overengineer.dev

They just sent me a new one right away (<10 days) and there was no need to return the charger or anything. So I still use it, just blocked the bad port. I gotta say, whenever I encounter good customer service I become loyal. They are good with returns/replacements. My experience with their product quality has been less good though. I had a pair with earbuds from them, I think it had some firmware issue where on an Android phone, volume would go from far too soft to 'blow your eardrums out'. No other buds had this issue with the same phone. They sent me a replacement which was fine, but it could certainly have caused hearing loss. I also had an USB-C adapter from them (one of those USB-C with power passthrough, HDMI, etc.) it was so badly shielded that no WiFi or Bluetooth connection near it would survive. I think people generally rave about them because the among very cheap/affordable Chinese vendors they have support that actually writes back and are helpful. The quality of their products is not great though (also see all these power bank recalls). I avoid them now. Does not mean that all western brands are great either. My wife bought a Satechi USB-C adapter with DP-Alt mode that Satechi claimed would support 4k@60Hz. There was no way to get it running on Mac or non-Mac at 4k@60Hz. So, I did more research based on the MAC address of the device and found that it just a 'recased' version of a $20 Chinese USB-C design (which was specced to only support 4k@30Hz). Not only…

This is the exact sort of situation that supports the ever increasing importance of brands. There are many brands that still profit off their good name, but by now are just selling generic Chinese designs with fancier enclosures. E.g. my wife bought a Satechi USB-C On-the-Go adapter. One of its stated features is that it supports 4k@60Hz. Except that it didn't work. We tried different 4k screen models from different manufacturers and two different MacBooks and a Windows PC. All of which work fine with a USB-C DP alt-mode cable and a Lenovo USB-C Dock [1]. We contacted their support and they recommend that we do a firmware update. They send you a completely undocumented Realtek firmware updater (Windows-only) that doesn't work. I was surprised by all of this, because Satechi used to be a reputable brand for Mac adapters. So, I investigated the adapter a bit more and the MAC address stood out. The MAC address was registered to Part II Research, which doesn't really seem to exist anymore. However, looking at their website through archive.org showed that they were a division of the Chinese brand Power 7 Technology. After browsing their website, I found an adapter that was more or less identical to the Satechi USB-C On-the-Go. The same port layout, the same touted features, but with a different enclosure: https://www.power7tech.com/page/305 Power 7 makes reference designs and sells them to manufactures that rebrand them. This explains why Satechi couldn't provide proper…

One starter article for how the market works - there are lots more. This one was discussed in HN too: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness/ Now, for hubs, I didn't need a full blown thunderbolt one, but my current hub this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F5PY4F2N?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title which works fine - I looked at some competitors with 2x and 3x the money for the same and sometimes lesser specs.

The GIFs look good and I like how it lets the user diff between original code and AI-generated ones. But still, I would like to quote from an article on Thread (well, this Thread is a network stack) [1]: > No, seriously. Can we please not name new things using terms that are already widely used? I hate that I have to specify whether I’m talking about sewing, screwing, parallel computing, a social network from Meta, or a networking stack. Stop it. [1] https://overengineer.dev/blog/2024/05/10/thread/#user-content-fn-3

Here are the full texts of both emails I sent them: https://overengineer.dev/txt/2024-05-11-thread-group-emails/ The second one to their press team sounds super presumptuous, sorry for that, but I found that you kinda have to talk to press teams in that way if you want to get /any/ response at al.

Each release of a new decentralized social protocol spurs the developers of the previous generation to weigh in on the problems of the new one. Here's the last generation of critique, when Diaspora developers discussed the good and bad in ActivityPub, and why they wouldn't support it: - https://overengineer.dev/blog/2018/02/01/activitypub-one-protocol-to-r… - https://overengineer.dev/blog/2019/01/13/activitypub-final-thoughts-on…

Maybe this post[0]? I remember relating to this part: > Again, I found multiple identical-looking products on Aliexpress for 10 to 15 euros. I appear to be paying a lot of money for products that I could buy for cheap on random websites is starting to piss me off a bit at this point. I don’t really care about paying too much - I’d be perfectly fine with that if the product did its job. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that. [0] https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html

> and the wire ethernet is not a cheapo chipset either (Realtek) Buying Realtek does not guarantee getting good hardware, the RTL8153 is infamous [0], and I remember there were reports about Realtek chips flooding the network with corrupt packets if they were powered on via the charger but not connected to a laptop. [0] https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html

See also this blog post on USB-C hubs: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html

As detailed in this post, RTL8153 with Mac also regularly hops down to 100 mbps and doesn't return back to 1 gbps: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html A pertinent question, however, is: how do you know what chips an adapter uses, before buying? I'm in utter dread regarding the prospect of buying a usb hub, since just like in the above post, they're black boxes to me which of course turn out to repackage the same Alibaba junk with 10x markup.

Could you elaborate on why realtek was chosen for the ethernet expansion card? It does tend to have a pretty bad rep, with one of the recent documentations being https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html

You might enjoy this story: USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html It was recently discussed on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30911598 One interesting takeaway for me was that there are actually some quite cheap hubs available from AliExpress and the "branded" ones are essentially the same with a logo printed on (and hopefully some additional QA).

this comes to mind everytime vpn”s / debate comes up i read it years ago and never forgot it. https://overengineer.dev/blog/2019/04/08/very-precarious-narrative.htm… and this is here is scary i guess! https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/26/hidemyass_lulzsec_controversy/

Your point would be true if ActivityPub was a properly defined specification, but it isn't. It is voluntarily vague in many places to accommodate for the differences in implementations, which means that each implementation needs to understand how other software works to interoperate. So in practice it is more accurate to say "Protocol like Mastodon", because even if you can talk with Mastodon it doesn't mean you can talk with Pleroma or Pixelfeed or others. More details here: https://overengineer.dev/blog/2019/01/13/activitypub-final-thoughts-on…

Interesting parallel. I think I'd disagree that it's considered "fine" when company's do it, though. What the OP describes is basically a version of a "bait and switch" fraud, which is pretty widely illegal and not considered OK by anyone. Although you can find examples where people ride that line pretty closely[1], but even then people think it's bad behavior. A subtly different thing that's maybe closer to what you're talking about is hiring contractors and then blaming them for problems. A current major example being many of the Amazon-branded delivery trucks that only deliver for Amazon, but when they do something wrong "oh they're a subcontractor, not Amazon's fault!" So, not sure I agree 100%, but I understand the anger. [1] For example, this guy that found name-brand USB-C hubs had the same "guts" as cut-rate crap. https://overengineer.dev/blog/2021/04/25/usb-c-hub-madness.html