USB has always been reversible. In fact you have to reverse it at least 3 times before it’ll FUCKING PLUG IN.

That’s the reason Apple released the Lightning connector. They pushed for several features for USB around 2010, including a reversible connector, but the USB-IF refused. Apple wanted USB-C, but couldn’t wait for the USB-IF to come to an agreement so they could replace the dated 20-pin connector.

You can even get PD capable USB-C cables that don’t transmit data at all.

I don’t think this is right. The PD standard requires the negotiation of which side is the source and which is the sink, and the voltage/amperage, over those data links. So it has to at least support the bare minimum data transmission in order for PD to work.

USB-c cables can vary drastically. Power delivery alone ranges from less than 1 amp at 5 volts to over 5 amps at 20 volts. That’s 5 watts of power on the low end to 100 watts of power on the high end and sometimes more. When a cable meant to run at 5 watts has over 100 watts of power run through, the wires get really hot and could catch fire. The charger typically needs to talk to a very small chip in the high power cables for the cables to say, yes I can handle the power. Really cheap chargers might just push that power out regardless. So while the USB-c form factor is the one plug to rule them all, the actual execution is a fucking mess.

Yeah, I wouldn’t trust it on a computer port. I’d just plug it into a power brick.

The cheaper aliexpress item you actually want is this one, it will read the emarker and tell you the power/data rates it supports, if it supports thunderbolt etc https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007287415216.html

Some photos of it in action https://bitbang.social/@kalleboo/109391700632886806

That’s still only 3 simultaneously if I saw that right. My old Lenovo laptop had 3 USB-A 2.0 ports, 2 x USB-A 3.0, RJ45 and HDMI. That was gold. Everything that comes now is a bloody chore.

My first thought was hacking.

I don’t think mice were a mistake, but they’re worse for most of the tasks I do. I’m a software engineer and I suck at art, so I just need to write, compile, and test code.

There are some things a mouse is way better for:

• drawing (well, a drawing tablet is better)
• 3d modeling
• editing photos
• first person shooters (KB works fine for OG Doom though)
• bulk file operations (a decent KB interface could work though)

But for almost everything else, I prefer a keyboard.

And while we’re on a tangent, I hate WASD, why shift my fingers over from the normal home row position? It should be ESDF, which feels way more natural…

It’s also an age thing. My visual processing is getting worse and worse. My disorientation facing a busy screen with literally thousands of objects that can be interacted with by mouse is a cognitive drain compared to a textual interface where I do most of the work abstractly without having to use visual processing at all. Like reading a book vs watching a movie.

I probably have a lot more experience using pre-mouse era computers than most people. It’s like being asked to start using a different language when you are 20. Yeah, you’ll become perfectly fluent for a couple decades… but you’ll also lose that language first when you get old.

I have noticed that millenials navigate multilayer mouse interfaces (like going down a few chained drop down menus) way faster than I ever did. And zoomers use touch screen keyboards almost as well as I ever touchtyped. Brains are only plastic to a degree, and it just plain feels good to use all those neurons that you first laid down when you were young and your mind was infinite.

Hey they made new technology where you can just yell at the computer and it’ll understand 60% of what you’re saying.

I kept every mouse ball I ever obtained and display them in my china cabinet.

Sure. It’s a lowest common denominator interface. With all that comes with that.

I feel your pain and irrelevancy with crystalline clarity. The world isn’t interested in doing things the right way, or even in a good way; consumers are too perversely enthralled by capital’s interests. I kind of hate that computers ever became a consumer good.

Yes, the mouse is useful in many situations (esp 3d modeling), so I don’t think anyone is arguing that it shouldn’t exist.

The problem, however, is that we’ve standardized on it for everything, to the point where software often ignores a better KB-driven workflow because the mouse one is good enough. “When all you have is a hammer…”

We’ve prioritized “intuitive” over “efficient.” There’s nothing wrong with learning to properly use a tool, and it’s sad that we don’t expect users to put in that modicum of effort. In the 80s and 90s, that’s just how things were, you either learn the tools (often with a handbook) or you don’t use them. The net result was a populace that didn’t need support as much, because they were used to reading the docs. If a component died, the docs would tell you how to diagnose and fix it. These days, those docs just don’t exist, so if the solution isn’t intuitive, you replace it (both hardware and software).

That’s where this frustration comes from. Making things intuitive also means reducing the average person’s understanding of their tools, and the mouse is a symptom of that shift.

I’ve used ion, ratpoison, i3, sawfish, and other tiling window managers for fifteen or more years, all totaled up. There is a great deal of pressure to use a modern desktop environment and it’s a lot of work maintaining my janky bespoke desktop environment functions necessary for a few critical applications. I use KDE’s tiling features and keyboard shortcuts, but it’s a double edged sword because I have to disable all window manager bindings in (for example) Blender and emacs to avoid shadowing important features. Actually, I have re-implemented a lot of my custom KDE shortcuts as emacs bindings as well, so they still work when emacs has the focus. Here’s one:

(cl-flet ((switch-to (name)
	    (lambda ()
	      (interactive)
	      (shell-command (concat "wmctrl -a " name)))))
  (global-set-key (kbd "s-1") (switch-to "librewolf"))
  (global-set-key (kbd "s-2") (switch-to "konsole"))
  (global-set-key (kbd "s-3") (switch-to "signal"))
  (global-set-key (kbd "s-4") (switch-to "darktable"))
  (global-set-key (kbd "s-5") (switch-to "emacs")))

I have no idea what you mean by “fell out of favour”. Does your keyboard not have pips on F and J? People still touch type. Dunno what to tell you.

You’re getting hung up on “home row”. You still have to move your hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back. It’s the same problem, whether or not you know how to type well and stare at your hands.

I have a game controller and a mouse. I don’t use my game controller to code. I don’t use my keyboard to sculpt. The problem isn’t that mice exist at all, its that they are overwhelmingly dominant to the point where most applications do not cater to anything else.

Has the keyboard and mouse versus controller argument finally died? I mean I use a controller for things like Elden Ring and keyboard and mouse for first person or tactics/strategy games.

We proved twenty years ago that keyboard and mouse was better for first person gaming and I was still hearing arguments that controllers were better five years ago.