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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine just ran into this, and after investigation it seems it is quite the thing. Don't buy your chips on Ebay or Alibaba I guess.

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Supply chain integrity is hard, especially when you're building things on a schedule, especially when you're building <50k in a batch, and when you're not super well known.

I wish we'd bring back an electronics manufacturing industry to the US just for that reason alone, even at 2x the cost. Right now it seems the "safest" way to make boards in 5k units is in Mexico -- NAFTA rules plus cheaper labor and compliance.

Supposedly select parts are coming back, as big companies lose faith. (But not all of it will come back)

Its worse than that. Don't buy a board from Ebay or Alibaba.

Its worse than that. Don't buy generic electrical goods w/USB from East Asia (they might be tainted by this, unbeknownst to you).

"Don't buy generic electrical goods from East Asia" is pretty good advice in general, given that some people have been literally electrocuted by faulty low-cost equipment sourced from the region.

“Only buy electronical goods from East Asia that passed VDE, TÜV Nord, GS and CE specifications and tests”.

(Interestingly, a lot of the US–produced products do not pass these tests either. The German standards for product quality are some of the highest existing and they have actually the ability to test all the imported stuff. Just don’t ever trust the TÜV Süd)

This might have just been rumor, but I've heard tell of devices with fake CE stickers.

It reminds me a bit of the great 'bad electrolytic capacitor' debacle that cost companies millions.

Except in this case, the quality of the fake is fine.

It's hard to know if that's true or not - as if the fakes caused a bunch of problems, they'd be complaining about FTDI rather than the fakes.

Nope. It has the wrong VID/PID programmed in to it.

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