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The Sub-$25 Digital Games That Belong On Every Switch

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One of the best reasons to get the Nintendo Switch is its huge and ever-growing library of indie titles.

This week’s Nintendo’s Indie World Showcase confirmed it’ll get even bigger. And while you’ll need to wait for some of the more interesting ones like Risk of Rain 2 and Ori And The Blind Forest, there are a ton great titles already available, and a whole bunch of them can be picked up for under $25.

Below is a list of The Inventory team’s favorites. But of course, feel free to chime in your recommendations in the comment section.

Note: We’re including Amazon and eShop links, as available, but remember that when you buy through Amazon, you’ll always get credit for the full price of your game in your Gold Coins balance, even if it’s on sale. The eShop will only credit you for the price you actually paid.

To be frank, I wrote pitched this entire post just because I wanted to write about this game.

I love this Stardew Valley.

It’s a simple and relaxing way to spend time between Overwatch Role Queue waits and reading the news. It’s basically all of the JRPG side games that I loved without the over-the-top, world-ending stakes. -Tercius

If you like Earthbound, or hilarious dialogue, or incredible music, or having your heart broken…you’ll like this game. It’s also good for multiple playthroughs, because you can essentially play it as a benevolent pacifist, a genocidal warmonger, or anything in between, and your choices have dramatic consequences on the game. – Shep 

From Kotaku’s review:

I don’t normally shed tears when a video game ends. I hardly ever pause in the middle of a playthrough to appreciate a clever game mechanic. I do stop to listen to game music, but it’s rare I spend minutes trying to get gameplay and soundtrack to sync in order to recreate a perfect moment. All of these things happened during the four hours I spent completing Gris. – Mike Fahey, Kotaku

Crypt of the NecroDancer (eShop)

Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer (Amazon | eShop)

I haven’t yet played the Zelda-themed Cadence of Hyrule version, but the original Crypt of the NecroDancer is unlike anything I’ve ever played: a perfect blend of Dance Dance Revolution and top-down dungeon crawlers of yore.

The second outing from the folks who brought us FTL, Into the Breach is a shockingly deep turn-by-turn strategy game considering each game takes place on an 8×8 grid, and only lasts for a few rounds. By telegraphing what the enemies will do on their next turn, you’re in complete control of the outcome of the game, for better or worse – Shep

Lumines Remastered (Amazon | eShop)

Luimines timeless, in the same way Tetris or Sudoku can be enjoyed by anyone at any point in time. I loved this game back when first experienced it on my PSP and it’s still one of my favorite puzzle games. With a solid soundtrack and addictive gameplay, it’s still a must-own a decade later. -Tercius

Equal parts stressful and fun, Overcooked! 2 is a window into the soul of (and what it’d be like to work with) your friends. It’s a game that’s best played inebriated with three of your closest friends (plus one or two, just in case someone rage quits IRL.) -Tercius

Enter the Gungeon (Amazon | eShop)

Enter the Gungeon is one of those games I’m admittedly terrible at, but I still play just because it’s so much fun. With so many ridiculous guns to try out and the ability to play with a friend, it’s one that deserves to be on your Switch.-Tercius

This game was somehow made by two people, but you could have convinced me it was a first party Nintendo game. It’s a hard game, and it’s a long game, but the gorgeous visuals, incredible score, and tight controls mean it never feels like a chore to play. Hollow Knight and Breath of the Wild are 1a and 1b on my ranking of the best Switch games you can buy, and the former is only $15.

Rocket League is one of the best online multiplayer team games for casual players and friends. It also happens to be one of the most popular among competitive players.

The concept of soccer with cars is simple to grasp, yet mastering Rocket League’s mechanics, physics, and ever-changing meta requires discipline and creativity. Matches take less than 10 minutes making it easy to fit in a quick bout or to stack several into a marathon session. -Corey

Cuphead is impossibly frustrating and fun to play. The artwork, cutscenes, lovable characters, and story line instill an insatiable desire to play and fail countless times at multiple points throughout the game. -Corey

Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (Amazon | eShop)

Shovel Knight is everything that adult me wants in a platformer reminiscent to what adolescent me used to play. It specifically reminds me of some of my favorite times playing Mega Man titles.

It’s easily picked up, fun to play, packed with secret areas, and is challenging to a degree right before impossibly frustrating. -Corey

Dead Cells is a little bit Hollow Knight, a little bit Into the Gungeon, and while it doesn’t quite hit the highs of either of those games, it’s a challenging, unique roguelike that rewards lots of different types of play. – Shep

via Gizmodo
The Sub-$25 Digital Games That Belong On Every Switch

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THE Ohio State University Applies For THE Stupidest Trademark In THE World

We’ve talked ongoing about how ridiculous and aggressive many universities are becoming on trademark matters. Now colleges and universities do many, many annoying things, but their tendency towards trademark bullying certainly ranks up there near the top of the list. Not as high, of course, as Ohio State’s neverending insistence that everyone call it "THE Ohio State University." The school likes to point out that the "the" (sigh) is actually part of the school’s legal name, when the reality is that the school is simply being haughty and pedantic.

Well, now these two worlds are colliding in what might just be the dumbest trademark application I’ve ever seen. You’ll never guess what single word OSU wants to trademark.

Application No. 88571984, filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, was discovered and publicized Tuesday by Josh Gerben, a prominent trademark lawyer in Washington. The application seeks a trademark on the single word "THE" for use on T-shirts and baseball caps and hats.  

For years, the university’s demand that it be called "THE Ohio State University" has rankled sports fans and journalists, who’ve called it "pompous and stupid," "ridiculous" and "arrogant."

Partisans, including the university, point out that "the" is part of its name under state law. And Chris Davey, a spokesman for the university, told The Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday that it’s important to "vigorously protect the university’s brand and trademarks."

This, simply, is absurd. Trademark law is written in such a way to be wide open for abuse, but even this is a bridge further than the law will allow. Trademarks require original identifiers that indicate the source of a good or service and the bar for approval by the Trademark Office goes up the shorter and less original the identifier is. The idea that someone might apply for a trademark on the single most commonly used determiner in the English language is the sort of thing reserved for jokes in our comments section. But THE Ohio State University went ahead and did it anyway.

Other schools took notice, of course, and some of them are having fun at OSU’s expense.

Michigan getting a trademark on the word "of" makes every bit as sense as OSU’s application. Fortunately, despite all of the madness we see from the USPTO on a frequent basis, nobody seems to think this application is going to be approved.

Gerben predicted on Tuesday that Ohio State was "likely to receive an initial refusal of the application."

For a trademark to be registered for a brand of clothing, the trademark "must be used in a trademarked fashion," he said on Twitter. "In other words, it has to be used on tagging or labeling for the products. In this case, just putting the word ‘the’ on the front of a hat or on the front of a shirt is not sufficient trademark use," he said.

That careful analysis is almost certainly correct, but I much prefer to simply point out that this is all very, very crazy and be done with it.

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via Techdirt
THE Ohio State University Applies For THE Stupidest Trademark In THE World

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Eloquent: Recursive hasMany Relationship with Unlimited Subcategories

Quite often in e-shops you can see many level of categories and subcategories, sometimes even unlimited. This article will show you how to achieve it elegantly with Laravel Eloquent.

We will be building a mini-project to views children shop sub-categories, five level deep, like this:

Database Migration

Here’s a simple schema of DB table:

Schema::create('categories', function (Blueprint $table) { $table->bigIncrements('id'); $table->string('name'); $table->unsignedBigInteger('category_id')->nullable(); $table->foreign('category_id')->references('id')->on('categories'); $table->timestamps(); });

We just have a name field, and then relationship to the table itself. So most parent category will have category_id = NULL, and every other sub-category will have its own parent_id.

Here’s our data in the database:

Eloquent Model and Relationships

First, in app/Category.php we add a simple hasMany() method, so category may have other subcategories:

class Category extends Model { public function categories() { return $this->hasMany(Category::class); } }

Now comes the biggest “trick” of the article. Did you know that you can describe recursive relationship? Like this:

public function childrenCategories() { return $this->hasMany(Category::class)->with('categories'); }

So, if you call Category::with(‘categories’), it will get you one level of “children”, but Category::with(‘childrenCategories’) will give you as many levels as it could find.

Route and Controller method

Now, let’s try to show all the categories and subcategories, as in the example above.

In routes/web.php, we add this:

Route::get('categories', 'CategoryController@index');

Then, app/Http/CategoryController.php looks like this:

public function index() { $categories = Category::whereNull('category_id') ->with('childrenCategories') ->get(); return view('categories', compact('categories')); }

As you can see, we’re loading only parent categories, with children as relationships. Simple, huh?

View and Recursive Sub-View

Finally, to the Views structure. Here’s our resources/views/categories.blade.php:

<ul> @foreach ($categories as $category) <li></li> <ul> @foreach ($category->childrenCategories as $childCategory) @include('child_category', ['child_category' => $childCategory]) @endforeach </ul> @endforeach </ul>

As you can see, we load the main categories, and then load children categories with @include.

The best part is that resources/views/admin/child_category.blade.php will use recursive loading of itself. See the code:

<li></li> @if ($child_category->categories) <ul> @foreach ($child_category->categories as $childCategory) @include('child_category', ['child_category' => $childCategory]) @endforeach </ul> @endif

As you can see, inside of child_category.blade.php we have @include(‘child_category’), so the template is recursively loading children, as long as there are categories inside of the current child category.

And, that’s it! We have unlimited level of subcategories – in database, in Eloquent relationships, and in Views.

via Laravel Daily
Eloquent: Recursive hasMany Relationship with Unlimited Subcategories

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Security Researcher’s ‘NULL’ Vanity Plates Cause Glitch That Lands Him $12,000 in Parking Tickets

You can’t put a price tag on the value of sticking it to the man—specifically, trying to own an official surveillance system. Except maybe when you are owned right back.

A security researcher going by the name of Droogie attempted to fuck with Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems by customizing a vanity California license plate with the word “NULL.” The word was a play on the term used in programming to indicate no value, and Droogie hoped that it would mess with the systems.

ALPR systems involve surveillance cameras mounted on cop cars and around cities that collect a vehicle’s license plate as well as the time, date, and location. And the collection of this data isn’t relegated to suspects—anyone’s vehicle is subject to being surveilled and subsequently loaded into a comprehensive database with robust information on their real-time whereabouts. It’s also presently unclear all the ways in which government agencies and private companies are using (and potentially abusing) this data.

Droogie presented his misadventure at the DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, in which he explained that while his customized plate was successful in confusing the systems, it resulted in thousands of dollars of other people’s parking tickets.

When he went to renew his tags on the DMV website, the website informed him that his license number was invalid, Mashable reported. Droogie then started receiving thousands of dollars in parking tickets, totaling over $12,000, addressed to him. He told the convention audience that a processing center was assigning “NULL” to vehicles with outstanding tickets that the DMV didn’t have license plate information on. And so Droogie received all of those unassigned tickets.

The DMV and LAPD reportedly told him to change his plates (he didn’t), but eventually the processing center erased the fines that were mistakenly sent to Droogie. But the system is still operating as it was prior to the erasure of his fines, and the system has since assigned him over $6,000 more in tickets.

“I was like, ‘I’m the shit, I’m gonna be invisible,’” Droogie told the crowd at DEF CON, Mashable reported. “Instead, I got all the tickets.”

Droogie’s stunt is a powerfully comedic statement about a mass surveillance system being deployed without the consent of civilians, and until recently, with little to no oversight. In June, a California legislative committee voted to enforce a state audit into ALPR systems used by cops. Leading up to that, reports indicated that these systems were being exploited by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and potentially other government agencies and that agencies often obfuscated the honest accounts of how the data gleaned from these readers was being used.

“These systems wouldn’t work at all if the government did not require drivers to post identifying numbers in public view,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a blog post. “But unlike an officer writing down plate numbers by hand, the collection and storage on a massive, automated scale can reveal intimate details of our travel patterns that should be none of the government’s business.”

via Gizmodo
Security Researcher’s ‘NULL’ Vanity Plates Cause Glitch That Lands Him $12,000 in Parking Tickets

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Archaeological dig in Jerusalem unearths evidence of biblical Babylonian conquest

Shimon Gibson, co-director of the Mount Zion Archaeological Project, sets the scene at the Jerusalem site. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

One month after offering up archaeological evidence to back up a contested claim about the First Crusade, researchers say they’ve found traces of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in a deeper layer of their excavation on Mount Zion.

The newly reported find demonstrates how the site, just outside the walls of the Old City’s Tower of David citadel, serves as a “time machine” documenting the twists and turns of Jerusalem’s history.

The Babylonian conquest, which dates to the year 587 or 586 BCE, is one of the major moments of Jewish history. As detailed in the biblical Book of Kings, the Babylonians laid siege to Jerusalem for months, eventually broke through the walls and burned “all the houses of Jerusalem,” including Solomon’s Temple.

After the fall of Jerusalem, the Jewish people were sent into exile – an event that Jews commemorate with mourning and fasting every year on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av. This year’s Tisha B’Av observance began at sundown tonight.

During this year’s Mount Zion excavation, which is managed by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, researchers came across a layer of material that included burnt wood and ash, potsherds, lamps and arrowheads dating from the time of the conquest. They also found a piece of period jewelry – a tassel or earring made of gold and silver.

A tassel or earring made of gold and silver was found amid a layer of ashen material linked to the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE. (Mount Zion Archaeological Expedition  / Rafi Lewis)

An area around the dig yielded up signs of what appears to have been a substantial Iron Age structure, but that particular area has yet to be fully excavated.

Today, the focus of the Mount Zion Archaeological Project is a triangular wedge of ground that lies between a busy Jerusalem thoroughfare and the citadel’s walls. But at the time of the Babylonian siege, the area was a neighborhood within the fortifications of the Iron Age city, said Shimon Gibson, a co-director of the excavation and a professor of history at UNC Charlotte.

By itself, the ash wouldn’t serve as conclusive evidence of the city’s biblical destruction, Gibson said.

“For archaeologists, an ashen layer can mean a number of different things,” he explained in a news release. “It could be ashy deposits removed from ovens, or it could be localized burning of garbage.”

But the fact that the ash and debris were mixed with Scythian-type bronze and iron arrowheads that date to the sixth century BCE, plus the presence of a precious bauble from the same era, helps strengthen the case.

“Nobody abandons golden jewelry, and nobody has arrowheads in their domestic refuse,” Gibson said.

The clay artifacts, which include the high-based pinched lamps that were common at the time of the siege, help to date the deposit.

“It’s the kind of jumble that you would expect to find in a ruined household following a raid or battle,” Gibson said. “Household objects, lamps, broken bits from pottery which had been overturned and shattered … and arrowheads and a piece of jewelry which might have been lost and buried in the destruction.”

Miles Shen with lamp
One of the students of UNC Charlotte’s Levine Program, Miles Shen, holds a lamp dating from the Iron Age (Mount Zion Archaeological Expedition / James Tabor)

Gibson said he likes to think that the site represents one of the “great houses” mentioned in 2 Kings 25:9. “This spot would have been at an ideal location, situated as it is, close to the western summit of the city with a good view overlooking Solomon’s Temple and Mount Moriah to the northeast,” he said.

But he and the rest of the team are proceeding carefully.

“We are slowly taking the site down, level by level, period by period, and at the end of this last digging season, two meters of domestic structures from later Byzantine and Roman periods have still to be dug above the Iron Age level below,” Gibson said. “We plan to get down to it in the 2020 season.”

Excavation co-director Rafi Lewis, an archaeologist at Ashkelon Academic College and Haifa University, said the historical context that surrounds the discoveries at the Mount Zion site adds to the project’s appeal.

“It is very exciting to be able to excavate the material signature of any given historical event, and even more so regarding an important historical event such as the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem,” he said in the news release.

This season’s other notable discovery relates to another battle at Jerusalem’s walls – the siege by the Crusaders in 1099. The UNC Charlotte team excavated the outlines of a defensive ditch that, combined with artifacts including arrowheads, crucifixes and a piece of jewelry found amid a layer of burned debris, served to confirm a long-debated chapter in the saga of the First Crusade.

The team also uncovered vaulted basements dating from the time of Herod the Great, and a Byzantine street that was the continuation of a thoroughfare in Jerusalem known as the Cardo Maximus. Previous finds at the site include a rare gold coin bearing the visage of Nero as a young Roman emperor, and a first-century Jewish mansion that came complete with a bathtub.

The Mount Zion archaeological project is conducted by researchers, students and volunteers under the direction of Gibson, Lewis and James Tabor, a professor of religious studies at UNC Charlotte. The site is within an Israeli national park near the Old City’s Zion Gate. The project’s sponsors include Aron Levy, John Hoffmann, Cherylee and Ron Vanderham, Patty and David Tyler. Sheila Bishop of the Foundation for Biblical Archaeology is a facilitator for the project. 

GeekWire’s Alan Boyle traveled to the Mount Zion site last month as part of a field trip associated with the World Conference of Science Journalists and organized by CERN with support from the Open SESAME consortium.

via GeekWire
Archaeological dig in Jerusalem unearths evidence of biblical Babylonian conquest