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Free Software Will Help Detect Faulty and Malicious USB-C Cables
Reader Mickeycaskill writes: The USB 3.0 Promoter Group, of which HP, Intel and Microsoft are members, has developed authentication protocols for USB-C and will offer free software to detect faulty or malicious cables.This tool will alert users if they are using a non-authenticated cable. It has been suggested that hardware manufacturers could ship devices with an authentication system already installed. It is hoped that the specification will help end a number of recent incidents where sub-standard cables have either ripped off buyers or damaged devices. Most recently, Amazon said it would be adding USB-C cables and adapters that do not comply with standard regulations to its list of prohibited electronics items.
So the cables are deliberately causing fault or do you mean the manufacturers? It's hard for me to believe than an inanimate object has malicious intent.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
when you cables need to be "authenticated"....
Honestly, Everyone bitches about Apple, but the rest of the world is doing the same fucking thing, my cable should not have to authenticate to anything. and should just contain plastic, metal connector pins and copper wires to take it to the other end.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
USB has become succesful because it was cheap and simple to use and cheap and simple to manufacture. It seems to me that USB-C is getting further and further away from that by the day. Maybe different use cases require different solutions, maybe there is no such thing as a 'one universal cable' that can combine the advantages of all the others without the disadvantages. It seems like USB just wanted to replace lightning on Apple stuff, and does not care about PC users who don't have a fortune to waste on a piece of wire. Which is not even just wire anymore, it contains its own electronics, losing all the elegance and simplicity tha made USB great.
No. No, no, no!
The *LAST* thing we need is a USB cable with active components in it. It's almost bad enough that some charging cables have a small resistor in them, because now there are a million different standards of them.
Also, if the ground and power wires are swapped at one end like the cable that killed the chromebook of that google employee, then no software is going to help at all. As soon as you plug it in, it will already have damaged your hardware.
Here is what we *DO* need: USB cables that are transparent so you can SEE the colors of wire going to the pins of each connector. *THIS* is what will prevent damage due to bad cables. Your "software" is not needed, and wouldn't help anyway.
until it's authenticated
Until what's authenticated? That it's a cable? I've read the USB press release and a few other articles and there's no indication anywhere as to what this "authentication" is authenticating. If I take an authentic USB 3.0 cable with authentication and authentically send 10,000 authentic volts down it, does it authentically help the authentic owner of the authentically fried device to know that it's been authentically authenticated?