Remember everyone: there is no standard naming scheme for these manufacturing processes. The naming of process nodes is very much marketing-driven and is not related to any measurable distance on a chip - it is just a name. TSMC could choose to call their 2nm node a '1pm manufacturing node' if they wanted and nobody would be able to stop them.
What makes the difference between manufacturing processes is transistor density, and we have no idea what sorts of densities to expect from these upcoming nodes. If the density is similar between two nodes, then it doesn't matter if one is labelled as 5nm and the other as 2nm - both will likely perform similarly to each other. Saying that Intel won't reach 2nm until 3-4 years later is meaningless as we don't know the actual difference in densities between these processes. The only way we will know which is better is when they actually come to market.
The same way as a 4GHz processor isn't necessarily better than a 3GHz processor, a 2nm node isn't necessarily better than a 5nm node.
If you don't want to read a wall of text, scroll down to the second post where you will see VIDEO TUTORIALS about soldering
I saw another person start a thread about soldering but felt like my long posts would be lost in the middle of pages among other messages.
Maybe this can be made sticky by a moderator or something like that.
What's soldering? Basically it's a chemical reaction between metals ... the process in which two metals are joined together using a metal filler called solder.
This chemical reaction that binds the metals together (similar to welding) happens at specific temperatures and that's why you need some soldering equipment to solder.
You have three major kinds of soldering tools:
1. Soldering guns - very basic soldering irons that usually plug directly in mains socket and always run at same temperature
2. Soldering irons with power control - these soldering irons give you some control over the tip temperature by allowing you to adjust how much power is sent to the heating element in the tip, but don't actually "read" the temperature and have any feedback mechanisms to dynamically control the tip temperature
3. Soldering stations - soldering irons which have a temperature sensor in the tip and allow you to configure a temperature, and then automatically control the amount of power sent into the heating element in the tip to keep the temperature within a very narrow range of your set temperature.
Temperature is the most important thing when soldering, so obviously having good control of temperature is important.
Some components are very sensitive to heat (LEDS, some sensors, solar cells, various ICs) and flux (i'll talk about it further down) is also very affected by temperature.
The temperature of the tip is affected by two things : the size of the soldering iron tip and how big the "heat reservoir" is.
Depending on how the soldering iron tip is, less or meat heat can be transferred to the metals that the tip touches in a unit of time. For example, a conical tip will have less surface area in contact with the metals compared to a chisel (like flathead screwdriver) tip... the chisel tip will have bigger contact area so more heat will be transferred to the metals.
At the same time, the metals that touch the soldering iron tip also act like heatsinks, so they suck away heat from the soldering iron tip, cooling it down which is not good, because you get a good solder job when you have the right temperatures.
The heat reservoir is basically just how well an soldering iron tip holds temperature. A small heat reservoir means the iron tip cools faster when it touches what you want to solder, so a soldering iron would have to pump a lot of energy into the heating element to quickly recover. A bigger heat reservoir means the temperature will fluctuate less.
The enemy of soldering is oxidation ... the formation of oxides on the soldering iron tip and metals you want to solder.
Oxides form naturally wherever there's oxygen, so any metal leads or pads on the circuit boards will have oxides on the surface (well, maybe less or none if you have gold plating or something like that but in general it's safe to assume there's oxides on metals)
You need a high enough temperature to solder, but too high temperature also accelerates the process where oxides are formed.
Oxides block transfer of heat, and blocks that chemical reaction between metals, so you would not get a proper soldering job if the surfaces are oxidized.
In order to deal with oxides and various other crap that's on leads and soldering iron, there's flux used.
Flux is basically an ACID which activates when it reaches a certain temperature and quickly attacks the surfaces moving away oxides and crap from the area, giving the soldering iron tip and metals a very clean contact point, and that's where the chemical reaction between metals and solder happens.
Most soldering wire you can buy has some amount of flux built in ... think of it like a semi-solid or solid line of flux in the middle of the soldering wire (sometimes there's several such lines inside a thin soldering wire).
The flux has a lower melting temperature, so when the soldering iron tip starts to heat up the soldering wire, the flux melts first and pours over the metal parts you want to solder and at the same time it activates doing it's "acid" job, to quickly corrode the oxides and crap on the metals and as the flux evaporates, it binds with those oxides and they go away from the surface.
At the same time, some amount of flux survives and more or less covers the iron tip and the point where the tip makes contact, preventing air from coming into that point of contact.
So, this is another reason why temperature control is very important. If the tip temperature is too high, the iron tip can basically burn that flux too quickly, and the flux will have no time to actually activate and corrode the oxides on the surface and clean the area, because the tip burns it out too fast.
Now let's discuss those three soldering tools.
1. The cheapest are the soldering "guns" or irons that plug directly in the mains socket and offer no temperature control or very little adjustment options, which look like this:
These are very basic and simple. They don't control temperature and have no feedback mechanisms, there's just a heating element inside connected directly to mains, which pumps constant amount of energy and raises the tip temperature to around 400-450 degrees celsius, which is too high and that means tips of such soldering guns quickly form oxides which makes it even more difficult to solder. You're supposed to plug them in, wait 5 minutes or so to get up to temperature, quickly solder and then unplug, to "save" the tip from being corroded and damaged by the heat.
The tips are most often conical which means you have little contact between the iron tip and the metals you want to solder, further making it harder to solder.
Because of the small heat reservoir, as soon as you connect the tip to the parts you want to solder, those parts will suck heat away from the tip cooling it down... and because they pump a constant amount of energy in the heating element you will then have to wait some time for the temperature to come back to where it should be.
So for example, your tip may be at 300 degrees Celsius which is more than 190-230 degrees you need to solder, but you connect the tip the leads or wires you want to solder and the temperature almost instantly drops to 150-200 degrees and you have to wait seconds with the tip touching the parts for it to go above the soldering temperature of 190-230 degrees at minimum.
Nobody should buy these because the tip is bad, they'll quickly damage the tip if you leave them plugged in for long time, and they result in poor soldering jobs because of tip shape, small heat reservoir and high temperature which can burn up the flux inside solder before it can actually work.
2. The soldering irons / stations with power control / "fake" temperature knobs which look kinda like this:
These are a bit better, as in they usually have a better soldering iron tip (bigger heat reservoir) and for some models you can actually change the tips to have various shapes that are better suited for your particular need at that time.
These don't control temperature using feedback, they just control the constant flow of energy to the heating element. As an analogy, think of it like the dimmer for your lights, or switching between 40w , 60w, 75w and 100w light bulbs.
The knob just controls the amount of energy going into the tip, but the actual tip temperature will still vary depending on tip shape.
The benefit is that you can keep the amount of power low, to keep the iron tip at a lower temperature and reduce the amount of oxidation that forms on the tip and extend the life of the tip, and you can raise the power just a few seconds before you actually decide to make the connection.
You can also keep the power lower for small soldering jobs like soldering thin leads of a led to a circuit board, or you can raise power high if you have two thick wires you want to solder.
You can get used to one of these.. as in by repeated soldering, you would figure out that the iron tip would be at around 300 degrees with a chisel tip and knob at 60% which works for thin leads, or that for thick wires you'd want at least 75%
3. The soldering stations with temperature control which look like this :
These are the better of the three. The iron tips can be changed, to use the best tip shape for your needs, and the heat reservoir is bigger because the heat element is often much bigger)
Also, inside the tip there's a temperature sensor which "tells" the unit the tip temperature right there at the tip, and that allows the soldering station to quickly react to changes in temperature and either pump more energy into the heating element or stopping energy when the temperature is too high.
The knob on the unit is actually calibrated to be reasonably precise (typically give or take 10-20 degrees celsius), so for example if you set the knob to 300 degrees, the unit will constantly read the tip temperature and adjust the heat element's power to keep the tip temperature constant.
When the tip touches some leads or metal parts and heat is sucked out of the tip (because those metal parts act as heatsinks, cooling the tip), the unit detects that and quickly pumps a lot of energy in the heater, raising the temperature back much faster.
Unlike previous soldering stations with power control, the flow of energy into the heating element is not constant, it's always adjusted to keep the temperature where you want it.
This is what you should buy, they're more expensive, but can be bought for as little as 20-30$ these days and they will last you at least 10-20 years if you take care of them. Yeah, they're more expensive than 3-5$ you'd pay on ebay for the mains soldering irons (1) but so worth it.
Soldering alloys...
Soldering soldering alloys are :
1. lead free or lead based solders.
2. low melting point solders or regular melting point solders
3. euctetic and non-euctetic solders
3. without any flux or with various kinds of flux inside
Lead based solders are much better for beginners, as they melt at lower temperatures and therefore you can use cheaper soldering irons.
Because of the lower melting point, these often also have less aggressive fluxes so you don't have to be worried as much about hurting your lungs (over time)
Another reason they're good for a beginner is because if you do a proper soldering job, the surface of the solder joint will be shiny. A disturbed solder joint will not be shiny, will be matte, opaque. Lead free solders will not have this behavior, they won't be shiny, reflective etc... so you can't use this property as a quality indicator with lead free solders.
Lead based solders may be harder to find in the future, for example in Europe they already don't allow regular persons to buy them, but again, it's much better than lead free solder.
Why should you use Leaded solders?
Well, mainly because they have a lower melting point of around 180-183 degrees Celsius, compared to Lead free solder which usually has a melting temperature of around 217 degrees Celsius.
Because of the higher melting temperature, companies often have to use much stronger fluxes inside lead free solders, as people use much higher temperatures on the solder iron tips. Those higher tip temperatures will burn through the fluxes much faster, so the fluxes have to be stronger acids to turn to liquid and attack surfaces before the heat from the tip evaporates / burns it. The fumes from the flux being burnt can be worse for you, and it's often recommended to use at least some kind of fan (a case fan is enough) to move the fumes away from you.
2. Low melting point solders are solders which are made of various metals like Indium or Bismuth which melt at much lower temperature than normal (let's say 80-150 degrees Celsius) and which are often used in the process of repairing things. For example, this low melting point solder can be added to existing solder in order to reduce the original solder's melting temperature and make it possible to desolder a component without thermally shocking it (as I said, some components are very sensitive to heat, and don't like 200-250 degrees Celsius on their leads)
What's Euctetic and non-euctetic solder?
Well, solders become liquid when they're heated, but not all solder allows behave the same.
Some solder alloys are euctetic, which means at a very precise temperature they'll turn from liquid to solid ... for example 183 degrees Celsius +/- 1..2 degrees, the 63/37 alloy snaps from liquid to solid. This is great, especially if you're soldering in places where there's vibrations or other things that can perturb the joint, what you solder. However, if you use a very cheap soldering iron that can't keep up the temperature properly, this type of alloy can be harder to work with.
Other alloys are non-euctetic, which means that between the liquid and fully solid ranges, there's a range of temperature where they are "plastic", like a semi-solid metal.
For example, the most common lead solder alloy 60/40 , will start to melt at around 180 degrees , and will stay in that "plastic region" for around 5-10 degrees Celsius.
This makes it more beginner friendly, but like i said not as good if you have vibrations or shocks or whatever ... if the soldering joint is disturbed while the solder is in that plastic region, semi-liquid, the solder joint will be bad, so you'll have to redo it.
So the most common lead based alloys are:
63/37 - 63% Tin, 37% Lead - euctetic, 183 degrees, that's what I recommend to everyone
60/40 - 60% tin , 40% lead - non-euctetic, 180 degrees, a bit more beginner friendly and cheaper but not as great as 63/37
There's some variations which include 1-2% Cu (copper) or silver (Ag) ...
Copper is added because it can help the iron tips, extending their life, but otherwise don't really have big benefits for the solder joints.
Silver was introduced when surface mounted components (resistors, capacitors, chips) had their terminals / leads plated with silver. This extra 1-2% of silver in the solder alloy would help create a slightly better reaction between the solder and those plated leads/terminals making a strong connection.
These days, few components actually use silver on them, and there's minimal benefit to use solder with silver in it.
Audiophiles still suggest it but it's mostly placebo, presence of silver doesn't really help sound in any way.
Lead free solders will typically be 99%...99.7% Tin, followed by some additives that help to some degree. Minimal benefits to lead free solders that have 1-2% copper or silver, they may help extend the life of your soldering iron tip a bit, but nowadays solder iron tips are cheap.
Solder diameters
You can buy them in various diameters ... my advice is to get something like 0.7-1mm for soldering thicker wires and 0.56mm or less for surface mount stuff and small things. If you don't have lots of money, go with 0.56mm or a bit smaller diameter, as you can always cut a length of solder and double it to make it thicker.
I personally use 63/37 0.56 mm thick solder with 2% of no-clean flux from Multicore, ad this solder has multiple strands of flux spread throughout the lengths of the solder. It's a bit more expensive, but a spool of 250-500g will probably last you more than 5-10 years.
Flux amount and flux types
Look for Rosin based , Rosin Activated (RA) or Rosin Mildy Activated (RMA) or no-clean fluxes.
These are milder fluxes, which do a good job and residue of such fluxes can usually be left on the circuit board without any bad effects. If you want, you can clean with isopropyl alcohol or water or other solvents.
Some RMA fluxes can be strong enough that they should be washed off with some isopropyl alcohol or just plain water, because if they're not cleaned over time they can continue to corrode the metals (as they're acids)
You may be tempted to go with "water based" or "organic" fluxes, thinking it's more eco friendly, but really don't,
These fluxes are much stronger acids which will make more toxic fumes when burnt and most of them MUST also be cleaned from the surfaces, otherwise even when cooled down they will continue to attach the metals and corrode them. For some water based fluxes, the recommendations are to put the whole solder joint under isopropyl alcohol and then clean the area with distilled water or specific flux solvents to make sure the acid is neutralized.
As for "organic" fluxes, they're just worse for your lungs, should not inhale the vapor of such fluxes.
The percentage of the flux inside wire makes a difference... for 0.56mm or less, aim for 2-3% flux and for 0.7mm or higher, you can do with 1-1.5% flux.
EXTRA FLUX always helps. Even if you have new components with clean leads and good solder, it never hurts to add a drop or two of liquid flux. Flux pens are expensive, but you can buy fluxes in small 100ml or 250ml bottles for a few dollars, and they really do make a difference.
Other notes
Low melting point solders should NOT be used for permanent jobs, as they don't have the same properties (strength, resistance to vibrations, don't handle flexing so well).
After using low melting point solder, the solder should be removed using solder wick or other methods and fresh regular solder should be used.
In general it's not a good idea to mix lead free solder with leaded solder, but for hobby projects, home repairs, it will be fine. Wherever possible, remove the old solder and use your new solder kind.
It's common practice to add leaded solder to a lead free solder joint in order to reduce the melting point temperature and make desoldering something easier, but once part is desoldered, the "mixed" solder should be removed from the board.
Common misconceptions and myths
Lead solders are toxic, bad for you, you'll breathe lead and get poisoned.
Unless you EAT the solder wire or you have open wounds on your hands, you will be fine. If you are handling lead solder with your hands, some particles of lead can "chip" off the wire and stay on your skin, but washing your hands with soap after you solder is enough to be clean.
You can not breathe in lead, because it doesn't "float" in that smoke produced when soldering. It would require way higher temperatures than 250-400 degrees Celsius for lead or tin to become airborne, in the smoke.
In fact, the smoke is mostly the acid flux being burnt or evaporated by the soldering iron tip, and as it's an acid it can hurt your lungs, if you are exposed to such smoke for a long time (think weeks, months, years of daily soldering).
Lead free solders are actually worse for your health for this reason: because the iron tip temperature is much higher, manufacturers have to use fluxes inside the solder which melt and have higher acidity so they'll do the cleaning job in a shorter time (because the hot tip will quickly evaporate the flux)
Hot take: covering the webcam is unwarranted paranoia. If someone has access to your webcam they already have full control of your computer and them watching your face while you browse facebook is the least of your concerns.
The only way this bill should be accepted is if it applies to members of congress, law enforcement, the executive branch, and SCOTUS. No exceptions, no allowances, no dispensations, all or nothing.
End of story. End of discussion, full fucking stop. I don't care which party or politicians support it.
We, the people, should absolutely NOT tolerate ANY form of "exceptions" for members of government, of any law proposed.
"BuT iT's A nAtIoNaL sEcUrItY iSsUe!"
Then it's important enough to apply to everyone, end of fucking discussion. The reason being that it would then enable some rando hacker to expose all of congresses personal communications, which would result in internet privacy becoming a human right with alarming speed.
There is not much more to be said here. Fuck this bill and anyone who signs off on it.
Garbage. Now everyone will just have token "diverse" people to tick off on the checklist just to comply. Yeah, racism and diversity problems solved. Congrats. Why haven't we thought of this 50 years ago... So much diversity, so progressive!
Also the bullshit idea that everything has to be represented with 50/50 just needs to die already. Unless they'll also demand 50% representation of women in garbage collection, construction, sewer maintenance, remote oil rigs, fishing, deep earth mining etc, you know, all the nasty disgusting soul and body crushing jobs almost exclusively occupied by men. Of course they won't. They'll demand fancy leading positions with office and AC. Been there, seen that. 5-6 years ago or so. And they are still pushing this drivel. *Sigh*
That is BS. Anyhow the feature is present physically on the car to do these feature. It takes maybe an hour or 2 to bypass a 12 volt to the heated seat and install a mechanical switch to turn it on and off. People will find third party device to control them anyway.
There is still microcode, the fly over from above difference (quick and dirty) is basically the name itself. PowerPC also had to release microcode updates to fix Spectre vulnerabilities. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psirt/potential-impact-processors-power-family/
Modern processors today take input of large instructions but end up breaking them down (the decoder) in to many smaller ops which is where the comments about everything basically being RISC comes from. Actual RISC processors don't have these decoders though so your doing more of that yourself in code and compilers, and you might not be better at it than Intel optimized compilers and CPU decoders are.
Yeah that's what I am thinking too.
No way a mentally stable and healthy individual would just suicide as soon as they saw a negative balance on their account.
Also, how can you have so little insight into your finance that you don't know if you are 730,000 dollars in debt or make money?
If I saw -730,000 I'd be contacting the company involved, not topping myself. Must have been some underlying mental health issue for such a lack of rational thinking.
That's somewhat of a too broad blanket statement. MOSFET's have a gate capacitance which must be charged each time you want to turn it on and discharged each time you want to turn it off. Depending on the MOSFET in question, this gate capacitance can be significant and require large currents to switch the MOSFET on and off quickly. Gate drivers are used to mitigate this problem.
So you can't just choose any MOSFET. You need one with a low enough gate capacitance so that the arduino can drive it fast enough for PWM.
We have no concrete information but we can just remember 2004-2005 when Dell were being paid 1 million per month by Intel to avoid Athlon 64 x2 sooo...imagine 10 million per month.
You could use the transistors to switch your relays. They won't be able to switch the LED strips directly, but you can use an NPN transistor or even a Darlington pair to easily switch on and off the relay, just make sure to use a flyback diode.
+1. Using a MOSFET would also allow you to control the brightness of the LEDs using pwm signals.
USB-PD is designed to supply upto 20V/5A(100W). However, the available power is offered at 4 different levels- 7.5W, >15W, >27W, >45W. The available voltages for each level can be checked from this graph-
Also, in order to select the amount of power you want to draw, USB-PD requires the two connected devices to communicate to each other(a "handshake" has to be made to select the appropriate power/voltage level).
Since your display requires 12V(and probably around 2A, as most displays do), you would have to build a logic circuit to communicate with your MacBook via the same USB cable and then hook it to a buck/boost converter to regulate the voltage to 12V.
^Both of these are meant to supply power TO the MacBook and not draw power FROM it, hence these only supply the required power and won't allow you to draw power from the USB port.
If you want to design your own circuit to handshake with your device, I would recommend starting here and here.
If not, I too would say to go with a 12V adapter or a battery to power your display, it would add a bit of hassle but is a much simpler solution.
In what is an ongoing trend among internet new providers, companies are now replacing their journalists with computers that could write their own news articles. MSN is the latest to be hit with this change.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/30/microsoft-sacks-journalists-to-replace-them-with-robots
Thoughts: Years ago journalists made fun of programmers and other blue collar jobs about they are far less paying and not much of a contribution to society. Jump to 2019 now they get mad when twitter tells them to learn coding. This trend of human writers replaced with computers isn't likely to stop, just like the industrial revolution. I couldn't think of ethical concerns about this either.
So, in short, a third party seller changed their product images/titles/descriptions or w/e to include racist language?
After which Amazon removed it?
IMO it's news articles like this which are just adding fuel to the fire.
Making it look as if Amazon have played some part in racist propaganda - when in reality it was just some piece of shit looking to kick something off , which they have achieved.
.png "Funny")
Minimalist Manta Ray got a reaction from Hackentosher in What is the maximum current input on an Arduino?
Minimalist Manta Ray got a reaction from bmx6454 in Need a 12V barrel plug adapter to PD (Supplying power to display from mac)
.png "Funny"){kind=small}
