232
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2026
232 points (97.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
43192 readers
635 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I've got two devices (An auto-darkening welding hood, and a LED desk lamp) with USB-C ports that will simply not charge if you plug them into a USB-C charger. You cannot use a USB-C charger to charge these USB-C devices.
You must use a USB-A charger with a USB-A-to-USB-C cable to charge these devices.
The way USB-C is supposed to work is the charger, device, and the cable itself have smarts in them, and they all negotiate taking into account the kind of power the device accepts, the kind of power the charger can provide, and the kind of power the cable can deliver to properly charge the device.
More than likely those devices you have don't have any smarts in them and just want 5V with 500mA or perhaps 1A delivered to its USB-C shaped plug. Since it's dumb port, the USB-C chargers can't talk to it, and therefore they refuse to provide power. However, most USB-A chargers are just dumb power supplies and will happily provide the 5V 1A (or 500mA) the device wants. Technically a USB-A device shouldn't draw more than 100mA of power without getting an OK from the port it's plugged into, but that's been mostly ignored for years now.
You can charge them with a USB-C charger, but only with a cable that sets the voltage for the device. The fact that the USB-C port is used without selecting the charging voltage is beyond infuriating to me.
Based on that hypothesis, let me guess: The manufacturer used to make this model with a micro-B socket and did nothing to alter the design but change the physical socket.
Probably. USB-C has multiple protocols defining voltage, but they have to be "agreed" on by the charger and the device. Cheap devices skip that and it angers me more than it should. Or not enough, I haven't come to a final conclusion.
USB Consortium: Okay, so our new connector can do everything! It's almost as small as Micro-B, the plug is reversible in the socket like Lightning, the host and peripheral ends use the same port like FireWire, it's got not four not nine but twenty-four pins so it can carry one USB 2.0 link, two USB 3.1 links, plus grounds, a couple different kinds of power and out-of-band communication, this thing should be good for high speed peripherals to include DisplayPort. This cable can do everything.
Device manufacturer: We make pocket flashlights. Our product is not Turing complete. We need no data transfer and 5V 1A of power. It would be a convenient end-user feature if it could charge from the same cables as our customer's phones. What's the minimum viable product for USB-C power delivery?
USB Consortium: ...It's got Thunderbolt!
It...kind of hasn't helped.
Let us join together in irritation.