01:43 <joepie91> ec: aliexpress, if you can wait 2-3 weeks

01:43 <joepie91> straight from China etc., costs fuck all

01:43 <joepie91> and there's very little you can't find there

01:44 <joepie91> (and yes, some sellers will genuinely ship you 10 components for $0.15 with free shipping)

01:44 <joepie91> I was just marvelling over the price of this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1000pcs-5mm-LED-diode-Light-Assorted-Kit-DIY-LEDs-Set-White-Yellow-Red-Green-Blue-free/32599096572.html

01:45 <joepie91> that's, what, $0.00886 per LED? :P

07:17 <ec> man wtf

07:39 <ec> holy shit, joepie91

14:54 <joepie91> ec: so, a bit of context about what aliexpress is... if you've ever seen these straight-from-china online shops like dealextreme, aliexpress is basically the next step of that - it's operated by alibaba (large b2b trading thing), and they expanded into direct-to-consumer shipping, and now operate as a sort of straight-from-china amazon

14:54 <joepie91> ec: so you have thousands of sellers on the site that all sell their own shit via a single site (aliexpress) and the site offers a certain amount of assurances (refunds if you don't receive the item as described, etc.)

14:54 <joepie91> (dispute handling, and so on)

14:55 <joepie91> ec: it has partially centralized logistics like Amazon, but nowhere near all sellers use it, so you'll often receive separate envelopes from different sellers if you order from multiple sellers

14:55 <joepie91> so yeah, a bit inbetween ebay and amazon\

14:56 <joepie91> ec: downside: it ships straight from China/Singapore/etc., usually with the cheapo untracked airmail service, so it can take 2-3 weeks before the package arrives, and it's hard to predict the delivery date... to NL nowadays the average is 8 days, but based on what I've heard pretty much every country still sits on an average of 2 weeks - this probably has to do with PostNL (Dutch ex-state postal company) expanding into China and handling a

14:56 <joepie91> large part of the China -> NL logistics themselves

14:57 <joepie91> ec: but tl;dr yes it's a real site, yes they really deliver, yes you pay what the site says, but don't expect either a year of warranty or reliable shipping times :P

15:01 <joepie91> (also, the same rule applies for disputes as for ebay - if a seller fucks up the order, and they come up with some half-assed 'solution' that doesn't actually help you, just tell them "nope, new one or refund" and they'll agree)

20:56 <ec> joepie91: Oh, I was familiar with the concept

20:56 <ec> joepie91: I just didn't expect this variety of *electronics parts*

20:57 <pikajude> you have electronic parts?

20:57 <ec> relatedly I need to build a high-wattage DC-DC converter / voltage regulator

20:57 <ec> and i'm afraid and idk what I'm doing and blah

20:57 <pikajude> oh

20:58 <pikajude> definitely don't look it up

20:58 <pikajude> just kinda blunder through it

20:58 <ec> my car's accessory-system runs at 18V instead of 12V and I've got a Whole Horde™ of accessories I want to wire up; several of which can get up towards the 500W mark

20:59 <joepie91> ec: ah, right. well, the whole "maker movement" thing is rather alive in China so that naturally spills over to sites like AliExpress :)

20:59 <pikajude> aliexpress good place to get keeb accessories too

20:59 <joepie91> and they already sell just about everything, so why not components? :D

20:59 <ec> keep?

21:00 <pikajude> no, keeb

21:01 <ec> keep?

21:01 <ec> keep?

21:01 <ec> keep?

21:01 <ec> fuck

21:01 <ec> keeb?

21:01 <pikajude> keeb

21:01 <pikajude> keeb

21:01 <pikajude> key board

21:01 <pikajude> what you're typing on

21:01 <ec> who the fuck calls that a keeb

21:01 <pikajude> the keyboard community

21:01 <pikajude> are you a normie ec

21:01 <joepie91> lol

21:02 <pikajude> have to write myself an "intro" to join this new team

21:02 <pikajude> ewwwwwwwww

21:03 <ec> I'm a normie by literally nobody's standards 🙄

21:03 <pikajude> you're a normie by someone's standards

21:03 <pikajude> that special someone

21:09 <ec> nah, she thinks I'm a freak-o too

21:09 <ec> in fact that's basically my type

21:09 <ec> “r u weird”

21:09 <ec> “do u think *I'm* weird”

21:09 <ec> “k let's date and do weird stuff 2gethr”

21:10 <ec> tfw even AliExpress doesn't carry a 12V buck-converter / voltage-regulator that handles ~18V

21:13 <joepie91> ec: you sure?

21:13 <ec> idk I spent some time digging

21:13 <ec> you find me a 500W-capable 12V regulator that supports input of 17-19V-ish

21:14 <ec> I found a bunch of nominal 24V-input that spec “18-30V” or something like that

21:14 <pikajude> is it really weird though

21:14 <pikajude> Or is it secretly normie

21:14 <ec> but my car drops below 18V, and also I wouldn't want to run something like that at its absolutely minimum input-spec constantly

21:14 <joepie91> oh, 500W

21:14 <pikajude> I joined a kink elitist group on facebook

21:14 <pikajude> they make fun of vanilla people

21:14 <pikajude> so I left the group

21:15 <joepie91> ec: most pre-built electronics stuff on aliexpress is low-power stuff so for something like 500W you may be better off bothering mouser or such

21:15 <pikajude> thou shalt punch down

21:18 <ec> pikajude: lmao

21:32 <ec> it me, bringing Caverna to various friend-groups' board-game-nights

21:33 <ec> it me, feeling the constant low-key sting of rejection

21:33 <ec> it me, unloved

21:52 <ec> wait mouser sells assembled shit?

21:54 <pikajude> pffff

21:54 <pikajude> i can assemble shit easy

21:54 <pikajude> just give me some fiber and 20 min