Mechanical engineer Pim de Groot recently shared photos and video of what he described as a “cursed” USB Type-C device. The board lights up differently depending on the orientation of Type-C adapter you plug in. this might sound innocuous enough until you take a moment and remember the whole point of the Type-C design: to move past the mystifying and frustrating experience of trying to plug in a Type-A cable. 

Thanks to the laws of random chance, Type-A plugs almost always required multiple attempts to connect, an effect humorously described as “USB Superposition.” De Groot’s device relies on a lesser-known fact about the construction of USB Type-C plugs: while the adapter’s receptacle is symmetrical – allowing users to plug a Type-C cable in regardless of its orientation – only one side has D+ and D- contacts. It has green and red LEDs that light up differently, depending on whether D+ and D- contacts are shorted. 

De Groot’s box of horrors does seem to have some practical benefit, however: because of the internal differences, flipping your Type-C adapter might actually be a valid troubleshooting step in certain situations.