Cursed Connectors #187 presents the utterly impossible Dual USB-C plug
Description
A black-and-white single-panel cartoon mimics a tech schematic. Center stage is a cable whose plug has two male USB-C tongues mounted side-by-side on one rectangular face, evoking a wall-power prong arrangement. At the top, hand-lettered text reads “CURSED CONNECTORS #187”. Beneath the drawing, the label “DUAL USB-C” is written in the same casual font. The joke relies on engineers knowing USB-C is reversible and standardized - yet here the parody design doubles it, rendering insertion into any port impossible and lampooning the constant churn of connector standards. It satirizes hardware over-engineering and the confusion developers face when every device ships with a different, allegedly ‘universal’ cable
Comments
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Dual USB-C: when the spec committee took “supports simultaneous host - device roles” a little too literally and created the first cable that deadlocks at layer 0
This is what happens when your architect insists on 'doubling throughput' but refuses to read the USB-IF specification. Next they'll ask why the power negotiation keeps causing kernel panics and blame it on 'legacy USB stack issues.'
Finally, a connector that solves USB-C's biggest problem: you could still plug it in correctly on the first try. Now with dual plugs, you're guaranteed to fail twice simultaneously, achieving true hardware-level race conditions in physical space. It's like implementing a distributed consensus algorithm where both nodes are the same node, violating CAP theorem in the most literal way possible
Dual USB‑C: hardware‑accelerated two‑phase commit for power delivery - still deadlocks, but now it’s reproducible
The microservice of cabling: twice the CC lines to miswire, same bandwidth, and a distributed outage when PD negotiation retries go exponential
Dual USB-C power plug: because negotiating Power Delivery on one finicky connector wasn't race-condition enough
actually (not) great idea to combine two type c's and an AC power plug Comment deleted
It actually might be useful if you travel with a group of people... Comment deleted
Umm it won't work Comment deleted
I do use it) Comment deleted
How Comment deleted
The ports are divided across the two connectors so you could run most of the connectors at full speed Comment deleted
I'm not about it It seems geometrically imposible, the phone will be obstructed with other connector Comment deleted
It's for laptops, dude. Comment deleted
You'd rather say that for one specific laptop) Comment deleted
Not really. Fits a lot of modern ultrabooks, but most are specifically advertised for macs, that's right. Comment deleted
well, yeah. But Apple is the only one who rejects other important interfaces (don't get me wrong, I'm fine with their stuff, It's pretty cool, but some decisions are hilarious) Comment deleted
Check out the Dell XPS 13, and maybe also Lenovo X1 Carbon (not sure about that one). It's an industry-wide movement to axe everything but type-c, which is fine and all, until type-cs start dying because they are more fragile then type-a and way-way more fragile then a barrel plug. Comment deleted
Yeah, I know 'bout modern Win ultrabooks. Thats right movement in some way. It's cool to have one single connector for anything. Well at least when you have more than 2 connectors. However some USB-c devices cost a lot more just because of the USB-c connection ability (external screens for instance). Well waiting for price decline and wide spreading Comment deleted
it's for laptops with usb-c connectors Comment deleted
oop tg didn't load the other messages - sry for double posting am in a place with shit internet rn Comment deleted
My JDM Mouse ultrabook is 2 years old, and I've already replaced 1 type-c port I use for charging. Comment deleted
Oh, really? Not the greatest news Comment deleted
Stop kanging xkcd Comment deleted
hdmi Comment deleted