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USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)


A short story of me trying out different USB-C hubs, taking them apart, and slowly descending into madness.

USB-C hubs are a great idea: not only do they usually offer a power supply pass-through, but they also allow you to plug in some USB devices, an ethernet cable, and maybe even a monitor. The support staff appeared to just brute-force all the macOS hardware troubleshooting guides (including “reset your SMC”), completely ignoring the fact that the issue reproduces on multiple machines… And the fact that most of those quirks (especially the silent network downgrade) are things that most people won’t even notice, those companies appear to be getting away with it just fine - it’s not like one annoying blog post and a couple of nerds complaining online is going to change anything.

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