In other news today...
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@acrow it’s too big for my phone. Make it 0.1 micron thinner!
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@topspin said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@Bulb except, of course, in the UK where we decided that for Freedom! we’re not going to enforce this.
That's basically a sensible approach, would just waste legislative time.
It's going to happen universally everywhere, or not at all, so one such regulation is enough.
You assume we’re not doing it for sensibility reasons, we’re totally not. It’s in the bucket of “we’re not doing it because you are and we’re totally not following your rules any more nyaaah” because a group of screaming 5 year olds would make a more reasonable government than our shower of shit.
Alternately, maybe they're doing it because who gives a shit?
They're not locking you in with the cables anymore, they're locking you in with the ecosystem. When I get a new Android phone, all the apps and logins and whatnot that I've had for 10 years automatically transfer over. I assume Apple has the same capability. But it wouldn't work cross platform because you'd have to pay twice for "the same" app on different stores.
I say "the same" app, but it's really two different apps. It makes sense to have to pay to get an app on a different platform.
On the US, they're not even gouging on prices. USB-C and Lightning cables usually cost within 10% of each other. All the accessories are cross platform also.
There was a time when this would have been meaningful and useful, but that was 10 years ago. I don't think what the EU is doing will help, and it's good that England isn't going along.
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
If the UK government mandated a charging connector it'd probably be 9-pin serial.
What's wrong with wiring everything up with one or two of these?
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
My hypothesis is that the number of attempts it takes to plug in a connector is linearly related to the number of sides it has.
Normal USB: ~2 sided, not symmetric: 3+ attempts
USB-C: 2-sided, symmetric: 2+ attempts (symmetry seems to reduce it by one)
USB-D: 4-sided, symmetric(?): back to 3+
...
USB-X: circular, so ~infinity sided, symmetric, so (infinity-1) = infinity attempts.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear But, to view it in a different way:
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With requirements on standardized plugs: New phone from different vendor/ecosystem means getting new apps, and painstakingly transferring stuff. But you can probably keep your existing chargers & cables. Plus those can be shared across devices.
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Without requirements on standardized plugs: New phone from different vendor/ecosystem means getting new apps, and painstakingly transferring stuff. Also, you need to new cables (and maybe chargers). Those can only be used if you stick to that ecosystem.
To me that sounds a lot like you're arguing for more legislation that makes e.g. apps and such transferable/compatible.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear But, to view it in a different way:
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With requirements on standardized plugs: New phone from different vendor/ecosystem means getting new apps, and painstakingly transferring stuff. But you can probably keep your existing chargers & cables. Plus those can be shared across devices.
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Without requirements on standardized plugs: New phone from different vendor/ecosystem means getting new apps, and painstakingly transferring stuff. Also, you need to new cables (and maybe chargers). Those can only be used if you stick to that ecosystem.
Or alternately, I'm a new vendor with a new phone and a new operating system. I can come up with my own special snowflake cable if I want to make things more difficult for my potential customers...
Or I could just use USB, which already exists.
USB was around a long time before Android was, but they picked to use USB cables rather than something else.
I don't see why anyone starting now would pick the nonstandard option.
To me that sounds a lot like you're arguing for more legislation that makes e.g. apps and such transferable/compatible.
The Android version of an app and the Apple version of an app are two completely different things. It wouldn't make sense for governments to require you to bundle one with the other.
It would violate the rights of the vendor and of the consumer to require that bundling. We could talk about why, if you want. But half of this thread would want to beat the shit out of us if we did so.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
To me that sounds a lot like you're arguing for more legislation that makes e.g. apps and such transferable/compatible.
The easiest way would be to require that Apple phones be able to run Android applications.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
But half of this thread would want to beat the shit out of us if we did so.
Probably, yeah.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
The easiest way would be to require that Apple phones be able to run Android applications.
While we're at it, can we also make Apple use standard (graphics) APIs? Not having to do special workarounds to deal with Apple-flakes would make my life easier.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
half of this thread would want to beat the shit out of us if we did so.
Or not. Keep defining the boundary, that's the important part.
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News continues absent this week, apparently.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear wtf? How is any of that relevant to what the actual requirement is?
Apple like most vendors for most of the mobile phone era did their own cable to suit themselves. The EU is mandating a common standard so chargers become more reusable and you don’t have specific-vendor-charger-32 going to landfill when you change your phone.
It is fuck all to do with vendor lock-in, even less to do with vendor interoperability, but simply the EU telling all the vendors to stick to a standard to produce less waste. Many of them already adopted USB-C because it was cheaper for them to do and buy off the shelf parts and chargers anyway. It’s just Apple being Apple who operate at a different scale to many where the same situation doesn’t necessarily apply.
The only reason the UK isn’t going along is because they’re so desperate to appear to not kowtow to the EU at any cost that they’re declaring so. Never mind that Apple won’t care because the UK is not a big enough market on its own to do something differently.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear wtf? How is any of that relevant to what the actual requirement is?
Apple like most vendors for most of the mobile phone era did their own cable to suit themselves. The EU is mandating a common standard so chargers become more reusable and you don’t have specific-vendor-charger-32 going to landfill when you change your phone.
There aren't 32 vendor specific chargers. There's two vendors and two chargers, each accounting for about half the market. There's also very little switching between vendors because ultimately, most people are locked into either one ecosystem or the other. (By something other than the cable.)
Everyone who's in the Apple ecosystem already has a shitload of Lightning chargers. If you make Apple switch to USB-C, everyone will have to throw out all those chargers and replace them with new ones. That's a lot of e-waste.
The only reason the UK isn’t going along is because they’re so desperate to appear to not kowtow to the EU at any cost that they’re declaring so. Never mind that Apple won’t care because the UK is not a big enough market on its own to do something differently.
While you're right that Great Britain not going along with the EU isn't going to make a difference, it's worth pointing out that what the EU is doing is counterproductive to its own goals. Great Britain's strategy, if Apple did it, would actually reduce e-waste.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear eh? What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The top few vendors for phones in the UK are apparently in order: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, Google, Sony, Oppo, OnePlus.
The requirement is that they all have to use USB-C chargers in Europe so fewer chargers get sent to landfill, instead of each vendor having its own charger as they used to. Mostly everyone already went to USB-C anyway, this is just getting everyone else in line.
This is not about Apple vs Android.
Edit: And as of iPhone 12 apparently they now come with no charger, a Lightning socket and a USB-C to Lightning adapter so less waste all round. Which is what the EU wanted.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear eh? What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The top few vendors for phones in the UK are apparently in order: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, Google, Sony, Oppo, OnePlus.
The requirement is that they all have to use USB-C chargers in Europe so fewer chargers get sent to landfill, instead of each vendor having its own charger as they used to. Mostly everyone already went to USB-C anyway, this is just getting everyone else in line.
This is not about Apple vs Android.
All the non-Apple vendors had their own special snowflake chargers 20 years ago. And if the EU had come up with this law then, it would have meant something. But because, in practice, all the non-Apple vendors have been using USB for a decade or more, it's not a real change for them.
This is about getting Apple, which is a significantl share of the market, to change and getting Apple customers to throw out all their existing Lightning cables and generate a bunch of e-waste.
Letting half the market use USB-C and half the market use Lightning would generate significantly less e-waste.
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
Edit: And as of iPhone 12 apparently they now come with no charger, a Lightning socket and a USB-C to Lightning adapter so less waste all round. Which is what the EU wanted.
Is it? Sounds to me like you still need a Lightning cables to charge an iPhone.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear did you not see the part about a USB-C to Lightning adapter so you could use a USB-C charger, and not bundling a charger by default?
Clearly they’re already letting people use either, and then they’re going to phase out one of the two so everyone uses the same in their next upgrade.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
In other news, Apple will have to start using USB-C on their shit before the end of 2024.
Bad news for Apple as EU makes USB-C common charger
Commissioner to device makers: 'We're not forcing anybody to enter the internal market, but if they want to do so, they must comply'
⊞ There will be a common standard.
⊟ They picked a shitty one (I've seen more bad C sockets than A and mini/micro combined).I think the only bad ones I've seen were mini and micro. Almost all of them in phones, caused by users being idiots.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear did you not see the part about a USB-C to Lightning adapter so you could use a USB-C charger, and not bundling a charger by default?
Clearly they’re already letting people use either, and then they’re going to phase out one of the two so everyone uses the same in their next upgrade.
That is what happened. All the snowflake shit went away when the EU implemented the first version of this directive.
But of course Apple found a loophole, and so "USB" only meant the charger going into the wall plug but not the cable going into the phone.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear did you not see the part about a USB-C to Lightning adapter so you could use a USB-C charger, and not bundling a charger by default?
Clearly they’re already letting people use either, and then they’re going to phase out one of the two so everyone uses the same in their next upgrade.
???
If the port on the phone is a Lightning port, the thing you plug into it has to be a Lightning cable. A cable that's Lightning on one end and USB-C on the other is still a Lightning cable.
That's what we're talking about here. The physical cable. Right?
Because every "phone charger" I've seen in the past decade has consisted of two pieces. One is actual AC/DC transformer piece that plugs into the wall and has a USB (usually USB-A) port in it. Then you plug the cable that goes with your phone (USB or Lightning or Apple 30 pin on one side, USB-A on the other) into the transformer and into your phone.
If the EU is worried about the transformers, that's even dumber because those are already standard between Apple and Android.
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Biden to require electric vehicle charging stations every 50 miles on federal highways
President Joe Biden has pledged to have a network of 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place across the country by 2030.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear eh? What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The top few vendors for phones in the UK are apparently in order: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, Google, Sony, Oppo, OnePlus.
The requirement is that they all have to use USB-C chargers in Europe so fewer chargers get sent to landfill, instead of each vendor having its own charger as they used to. Mostly everyone already went to USB-C anyway, this is just getting everyone else in line.
This is not about Apple vs Android.
All the non-Apple vendors had their own special snowflake chargers 20 years ago. And if the EU had come up with this law then, it would have meant something. But because, in practice, all the non-Apple vendors have been using USB for a decade or more, it's not a real change for them.
This is about getting Apple, which is a significantl share of the market, to change and getting Apple customers to throw out all their existing Lightning cables and generate a bunch of e-waste.
Letting half the market use USB-C and half the market use Lightning would generate significantly less e-waste.
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
Edit: And as of iPhone 12 apparently they now come with no charger, a Lightning socket and a USB-C to Lightning adapter so less waste all round. Which is what the EU wanted.
Is it? Sounds to me like you still need a Lightning cables to charge an iPhone.
Considering that Apple has changed its cables every now and then and caused waste without government getting in on the stupidity, this would have happened soon anyway.
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The requirement is that from 2024 Apple will have to use a USB-C socket on the phone.
They’re already in transition to weaning people off Lightning as the “only” choice - as evidenced by supporting people who already have USB-C charger + cable setups.
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@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear eh? What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The top few vendors for phones in the UK are apparently in order: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, Google, Sony, Oppo, OnePlus.
The requirement is that they all have to use USB-C chargers in Europe so fewer chargers get sent to landfill, instead of each vendor having its own charger as they used to. Mostly everyone already went to USB-C anyway, this is just getting everyone else in line.
This is not about Apple vs Android.
All the non-Apple vendors had their own special snowflake chargers 20 years ago. And if the EU had come up with this law then, it would have meant something. But because, in practice, all the non-Apple vendors have been using USB for a decade or more, it's not a real change for them.
This is about getting Apple, which is a significantl share of the market, to change and getting Apple customers to throw out all their existing Lightning cables and generate a bunch of e-waste.
Letting half the market use USB-C and half the market use Lightning would generate significantly less e-waste.
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
Edit: And as of iPhone 12 apparently they now come with no charger, a Lightning socket and a USB-C to Lightning adapter so less waste all round. Which is what the EU wanted.
Is it? Sounds to me like you still need a Lightning cables to charge an iPhone.
Considering that Apple has changed its cables every now and then and caused waste without government getting in on the stupidity, this would have happened soon anyway.
USB-C is a technically better cable than USB-Mini or USB-Micro. My assumption is that Lightning is better than Apple 30 Pin in the same way.
Is the EU going to handcuff us to USB-C and prevent phone companies from switching to a technically better cable when one becomes available?
Because that's awful too.
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@Arantor said in In other news today...:
The requirement is that from 2024 Apple will have to use a USB-C socket on the phone.
They’re already in transition to weaning people off Lightning as the “only” choice - as evidenced by supporting people who already have USB-C charger + cable setups.
So, nobody?
If you can't plug a USB-C cable into the phone you can't charge your phone with USB-C.
The thing you're calling a USB-to-Lightning adapter is really just a very short Lightning cable. That's what you're charging your phone with.
In 2024, all the Apple customers will have to throw out all their Lightning stuff (including the adapters that were produced in the transition period) and switch to all USB-C stuff, which will itself generate more e-waste than just being OK with two separate ecosystems that next to nobody switches between.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Because every "phone charger" I've seen in the past decade has consisted of two pieces. One is actual AC/DC transformer piece that plugs into the wall and has a USB (usually USB-A) port in it.
Hm, the phone ones indeed do. The notebook ones have a (quite hefty) cable ending with a USB-C plug hanging from them.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Is the EU going to handcuff us to USB-C and prevent phone companies from switching to a technically better cable when one becomes available?
Seems like it.
And, for charging at least, companies making laptops, cameras, handheld games consoles, etc.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Because every "phone charger" I've seen in the past decade has consisted of two pieces. One is actual AC/DC transformer piece that plugs into the wall and has a USB (usually USB-A) port in it.
Hm, the phone ones indeed do. The notebook ones have a (quite hefty) cable ending with a USB-C plug hanging from them.
Isn't that because they're wildly different in terms of electrical draw?
My laptop has a 330 Watt charger. My phone does not. Can you even shove 330W down USB-C?
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Can you even shove 330W down USB-C?
Just the once.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@Carnage said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear eh? What the actual fuck are you talking about?
The top few vendors for phones in the UK are apparently in order: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Motorola, Xiaomi, Google, Sony, Oppo, OnePlus.
The requirement is that they all have to use USB-C chargers in Europe so fewer chargers get sent to landfill, instead of each vendor having its own charger as they used to. Mostly everyone already went to USB-C anyway, this is just getting everyone else in line.
This is not about Apple vs Android.
All the non-Apple vendors had their own special snowflake chargers 20 years ago. And if the EU had come up with this law then, it would have meant something. But because, in practice, all the non-Apple vendors have been using USB for a decade or more, it's not a real change for them.
This is about getting Apple, which is a significantl share of the market, to change and getting Apple customers to throw out all their existing Lightning cables and generate a bunch of e-waste.
Letting half the market use USB-C and half the market use Lightning would generate significantly less e-waste.
@Arantor said in In other news today...:
Edit: And as of iPhone 12 apparently they now come with no charger, a Lightning socket and a USB-C to Lightning adapter so less waste all round. Which is what the EU wanted.
Is it? Sounds to me like you still need a Lightning cables to charge an iPhone.
Considering that Apple has changed its cables every now and then and caused waste without government getting in on the stupidity, this would have happened soon anyway.
USB-C is a technically better cable than USB-Mini or USB-Micro. My assumption is that Lightning is better than Apple 30 Pin in the same way.
Is the EU going to handcuff us to USB-C and prevent phone companies from switching to a technically better cable when one becomes available?
Because that's awful too.
Yeah I don't like when laws force a specific technology.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
My laptop has a 330 Watt charger. My phone does not. Can you even shove 330W down USB-C?
Max wattage for USB Power Delivery is 240W at the moment.
Could always use two chargers like that ridiculous Acer gaming laptop from a couple of years ago.
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@Bulb said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
interior of a deer carcass
Fortunately, deer are not cannibalistic.
Oh, ye of little faith...
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
I have some older Lightning cables but the two I use most often have been replaced with braided cables made by Anker. Partly because they're better made than the Apple cables but also because they're longer.
And probably cheaper
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
USB-D: 4-sided, symmetric(?): back to 3+
If they design it "correctly", one wing will be 0.1 microns longer so it can only be plugged in one way. That will up the attempt count nicely.
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
The easiest way would be to require that Apple phones be able to run Android applications.
Why not? Window can!
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
If you make Apple switch to USB-C, everyone will have to throw out all those chargers and replace them with new ones. That's a lot of e-waste.
I just switched from an S7 to an S22 and need to do exactly that. (Just spend $45 on getting needed cables/adapters/chargers)
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@dcon Exactly. Of course, it would mean that most developers would immediately try to switch to only developing for Android (since they'd be able to deploy to other platforms easily) but that'd be on Apple for making the iOS development experience so terrible...
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@dkf said in In other news today...:
that'd be on Apple for making the iOS development experience so terrible
Android is also terrible, just in slightly different ways. No xCode (which is a major savings in horribleness), but the APIs and documentation aren't any better. And the basic structuring paradigm is...obnoxious. Activities, fragments, views, it's a jumbled mess. At least it supports direct view binding, even if my colleague (who does most of the android development on our team) refuses to use it.
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@loopback0 said in In other news today...:
@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Is the EU going to handcuff us to USB-C and prevent phone companies from switching to a technically better cable when one becomes available?
Seems like it.
It doesn't. There will be a review if the technological choice is still sensible every X years, although I can't find the number right now.
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@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
President Joe Biden has pledged to have a network of 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place across the country by 2030.
Will they have USB-C chargers? Only asking, because apparently that's the regularly scheduled topic derailment topic today
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
President Joe Biden has pledged to have a network of 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place across the country by 2030.
Will they have USB-C chargers? Only asking, because apparently that's the regularly scheduled topic derailment topic today
Unless "public charging stations" are public in the sense that a public pool is public (the government owns it), I'm not sure how he plans on pulling this off.
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@GuyWhoKilledBear said in In other news today...:
Unless "public charging stations" are public in the sense that a public pool is public (the government owns it), I'm not sure how he plans on pulling this off.
LEGISLATE HARDER!
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in In other news today...:
@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
President Joe Biden has pledged to have a network of 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place across the country by 2030.
Will they have USB-C chargers? Only asking, because apparently that's the regularly scheduled topic derailment topic today
I don't think even the EU would mandate charging cars over usb-c. So sure, go ahead.
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Thinking about road trips from our discussion in the
about EV road trips. Reminded me of all the stretches of interstate I have been on that don't even have a gas station every 50 miles. Sure, there are fewer of them now, but they certainly still exist in the less populated parts of the US.
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@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
less populated parts of the US.
And there are a lot of those, especially out West. "Next exit 50 miles" is fairly common, and most of those exits don't have gas stations.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in In other news today...:
@Dragoon said in In other news today...:
less populated parts of the US.
And there are a lot of those, especially out West. "Next exit 50 miles" is fairly common, and most of those exits don't have gas stations.
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@dcon I think that a lot of people, including a lot of easterners (Eastern US'ers, that is), forget just how darn large and empty the Western US is. Heck, Texas. You can drive an entire day and still be in Texas.
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@Benjamin-Hall Challenge with that idea seems to be more about getting electricity along the whole interstate system, rather than setting up a charger every 50 miles or so.
At least Wikipedia claims that there are 48756 miles of interstate. One every 50 miles nets you about 1000 chargers. That doesn't seem so bad?
Edit: Minor mistake, those are supposed to be on federal highways, of which there are bit more. Google says 161000 miles (source is some .gov page). But that's still just 3500 chargers.
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@cvi said in In other news today...:
@Benjamin-Hall Challenge with that idea seems to be more about getting electricity along the whole interstate system, rather than setting up a charger every 50 miles or so.
At least Wikipedia claims that there are 48756 miles of interstate. One every 50 miles nets you about 1000 chargers. That doesn't seem so bad?
Edit: Minor mistake, those are supposed to be on federal highways, of which there are bit more. Google says 161000 miles (source is some .gov page). But that's still just 3500 chargers.
And maintenance. And buying the land--remember there aren't even gas stations at that frequency in a lot of places. Etc.
Since the power lines parallel the freeways most of the time, getting electricity near isn't the problem. But you need a separate substation (because your Tesla really doesn't like multi KV electricity). And those take maintenance as well.
And a lot of those highways go through national forest (or state forest, or national wilderness, or other protected lands) for much of their stretch. You can't build an outhouse without multi-year, multi-agency, multi-million-dollar planning permits and environmental signoffs. A parking lot with a substation and protection for the wildlife (squirrels and high voltage lines don't get along) are just not in the cards.
All of which take tons of cash. And the ability to build stuff without decades of bureaucracy. Neither of which are in heavy supply currently.
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@dcon said in In other news today...:
@dkf said in In other news today...:
The easiest way would be to require that Apple phones be able to run Android applications.
Why not? Window can!
In other news, MacOS improving support for running Linux applications even across architectures.
Penguin fans will be able to use Rosetta 2 to run x86 binaries in forthcoming update
It might not be that far away that Apple runs Android apps.
Deer Instincts Can Trigger Weird Behaviors, Like This Doe Eating a Dead Fawn | National Deer Association
