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There are purchases you need to make and the ones that you just want because they'd be nice to have. To identify the latter more clearly, ask yourself if the reason for a purchase goes beyond "Wouldn't it be nice?"

There's no limit to the things that companies can and will sell you to make your life a little easier. A device that cuts vegetables in half the time, a chemical that makes rain roll off your windows easier, a car charger that's also a flux capacitor. Some of these are more useful than others, but they all fall into the category of "Wouldn't it be nice to have?" for most people. As personal finance blog Frugaling explains:

"You know what would be nice" is the reason Ikea, Target, and other big-box retailers exist. They perfected the art of the ensemble. It wasn't enough to get/have a couch; now, you needed the accoutrements. They suggest "what would be nice" and show you the pairing. Their catalogs and stores are expertly laid out to exemplify an orgiastic group of accessories.

A small rug could complement the dining room. That watch would make this outfit POP. This lamp shade would make my room cozier. This shirt would be great for a night out.

"You know what would be nice" is the dream hypothetical that only lives in marketers' models. Realizing this is one of the most painful lessons in consumerism. No matter how many "nice" things I own, the question will continue to putz around my little mind — craving me to cave and spend.

This isn't to say that all purchases that aren't basic needs are frivolous. That windshield treatment for rain would do wonders for someone in Seattle. And maybe you bake enough to warrant an industrial grade mixer. But if the best reason you can come up with for a purchase is "Wouldn't it be nice?" then chances are there are better things to spend your money on.

You Know What Would Be Nice? | Frugaling via Rockstar Finance

Photo by Kirsty Hall.

After two and a half years of development, Will.i.am finally unveiled the smart "cuff" he has been working on with his consumer electronics company, i.am+. The Puls is a wearable wristband that tells time, but "it's not a watch," the Black Eyed Peas singer said repeatedly on stage at Dreamforce in San Francisco. The key difference is that the Puls makes phone calls and accesses online services using a 3G radio. Puls will launch on carriers AT&T in the United States and O2 in the United Kingdom.

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The company expanded the "ex parte temporary restraining order" so it could stage one-sided, sealed proceedings to take away rival businesses' domains, sometimes knocking thousands of legit servers offline. Read the rest

Variety: Actress Elizabeth Pena, who appeared in “Modern Family” and “La Bamba,” died Oct. 14 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to her nephew, Latino Review writer Mario-Francisco Robles. She was 55.

Several years ago, someone came up with a potent worst-case scenario for an internet without net neutrality: it would look like cable TV. With the option to slow down or block individual sites and programs, ISPs would give you the internet equivalent of basic cable, then charge extra for "News" and "Hollywood" bundles with Digg and YouTube instead of CNN and Showtime. There’s no subtlety, but it gets the point across. So what happens when, after almost a year with no net neutrality rules, a company whose name is synonymous with premium cable jumps online?

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The blood cells of cancer patients, reprogrammed by doctors to attack their leukemia and re-infused back into the patients’ veins, led to complete remissions in 27 of 30 people. That’s especially exciting because those patients had failed all conventional treatments.

Today’s report, in the New England Journal of Medicine, is an extension of data presented last year at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting. Not all of the remissions lasted, the report showed. Nineteen patients in the study remain in remission 2 to 24 months later, and 15 of them didn’t need any additional treatment. Seven patients relapsed between 6 months and 9 months after their infusion; those included three people whose cancers spread beyond the blood...

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Wonderful mugs for hot beverage and daily inspiration by illustrator and funny lady Emily McDowell. Read the rest

In 2014, it’s easy to think of Captain America as a bit of a tough sell. He’s a figure of an earlier time, and bringing him into the modern age has always meant a dance between sly retcons and outright hokeyness. He’s also a pain in the ass, sticking up for abstract ideas of justice and liberty when a lot of other heroes are content to just blow up the bad guy and move on. And then there’s that name: When the first Cap movie debuted in South Korea, it bore the unassuming title The First Avenger. After 60 years of military bases, having "America" in your hero's name had become a marketing liability.

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DC Comics (and parent Warner Bros.) would like you to know that it, too, is 100 percent serious about creating an expansive, interconnected superhero film series. Today, the company mapped out eight films due out between now and 2019. While some of this has been known, the full scope and scheduling is a clear sign of DC wanting to take Marvel's Cinematic Universe head on.

• 2016: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which will introduce Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman) and Suicide Squad (aka Task Force X), which will be DC's closest film equivalent to Guardians of the Galaxy
• 2017: Wonder Woman and Justice League Part One (directed by Zack Snyder)
• 2018: The Flash (starring Ezra Miller from Perks of Being a...

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It's Nexus day. The Nexus 6 and 9 are real, and we have the details. Nexus Player is Google's new Android TV box. Lollipop is the new version of Android. With so much stuff to take in all at once, we figured it a good idea to collect all the videos from today and post them in one, easy-to-find place. This post is that place. Have fun.

 

[ALL NEXUS ALL THE TIME] Here Are All The Nexus-Related Videos From Today [Updated] was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Up until Obama's "most transparent administration", and throughout the entire history of the USA, national security leakers had received a total of 24 months of jail time. There are many more cases pending. Read the rest

The long-awaited (and long-rumored) Nexus 6, the 6-inch (technically 5.96) monster phablet, is finally, officially here. The Nexus 6, like its predecessors before it, will be the first device in the world to ship with Android's new operating system, Lollipop. It's the purest vision of what an Android phone should be. Apparently Android phones should be huge.

As all those rumors suggested, the Nexus 6 is basically a super-sized and super-spec'd Moto X, which Motorola released this the summer. It comes with a simply massive 5.96-inch 2K screen, a speedy Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM, and 32GB of onboard storage (a 64GB version is also available). The device weighs in at about 6.49 ounces with a 10mm thickness, making it one of the thickest phablets you can buy. That bulk could be due in part to Google continuing the awesome tradition of wireless Qi charging in its devices. The Nexus 6 is powered by a 3,220 mAh battery, supported by Motorola's Turbo Charger ability to get 6 hours of battery life after only 15 minutes of charging.

Besides its Kaiju-esque size, the Nexus 6 retains many elements of the Moto X's design. Google keeps the same dual speaker set up, aluminum chassis and the ring flash on the back. The camera itself is a 13-megapixel sensor (2 megapixel on the front), also like the Moto X, but with optical image stabilization for better low-light images and HDR+. Samsung's new Galaxy Note 4 and Apple's own phablet, the iPhone 6 Plus, also came with OIS, so it seems like a big phone requirement at this point.

As for Lollipop, it will be available stock on the new Nexus 6 and HTC's Nexus 9 tablet, which was also revealed today along with the Nexus Player, a collaboration with ASUS that "is a streaming media player for movies, music and videos," according to Google. Lollipop will arrive for Nexus 5, 7, and 10 and Google Play edition devices within a few weeks.

Google's decision to team up with Motorola was motivated, in part, by their actual breakup. When Google sold off Motorola to Lenovo earlier this year, the split allowed Google to turn around and work with Motorola on new devices and completely avoid first-party favoritism among manufacturers.

It's clear from the Nexus website that Google believes the Nexus 5 to be an integral part of the family as a low-cost, small-sized (in comparison) option for customers not ready to accept the phablet way of things. However, Asus' Nexus 7 tablet appears to be facing extinction as every version of the device is out of stock on the Google Play Store and isn't part of the official Nexus lineup. After all, do you really need a 7-inch tablet when you have a 6-inch phone?

Motorola says the device will come in two colors (pictured above) called Midnight Blue and Cloud White. The Nexus 6 has an Americas-specific SKUs, meaning any device should work across any carrier. Pre-orders will be available on October 29th for $650 ($700 for 64GB) through the Google Play Store and shipping will begin in November. Unlocked versions will be available in the Play Store and carrier versions from AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon. [Google Official Blog]

Chromecast who? The real Android TV is here. This is the Nexus Player, a four-inch, half-pound hockey puck of a set-top box designed to watch all your movies AND play your Android games. It'll cost $99 on October 17th.

Powered by a quad-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom processor with PowerVR Series 6 graphics, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, the Asus-built box is the first device with Google's new Android TV operating system on board. Which, if you haven't been paying attention, is designed to be everything Google TV was not.

Where Google TV was a confusing power-user experience driven by the web, with a tiny siloed collection of apps, few games, and where you needed a keyboard to get very far, Android TV channels the full power of Android into a super simple set-top-box interface more like Amazon's Fire TV. (It even uses an identical game controller — sold seperately for $40.) You can get your apps from Google Play, and biggies like Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube (of course) and Vevo are already confirmed. The box also comes with $20 in Google Play credit.

Android TV sports a single flat interface you can scroll up, down, left or right to navigate through all your applications with a dead-simple remote control with just four buttons and a d-pad, though you can also just say what you want — just press the voice search button up top and speak into a mic embedded in the remote.

If Google plays its cards right, though, you won't need to do much scrolling or voice searching: Android TV will supposedly automatically suggest things to watch based on the data Google collects from you across all its services, and present those recommendations front and center as soon as you turn the box on.

Oh, and the Nexus Player also doubles as a Chromecast, meaning you can start or resume content from any PC, smartphone, or tablet (no matter the operating system) by pressing a single button to beam instructions to the set-top. Start watching on your phone, pick up on your TV. Go get a snack and take your show with you. Though unlike the Chromecast, this sucker has faster, more reliable dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

We can't wait to try out the Nexus Player. Here's looking forward to telling you how it stacks up to the competition, real soon. [Nexus Player]

 iBeacon, the Bluetooth Low Energy technology that is being used by businesses to push offers and other messages to customers’ smartphones when they are in the physical vicinity of a small pinging device, is starting to see some decent traction. Businesses like Shopkick (recently acquired by SK planet for $200 million) have now rolled out some 7,500 of the devices across its retail… Read More

 Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm has agreed to acquire Cambridge, U.K.-based CSR for £1.56 billion. The latter rejected an earlier offer from Microchip Technology, back in August, but the FT notes that Microchip now has until 5pm today U.K. time to put in an increased offer to challenge Qualcomm’s all-cash bid. Read More

Ultimate 75th is a slick exploration of Marvel Comics' prodigious stable of works. It's broken up into years, beginning with the company's inception in 1939. Clicking on a date will reveal even more data, notably the number of super heroes introduced or already existing during that time span, and the total series being produced or already created. From there, it's possible to then go through individual comic issues and peruse information like how many heroes made an appearance within its pages.

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Security professionals Luke Janke and Jay Davis recently showed off a $150 safe cracker that they built from a custom Arduino, 3D-printed components, and salvaged electronics like a step motor formerly utilized in stage lighting. According to The Register, the device can be affixed on top of a combination lock and then used to stage "brute force" attacks. This techniques involves autodialing as many different combinations as possible until the lock is breached.

It reportedly takes less than four days for the duo's invention to break through a lock, a marked improvement over its initial time of 14 days. If the contraption is pre-loaded with default combinations, however, it will be able to accomplish the same job in minutes. "A lot of...

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 Transcense is a new app that accurately translates conversations in real time so the deaf and hard of hearing can participate in meetings, presentations and conversations. Founders Thibault Duchemin, Pieter Doevendans and Skinner Cheng, all deaf themselves, say one-on-one conversations are easy. Either they are speaking with someone who can sign or they can just read lips. However,… Read More

 One of the more interesting wearables lining up to challenge the Apple Watch next year is Blocks, a modular smartwatch conceived by a couple of students from Imperial College in the U.K. — in turn inspired by the Phonebloks/Google Project Ara modular smartphone. Read More

None more black.

Artist Concetta Antico is a tetrachromat, meaning a genetic mutation in her eyes enables her to see approximately 100 times more colors than an average person. Read the rest