Mr. GOH!

A US government default on its debt could likely crash the economy, as it would catastrophically devalue the safest investment out there, the US Treasury bond, precipitously and immediately. This is because the US could no longer guarantee the bonds, since it would no longer have the ability to pay them out. That's the rock-simple version, and the actual effects would be more complicated, but equally disastrous to the economy as well as to the functioning of the government at all. A debt limit breach would also precipitate a constitutional crisis as there are no recognized legal means of dealing with the fallout and Obama (or any president in his shoes) would likely try something like ordering the treasury to borrow anyway despite the House's orders.

Requested to join.

We should form a PXOD PS3 crew. My PSN ID is DrGOH. Let's do this.

DrGOH Add me for GTAV madness.

The importance of Gray Matter to Walt's character isn't in the details of what happened, but the fact that he helped found it, then left it voluntarily, and then it took off, making the Schwartzes rich while he languished as a high school chemistry teacher. I admit that I would have liked to know exactly why he left Gray Matter, but I don't think the details are all that important to the arc of his development in the show. I also think there's something to be said for leaving it to the audience to fill in. Indeed, Breaking Bad did a wonderful job of establishing Walt's character and his motives; there are likely enough clues that folks can figure out the important aspects of why he left Gray Matter.

There are a good number of Rosewill haters out there. I have zero experience with them, but assume they're generally good and the power draw is accurate. That is, a lot of bad PSUs say they're one wattage, but at that wattage they tend to die/catch fire. Rosewill doesn't do that in general. I think some folks might just not like the cabling.

Apevia's not the greatest, but you could do worse. Spend a few bucks more and get a better brand when you do upgrade; Apevias are known to be cheaply constructed. They're not shit, but they do have a reputation for not doing so well under lots of load. They also likely don't last as long as sturdier PSUs. But if it works, I wouldn't be concerned. Should be fine for a single GPU that costs ~$250. I do think you should wait until you have $250 and get a nicer GPU. Edit: Don't get an Antec. Not all Antecs are bad, but Antec seems to produce a higher-than-average number of bad units. It's like their quality control really sucks. I've had bad experiences, as have many others. Corsair and ThermalTake are among the nicest, as are, I hear, PC Power & Cooling.

Don't listen to us until you tell us what power supply you have. I suspect that will be the limiting factor. Wait until you have $300 dollars and then upgrade the GPU. You get a lot more bang for your buck on GPUs between $250 and $300.

Dean: I thought that in-home streaming would be a hardware-supported feature of the Steam Machine rather than an almost purely software feature of SteamOS/the Steam client. This is because I missed the relevant portion of the SteamOS announcement Monday. I thought we were talking about Steam Machines being small streamboxes versus standalone PCs and was expecting a streambox announcement today.

Valve made its third Steam announcement, and it's for a fucked-up new controller with trackpads instead of analog sticks, not in-home game streaming machines. Too bad. Edit: Apparently I'm an idiot; SteamOS and the Steam client will feature in-home streaming capability. That will be neat. Now I can stream games to the ol' laptop!

Strangelove: There's a "?" mission that unlocks the subsequent rampage mini-missions. But this convo should be in the GTA V thread.

Is this not the cheesiest and most awful commercial you've ever seen? I cringe whenever I see it.

I know several gamers with PCs in their living rooms. The trend seems to be to use the PCs as their entertainment hub, forgoing cable TV and streaming their entertainment. Some of this may be a function of small apartment sizes on the East Coast (not much room for a separate PC gaming area; that's been my personal experience) and the number of technophiles I know who have cut the cable. I also saw this sort of a few times this summer when looking at apartments to rent when the current occupants were couples rather than roommates who kept their lives in their respective bedrooms. Even saw one setup with just a huge monitor in the living room and a small TV in the bedroom. That person was clearly a computer illustrator by trade (she had a couple fancy-ass WACOM tablets and an artsy vibe),, but she had PC game boxes on her shelves in the living room. I still hope they do a cheap in-home streaming machine, and I agree that makes a ton of sense. I was responding more to Cowboy's discussion of getting into PC gaming with a Steam Machine and no prior gaming PC.

A great many PC gamers have already moved their PCs to the living room. Steam is looking to accelerate this with the Steam Machines. A decent starter gaming rig capable of 1080p on high settings for new games should be about $800-$900, so about twice the price of a next gen. Perhaps in Darkest Europe PC components are more expensive, thus making a PC more expensive. I suspect that the cheapest Steam Machines will likely be a bit more expensive than the Xbone ($600 or so) and will not ship with a robust general OS but rather come with Valve's Linux SteamOS. Unlike the consoles, presumably Steam Machine manufacturers can't subsidize low console prices with game software sales.

GTA V. Fun game, but it feels like the characters' journeys (especially Franklin's) aren't over.

Playing Rome 2. I can see why it gets a lot of hate for the long waits between turns, but otherwise I'm loving it. It's a Total War game, so I expect a certain amount of AI jankiness.

Is that confirmed?

I agree. But it's the sort of thing folks bring up when saying that PC gamers have to navigate terrible incompatibility issues.

I cannot wait for the finale. I wanna know why Walt left Gray Matter!

There have been some high-profile isolated incidents with hardware compatibility recently, Ethan. Tomb Raider comes to mind. But there have been a similar number of hardware compatibility issues for multiplats on consoles, too, like Skyrim on PS3, apparently. If there were a Steambox under $100 that plugged into a TV and allowed me to play games streamed over the home network from my PC, I might buy it. Cheaper than getting DVR capabilities on both TVs.

Newer cards may have hardware allowing for faster/better compression of the video signal or syncing with the Shield. It could also be marketing.

Secret to making money without cheating:

Generally, you learn about whether someone is married or dating within a few times of meeting him or her. Maybe not your barista, but any work colleague or social acquaintance. And when you're telling a story about a character, generally details that reveal sexual orientation are revealed early on.