Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 400 posts

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

#321

Post by shimo5037 »

voltagex_ wrote: post #179
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…

It's difficult to buy Anker outside of North America. The Amazon Basics stuff is reasonable, too.

Very untrue. Their PC website has direct links to their products on almost every regional version of Amazon, with local support even. I've had a few of their wall chargers permanently lose 1-2 ports, and while I'd be much happier if it didn't happen in the first place, I received a replacement the next day here in Japan.

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

#322

Post by shimo5037 »

novaleaf wrote: post #113
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 like Anker (good bang for buck) but they are not above fail: I have a 5 port USB charger and the middle port stopped working (thankfully the others still work, so I have a 4 port charger now) I bought a bunch of their external battery packs (aprox 15 of them) and none of those have failed)

The same thing happened to me as well with the 5-port version, and more recently with the more powerful 6-port version. I still buy and recommend their products thanks to their very responsive support, though.

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

#323

Post by mynameishere »

darkstar999 wrote: post #229

Really, this is at the top of HN? Must be a slow news day.

You made that comment 6 hours ago and it's still at the top. I can't even figure out why it was posted in the first place. "Look, someone is writing reviews on Amazon!" Wow!

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

#324

Post by rurounijones »

Johnny555 wrote: post #15

Is there a simple test that someone could do with a multimeter to test these cables themselves? Or is it more than just having a pullup resistor on the right pins?

https://plus.google.com/+BensonLeung/posts/jGP5249NppF is his method (Not sure if you seen this). I am not sure if you can emulate this with a multimeter.

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

#325

Post by eulo_ »

shimo5037 wrote: post #321
voltagex_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to buy Anker outside of North America. The Amazon Basics stuff is reasonable, too.

Very untrue. Their PC website has direct links to their products on almost every regional version of Amazon, with local support even. I've had a few of their wall chargers permanently lose 1-2 ports, and while I'd be much happier if it didn't happen in the first place, I received a replacement the next day here in Japan.

They only ship to: US, Japan, UK and Germany

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

#326

Post by aninhumer »

atourgates wrote: post #205
asddubs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

another really common thing is people rating the shipping instead of the product in their negative reviews

Though with some products this is helpful. I was just looking at air compressors on Amazon, and there were a few models that seemed to arrive damaged in the vast majority of reviews. Given that feedback, I might pay a bit of a premium to buy one locally.

Perhaps, but it would still be far more helpful to tie that information to the distributor instead of the product. For all you know, those reviews were all due to a different distributor, and the one your were looking at would have been fine.

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

#327

Post by TeMPOraL »

sdrothrock wrote: post #300
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…

> Clearly the reviews of a hardware engineer at Google Not sure if this is an oversight, but Benson identifies himself as a software engineer. I feel divided on this. On the one hand, I'd like to give more weight to his reviews; on the other, why? Being at Google, a software engineer, or working on the Chromebook don't actually make it more likely that his reviews should be better than anyone else's. I feel like most…

> Being at Google, a software engineer, or working on the Chromebook don't actually make it more likely that his reviews should be better than anyone else's.

Of course it does make it significantly more likely. "Being a software engineer at Google" restrict the space of reviewers to the > 100 IQ subspace and further to the "good with tech" subspace. "Working on Chromebook, et al." further cuts the space down to the people who have to deal with USB-C devices at work. Opinion of such selected person should be given much more weight than the average, because basically he most likely knows the shit he's talking about, while average reviewer has no clue about anything.

> I feel like most people would take his word because he claims to work at Google

I think most people take his word because he cites the USB spec directly. No bullshit, just pointing out the exact problems and their implications.

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

#328

Post by hackuser »

This is just one side of an ancient debate: If component A doesn't work with component B, where is the problem? The manufacturer of A blames B, and vice-versa. (The truth is that they are simply incompatible and often it's nobody's fault.)

If many USB-C cables don't work with Google devices, where is the problem? It suits Google to say the problem is with the cables, but maybe creating pressure for better cables or shifting consumer attention to them is just a less expensive solution than altering the devices.

Regarding the violated specifications: 1) In the real world, nobody meets all published specifications and both sides can point to violations. Have you ever built anything that met all specifications? (I laughed a little when I wrote that) 2) If you design your product to work only with other systems that meet all published specifications, your product sucks. If your car only runs safely on roads that meet all specs, your customers are going to die. (Maybe there are exceptions when engineering critical systems components in things like airplanes, but I doubt it.)

That doesn't make our Google engineer wrong; it just means we don't know (unless you know what realistic performance specs are for USB-C cables). However, if in the real world it's hard to find USB cables that work with Google devices then, ipso facto, there's something wrong with the devices.

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

#329

Post by noinput »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #272
izzydata wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently got a Nexus 5X and it only came with a usb-c to usb-c cable and I wasn't able to connect it to my computer. I searched specifically for anker, usb-c to usb-a and couldn't find anything. Can anyone confirm that this is a product somewhere? This is what I went with, but it didn't seem to support data transfer. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B011N7ME48?psc=1&redirect=t...

Anker Type C to USB 2.0 Type A: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y0K51PU/ Anker Type C to USB 3.0 Type A: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0119EIHTG/ Both are currently out of stock, which might be why you didn't find them. I was told by someone I know that asked Anker that they should be back in stock before the end of November.

Nicely done spreading the word about Smile.

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

#330

Post by voltagex_ »

shimo5037 wrote: post #321
voltagex_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to buy Anker outside of North America. The Amazon Basics stuff is reasonable, too.

Very untrue. Their PC website has direct links to their products on almost every regional version of Amazon, with local support even. I've had a few of their wall chargers permanently lose 1-2 ports, and while I'd be much happier if it didn't happen in the first place, I received a replacement the next day here in Japan.

I should have rephrased it - I can't buy them without using a reshipper in Australia.
Post reply on HN