Amazon bans cheap USB-C cables in wake of Google engineer’s crusade

For months, Google engineer Benson Leung has been engaged in a one-man struggle against a seemingly infinite movement of terrible USB-C cables. As we distinctive lower back in November, Leung, who works on Google’s Chromebook Pixel and Pixel C teams, has been testing and validating (or invalidating) dozens of cables relying on whether or not or now not they had been manufactured appropriately to USB-C spec and were well matched with Chromebooks or different devices that depend on the nevertheless-nascent port fashionable. these days, Leung gained a prime victory; Amazon has introduced it will not sell cheap, substandard USB-C cabling.

The alternate comes courtesy of an update to the Amazon terms and situations for object income, and prohibits “Any USB-C™ (or USB type-C™) cable or adapter product that is not compliant with standard specs issued by “USB Implementers discussion board Inc.” agencies that try and mislabel and sell such merchandise could see their bills suspended if customers whinge.

lamentably, this kind of ban isn’t in all likelihood to have a massive impact on whether or not or not third-birthday celebration producers maintain shipping mistaken hardware. The engineers that simply design the specifications and the advertising and PR folks who write the ad reproduction are regularly in much less-than ideal contact with each other. This problem become on show more than one instances ultimate year whilst Samsung declared it encrypted the audio data it despatched over the web for processing (it didn’t), or whilst Vizio informed reporters you have been only opted right into a viewing habits tracking software if you agreed to participate (in fact, its customers had been opted-in whether they agreed with being a part of the program or now not). Amazon also isn’t volunteering to tackle cable testing itself, so the number of eyeballs looking at any given answer are going to be limited.

With that stated, that is a step forward, and Leung himself consents. He writes: “surely excellent news, however all of us should stay vigilant and make contact with out any horrific merchandise we discover on Amazon and other stores (both on-line and brick and mortar) as we find them.”

if you want sources on picking suitable cabling, users have assembled each a website and a Google docs spreadsheet to disseminate this records. We rather recommend taking advantage of this useful resource — awful USB-C cables don’t work (at satisfactory) and can purpose catastrophic gadget damage or entire tool failure. some dodgy cables will work on some hardware however not in others, without a facts furnished to the user on what might be causing the problem. It’s fine to keep away from the problem altogether. for the reason that building a compliant cable sincerely isn’t difficult in comparison to the harm non-compliant designs have been acknowledged to reason, the earlier we see this trouble stamped out, the higher.