edited 7th Feb '15 6:58:38 PM by TairaMai

Anyone have any recommendations on a good gaming laptop? I really want to replace my 4 year old store bought tower woth something with a bit more ease to carry around while still being able to play World of Warcraft, Minecraft and other games.

I have about 1500 USD, but am willing to go a little bit higher if possible.

Look at the ASUS ROG line.

HP has laptops with Radeon and Nvidia graphics. Those can carry you for several years.

Remember, you can't upgrade the GPU on a laptop. Asus makes gaming lappys that are in Crack is Cheaper territory. HP makes ones that are affordable.

What Microsoft didn't say about Windows 10 is important to know

tl;dr: Author's afraid that Microsoft's new way of doing things could saddle people with a Vista without the choice to avoid upgrading.

New algorithm can separate unstructured text into topics with high accuracy and reproducibility: "Much of our reams of data sit in large databases of unstructured text. Finding insights among emails, text documents, and websites is extremely difficult unless we can search, characterize, and classify their text data in a meaningful way.

One of the leading big data algorithms for finding related topics within unstructured text (an area called topic modeling) is latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). But when Northwestern University professor Luis Amaral set out to test LDA, he found that it was neither as accurate nor reproducible as a leading topic modeling algorithm should be.

Using his network analysis background, Amaral, professor of chemical and biological engineering in Northwestern's Mc Cormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, developed a new topic modeling algorithm that has shown very high accuracy and reproducibility during tests. His results, published with co-author Konrad Kording, associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, physiology, and applied mathematics at Northwestern, were published Jan. 29 in Physical Review X."

Microsoft tired to lock "apps" in on Windows 8, forcing people to buy apps instead of downloading programs was The FUTURE!. They might try again with some other shenanigans.

My eyes have been really sore lately.

Does anyone here know if those "anti-glare" glasses/goggles/etc actually help when you're staring at a computer screen all day?

All I know is that I can buy those too, but not how effective they are. LOL

I can't say anything about the effectiveness of reducing glare you see through them because I never really paid attention, but they sure as hell reduce the amount of glare others see on them.

Do USB hubs reduce the transmission speed on mice/keyboards/controllers connected to the hub in question? And what are the chances of controller conflict occurring due to doing the former?

Linux distrib vendors make patches available for GHOST: "Qualys said on Tuesday that there was a serious weakness in the Linux glibc library. During a code audit, Qualys researchers discovered a buffer overflow in the __nss_hostname_digits_dots() function of glibc. The weakness can allow attackers to remotely take control of the victim's system without any prior knowledge of system credentials. This has become known as the GHOST vulnerability, discovered by researchers at the security company Qualys, which worked closely with Linux distribution vendors."

If a USB hub increases the latency of a keyboard/mouse connection, it is by fractions of a millisecond at most. I can't imagine you noticing it unless you're doing some kind of ridiculously competitive twitch gaming.

Google Earth Pro is now free

x6,x5: I see...

I have three questions:

1) A few months ago, I posted here and the solution to my DPC Watchdog Violations and Kernel errors was to update the drivers. How do I know which ones I have to update?

2) I found a place where I can download all drivers I may or may not need. Should I download them all or just check which ones I need through 1)?

3) How do I deactivate or delete the OneDrive thing which is part of Windows 8.1?

If someone can answer, that'd be great.

To deactivate OneDrive;

• Right click on the icon and select "Settings"
• Click on the "More Info" tab and click on the "PC Settings" button.
• On the window that shows up, flip the switch marked "On" to "Off".

That should stop it backing up files on that machine.

edited 2nd Feb '15 3:18:25 PM by Bisected8

Oddly enough, I have none of those buttons in the app/program.

Eero Wi-Fi system aims to conquer dead zones, buffering: "The makers of a sleek-looking white box called Eero are pointing out that this is no router—it's a Wi-Fi system with features that are capable of blanketing every inch of your home with speedy coverage. With Eero, you create a network easily. 'Pick up your phone, type in your name and password, you're done,' said its promotional video. An Eero comes with built-in Bluetooth, which allows the Eero app to connect with your first Eero for setup. A set of three Eeros covers a typical home. They connect to create a mesh network for a home with reliable Wi-Fi. After you plug your first Eero into your existing cable or DSL modem; additional ones just need power from a standard outlet. The app helps place them for optimal Wi-Fi coverage. The team said the setup takes under 60 seconds with "no Ethernet wiring or IT degree required." The distinctive aspect of Eero is that the Eeros work together to form a mesh network, a technology familiar in enterprise settings.

Unlike traditional routers and extenders that allow for data to make a single hop, the Eero allows for multiple hops with minimal signal loss, said the company. You can connect up to 10. Each device is an access point. The company's software allows them all to connect to form a mesh network. The mesh allows for many paths for data, automatically choosing the fastest. Eero supports the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard that uses the 5GHz radio spectrum, less crowded and offering more and wider channels than the 2.4GHz spectrum, but 5GHz radio waves have limited range 'and don't play nice with walls and doors,' said the company. When the Eero system cannot use 5GHz throughout the home, it will automatically switch between 2.4 and 5GHz frequency bands."

My Asus laptop's monitor defaults to a cool blue hue, even after disabling the Splendid Utility. Just about every program I have tweaks the screen colour balance to make it more normal, so to speak. Does anyone know if there is a method of fixing this permanently?

And is there a command line parameter that can be used to make certain programs always run with the graphics card enabled? Some games I have default to the onboard graphics of the processor and run poorly as a result.

You need to disable the onboard graphics in the BIOS settings. Most systems should do this automatically if there's an expansion card installed, so something funky is going on.

edited 7th Feb '15 7:18:54 AM by Fighteer

From the article, the tl;dr of "Bob" in action:

Well, that crash of the sort I've had a few times in the past happened again today, for the first time in a few months, just after I'd finished watching a YouTube video. But this time I managed to recover from it. Upon unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in, I got my screen back. However, a few of the icons on my desktop were messed up (as if I had changed the screen resolution to something else and then back), Firefox's graphics were glitching out (the Flash frame was visible, but everything else was blank; Firefox responded correctly when I closed it and relaunched it), and Terragen 2, which I had been setting up for a render behind Firefox, had crashed completely (its window was blank, it said 'not responding', I terminated it from the Task Manager).

There's about one month left on this system's one-year warranty from NCIX, so if this is an actual hardware issue, I'd really like to know soon. Although, I'm not sure what good the warranty would do me given how rare and apparently non-reproducible the problem is. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a software command that is equivalent to unplugging the monitor and plugging it back in- a command that can be issued without access to the mouse or any onscreen UI- that's also something I'd like to be able to try.

Not sure what to search for...but, need help: I'm using 120 GB SSD as an OS drive, and currently Windows report that I used 76.8 GB of space...but when I used TreeSizeFree (and later WinDirStat) and just highlight ever folder in C: and click Properties, those combined files only eat up 44 GB...anyone know what might be the cause of 30 GB discrepancy?

Pic

Edit: turns out it's System Restore using all those space...damn, I thought I had all of that turned off already. Wonder if Windows Update turned it back on or not...

edited 8th Feb '15 3:46:07 AM by onyhow

Has anyone bought digital music on Amazon? What is the experience like? How easily can you download it as just a straight mp3 or similar?

I have. When I tried using the browser-based player to download, I remember it being a pain in the ass, but I just use the Amazon Music application on Windows (and/or download it straight to my Kindle Fire) to download it easily now. It's all MP3, some of it encoded at a CBR of 256 kbps and the rest encoded at VBR aiming for 256 kbps average

edited 10th Feb '15 10:09:02 PM by Sixthhokage1