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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Wait until they encounter the final boss
There are 3 ways to plug in a USB-A. Wrong, wrong and right.
Hey I can consistently get that around my 4th try
USB, the jack of all connectors, master of none.
Well, the U does stand for universal.
Blame the standards group. There are so many things USB is excellent at but they have been horrifically butchering the implementation.
They need to mandate compliance. Each accessory should support a basic level of features. Packaging and listings should include a facts table which shows the support for the various features. You shouldn't have to guess.
But let's talk about the features. Oh. My. God. Let's talk about it.
USB-PD is great. But they don't have to support it. Or they can have their own implementation which is also compliant. Or their own implementation which isn't.
Oh, but you can connect your headphones into the USB port and play music! Well, only if the device, cable, and headphones support analog audio. Or if the device, cable, and headphones support digital audio. But if it supports digital audio, both devices must support synchronous audio. Or asynchronous. Or adaptive. And none of these are cross-compatible.
Well, that's annoying. At least video isn't bad. You can use it to connect directly to your monitor! Just make sure it's DP. Or HDMI. Or VGA. Or MHL. Or VirtualLink. Only DP and HDMI are cross-compatible.
They also can support Ethernet. Or they might not. They could support ThunderBolt. Or they won't.
They have to be at least USB 3.0. Sorry, 3.1 Gen 1. Wait, 3.2 Gen 1x1. Oh, I mean SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps. Ah, fuck, never mind they changed the standard again - USB1/2 are fine.
But at least manufacturers are happy to put the specs on their packaging and listings, right? I'm sure there isn't any natural incentive to hide this information so they can sell inferior products.
I mean, I never worried about it even back in the day when the computer would yell at you if you didn't click the stupid safe disconnect thing in the system tray.
Nothing ever happened. At worst, a thumbdrive would get corrupted and have to be reformatted. And I also grew up with the mouse and keyboard being PS/2, not USB, so it didn't matter for those at all.
The purpose of the ‘stupid’ safe disconnect is the same as it is today, to finalize cached writes. If you are transferring large files to the device and don’t safely remove/disconnect the device then don’t act confused because the data isn’t there when you plug it into another computer. Or do, because that’s what users do.
We used to have time to eat serial, but now everything has to catch the bus.
My favorite fucked-up thing from the past was the Macintosh circa 1990. The disk drive on this thing had no eject button -- to eject a disk, you just did the oh-so-fucking-intuitive thing of dragging the disk icon over the trash can icon. But they did very conveniently place the big knobby power button for the whole computer (which looked exactly like an eject button) right above the disk drive. I spent a year constantly powering off the computer every time I wanted to just eject the disk.
Fun fact. The ADB Apple Desktop Bus connector had four pins. Power, ground, one for the power button, and one for all other functionality. That’s daisy chained keyboards, mouses and drawing tablets. All data in one single pin. And one for the power button.
to eject a disk, you just did the oh-so-fucking-intuitive thing of dragging the disk icon over the trash can icon.
"Ah yes, just delete the disk to eject the disk drive. Of course!"
That's such a crime against UI LOL.
Especially because I am sure it feels very scary to people with important data on the disk.
That would be a neat shortcut for formatting it though lol.
Exactly! I mean, why wouldn't you think that doing that would delete everything on the disk instead of just ejecting it?
I remember getting a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for my laptop to use my enormous external DVD drive. The only DVDs I had at the time were X-Men, Star Wars Episode 1, and Nothing But Trouble.
Nothing but Trouble
Absolute CINEMA.
I have a soft spot for what most people consider objectively bad movies. Battlefield Earth, Waterworld, Soldier. Some of my favorite movies from my teenage years.
What feels like a lifetime ago, my mates at the time would watch what were considered awful movies.
Two of my favorite films are dross like Nothing but Trouble and Ultraviolet.
Remember: (M)y (D)ear (C)omputer.
You have to turn on the monitor, then turn on the disk drive, and finally turn on the computer. You have to do the reverse when you turn them off.
If you don't do this you might damage your Apple //e.
When USB-C was still new, there was the possibility of an out of spec cable to kill your device. That's, I think, slightly more inconvenient than said device not charging fast enough or not offloading cat pictures at the bitrate you expect.
I spent two hours today explaining the difference between USBC plugs meaning USB 3 — USB 3.1, USB 3.2, and thunderbolt 4,and the differences between all of that, and how they would affect the performance when my buddy was shopping for an external drive bay enclosure. (You bought a server with TB4 ports, get that TB4 enclosure! Those drives are set up in parallel, so let’s eat that speed!)
I literally had to explain the differences to him for two hours. Not because he was stupid, but because it’s absurdly complicated.
All devices now have chips that do a handshake with the charger, exchanging information about supported standards and charging using the best common option. So I charge my prohe with a 90W laptop charger, even when it is unable to use the whole wattage
The point is that it is unclear which USB C can do what.
What's the solution here though? I am 100% unwilling to go back to non-compatible and separate chargers for electronics where not completely necessary. It's awesome taking only my laptop charger with me and being able to charge all devices optimally with it.
I think the complaint is more about the ports on computers, and the answer is for manufacturers to label the ports and for users to read them.
That last part is admittedly hard for a lot of people (myself includes at times).
