Trying to put a spin on games to make them more creative or innovative, or just to try and make them appealing to a wider audience doesn't always work, if at all. There may be some games that have good execution of a weird concept but those are pretty rare.

Here, SB Nation compares two weird basketball video games - NBA Jam and NBA Street - which try to offer some form of variety or weirdness to the ordinary mechanics of the sport but do it pretty well.

NBA Jam is a legendary franchise that defined multiple generations of basketball video games. NBA Street was a series with extremely low expectations that turned out to be pretty damn great.

Which one do you think is best?

(Image credit: SB Nation)

Over the last few years, Samsung has created smartphones with great specs. Throughout the years, the company has managed to find both good and not-so-good ideas and build upon these ideas, and because of this they are able to continually create high-quality Android phones which make a good competitor against the iPhones of Apple.

This year, Samsung goes big as it released the 6.4-inch and 6.7-inch versions of its Galaxy S10, the company’s flagship smartphone, in February, and the Galaxy Fold, a smartphone with a 6.3-inch foldable display, which they showed off in April. Finally, in August, Samsung has revealed the latest version of the Galaxy Note 10, the phone series that has been traditionally the largest of Samsung’s phones.

It also produced a plus-sized version of the Note for the first time. The Note 10+ has a display that’s only about half an inch smaller than the one on the Fold.

But is the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 worth buying? Head over to Quartz as they tell the good and the not-so-good things about the phone and be the one to judge.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: Samsung/ Quartz)

As if we need more of Facebook in our lives, the social media platform has just recently launched their own dating service expecting that the new product will help them regain the value they lost from last year as well as when millions of users left the platform this year.

Called Facebook Dating, it is a platform wherein users can meet with potential partners by employing an algorithm that matches your profile based on your interests, preferences, and other activities done on Facebook. Users would need to create a separate profile which they will use on the platform.

“Facebook Dating isn’t about swiping or having to wait for someone to like you to get a first chance at reaching out. If you are interested in someone, you can comment directly on their profile or tap on the Like button to let them know. If you aren’t interested, you can pass on them.”

(Image credit: Facebook via Jezebel)

It's been almost three years since the US elected its 45th president and as we inch forward to the next elections, several Democratic names have come up as possible presidential contenders to the GOP. However, one name at the moment stands above the rest, and that is Elizabeth Warren.

Over the summer, Trumpworld operatives, Republican Party oppo researchers, and GOP aides in Congress have all gleefully celebrated planting unflattering stories about Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris. But no one seems to have landed a lasting blow on Elizabeth Warren.

The earliest days of the Massachusetts senator’s presidential campaign provided ample fodder for Republicans. But Warren has recovered from that initial stumble, and steadily gained ground in the Democratic primary. And now Republicans are wondering why there is so little critical coverage of the senator and why the stories out there are making next to no dent.

Former VP Joe Biden may be ahead of the pack for now but trailing close behind are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. So far though, one of the hurdles that Warren needs to overcome is the expansion of her base and reaching out to a more diverse group of people. But if she can keep her momentum going and steadily gain more support from different sectors, then she has a really good chance of becoming the nominee.

-via Jezebel

(Image credit: Elizabeth Warren/Flickr)

Currently, there are 14.6 million Jews in the world and though their numbers are spread out in various countries, there are some countries which constitute a large percentage of their global population. One can venture a guess and say that Israel and the United States would be at the top but would you know where else in the world in which there is a large Jewish population?

Della Pergola defined a country’s “core Jewish population” as anyone who identified themselves as Jews; anyone without a religion who was identified as Jewish by a respondent in the same household; or anyone with Jewish parentage who does not identify with a particular religion. If one were to use the broader definition of Israel’s Law of Return - anyone with a Jewish grandparent - the number would swell to 23.5 million.

(Image credit: Cole Keister/Unsplash)

Michael Bradley was trying to get from Manchester to his vacation destination of Alicante, Spain. Alas, the pilot assigned to the flight was a no-show. So Bradley volunteered to fly the easyJet flight himself. This was something the airline would accept because Bradley is also a pilot for easyJet. The New York Post reports:

He said he was legally permitted to fly because he had the previous four days off and brought his license with him.

“I phoned up easyJet and said, ‘Hiya, I’m standing in the terminal doing nothing. I have got my license with me,'” Bradley told the outlet. “Thirty-eight seconds later they phoned me back and said, ‘Please, please, pretty please with a big cherry on top, can you fly the airplane to Alicante?'”

-via Instapundit | Photo: Chris Sampson

There are a lot of place names in the world that are considered rude, explicit, and even downright obscene, especially in a different language. These place names are collected in the Really Rude Map.  You can scan the entire world, or zoom in to bring up more place names. Be warned that your co-workers will consider this NSFW. It was difficult enough for me to find a section tame enough for a screenshot to post here. -via Boing Boing

This week at IFA 2019, Asus has revealed the ProArt Studio Book One, which boasts a ridiculous 24 GB graphics processing unit (GPU), making it the most graphically-powerful laptop ever.

That power come from a mobile version of Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 6000, the desktop versions of which were unveiled at SIGGRAPH last year. Built on the Turing architecture, the main gimmick of this GPU is real-time ray tracing, which is claimed to trace the path of light through virtual scenes and produce realistic reflection, refraction and scattering.

With 24 GB of this graphical grunt, that makes the ProArt StudioBook One the most powerful laptop around by quite a wide margin. The runner-up title also belongs to Nvidia, with laptops packing the 16 GB Quadro RTX 5000 which came out earlier this year.

If a 24 GB GPU seems like overkill for even the most hardcore of gamers, that’s because it is. The 8 GB RTX 2080 is plenty for consumer needs – instead, the Quadro RTX lineup, and the laptops it’s built into, are designed for business, engineering and scientific use. That includes crunching huge datasets, editing 8K video, and creating detailed 3D animations and environments.

Aside from the powerful GPU, the laptop also boasts other high-end specs. It would surely be expensive, however. But if you’re just someone who uses a laptop for writing documents, then a laptop with basic specs will do.

(Image Credit: Asus)

It's freakin' huge! 20-year old Jacob Pina of Westport, Massachusetts has a ridiculously long right thumb. He shows it off in Tik Tok videos, which Caters News compiled in the video above.

Even though he's never lost a thumb war, Pina doesn't let his Internet fame go to his head. Metro quotes him:

When people see my thumb, they freak out and measure it next to their own thumb, I feel great about it.’

‘It’s always great to be different and embrace your own essence.’

-via Geekologie

He’s filthy but he’s mine (again)!

🏆 pic.twitter.com/RXGuzTBGke

— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) July 11, 2019

Because many New Yorkers have accidentally dropped their beloved AirPods onto subway tracks this summer, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering the issuance of a PSA asking commuters to not take their AirPods on or off while entering or exiting the trains, according to the Wall Street Journal.

MTA maintenance supervisor Steven Dluginski says the number of lost AirPods first spiked in March after Apple released the AirPods 2, but there’s been a considerable uptick this past summer, presumably due to the heat and humidity on subway platforms that makes “the ears and hands of New Yorkers pretty sweaty.” It’s true that during the summer months, stepping onto a subway platform is a disgusting, sauna-like experience. In an investigation, Gothamist found that some platforms can get as hot as 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s definitely steamy enough for those tiny earbuds to slip out of sweaty ears.

Up to 25 MTA workers search the tracks thoroughly for lost items every weekend. Before, workers retrieved baby pacifiers and dentures. Now, they recover AirPods. The Wall Street Journal also states that “on one particular Thursday”, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority got 18 requests to retrieve lost items, and six of these requests are for AirPods (that’s one-third!)

“It’s job security, as far as we’re concerned,” Dluginski says.

MTA workers use an eight-foot pole with two rubber claws at the end to grab items, but retrieval can take a while. In July, one of commuter Ashley Mayer’s AirPods fell onto the tracks. She was told that it would take two hours to retrieve, and she had to be present for it. So she went on a DIY rescue mission and managed to retrieve her AirPod with some duct tape attached to the end of a broom. It may not have been the safest or most sanitary option, but it was certainly cheaper than paying $69 for a replacement AirPod.

Have you dropped your AirPods in a similar situation?

(Image Credit: Ashley Mayer/ Twitter)

Before humans tamed them, pugs saw humans as only one thing: a source of food. When the feeble facade of civilization eventually crumbles, they will resume the hunt, as They Can Talk warns us. Either way, the pugs will endure.

Christie Kirkpatrick felt overwhelmed with joy and relief after she had just witnessed the miracle of birth. Bringing life into the world is something special and she took a moment to take it all in. More than that, she actually did the procedure with the same doctor who delivered her into the world.

“I’m seeing the miracle that is life for the first time, and in C-section, it’s not a traditional delivery,” Kirkpatrick said of the Aug. 27 delivery. “You just sort of see this little life pulled out from an abdomen. So I’m seeing this miracle of life for the first time. Your jaw kind of drops.”

“I’m standing across from the man who brought me into this world, and I have this sort of overwhelming sense of gratitude just to be a medical professional,” Kirkpatrick said. “The things that we do in medicine, it’s a privilege to share these moments with patients. And the fact that I’m getting to do that in my home community with the physicians that I grew up around, it was overwhelming. I had to take a moment after the surgery.”

(Image credit: Sharon McCutcheon/Unsplash)

Ducks, Newburyport requires, shall we say, an extended attention span. This new novel by Lucy Ellmann is, from one point of view, rather short. It's mostly just one sentence. That sentence is a doozy, though. Parul Seghal reviews it for the New York Times:

“Ducks, Newburyport,” the new novel by Lucy Ellmann, recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, unspools as a 426,100-word sentence that stretches over 1,000 pages — occasionally interrupted by a more traditional story, albeit one from the point of view of a mountain lioness.

I doubt that it was Ellman's goal, but I'd like to see a writing contest aimed at creating the longest possible sentence that is still grammatically and stylistically correct.

-via Dave Barry | Photo: Patricia Wall/New York Times

Any book lover would know that going to a bookstore can be a struggle, especially when there are a ton of books that would pique one's interest and yet one doesn't have the means to buy them all. But not everyone who loves books actually loves reading them. That is, some love books only for the sake of owning them. This is what was called bibliomania.

“Bibliomania is the overwhelming compulsion to own books, not so much as to inform oneself as to possess them and feast one’s eyes on them.” The bibliomaniac was interested above all in editions, and bindings, either old or fine. These interests were, in essence, a disease of the mind, a futile, absurd, and ultimately self-destructive obsession.

(Image credit: Eli Francis/Unsplash)

Long-running game series Fire Emblem took the gaming world by storm just this summer, on its release of the  latest installment for the Nintendo Switch, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Set in the world of Fodlan, your character plays as a new professor teaching students of the Officer’s Academy in Garreg Mach Monastery. Taking the same concept of a turn-based strategy game from the previous games in the series, Three Houses also incorporates new mechanics and removes some classic concepts from previous titles. The game makes use of the Switch’s power to create massive and well-designed maps, as IGN details: 

Battles take full advantage of the relatively powerful Switch (as opposed to the 3DS) to create some impressive looking maps. With new battalions that you can equip to enhance and support your units, armies actually start to look like armies as the map zooms right into the fight to show the opposing forces slam into each other. 

Fans of the series may notice that the traditional “weapon triangle” of swords beat axes beat lances beat swords has been all but abandoned in Three Houses. Instead, there’s a bigger emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the right person — depending on their skill level and the stats of the weapon itself (swords still have the best overall accuracy, while axes unleash the most raw power, and lances are balanced in the middle).

Fire Emblem: Three Houses succeeds in its ambitious telling of a land at war helmed by captivating leaders, in which no side has all the answers. Its tense battles are made all the more harrowing thanks to new strategy elements, and the colorful cast of troops you send into the fray are incredibly charming. With a new take on training and bonding with your units, and the many activities and options available to sample, it’s absolutely begging to be played multiple times.

In addition to the old mechanic of fighting battles, Three Houses offers a new explorable fortress, alongside an immersive calendar-paced story that differs depending on the route you choose at the beginning of the game (which depends on which house your character decides to teach). The big differences in every available game route, along with a cast of complex and interesting characters, give the game a huge replay quality. Summer’s over, alright - but it’s not too late to give this game a try.

image credit: gameinformer.com