cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cringecollective.io/post/75583
why isn’t it ok? why???
Meme “the number of people who think this is an abomination” over a photo of a USB-A to USB-A cable, “but think this is perfectly acceptable” over a photo of a USB-C to USB-C cable, “makes me sick.”
Huh, I’m not sure they are comparable.
Didn’t USB A and USB B use a master-slave relationship in which the male would (generally) always be the slave, whereas USB C uses agreement and discussion to decide the master and slave roles regardless of connector gender.
Please do correct me if I’m wrong. Also, do we say “agent” now instead of “slave”, or what is the new term?
I believe the common terms now are “domme” and “sub”
I’m going to refer to myself as USB-B from now on
I can’t tell if this is real life or sarcasm…
Did I really miss the memo on this one?
No that’s the lingo the professionals use these days
I can confirm, I’m called sub at work
Ah yeah, I’ve heard that offices are rolling out a new role of office cumdump. Glad to hear from someone already in the role
I think the biggest problem I see with A to A is: who’s delivering power, and who’s receiving it? Maybe if you use it only with the device it came with then it’ll be fine, but if anyone tries to just hook up that cable to two random computers, it might actually cause a short circuit and fry something.
Whereas Type-C was explicitly made to handle such situations.
Or a shorter reason: Type-C cable is allowed by the spec while Type-A is not.
Hrm. I have a keyboard that requires an A to A cable and I think it works with the cable any way around…
Might be wrong.
It makes sense, if I remember correctly the older USB cable (i.e. everything before Type-C) are passive, so as long as the pins are wired symmetrically it wouldn’t matter which side is which. But whoever made your keyboard really blundered, there is no reason in the world why anyone would do this. There’s so many options: the B connector, mini USB, micro USB. All would make sense to put in the keyboard. A just doesn’t.
Let me guess: you got it from an ultra cheap online store? AliExpress/Wish/Temu?
You guessed wrong.
It’s a ridiculously expensive and “home made” looking, but it saved my hands from OCD.
master/slave could be primary/secondary, primary/subordinate or principle/agent, so you’re correct on that replacement.
I personally am a big fan of “Mantrap” becoming an “Access Control Vestibule” mostly because it’s fun to say.
I like controller/peripheral, which is the most descriptive in my opinion. That’s what’s commonly used for SPI.
Type C sounds like a healthy relationship.
In the usb world its “host” and “device”, not “master” and “slave”.
But yes you are right
USB-A male to USB-A male is not in any USB standard (not entirely true, but compliant cables are very rare and don’t connect voltage), and if you plug it into a device it’s not meant for, the behavior is entirely unspecified. It will probably do nothing. But it might fry your USB controller that is not expecting to receive voltage.
USB-C to USB-C is in the spec, and if you plug in two host devices, they won’t hurt each other. You can actually charge a host device over USB-C, unlike USB-A.
That’s why it isn’t ok. It’s not the same thing, it’s not in the standard, and it can even be dangerous (to the device).
I guess the usb spec makes you sick then.
With the the first one you can fry your gear, while stuff that takes the second one does auto negotiation.
USB-A requires three attempts to connect, C only one.
I absolutely have some Type C cables that only work one way because there’s no enforced standards and the manufacturer will wire them however is cheap, throw on another company’s logo, and sell it to Amazom.
Don’t buy electronics through amazon. This is precisely why.
Even if you don’t, there is basically no way to tell you’ve got a legit authentic product that passed QC until you test it yourself. The supply chains that give retailers plausible deniability wrt child labor also by their nature allow counterfeits.
You have to get your electronics from somewhere, retailers’ supply chain has a helluva lot more quality control than Amazon. Just because you can’t get to 100% doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive for, well, anything more than the worst chances anyone can offer.
I imagine that “sold by Amazon” has about the same supply chain reliability as big box retailers. On Amazon you do gotta check your seller rating if you’re not buying prime, but that’s not harder than driving to best buy, and big box retailer online stores have the same problem when they’re the storefront for 3rd parties (as many are, trying to emulate Amazon).
On Amazon, reviews can be faked, but at least it has reviews.
You’re wrong. Amazon mixes inventory between themselves and any other seller that’s fulfilled by Amazon, meaning if one random seller has fake product, then even the “sold by Amazon” option can send you that other seller’s fake product. And vice versa, of course.
Ooph yeah that seems pretty bad. What is even the purpose of seller rating with FBA if the inventories are mixed?
I have never seen this.
There is absolutely a certification process, but playing legal whack-a-mole with fly-by-night counterfeiters is difficult.
This is why buying reputable brands from reputable sellers is important.But even then, I remember years ago I read an article about major retailers selling counterfeit brand name SD cards that didn’t meet the labeled performance specifications and had very poor QC. Turns out that gray market sellers were buying batches of the real product that failed QC and just reselling them as though they were fine, and they ended up making their way back into the distribution network.
In the end the conclusion was that we’re all kind of fucked until retailers start being way more strict about their supply chains, which they are disincentivized to do, because the current system gives them plausible deniability on things like child labor.
Six since it has A at both ends.
The USB spec requires one master and one slave device, which is usually decided by which type of connector each side has. USB OTG can bypass that restriction, but I’ve only ever seen it done with micro USB or type C.
I am a stupid end user. But I’ve never found an instance where I needed male to male cords.
In general? Off the top of my head I remember these male to male cables.
- Ethernet cables
- telephone cables when they were a thing
- audio cables of different varieties
- optical cables
- coaxial cables when they were a thing
Well, if you have asymmetric cables, there’s always one clearly-defined host and the other one is the slave.
it works like sex: with usb-c, both devices more or less kinda have ti “negotiate” who’s dom and who’s sub. that takes extra negotiation effort and makes the protocol more complicated. and therefore more expensive imo.
Just a small nitpick, but sub or dom doesn’t care about gender or sex, its top or bottom you mean in your example :)
bottom dom sounds interesting 🤔
Is that like a power bottom on steroids?
A to B made more sense in a world where devices cannot serve as both roles vai negotiation. My android phone when I got it utilized a data transfer method of plugging my iPhone charge port into my Android charge port, then the Android initiated the connection as a host device.
The true crime is not that the cable is bidirectional, the true crime is that there is little to no proper distinction and error checking between USB, Thunderbolt, and DisplayPort modes and are simply carried on the same connector. I have no issues with the port supporting tunneled connections - that is in fact how docking stations work - just the minimal labeling we get in modern devices.
I’d be fine with a type-A to type-A cable if both devices had a reasonable chance at operating as both the initiator and target - but that type of behavior starts with USB-OTG and continues in type-C.
I’m not sure what the point is here. C is symmetrical and has absolutely no downsides, so yes, it’s objectively better.
What’s a common thing that would require the use of USB A on both ends?
it was common amongst digital cameras in the early 2000’s
They make A-to-A cables with a bit of file transfer software integrated into the cord. Useful for transferring big files between two PCs without setting up a network.
nothing worthwhile, as it’s not allowed (for a good reason)
The only place i ever saw it was on those cooling padas for laptops
I bought a charging pad once that had a USB c connector but none of the 40 USB power adapters I have have one so I returned it. IDK wtf they were thinking. Just make the wall end an A connector like everyone else has been doing for a decade.
It’s about the winding and not about the USB version, right?
In the long, long ago, we used to use USB-A to A cables to transfer customers’ Mac OS X user profiles when they would buy a new Mac. Also worked with Target Disk Mode, way back when.
actually they would be correct :
USB began as a protocol where one side (USB-A) takes the leading role and the other (USB-B) the following role . this was mandated by hardware with differently shaped plugs and ports . this made sense for the time as USB was ment to connect computers to peripherals .
however some devices don’t fit this binary that well : one might want to connect their phone to their computer to pull data off it , but they also might want to connect a keyboard to it , with the small form factor not allowing for both a USB-A and USB-B port. the solution was USB On-The-Go : USB Mini-A/B/AB and USB Micro-A/B/AB connectors have an additional pin which allows both modes of operations
with USB-C , aside from adding more pins and making the connector rotationally symmetric , a very similar yet differently named feature was included , since USB-C - USB-C connections were planed for
so yeah USB-A to USB-A connections are explicitly not allowed , for a similar reason as you only see CEE 7 (fine , or the objectively worse NEMA) plugs on both ends of a cable only in joke made cables . USB-C has additional hardware to support both sides using USB-C which USB-A , neither in the original or 3.0 revision , has .
With USB-C isn’t there still a slave-master dynamic that is now negotiated via software rather than hardware?
it seems like it , but I have no idea !
a slave-master dynamic
please don’t use that term, every time i see it i immediately verge on orgasming. you’ve already made me ruin 2 undergarments today. i have a serious bdsm kink and this is not funny.
sorry, I didn’t mean trigger you. I’ll refer to it as a daddy-pig duo instead
I realy don’t want a cable i plug both ends in wrong and have to turn them a couple of times
