• Margot Robbie
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    1109 months ago

    But in practical use, people found out that even a 50/50 chance of plugging the connector in the right way is annoying enough to warrant the additional complexity of reversability, hence the development of USB Type C.

    The USB-C design turned out to be much more durable and versatile (signal and power wise) in addition to reversability compared to the previous USB designs, and it is developed specifically to address the problems people found with USB-A/B/MicroUSB.

    Sometimes problems only reveal themselves through real life usage, and iterative improvement through a scientific trial and error process to address these problem is how you get development progress.

    • @[email protected]
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      479 months ago

      For USB-A, it’s usually not even 50/50. It’s the witchcraft superposition when the first two tries don’t work.

      • @[email protected]
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        79 months ago

        Yeah, people don’t take into account quantum positioning, pass-through phenomenon, or the fact that I can’t “see” when I plug it in wrong and that makes me think maybe my fingers are dumb and I missed the hole and not that I need to reverse it and try again.

      • @[email protected]
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        39 months ago

        First try doesn’t go in: oh I guess I have to flip it. Second try doesn’t go in, fiddle it a bunch still doesn’t go in. Fuck I had it the first time. Third try goes in immediately

    • @[email protected]
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      129 months ago

      I wish it was 50/50. A lot of the time it wouldn’t plug in so I flipped it. Still didn’t work so I flipped it back to the original orientation and it magically plugs in.

    • @[email protected]
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      9 months ago

      Can someone explain to me why I keep reading about people having problems plugging in USB A connectors upside down? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Per the spec, the holes always go up. They indicate the correct way to plug in the port. Not only that, but the printed logo on the connector also always goes up.

      The only time this is SLIGHTLY confusing is if you have a desktop tower where the motherboard is essentially mounted sideways, but for that case it just takes an extra second to think which way is “up” from the perspective of the motherboard.

      And before anyone says “who reads the spec?”, it feels like I subconsciously knew this for something like a decade before I even knew what a spec was.

      • @[email protected]
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        89 months ago

        I’ve seen enough devices with the usb ports mounted upside down, for whatever strange reason. Also sometimes you want to plug something in without looking, this is much easier with USB-C

        • @[email protected]
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          29 months ago

          That’s wild, I’ve never seen an upside down port.

          I agree reversibility is better and am happy usb c will finally kill this meme.

      • StarDreamer
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        9 months ago

        Sometimes you’re working on an IoT device in a tight space, which makes rotating/seeing everything much harder.

        Especially if you drop the cable it falls into a crevice somewhere.

        You probably won’t have trouble plugging it in the first time, but gods forbid you unplug/replug it then the cable rotates 540 degrees and you have no idea how it was plugged in before

        • @[email protected]
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          19 months ago

          Yeah that’s fair. But I feel like I’ve seen these “USB superposition” memes since before IoT was even a thing.