this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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I found it at the dollar store.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 167 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Don't think of it as a tiny cable, think of it as a gender bender. You can put on the end of some female cable.

You're more likely to see dongles like this at fixed installations. Like somebody puts a USB port into a wall, like a speaker's podium, or a presentation stand. So one side is fixed, depending on what you want to hook up to it, you might need to have a gender bender.

[โ€“] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is the cable considered transgender after that ?

[โ€“] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago

USB is bi-directional. So it really doesn't care about the plug gender. Some other protocols are directional, then the plug gender is very important, so adapters for directional protocols tend to be more expensive, it may even require external power.

Once USB on the go was invented it cease to matter at all.

[โ€“] x4740N 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What your describing sounds more like a double ended dildo

[โ€“] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As long as the double ended dildo provided low impedance electrical through ways, and distinct electrical paths for at least four conduits, with minimal capacitive cross talk... then yes

[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I like you and your style. Do not let a stupid dirty joke get in the way of proper electrical and data connections. It tells me where your priorities are and I respect that.

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[โ€“] Hurensohn 131 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The stars of username, comment and upvotes aligned

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[โ€“] Hellstormy 106 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Have you never just wanted to plug 2 PCs into each other back to back?

[โ€“] [email protected] 74 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Back and forth, forever.

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[โ€“] x4740N 75 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you think about it, this is the USB equivalent of a double ended dildo

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

does this mean there's also double ended flesh lights?

[โ€“] n00b001 14 points 1 year ago

Isn't that the nickname of your mum?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It turn@ a usb extension cable into a regular usb

I guess that could be a use case?

[โ€“] ook_the_librarian 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Or turn 2 extension cords into a long one.

But a serious answer is that these are sometimes sold in a kit of adapters that would let you change the head. Most kits like used a normal cord as the base cord, but some used USB extension cords as the base cord. So this is meant to be a replacement part, not useful in its own right.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

wouldn't that just make this thing longer? we'd still have the same problem

[โ€“] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are female-female USB extension cables. As to why those exist...

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[โ€“] Z4rK 53 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Iโ€™ve used them for extension, as it allows you to attach a second, regular USB cable to it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Well, what do you mean by "regular"? The cable would need to be female on at least one end, which I usually see in... USB extension cables.

[โ€“] LesserAbe 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Not that you probably need to know this, but for some other stranger: there's a max functional length to USB cables. At work I remember pulling my hair out troubleshooting a printer until we swapped cables for something shorter.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

And that max length goes down with each coupling.

We have smart boards in most classrooms, but in an entire wing of my department the smart board doesn't work. Reason? When we built the wing, 8 or 10 years ago, the installers fitted their own low grade plugs on the USB connection for the boards, before figuring out that they snipped the cables too short. Instead of running new cabling the installers then introduced another extension.

Nobody cared to check it out before accepting delivery and my complaints went unheard by management, until it was too late to RMA it.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Such A-to-A adaptors and cables always have been prohibited by the USB spec, but people built them anyway. A common usecase for "illegal" A-A cables i remember was connecting PCIe cards (especially GPUs and mining cards) externally to riser sockets.

[โ€“] accideath 23 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have an external 3,5โ€œ HDD enclosure that needs a male to male USB 3.0 A cable to plug into a PC. Still wondering, why they didnโ€™t use Bโ€ฆ

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's really odd. Why use a host connector when a client connector is intended for the purpose.

Did they entirely miss the purpose of USB?

[โ€“] accideath 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cost? A USB-A 3.0 connector is probably a few cents cheaper than a B 3.0 connector

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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go

In 2001 the directionality became kind of moot. Especially if you want to do attach something with an on-the-go host

[โ€“] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An OTG setup needs all 5 pins of the micro-B connector. USB A cannot be used for OTG. If a USB-A port can act as a client, that's not OTG, it's a botched implementation.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Sometimes you have a female to female cable.

[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You ever watch Requiem For A Dream?

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

ASSSSSSS TO ASSSSSSSS

[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

LUSBian sex obviously!

[โ€“] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I dunno but it bothers me how much plastic wrapping that fucking thing apparently needs.

[โ€“] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (25 children)

To connect two USB-A ports.

Basically the same as a USB-A to USB-A cable, just really short.

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[โ€“] LazaroFilm 13 points 1 year ago

I used to have a portable hard drive that had a usb-A/ e-sata hybrid connector and I had to use a USB A to A cable (or e-data) to use it.

[โ€“] Rand0mA 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Get 2 laptops, put them side by side with usb ports wide open and plug them bitches together. Likely will short with 5v being fed both sides.

But in reality its a usb coupler (plugging together 2x usb extension cables). Not a great lot of use from them in my opinion. I've seen shit bodged together in low budget it offices using edge case crap like this.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It's an Usb-A gender changer. It's not that useful but you could use it to turn an otg adapter (female usb-a to male usb-c) into a regular usb-c cable. I'd rather buy a usb-c cable though.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Not one that short but I do have A to A cord like that in use. In my case it's with a KVM that I lost and AC adapter for but found that if I plugged in to one of the rear console connections it could get it to power on from the USB device. Cable it to a USB charging port on the front of one of the UPS and away it goes.

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