WTF Happened July - August 2024
This is the fourth recap post, affectionately titled "WTF Happened." This is a monthly news post of sorts. I'll use these recaps to briefly cover cool, exciting and also not-so-good and downright terrible events which happened in and around the past month. I'll cover things like world news, movies, TV shows, tech, VR, personal projects (like this blog), cool game releases, and anything I find out during the month that I personally think is worth mentioning. I ask around on social media toward the end of each month for ideas, and I may or may not steal credit for the news I place here! I will cite references when it suits me! Moving on....
This month's recap is a lot late, sorry! For this reason, we're covering 2 months of news at once! Just in time for Labor Day!
To start us off, I made some improvements to the blog system! I added draft states to the posts, so I can save work-in-progress posts on the server and not lose the work, which should minimize the workload for these monthly posts and allow me to make higher quality posts and make them more often. I also bought a UPS for my gaming rig, which should give me some extra time to save work or end stream when the power inevitably goes out. I usually write these monthly articles from one of my laptops, but last month's article was lost to a power outage because I tried to write it from my desktop without protection.
Remember, kids: Always use protection! 
In U.S. Politics, Biden dropped out of the election race pretty late. Kamala Harris called in Tim Walz as her VP. This was announced August 6th. Thanks to the power of hindsight, this decision was seemingly met with great reception. I personally have no strong feelings one way or the other, because I don't know the guy, but I must stress that if you vote, you should research the candidates thoroughly beforehand. It's your duty not to blindly vote for anyone and to educate others to do the same. It's not easy, but it's worth the effort. That said, this year's election is a no-brainer for me.
Microsoft has been posting about AI content and fake news and U.S.
election interference attempts a lot lately. On August 8th, they posted
about Iranian attempts specifically and provided some rather specific
examples of some AI-generated news sites designed to make people hate
their opposition or whatever those behind the sites want the readers to
hate. Things are looking worrisome, but I hope that we can start educating people to better maintain their
online presences and where they get political information from.
Firefox has added a new feature, Reader View, which is basically a text-only rendering mode that still renders images but ignores most CSS rules. Web developers will want to look into ways to mitigate the styling issues caused by this new feature, but users will definitely find this useful when reading articles on news sites and wikis where there are a lot of ads and wasted space. I have made some efforts to make sure this feature works on my blog, but I haven't put a ton of time into it yet, and there's always room for improvement.
Admittedly a fluff piece as far as news goes, but I wanted to include something heartwarming, so check out this Huffington Post article about a museum allowing a reckless minor back into its museum to see the piece he broke repaired. Honestly, it's really not newsworthy at all, but every once in a while, it's nice to be reminded that not everyone is evil and not everything broken stays broken. We can fix things!
Google was officially branded as a monopolist in U.S. court! On August 5th, the search engine giant lost its fight in court and was legally acknowledged as a monopoly and scheduled a future hearing on September 6th.
Yale has promised $150 Million USD over 5 years to fund an AI research program to help Yale students and faculty acclimate to the new AI-driven world. You can read up on this here, but basically, they're rich, and they're spending money on rich people things. Jokes aside, this is a bold move by Yale to improve their offers and stay relevant as the future of AI evolves. Some of the money will be spent on gigantic GPU server farms to provide their own AI computation services and not be tied to any third-party service. I like the idea, really. It's nice to see *some* money going to new technology rather than lining people's greedy pockets. It's a shame this isn't a public school thing, but at least, it's a collaborative effort between multiple universities. I remain hopeful that more AI research in university settings will result in better open source learning models later on, and I know some of this equipment will help further cancer research and brain studies.
Speaking of brain studies, can someone tell Elon Musk he needs one the Brazil government they need one? I know, Elon Musk seems pretty selfish at times, but this isn't one of those times, trust me...
Mr. Musk is denying Brazil's orders to assign a legal representative for their country, and Brazil, rather than acknowledge that his company is not located in Brazil, pulled the plug on open access to Twitter/X, Musk's social platform. This is ridiculous behavior by Brazil in my opinion, because the internet is meant to be open to everyone, not closed to people in specific countries where the internet isn't abiding by their laws. The internet should have its own government at this point, but that doesn't exist, so we're still in the later end of the Wild West era of the internet. I say "the later end" because the internet had a lot of interesting eras, from the dial-up days of forums and AOL to the early 2000s Flash-powered Newgrounds-led era to the cleaned up, sanitized social media era we're suffering through now. It's still mostly a barely controlled chaos machine, but it's less fun the further we go into the future. This demand from the Brazilian government is ridiculous, but unfortunately, that's the world we live in. You can read more on the subject starting at APNews' article about the judge's threat to the previous legal representative.
Halloween is quickly approaching, just a warning to everyone who procrastinates to get their costumes ready! That's all about that for now, but I'll remind you all again in a month. Best to start readying up now so your online purchases arrive on time! I'll be 3d printing at least part of my costume this year. 
Speaking of costumes, I've always had an affinity for Master Swords, and finding a foam sword that looks good was impossible until very recently. I found this Amazon listing for a foam Master Sword, though! It's only $39.95, which is dirt cheap if you ask me! It also seems to be available on Walmart for a few dollars less, but the Amazon listing is a better fit for me, because I prefer their shipping. I already recently bought a similar sword from Temu, but it didn't come with a scabbard/sheath, so I will be purchasing this one as well - sometime - and will compare the sword quality for you all. Now, I'm still on the hunt for a more authentic-looking blade shape, so if you find anything promising, let me know! Oh, and I'm also on the hunt for an epic shield 
I relegated game release news to a separate article series. You can check that out here! The reasoning behind this was there are too many great game releases to lump them into this article, and I can still find other gaming news to include in this article. The new article series will focus on new releases and trends, but I'll still mention some new releases in the monthly news recap if it's deemed newsworthy.
For example, Fallout: London came out July 25th on GOG. This mod release came outta nowhere for me, because I felt out of touch with the Fallout series after Fallout 76's release until I watched the surprisingly epic Fallout TV show not too long ago.
Splitgate 2 was announced on August 8th with a gameplay reveal trailer on Steam. Playtest access could be requested via Steam store page, but it didn't last long.
Deadlock, Valve's new MOBA shooter akin to Smite or Predecessor, also had an alpha test start recently. This alpha is ongoing and you can still get access to it via a friend invite, but to be quite honest, I don't think it's worth anyone's time just yet... except for those who are ultra competitive. Let it cook.
Oh, and Star Wars Outlaws came out on August 30th. 
I don't know if I'd call that exciting, but I've been jaded toward Star Wars for many years. It might be worth a try if you're still a fan of the franchise.
In VR news, PSVR2 is now officially a PCVR kit! The official announcement was on June 3rd and mentioned an adapter release date of August 7th, but some people were able to make it work somewhat without the adapter on specific hardware well before the announcement. The adapter is only $50 USD, though, so it's really affordable and probably worth it just to avoid as much hassle as possible. Note that you will need a separate Bluetooth 4.0 adapter for this, not included with the PC adapter. The headset isn't wireless (which is pretty sad in 2024), and all its most important features are still only available on PS5, but its controllers look promising to me. I'd like to try it out sometime.
Maybe I'll buy a PSVR2 someday? I don't know when, though, because while I have a PS5, I already have a Quest 3, which to me is a superior experience overall. If you already have a Quest 3 and want to do PCVR wirelessly, you may as well invest in the Puppis S1 dedicated router for it, which costs about the same amount as the PSVR2 adapter but gives you quite a nice wireless experience for Quest 3 on your PC. Also, the Quest 3's standalone titles are pretty awesome. If you're like me, you still want to get PSVR2 for its few exclusives, and this PCVR capability just sweetens the deal.
The RotoVR chair was announced on August 14th with pre-orders for a planned release date of October 1st, 2024. You can read more about it in this PCGamer article by Jacob Fox or visit their promo site and browse the pre-order details. Their official site also seems to already have a cart system with a way to just purchase the chair for $799, which is a bit confusing. It's advertised to work with Meta, which implies it'll work without a PC, but I'm not sure about that at this time. YawVR, the closest competitor to RotoVR, has been around for a while and has 2 major versions already released, both with PCVR support and wheel and pedal mounts, but the price of Yaw VR is a lot higher, so I think this chair is poised to do a lot better at selling to the enthusiasts out there with a spare credit card. Once you get past a certain amount of money, it just becomes a game of financing for most people, anyway, but not everyone will be able to finance YawVR or find space for it in their rooms. RotoVR shows promise as a smaller alternative to YawVR that's both more affordable and more space-cautious.
Hey, RotoVR, send me a review copy! 
You can check out my Most Interesting Games August 2024 article if interested in new VR games! I'm trying to keep the articles short and concise when I can, but if there's something amazing I missed, let me know, and I may include it in the next article.
RIP gaming's longest running magazine.
RIP gaming's longest running magazine. GameInformer had lasted 33 years before being shut down on August 2nd. The final Game Informer issue was released June 18, 2024, and is the 367 issue and focused on the game “Dragon Age: The Veilguard”. - WHNT
In honor of the magazine I never actually read, here's a picture of my stack of unread gameinformer issues. Sorry, I couldn't be bothered to clean up the room for this pic... just like GameInformer couldn't be bothered to release another issue.
That's it for this month's two-month recap of WTF Happened! Sorry again for the delay! We'll go back to a regular monthly recap schedule with September. Stay fresh!