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@nf3xn Standard endurance for USB-A ports is 1,500 connect/disconnect ("mating") cycles.
@dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn is that more or less than a standard AC wall socket?
NEMA is the US standard, 5-15P is the 3 conductor 15A plug side that 90% of the appliances you can buy use, 5-15R is the wall outlet side that 90% of the walls will have. The exceptions are mostly 220/240V outlets and plugs for large air conditioners, electric dryers and such.
Very old houses will have ungrounded 2 conductor plugs; some appliances use ungrounded 2 conductor plugs that work in NEMA 5-15R.
@dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn
I could imagine that the plugging frequency could differ for USB.
20.000 is a bit more than two 2 plugging cycles per day for 25 years.
If you use it that much you should think about a good durable power converter in the wall. 
I don't believe I have any devices which use USB A or C and will last 25 years.
I have several NEMA 5-15P devices that are more than 50 years old and still in reasonable condition...
but in any case, the question is what you should put into your walls. I wouldn't put USB in the wall; as @cstross said, we'll have a new standard every few years.
@dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn @cstross We need the USB forever* standard.
*Support 50 years
@dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn @cstross
After 25 years. "Why was it called USB forever? " "Because it takes like forever to transfer data."
USB 1.1 came out 25 years ago. Extrapolating linearly for the next 50 years, we can expect USB 12 to carry roughly 50 Tbit/sec of data and provide up to 10kW of power on demand.
@cstross @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn If this forecast is right we would have to rewire everything. 3.6kw max for most households. Also the cable must be very much thicker if they stay with 5 volts. Results in 2.000 ampere.
Will we need the bandwidth... We will see. But with Moore's law ending this could be a bit too much to compute.
@Zeugs @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn This is a classic example of why linear extrapolation usually fails!
(10kW is more than enough power to run every appliance in a house except the heating/air conditioning. And 100 Tbit/sec is probably excessive by a similar margin. Look back 50 years before USB and we didn’t even have/need data cabling in the modern sense … it was 1943 and 50 baud Telex over PSTN was the new hotness!)
In 2016, I estimated that per-person bandwidth demand caps at about half a terabit per second.
Estimation method here: https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/02/26/more-bandwidth-please/
@dashdsrdash @cstross @ryanc @nf3xn
100+ people multiplayer ? You want another cable for that? It's 2073!
@dashdsrdash @cstross @ryanc @nf3xn In 2073 ... Do they still have servers, the cloud or local servers? Maybe miniature kubernetes clusters in synthetic computation fluids Running your house.
Or they just use brain tissue based ML models for everything because all programming knowledge was lost.
@dashdsrdash @cstross @ryanc @nf3xn will they have switched to IPV6 ?
@cstross @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn yeah, Moore's law! who cares about linear, go for exponential!
But that does not solve the problem that I don't want to crouch on the flor to plug in USB or have to use the rooms as they were initially planned with ports on table height.
@cstross @Zeugs @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn Many modern builds will now have 3 outlets that can top 10kW, though: the air conditioning / heat pump, the induction hob (for very short bursts) and the car charging point (11 kW for 5-8 hours at a time). Those in EU use connectors and sockets with a 1960's design standard, but the power draw is not something that'd be expected in a house before the "electrify everything" push.
@cstross @Zeugs @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn I'm likely to eat my words at some point but 100 terabytes a second is complete overkill for basically anything well unless we figure out brain uploading in the next 50 years which I doubt (cheap fusion power has been 20 years away since the 1950s)
@cstross @Zeugs @dashdsrdash @ryanc @nf3xn Finally, the USB toaster could become a reality
@dashdsrdash @Zeugs @ryanc @nf3xn @cstross
I bought an outlet plate (for a standard US 2× NEMA 5-15R outlet) which includes a little parasitic rectifier and voltage dropper feeding a USB-A socket.
When it stops working, or being relevant, I can just pop it off and pop a regular wall plate on. Nothing is wired in. (It has contacts which slip over the screws on the side of the outlet.)
Mind you, it was $1 at a thrift store. I doubt I would have paid full price.
@publius @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @ryanc @nf3xn Different mains standard here (I'm not American).
@cstross @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @ryanc @nf3xn
I am aware that such "minimally invasive" options might well not be available everywhere. On the other hand, my experience is that it's not difficult in Europe to buy "power strips" or whatever you want to call them, boxes of receptacles on the end of an extension cord, which also include a USB power supply. That also seems to me like a reasonable compromise.
@publius @cstross @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @nf3xn I do have a few of those with the "universal" sockets that will accept plugs from the UK, EU, and US (most stuff sold in the US is 240V tolerant), plus USB, and those are nice.
Wouldn't plug anything more expensive than about £30 into the USB charging ports though.
@ryanc @cstross @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @nf3xn
Oh, what Big Clive calls the "Dethdaptor"!
@publius @cstross @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @nf3xn I have enough wall warts from the US that having power strips with universal sockets seems like the least bad solution. They at least have their own fuses.
@ryanc @cstross @dashdsrdash @Zeugs @nf3xn
Spending four months out of the typical year in Germany, I have a US power strip (with 15A circuit breaker) which I plug in via a Schuko-NEMA adaptor, and then I can plug in any 240V-tolerant device with a US connector. As time passes I have fewer of those, though. What I do have have a lot of is power bricks which take a "shaver cord" or a "trinocular", so I just carry some Schuko-ended power cords for them.