Dear Tildesterites: my trusty PC has led a dutiful life of eleven years and, along with my keyboard, has finally met its earthly doom (total organ failure). I wish it luck across the ultraviolet lithographic bridge, at the other side of which we'll someday reunite to play Skyrim together again.

In the meantime, I would like another PC on which to play various modern AAA games except for The Elder Scrolls VI. I'd intended to replace my machine ~4 years ago when it was in fairer health, but other efforts took priority. Since then, the product market has inflated in price and all the SKUs have changed, so I'm back to being mostly clueless about the state of the industry.

I put together a parts list from some basic research and would like a gut check. I'm coming from an i5-4460, GTX 970, and 16 GB RAM at 1080p 144hz, which may as well be neolithic. I only really need this PC to play video games smoothly and to do standard workstation tasks (nothing remarkable).

PCPartPicker Part List

Rationale and notes:

• 60hz to 144hz was the greatest upgrade I ever made and now it seems like 180hz or 240hz is the new 144hz. I've also wanted to move to 1440p for years. I reviewed the Gamers Nexus GPU benchmarks and it seems like 120fps+ is broadly possible at this resolution.
• Nvidia's cards seem unreasonably priced. A friend of mine offered me his RTX 3070 for free, which I would be happy to accept as a stand-in to keep the initial cost down, and in a year I might come back to get a newer card like the 9070 XT or whatever replaces it?
• I'd like an M.2 to keep cable management to a minimum.
• I will not overclock or undervolt the CPU. I'd just like it to run.
• I'd love for the thing to be quiet.

My questions are:

1. Does the build feel balanced? Are there any egregious oversights?
2. How much RAM is prudent, at what speed/latency? Do we expect prices to drop anytime soon?
3. M.2 PCIe 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0 x4? Does this matter for games? Is a dedicated OS drive still best practice?
4. IPS or OLED? WOLED or QD-OLED? Is Freesync Premium sufficient? (@AugustusFerdinand we spoke about this some time ago; has your opinion changed?)

I thank you in advance for your insights. I'm not going to buy this immediately (this summer at the earliest), but I'd like to know how close to reasonable I'm being.

I have apparently hit the limit with how many gmail addresses I can open associated with my phone number.

and honestly, I hate that I have to rely on google for the various email addresses I need.

which makes me wonder, I own a domain. can I use that to instead setup various email addresses that i can use for different purposes, just as sending or receiving and when it comes to receiving, setup some inboxes so it forward to my personal email + a friend's email?

i don't really know the best options for this or even where to start. I originally bought my domain on namecheap but I migrated it over to cloudflare so I could use it for setting up cloudflare argo tunnels.

By orphans I’m including everyone who can’t spend Christmas with their family, whatever the reason. Maybe they live on another continent, maybe they’re insufferable, maybe you don’t know them, maybe all of the above and you don’t have kids, whatever. The end result is: you don’t have a family to spend Christmas with.

I’m in this situation. And I don’t know anyone well enough (newish city and country) to crash someone else’s family Christmas.

Wondering how people in that situation deal with it so that maybe I can find something that’d work for me to tide me over this challenging part of the year.

Additional context: SO is really into it, feels bad when we treat it as just another day, so I feel the pressure to figure something out.

I’m reading every answer you share but not necessarily answer unless I have a follow up question or something meaningful to add.

I played a game of the Free Stars demo with my son recently, and when your ship is close to exploding, an alert very similar to the Star Trek red alert sounds starts playing.

My son instantly said "it sounds like McDonalds", and I was a little shocked because the first place I heard that sound was on TV when a captain called for Red Alert. But for him, it's completely different: you hear the same sound used as an alarm behind the counter at McDonalds, and that's his association.

Just a short anecdote, I'm sad that McDonalds has co-opted that sound. I do wonder though, is that only in McDonalds in Australia, or is it in places like the US too?

I'm feeling deeply emotional today. There's a lot that's happened over the last few months - including a fair bit that I won't bring up here, outside of the relationship woes. Sorry if this rambles a lot, but I'll try and keep it organized.

For those that need background:
Struggling with my relationship
So it turns out I've been cheated on.

It's been nearly 4 months. I adjusted well to being single again. Went out and restarted hobbies I used to enjoy, took myself out on dates, and generally tried to feel like myself again. Two months after my last post, I had an opportunity to begin seeing someone new. I'm being cautious and careful and the new person is very calm, communicative, and understanding. I recognize it may be early to be seeing someone and this line of thought will be relevant later.

Things were... Copacetic? With my ex. I wasn't terribly happy but was able to move my thoughts along. I got mad at them, said angry things that didn't help, reconciled somewhat and tried to move on. We negotiated financial details a bit, and settled into summer plans. Their new partner was still around a lot, and still refused to ever even talk to me. How dare they, thought I, act like I wasn't even around? At least have the courage to say something, thought I. It irked me. I tried to find out more about this person, search for them online for anything, because they were now around my child more and more and I knew nothing. My searches were in vain, I found not a trace. They were a ghost.

I still kept contact with my ex's best friend - though that's a loose term now. They were equally exasperated and upset about the situation. Their relationship was breaking down because the new partner was - shall we say - incompatible with the best friend. Late in June, I thought to ask a question. One which I had an assumed answer for, but didn't actually know.

"Are they still married?"

The best friend answered. "Yes. It's something they don't like to talk about."

oof.

Here is where some of you will take issue with me, maybe.

That piece of the puzzle was the last thing I needed to find the new partner. I can be very determined when I set my mind to something. I discovered who they were. Their address. Their family. Their partner on Facebook. And I informed them about what was going on. I won't deny it felt good to burst their bubble of secrecy, but I also wanted this partner (let's call them J) to not be blindsided as I was. I wanted to give them the power to make their own choices and decisions with knowledge, not secrecy.

They were completely unaware of what was going on. Long story short, they had been in couples therapy for years. Were high school sweethearts. Together 25+ years. J was livid, of course. They had a family together, with several children (mostly older) involved. My ex found out what happened and blew up at me, claiming that I made a terrible choice and that what I did was wrong, and how could I go "talk to the other side"? They threatened to do what my parents had done. To fight, squabble and argue endlessly. To restrict access to the former stepkids. To limit everything I could do.

Everyone else seeing that situation insists I did the right thing - including J, who was grateful towards me. The house of cards my ex and their new partner had built was now collapsing. Things developed quickly from there. My ex turned everything into my fault. I was the villain in this story of theirs. In speaking with J recently, since after our initial conversation I gave them weeks of space to sort things out, I've learned some things about how my ex has been framing things.

The story New Partner was told was that I'm an alcoholic who abused my ex. My ex claimed that when they were drunk one night I raped them, which led to the pregnancy of our child. My ex said that I tried to force an abortion. That I didn't want our child. There's more details - such as describing the constant debt cycles as being caused by my student loans (nevermind that I haven't had student loans since before we got together) in order to explain those details away and make it all my fault. The more I learned, the more I realized what my partner was describing. It was word for word something that had happened with a prior ex of theirs. A story they'd told many others in their life. The dots are so simple to connect that they might as well be numbered.

Now I am at a juncture. I have had many other things come up this summer which leave me feeling overwhelmed. Professionally and personally. I am seeking legal counsel because claims of rape can and will impact my career and personal life. I am looking for a therapist but the process is excruciating.

In the meantime, I'm doing the best I can to put on a brave face and be there for my child, even when they show up with a shirt saying "X parent is cooler than Y parent".

But today I cried. I cried a lot. I hid it from my child because I didn't want to answer about why I was crying. I sobbed into my pillow until they came asking for pancakes and coca cola and forgive me but I provided.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Update us on your progress so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

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• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

I've been craving a lot of popcorn recently after discovering hulless varieties that don't get super stuck in your teeth. Historically, my preferred method was the microwave because of simplicity, but our current microwave simply fails to pop popcorn. I've switched to stove-top with a standard pot and a lid wrapped in a dishcloth to limit moisture. Combined with butter-flavored coconut oil and Gold Medal Flavacol, I've been making some excellent popcorn.

Come to today, I've ordered an air popper (Presto PopLite) because I want the quickest and easiest method with the least clean-up, but I'm not sure how to evenly distribute liquid toppings nor how to make kettlecorn with popped popcorn. I'd be interested in a whirlypop if they were dishwasher safe. Tramontina's new Gold Pop looks reasonable, but I couldn't find any thorough reviews since it's fairly new.

Anyhow, what's your history with popcorn? How do you make it? What toppings do you like?

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

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