But one thing that USB-C ports had going for them was a solution for one of the biggest annoyances of USB-A — it’s no longer possible to insert a USB cable the “wrong” way, thanks to the symmetrical design of the plugs.
Or, at least, it was, until mechanical engineer Pim de Groot came along with a USB-C gadget from hell, which does behave differently depending on which way your USB-C plug is facing. And I hate it so, so much.
The device itself is rather simple: when the USB-C cable is plugged in one way, a green LED lights up on the top of the device. Plug it in reversed, and the bottom LED lights up green, a malevolent horror balefully blazing out in a sea of black silicon.
What unearthly science has birthed this horror? Well, as de Groot explains, USB-C plugs aren’t entirely symmetrical — there’s a set of contacts that are only used when connecting plugs as a USB 2.0 device that’s only found on one side of the plug. And when you connect a plug to use in a USB 2.0 setting, you apparently can take advantage of that to create de Groot’s cursed device above, which uses a pair of microcontrollers that each only light up when they detect those contacts. (USB-C 3.0 connections apparently are immune to the trick, thankfully.)
