My eyes glazed over looking through your comment. I think you and the author of the article are in agreement as far as this part of the article is concerned: “What we want is to look at a port and cable and know what they do. That shouldn’t be so hard, but it apparently is.”
I believe, as I wrote elsewhere in the past the solution would've been standardized introspection: cheap devices you can plug into a port / a cable into and it gives capabilities.
