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Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

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Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#91

Post by kuschku »

larrybud wrote: post #78
mikestew wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I filter out one and five star reviews. To me, five stars means when you use the product, Jesus appears before you. One star means I ordered a cable and received a dead crab instead (pretty sure there's an XKCD that covers the last one). But others don't agree with my rating system, so "ordered blue, but it was robin egg blue. Werst company evar!!!11" means one star. Five stars means "I work for the compa…

Really? If a product meets your needs, is a fair price, and seems to be working fine after 30 days, you would not give it 5 stars? It would need to perform miracles to get 5 stars?

3 stars is "Okay, does its job".

4 stars is "Does its job better than expected"

5 stars is "contained a 100$ coupon for amazon" or something that really makes you love a product.

The product quality of LEGO bricks – survives a century and so on – is worth 5 stars, as it’s far above expected quality for such things.

For a USB cable it would need to be amazingly resistant to wear – survives being folded and survives a dog chewing on it and so on – and it would need to be perfectly manufactured to get 5 stars.

In Hardware, usually very few high quality products – Miele washing machines, LEGO bricks, IBM ThinkPads, etc – reach something that could be called "5 stars".

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#92

Post by ocdtrekkie »

mikestew wrote: post #47
ScottWRobinson wrote: post #26

And this exemplifies why (in my eyes) Google seems to have the best engineers - they're willing to go above and beyond in everything they do

Other companies have employees just like that. Sadly, if those folk pull a stunt like that, someone will be having a word with them. I say "sadly", but I've seen the flip-side of this, too. A properly-formed query on usenet will turn up some back-in-the-day posts from Microsoft employees (posting with a microsoft.com reply-to) who were real assholes. (And not to pick on Microsoft, though they certainly have it coming…

I've definitely seem some embarrassingly bad attitudes from Googlers on social media. (One recently which basically said every serialization protocol that wasn't Google's was inherently harmful, because Google didn't make them.)

But obviously, there's many people like Benson who provide incredibly sagely advice that do a service not just to Google's own customers, but competitors' like Amazon's customers as well.

Once a company reaches a certain size, they have way too many people to police all of them across the Internet, or ensure all of their hires contribute meaningfully online.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#93

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #66

I see no reason why to buy anything but Anker. I once tried to purposely destroy an Anker MicroUSB cable (bought a 5 pack that had three 3ft, one 6ft, one 1ft, didn't need the 1ft), by grabbing the head of it with clamping pliers and yanking the fuck out of it with the cable wrapped around my hand, and bending it to near 180 degrees repeatedly for about 5 minutes. I could not kill it without straight up taking wire c…

As someone who also owns and recommends several Anker products, I do have a counterexample: A microUSB cable I bought about a month ago has gotten it's locking pins stuck in the retracted position somehow, and no longer secures itself inside the port. Not a common case, of course, but they're not infallible.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#94

Post by chrisBob »

melling wrote: post #22

Has there been any uptick in USB-C adoption? Apple skipped it in their latest iMacs. I think they're waiting for the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 unification. https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-d... I've seen a couple Dell laptops but not much else. It's a much better form factor. Not to mention the elimination of USB superposition: :-) http://9gag.com/gag/6756457/usb-superposition

The only physical USB-C device and cable I have seen are the ones on the new Apple TV. Apple even helpfully included the cable with the developer devices.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#95

Post by legulere »

Albright wrote: post #2

…And on ones that do. Looks very useful for weeding out actual quality from the muddle. Would love to see someone doing this kind of work with other types of cables, too.

You don't have that issue with cables usually because they don't need to contain active components

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#96

Post by phil21 »

munchbunny wrote: post #19

If only there were more of this stuff! The kind of information in his reviews is technically detailed but clear enough for the layperson, and it answers the real question I have in mind when I'm looking at the 1-3 star reviews: does it actually work for what I want it to do?

The strange part of these reviews though is that counterintuitively many of these cables would be considered to "work for what you want it to do" when a spec-compliant cable would not.

Usually what people want is to "make my device charge fast" - in which case the cables not implementing the spec correctly work while compliant cables would not.

Of course, there is a reason that compliance exists! Chances are you are plugging this cable into a wall-wart made in the past few years with higher tolerances than needed, and things will work out fine. Until they don't. Then you may burn out a PC USB port, or potentially I suppose catch a cheap chinese wall wart on fire.

At least that is my current understanding having spent the past few days attempting to decipher how this all works. The correct way to go about this transition to USB-C is to toss out all your USB-A chargers, buy USB-C chargers, and if you need to adapt; adapt in the USB-C -> USB-micro/mini direction vs. the USB-A -> USB-C direction.

The tldr on this is basically if you plug into a USB-A charger, you should not be able to "rapid charge" at 3A. If you are, you are out of spec and could potentially damage something you plug that cable into. Just give up on the dream of using your old chargers and expect to replace them with chargers that implement USB-C there. If you need to charge USB micro devices, invest in some USB-C -> Micro cables (or adapters) instead.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#97

Post by organsnyder »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #66

I see no reason why to buy anything but Anker. I once tried to purposely destroy an Anker MicroUSB cable (bought a 5 pack that had three 3ft, one 6ft, one 1ft, didn't need the 1ft), by grabbing the head of it with clamping pliers and yanking the fuck out of it with the cable wrapped around my hand, and bending it to near 180 degrees repeatedly for about 5 minutes. I could not kill it without straight up taking wire c…

I've also started buying Anker exclusively. Their chargers work with every device at full-rate, and their cables are decent. I have had the clips break on a couple of MicroUSB cables, including the 1ft from a similar 5-pack. I had my phone attached to a battery pack and stuffed both in my pocket. The stress of bending the cable in strange directions messed up the clips on the cable. Not quite bulletproof, but not bad (and I was lucky I didn't damage the phone instead).

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#98

Post by ocdtrekkie »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #60
Johnny555 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well it's easier to make things by the million when you don't care about testing, certification or product damage. Part of the reason the cheap ones have so much availability is that they are cheap and easy to make and have little quality control -- even though they may not work.

Not really. I can buy super cheap micro-USB cables that work perfectly. This seems to happen all the time when there's a new standard out. The disreputable companies whip together something shoddy and try to get those early sales before more reputable companies can move in. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon do nothing to stop this obvious fraud. Amazon should be stopping these sales. Also, its disingenuous to pretend…

Arguably though, if a USB cable is $20 through Google, and $2 through an off-brand, I may want two of them, but buy six and consider any that don't work or stop working disposable. And still be saving money over buying from Google.

Consumers need to be aware of the risks they take when they buy bargain brand, but it doesn't negate the benefits of having bargain brand available.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#99

Post by mschuster91 »

TillE wrote: post #68
Johnny555 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A central review clearinghouse will never happen with cheap accessories like this. If model "1234-X" gets bad reviews, the same product will just be renumbered to model "9863-V2" and even the company name may change. So there's no way to keep reviews associated with the same product -- it's the same reason why there are no good review sites for mattresses across all retailers -- the manufacturers use a variety of nam…

Yeah, you'd need to cooperate with the manufacturer to "certify" only one exact product, and make sure that the certification is revoked when anything is changed. The mattress issue actually sounds like a solvable problem, if you're willing to put in the effort. It's just not really worth it when you can also buy mattresses from IKEA or various online retailers which don't engage in those tactics.

> It's just not really worth it when you can also buy mattresses from IKEA or various online retailers which don't engage in those tactics.

IKEA manufactures wherever possible for the lowest price. The difference is that IKEA employs quality control measures.

Re: Google engineer writing Amazon reviews on USB-C cables that don't work

#100

Post by semiel »

fpgaminer wrote: post #83

The current rhetoric when it comes to the failings of online reviews is to point at fraudulent reviews. I posit that, rather, it's the lack of weighting reviews by the expertise of the reviewers. Clearly the reviews of a hardware engineer at Google should have more weight to them than an average consumer (on products like this), because as bkmartin points out, the average consumer has no idea as to the true quality o…

When buying something online, I make a habit of reading a couple of the negative reviews. Sometimes they're, "I meant to buy a toaster, and misclicked on this television instead. Makes poor toast. 2/5." But sometimes they're more like, "It worked great for two years, and then became sentient and strangled my pet fish. 2/5" Rating distributions only tell you part of the story.
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