Zac Cannon III

DevOps Papa, SysAdmin Greybeard, and Web 1.0 refugee writing from the cloud.

World of Warcraft:Forever

I'm a big fan of World of Warcraft. I was there in 2004 when it launched and played the game seriously doing end-game raiding up until Wrath of the Lich King, or about five years. I loved it!

After the release of Cataclysm, I became a casual player, but I still purchased all the expansions and played for several months after each expansion. I jumped at World of Warcraft Classic when it came out and played that for a year. Loved it! The nostalgia was great with that.

And now we have World of Warcraft Forever. It ticks all the boxes and more. I can't wait. I can definitely see myself pre-ordering and pre-paying for a 1-year subscription, something I have done since 2009.

Games

All the games

I was reading how last year over 20,000 games were released on Steam and only about 600 have concurrent players. I think the issue with this is we all have a huge backlog of games from the pandemic. For this reason, I see no need to buy any games. I now considered myself a game collector and not a game player so much. I was also reading how the growth of the gaming industry during the pandemic is now leading to devastating cutsbacks and layoffs. And now you have AI on top of that, all contributing to the layoffs and downsizing of game studios. I was also told that the vibe coding of "cozy games" that are popping up all around the web for free and without ads is causing yet another pain point for Indi developers'. Why spend money on a game when you can write code to your specifications for $20 a month?

Games

No AI is now a feature

It's a weird timeline where not having built-in AI is now considered a feature.

AI

The barrier to generating content is almost zero with generative AI now

With the advent of AI, it's not possible to churn out content with almost no effort. Everyone can now generate AI content, or slop as it's known, at alarming rates, be it text, images, videos, etc. With agents, that generative AI content can be automated and posted on social media, a blog, a website, etc.

Call me crazy, but I don't want any of this AI-generated content. The more I see it, the less I want it.

AI

Hypernormalization

Today I learned about the phrase Hypernormalization and I have never been happier. The term perfectly explains what's going on in the world with many things.

“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying.”

Then, in 2005, another Russian scholar, Alexei Yurchak, coined a term to describe that phenomenon: “Hypernormalization.”

More on Hypernormalization.

OpenAI and Hugging Face hacking incident

The newly released independent METR-Redwood report is an eye-opener regarding the OpenAI and Hugging Face hacking incidents.

AI

Peppermint oil

Taking peppermint oil can lower your blood pressure.

Peppermint oil may have an unexpected benefit for people with mildly high blood pressure. Adults who took a small dose twice daily for 20 days saw their systolic blood pressure fall by an average of 8.5 mmHg, while a placebo group showed little change. Researchers say the inexpensive oil could eventually provide a simple additional option for managing elevated blood pressure.

Peppermint Oil Lowers Blood Pressure

Peppermint oil

Tiësto - Live from Atomium Brussels

Incredible set!

Tiësto, Music

Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results automatically

Yes! Now I can remove all those paid sites from my blocked domain list.

1787308096-146018-image

Kagi, search

Phishing attackers can't even

The lack of effor in this phishing email is sad. Look at the [EMail] and [EMail_DomainPart] placeholders.

Screenshot_20260821_082127

Phishing

Surfing the web like it's 1999

I might be in the minority here, but I still surf the web like it's 1999. But instead of a start page or a portal or bookmarks, I have an RSS reader with about 2,000+ feeds set as my new tab in Firefox. This is my start page and web portal, if you will. If I do need to search for something, it's via Kagi. I also have a collection of bookmarks organized by folders as well. In case I need something random, I'll head over to Kagi's Small Web, wibly and ooh.directory. If I need some more content, I'll head over to theindex.fyi.

Blog directories, Indie web

Stars Reach

Stars Reach is available on Steam in early access. I usually don't do preorders or play early access games, but I was really looking forward to Stars Reach. Unfortunately, this early access launch is not good. I don't personally think this is ready for early access. Not in the current state, so many issues. I think this is an early alpha at best; it's barely playable currently.

Stars Reach, MMORPG, Games

AI Scam Calls

AI

AI reductions

IA reductions are a real thing now. At an organization where my friend works, they are moving everyone off the $100 a month plan to the $20. The only teams that will remain with the $100/$200 are the Dev/OPs. This reduction will affect over 1,000 users.

AI

AI crawlers and calendars

I was helping out a friend whose site got hit with a huge spike in traffic. This is a portfolio site. So no blog or anything like that. The entire site is six pages and static coded via Bootstrap. So why the 10,000x spike in traffic? It turns out the AI crawlers got stuck on his booking calendar in an endless loop. Once we blocked the AI crawlers, things returned to normal.

AI

Lulu Lewis - Destroy All Data

Data Centers

Someone added “Data Center” as a disaster option to this SimCity 2000 game screenshot.

data-center-disaster_7861172724291630

Data center

Wealth tax

I wonder how much Sergey Brin would have to pay in tax if the wealth tax was passed?

tax

Tax

Windows 11 and RAM

I like to think that Microsoft is aware that there is a memory shortage and RAM prices are at an all-time high. But then I read this: Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM, and then this: Microsoft Is Quietly Deleting 32 GB RAM Recommendation for Windows 11 and wonder if Microsoft is AI coding the weather application or are the engineers just incompetent.

Windows, RAM

Massively multiplayer online games played

How many MMO's have you played? According to the timeline here are the ones I played in chronological order, followed by my personal ratings.

The only new upcoming MMOs I am looking forward to are Guild Wars 3 and Stars Reach.

  1. 1996 - Dark Sun Online - 2/5
  2. 1997 - Ultima Online - 4/5
  3. 1999 - EverQuest - 5/5
  4. 2001 - Dark Age of Camelot - 4/5
  5. 2003 - EVE Online - 3/5
  6. 2003 - Planetside - 4/5
  7. 2003 - Star Wars Galaxies - 5/5
  8. 2003 - Lineage II - 2/5
  9. 2004 - City of Heroes - 3/5
  10. 2004 - World of Warcraft - 5/5
  11. 2004 - EverQuest 2 - 4/5
  12. 2005 - Guild Wars - 4/5
  13. 2006 - Dungeons & Dragons Online - 3/5
  14. 2007 - Vanguard - 3/5
  15. 2007 - Lord of the Rings Online - 4/5
  16. 2008 - Age of Conan - 2/5
  17. 2008 - Warhammer Online - 3/5
  18. 2009 - Aion - 2/5
  19. 2010 - Star Trek Online - 3/5
  20. 2010 - Final Fantasy XIV - 5/5
  21. 2011 - RIFT - 3/5
  22. 2011 - Allods Online - 2/5
  23. 2011 - Star Wars: The Old Republic - 5/5
  24. 2012 - TERA - 3/5
  25. 2012 - The Secret World - 3/5
  26. 2012 - Guild Wars 2 - 5/5
  27. 2012 - PlanetSide 2 - 4/5
  28. 2013 - Neverwinter - 3/5
  29. 2014 - The Elder Scrolls Online - 5/5
  30. 2014 - WildStat - 4/5
  31. 2016 - Black Desert - 3/5
  32. 2017 - Albion Online - 2/5
  33. 2019 - World of Warcraft Classic - 5/5
  34. 2021 - New World - 4/5
  35. 2022 - Diablo Immortal - 3/5
  36. 2023 - Diablo IV - 4/5
  37. 2026 - Project Gorgon - 4/5
  38. 2026 - EverQuest Legends - 4/5

MMO, Games