Yeah, it's inconsequential fluff misrepresenting itself as social commentary. DC has been used to power "larger" devices for years - every laptop made takes DC power. The internal bus of desktops has been DC since UNIVAC. Pushing USB out to 100w is a spec thing, not an "edison's revenge" thing. Edison wanted DC for long-distance power transmission because he was a monomaniac with zero scientific training. There are reasonable ways to do it but that wasn't what Edison was about. And behind all this power-over-USB crapola, there's still a half-wave rectified transformer somewhere.
It's actually more of a capitulation to the Chinese; 5VDC has been the bread and butter of pretty much every handheld device they make. The 10W limit didn't amuse them so they just rocketed right the fuck past it without giving a shit. You can get "USB" power supplies with some Chinese kit that will pull down 120W. And, of course, when you import them into the US through official channels, they've got this USB plug that will absolutely grenade USB devices. The Chinese get around this by putting instructions on that say "no plug USB into USB" but TuV and ISO don't dig on that, so companies importing Chinese goods had to swap out the power supplies. Now you're no longer straight importing, you're adapting. Expenses go up. This move basically allows American manufacturers to go "look - just make it meet this, we don't care about anything else" and they can use the Chinese shit without having to swap components. "Edison's revenge" it ain't. Gotta love the Chinese. they figured out pretty quickly that TVs were rare but computer monitors were ubiquitous; they put VGA plugs on their DVD players and output in RGB colorspace (damn handy for those of us running ancient CRT projectors). They also figured out that everybody under the sun had a dozen IEC cables sitting around, so they adapted that plug to everything. I've got a truly dope all-stainless rice cooker that uses the same power plug as my Mac Pro. Meanwhile, in the US, it took ten.fucking.years between USB-equipped power outlets showing up at Chinese factories and NEC-approved USB-equipped power outlets showing up at Home Depot.
Oh shit, I just added 4 normal outlets to my man-cave last weekend. I am cutting another hole in the wall!Meanwhile, in the US, it took ten.fucking.years between USB-equipped power outlets showing up at Chinese factories and NEC-approved USB-equipped power outlets showing up at Home Depot.