Tech

Marques Brownlee (MKBHD – YouTube) Gives His First Thoughts on the New Nexus Phones

Marques Brownlee has emerged as one of the best commentators on tech and excels at talking about phones, especially.  In this video, he is discussing the two phones announced by Google today: the Nexus 6P, and the Nexus 5X.  I really love what Google is doing with these phones, and I think that they are improving with this lineup every year.  Small things like putting the fingerprint sensor in the back of the phone where our finger rests most of the time anyway are wacky as hell, but also really cool.  Android as a mobile operating system is fantastic, and the fact that the Nexus devices get updates right away [this is the single biggest issue for me on the Android platform] makes this a compelling product, especially at that price.  I hope to get my hands on these to play with!

Sports

Ben Rosales (Silver Screen and Roll) Breaks Down the Lakers Roster

It’s important throughout this process to remember that this is still a chiefly developmental season for the Lakers. While the team can’t actively tank to keep their pick — even having the worst overall record in the league, something they couldn’t accomplish the previous two years with rosters worse than the one currently assembled, would only give them a 64.3 percent chance of keeping their pick — neither is the team remotely close enough to making the playoffs such that they could justify sacrificing valuable playing time for their now well-defined young core in favor of veterans.

Ben Rosales is my consistent go-to for talent evaluation especially when it comes to the younger players.  I don’t follow college basketball, which makes the work that Ben does especially around draft time incredibly valuable to me.  In this piece, he does a great job of breaking down the roster to determine which players should theoretically make the cut.  Mitch Kupchak and co. have done a really good job adding young depth to the team and I’m excited to see how camp plays out.

Podcast

Doug Loves Movies: Jon Hamm, Kumail Nanjiani and Max Landis Guest [Posted September 23rd; Length: 93 minutes]

Doug Benson hosts a great podcast in which he and his comedian and/or actor friends play movie-based games. Doug is the perfect host to set the table and allow the guests to have fun while also keeping the show chugging along at a great pace comedically. You don’t have to really be a movie buff to enjoy this podcast, Kumail and Jon Hamm [Yes, THAT Jon Hamm] absolutely kill and were hilarious throughout. Recommend this episode, and this podcast as a whole, to anybody with even the slightest of interest in movies.