
Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work - evmar
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A25GROL6KJV3QG/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp
======
DiabloD3
I see no reason why to buy anything but Anker.

I once tried to purposely destroy an Anker MicroUSB cable (bought a 5 pack
that had three 3ft, one 6ft, one 1ft, didn't need the 1ft), by grabbing the
head of it with clamping pliers and yanking the fuck out of it with the cable
wrapped around my hand, and bending it to near 180 degrees repeatedly for
about 5 minutes.

I could not kill it without straight up taking wire cutters to it, which I
decided not to do.

The cable still works perfectly, and sits in my junk drawer for when I need to
plug something into the front of my case and leave the thing sitting on top of
the computer.

Literally any other brand? Most I would have been able to rip the head off the
cable after the first few yanks, the few that survived that would have broken
the wire pairs inside either from that or from the repeated 180 degree bend.

Remember those original Monoprice USB cables we all bought and loved back in
the day? Those didn't survive that abuse, and Monoprice cables have only
gotten worse then. And the AmazonBasics USB cables (that I recommend for non-
MicroUSB cables (only because Anker doesn't make them, only MicroUSB, Type C,
and Lightning))? Don't survive that level of abuse either.

Anker also has the best damned USB chargers for walls and cars I've ever seen
(heaviest USB chargers I've ever had, no coil whine, doesn't EZ-Bake itself,
shuts off completely when nothing is plugged in), they're just perfectly
glorious.

~~~
mathewpeterson
Just keep in mind that all these products are mass produced and are subject to
imperfections. Really, the only thing that matters is how good their customer
support is and Anker is probably better than most but they still have a long
way to go.

I say this because I had one of their USB power ports that my children use to
charge their iPads (2x 4th gen) that overheated and burnt up[1]. I completed
the contact form on their website and used keywords like "fire" but it took my
tweet to get their attention. Even after that, their response was fairly slow.
After many weeks and me even shipping the defective product back, they only
offered to refund me the cost of the unit, send a replacement power port,
Anker brand lightning cables (to replace Apple genuine ones - and those
broke), and send me an older generation battery pack. In the end, I did not
pursue the replacements because I no longer had faith in their products or
brand.

After all of this, I will no longer be purchasing or recommending Anker
products.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/mathewpeterson/status/603337986495807489](https://twitter.com/mathewpeterson/status/603337986495807489)

~~~
IE6
IMHO there is no reason to ever be loyal to a brand anymore. Brand names are
sold, the same two products are built or assembled by different
subcontractors, the same two products contain bits and pieces manufactured by
different companies at different times... There really is no reliable way to
choose the best product without doing some research and often times you have
to rely on enthusiasts or experts since frankly it's impossible to know
everything about every product...

~~~
Hello71
Their point is not that the product was low quality (although it was), but
that the brand's resolution of the problem was of low quality.

Although it may not be possible to control an entire production chain, it is
entirely possible to control the customer service department or at least the
refund policy.

------
bkmartin
The average consumer has no idea if one of these cables will actually do what
they proclaim. The only way to really know is when other customers review the
product, which we know is barely useful most of the time due to fraudulent
reviews. Great job on the part of this Google engineer for writing such clear
and technical reviews of the products.

Now that an expert has called some of these cables out as not adhering to the
spec shouldn't they be taken off of Amazon? Should they be reprimanded for
false advertisement?

~~~
x0x0
And in a nutshell, that's why people buy stuff from apple. imo, their brand is
"here's a good thing, and we promise it will work". Amazon's is "you're on
your own, but it's really fucking cheap!" That's not to say amazon doesn't
have good customer service, but the whole thing is still shit. I just wanted a
[cable|dongle|hdmi adapter|battery|plant spray|charger] that was what it
claimed to be and worked correctly the _first fucking time._ The fact that you
have a good return policy doesn't fix the fact that I still don't have X.

~~~
bengoodger
Funny story. I wanted to buy a cheap iPad for my son. I could have got one
from Amazon but after hearing so many stories about scams or refurb devices or
devices with someone else's state on it I decided not to deal with that
headache and ordered direct from the Apple website.

Upon turning on the device for the first time it showed a screen saying it was
controlled by the LDS Church and wouldn't proceed through guided setup until I
acknowledged that. After some time on the phone with customer service, we
determined there was no way to remove this configuration. I ended up having to
return it to an Apple store. The rep there said "yeah that happens sometimes"
(someone pulled from the wrong pile in fulfillment most likely). So sometimes
you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

If anything Amazon's customer service is better - to resolve an issue like
this for items they ship I don't have to drive anywhere, just put the box back
on my front doorstep. I wish they would make it clearer when you're buying
things from them, and would do a better job of associating compatible
products. This seems like data they should be able to have, and UI they should
be able to build.

~~~
scintill76
Am I correct in assuming this is some kind of enterprise managed provisioning?
I am surprised that they both ship it that way, and that it can't be removed.
I guess Apple doesn't care about killing resale value (in the case of it being
unremovable), but you'd think these kind of screw-ups would be a reason not to
ship it this way. Do the restrictions extend deep into the hardware, or are
they just saving the enterprise customer like 3 minutes per device pushing a
profile over USB?

~~~
EvanAnderson
It's the Apple Device Enrollment Program
([http://www.apple.com/business/dep/](http://www.apple.com/business/dep/)) and
it allows enterprises to exercise "mobile device management" at the time of
device activation. Apple says that once devices are enrolled they can't be
removed (because, presumably, rows cannot be deleted from a database after
being added... >sigh<).

~~~
giovannibajo1
It's not that easy. DEP is meant to also protect private property, so it piggy
backs on activation lock to bind a device to a certain (company) Apple ID.
Obviously, there must also be no way for any person to social engineer an
Apple Care representative over the phone to get DEP lifted from a device, and
this is why Apple Care can't do that, period. The only possible way to remove
that is going through the private key bound to the MDM for that decide, the
same MDM that requested DEP while buying the device in the first place.

(Obviously, much like for activation lock, it is indeed possible that someone
with "root access" \- so to speak - to Apple systems would be able to manually
disable DEP; but the point is that this possibility isn't exposed on any user-
level user interface)

~~~
Dylan16807
>Obviously, there must also be no way for any person to social engineer an
Apple Care representative over the phone to get DEP lifted from a device, and
this is why Apple Care can't do that, period.

That's not obvious to me. Those same people _can_ be social engineered into
giving someone access to your data, which is an order of magnitude worse than
a device wrongfully moving accounts.

------
radiorental
What I find interesting here is that Benson is essentially using his employer
as a reputation guarantor.

I guess depending on the company's HR that could fall either way of

a) This is great, we're getting nice PR

b) Mr Benson, we need to have a quiet word about what it is you do here and
what Google is not in the business of.

Really interesting.

edit: I assumed this is part of his job. I just find the publishing of the
result along with Google's name interesting.

If/when I evaluate software for a solution as part of my job, I wouldnt dream
of publishing my findings and referencing my employer - but I like what Benson
has done.

~~~
ryan-c
My assumption is that he's working on some sort of project where he's buying
many cables on Google's dime to test them, then reporting his results on
Amazon.

My worry would be the cables that get good reviews being switched out for
crappy cables down the line. I've had problems with this for cables and
adapters before - I'll re-order from Amazon and get a slightly different
product that is not 100% compatible with the old one.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Isn't there some kind of SKU/ISBN-like identifier that you could use to
prevent that? Enforcing consistency would be tricky, but there should be
certain quantifiable properties, especially when proper specifications are
involved, to rate against.

~~~
duskwuff
Unfortunately, there is not. Amazon will often group similar unbranded
products together under the same ASIN.

(This was a particularly serious issue for Arduino a few years ago, when
Amazon started listing genuine Arduino products under the same ASIN as third-
party clones: [https://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the-
clones/](https://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the-clones/))

------
downandout
This is cool, but being from the online marketing world, I can already see
people copying this in bad ways. "Hi this is Tom, I am from iPhone Development
Team 6 here at Apple and we have been testing [product] in our labs. In our
opinion, [affiliate link to other releated product] is far better because this
product [technical critique that few will understand but will serve to bolster
reviewer's credibility, can be copied from random highly technical review
site]".

If this is going to be a thing, Amazon should offer the ability to certify
that the user at least has an email address for the company they claim they
are with (@apple.com, @google.com etc) and show a "certified Googler" or
similar logo next to their name.

~~~
ryandrake
You can pretty safely bet your life this is going to happen if this guy gets
any press for what he's doing. Within a month or so, every tech product on
Amazon will have glowing reviews by "Josh from Microsoft" or "Brian from
Intel"

------
fpgaminer
The current rhetoric when it comes to the failings of online reviews is to
point at fraudulent reviews. I posit that, rather, it's the lack of weighting
reviews by the expertise of the reviewers. Clearly the reviews of a hardware
engineer at Google should have more weight to them than an average consumer
(on products like this), because as bkmartin points out, the average consumer
has no idea as to the true quality of a product. Perhaps the cable does work
for them. Perhaps the cable mostly works, but the wire gauge is under spec and
1 out of 100 people end up with a fire. That won't be reflected in the overall
rating of a product.

Case in point, the Juiced Systems product that Benson reviewed as 2 stars is
currently listed as an overall 5/5 stars. In Amazon's defence Benson's review
is currently displayed at the top of the reviews. So any shoppers that go
through the effort of reading the reviews will quickly see it.

But this product shouldn't be rated 5/5 overall, and because it is, many
consumers who can't be bothered to check the content of the reviews will be
burned.

This, to me, is a greater problem than fraudulent reviews. Fraudulent reviews
can be solved by getting more regular customers to review products they buy.
Uber is a great example of UX design that gets customers to review the quality
of their service nearly every time. But even if Amazon or other retailers
achieve a higher rate of reviews by actual costumers, the non-expert bias will
remain.

Of course the trick is, how do we determine which reviewers are experts? Most
review systems have a helpfulness rating on each review which could be used to
weight reviews in the overall average. But that's only a proxy for an expert
rating, is easily cheated, and it's harder to get customers to rate reviews
than it is to get them to at least review the product.

~~~
semiel
When buying something online, I make a habit of reading a couple of the
negative reviews. Sometimes they're, "I meant to buy a toaster, and misclicked
on this television instead. Makes poor toast. 2/5." But sometimes they're more
like, "It worked great for two years, and then became sentient and strangled
my pet fish. 2/5" Rating distributions only tell you part of the story.

~~~
asddubs
another really common thing is people rating the shipping instead of the
product in their negative reviews

~~~
atourgates
Though with some products this is helpful. I was just looking at air
compressors on Amazon, and there were a few models that seemed to arrive
damaged in the vast majority of reviews. Given that feedback, I might pay a
bit of a premium to buy one locally.

~~~
aninhumer
Perhaps, but it would still be far more helpful to tie that information to the
distributor instead of the product. For all you know, those reviews were all
due to a different distributor, and the one your were looking at would have
been fine.

------
lchengify
These reviews took me back (and made me laugh). They have the same to-the-
point-and-technically-correct tone as code reviews internal to Google.

In all seriousness though, these are important for a non-obvious reason: Nexus
6x devices don't ship with USB2-USB3 adapters (they only have a USB3 cable
with a wall charger).

So ... anyone who wants to hook up their Nexus 6x to a laptop will almost
certainly to Amazon to buy a cable. This is what I did last week, and just
today I discovered that certain cables do not quick charge.

Benson Leung, you are doing the lord's work. May future Nexus 6x owners
benefit from your expertise.

~~~
voltagex_
What I can't work out is am I going to damage my new 5X with any of these
cables? There's a limited number that'll ship to Australia

~~~
pgeorgi
You might damage the other end of the connection if the 5X considers it
alright to draw 3A (because the cable says so) but the other end isn't
prepared to deal with that.

Generally speaking, USB cables won't make the receiving end request more than
they can handle. It's always about the power source.

------
Albright
…And on ones that do. Looks very useful for weeding out actual quality from
the muddle. Would love to see someone doing this kind of work with other types
of cables, too.

~~~
noobermin
Reading the headline, it sounded like astroturfing. Instead, he's being
helpful and providing some very useful information from his experience as an
engineer from google itself. What a thoughful fellow!

~~~
maxerickson
In one comment thread he does suggest that buying cables from the Play store
would be safer.

~~~
mikeash
It's probably true, since the Play store only sells one variety of cable, and
Google has probably actually vetted it. In which case I can only see that
suggestion as a helpful bit of advice for avoiding problems.

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah, no pitchfork in hand here, but I also wouldn't be surprised if Amazon
didn't appreciate that sort of activity.

~~~
mikeash
For sure. I'd hope they'll be self-aware enough to realize that it would be
crappy to yank the reviews or punish the reviewer for recommending another
store where the products aren't broken when Amazon is full of broken products.
But I wouldn't be very confident of that.

~~~
vidarh
I don't think Amazon worries about bad reviews, as long as they don't see
_only_ bad reviews. Bad reviews create trust in the reviews: Seeing bad
reviews makes me reasonably certain that products with problems will get
called out most of the time.

And often I end up _buying_ products with bad reviews in preference to those
with perfect reviews because bad reviews gives me faith a product has been
reviewed "enough" by real people, and often the issues brought up are not
important to me.

I'd say that for Amazon, these reviews are fantastic: Next time I want a type
C cable, I'll check his reviews and buy one of the ones he gives good reviews
- probably at Amazon. This is like popping into that store where you trust the
staff because they talk shit about "their" own products when they're no good
even if it means steering you to less profitable products.

------
mrb
The most shocking is that some vendors or manufacturers are blindly
criticizing and rejecting Benson's reviews, completely ignoring his technical
analysis. This makes me never want to purchase anything from "Cable Savage"
for example:

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_cr_rev_de...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_cr_rev_detmd_pl?ie=UTF8&asin=B013XFANAA&cdForum=Fx2X5W623J3PRPU&cdMsgID=MxT9NT6916AU49&cdMsgNo=4&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx2O5XXKTTD2YAL&store=pc#MxT9NT6916AU49)

"""

 _Benson I can say with confidence this cable has been tested and can provide
up to 3AMPs of power. Since you are supposedly on the google team, then you
will know that the Pixels original OEM charger actually has an output of 5
AMPS. (What 3rd party charger were you using to attempt to charge a pixel with
a 3AMP cable, when the pixel demands 5amp output?_

 _These cables have been confirmed and work great with the Nexus 5x and 6P. It
even can replace the 12 " macbooks charging cable with a proper walll charger.
The power output is relied on the actual wall charger. The cable with be able
to provide ample power given that the wall charger is correctly powered. Also
please note, that batteries charge at different mAh intervals depending on the
percent full the battery is at._

 _Our cables can charge the 5x and 6P units at the same speeds as the stock
oem cables._

"""

Benson's counterreply explains that 3 A is actually a violation of the spec,
and that the Pixel charger never outputs 5 A, etc.

------
lhl
I'm trying to think if there's anyone else that's doing something similar. I
remember a while back I was really impressed by "NLee the Engineer"'s
reviews[1] on lights/batteries.

There's also a reviewer Sporty[2] who's done a fair number of reviews on SD
cards.

I took a quick look at Amazon's Hall of Fame/Top Reviewers, but sadly, it
seems to prize volume vs quantified/focused cross-sectional reviews.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOEAD7DPLZE53](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/AOEAD7DPLZE53)

[2]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Q6Z6MRTI2RJY](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2Q6Z6MRTI2RJY)

~~~
justin66
I bought a real piece of garbage battery charger as a result of one of that
NLee guy's detailed reviews. Super unimpressed.

~~~
BorgHunter
You haven't really qualified "piece of garbage", so I have no idea what
actually happened, but I will note that charger manufacturers have pulled some
bait-and-switch tactics in the past. I bought a battery charger based on an
NLee review[0], and was very satisfied. A friend later asked for a battery
charger recommendation, and I went back to that very review and found that
they'd started selling a "revised" model under the same listing, that was
basically worthless. Something similar may have happened to you.

[0]
[http://www.amazon.com/review/RSYHTFQQYEGLG](http://www.amazon.com/review/RSYHTFQQYEGLG)

~~~
justin66
On mobile right now so I'm not feeling verbose. He noted serious problems in
his subcomments after the initial review that strike me as quite serious, but
didn't alter the item's rating accordingly. Whatever.

------
mdlowman
Reading the reviews, it looks like there's basically one complaint.

Ports/devices with older connectors (USBA, mini-B, micro-B, B) aren't
necessarily going to be able to (or supposed to be able to) handle a 3A
current draw.

A device that supports USBC should handle current draws this high. But to do
so, it must be able to determine if it is safe to draw this much current.
That's only doable with a USBC->USBC connection as per spec. So a USBC-USBA
cable (or any other USBC->something cable) should use a resistor identifying
that the USB3 current draw spec should not be exceeded.

The cables he's reviewing misidentify as being capable of the full current
load. This could cause damage to the device your USBC phone or laptop is being
plugged into.

~~~
tytso
I've smoked a USB wall-wart that was spec'ed to be able to provide 2A. At the
time I had assumed it was a dodgy USB charger, but I now believe that it was
the cable which was dodgy.

Benson has posted instructions if you want to test a cable yourself and you
have a 2015 pixel:
[https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF](https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF)

The problem is that you'll need a sacrificial USB charger, and if you're
lucky, you'll find out from the Pixel's diagnostics whether or not the cable
is dodgy. If you're unlucky, you may also find out when the USB charger dies.
In Benson's words, "Plug in the suspect USB cable and plug the other end into
a DCP charging wall wart (preferably one you don't have any sort of
sentimental attachment to)".

Also read all the way through to the end. There are instructions for how to do
this without needing to put the Pixel into dev mode, which is useful for those
of us who need to use the Pixel in its enterprise enrolled mode to access our
corporate accounts. :-)

------
Marcus10110
We've done a similar analysis of USB 3.0 host controllers and the state of
their drivers cross-platform. It's amazing how bad the state of USB 3.0 is,
even 5 years after devices started shipping. Even the latest Intel host
controllers (8 & 9 series) initially shipped with bad drivers. I look forward
to getting our results posted.

~~~
twy678
Haha, if it were only bad drivers. Try bad hardware:

[https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-
usb/msg131265.html](https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg131265.html)

[http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-
usb/msg122354.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg122354.html)

[http://marc.info/?l=linux-
usb&m=134861220631257&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=linux-
usb&m=134861220631257&w=2)

[http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-
usb/msg63980.html](http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-usb/msg63980.html)

...shit's so broken I could keep doing this all day long.

~~~
Marcus10110
Absolutely. Data corruption from VIA based host controllers was probably the
worst issue we've seen, and the USB 3.0 ASMedia host controllers are probably
the worst now that VIA was able to solve their issue with a driver update.

Most hardware on the market today was released before the xhci spec 1.0 was
finished, and I agree that ALL hardware on the market does not even properly
implement the spec that was available during its design. Fortunately, most
issues can be worked around using quirks.

The hardware is the root of the problem, but I would also add that the
xhci_hcd kernel module, even in the latest kernels, is well behind Microsoft
in terms of handing these device-specific quirks. The Microsoft USB 3.0 stack
introduced in Widows 8 solves just about every host-specific issue we've ever
seen. ASMedia is the only host controller vendor that bothers to provide their
own Windows 8/10 driver (both for their USB 3 Gen1 and Gen2 chips). No one
else provides an alternative to the Microsoft provided usbxhci.sys. That said,
all of our tests have been limited to bulk transfers, and we're only using
existing user space libraries (WinUSB, LibUSB, IOKit). We do push throughput,
we have tight latency requirements, and we keep a large number of buffers
queued at all times, which does push the host controllers further than your
typical storage device. (We make streaming data recording equipment for
electrical engineers and embedded developers)

I don't want to bash xhci_hcd though; their progress has been fantastic,
despite the minefield of problems created by all these host controller
vendors. I would like to say a special thanks to @sarahsharp, for all of the
hard work put into the xhci host controller module. Without Sarah, I don't
know who will answer when the xhci_hcd doorbell rings.

------
SwellJoe
That's lovely, and exactly the sort of thing a good company would do.

So many companies have a very short list of "approved" compatible devices and
get ornery if you use something else; often those approved devices are
unavailable under that exact product name or number and so you're left
guessing as you replace stuff in two, three, or four years, which is actually
when you're likely to find yourself needing to replace components like this.
The very worst companies (ahem, Apple) only validate their own devices for
inter-operation with their products, and act as though using something else
would be the pinnacle of recklessness. Some even threaten it'll void the
warranty (which is actually not legal in many cases, but companies do it
anyway).

The fact that someone from Google is doing this in a non-Google location for
the benefit of the standard and of their customers is just really nice.
Certainly, it is in their best interest to have their devices behave reliably
and not be damaged by shoddy third party devices; and so Google does benefit.
And, yet, many companies just don't see it that way and are willing to screw
over their customers just to get that extra few bucks after the sale for
accessories that could just as readily be provided by third parties (and often
third parties offer more variety, making them more fit for purpose in some
cases).

In short, I've lost a lot of trust for Google over the years (mostly as
marketing and violation of privacy became their primary revenue sources), but
this is a good thing, for the consumer, for the industry (standards are great!
implementing standards poorly is bad!), and for Google.

------
jwr
This is such a great service to everyone! I wish more companies let their
engineers do that. Too few knowledgeable people call out the crap we're being
sold.

~~~
andrewguenther
I don't think we know if Google "let" him yet. Most companies have very strong
policies against things like this...

~~~
jrockway
Google doesn't have a strong policy against things like this. It mostly boils
down to using your best judgement. "Would you like to read this on the front
page of the New York Times?" is the usual question to ask yourself. I also
like to ask myself, "is this factually correct, and am I providing proof?"

On HN, I tend to limit my responses because I usually end up being attacked
for something I have nothing to do with, by virtue of some grudge the
commenter has with Google. If you want to call me out for my own work, go
ahead, I value feedback greatly in areas that I can control. If you have
useful commentary, I'll try my hardest to make sure that people with
understanding in that area see your comments. But if you just want to yell at
me by virtue of who pays my salary, I find that all very unenjoyable and would
prefer to not be involved.

I also notice that lurkers with blogs tend to like to take quotes from HN and
convey them as the official word of Google out of context, which I also don't
like being involved in. Learned that lesson my first week at Google :)

Finally, one also ends up attracting the crazies that email me threats against
other Google employees. All those get forwarded directly to Security
Operations and don't get a reply from me.

HN is a pretty big community these days and isn't quite the bastion of sanity
that it once was. This limits how open many people will be with the community
more than any policy.

------
whistlerbrk
Why two star reviews instead of one for the cables that fail to meet the spec?
Does Amazon / do people view 1-star reviews as bitter / exaggerated? Are they
less visible?

~~~
mikestew
Personally, I filter out one and five star reviews. To me, five stars means
when you use the product, Jesus appears before you. One star means I ordered a
cable and received a dead crab instead (pretty sure there's an XKCD that
covers the last one).

But others don't agree with my rating system, so "ordered blue, but it was
robin egg blue. Werst company evar!!!11" means one star. Five stars means "I
work for the company that makes these, or I'm otherwise being paid to write
this, or I simply didn't give a lot of thought to how rating systems work."

In this case, the cable fulfills most of the requirements, misses a some of
them, but might work for your use case, so two stars.

~~~
larrybud
Really? If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be
working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? It would need to
perform miracles to get 5 stars?

~~~
mikestew
_If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine
after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars?_

And then along comes the cable which, when I plug it in, causes a religious
miracle to occur. How do I rate that one? Five stars is already taken. (Or
maybe it should be two stars. I want to get my work done without being
distracted by a prominent religious figure appearing next to my desk.)

To put it another way, when I purchase something I _expect_ that it will work
fine after 30 days and that it meets my needs. That doesn't warrant five
stars. That's three stars: does what I expected, doesn't suck but doesn't
stand out from the rest all that much. If it were half the price of cables of
equal quality, then I'd give it five stars. But IMO the product has to be
outstanding in some way to warrant five stars, otherwise why have a rating
system at all?

OTOH, Amazon doesn't help with this. Click on "critical reviews" on Amazon,
and three star reviews are listed. That's just broken. Three stars is middle
of the road, not outstanding in anyway but not deficient, either.

So, no, given your parameters, I would not rate the item five stars. I realize
the rest of the world doesn't agree with me, and I'm loathe to participate in
such a skewed system (everyone gets a trophy). My concession is I'll give four
stars to something I'd normally give three stars, just so it doesn't show up
in the "critical review" section, broken as that might be.

~~~
ghaff
I'm more inclined to reserve 5 stars for _really_ good films and books (even
if they're not in the truly great category). For a cable though? If it does
it's job, appears well-made, and is a good price, I'm not sure why I'd hit it
in the ratings. I suppose I can leave lower numbers of stars in a quixotic
quest against review inflation but doesn't seem really fair to the products
involved.

~~~
mikestew
_If it does it 's job, appears well-made, and is a good price, I'm not sure
why I'd hit it in the ratings._

And hence my quandary; I don't consider three stars to be a "hit...in the
ratings". It does the job, doesn't stand out in any other way, three stars.
But, as you point out, it's not fair in the inflated system that we have
available. So which wins out, an honest review system that benefits consumers,
or review inflation that benefits product sellers? I haven't decided, nor
figured out any means of compromise.

As I once heard about bug priority, if everything's a Priority 1, then
_nothing_ is a Pri 1. And if everything that isn't complete shite is five
stars, then really nothing is five stars. Five stars just means it doesn't
suck. Then why don't we have just one star or no stars from which to choose?
In other words, the precision of the rating system is not what the five
choices would imply.

~~~
MichaelGG
Unlike bugs, you are not triaging all products on Amazon together. If I search
for a certain type of USB cable, I expect to see 5 star products. I'm not
disturbed that Spirited Away is also rated 5 stars. I'm not confused and
decide to buy a great film instead of a cable.

------
devit
Looks like Google is doing an amazing service for customers in this area.

Not only they are using a standard plug and thus not locking you into buying
accessories from them, which seem reasonably priced anyway, but they even test
a lot of other cables in the market and tell you how compatible they are both
with their own products and even with the products of competitors with quite
different practices.

------
nfriedly
BTW, he put instructions for how to test at
[https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF](https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF)

~~~
vxNsr
I thought that would be how to test all usb-c's really it's how to test usb-c
if you have a pixel (or in other words $1000 in your fun-time budget)

~~~
nfriedly
True, maybe I should rephrase that as "he wrote down details for how he tested
them..."

------
Roodgorf
My favorite is the only other review on his profile from years ago of the
Orange Box soundtrack.

~~~
thomnottom
I was scrolling through the comments thinking "No one else here noticed his
rave review for the Orange Box Soundtrack?"

~~~
nuclearghost
Surprised none of the USB cables were a triumph

------
ck2
Amazon reviews become useless as Amazon allows third-party vendors from China
and HK to flood the original listing with clones.

So people buy based on the review and then they find out the vendor shipped a
clone, so then they give a bad review but it's not for the original listing.

Amazon made a huge mess with that, they should never allow third parties to
sell on the original listing.

~~~
jarek
Another fun thing I saw on Amazon a few months back was items for sale with
reviews for another product. Shopping for a small FM transmitter, I found a
listing where every review more than a few months old was for a roof-mounted
car antenna.

I suppose there is a Ship of Theseus problem when trying to detect tricks like
that automatically - surely sellers should be able to reword description,
update product image, and change the product name slightly, but where do you
draw the line and how do you handle that? Heh.

~~~
vidarh
I've had a similar thing, where a vendor had clearly kept the same listing for
many years. They were the same type of product (tablets) but the specs
referenced for the oldest listings were quite hilarious. For a long time this
seemed to have been fine, sort of, as the shipped products consistently were
better than those described in older listings.

Until they weren't. We bought one that was a substantial step down (screen
resolution in particular, which was exactly why I'd picked it).. Got a refund,
but Amazon simply didn't seem to care that the reviews had no relevance to the
current model, which was a let down (though a lesson to read the reviews
closely and pay attention to their age...)

~~~
lsaferite
Weird. Any time I've pointed out an obviously wrong listing it has been pulled
down almost immediately.

------
natch
Cool but I don't think he understands how off-brand (meaning not big name
brand) products like this change specs and quality on Amazon like Seattle
changes weather.

For cases where there is a big brand, and they have a reputation to defend,
these reviews seem very valuable. For other cases, buyer beware.

~~~
delecti
> like Seattle changes weather

From the perspective of having grown up in the midwest, Seattle's weather
might as well be Old Faithful.

------
ridiculous_fish
Oh hey Benson! _waves_

I worked a little with Benson. He's a fantastic guy with a penchant to veer
into epic rants, which he seems to have kept in check on these reviews. Our
loss!

Anyways he is a kernel software engineer and surely has some assistance (or at
least double checking) from the resident EEs. This feels like a bottom-up
initiative, showcasing how Google can empower its engineers. Great stuff.

------
xixi77
This is awesome, and I really hope more companies do this.

I wonder though: from the few reviews I've looked at, it seems that the main
complaint is that the cable does not identify itself as a legacy connector,
and can result in the device drawing too much power from the port, potentially
damaging whatever is on the other end.

Definitely an unfortunate result, BUT: I wonder, is it still a common concern
when the device on the other end is (for example) a wall plug-to-USB
connector? Because if it's not too much of an issue in that case, and the
device on the USB-C end is not at risk, wouldn't a non-compliant cable result
in faster charging?

~~~
tytso
I've smoked two wall warts because of trying to use a dodgy USB-C cable to
charge a 2015 Pixel. In one case, the wall wart sim[ply stopped charging.

In the second case the wall wart started charging my Nexus 6 REALLY FAST on
one port and the other port has gone dead. I haven't had a chance to check it
out with a volt meter, but I suspect it's now putting out substantially more
than 5V on one port, and substantially less than 5V on the other. Fortunately
the N6 supports Quick Charge 2.0, so as long as the voltage wasn't more than
9V, it probably didn't do any real harm to the phone (although it was actually
charging faster than my normal QC charger). But since I also noticed the phone
getting really hot, I've stopped using that charger, and it doesn't look like
I've significantly damaged the N6 batteries. At least, the battery life hasn't
been compromised and it hasn't burst into flames. Yet. :-)

------
lips
It would physically pain me to work at a company that sells defective
equipment.

I'd like to see amazon just develop in-house testing for certain types of
stock. Cables, power supplies...

~~~
Johnny555
How much more are you willing to pay for that? If you're willing to pay a
premium for tested and certified gear, why not just buy from your phone's
manufacturer in the first place?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Because a lot of the Nexus 6P/5X accessories are sold out or have long delays
before shipping. Also, I don't need another wall wart charger, just the cable.

~~~
Johnny555
Yeah, well it's easier to make things by the million when you don't care about
testing, certification or product damage.

Part of the reason the cheap ones have so much availability is that they are
cheap and easy to make and have little quality control -- even though they may
not work.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Not really. I can buy super cheap micro-USB cables that work perfectly.

This seems to happen all the time when there's a new standard out. The
disreputable companies whip together something shoddy and try to get those
early sales before more reputable companies can move in. Meanwhile, companies
like Amazon do nothing to stop this obvious fraud. Amazon should be stopping
these sales.

Also, its disingenuous to pretend these are $2 cables. The only ones still
available showing price are $14.99. These are much more than $2.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Arguably though, if a USB cable is $20 through Google, and $2 through an off-
brand, I may want two of them, but buy six and consider any that don't work or
stop working disposable. And still be saving money over buying from Google.

Consumers need to be aware of the risks they take when they buy bargain brand,
but it doesn't negate the benefits of having bargain brand available.

~~~
Johnny555
Unless, of course, the $2 cable over-charges your $600 phone and the battery
explodes or it burns out the charging circuit, then it's a false economy.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That's a risk. But for the millions of people who successfully use $2 cables
every single day, many of whom can't afford $20 cables, they're pretty glad $2
cables exist.

------
Johnny555
Is there a simple test that someone could do with a multimeter to test these
cables themselves? Or is it more than just having a pullup resistor on the
right pins?

~~~
proee
These are very high-speed cables, so there's a lot that can go wrong from a
signal integrity standpoint.

~~~
Johnny555
I can't even remember the last time I used a USB cable on my phone for data,
the only time I ever plug it in is for charging, so I don't care too much
about signal integrity as long as it will charge my phone without damaging it.

When I do care about signal integrity (i.e. connecting a USB hard drive to my
computer, I use name-brand cables)

~~~
voltagex_
Without root, you need USB to start a connection with adb for debugging on the
phone, even if you switch to wifi later.

~~~
Johnny555
I can count with zero fingers the number of times I've used ADB for debugging
my phone.

------
bryanlarsen
"USB" and the various USB logos are trademarks of the USB-IF. I was under the
impression that non-compliant products can be sued for trademark infringement
by the USB-IF. Sure, they could be sold without the logo, but not being able
to put the word "USB" in their product description would make them
unsearchable and kill their online sales...

~~~
dspillett
The trouble would be chasing all the cheap manufacturers, distributors, and
resellers. It would be rather time consuming and costly.

------
JoshTriplett
Related: has anyone written reviews of car USB ports, what devices they're
capable of charging, and workarounds for charging higher-current devices? Many
car USB ports have failure modes similar to those documented in these reviews,
and they can't actually deliver high current for charging high-end
smartphones, let alone tablets and laptops.

~~~
tehstone8
Buy an Anker charger rated at 2 Amps. It will live up to it's promises.

~~~
JoshTriplett
The kind that plug in to the 12V "accessory" port, skipping the car's own USB
entirely?

~~~
jmiwhite
Yes, for example: [http://www.amazon.com/Car-Charger-PowerIQ-Technology-
Motorol...](http://www.amazon.com/Car-Charger-PowerIQ-Technology-
Motorola/dp/B00SSMRB9A)

------
tehwebguy

        CableCreation Micro-B receptacle to Type-C plug adapter is out of spec.
        May cause damage to your USB charger, PC, or hub.
    

Still gave it 2/5 stars?!

~~~
ryan-c
Didn't burn down Google campus or shoot my dog, +1 star.

Joking aside, I'm somewhat more likely to read a two star review vs a one star
review because a lot of the one star reviews are whiny rants and not actually
helpful.

------
ScottWRobinson
And this exemplifies why (in my eyes) Google seems to have the best engineers
- they're willing to go above and beyond in everything they do

~~~
mikestew
Other companies have employees just like that. Sadly, if those folk pull a
stunt like that, someone will be having a word with them.

I say "sadly", but I've seen the flip-side of this, too. A properly-formed
query on usenet will turn up some back-in-the-day posts from Microsoft
employees (posting with a microsoft.com reply-to) who were real assholes. (And
not to pick on Microsoft, though they certainly have it coming; just the first
counter-example that came to mind.)

So I guess I'm conflicted. Yeah, Benson's being really helpful and it looks
good for Google, IMO. But with a different employee, it could turn really ugly
if someone's back is turned.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I've definitely seem some embarrassingly bad attitudes from Googlers on social
media. (One recently which basically said every serialization protocol that
wasn't Google's was inherently harmful, because Google didn't make them.)

But obviously, there's many people like Benson who provide incredibly sagely
advice that do a service not just to Google's own customers, but competitors'
like Amazon's customers as well.

Once a company reaches a certain size, they have way too many people to police
all of them across the Internet, or ensure all of their hires contribute
meaningfully online.

------
smpetrey
Good to see that Benson is a Half-Life man.

------
scottmp10
I bought the TechMatte 2x USB-C to Micro-USB item that he gave two stars for
use with my 5X. At least one of the items I got was actually defective. The
other worked but charged very slowly. I wish I had seen his post before
buying!

Now I am nervous because I subsequently bought a cable that he hasn't reviewed
yet...

This has me wondering if there is some way to incentivize good reviewers.
There is Consumer Reports and some more tech-specific sites but there is still
a long tail of products that you have to buy without good reviews.

~~~
maxerickson
It's probably more effective to try to weed out the reasonable brands.

For instance, I don't think Amazon is going to sell broken crap using their
AmazonBasics brand, and they still charge quite a bit less than Belkin (I
don't think they sell USB C yet, but that's besides the point).

------
colund
Can someone explain why this topic receives so many upvotes?

Is it just a popular topic getting upvoters who vote for popular items or is
there something genuinely interesting about this?

~~~
i336_
I was similarly curious too.

You may find [http://hn.algolia.com](http://hn.algolia.com) of interest to
look through, to see the kinds of things HN tends to upvote, and the kind of
things that tend to get passed by. Different things attract different levels
of attention and fascination on here. It can actually be quite interesting to
observe.

This is just a fascinating artefact of the HN hivemind collective interest, I
guess.

------
jtha
Google screws up cables as well. My Chromecast (V1) came with a dud cable that
will provide some charge to some devices, but won't power or charge anything
I've tried it on. So my Chromecast is now powered courtesy of Lenovo.

It's a statistic though, just as anything mass-produced. But I found his
comment on the quality of 3rd party manufactured cables vs Google and Apple
slightly amusing. Apple cables in my household and everywhere I've come across
them are no prize pigs. Samsung Galaxy provided cables on the other hand have
proved to be exceptionally durable in my experience. Nokia cables and chargers
also seem to be made out of solid Kevlar or some flexible Titanium, seeing
that every single one I've owned since the late '90s is still working. My blue
LED modded Nokia 3310 is still going strong, battery and all, but that's
another story.

------
malkia
I just bought an HDMI "hub"/duplicator, and just now realized that now all
HDMI cables are the same - some support 1.3, others 1.4 (or were these the
numbers and such).

Maybe it's okay, so far the Wii/PS4 and ChromeCast work fine through it... I'm
just posting this here, as no one informed me about possibly complications at
BestBuy, but the great folks at Staples actually forwarded me to BestBuy to
look for such device.

My father told me a story about service in Turkey, basically if you go to a
store and they don't have right away what you need, they may go out find/buy
it for you, just to please you. Or buy you a coffee, while waiting in s shoe
shop.

Whether he exaggerates a bit or not, I like this approach. Yes you might lose
customers, but you'll always leave a smile in good customers. They might come
back, just for that little appreciation...

------
mindslight
It would be good if he did resistance tests as well. I killed my phone's
battery by absentmindedly using a shitty cable that was basically tinsel wire.

(details: I was full-time tethering while plugged in. I assume the charge
controller thought the battery was charging but it was actually slowly
discharging)

~~~
i336_
That info deserves being tied to the model of the phone, at least. Not because
that phone's thus inherently bad, but because that's a buggy design. I
understand you're saying that the cable fooled the charge controller into
letting the battery fall completely flat? Wow.

Getting said info to the right place so next version's charge controller is
fixed would be nigh impossible, but dropping the info in lots of high-exposure
places might be a start.

~~~
mindslight
It was an HTC EVO 4G (non-"LTE"). Quite old at this point.

I can only surmise what actually happened. I was full-time wifi tethering for
a month or two and the symptoms along the way seemed to point to this cause.
The phone eventually stopped taking power at all, until I plugged it into a
USB port instead of the OEM 1A charger. At which point I realized the higher
current was the problem, and investigated the cable.

It actually felt like a really nice cable - very robust and strain-reliefy.
But apparently that's because the whole thing was mostly plastic and
essentially headphone wires. Lesson learned!

If my theory is correct , it's a pretty stupid design. But I feel like there's
probably many weird corner cases in consumer electronics that don't matter
because 99% of people won't find them, and the ones that do won't realize it's
a bug, and by the time anybody could put it together that specific model has
been obsoleted anyway.

------
rdl
Wow. I wish more companies would do this kind of small "public good"
incidental to other work.

------
munchbunny
If only there were more of this stuff! The kind of information in his reviews
is technically detailed but clear enough for the layperson, and it answers the
real question I have in mind when I'm looking at the 1-3 star reviews: does it
actually work for what I want it to do?

~~~
phil21
The strange part of these reviews though is that counterintuitively many of
these cables would be considered to "work for what you want it to do" when a
spec-compliant cable would not.

Usually what people want is to "make my device charge fast" \- in which case
the cables not implementing the spec correctly work while compliant cables
would not.

Of course, there is a reason that compliance exists! Chances are you are
plugging this cable into a wall-wart made in the past few years with higher
tolerances than needed, and things will work out fine. Until they don't. Then
you may burn out a PC USB port, or potentially I suppose catch a cheap chinese
wall wart on fire.

At least that is my current understanding having spent the past few days
attempting to decipher how this all works. The correct way to go about this
transition to USB-C is to toss out all your USB-A chargers, buy USB-C
chargers, and if you need to adapt; adapt in the USB-C -> USB-micro/mini
direction vs. the USB-A -> USB-C direction.

The tldr on this is basically if you plug into a USB-A charger, you should not
be able to "rapid charge" at 3A. If you are, you are out of spec and could
potentially damage something you plug that cable into. Just give up on the
dream of using your old chargers and expect to replace them with chargers that
implement USB-C there. If you need to charge USB micro devices, invest in some
USB-C -> Micro cables (or adapters) instead.

~~~
pgeorgi
Just slapping the "the other end is 3A capable" resistor onto the cable isn't
good enough, because a cable has no idea what's on the other end.

You can still rapid charge with a compliant type-C/A cable, but it needs to be
negotiated through one of the other specified mechanisms (that directly talk
with the other end and thus can figure out what the type-A charging side can
actually provide).

------
voltagex_
Some of these cables are downright dangerous:
[http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_aya_cmt?i...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2DQ7OH7PQG24F/ref=cm_aya_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B013XFANAA)

------
melling
Has there been any uptick in USB-C adoption? Apple skipped it in their latest
iMacs. I think they're waiting for the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 unification.

[https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-
c-d...](https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-
all)

I've seen a couple Dell laptops but not much else. It's a much better form
factor. Not to mention the elimination of USB superposition: :-)

[http://9gag.com/gag/6756457/usb-
superposition](http://9gag.com/gag/6756457/usb-superposition)

~~~
uzi
The recently released Nexus 5x and Nexus 6p phones both have USB-C, as does
the Chromebook Pixel.

------
bgentry
I'm glad somebody is taking the time to do this. I'm going through and marking
every one of these reviews as "helpful" so they float to the top of the Amazon
reviews for these products.

------
distantsounds
I wish someone would do this for micro-usb2 cables. I've bought so many
different ones and found that they don't carry enough current from the charger
to properly charge my Nexus 6.

~~~
digi_owl
Well there you have multiple "issues".

One part is the wire gauge. You need something like 24awg (its the American
system, don't ask me why) on the power pins (higher number, thinner wire,
iirc). Most use 28 on both power and data pairs.

Then the charger has to actually follow the USB spec, not the very similar
Apple one. This means either a microchip that can handle the USB handshake, or
a resistor across the data pins at the charger end to signal that this is a
charger (Apple has one resistor on each pin, with a slightly different
resistance).

Now on top of that you have Qualcomm pushing their fast charge system that
involves a chip at both ends, and higher voltage than the 5V that USB normally
uses. The higher voltage allows for more watts without upping the ampere
(V*A=W, iirc).

Note that the Qualcomm system is similar (but i don't think they are
interchangeable) with the USB3 system (the latter can go all the way to 20V,
but that requires beefy cables).

Frankly the more i think about it the more i expect to hear about someone
getting electrocuted because they mistook their data cable for their dumb
laptop charger.

------
will_pseudonym
Benson is doing God's work. Because of him I was able to purchase a USB-C to
USB-A cable (the iOrange cable he reviewed), and I learned that Google's own
marketing materials were functionally incorrect, which led users to expect
3.0A charging out of the cable from Google (which is out of stock currently),
when it technically only charges at 2.4A (if I understand things correctly).
This in turn led people to (incorrectly) poorly review the non-Google cables.

------
punnerud
I miss a simple page with information om how I can perform tests, like on the
USB-C cables, myself. I find reading specs to take to much time to be able
know how to perform them. Example is the 57MB zip-file for the USB-C-spec:
[http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/](http://www.usb.org/developers/docs/)

------
st553
I'd like to see a technical review of the Nektech cables:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VIWE1ZY](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VIWE1ZY)

They have over 200 positive reviews but I don't think they've been tested to
same degree that Benson has been checking.

------
biot
I look forward to reading his review of this USB cable:
[http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-
Cable/...](http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Diamond-feet-Braided-
Cable/dp/B003CT08E4)

I'm sure Google can afford the $1000+ price tag.

------
aerovistae
I don't understand why this is so fascinating that it has 724 upvotes, can
someone explain?

~~~
tempestn
1200something now. I agree; this seems interesting enough to be on the
homepage for a bit, but not vastly more so than many other stories. Not sure
what's going on!

------
digi_owl
Must say it strikes me crazy that they put anything at all into the cable.

How hard would it be to carry the existing A port charging spec forward, so
that if a device detected the A form it would go no higher than 2.1A?

Frankly cables should be as dumb as you can make them.

------
chrisBob
One of his reviews brought up an interesting point. Version 3.1 of the spec
does not limit the length of a cable, but version 2.0 does. Is a 4 conductor
cable with a USB-C connector on one end only required to meet the USB 3.1
standards?

------
andrewchambers
Now you know why apply made their own plugs and cables. You can't trust third
part manufacturers. Google probably gets lots of complains about devices not
charging properly, when it is the cable at fault.

------
hydrogen18
The title of this is a bit misleading. It looks like it just reviewing cables.
Plenty of them are positive reviews and he recommends the product.

------
hlmencken
I love that he had also reviewed the orange box OST

------
ScottWRobinson
All areas of internet business (ecommerce, publishing, etc) need to be held
more accountable. Kudos to this guy for doing his part

------
donatj
Well crqp. I just bought a couple of these for my Nexus 5X a week ago. I
wonder if I could work an amazon refund.

------
ramon
His this is Benson again, Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V...

Doesn't work! I just broke my keyboard keys! Stopped my reviews, damn..

------
callumlocke
What's the "ref=cm_cr_rdp_pdp" on the end of the URL? Is this an affiliate
link?

------
knodi123
Thanks guys, I just bought $80 of assorted USB-C cables 5 hours ago. :-/

------
mydpy
Why is this one of the all-time most popular posts on HN about Google?

------
ricksplat
You wouldn't get Apple doing this for third party lightening cables .. yeah I
know it would be like them giving away their own lunch, but it further
underlines that lightening is just a money-spinner not any real technical
advance.

~~~
legulere
Actually they have the MFi program [1] and you just have to look for the logo
when buying cables. Of course you can criticize the program, but it's just
plain wrong that Apple isn't doing something about cable quality.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFi_Program)

------
rakel_rakel
Benson obviously adds value to the content so I feel bad about whining, but
this looks like a severe case of "how can you tell if someone works for
google? -Don't worry, they'll let you know".

------
billylindeman
Cablegate 2015!

------
ossreality
So uh, maybe they can explain why the DisplayPort USB-C adapter for the
Chromebook Pixel only works in one orientation? Yes, that's right. You heard
me. You have to flip it over 50% of the time to get the screen to come on.
(This might be Linux specific, I don't have ChromeOS to check)

~~~
jrockway
I don't have one of these adapters but that seems sub-optimal. Perhaps it's an
issue fixed by a newer firmware (which CrOS will load to the dongle
automatically, but probably not a stock Linux distribution)?

Detailed design for the adapter is here: [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-
os/dingdong](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/dingdong)

If you feel like it, please file a bug.

~~~
ossreality
:) I don't come across a lot of ppl that know that one. Googler? Fan/user

Anyway, yeah, I've actually had that thought in the back of my head. I've
actually reloaded this laptop 3 times due to the exact situation you mention.
(The HDD is too small to leave CrOS on there).

It's been several months since I've let CrOS do it's thing and reflash the
firmware... I should give it a shot.

Many moths ago, I was reinstalling CrOS it to try to get it to reflash the
adapter so that MST on DP1.2 would work. But it never worked and furthermore,
the Dell monitors I have stop working when you enable DP1.2 so all around...
it was disappointing.

I wanted my Pixel to be my sole development machine... but when I'm sitting at
my desk... I expect dual monitors... So I continue to sync my git repos
between 3+ computers at a time. Woohoo.

Whoever wants to make a laptop with 16GB RAM, HiDPI screen (and not the shitty
Lenovo panels), and 2x mini-DP out.... boy, I'd sure love to see it. (And the
Surface Pro 4 actually falls in that category, but is not Linux friendly)

\----

edit: Checked the dingdong history... not seeing too much relevant but I might
give it a shot when I have a slow weekend. Thanks again!

------
darkstar999
Really, this is at the top of HN? Must be a slow news day.

~~~
mynameishere
You made that comment 6 hours ago and it's _still_ at the top. I can't even
figure out why it was posted in the first place. "Look, someone is writing
reviews on Amazon!" Wow!

------
alistproducer2
The best engineers in the world work at Google.

~~~
mahouse
[looks at his Android phone] hmmm...

------
hackuser
This is just one side of an ancient debate: If component A doesn't work with
component B, where is the problem? The manufacturer of A blames B, and vice-
versa. (The truth is that they are simply incompatible and often it's nobody's
fault.)

If many USB-C cables don't work with Google devices, where is the problem? It
suits Google to say the problem is with the cables, but maybe creating
pressure for better cables or shifting consumer attention to them is just a
less expensive solution than altering the devices.

Regarding the violated specifications: 1) In the real world, nobody meets all
published specifications and both sides can point to violations. Have you ever
built anything that met _all_ specifications? (I laughed a little when I wrote
that) 2) If you design your product to work only with other systems that meet
all published specifications, your product sucks. If your car only runs safely
on roads that meet all specs, your customers are going to die. (Maybe there
are exceptions when engineering critical systems components in things like
airplanes, but I doubt it.)

That doesn't make our Google engineer wrong; it just means we don't know
(unless you know what _realistic_ performance specs are for USB-C cables).
However, if in the real world it's hard to find USB cables that work with
Google devices then, _ipso facto_ , there's something wrong with the devices.

~~~
zyxley
"Realistic" performance specs should include "doesn't have a chance of
literally setting something on fire by drawing too much current through it".

