Benson Leung | |
---|---|
Occupation | Engineer |
Employer | |
Known for | USB-C cable testing |
Benson Leung is an engineer known for reviewing USB-C cables for safety and specification compliance. His reviews have cast light on the proliferation of cheap, non-compliant cables.
Leung is a senior software engineer at Google working on the ChromeOS kernel. [1] He is an upstream Linux kernel maintainer for Chrome hardware. [2]
In 2016, Leung's laptop, a Chromebook Pixel, was rendered unbootable after plugging in a non-compliant but commercially available USB-C cable. Leung determined the cause to be a miswiring in the cable. [3] Since then, Leung has reviewed USB-C cables on Amazon under the name "LaughingMan", to test for specification compliance and weed out unsafe cables. His tests have identified numerous problematic cables. Some cheap cables identified lack pull-up resistors mandated by the USB specification, potentially causing devices to draw high levels of current, causing irreversible damage to the machines they are plugged into. [4] Leung found problematic cables can break the USB port they are plugged into, or even risk causing an electrical fire. [5] Following Leung's work, some vendors fixed their designs, [1] while Amazon banned the sale of non-compliant USB-C cables altogether. [6] Supplementing his online reviews, Leung has published instructions to help end-users test their cables. [7]
Leung is regarded as an expert on USB-C implementation. [8]
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