer' if simple paper clip would fry the motherboard?

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skj
The external power source was presumably a wall outlet, since he was testing
its ability to charge.

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gravypod
Well that is an entirely different story. I thought that the cable was plugged
into a phone and his chromebook (Just like parent).

I was concerned that this might be a flaw in the chrome book, not the cable.
The USB bus should be fine to use such a cable, charging is another thing.

When you add the external power source, that completely changes the game.

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digi_owl
Best i understand, the guy involved works for Google on USB support in their
software and hardware.

What got fried was a Chromebook Pixel. A Chromebook designed and sold by
Google directly.

He has been using it and various test instruments to check up on A-to-C
adapter cables, as they need to have a specific resistor in them to indicate
their nature.

