Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Universal Serial Bus was created by a group of seven major technology companies including Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel. The development was driven by the vision of individuals like Ajay Bhatt and his team at Intel, who worked to create the first integrated circuits supporting the standard in 1995.
The USB 3.0 specification was released on the 12th of November 2008. This release introduced the SuperSpeed architecture which provided an operation mode at a rate of 5.0 Gbit/s, a tenfold increase over the previous generation.
USB Power Delivery Rev. 3.1 extends the power delivery limits to 240 W. This version was released in May 2021 and enables the charging of devices that previously required proprietary chargers.
A USB system allows up to 127 devices to be connected to a single host controller. The host controller directs traffic flow to devices, meaning no USB device can transfer any data on the bus without an explicit request from the host controller.
The plug-and-play nature of the USB standard has introduced significant security vulnerabilities such as BadUSB attacks and USB killer devices. Malicious actors can create devices that simulate keyboards to type malicious commands or send high voltage pulses to destroy hardware.
The USB Type-C connector was officially released in 2014. Unlike its predecessors, the USB-C plug is reversible, eliminating the frustration of trying to insert a cable the wrong way.