the Hearth @Felthry@awoo.space

@LexYeen also i was kind of wanting to do co-op stuff with friends who are going to get way ahead now
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@LexYeen we're pretty upset about this honestly
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@LexYeen i just want the game i was looking forward to to actually be playable
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@curls yeah i'd recommend replacing that when you can
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@curls I am curious if you have a model number or part number for it--or is it one of those that the handle plugs directly into the wall? (the latter is what we call a "cheap hardware store iron" and they're not worth the $5 they cost)
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@curls (we can provide more specific advice for specific contexts if you need, feel free to ask! The best choice of soldering tool is different if you want to solder big things than if you want to solder small things, for instance; the above suggestions are reasonable all-rounders but we've found the FX-888D's iron a bit too large for some fine work)
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@codl Becquerel. In the context of nuclear physics, it's used to measure activity of a radioactive sample, 1 Bq is one decay per second (averaged)
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@codl If you want help understanding them, feel free to ask! but if you don't want help just know that VA and W are indeed the same dimension, but are used to measure different things. Similar to how Hz and Bq are equal units but used to measure different things.
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@curls if you need advice, here's our opinion: if you're on a budget, the *most important thing* is to get an iron with temperature control. I'd recommend a Hakko FX-888D, but I know Weller has some in a similar price bracket that are similar quality

if you have lots of money to spend (like if you're going to get your work to buy it, or a collective purchase for a makerspace or something), JBC is hands down the nicest soldering irons we've ever worked with, if you can afford the price tag
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@codl see my other post! i can explain in more detail if you want or if there's anything you don't understand about it
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@codl when talking about AC power, there are three different quantities at play

Watts measure real power consumed, the power that actually gets converted to heat and/or useful work

Volt-amperes measure apparent power, the product of RMS current and RMS voltage, which is equal to the real power only in the case of a purely resistive load. Anything supplying AC power (inverters, generators, transformers) will be rated in VA, as that's what directly affects the losses in the power supply

Then there's VAR for "volt-ampere reactive", which just measures reactive power and not real power. Reactive power can be thought of as the energy that "sloshes" back and forth between the source and the load, doing no useful work (but contributing to transmission losses since it does increase current draw)

The relationship between the three mathematically S = √(P²+Q²), where S is apparent power, P is real power, and Q is reactive power.

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why is there no :soldering_iron: emoji

@Zest that's a really pretty ring!
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@pup_hime Cat Business.
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@noiob well, something's clearly wrong and the information online is conflicting
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are gpus ever going to become affordable again

i was wondering if the inability to run elden ring turns out to be due to a gtx 1060-6gb not being quite enough (despite meeting the minimum requirements), how much it'd cost to get a more recent gpu, and the cheapest 20- or 30-series one out there is apparently still over $700
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@kat ⬚
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setting the resolution to 1920x1080 did not fix it, so i think that rules out some kind of incompatibility with ultrawide monitors
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we meet all the minimum requirements (have a gtx 1060 6gb, ryzen 3600, running windows 10) and have freshly updated graphics drivers, and we tried the thing about uninstalling epic games launcher, the game still just crashes after the loading screen

the only slightly unusual thing about our computer is that we have an ultrawide monitor, and that we're playing it over a steam link (but it won't launch if we do it without the steam link either)
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