| 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, 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]