Noah Smith

MSNBC HIGHLIGHTS

Tech entrepreneur Mark Nadal is a dreamer who longs for a world with less greed and more community. He believes the Internet will make this possible — just not the Internet we have now.

Would you rather meet LeBron James or Tfue?

The question was posed in December to 9-year-old Guy Dadon. He was sitting with his mother after playing basketball in Los Angeles — just a few miles from Staples Center where James, the world’s most famous basketball player, leads the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most storied NBA franchises.

“LeBr …” the mother began.

“Tfue!” the son interjected with a big smile.

The mother’s unfinished answer gave way to a look of confusion.

“Tfue?” she asked.

G...

BURBANK, Calif. —The Overwatch League christened its inaugural season this month in largely the same ways as any professional sports league’s opening day. The very best players in the world donned uniforms representing their teams. Fans packed an arena, purchasing licensed merchandise in addition to concessions. And announcers broadcast the action for hundreds of thousands more watching at home.

The setting was consistent with a big league pro football, basketball, baseball, soccer or hockey ...

Noah Smith, a journalist who writes for the Washington Post and the UK's Guardian, discusses the suspected chemical attack in Douma, Syria and other summit developments.

Interview on Fortnite World Cup

LEMOORE, Calif. — The wave shouldn’t be here, surrounded by boundless fields of nuts, vegetables and cotton. It’s an exotic crest of water six feet high, one that would be at home in Bali or the east coast of Australia. But not here, well over 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean.

The idea of belonging, of context, has always been central to those who ride the best waves. Surfing was born centuries ago in the South Pacific and Hawaiian islands, where it is called he’e nalu, then rebranded startin...

Noah Smith, Washington Post Sports Contributor and friend of Checkpoint XP, returns a third time on the show, and shares his gaming background and how esports fell into his lap. Noah grew up with the original Nintendo games, such as Duck Hunt and Track and Field. His... For the final day of our Grand Studio Opening we talk with Noah Smith about his background and Jon Vokal, Overwatch League player for Northwood University and partner with the Renegades. We also talk about the 2020 election. W...

February 26
Sam Haberern, 20, was playing Call of Duty on Xbox at his family’s house in Connecticut, and he was on a roll. After several dozen high-scoring rounds, other gamers started to take notice. He began receiving invites from players asking him to play with them. He accepted one and joined in the group’s online conversation through his headset.
“It was great,” said Haberern in an interview with The Washington Post. “I was talking [trash], they were talking [trash],” he said, adding tha...

The Internet of 2010 contained many things, and free of charge. It had the full works of Shakespeare. It had robust English translations of classical Greek philosophy. It had just about every Miley Cyrus lyric.

But when Joshua Foer, author of “Moonwalking With Einstein” and creator of the travel website Atlas Obscura, sat down one day to find a modern, complete English translation online of the Talmud, or Jewish Oral Law, he came up mostly empty, save for some pirated PDFs and a host of anti-...

The two of them made for an unlikely duo, the celebrity performer and the kid from Florida who dreamed of one day becoming a pro competitive gamer. And yet they connected in a virtual world, teaming up to play Call of Duty and sharing their lives — their joys, their difficulties — over a headset while battling side-by-side.
It was a dynamic that brought them closer together, despite their distinctly different social strata. And it was in this setting that Eric Pedro Cruz, a relatively anonymo...

Washington Post Interview on esports and security

כבר יותר מעשרים שנה שאילן אטיאס, יהודי דתי מלוס אנג'לס, בן להורים ישראלים, מתפקד כסולן של "הוויילרז", הלהקה המיתולוגית של בוב מארלי, ומחזק את החיבור בין היהדות לדת הראסטפארית. בראיון הוא מספר על איך זה מרגיש לעמוד במקומו של הגיבור הפרטי שלו, כיצד התקבל במדינות ערב ומדוע נחנק בהופעה הראשונה בארץ
הוא מעולם לא שר מול 4,000 איש לפני כן. למעשה, הבחור היהודי הדתי מלוס אנג'לס מעולם לא שר מול קהל בכלל. הוא אפילו לא השתייך לשום להקה עד לאותו רגע. "אתה בטוח שאתה מוכן?" שאל הגיטריסט של "הוויילרז", הלהקה...

Esports

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Black, electric-powered scooters suddenly began appearing on the downtown streets, suburban sidewalks and beachside a few months ago in this urban coastal city.
The dockless shared scooters took Santa Monica by surprise, including the mayor, who says he received a LinkedIn message from Bird chief executive Travis VanderZanden, offering to introduce him to the company’s “exciting new mobility strategy for Santa Monica” — after they landed in town.
“If you’re talking abou...