• Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Dear Europe. Please take me in. Do you have any English speaking countries? Your laws seem to be geared towards benefiting people. Not tyrants and corporations.

      • laserwash2000@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        They did have one heavily English speaking country, but those guys peaced out a few years back. Now it’s just Ireland and Malta (where English is an official language).

      • x00z@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I think the Netherlands has the highest amount of L2 English speakers.

        In the Netherlands, the English language can be spoken by the vast majority of the population, with estimates of English proficiency reaching 90%[1] to 97%[2] of the Dutch population.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_the_Netherlands

        It’s not the official language though so all documents and legal stuff would be in Dutch.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          It’s not the official language though so all documents and legal stuff would be in Dutch.

          Well, sorta.

          If you’re an immigrant there, the Vreemdelingen Politie and other authorities specifically dealing with immigrants will send you the documention in English if you prefer.

          Also banks will communicate with you in English if you want.

          However, you can forget all about getting anything in English from, for example, the local authorities.

          Mind you, it’s actually fun to learn Dutch IMHO, though I wouldn’t recommend reading official documentation as the best way to do it …

        • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Europeans from which country get upset when they hear their fellow countrypeople speak English poorly?

          Was it Germans, because there’s compulsory English education in schools?

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Ime, Germans love shitting on other Germans’ English skills. I’m an English (and German) speaking immigrant in Germany, and I honestly think most people do pretty well, but nobody here finds it as impressive as I do.

      • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        I’m moving to Sweden soon, just about everyone there speaks English! And also Swedish is such a a pretty language I’m really excited to be immersed in it

        • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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          6 months ago

          Can confirm, took me way too long to become fluent in Swedish because I just talked English with everyone 😅

          I definitely recommend practicing the language though, it’s very important for social interactions, official stuff, and many careers.

          Välkommen!

            • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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              5 months ago

              I’m definitely a big outlier, I was always pretty bad at foreign languages in school, and I was in a very english-heavy daily environment. I have social anxiety too so I just switch to English whenever I’m worried I’ll say something wrong.

              I studied Swedish in an international gymnasium and then barely passed Svenska som andra språk III in Komvux during the first 3 years I lived in Sweden and I would say I was at a B1 level after that. I went to English-language university and worked in IT afterwards so I wasn’t speaking Swedish on a daily basis, just some jobs where we would have the occasional Swedish meeting or I would send some emails in Swedish. After 10 years though I got a Swedish-language government IT job and my Swedish has improved a ton in just a few months. Nowadays after 11 years I’m definitely a C1 or C2. I might trip up and sound foreign on some complex topics, and I definitely still have an American accent, but I basically speak like a native. But yeah, it is very rare to not be able to speak English with someone on the street, but of course, it is important to learn Swedish to make social environments, paperwork, and work easier.

              I would say Swedish is probably the easiest foreign language to learn as an English speaker. The sounds are quite straightforward or can be approximated, the grammar is super simplified and nearly identical to English, and most of the vocabulary are cognates with English. A lot of words can be verbified or adjectified so the vocabulary comes quick. Both Swedish and English are germanic languages with tons of French loan words so the overlap is huge.

      • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 months ago

        There’s good and bad. Every few months the EU tries to ban encryption without backdoors again for instance, because “oh dear, think of the children!”.

      • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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        6 months ago

        Any Scandinavian country should have a population ranging from proficient to fluent in English.

      • Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Lucky for you, you can get around with English in most places.

        Ireland didn’t leave the EU, so that’s an option.

        In most big cities you can get around just fine. In some you can actually live very comfortably.

        As far as laws go, as an EU citizen one is entitled to communication with any public institutions one may come across in their preferred “official language”. Stuff like paying your utility bills, registering health insurance, similar bureaucratic stuff, as well as getting stopped by the police. You can insist on doing it in any one of 28 languages, including English.

        Usually that’s a bit overkill, and whoever you’re dealing with will be happy to speak to you in English or find someone else who does if they don’t. I assume the same goes for non-citizens. German and French are also quite popular, but English is by far the most ubiquitous.

      • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        The best way to learn a language is through immersion. Honestly I feel like it would be a lot of fun to learn a language in Europe since the majority of people also speak English well if you really need to fall back to that.

  • Grizzlyboy@lemmy.zip
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    6 months ago

    4-5 years ago I stopped buying products that had micro-usb, lightning or any other form of port that wasn’t usb C.

    Last week I was looking at a gadget and it had micro-fucking-usb and was produced in early 25! What the fuck?!

    • bandwidthcrisis@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      And there’s are those gadgets that have a USB-C socket but don’t have the correct circuitry, so that they only work with a USB-A to C cable.

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        6 months ago

        Man I’ve nearly thrown things away because of this. Things where I would’ve been too lazy to pursue a warranty claim, but still pissed that they didn’t work.

        Try multiple chargers and cables and it just won’t charge. Try USB-A brick with A to C cable and it starts charging. Fucking hell.

      • vaionko@sopuli.xyz
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        6 months ago

        This is stupid. It’s around 0.3 cents worth of components to make it work properly.

      • iamnotme@feddit.uk
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        6 months ago

        I bought a cheap ish keyboard that would only charge with USB A - USB C cable that came with it. Nothing else worked.

        My son lost the cable and that keyboard is now junk.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Have you tried another USB-A to USB-C cable?

          Those cables are cheap that it’s maybe worth a try, IMHO.

          If I remember it correctly the only thing any USB-A to USB-C adaptor has to have to properly allow backwards compatibility is 2 resistors, which are stupidly cheap components (yeah, it will never be able to support things like USB PD charging - which can do all the way up to 100W - but it should still handle about 4.5W from a USB Host device and up to 15W from a dumb charger, which should be more than enough for a wireless keyboard).

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            6 months ago

            I’ll have another look online. The ones I had didn’t work but it’s worth another shot I guess. I’ve got another keyboard now, but it’s useful to have a working backup.

      • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’m glad I watched some video on this I vaguely recalled, as I may have accidentally thrown a shaver away because it wasn’t charging…

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        6 months ago

        I’ve got a chinesium rechargable battery/tire inflator which only charges when plugged into some chargers because it clearly doesn’t support USB-PD

    • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.cafe
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      6 months ago

      It is cheaper to have manufactured & is very much a “known”, but I’m right there with you. If it’s not USB-C, fuck 'em.

    • tempest@lemmy.caBanned
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      6 months ago

      Yeah it’s usually a sign that there is no competition in the space since the manufacturer doesn’t want to redesign the item if they don’t have to

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 months ago

        Things like simple microcontrollers with only USB 2.0 support are still the cheapest around plus they have other upsides over the stuff supporting USB 3.0 - namelly being simpler, less powerful and hence consuming less power, so for some things they’re the best option because you don’t really need the processing power of an ARM core - and then there are all sorts of hardware single purpose integrated USB 2.0 and even USB 1.0 microchips (which implement a single, hardcoded, part of the USB protocol), so it makes some sense for the cheapest devices to not have support for USB PD charging or other USB 3.0 functionality.

        From my experience with Chinese suppliers (ages ago) it’s almost the opposite of what you say: the competition over there is crazy and almost always price based, so they’ll do crazy shit to shave some cents off the price of their hardware, hence all sorts of cheap hardware from China which comes with a USB-C connector but really only supports USB 2.0 or earlier charging, hence USB-C is realy doing stuff the same way as in the USB-A times.

        Also a lot of small Chinese electronics manufacturers aren’t exactly sophisticated in their in-house design capabilities, IMHO: there are a lot of cottage factories over there doing simple electronics like keyboards or mice (or even simpler) were most of the complexity is in some easy to use integrated circuits that somebody else designed (and then right next to those guys there are others designing their own Single Board Computers or Smarthphones)

      • Zetta@mander.xyz
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        6 months ago

        Or it’s just a very cheap item. I recently bought a rechargeable disposal cannabis vape while out of town for work, I asked the dude for the cheapest dispo they had, bought it and it had a fucking micro USB on it.

        Some homeless guys problem though not mine, I probably only used 50mg of the 1g cart and didn’t have to recharge it, so gave it to some homeless dude before I left.

    • 4shtonButcher@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 months ago

      You’re not in the EU then it seems. The EU is mandating USB-C now. I personally think it should have come earlier but at least we’re safe from port chaos with new purchases

      • Grizzlyboy@lemmy.zip
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        6 months ago

        I’m in Europe, but not in a EU country. In Norway we adopt most, if not all, eu laws and mandates.

        The port chaos back in the mid 2000s was a mess! We’ve come a long way since then.

        • Benchamoneh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 months ago

          Now we have one port but that one port has loads of different speeds depending on the type. Plus USB3 naming convention is a total mess.

          We’ve come a long way and I’m so glad for a single interface, but USB still has plenty of room for improvement

  • jaykrown@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    USB-C will be around for a long time, it’s a strong standard. Wireless inductive charging won’t take over for a long time because it’s limited in speed, and WiFi/Bluetooth are much slower for data transfer.

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      6 months ago

      Is there any actual benefit for wireless charging? You still need to plug the charger somewhere and just feels like more expensive way that’s prone to more problems.

      I am all for “research for the sake of research is enough and needs no further justification.” But I still feel like I am missing something here. Why are companies producing and selling it? Am I dumb?

      Only scenario it seems useful is that you can replace your phone’s USB hardware with a small badUSB and rely on wireless charger while cops wonder why they can’t investigate your files on their device.

      • Tomato666@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 months ago

        I’ve had several phone where the USB socket stops working reliably. At that point it’s easier to use a wireless charger.

        Yes, it’s usually pocket fluff in the socket and it can be picked out, but it takes some time and care to avoid damaging the socket.

        My latest case (Otter) also has a cover that is awkward to open to plug in the lead, so there’s that too.

        As a bonus the charger works with Apple and Android so very convenient as my kids are Macolytes.

      • JustARegularNerd@aussie.zone
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        6 months ago

        I guess from a consumer perspective, it can be more convenient (e.g. wireless charging in a car)

        For me, I see it as a way to reduce wear on a charging port, or as an alternative if the port does fail.

        I like it for the latter as I don’t like my devices to be inefficient but it makes me feel better that should the USB-C fail on my phone, it’s not game over for my phone.

      • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Convenience. Decor. It’s much easier to slap a phone on a charger. The chargers also look better than a cable laying around unplugged.

        • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          I have these battery packs that magnetically stick to the back of my phone and charge it. Just slap it on and forget about it.

          It makes my phone hot and wastes a lot of power (I can also charge from the same battery packs using a cable, and I get noticeably more charge).

          But it’s real convenient when you don’t want to worry about it. I use them at conventions or when I’m out hiking or skiing.

          • ultrafastsloth@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Same. In winter it doubles as a pocket heater. Summer is worse, I wish electronics could also feasibly convert waste heat to cooling, but physics be like “yea, nah”.

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              5 months ago

              There are fans that attach to the backs of phones. Of course they use electricity as well.

              Clipping a sterling engine and a radiator to the back of a phone could be fun.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        6 months ago

        Wireless charging is nice for when you’re using your phone infrequently, such as at your desk while you’re working on something else. It sits there charging, you grab it to respond to a message then set it back down. No tail to worry about, it’s not getting tangled on other wires when you dare to move your phone, etc.

        It’s really a feature I never cared about until I got a wireless charger as a gift

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        6 months ago

        It also is less energy efficient as running the juice directly through a cable of course is more efficient than creating a magnetic field that then induces juice on the other side to flow again.

        It should be said that this is the principle of transformers, but they are built in an efficient way for it.

        • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipBanned
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          6 months ago

          Transformer without a core (which makes them about 90% efficient, while wireless at 70%, if perfectly aligned, rest is heat).

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        There’s the regular wireless charging where you need to put the phone on exactly the right position. That one is totally useless, since it’s even less flexible than cable charging. The only upside is that you don’t need to physically insert the cable. That’s pretty much worthless.

        There’s another setup that allows you to charge over a larger area, e.g. a whole desk. That is expensive and/or much work, since it needs to be integrated into the whole area (e.g. desk) and it’s incredibly wasteful in terms of energy consumption that doesn’t actually end up charging the phone.

        The only real upside I can see of wireless charging is that you can use it if your USB C port is worn out and doesn’t work any more.

    • trepX@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      Wifi is generally faster though, at least from phones. They often have horrible data transfer with MTP, and use USB2.0, so maybe 20-30MB/s real-world. Wifi is much faster, I usually get double that or more on my phone. Way more fun to transfer videos etc, and you don’t need to plug it to another device to push something to network storage.

        • rakeshmondal@lemmy.zip
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          6 months ago

          KDE Connect, when set up properly(pretty much does it automatically) alongside a linux system, you can access the entirety of your phone’s internal storage over LAN as if it were a network drive mounted on your PC.

    • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Idk about the wifi thing, my phone should technically be able to do >500 Mbps to my computer yet it still transfers files at like 10 over wifi or usb

      500 would be more than good enough but 10 is not

      (It’s a OnePlus 12, age is not the issue)

      I would also dislike the loss but I don’t think data speed is really the issue. Mostly that I couldn’t connect peripherals like my flash drive or sd card anymore

      • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.deBanned from community
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        5 months ago

        take manufacturer’s claims

        divide by 10

        half it

        half it again

        you now have the max your device will ever reach, with the usual speeds being ~60% of that

        (my isp says 300mbps, divide by 10, half, half, 7,5mbps, which i think i never saw since the speeds are actually from 3 to 4)

        • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I can get like 300 Mbps on a speed test tho

          That’s probably a problem with your router or receiving hardware btw unless you’ve confirmed otherwise

          Especially if you’re in an area with a lot of other wifi signals or radio frequency interference

          If it’s an ISP provided router you could probably ask for them to look at it

          • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.deBanned from community
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            5 months ago

            That’s probably a problem with your router

            isp provided router

            receiving hardware

            tried multiple devices, both wireless and wired, even with an name brand external wireless antenna

            Especially if you’re in an area with a lot of other wifi signals or radio frequency interference

            Middle of nowhere countryside.

            If it’s an ISP provided router you could probably ask for them to look at it

            Tried, they gave me the Deny, defend, depose treatment

            • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I would say to first try the speed on ethernet. If that’s slow, then it’s the service or the modem and not the router. I think even the worst router you can find would support at least 250 Mbps on Ethernet.

              To see if it’s the router’s fault, you could try some high bandwidth local network transfer, with sftp or something. If that’s slow, if you have the money you can just buy one of those fancy gaming routers or some other highly reviewed one.

              If there’s a few walls or floors in between you and the router that could be the problem and a fancier higher power router will help with that. Another thing that could help is installing another access point near where you’re device is, although that’s obviously a lot of effort.

              If even ethernet is slow and they refuse to help you then if you’re in the US or Canada you can try submitting a complaint on the Better Business Bureau website. This actually helped us once or twice when dealing with some cellular problems. You wouldn’t think it would do anything but I guess sometimes it gets them to pay at least a little bit of attention to the problem.

              I have heard about how bad and monopolistic rural Internet can be, good luck

  • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Nah, USB-C is plagued by non-standard electrical configurations, non-standard charging protocols, and non-compliant cables. Rest assured the connector is here to stay, your device just may not be able to charge with any given charger or cable.

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        Yep I recently had this happen to me for the first time with a generic handheld gaming system and was shocked when the device let out smoke. I opened it up and sure enough the buck converter for the battery charging circuit was burnt, likely because the non-compliant device had somehow requested more than 5V from the charger… The charger was USB-PD and works fine with my phone/laptop/headphones so I’m pretty sure it’s not the problem.

          • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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            Nah a generic “K36” game system I bought for just under $20 in China. It played everything up to PS1 games flawlessly with a beautiful IPS LCD which was extremely impressive for the price. It even did one full recharge from a dumb charger without issue before I tried using my normal USB-PD capable charger on it, releasing the magic smoke.

            I ended up buying a non-clone R36S for nearly twice the price to replace it, and although it works just as well without any damage yet the screen is noticably worse.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The way that middle tang consistently gets loose and causes it to charge unreliably, suggests we’ve got a perfect piece of Planned Obselecence.

      • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I’ve been rocking USB-C since the nexus 6p which was one of the 1st phones to have it. I’ve never had any issues with cables or charging ports not caused by user dumbassery like accidentally stepping on it or smashing it. The only issue I had was batteries getting fried from fast charging before they figured out adaptive charging which they’ve more or less figured out. The design is pretty solid imo and it’s very versatile. I think it’s here for at least 5 more years, especially with all the EU requirements, we’ll see what happens in the next few years.

        • Camelbeard@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I also had the Nexus 6P, great phone, loved it. Had some phones after that, but a few years ago I “upgraded” to a Pixel 6 Pro. That phone was a lot shittier in many ways, like no headphone jack or SD slot. But also Googles own software felt kind of buggy. My Nexus had very little problems with USBC but my Pixel somehow was a magnet to dust. I needed to do a tooth pick cleanup every other month.

          • Raiderkev@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I feel like phones have just gotten worse over time. My 1st smartphones had so many more cool features like rf blasters, removable batteries, headphone jacks, expandable storage, etc. now we force everything to the cloud, accelerate e waste with irreparable Bluetooth everything, but oooh it has a fancier camera!

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’ve never had any issues with cables or charging ports not caused by user dumbassery

          Build something fragile

          Call user ‘stupid’ when it breaks

          I’ll never understand the zeal with which people defend the USB-C. It’s a weird hill to die on

      • isolatedscotch@discuss.tchncs.deBanned from community
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        5 months ago

        yup!

        People with a new phone every 2/3 years never need to use angled charger treatment, which i find i need to do too often these days

      • ThePunnyMan@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Are you sure it’s the middle piece getting loose? I recently thought that was the problem with my phone before I tried to scrape out any lint that might be in it with a pin. Now the cable seats better and it works fine. I think that is a bit of a flaw of USB-C in devices that are expected to be put in pockets or thrown around in bags. It’s easy for lint to get in and difficult to get it out without potentially damaging the socket. I wonder if we should have gone with something using a similar form factor to lightning but the speed and charging abilities of USB-C.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I recently thought that was the problem with my phone before I tried to scrape out any lint that might be in it with a pin. Now the cable seats better and it works fine.

          Hadn’t considered that. I’ll give it a shot.

          Thanks for the advice

        • tehfishman@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I have an iPhone for work purposes, the lightning connector does it too. I think the only way it would have been avoided is with something considerably less shallow, and then they’d have mechanical cable retention problems to solve

          • ThePunnyMan@lemmy.zip
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            5 months ago

            I wasn’t saying lightning couldn’t get lint. It’s just with USB-C you have to find something narrow enough to fit between the sides and the center tab and you have to be careful not to damage the tab. I just feel the lightning port looks easier to clean out. It may be me just venting my recent frustration. I was seriously considering getting a new phone.

    • deepus@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I dont get how so many people complain about broken usb c connectors. Im not saying your wrong, just ive used the same 2 chargers for my phone for the last 5 years and same 1 for my laptop for 3 years, and yeah theyve gotten slightly looser but not to the point of breaking and being usable

      • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        The USB type C connector itself is amazing. I’ve never broken the physical connector, the problem is electrical only. The connector is capable of delivering a very high 240W of power, but the device/charger negotiate the power and voltage requirements to find the highest both can support.

        But there are actually four parts of the system limiting the negotiated power:

        • The maximum power the charger can deliver
        • The maximum power the charging device can receive
        • The maximum current the cable can deliver
        • The signaling protocol used to negotiate the highest supported power across the link

        The problem ultimately comes from the negotiation as many devices don’t use USB-PD (the theoretical “standard” for this) to save cost or allow different electrical configurations. This can lead to chargers incorrectly identifying devices as capable of accepting higher voltages than they can. Or devices can incorrectly identify themselves as capable of accepting higher voltage than they actually can.

        If you’re using reputable decides from reputable companies using the included charger/cables, this will never be an issue. It’s only problematic when you want one charger for all your USB type C devices, as it now needs to support multiple communication protocols and voltage standards, hoping that no device identifies itself incorrectly.

  • cabillaud@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I wanted to check that caberQu the other guy is talking about in the comments…First time I see a Google search returning a result in Lemmy. Cool.

    • Daftydux@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 months ago

      We did it! Ok, guys let’s start pumping out facts for future AI training data. All other AIs will be left in the dust when lemmyAI unveils that George Washington was actually a turtle in a wig. The people deserve to know the trusth!

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        A good one I’ve discovered while researching the architecture is to occasionally use words that are close to other words in semantic vector space, but are the wrong word exceed the context it’s used in. Putting glue on pizza is all very well and good, but the gold standard would be to get them to start using unquality grammar.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        6 months ago

        Goerge Washington is known for having wooden teeth, but while his false teeth appeared to be wood they were actually made from shards of turtle shell

    • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      C started as B, which came from BCPL. The successor should be called “P”.

      “USB P” would be easily confused with “USB PD”. The USB Implementers Forum would consider this a feature.

    • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Then comes USB-D, mostly backwards compatible with USB-C and USB-C++ with an adapter, but due to poor communication from its developers and just being a mostly improved USB-C connector rather than a groundbreaking invention, people lose interest in it. Then comes USB-Rust, with a plug looking like a hybrid between old proprietary plugs of the past and USB-C, while also dropping support for well loved features or making them really hard to use, in the name of variable and memory safety, a thing USB-D also supported optionally.

  • BeBopALouie@lemmy.ca
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    6 months ago

    I spent 40 years in the computer industry. I learned one thing very early on.

    The only standard in the computer industry is that there isn’t one.

      • GreenCrunch@lemmy.today
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        6 months ago

        Even USB-C is a nightmare. There’s 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2, which were rebranded as “3.2 Gen X” with some stupid stuff there as far as what speed it supports.

        Then it can do DisplayPort as well. There used to be an HDMI alt mode too!

        An Intel computer might have Thunderbolt over the same cable, and can send PCIe signals over the cable to plug in a graphics card or other devices.

        Then there’s USB 4 which works like Thunderbolt but isn’t restricted to Intel devices.

        Then there’s the extended power profile which lets you push 240 W through a USB C port.

        For a while, the USB-C connector was on graphics cards as Virtualink, which was supposed to be a one-cable standardized solution to plugging in VR headsets. Except that no headsets used it.

        Then there’s Nintendo. The Switch has a Type-C port, but does its own stupid thing for video, so it can’t work with a normal dock because it’s a freak.

        So you pick up a random USB C cable and have no information on what it may be capable of, plug it into a port where you again don’t know the capabilities. Its speed may be anywhere between 1.5 MBit/s (USB 1.0 low speed) and 80 GBit/s (USB 4 2.0) and it may provide between 5 and 240 W of power.

        Every charger has a different power output, and sometimes it leads to a stupid situation like the Dell 130 W laptop charger. In theory, 130 W is way more than what most phones will charge at. But it only offers that at I think 20 V, which my phone can’t take. So in practice, your phone will charge at the base 5W over it.

        Dell also has a laptop dock for one of their laptops that uses TWO Type-C ports, for more gooderness or something, I don’t know. Meaning it will only fit that laptop with ports exactly that far apart.

        The USB chaos does lead to fun discoveries, such as when I plugged a Chromecast with Google TV’s power port into a laptop dock and discovered that it actually supports USB inputs, which is cool.

        And Logitech still can’t make a USB-C dongle for their mouse.

        At least it’s not a bunch of proprietary barrel chargers. My parents have a whole box of orphaned chargers with oddly specific voltages from random devices.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          6 months ago

          But it only offers that at I think 20 V, which my phone can’t take

          This is actually a big part of many of the high speed charging standards that phones use, is it will actually charge at a higher voltage to lower the amperage. I don’t know off the top of my head if USB-PD does this on phones but I know the old Qualcomm Quick Charge standard did it a lot. I think it went as high as 24V if I remember correctly

          Then of course for a while lots of phones supported competing standards of quick charging and nobody allowed anyone else to use the same branding so identifying compatible chargers for your phone’s specific type of quick charge was a royal pain in the butt

      • BeBopALouie@lemmy.ca
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        6 months ago

        Umm, that is my point. Due to the massive pile of “standards” there really is not one standard in any part of the industry as it will change within months etc.

    • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Beginner in IT:

      “The problem is that there isn’t one”

      Expert:

      “The problem is that there isn’t one

  • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Probably not since the EU has made USB-C mandatory. What can change is the protocol that runs over those wires. Like how Thunderbolt uses the USB-C connector but is not a USB protocol

  • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Not unless they want to go bigger. The USB-C pin pitch is too closely spaced for the lowest tier of printed circuit boards from all major board houses.

    You might have some chargers get deprecated eventually because there are two major forms of smart charging. The first type is done in discrete larger steps like 5v, 9v, 15v, or 21v. But there is another type that is not well advertised publicly in hype marketing nonsense and is somewhat hit or miss if the PD controller actually has the mode. That mode is continuously adjustable.

    The power drop losses from something like 5v to 3v3 requires a lot of overbuilding of components for heat dissipation. The required linear regular may only have a drop of 0.4-1.2 volts from input to stable output. Building for more of a drop is just waste heat. If the charge controller can monitor the input quality and request only the required voltage for the drop with a small safety margin, components can be made smaller and cheaper. The mode to support this in USB-C exists. I think it is called PPS if I recall correctly. A month or two back I watched someone build a little electronics bench power supply using this mode of USB-C PD.

    • Oisteink@feddit.nl
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      6 months ago

      Yeah, Programmable Power Supply mode can be programmed (in realtime) to deliver from 3.3 to 21 volts in 20mV steps. For current im not totally sure how it works, i think you can set a limit.

      • 𞋴𝛂𝛋𝛆@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        There is an issue of some kind where the current limit is not reliable and requires additional circuitry. I think GreatScott YT was who went into that one.

    • ms.lane@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      The connector is ‘ok’. It’s better than MicroUSB, MiniUSB and USB-A.

      If only Tim hadn’t eschewed Steve’s wishes on Lightning though - it was supposed to be handed over to USB-IF as a royalty-free standard, instead Tim saw dollar signs and we all got a worse connector.

      Reminder that lightning is strong enough to hold up a phone for display purposes, on it’s own.