Blog Posts by Syrsly

WTF Happened March 2026

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 23:30:00 EDT

This is the WTF Happened recap article for March 2026! This is a retrospective series, so every post is technically late, but we do these articles for the sake of being able to go back and remind ourselves what was going on each month. It's nice to be able to easily get a bunch of highlights from a specific month without having to ask an AI for a summary based on every news article out there. Our approach is more environmentally friendly and speaks from the soul of an actual person who lived through the time.

World News & Politics

Anti-Kat Advertising Campaign Exposed

Kat Abughazelah, a popular Illinois politician, exposed an anti-her campaign that she found out about. It was laughably bad. Start going down the rabbit hole here.

Xbox Exec Fired For Refusing Bathrobe Outfit At GDC

A female Xbox executive producer was phased out of her job after a co-worker reported her boss to H.R. and said she was saved by Phil Spencer (Notebook Check) This happened way back in the early 2000s, but she came out with the story at the beginning of March. I think the story should have been shared sooner, but the games industry back in the 2000s was awful toward women in general, and society hasn't changed enough if you ask me.

NPR and PBS Funding Pause Unconstitutional

A Federal judge sided with NPR and PBS against Trump's attempt to remove their funding. (CNN) This doesn't mean their funding is safe, but it does mean they will likely receive a lot of the funds taken away from them by Trump's executive order. That said, these companies will have to continue to seek funding from elsewhere to secure their future under the ongoing Trump term. I, for one, hope PBS bounces back with more money than they were originally promised. NPR, too, but if I had to pick just one, PBS is way more valuable to me overall, because PBS is how I watched Frontline, Downton Abbey and Masterpiece Theater. PBS also has their own news shows, though NPR is definitely the better news source on the web. Let's not forget Sesame Street and Barney. PBS was such a huge part of my childhood and young adulthood that it feels downright criminal to even think about defunding it.

White House Posted Distasteful Video Glorifying Death Of Iranians

There were many really bad promo videos posted on White House social media accounts recently, but this one really took the cake, or should I say, it got the killstreak? The video, shown here, was a splice of real world strike footage and Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3 gameplay. It was posted soon after an attack on Iranian school that killed at least 175 people, including children and teachers. (Washington Post) The way this was promoted was disgusting.

Iran Ignored Warnings To Stop Attacking Ships

There was some added tension between the United States and the rest of the world in March after the attacks on Iranian facilities in mid to late February. many countries expressed disappointment in the decision and many more expressed concern that they were not given advance warning of the attack. (PBS) This led to Iran attacking ships in retaliation and eventually, the U.S. decided to announce a future blockade in the Persian Gulf in April to intercept Iranian drone attacks.

Meta Reportedly Outsourced Smartglasses Footage Review

This hits close to home for me, because I bought the first generation Meta Wayfarer glasses last year. Meta reportedly hired third parties to review footage submitted to their servers. (Ars) This should be illegal, but unfortunately, we live in the darkest, dumbest timeline. That said, this is why tons of people will avoid Meta like the plague and only buy hardware they can use freely without a company overlord. It's also wise to at least turn off all Meta AI features on these glasses if privacy is important to you.

Federal Judge Limits Tear Gas Use In Oregon

Amid lawsuits, a federal judge has ruled that ICE agents cannot use tear gas in residential areas or to use any amount of any chemical substance that could reach a residential area. (Katu)

The Memes

With the anticipation of the release of Pokemon Pokopia, Pixelframe released a Pokopia font generator, and this tool was used to make a bunch of meme images basically saying things you wouldn't normally expect a Pokemon game to say.

We also saw a ton of Twin Peaks memes during this time for a similar reason of it just being easy to churn out content with this generator that released the month prior.

We also saw a trending meme of "How I Access Bluesky" where the user posts some image to describe how they access Bluesky, often some crazy fiction but also some funny images based on not-so-farfetched ideas, like accessing Bluesky in a VR browser.

DLSS 5 was announced at the Nvidia GTC event on March 16. The reception was so poor it led to the "DLSS 5 off/DLSS 5 on" meme.

Celebrity News

Chuck Norris Beat Us In The Death Race!

Chuck Norris decided to finally take part in the death race at age 86, (Yahoo!) citing he didn't even know the race was a thing until he talked to God about it. Of course, he got to the finish line immediately once he started participating. Chuck Norris jokes aside, Carlos "Chuck" Norris will be missed by pretty much the whole world. The legacy he left behind was epic, even if a lot of people will remember his real life as simply an old actor who got typecast his whole career. (Jennifer Asencio at Yahoo!) Chuck did so much throughout his life that I can't help but respect the hustle. He was a martial arts master, a TV star, a business man, and a military veteran. He started several philanthropic programs across the world to help feed, cloth, teach and treat people. He was an internet meme stronghold on top of all of that.

Mark Hamill's Son Turned 42

On March 4, Mark Hamill's youngest son, Griffin Hamill, turned 42. (Official Mark Hamill Biography) Mark posted on Bluesky to wish him a happy birthday. This makes me feel so... old.

Harrison Ford Accepted The Life Achievement Award

Speaking of feeling old, Netflix hosted the 32nd Annual Actor Awards where Harrison Ford, now in his 80s, was presented the Life Achievement Award. You can watch a 8-minute clip of Harrison Ford's acceptance speech on YouTube. It's worth a watch!

New Movies

Super Mario Galaxy the Movie released March 28, April 1 worldwide. The movie's biggest surprise cameo was spoiled days before release with an official movie poster featuring Fox McCloud. Below is a screenshot of someone showing some frustration toward the spoiler.

New Shows

Invincible season 4 started on March 18 with a 3 episode premiere and released a single episode per week since then. The finale of season 4 is set to air April 22.

Upcoming Movies

We saw a trailer for The End of Oak Street show up on Discord's quests. The trailer shows dinos running around a suburban neighborhood, Jurassic Park style! I'm looking forward to this one, and it comes out August 14!

A new trailer for Street Fighter came out and the movie is looking good!

On April 1st, the new trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day dropped. The trailer actually showed up a few days earlier in some theaters, so I felt it was worth mentioning in the March recap. The movie looks really promising as a good street level Spider-Man tale.

The Moana live action trailer was shown online and in theaters and showed Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in full Maui get-up.

Upcoming Shows

Lanterns dropped its first trailer on March 4. It's a very grounded trailer but mentions a squirrel character in the dialogue. I'm unsure how invested I can get into a DC universe show right now with the state the DC franchises have been in lately, but this could be a really good spiritual successor to Early Edition. Gary Hobson. Here to save the day once again... except this time, he has a power ring.

McFarlane Superman Figurines

On March 19, the Superman versus Mongul playset went up for pre-order on the McFarlane Toys website. (Superman Supersite) I'd be lying if I didn't admit I had some nostalgia for the comic these toys are inspired by. Some toys released for the upcoming Supergirl movie, too, but you really can't beat the classics.

New Games

Pokemon Pokopia poked out on March 5 only on Nintendo Switch 2. I'll be honest, I'm not enough of a Pokemon fan to care about this one, but Pokemon fans went crazy on social media about it, and the concept is an interesting one for sure. The story behind the game is filled with dark curiosities I just know Nintendo was not prepared to dig deep into. The internet, however, got to make up its own stories about what happened to the trainer of this ditto, and the open narrative definitely played a part in making this game go viral. (IGN) Of course, every Pokemon game gets *some* attention, even Hey You, Pikachu!. Okay, yeah, that was also a cool concept... I guess.

March 6 saw Blossom: The Seed Of Life on Steam for $16.99. The demo was really cool, but it did seem like a lesser version of Astroneer if not for the biome growing/farming stuff. It could be cool, but the lack of multiplayer at launch makes it a hard recommendation for those who already played Astroneer and mostly played it with other people. That said, I think playing these kinds of games alone is its own worthwhile experience, because playing with others tends to make these games a lot easier and a lot less engaging. When you can't rely on teammates for the materials, it forces you to choose when you need materials badly enough to get them yourself.

Everwind released March 17! We were looking at this game last month with a lot of anticipation but didn't go into depth about it because we had just seen it around the end of the month. It looks really promising for Minecraft lovers, and we really want to try it soon, but it's definitely going to require a lot of time to play! Check it out and wishlist it at Steam.

The highly anticipated open world game Crimson Desert was released on most major platforms March 19. The game was met with mixed reviews with some players praising the amount of freedom the game allows and other players complaining about the random theming, pointless narrative, and awkward controls. There was also some controversy over the game's use of generative AI.

You guys remember Neopets? If so, you might be overdue for a colonoscopy, but you might also want to check out this trailer, which dropped March 25 and is a Neopets minigame collection.

Video Game Preservation Shut Down

Myrient, a video game preservation service, was officially shut down March 31. The creator of Myrient still has their 3DS preservation archive available under the name hShop (assuming that's short for homebrewShop), and yes, you can download 3DS games there. I will not link to it since its legal status is questionable, but it's easy to find if you really want it. I don't even have a 3DS currently, but I assume you could find something on AliExpress to help you play roms on the 3DS hardware without much investment. Now might be the best time to collect the games you lost to the official eShop's closure for fear of losing them forever.

Rec Room Is Shutting Down Immediately

The popular VR social experience turned kids desktop minigame game Rec Room has announced it is closing its doors effective almost immediately. (Official blog) Existing users have a couple months to save their data, but no new users are allowed. The main website does not make this news obvious, still asking users to download the app.

New VR Games

Of course, games which expect you to play with your wood come out all the time, but Forest Construction VR, which came out March 11, looks like it might be a pretty... immersive experience. Or you could just get a VR porn game. Whatever floats your boat.

Speaking of boats, Bootstrap Island reached its 1.0 release March 12. (VRShowcase) The PSVR2 release was still in development. Check it out on Steam!

Some other VR games which released this month include VMX, Racket Pinball, Re-Animated, Unseen Diplomacy 2, and Dezzibels among many other releases.

VMX is a BMX simulator game in VR that looks really fun!

Tower Tag tried to say it released March 13, but it's been out for years and had a 1.0 launch before. They're relaunching but this time, there are bots and other cool features to keep you busy. I personally think it's a unique experience worth trying out, but it misses the mark trying to replicate classic laser tag, because it takes place in square tower spaces.

Not long before the airing of The Boys season 5, a The Boys VR game originally titled "The Boys Trigger Warning" but simplified to just "The Boys" was released on March 26 exclusively on Meta for $29.99.

One particular new VR release that caught my eye was Dig To Escape, which released March 5 on Steam with a hilarious trailer and a rather charming mole mascot.

Kickstarter: Toumei S2 Ultra Short Throw Laser Projector

I have a soft spot for video projectors, and this one seems pretty cool. Check out the Kickstarter campaign here while it's still going on. It's a projector that falls into enthusiast pricing, but it's really sleek and offers a ton of great features for a reasonable early bird price at least.

Official Price Hike: PlayStation 5

The PS5 came out in 2020 for $499. It is now $649 for the non-digital edition and the digital edition is still increasing to a massive $599. (Sony) Someone should tell Sony that consoles are supposed to lose value, not get more expensive after more than half a decade. Thankfully, this price hike hasn't affected current stock on Amazon yet, so if you plan on buying a PS5, you may as well buy it on credit right away, because in the near future, it will cost just as much as the interest you'd pay to get it now and then pay over time. It may even cost less to pay over time in that scenario.

VR Game Publisher Announced

Just when we thought the VR industry was stagnating, on March 5, Evolution Publishing, a VR-focused game publisher, was announced. (Games Industry) If you're a VR developer looking to get a publisher, this is lovely news. Shoot your shot!

Software News

Blender 5.1

Blender 5.1 released March 17 with new features, optimizations and improvements to the UI. You can read up on everything that's new to Blender here. I personally think this release is huge for the Cycles and Eevee community because of the added "El Rey Cast" feature, but there's a lot of good stuff in this release.

Pico OS 6 & New Early Access Hardware Program

Pico, the VR hardware giant, announced OS 6 and a new early access developer outreach program to supply developers with their newest hardware. (Pico)

Boris FX Acquired Magix Software

On March 30, Boris FX, known for their suite of video editing and audio editing tools and plugins aimed mostly at enterprise projects, has acquired consumer grade video editing software Vegas Pro from Magix Software as well as Magix's other previously acquired products, Sound Forge and Acid Pro. This means new rounds of reorganization behind these software line-ups and the price of the software is likely to increase as well for the next major release of each product. Boris will likely fund the development of these products a lot more than Magix ever did, and they'll likely improve their plugin products to work better with Vegas at least now that they're incentivized to push Vegas as the primary way to use their AI plugins. This acquisition at least keeps a popular but dated video editor app out of obscurity for a few more years before it gets replaced by something new and shiny.

Firefox Split View

A new feature, Split View, was added to Firefox to allow users to organize nested browser tabs into split view panes similar to Blender viewports. (Firefox blog)

This feature is actually really useful for streamers who want to keep their chat tab on the screen at all times. Previously, you had to be creative with the window instances and use a OS level snapping tool or manually adjust the window sizes and then keep an empty tab instance open everywhere you wanted a specific size window. This split view means you can go back to split view or never leave it and just drag tabs around without worry.

Gimp 3.2

On March 14, Gimp 3.2 released with major upgrades over 3.1. (Gimp blog)

Godot Engine 4.7 Dev 3 Snapshot

Godot 4.7 Dev 3 snapshot was released March 26 with some cool new features mostly for the editor and for mobile screen support. (Official blog)

N64 Indie Games Are Still A Thing!

Junk Runner 64, an open world tech demo of a game reached version 2.1 on March 18. (Github) I've downloaded but not tried the rom. It looks interesting based on the description and screenshots. I look forward to giving it a go on original hardware shortly.

Claude Code Leaked

On March 31, Anthropic accidentally pushed a source map to their NPM repository that linked developers to private source code snippets for Claude Code as well as a roadmap for upcoming features Anthropic has already developed for the most part based on this leak. The funniest part of all this is they didn't even realize they did it for several hours, and a bunch of geeks made their own copies of what they found in the leak before it could be sealed up with the finest duct tape.

iMoochi

Early March saw the release of a new robo-doll product that looks a lot like a Furby. It's the iMoochi! The creator claims this product, particularly its AI software, can be useful to treat mental illness here, and honest, if there was ever a red flag not to buy a doll, this is it. It's cute, but if I was going to buy an AI, it better be in a fully animated Optimus Prime or a Gorgonite.

Happy St. Patty's Day!

People celebrating Saint Patrick's Day likely don't know much about the holiday or why they're celebrating. Many people just like to party, and to those people, I hope you had fun during this holiday, but it's more than just a day off work (assuming you even get the day off). Saint Patrick's Day is a day to memorialize the death day of Saint Patrick and remember what he stood for. Before you go out and celebrate another commercialized holiday event, perhaps read about the original purpose of the holiday, or... listen to the NYC mayor talk about it on a Bluesky video post.

Oh, and please,

Aw, man, why'd you have to go and do that?

Stop killing old software!

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:30:00 EDT

There was recently a movement to "Stop Killing Games", and I'd like us to consider expanding that movement to software. Let's stop killing software in general! Adobe is guilty of killing Flash Player, but thankfully, we had enough open source tech out there to replace it and keep the old content alive with less officially supported alternative players like Ruffle. Then, there's Unity and their web player plugin, which seemed like it would replace Flash Player as a 3D alternative before Unity pulled the plug on that plugin and we started working on WebGL alternatives which only recently reached a similar feature set to the Unity web player. I personally feel that the web player should have been open-sourced as part of a community outreach project, but Unity, like Adobe, is very anti-consumer. I'll come back to that later.

One thing I'm definitely a nerd about is the history of the internet. However, it's not because I want to ace trivia questions somewhere about the first dialup modem (History-Computer) or that time we created the internet. No, my reasons are more self-serving: I just loved the internet "back in the day" and feel that we've lost something special. It was more fun to explore the internet before it became this mostly corporate social media world. There's still stuff out there like what I once explored, but the culture of the internet as a whole has moved away from that stuff to become bland and mostly uninteresting with an odd fixation on extremely short blog posts on only a spare few blog hosting sites we now refer to as social media.

I grew up with some wild stuff like Flash and Shockwave, but before even those, we had HyperCard. (Ars) What was cool about HyperCard was it made things interactive and fun to look at long before we even had Flash Player. It wasn't really an internet thing, but it was an early attempt at what Macromedia Flash would eventually become... sort of. The HyperCard technology was able to handle a lot of stuff but wasn't web-centric, while Flash was more animation-focused and required some additional overhead to accomplish a similar goal. It was still a great step forward for animators at the time, and it was great for making... flashy... webpages, too... before we even had ajax requests in 1999. (IE5 Wiki)

Anyway, it feels like we keep killing technology that was simple to use in favor of technology that over-complicates the same deliverables we already accomplished. I wish we could just fix problems with the old stuff rather than throw it in the trash and start new every few years. I'm looking at you, Unity game engine! *Ahem!*

Like Adobe, Unity jumped ship from the product business to the service business decades ago, and like many others, I was a customer they abandoned soon after that switch. Like Adobe, Unity made it increasingly harder over time to use their old software and eventually made it impossible to activate an old license you legitimately bought. The only way to use Unity 4.x now is to use a pirated, cracked copy of it, which introduces security challenges and performance hits due to those security challenges. For example, you have to run the cracked copy in a sandboxed virtual machine to reduce the likelihood of a virus taking over the system or the app from calling home, and any compiled code is at high risk of being infected by extension. Similarly, Adobe removed old licenses for Flash years after CC was a thing because it would force us old users to buy the new subscription or download a crack to keep using their software even though the software was sold to us as a product, not as a subscription. All of this is anti-consumer, but it's also anti-progress, because it means they don't actually have to improve their software to get old users to upgrade; They just have to make old versions no longer work when the time comes to force their customers to upgrade.

The workaround for now is to stop supporting closed source software whenever possible. Open source software doesn't typically get killed as easily, because even if the original developer stops working on the project, if enough people are passionate about the project, they will create a fork of the project and keep it alive. This is what happened with Atom Editor: We got Pulsar Edit. Rarely do we get closed source projects open-sourced after their life ends, but we do sometimes have that happen, and it's nice when that finally happens. For example, Tilt Brush became Open Brush and the open source community managed to expand Tilt Brush to have multiplayer and fix tons of bugs and have integration with Liv's mixed reality app within weeks. We also get a lot of hybrids of open source projects and closed source tools, like Stencyl's editor being closed source but their actual game engine being MIT-licensed. I like this because we get the engine as a starting point to keep old games working if the company ever goes under or gets sold to someone else. The editor is where the meat of the project is, mind you, but at least we can easily preserve old projects and have a ground truth of how the game engine operates. It feels safer than other tools like Unity where the entire engine is closed source. Unreal, Unity's biggest competition, is now partially open source as well.

If you're looking for a modern Flash alternative that kind of doubles as a modernized HyperCard (depending on how you use it), look at Wick Editor. It's open source (GPL 3) and works incredibly well. I highly recommend it if you want to bring life to the web or make a modernized version of a Flash game. Alternatively, if you want to add CSS animations to your webpages, try my CSS Animator instead, but it's more geared toward simple object manipulation tasks I find obnoxious without said tool. If your goal is 3D game creation, look at Godot.

Stop killing old software!

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:30:00 EDT

Stop killing old software!

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:30:00 EDT

WTF Didn't Happen!? 2026 Edition

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:23:33 EDT

Happy April Fools!

This is a joke article. You fell for it.

That said, I kind of like the premise of the title.

I mean, it'd be fun to list out things we hoped would happen but didn't. Problem is we're still not even halfway into the year. This type of article should be at the end of the year. Thoughts?

I'll be posting the next recap soon.