Author: Nelson Rosario

When news broke in June that a hacking group claimed to have stolen hundreds of megabytes of company data, the gaming community took notice almost immediately because Nintendo has spent decades protecting its secrets the way Mario guards a castle. The group, going by the name ShadowByt3$, claimed to have stolen about 859 megabytes of content related to Nintendo of America. They posted this claim on a cybercrime forum and included a two million dollar price tag for silence. When Nintendo responded, it sounded less like a company in a panic and more like one that had practiced this situation.…

In the last weeks of June, when the justices are still deliberating over their most important decisions of the term, a certain silence descends upon the marble steps of the Supreme Court building. That silence feels heavier than usual this year. Behind those doors is a decision that affects a question that most Americans never consider: does being born in the United States automatically grant citizenship? The answer has been a straightforward “yes” for over a century. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 following the Civil War, states that everyone born in the United States and subject to…

When a federal building’s purpose is being eliminated one memo at a time, a certain silence descends upon it. Although no one in Washington is referring to it as such, that is essentially what is happening to the Education Department this week. It is referred to as a partnership by officials. Opponents describe it as more akin to a slow-motion demolition, executed by a series of covert interagency agreements between offices rather than by Congress, which is the only body with the legal authority to close a cabinet agency. Two of the department’s most important roles were transferred on Tuesday.…

There’s something almost anticlimactic about the way this is unfolding. A multi-year legal fight, thousands of pages of filings, a decade of borrowers wondering whether anyone in Washington was actually paying attention to their claims, and in the end it all comes down to an email. Not a press conference. Not a check in the mail. Just a plain message from noreply@studentaid.gov, sitting in an inbox between a grocery coupon and a calendar reminder. That’s what happened this week to roughly 30,000, maybe closer to 36,000, federal student loan borrowers. The notices are the final wave of relief tied to…

It doesn’t seem like Linda Vista Road would be the site of a horrible incident. It’s sloping, narrow, and lined with the kind of student housing that fills up in August and vacates in May. However, that section of road close to Goshen Street was the scene of an accident early on Wednesday morning at around 1:30, leaving a portion of the University of San Diego community in a state of stunned, silent grief. A San Diego police officer felt an impact while traveling downhill and west in a marked patrol car. He pivoted the vehicle. A man in his…

After a team’s season concludes, a certain silence descends upon Charles Schwab Field, and on Wednesday night, it belonged to Georgia. 24,446 spectators watched the Bulldogs leave the field for the final time this season as the scoreboard showed 11-4 in Oklahoma’s favor. Unlike some elimination games, it wasn’t a blowout. Five home runs over the course of nine innings, each eroding Georgia’s remaining hope into the final frames, was something slower and more methodical. Two of them were struck by Jason Walk. Dasan Harris also felt that the game had changed from “still possible” to “essentially over” when he…

OMAHA, Nebraska — When a lead feels safe and then gradually stops feeling that way, a ballpark makes a specific sound. On Wednesday night at Charles Schwab Field, North Carolina’s bats created that exact feeling. The Tar Heels had built up a 12-1 lead against West Virginia, but during the seventh and eighth innings, they watched it erode, run by run, until the unc baseball score was 12-7 and nobody in the stadium was completely at ease. In the end, North Carolina prevailed. For the first time since 2007, the Tar Heels will play in the College World Series finals.…

Even decades later, Lawrence Taylor still carries a certain irony with him around Chapel Hill that has nothing to do with Super Bowl rings or sacks. North Carolina has always been a basketball-focused state. You can sense it when you stroll through the Dean Dome on a Saturday afternoon—the banners, the chants, the idea that football is something the university tolerates rather than worships. Nevertheless, the most disruptive defensive player the NFL has ever seen quietly came together on a football field where no one outside of Williamsburg, Virginia, was paying close attention. It wasn’t until he was fifteen that…

Located in Sunbury, Ohio, a sleepy town 25 minutes north of Columbus, Big Walnut High School is the kind of place where Friday night lights still have significance. It’s a strange setting for a controversy that has revealed one of college football’s least talked-about recruiting strategies in less than a week. The five-star wide receiver and Ohio State commit Jamier Brown had no intention of starting anything. He was simply responding to an interview circuit question at the OT7 Finals, where seventeen-year-olds are asked what the most bizarre thing a school has offered them. “A couple schools have offered a…

This story’s plot—a first-grade class, a muddy field outside of Oslo, and a boy named Henrik who happened to look down at the wrong—or perhaps the right—moment—is almost too tidy. Henrik Refsnes Mørtvedt saw something protruding from the ground while Fredheim School students were on a spring outing in the Gran municipality of Norway, close to Brandbu, in late April. It didn’t appear to be a rock. Nor did it appear to be a root. It turned out that he had discovered a sword. It was an actual Viking-era blade that had been lying in that ground for about 1,300…