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USB hasn't added any active components or wires for short cables since USB C's introduction (which added emarkers and an extra pair of superspeed lanes for full featured cables)

All of the improvements in passive C cables since then are exactly the same "analog signal integrity requirements". Heck, the most common protocol for sending a display signal over USB C is literally just "send a DisplayPort signal over the superspeed lanes".

Now, USB C cables are more likely to have active retimers or redrivers in them, but a lot of that is that the highest speed signals are well above the display side. Even UHBR20/DP80 from a signaling standpoint is mostly just good old 40 gigabit Thunderbolt 3 except with everything pointed outwards (so 80 gigabit unidirectional instead of 40 gigabit bidirectional)


One of my theories is that there is a deliberate choice happening by people who don't realize it is as simple as a couple of resistors and think they need some fancy PD negotiation chip.

Even over on r/usbchardware it is super common for people to conflate "PD" with this missing resistor issue. Part of the confusion is that the devices that people want to charge with are very likely to be PD power supplies.


It's because they take PCBs spec'ed for micro-usb and just replace the port with USB-C.


And one of the points that's a little more obvious living here: Japan is a remarkably car centric culture. Not quite to the extent of America, but in much of the country you really do need a car.

If anything the main exceptions to that are exactly the places tourists are most likely to go.


I disagree, I lived a year in a small town near Osaka far from any tourist attractions and never did I wish I had a car. Public transport was ubiquitous and walking infrastructure excellent. Lots of people on bikes. Roads were tiny so cars on them are tiny and driving slowly, making it feel safe to share the roads with them.

Maybe the most clear indication that Japan isn't a car centric culture was the complete lack of FREE parking space.


So, yes, the extreme pedestrian hostility that is sometimes normal in the US isn't around, and there's more likely to be a viable transit system. That's especially the case if you're in the outskirts of a major metropolitan area where there are going to be commuters into the core transit network.

Still, if I hop on an express train for an hour away from central Tokyo, every house has a car park and most significant stores have dedicated parking spaces, and I get a vibe of "suburbia with narrower streets". Heck, I get some of that even as close as Kawasaki or southern Tokyo once you're away from major train stations.


Japan has 670 cars per 1,000 people, the US has 779. Not a huge gap.


Which shows that you can have lots of cars without having a cars-only culture. Freedom of choice of the mode of transport, and pay for privilege vs externalizing the costs of cars.


> Not USB-C complexity

3.2 Gen 2x2 (and the occasionally relevant 1x2 if you have a weak cable) are USB C only.

USB C ports and cables have 4 USB 3 "superspeed" lanes rather than two. When you use an A to C cable only one pair of those connects. The point of the "x2" modes is that they use the second pair of lanes that would otherwise go unused.

Except of course they don't always go unused. DisplayPort Alternate Mode sends DisplayPort over those two "unused" lanes getting you USB 3 data alongside a half speed DisplayPort connection. (or alternatively full speed DisplayPort on all four and only USB 2), and then of course Thunderbolt 3 and modern USB4/TBT4 use all four lanes and tunnel everything.


> The point of the "x2" modes is that they use the second pair of lanes that would otherwise go unused.

Thank you for answering a question I didn't know I had


Hmm, yes I was conflating a few things there.

However, I'd hold that this is an extension of the USB 3 mess that predates USB-C, even if the x2 mode specifically was a USB-C addition.

The important thing for people to know is that support for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 is practically non-existent: TB3 came before as a well-established (but premium) solution, and USB4 just two years after to commoditize it. A complicated solution with mid-tier bandwidth and none of the flexibility didn't attract attention, so support is poor.


I mostly agree with you -- 2x2 is a relative rarity, especially before Intel's Barlow Ridge chipsets that actually added 2x2 support.

Which leads to the funny point that, as far as I am aware, the very first 2x2 capable hub chipset was USB4v2/TBT5 that happened to also support 2x2.


I will say that breviary it showed up in "advanced" for me, and was one of only two words below "grandmaster" I missed. In the modern era it is jargon, it's just that the in group (practitioners of liturgical Christianity) are in the ballpark of a quarter of the English speaking world.

I'll remark that "if you have interest in [some particular academic pursuit], you'd likely know it" is a pretty decent description of the sort of word that shows up in "grandmaster" tier.

(I have joked that, living in Japan, my English is getting worse faster than my Japanese is getting better, but breviary might well be a concrete example.)


The single most implausible idea in that article is that New York City would be able to so completely outbid the SF Bay Area for burritos.


Proper burritos for lunch enables Wall Street finance firms to reach new heights of excellence, propelling a feedback loop that leaves SF bereft.


I think you've got this a little backwards.

The target audience of this comment chain is exactly people who are familiar with Tailscale, aren't familiar with Iroh, and read the linked post.

Such a person (like me) reading that post will have an immediate reaction of "this sounds a lot like Tailscale", but the post doesn't provide a clear answer to "what problem does this solve that Tailscale doesn't?"

The people with that reaction are the target audience of this comment chain. The fact it is upvoted to the top of the comment section here is an indication that there are quite a few such people, and if this is your reaction you're presumably not one of them. (and that is perfectly fine!)


Sufficiently good iterated next token prediction is an AI hard problem.


I do not believe the death here is an AI hallucination -- it is very likely deliberate engagement fodder.

Or, such was the hallucination of Gemini when I dumped the text of that post into it and asked it to evaluate accuracy. (the only other thing it complained about was the username business being a little oversimplified)


Is AI hallucinating false information or is a human using the fact that AI hallucinates false information to create a fake post to drive engagement but likley used the AI to create that false post itself. 2026 is going pretty well so far, why do you ask


Maybe they are trying to drive up the price of Klein bottles for some nefarious reason. Maybe they bought call options, or running a pump'n'dump scam.

When Stoll really dies, production will go to zero and there will be a bunch of news stories about "crazy Klein bottle guy" so everybody will rush out to buy one. Prices will go through the roof.


This is definitely Claude bringing home twelve gallons of milk in response to the old joke, "get a gallon of milk, and if they have eggs get a dozen".

As in, this is a reading comprehension fail on the part of Claude. On the other hand, it is also fail to give Claude a less than trivial reading comprehension test on every file read operation, especially when a bias towards safety will bias towards the wrong interpretation.


Ha! Great analogy, hit the nail on the head. What a ludicrous system prompt.


This is the kind of AI captain Kirk could convince to blow itself up


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