JonCole

Pretty good deal on a HTPC-style desktop, good for light gaming and Steam streaming - http://slickdeals.net/f/7823973-alienware-alpha-i3-desktop-console-for-383-99-w-f-s-tax It's the Alienware Alpha, which is designed with a similar aesthetic to a console. Comes with a dual-core Core i3 processor, 4gb of RAM, and a GTX 860M w/ 2GB VRAM. Also comes with a 360 wireless controller for couch gaming. All of that for $383.99 shipped + tax and after coupon code. I'd probably grab it myself if I didn't already have a cheap HTPC. Not (very) upgradeable, but who cares for that price + spec combination?

They also officially cancelled Silent Hills and are pulling PT from the PS Store on Wednesday.

I used to rock minimal AV, but when I started messing around with torrents I figured it's worthwhile to pony up. Ever since, it's caught way more threats than I previously would have assumed with relatively few false positives (Norton and ESET both). It can be a bother to deal with updates, assess the few false positives, and have it be another possible point of failure when trying to diagnose an issue, but it seems to mitigate some real risk for me so I just deal with it.

I was using an Ivy Bridge i5, but I recently gave it up to my wife so she could play The Witcher 3 along with her new GTX 970. That setup is pretty solid, I was watching her play Shadow of Mordor last night and it looked better and ran more consistently than what I saw on PS4. Right now I'm using a dual-core Pentium Haswell chip that I've OCed to 4.2ghz and it handles most things fairly well. I mostly got it as a stand-in until I can afford either a Core i5-4690k or a Core i7-4790k, for the next few months I'm just going to play most AAA games on my PS4. I've gotta give my wife the better rig for now because she pretty much exclusively games on her PC. Also, it makes her happy so that's great. As for the FX-6300, it probably will leave you wanting for an upgrade but AMD doesn't give you much upgrading room. You won't see a large increase in performance if you go to a 8000-series 8-core, plus they do a really good job of binning their chips so you won't get spectacular overclock potential from the cheaper 8320/8350 versus the 8370 (in other words, they really do make the better chips into different SKUs, so it's not like the good old days of finding a gem that OCs like crazy from a cheaper SKU). For now, I'd just recommend OCing the 6300 as much as you can and saving up for a switch to Core i5.

You should also check with your ISP to see if they offer a free pro version of AV software, I know that in my area Comcast offers Norton Internet Security (which is AV + Spyware protection) for free and my parents get McAfee for free. You get it as part of any internet package, so it's worth a try. I actually used Norton for a while and it was way better than the late-90's super-resource-intensive reputation that held in my mind would have anticipated. I did switch to ESET and I like it a lot better, but Norton Pro for free beat all of that other free stuff in my mind.

Without having watched it, I imagine that some of it just comes from the ensemble thing not being all that fun even in the comics. When I'm reading the Avengers comics, it feels just like answering fan service questions like "what would it be like if Rogue absorbed all of the superheroes powers?" or "who would win in a fight, Thor or Ares?" instead of actually telling a deep and interesting plot. Ultron in particular is one of those enemies in which his defeat always seems a little farfetched. I guess it's no surprise that Ultron literally always survives every encounter with the Avengers, whether that means being banished to another dimension or hiding in another AI for years or whatever.

Season 3-ish? If memory serves.

I wrote a couple spoiler paragraphs in rebuttal with much more to go, but then I realized that I really don't care to debate. While I'll admit that some elements are problematic with what you mentioned, I also think that they're not all that inconsistent with the rest of the series. I also think that a romantic relationship doesn't need all that much "setup", the personal affection was signaled enough for me to find it believable and I'm happy to celebrate that it did happen instead of leaning on the problematic in other ways anime/cartoon conventions that could have led to

I know I'm super LTTP with this, BUT I CANNOT HANDLE HOW GREAT THE END OF LEGEND OF KORRA IS. I AM SO GODDAMN HAPPY AND IT WAS SO CUTE AND SINCERE AND PERFECT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I was really happy with my 970 purchase. I used to get mid-range cards because I thought that "can handle everything" was what I wanted, but "can handle everything well" is way better and worth the ~$75ish difference.

Yeah, generally it's a good idea to contribute to a 401k up to the amount that an employer would match at the very least, if your employer does match. There's pretty much no better investment than a 1:1 match. Beyond that matching amount, it's debatable whether a 401k is the best way to invest. For many people, particularly young single people, it's probably better to also have a Roth IRA. Pre-taxing means no penalties or fees for withdrawing and much of the time if you actually do the math you'll end up with more in the end. Only disadvantage to Roth IRAs that I know of is a relatively low annual contribution limit, but that's no big if you're not rolling in money.

Kinda reminds me of the emails I'd get from Barack Obama's campaign, where it'd be like "Yo what's up man" and I'm just like does Barack want my money, want to be my bro, or is he a spambot now?

It's really a minimal difference. I wouldn't give it much thought in deciding what video card to get. I don't know what you already have so I don't know if it'd be "worth it", but if you're upgrading from anything older than a 2-year equivalent (GTX 670 or AMD 5950) or just plain weaker you'll probably be well suited with a GTX 970. I upgraded from a AMD 7850 and I saw a lot of improvement since it was just a higher class of card + about 1.5 generation difference.

I could see a Dead Space-style Souls game, where you're largely facing alien threats in which ranged weapons have limited, specific usefulness. Futuristic space stuff is much more a backdrop than the star of those games, which I think could work for Souls.

PCI-E is backward compatible, a 3.0 card would work on a 2.0 mobo. The spec of the motherboard governs the transfer speed, so it'll be a little bottlenecked from it's true potential but it'll definitely still work.

Bloodborne t-shirts goddddddd - http://theyetee.com/

Weird! I had very little that I was saving for a rainy day and decided to screw it and celebrate. Wish there was a legitimate way to procure for myself.

The starting gear is pretty bad, so any outfit change you can make will probably help. That being said, buying new clothes isn't the only way to get more so I'd recommend just tooling around a little more if you're having problems with specific enemies.

They essentially said that there would be no Jedi stuff in this one, so...

I think it's good that Apple backed USB, because it's actually a standard that's a real standard unlike stuff like FireWire, Thunderbolt, Magsafe, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing smartphones and tablets with USB Type-C ports in the next year. Though Apple will probably still use Lightning for their iPhones because they're weird and dumb.

I dunno, Apple is all about gen 1 products building hype and supply chain and then using the momentum to actually make a good product. Not to mention that they are really good at convincing people of what they want and setting industry standards. Take the MacBook Air for example, some of the biggest criticisms of it were the lack of disc drive, no FireWire ports, and tiny (80gb!) SSD which all contributed to the size reduction that eventually made the Air popular. And over the years, people realized that they didn't really need disc drives, FireWire was on the way out in favor of Lightning and USB 3.0, and SSDs would get bigger as demand went up for them so people wouldn't have to care about not having a hulking HDD. It also only had a single USB 2.0 port, so people bemoaned needing to carry around USB hubs. But again, once Apple refined their processes they were able to jam one more USB port into it and people pretty much forgot it was an issue to begin with. I'm guessing that when you say the "USB/power solution is lousy" you mean having only one port for both purposes is lousy and not the idea of having a USB 3.0 port for charging is lousy. Because I really think that having a tiny, universal port that can charge a laptop is amazing. I honestly think that this problem is a matter of a new idea not taking root, once Apple releases gen 2 with more ports and in time we actually get more peripherals that can just plug directly into that port instead of needing an adapter I'm sure everything will just pan out.

It's worth noting that under the direction of their corporate overlords CBSi, they are probably pretty discouraged against taking overly political views under the main GB banner because business reasons and stuff. I imagine that's the biggest reason why we're getting this trickle of information re: their views through weird channels like Mixlr and whatever.

i am incredibly intoxicated, alcoholically and otherwise. it took me about 1 minute to type that last sentence. i always do this when the wife is away for a night, i have no idea why. my cat keeps meowing at me and it just makes me laugh. i'm drinking this 50:50 mixture of stella artois and a local cider. this is too tasty. i can't stop laughing at the word "egggcorns".

I thought of another reason - ecosystem. Why wouldn't you buy a MacBook if you were an iPhone and iPad owner who uses iCloud to backup your photos, iTunes to buy music, FaceTime to video chat, etc? There's a lot of incentive to stay in one ecosystem, which is why after being a long-time user of Google phones and Chrome I feel like there's little chance that I'd switch to iPhone even if I acknowledge that it's probably a better device than the next phone I'll buy.