WTF Happened January 2025
Welcome, all, to the first WTF Happened of 2025! For those new here, this is an article series where I recap important and interesting things which happened in and around the past month. Stay awhile, and listen!
As I type this article out, I'm watching the 67th annual Grammy's award show, which aired 8pm EST on February 2nd. I just want to mention this show because the event still happened despite the devastating L.A. wildfires, which started January 7th (Source: ABC) and were only finally contained around the end of January. There was a lot of DEI-related drama over not having enough firefighters in the area, but that was just unfounded nonsense. Overall, there seemed to be quite an effort to handle the fires, and most of it was contained in a reasonable time frame.
It seems appropriate to mention Helldivers 2 when thinking about the L.A. wildfires. I think about how the firefighters kept swarming in to save the day from the fires in the same way helldivers kept dropping onto the same planets in the same locations over and over to kill the same bugs over and over for the sake of liberty. There was a phrase in the game that went like this:
There is no one way to prove your devotion to Super Earth. But there is one best way. Become a Helldiver. Become a hero. Become a legend.
That marketing was never seen with the firefighters, though. They just bravely jumped into battle from multiple directions and locations, even some brigades from Mexico helped out without so much as a Super Earth commercial to rally them. This gave me hope for our future in the States, because it showed me people still care for one another despite the crazies pretending otherwise. Unfortunately, our country wants to deport the people who helped put out our fires.
Another thing that recently went down in L.A. is a protest against the deportation policies of the new Trump administration. Thousands gathered in downtown L.A. to rally against the deportation policies being pushed upon them and effectively shut down 101 Freeway in the process! - Los Angeles Times
Beyond the wildfires, we've been dealing with a lot of crazy weather events recently. A massive winter storm wrecked havoc in the Mideast U.S.A. region from January 4th to January 12th. It wasn't the worst storm I've seen in my lifetime, but it was pretty bad. Bad enough that trees started falling and houses lost power for days in some locations. We saw nearly two feet of snow in most of the Eastern half of the States! I personally love snow when it first falls, but I recognize that the snow turns into ice and hazards happen. Regardless of how bad it was for you, it was an admittedly impressive size and reached all the way from New York to Florida and some of it even reached the Western coast. The Winter winds reached 100 MPH in some places as well.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is seemingly forever ongoing with no clear end in sight. I wish I could apply some kind of optimism to this, but at this moment, I'm not optimistic. I'm just counting the days until it's over and Russia gets a win and faces next to no consequences for their actions. I could include pages of eventful news about this bloody mess. It's a constantly evolving battlefield with a lot of world politics at play and can't easily be summarized. I suggest you read the daily summaries from AlJazeera and cross-reference the information there with other reputable news sources, like A.P. News. Believe me, there's a lot going on, and it's likely not going to end anytime soon.
A ceasefire was announced for Hamas and Israel, however! That happened before Trump took office, January 15th, so GG Biden. (Source: NBC)
Elon Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, did some prep work before Trump took office and were reportedly visiting government offices across the United States to "begin preliminary interviews that will shape the tech executives’ enormous ambitions to tame Washington’s sprawling bureaucracy." (Source: Washington Post) They should have denied him his meetings until his station was legitimate.
In the lead-up to the inauguration, Facebook made a lot of small changes to the platform to remove some things which might be seen as offensive to right wing agendas in the U.S., and this led up to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and now Meta, announcing a right-leaning plan to remove fact checkers from the facebook platform around the end of January. (Source: MSN) Mr. Zuckerberg remarked that the fact checkers were no longer a good thing even though that system was never proven to be broken and was the primary reason Facebook was excused from a hearing several years earlier for misinformation on his platform potentially leading to the January 6th, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
In entertainment news, TikTok went dark for a day and showed a rather disturbingly pro-Trump message.
The thing that makes this disturbing is the fact that they acted like Trump was their salvation despite Trump being an open advocate of banning TikTok since many, many years ago. I would have kept the app installed if it just went dark, but because it openly pushed a political agenda, I uninstalled the app and will never post on that platform again. That platform is likely going to lose popularity more and more, anyway, as a not-so-temporary ban is potentially around the corner. Many users attempted to join alternatives to TikTok owned by the same parent company, primarily what we all referred to as RedNote.
I personally prefer long form content to shorts, but if I was to partake in some shorts-watching, I find that YouTube Shorts is my favorite platform. Beyond that, there has also been the ability to post videos to BSky since September 11th, 2024. Ah, Vine, you were ahead of your time.
I found a rather popular thread on BSky asking for documentary recommendations, and the recommendations given are a great source of educational material all in one spot. I highly recommend giving it a looksie here.
In gaming news, we had a PC port of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth a.k.a. Remake part 2 on January 23rd. I held off on grabbing the game on PS5 because I knew it'd be on PC eventually, and I was happy I waited. The PC port was fantastic with only minor issues. It was fun to play some of the game with different peripherals to see how they all fair for different tasks. Of course, the PS5 controller played best for battles, but mouse aim helped a lot with shooting things. I also played through an entire chapter using a Gulikit KK2 with no issues. On top of that, the game supports multiple audio devices at the same time, allowing you to play some sound from the PS5 controller like on PS5, which was a feature I expected to get cut.
Also, large games media sites aren't completely lost to time yet! Walmart started a new online games media site titled Restart! This site appears to be only loosely tied to Walmart and not actually ran by Walmart. (Source: The Verge)
Nintendo finally announced a Switch successor! On January 16th, Nintendo released a teaser trailer of sorts for their upcoming Switch successor, the Nintendo Switch 2, and the video was an ASMR treat... but it unfortunately was also very misleading about dates. You see, the trailer showed dates for a hands-on tour, not an actual release date. The video also teased more info would be given on April 2nd. I think the Switch 2 is a must-have console, possibly the only one worth considering that isn't a VR headset.
In VR news, we had quite a lot of interesting products turn up!
First, there was a Kinect-like body tracking system titled BodyLink which was launched on Kickstarter on January 5th by Rebuff Reality. The Kickstarted successfully funded on January 25th for $96,288 with an initial goal of only $5000. You can view the Kickstarter here. Personally, I think this product is cool, but I think of it as a Wii-like product that may not even be useful long-term for VR content. That said, the marketing mentioned background removal for mixed reality, so I wonder how well it will work for Beat Saber streamers! If only I had it several years ago. It'll be a nice toy regardless of its longevity, so I kind of want it. I'll likely buy it someday if nothing overshadows it. Hey, Rebuff, send me a review kit!
NVidia announced a GeForce Now app for Quest (Source: VRGamesShowcase). The app will allow Quest to act as a wireless display for PC games without the need for VR software to run on the PC. That lesser overhead will help a lot with demanding games and will likely result in a higher quality experience for flat gaming. Unfortunately, I don't think this will allow for a good cloud gaming experience or help with VR experiences. I can only hope the flat gaming experience allows for a lot of scene flexibility and supports mixed reality.
In the VR rumor mill, I heard there was going to be face and eye tracking in the upcoming Asus ROG headset. (Source: UploadVR) I've been a fan of eye tracking since the Vive Pro Eye, but it has only really been utilized well on the PS5 with PSVR2. If we could finally standardize the feature, it would mean the feature would actually get utilized by indie devs, and that's what I always hoped for. Face tracking isn't nearly as important for most consumers, but it is a cool feature regardless.
As of January 31st, official support for the original Oculus Quest has been dropped. (Source: UploadVR) It lasted longer than I expected, but this does mean the original Quest won't receive any new apps or app updates. Some old apps which worked with Quest 1 will be forced to drop support the next time there's an app update.
In personal news, I spent all of January pursuing getting smartglasses to replace my old eyeglasses, and as I was halfway through getting my lenses, a Kickstarter launched for a much more promising smartglasses brand, Looktech, assuming the campaign actually delivers a product sometime soon. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to switch to that campaign or any of the many other smartglasses campaigns launched, and I found my Meta Wayfarer smartglasses way more limiting than necessary. I won't dive into the details here why I don't like the Meta Wayfarer product line, but I kept my purchase, because it was a huge time and money investment, and I really want to use them for unboxing content. Besides all that, my wife says I look like Clark Kent in them, so I have to keep them for that alone.
For 2024, I adopted a "Stay Fresh!" mentality. For 2025, I'll go with "Praise the sun!" because every night ends and the next morning, the sun shines again and our journey is renewed. It's important to stay vigilant and fight the good fight, but enjoy what you have and be thankful for it before the next dragon swoops down to one-hit you.
There were a lot of really bad things happening this month around the world, but it's good to understand how much life perseveres. Alligators survive in frozen water for weeks! (Source: The Weather Channel) Even in the coldest of times, life finds a way to keep living. Sure, that's alligators, but we humans are pretty resilient as well thanks to our ingenuity.
If you've enjoyed this read, check out my earlier WTF Happened posts, and if you're interested in retro video games, also check out my first Game Sandwich article, which was published January 31st!