how do they fuck up the labeling every time? this is astonishing!
this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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USB 3.2 doubles down on this confusion. 5Gb/s devices are now “USB 3.2 Gen 1.” 10Gb/s devices become “USB 3.2 Gen 2.” And 20Gb/s devices will be… “USB 3.2 Gen 2×2.”
No idea why…
The real failure is that the USB standard didn't require clear and consistent markings for all cables and ports from the very beginning. You should be able to look at your cable or device and know exactly what it will support.
Yea too many people buying something with a usbc and expect it to just work. Sorry that expensive USBC screen is not supported by your 5 year old laptop. You can either take it back or get a new laptop.
Some people still insist that I just didn't find the right driver.
I dont really get it. Of course an old cable will only support the standard that was around when it was produced. So if you have a port that supports a higher bandwidth than the cable then obviously the throughput will drop down to the level of the cable.
As long as its downwards compatible i dont see the problem. You can plug your old USBC cable into your brand new laptop and it will work just fine as it always has. Do these people just expect magic?
That’s not the problem. Lack of labels is. You need to have a cable tester to figure out which one of your many C-C cables is best for a particular purpose.
Yeah this whole article is a nothing burger.
"Alert!! Ur cables wont magically upgrade themselves!!"
Anyone ever worked with network cables. Those people would kill for magically upgradeable cables. Thats why we have fiber cables where the sky is the limit.
"What do you mean I need to upgrade my runs to get faster network speeds?!"
HDMI 1.0 can't do 4K120Hz whhaaaatt?
What do you mean I can't do 8k over VGA?
Some people don't want to hear it, but this was kind of a predictable side effect of the USB-C connector requirements. Like, it's obviously good in the fight against proprietary connectors, but it kind of sucks in terms of generational differentiation within the same standards family.
This is funny to me because so many people wanted USB-C to be a government mandated, gun pointed to your head standard, and they couldn't see how now we are stuck with USB-C being the default connector. That never meant you automatically get new protocols running over that wire. You still have to buy new cables.
Sure, but if I don't need any of the new protocols I can keep using the same chargers, cables, dongles, etc
You will have issues in the future and youll pull your hair out trying to figure out why its not working.
The only issue is the USB forum not properly labelling their standards. They cause the confusion themselves. People can understand "this cable will do 40gbps and this one will do 80gbps", it just has to be obviously pointed out on the cable.
It is a huge issue indeed, and we are living that issue for decades to come.
We're not stuck with USB C until the end of time. If USB D comes out and the USB IF says this is the future then there's provisions to switch to it.
Good luck with that 🫡
Some of us brought this up and were shouted down. I do like that the regulation eliminated proprietary connectors, but the inability to grow physical and signalling standards together was always going to be a problem.
I dont get it, what am I missing if I use USB-C? What is there waiting on the sides that cant use that hardware?
The devices are outgrowing the capabilities of the cables. Doesn't matter if the connector fits or not.
I guess I could search for it myself, but do you have a specific example?
The main motivation behind that is charging, not data transfer. USB-PD has been stable and backwards compatible
You can charge all you want, but when you're trying to thunderbolt your laptops display to three 4K monitors and grab your USB 2.0 charging cable to do that with, now you might have some bandwidth issues.
And honestly, even attempting to charge your laptop with a shit tier cable probably won't charge your laptop.
Yeah but no one is forcing you to use thunderbolt for displays, I still don't get your point that forcing adoption of USB-C for charging locks you into the mess that is the rest of the USB standards
Its going to cause issues when you grab a random USB-C cable out of your USB-C cable box and try to use a low bandwidth cable that has USB-C connectors when you need a high bandwidth cable that has USB-C connectors.
I don't get how thats hard to understand.
Because you're arguing across purposes.
For most cabling standards thusfar in history, the physical connectors indicated the purpose and capabilities of the cable. This has a 9-pin DIN, it's an RS-232 serial cable. This has RJ-45s it's at least a 100BASE-T networking cable. This is HDMI, suitable for attaching a DVD player to a television.
USB has spent the last 30 years fucking that up by trying to make one cable to rule them all...except they've made like eight different connector standards, A, B, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B, 3B and C. We've arrived into a world where we're allegedly standardizing on the USB-C plug and socket, but it has become damn near impossible to tell by examining the plug, socket or cable what capacities it actually has. A USB 3.1 cable can be outwardly physically identical to a USB4 cable. And they make USB 2.0 cables with A-C or C-C plugs, every smart phone comes with one in the box. None of the high speed data lines are rigged up, only the power and old USB2.0 lines are, so it will transfer data, just very slow.
Now, why do they do that? Because some people actually don't want the data lines. Because a USB 3.1 and later USB-C cable has like 19 conductors in it. that makes the cable thick and stiff. And if ya basic, all you do is charge thay phone, eat hot chip and lie, a high speed capable cable is difficult to run from the socket behind your headboard up the back of your night stand to the back of your wireless charger, it's so heavy and stiff that it might pull the empty charger off the table, like an HDMI cord does to a Roku. If ya basic, you don't care about data transfer speeds because you never transfer data via cable, your phone is a Tiktok and doordash machine. So why would you pay $30 for a single cable that sucks to use?
If instead you're the kind of umm actually jackass nerd that has a Lemmy account and opinions about systemd, you've got two Raspberry Pis on your desk next to the cable your new phone came with, and your phone is plugged into the PC you built with a USB 3.2 rated cable you bought from Cable Matters and then labelled as such with a Brother P-Touch label maker. /autobiography
Given that USB isn't bidirectional, having separate A and B connectors was actually a good thing, which USB-C has now gone and screwed up. Stupido example: let's say you charge up your phone using a USB-C wall plug adapter. We'll call the wall plug adapter (the device supplying power) the "charger" (this is normal), and we'll call the phone (the device receiving power) as the "chargee", ok?
Now instead of wall plug you have a USB power bank. So the power bank is the charger and the phone is the chargee. Eventually the power bank goes empty and you have to recharge it from a wall plug. So now the power bank is the chargee. Still not too bad.
But what happens when you try to charge one power bank from another power bank? Both use USB-C so which one is the charger and which is the chargee? Answer: the protocol says when you plug the two together, they are supposed to decide at random! A bunch of code in the chip and then you look at the LEDs to see which way the power is flowing. If it's not what you wanted, unplug and re-plug until it's right.
Even funnier, many phones now have charger capability, so you can recharge phone B from phone A and vice versa. Same confusion. Best of all is when your phone is down to say 30% charge, so you plug it into a power bank. Except oops, it didn't occur to you that the phone can end up charging the power bank instead of the other way around. Brilliant.
Someday maybe the USB committee will make up its mind about something. Meanwhile "universal" has meant "chaos everywhere", lol.
Unrelated but I just switched over from Reddit to Lemmy and that's exactly the kind of comments that I was hoping to find, you gave me a good laugh & write very well, thanks for this
You don't know the purpose of a USB-C cable because they all look the same.
Tell me, what is this cable capable of?
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there are two cables there.
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Judging by the thickness of the cable, they're USB 2.0 cables intended mainly for charging. A USB 3.x cable is going to be about as thick as the plug body. You vs. the guy she told you not to worry about:
- Yes, everyone who makes decisions for the USB Consortium regarding naming, labeling and iconography deserves to be spayed or neutered with a deadblow mallet.
Solid guess. You know your USB 2.0 USB-C to USB-C charging cables. (Its a 60w capable cable btw, not 120w or 240w, so don't bother trying to power your gaming laptop with it)
Can't we, please, have just a fast com port with 5V? Everything else should be made programmatically, without touching the hardware. A cable should be just a cable. A few wires, nothing more.
The article kinda addresses that:
"In order to hit 80Gbps, passive cables (which are the cheap ones) are strictly limited to roughly 0.8 to 1m in length. That means if you need a 2m cable for your desk setup, you must buy a certified active USB 4 80Gbps cable, which contains a tiny signal boosting chip."
Can't we, please, have just...
NO.