Why I no longer care which way I insert it

Prefer to do it 'Heinz-fashion'? Just don't bend my pin

Photo © 2024 Lucian Alexe | https://unsplash.com/fr/@lucian_alexe

Please excuse the throbbing. I got a bit excited.

Indeed my head has been throbbing (why, what did you think I meant?) ever since I over-indulged in celebrations on the big day last week. Not Christmas, not New Year. I held a big party last Saturday 28 December to celebrate the final enactment of Government Regulation 2023-1271.

Oh yes, those silver-tongued French legislators really know how to bring on a throb.

Décret 2023-1271 is my host country’s local application of the European Union’s Common Charger Directive which nailed last Saturday as the deadline for manufacturers to ensure their portable electronics devices can be recharged from a standard USB-C cable and power socket adapter. Since seven days ago, it has been illegal to sell mobile phones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones, headsets, videogame consoles, portable speakers, e-readers, keyboards, mice, portable navigation systems and earbuds in the EU unless they do.

Not to worry if you live in the UK, or in Australia or in the US. You can continue to charge up your devices Heinz-fashion: that is, by carrying around 57 varieties of charging cables. In fact, I assume Brexitland will want to develop its own thoroughly non-European recharging cable that uses only good honest British electrons measured in imperial units and recorded onto electricity bills in £sd.

Good luck with that. Here in the EU, the USB-C directive will also apply to all laptops from 28 April 2026. No, I do not know why these directives always land on the 28th of a month. Maybe it’s in the Joliet spec for Europeans Countering Useless Nob Tech. The acronym isn’t pretty so let’s just call it Joliette.

My throbbing head was the result of a drinking game in which you down a shot for each different type of recharging cable-and-plug you find in your cables drawer. You do have a dedicated cables drawer, right? Thought so.

It turns out I have retained a variety of USB 1.1s, 2s and 3s over the years. And all those different plug styles: USB, mini-USB, micro-USB, and whole host of alternatives that look as if they could be USB but are actually just a little bit too wide, or too fat, or too narrow, to fit in any socket other than the very specific device it came with.

And there is no way of knowing which ones are recharge-only or for data-transfer cable only, or for both. Unless you try them out one by one, of course. (I feel a new drinking game coming on.)