71–80 of 164 posts
I had one of these and quite liked it. Then one day I plugged my phone in before bed as a million times before and the cable display popped and started emitting smoke.
Current USB-C cables that connect to my docking station have a rigid connector end that puts mechanical stress on my laptop's port. I have the habit of moving my laptop around on my desk, and that connector end is a lever that pulls it out of the port.
Worse, it physically wore out one of the ports where it became almost unusable (replacing requires an entire new board).
Let's not put more stuff on these cables so they don't act more like like pliers instead of actual cables.
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Why would you do that with a display and visible light instead of a tiny antenna using basically any other part of the spectrum
Good thing the FCC doesn't regulate the visible spectrum. (We are assuming these malicious people also face the wrath of the FCC but somehow not the CFAA... right? :P)
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The USB-IF publishes a list of member companies[1]; purchase products from these qualified manufacturers, and perhaps more importantly, from authorized distributors. This is a good enough "policy control" for the average consumer. [1] https://www.usb.org/members
Surprised that Anker isn’t obviously on there.
Tread with caution...the prospects of zombie grift tend to be real when brand recognition is established.
[1] https://usb.org/sites/default/files/vendor_ids051920_0.pdf
> The paranoid side of me suspects that a cable like this one would be an ideal place to hide a malicious chip. Why hide a malicious chip in a cable with display -- why not in one without a display? Wouldn't that be more, uh, malicious?
Then again, this person discovered these cables this year and they've been out for awhile. And the OMG cable has been out for a few years now, which does exactly what they are afraid of. Which of course could be done by state actors for much longer.
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Surprised that Anker isn’t obviously on there.
Unsurprising considering Anker doesn’t pay for basic UL listing for many of their AC power taps.
I had one of these and quite liked it. Then one day I plugged my phone in before bed as a million times before and the cable display popped and started emitting smoke.
Did it destroy peripherals for you too?
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You can find them with full cell modems hidden in the cable end molding.
It's hard to discern if you're serious or joking. Is that an actual thing? I couldn't find anything by googling
Useful to get an idea how much your USB light draws and to check if your phone is really fast charging. I'd be careful with the numbers when the USB drives a more complicated load. Measuring the true power consumption of a microcontroller is surprisingly hard.