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Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

The sad part is I'd love to buy a $30 cable thats indestructible cable shielding and jacket, plenum rated insulation (just because) perfect dimensions so it fits great, anti-corrosion plated, visual and tactile indication of which side is up (which I can do with a paint pen but for $30 I want it done for me). Oh and superflex so in my car at -20F like last week its still flexy. And of course totally waterproof or at least if it gets wet, once dried out it'll work perfectly and undamaged.

But no, all we're allowed in a supposedly free market is $3 DX junk, $3 DX junk marked up to $15 at the brick-mortar store, or $700 audiophool stuff.

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I've found some of that audiophool stuff on Aliexpress for the sort of prices you're talking. Of course for $600 a cable it's complete bullshit, but for $20 that sort of thing is quite nice to use.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1M-2-RCA-to-2-RCA-Audio-Cable...

I've a big thing for cables with braided outsides, so the audiophool stuff fits the bill when it's priced sanely.

While our market may not be as free as I would like it to be, the lack of USB cable selection is separate from the issue of market freedom.

I like the cable you're describing. If you start selling them, I might buy one.

You might know this already, but I'll mention it anyways because I was looking at it recently: there exists something called "ultra flexible wire" that has a very high strand count compared to normal stranded wire. For example, standard 28 AWG wire has 7 strands of 36 AWG, but ultraflexible 28 AWG has 41 strands of 44 AWG. This makes it considerably more flexible.

http://www.daburn.com/2671ultraflexiblesub-miniaturewire-u/l...

USB/headphone cables made from this wire could be quite a compelling product.

A cousin of the superflex antenna wire the "trail radio" ham radio guys use, or "litz wire" which is handy for certain RF coil purposes WRT skin effect.

I would imagine ultra tiny diameter wire would suffer from strength issues and fatigue failure. Something like copper plated steel "copperweld" made into litz wire would be pretty awesome. OR would it? Gold plated into ultra fine diameter stainless steel insulated individually and braided into a LITZ wire.

Litz wire is not cheap, even the Chinese stuff is significant fraction of a buck per foot.

If you'd like to see a cable that costs $600 and is fairly priced the Pasternack company sells truly exotic aerospace microwave cables that are quite expensive. You know, to hook up the antenna on your space probe, that kind of thing. Built by hand, individually tested and swept on a network analyzer, that kind of thing. I buy .mil surplus stuff, made by them, from ebay (not new). And going the other way if you do broadcast engineering, $600 is a rounding error when installing a 100KW rated feedline for a TV station. $600 worth of high current service entrance cable for AC power is a depressingly short length. But $600 for a USB cable is impressive in a totally different way.

> But no, all we're allowed in a supposedly free market is...

What's more likely: that the lack of such a cable is the result of market disruption, or that there simply isn't a market for a cable like that?

Do you need your cable for digital or analogical signal? The digital signal can be corrected if there is no too much interference, for an analog signal the shielding can be more usefull.

From an electrical perspective it would merely squirt an amp or so around 5V to my charging cellphone in my car. It would do so in a physically indestructible, infinitely long lived and perfectly mechanically reliable manner in any imaginable environmental condition. Rather than value engineered so I have to buy a new one with each phone (roughly).

Most likely I'll get a wireless charger for the phone before I'm able to buy my "super cable". At that technological point, audiophiles will discover that taking a green magic marker and drawing a circle around the wireless charger unit makes the battery charge quicker...

The market is people; the market responds emotionally; .: the market often gets distinctive products in preference to functional ones.

If you can handle a death metal analogy, it's why more people listen to In Flames than Sacramentum.

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