Apple Mail has long been the ugly duckling of email clients. While the app technically works, it’s pretty barebones in terms of functionality. Despite the latest iOS 18 beta not addressing all of its shortcomings, it does make using the client more desirable on iPhone 15 Pro models. With iOS 18.1, the iPhone maker has baked Apple Intelligence into the Mail app, enabling AI summaries, priority detection, and more. Some of these features have also made it to the Messages app, such as the newly-added smart replies. Sure, Apple Mail still has a long way to go, but boy, do these AI enhancements make my everyday life easier and give Google’s Gmail a run for its money.

It all starts before you even launch the app

What I love about Apple Intelligence on iOS 18.1 beta 1 is that it works from the moment you receive an email or text. The technology analyzes the notifications’ content to display summaries on the lock screen. So, instead of previewing the first two lines of an email, the notification now shows a handier, AI-generated summary of the entire message. We’ve gone from “Hi, I hope this email finds you well” to “The sender is inquiring about your availability tomorrow” in the notification center. It’s pretty neat if you ask me.

An unannounced Helldivers 2 stratagem has leaked online, seemingly by a Sony email.

The unforced error – which came via an official marketing email sent out to Helldivers – proudly introduces the Airburst Rocket Launcher players unlocked after they successfully liberated Penta during Operation Legitimate Undertaking.

There's just one problem; the weapon in the image that accompanies the email isn't the Airburst… or, indeed, any weapon currently in the game. It's a gun no Helldiver has seen before.

Read more

Apple just announced a useful upgrade to the Apple Mail app in the WWDC stream. Your inbox will now be organized into categories, such as promotions, newsletters, and transactions. The idea is to separate those routine emails that you don’t want to delete or junk from your main inbox feed.

This new approach looks a lot like the way Gmail has done things for a while, with the categories also being very similar. Primary is where personal and time-sensitive emails live, Transactions are where confirmations and receipts go, Updates are for news and social notifications, and Promotions are for marketing emails and coupons.

Seemingly overnight, artificial intelligence went from a far-future science fiction technology to a real thing that is supposedly on the verge of ushering in utopia and/or killing the human race. Lost in the shuffle of this discourse is serious discussion of what AI technology can actually do and what real-world effects it is having.

Explaining actual AI products is the core of Timothy B. Lee's excellent Substack newsletter Understanding AI. Lee, a journalist (and occasional Reason contributor), refreshingly covers AI like a normal newsworthy subject. His articles include a nice range of original reporting on the companies and nonprofits producing AI, service journalism on how ChatGPT compares to Gemini, even-handed analysis of the legal and regulatory questions AI has inevitably provoked, and explainer articles on what even is a large language model.

The biggest takeaway is that, for all the boosterism and doomerism, AI will be a normal-ish technology that will have normal-ish impacts on the world. One of Lee's best entries is a deep dive into how AI has affected one of the industries where it already predominates: language translation. Turns out that prices for translation have fallen and companies consume more translation services. That's an unambiguous win for consumers.

The labor effects are more mixed. Some translators are specializing in more complex legal and medical translations the machines can't quite nail (and where mistakes create huge liabilities). Nonspecialized translators are either using AI to boost their productivity or dropping out of the industry.

Love AI or hate it, falling prices, rising consumption, and increased specialization sounds like the normal process of technological advancement under free-ish markets.

The post Review: <i>Understanding AI</i> Helps Separate the Sci From the Fi appeared first on Reason.com.

The Site

WordPress.com always wants to make sure I have something to write about in this section every month.  This time around I am back on about email subscriptions.

Last month I was complaining that they were only getting delievered to my inbox every other day.  This month… that stopped completely.  No email delivered with my posts any day of the week.  This coincided with WP.com removing a bunch of the email section of the subscription UI they put in a while back that looked like they wanted to take on Substack.  They have clearly changed their mind or are covering up some failure.

Anyway, if you are still getting email updates from here, WP.com clearly thinks you are special.

Also mentioned last month was the RSS feed issue, where WP.com is updating the feed only every few days.  I see this from other sites that use WP as their host, like Game Developer.  I will see nothing in Feedly for three or four days from them, then suddenly there will be 35 posts.

If that sort of burst behavior doesn’t bother you, carry on.  If it does, you can use the Feedburner RSS feed, though recommending a Google solution to a problem feels like herasy these days.  How have they not shut down Feedburner yet?  It must drive ad revenue in some way.

WP.com has also gotten extremely finicky about being able to leave comments without having a WP.com account.  It seems that you either need to be completely logged in or be willing to leave a full anonymous comment, with no in between.  Thanks a lot WP.

Finally, the wierd direct source bursts of traffic continued this month, though it has grown more erratic and seems to be tapering off somewhat.

The Direct traffic line so far this year

Basically, if it wasn’t there I would be getting about 500 page views a day, 300 of which would be from Google search.  But with that direct traffic the daily views run between 550 and 1,300.  That makes direct traffic the top source so far this year.

Traffic sources so far in 2024

I don’t know what it means, but it does seem to be driving ad revenue.  Go money.

Also, I strongly recommend you use Ad Block when visiting here.  I want the bots to pay my hosting, not you.  I currently use uBlock Origin for my own ad blocking needs.

One Year Ago

We were in Vegas during the Pro Bowl, those that was pretty much on accident.  We didn’t go see it or anything.

Meta was trying to get a younger demographic into Horizon Worlds.  I was also still on Twitter, though the alternatives were ramping up.

At Enad Global 7, the Q4 2022 financials celebrated the start of the My Singing Monsters hype bubble.

I was going on about some of the barriers in the way of going back to play old MMORPGs.  I was also pondering what Twitch drops do for games.

Activision Blizzard Q4 2022 financials were out and, while Dragonflight did well, it clearly did not break any records.   They were also trying to drum up pre-sales for Diablo IV.  Would that mean that season 28 would be the last season for Diablo III?  Probably.  Meanwhile, Mike Ybarra was pleading poverty or some absolute BS.

I was already on about the whole Cataclysm Classic question.  It would not be announced until BlizzCon later in the year.  I was also wondering when the peak era for crafting was in WoW.

In Wrath Classic we were working on the Lunar Festival achievements, since those were now available.  We all achieved the title of The Elder.  I was also going pretty heavy on the Wrath Classic dailies.  We ran off and did Violet Hold and Gundrak.

CCP was finally putting their Microsoft Excel plugin in to beta testing.  There was also the January 2023 MER to go over and a PLEX for Good campaign for earthquake relief in Turkey which raised $26K.

I did a Friday Bullet Points post about EVE Online that covered the Photon UI, pink SKINs, Imperium War Bonds, and the company financials.  I also started looking at ship destruction in New Eden and I hit 260 million skill points on my main.

At the CSM17 winter summit there was a dubious proposal about improving PvE.

Actually in game, the collapse of the FI.RE coalition ended up with the South East Agreement in null sec.

I had something about the postcards in Pokemon Go.  What are they ever there for?

And WordPress.com changed out the WordPress app out for the JetPack app, though aside from a color change, I couldn’t tell you why.

Five Years Ago

Epic Games had announced their digital storefront the previous December (2019), but we were finally getting a deeper look at their strategy for taking on Steam.  One word: Exclusives.  (Some of which were already up for sale on Steam, then withdrawn, making as many people angry as happy.)

Over at Activision-Blizzard they announced record annual revenues for 2018, then laid off 8% of their staff.  I suppose, in hindsight, they predicted 2019 correctly, but laying people off while execs get bonuses is never a good look.

Daybreak gave us some details about their planned special rules EverQuest II PvP server.  On the same front, the plans for the EverQuest anniversary servers sounded a bit muddled.  They gave us a revised plan for all servers before the month was out.

Meanwhile, the PlanetSide Arena launch, pushed back to March, was pushed out again, this time until “summer,” with a planned simultaneous Playstation 4 launch given as a reason.

I also wondered what EverQuest III should even look like, were it a possibility.  I doubt that it is, but it is fun to speculate.

All of that aside, with the approach of the EverQuest 20th anniversary I started logging in to play a bit with a fresh character.  I started on Vox, a standard rules server, with an eye on the tutorial.  I ran through the revolt in Glooming Deep.

On the LOTRO Legendary server I was wrapping up in Eriador.  It was time to start considering Moria.

I was also rolling back into WoW and Battle for Azeroth for a bit.  It was a change up from LOTRO.

On the EVE Online front it was announced there would be no alliance tournament for 2019.  The February update brought us some fixes and the Guardians Gala event.  CCP was also talking about letting people buy skills straight from the character sheet.  There was also talk of a new launcher coming.

I wrote something about the time zones of New Eden, it being a world spanning, 24 hour game.

Burn Jita was back again, kicking off with explosions as usual.

I wrote a bit about the city of Waterdeep, the heart of TorilMUD.

Twitch offered me a free trial in Final Fantasy XIV, but I couldn’t get it to work.

I was on about there being no good expansions again.

And there was word of a smaller Switch, the end of the Wii Shop Channel, eports was stomping its feet and demanding to be taken seriously, and the Olympics rejecting esports all wrapped up in a Friday bullet points post.

Ten Years Ago

A lot of people got their panties in a twist about Steam tags.  It was the literal end of civilization as we knew it… for about 30 minutes.

EA handed over the running of Camelot Unchained and Ultima Online to Broadsword.

I spent some time with Warcraft III attempting to discover the pre-history of WoW.

There was Diablo III version 2.0, and the changes looked promising.

On the World of Warcraft front, we were still talking about Warlords of Draenor.  Pre-orders were announced an there was a rumor that the expansion would cost $60, which seemed a bit steep.  Also, insta-90s looked to be coming as a cash shop item.  Would all of that stem the tide on subscription decline?

Meanwhile, I finished the last of the LFR raids, witnessing the downfall of Garrosh Hellscream.  For all of the complaints about LFR, I enjoyed my raid tourism.  The instance group did Grim Batol, then made the jump to Pandaria before returning with slightly better equipment for Heroic Deadmines.

I was wondering why PvP seemed to be a requirement for all MMOs.

I got into The Edler Scrolls Online beta and declared it Skyrim-like enough for me, then never played it again.

Brad McQuaid’s Pantheon: Further Falling of the Fallen Kickstarter campaign was winding down, doomed to failure.  There was talk about what would happen next.  Plan B anybody?

I ran another EVE Online screen shot contest to give away some items from the Second Decade Collector’s Edition which I scored for free… after having bought it for myself.  And then there was the monument and drone assist and campaign medals and the repercussions of B-R5RB to talk about.

I wondered what was going to happen with people being given free reign in Landmark.

And, finally, it was the end for Flappy Bird.  I grabbed that from GameIndustry.biz and their look back to February 2014.

Fifteen Years Ago

My 8800GT video card died.  That was the second one to go.

I had been looking at my dis-used GAX Online account and wondered what gamer social networking needed to be viable.  Since then, GAX Online has shut down.

PLEX showed up in EVE Online fifteen years ago.  It doesn’t seem like it has been around for that long.  And then there was the whole Goonswarm disbandment of Band of Brothers, and act that effectively ended the Great War, and which made the BBC news.  This led to talk of how much control players should have over their destiny.

In game I got the mining foreman mindlink as a storyline mission drop, I upgraded to a Raven Navy Isssue, and finally bought the freighter for which I had been training, and got some ships blown up in the Worlds Collide mission… again. There was EVE Vegas, which was just a player run meet up at that point.

I was still active in Lord of the Rings Online, playing characters on the Nimrodel server.  Looking for a class on which to affix the Reynaldo Fabulous name, I put up a poll on the subject.  While Minstrel won the poll, Reynaldo ended up being a hunter with a fabulous hat.  And when I wasn’t fooling around with alts, I was leveling up my captain who made it all the way to Rivendell at one point.

While over in Azeroth, it was revealed that my mom plays WoW.  I wondered at how active Westfall seems to be most of the time.  But the answer to that seems to be the Deadmines, which I ran my mom and daughter through. (No dungeon finder back then!)  There was a little pet drama with my daughter who wanted a raptor.  I also managed my first exalted status with a faction in WoW, the Kalu’ak in Northrend.  I wanted that fishing pole.

On the Wii, we had Wii Music, which was crap, and LEGO Batman, which suffered a bit from being yet another variation in the successful LEGO video game franchise.

And then there was the usual blog war shenanigans as somebody was still looking to blame WoW and WoW players for Warhammer Online’s failure to meets its subscriber goals.  I think we’re all over that now, right?  Warhammer did what it did on its own faults and merits in a market that was well known before they shipped.

And Darkfall finally launched and began its short life as… whatever it was.  I didn’t play it.

Twenty Years Ago

The aptly named Gates of Discord expansion for EverQuest launched.  While Smed called its bug-ridden launch “SOE’s worst mistake in five years” it did see the game to its subscription peak of 550K and introduced instancing as the default dungeon mode, something WoW would make a genre default soon enough.

The creator of the original Castle Wolfenstein game from 1981, Silas Warner,  passed away at the age of 54.  I played that game a lot back on my Apple II.  Also, that seems young now.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, arguably one of the best entries in the Civilization series, ships.  My only nit-pick is that it ran full screen at pre-set resolutions so, unlike its predecessor Civilization II, if you play it today it either has to be in a small window or distorted full screen on your likely much-bigger-than-1999 monitor.

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance also launched, one of the better Star Wars titles.  But Star Wars was never plagued by bad titles the way Star Trek has been over the years

Most Viewed Posts in February

1. Just a Lockpicking Minute…
2. Twitter and the Unleashing of the Great Blue Hope
3. The New System Purge of Video Games
4. Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go
5. Bonemass and Mountain Fever in Valheim
6. Stock Options and the IPO
7. Moving in to a New Computer Once More
8. Sailing into a Lightly Modded Valheim
9. EverQuest Starting Points – What Can I Even Say About Qeynos?
10. Quote of the Day – The Fourth A stands for… what now?
11. Quote of the Day – But Think of the Shareholder Value!
12. A Look into January 2024 Destruction in EVE Online

Once again, the direct traffic surge favored recent posts, so there were only two carry overs from last month.  The Lucky Eggs post is a Google search favorite, which is what keeps it on the list.

Search Terms of the Month

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[I guess I keep this going by posting it]

“aveo-enterprise-agreement”
[Oh now what is this?]

battle of m2-xfe titans lost by corporation
[How about by alliance? I can do by alliance]

poe daily game like wordle
[There are many…]

“civ5-research-agreement-worth-it”
[Still yes…]

gay game
[Not my bag, but don’t let me stop you…]

gay game pc
[Still not much help here]

game java sex gay
[Does being in Java change anything?]

геи игры
[Saying it in Russian doesn’t go anywhere either]

Game Time from ManicTime

The numbers this month pretty much confirm what I probably could have told you based on my gut; I spent a lot of time playing Valheim, to the exclusion of other titles.

• Valheim – 89.63%
• EVE Online – 5.08%
• EverQuest – 3.40%
• Forza Horizon 4 – 1.13%
• Wreckfest – 0.50%
• WoW Classic – 0.26%

The biggest change was WoW Classic, which had been topping the list for months.  I clearly took a month off from Azeroth.

EVE Online

I did get in and go on a few fleets this past month.  I did not spend a lot of time playing in New Eden, but I kept my PI farm going.  That is my sole source of revenue these days, though with the demand for mechanical parts, which among other things are required for fuel blocks, PI is worth about a billion ISK a month to me.  That and SRP is what keeps me solvent.

EverQuest

I am not so much playing EverQuest as touring.  I have been and out for my posting series for the 25th anniversary.  A nostalgia tour of my own.  The visuals stimulate memories which I then take and turn into rambling, semi-coherent posts.  The touring will continue until my writing style improves… or I get bored… or we get past the anniversaries.  The $1,500 Fippy Fest 2024 in-person ticket price certainly did not endear me to Darkpaw.

Pokemon Go

My wife and I are very close to hitting level 45… or we would be if we had finished up that last task.  You have to defeat 50 Team Rocket Go bosses to get to 45, and I stand at 25 defeated and my wife at 20.  We still have some remedial work to do on that front.  It could take a bit.  But at least we can still earn xp towards level 46 while we do it.

• Level: 44 (75% of the way to 45 in xp, 3 of 4 level tasks complete)
• Pokedex status: 818 (+3) caught, 832 (+3) seen
• Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
• Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
• Current buddy: Arctibax

Valheim

Whether or not Valheim was the right choice, it was the choice I jumped into in February.  I have pretty much taked a break from WoW all month to play Valheim, where there is always something to do.  We are currently in the mountains mining silver and search for the next boss.  I’ve geared up enough that I have ventured into the plains a few times and lived to tell the tale.  The mistlands await and maybe the Ashlands will be done before we burn out… so to speak.

WoW Classic

A very quiet month.  I did spend a little time in Wrath Classic working on my rogue, who is up to level 72 now.  Season of Discovery hasn’t held much interest for me since we got past Westfall.  That is kind part of the nostalgia barrier I guess.  Happy memories of Westfall and a bit after that.

Zwift

I managed to get on the bike every weekend this month.  Color that a win.  Meanwhile, the lower level curve meant I racked up three more undeserved levels.  Still no glowing neon tire sets available to me yet.

• Level – 21 (+2)
• Distanced cycled – 1,879 miles (+59 miles)
• Elevation climbed – 69,829 (+1,909 feet)
  
• Calories burned – 57,294 (+1,609)

Coming Up

Apparently one aspect of getting old is constantly asking things like “Is it March already? How did that happen?” aloud to your aging friends and family, who all declare their mystification as well.

So yeah, March.

That means that we will hit the EverQuest 25th anniversary on the 16th.  Expect a post.  Also, I will likely carry on with my own series of starting points posts.  A few more zones and then a couple about getting places.  I will have to run from Qeynos to Freeport.

You can expect some more Valheim I am sure.  Not done there yet.  At least not until we get to the mistlands… though reading up on that, things will get more complicated there.  Something about magic and a mana-like player resource.  We’ll see.  We still have the mountains to finish and the plains to conquor.

I will have to cast an eye towards WoW at some point.  Things are going on.  Cataclysm Classic looms.  Descisions will need to be made.

And then whatever news the wind might bring I suppose. I guess we already know that Microsoft is laying more people off in March.  We’ll have to see who else carries on with this trend.

The Site

WordPress.com always wants to make sure I have something to write about in this section every month.  This time around I am back on about email subscriptions.

Last month I was complaining that they were only getting delievered to my inbox every other day.  This month… that stopped completely.  No email delivered with my posts any day of the week.  This coincided with WP.com removing a bunch of the email section of the subscription UI they put in a while back that looked like they wanted to take on Substack.  They have clearly changed their mind or are covering up some failure.

Anyway, if you are still getting email updates from here, WP.com clearly thinks you are special.

Also mentioned last month was the RSS feed issue, where WP.com is updating the feed only every few days.  I see this from other sites that use WP as their host, like Game Developer.  I will see nothing in Feedly for three or four days from them, then suddenly there will be 35 posts.

If that sort of burst behavior doesn’t bother you, carry on.  If it does, you can use the Feedburner RSS feed, though recommending a Google solution to a problem feels like herasy these days.  How have they not shut down Feedburner yet?  It must drive ad revenue in some way.

WP.com has also gotten extremely finicky about being able to leave comments without having a WP.com account.  It seems that you either need to be completely logged in or be willing to leave a full anonymous comment, with no in between.  Thanks a lot WP.

Finally, the wierd direct source bursts of traffic continued this month, though it has grown more erratic and seems to be tapering off somewhat.

The Direct traffic line so far this year

Basically, if it wasn’t there I would be getting about 500 page views a day, 300 of which would be from Google search.  But with that direct traffic the daily views run between 550 and 1,300.  That makes direct traffic the top source so far this year.

Traffic sources so far in 2024

I don’t know what it means, but it does seem to be driving ad revenue.  Go money.

Also, I strongly recommend you use Ad Block when visiting here.  I want the bots to pay my hosting, not you.  I currently use uBlock Origin for my own ad blocking needs.

One Year Ago

We were in Vegas during the Pro Bowl, those that was pretty much on accident.  We didn’t go see it or anything.

Meta was trying to get a younger demographic into Horizon Worlds.  I was also still on Twitter, though the alternatives were ramping up.

At Enad Global 7, the Q4 2022 financials celebrated the start of the My Singing Monsters hype bubble.

I was going on about some of the barriers in the way of going back to play old MMORPGs.  I was also pondering what Twitch drops do for games.

Activision Blizzard Q4 2022 financials were out and, while Dragonflight did well, it clearly did not break any records.   They were also trying to drum up pre-sales for Diablo IV.  Would that mean that season 28 would be the last season for Diablo III?  Probably.  Meanwhile, Mike Ybarra was pleading poverty or some absolute BS.

I was already on about the whole Cataclysm Classic question.  It would not be announced until BlizzCon later in the year.  I was also wondering when the peak era for crafting was in WoW.

In Wrath Classic we were working on the Lunar Festival achievements, since those were now available.  We all achieved the title of The Elder.  I was also going pretty heavy on the Wrath Classic dailies.  We ran off and did Violet Hold and Gundrak.

CCP was finally putting their Microsoft Excel plugin in to beta testing.  There was also the January 2023 MER to go over and a PLEX for Good campaign for earthquake relief in Turkey which raised $26K.

I did a Friday Bullet Points post about EVE Online that covered the Photon UI, pink SKINs, Imperium War Bonds, and the company financials.  I also started looking at ship destruction in New Eden and I hit 260 million skill points on my main.

At the CSM17 winter summit there was a dubious proposal about improving PvE.

Actually in game, the collapse of the FI.RE coalition ended up with the South East Agreement in null sec.

I had something about the postcards in Pokemon Go.  What are they ever there for?

And WordPress.com changed out the WordPress app out for the JetPack app, though aside from a color change, I couldn’t tell you why.

Five Years Ago

Epic Games had announced their digital storefront the previous December (2019), but we were finally getting a deeper look at their strategy for taking on Steam.  One word: Exclusives.  (Some of which were already up for sale on Steam, then withdrawn, making as many people angry as happy.)

Over at Activision-Blizzard they announced record annual revenues for 2018, then laid off 8% of their staff.  I suppose, in hindsight, they predicted 2019 correctly, but laying people off while execs get bonuses is never a good look.

Daybreak gave us some details about their planned special rules EverQuest II PvP server.  On the same front, the plans for the EverQuest anniversary servers sounded a bit muddled.  They gave us a revised plan for all servers before the month was out.

Meanwhile, the PlanetSide Arena launch, pushed back to March, was pushed out again, this time until “summer,” with a planned simultaneous Playstation 4 launch given as a reason.

I also wondered what EverQuest III should even look like, were it a possibility.  I doubt that it is, but it is fun to speculate.

All of that aside, with the approach of the EverQuest 20th anniversary I started logging in to play a bit with a fresh character.  I started on Vox, a standard rules server, with an eye on the tutorial.  I ran through the revolt in Glooming Deep.

On the LOTRO Legendary server I was wrapping up in Eriador.  It was time to start considering Moria.

I was also rolling back into WoW and Battle for Azeroth for a bit.  It was a change up from LOTRO.

On the EVE Online front it was announced there would be no alliance tournament for 2019.  The February update brought us some fixes and the Guardians Gala event.  CCP was also talking about letting people buy skills straight from the character sheet.  There was also talk of a new launcher coming.

I wrote something about the time zones of New Eden, it being a world spanning, 24 hour game.

Burn Jita was back again, kicking off with explosions as usual.

I wrote a bit about the city of Waterdeep, the heart of TorilMUD.

Twitch offered me a free trial in Final Fantasy XIV, but I couldn’t get it to work.

I was on about there being no good expansions again.

And there was word of a smaller Switch, the end of the Wii Shop Channel, eports was stomping its feet and demanding to be taken seriously, and the Olympics rejecting esports all wrapped up in a Friday bullet points post.

Ten Years Ago

A lot of people got their panties in a twist about Steam tags.  It was the literal end of civilization as we knew it… for about 30 minutes.

EA handed over the running of Camelot Unchained and Ultima Online to Broadsword.

I spent some time with Warcraft III attempting to discover the pre-history of WoW.

There was Diablo III version 2.0, and the changes looked promising.

On the World of Warcraft front, we were still talking about Warlords of Draenor.  Pre-orders were announced an there was a rumor that the expansion would cost $60, which seemed a bit steep.  Also, insta-90s looked to be coming as a cash shop item.  Would all of that stem the tide on subscription decline?

Meanwhile, I finished the last of the LFR raids, witnessing the downfall of Garrosh Hellscream.  For all of the complaints about LFR, I enjoyed my raid tourism.  The instance group did Grim Batol, then made the jump to Pandaria before returning with slightly better equipment for Heroic Deadmines.

I was wondering why PvP seemed to be a requirement for all MMOs.

I got into The Edler Scrolls Online beta and declared it Skyrim-like enough for me, then never played it again.

Brad McQuaid’s Pantheon: Further Falling of the Fallen Kickstarter campaign was winding down, doomed to failure.  There was talk about what would happen next.  Plan B anybody?

I ran another EVE Online screen shot contest to give away some items from the Second Decade Collector’s Edition which I scored for free… after having bought it for myself.  And then there was the monument and drone assist and campaign medals and the repercussions of B-R5RB to talk about.

I wondered what was going to happen with people being given free reign in Landmark.

And, finally, it was the end for Flappy Bird.  I grabbed that from GameIndustry.biz and their look back to February 2014.

Fifteen Years Ago

My 8800GT video card died.  That was the second one to go.

I had been looking at my dis-used GAX Online account and wondered what gamer social networking needed to be viable.  Since then, GAX Online has shut down.

PLEX showed up in EVE Online fifteen years ago.  It doesn’t seem like it has been around for that long.  And then there was the whole Goonswarm disbandment of Band of Brothers, and act that effectively ended the Great War, and which made the BBC news.  This led to talk of how much control players should have over their destiny.

In game I got the mining foreman mindlink as a storyline mission drop, I upgraded to a Raven Navy Isssue, and finally bought the freighter for which I had been training, and got some ships blown up in the Worlds Collide mission… again. There was EVE Vegas, which was just a player run meet up at that point.

I was still active in Lord of the Rings Online, playing characters on the Nimrodel server.  Looking for a class on which to affix the Reynaldo Fabulous name, I put up a poll on the subject.  While Minstrel won the poll, Reynaldo ended up being a hunter with a fabulous hat.  And when I wasn’t fooling around with alts, I was leveling up my captain who made it all the way to Rivendell at one point.

While over in Azeroth, it was revealed that my mom plays WoW.  I wondered at how active Westfall seems to be most of the time.  But the answer to that seems to be the Deadmines, which I ran my mom and daughter through. (No dungeon finder back then!)  There was a little pet drama with my daughter who wanted a raptor.  I also managed my first exalted status with a faction in WoW, the Kalu’ak in Northrend.  I wanted that fishing pole.

On the Wii, we had Wii Music, which was crap, and LEGO Batman, which suffered a bit from being yet another variation in the successful LEGO video game franchise.

And then there was the usual blog war shenanigans as somebody was still looking to blame WoW and WoW players for Warhammer Online’s failure to meets its subscriber goals.  I think we’re all over that now, right?  Warhammer did what it did on its own faults and merits in a market that was well known before they shipped.

And Darkfall finally launched and began its short life as… whatever it was.  I didn’t play it.

Twenty Years Ago

The aptly named Gates of Discord expansion for EverQuest launched.  While Smed called its bug-ridden launch “SOE’s worst mistake in five years” it did see the game to its subscription peak of 550K and introduced instancing as the default dungeon mode, something WoW would make a genre default soon enough.

The creator of the original Castle Wolfenstein game from 1981, Silas Warner,  passed away at the age of 54.  I played that game a lot back on my Apple II.  Also, that seems young now.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, arguably one of the best entries in the Civilization series, ships.  My only nit-pick is that it ran full screen at pre-set resolutions so, unlike its predecessor Civilization II, if you play it today it either has to be in a small window or distorted full screen on your likely much-bigger-than-1999 monitor.

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance also launched, one of the better Star Wars titles.  But Star Wars was never plagued by bad titles the way Star Trek has been over the years

Most Viewed Posts in February

1. Just a Lockpicking Minute…
2. Twitter and the Unleashing of the Great Blue Hope
3. The New System Purge of Video Games
4. Timing those Lucky Eggs for Friendship Milestones in Pokemon Go
5. Bonemass and Mountain Fever in Valheim
6. Stock Options and the IPO
7. Moving in to a New Computer Once More
8. Sailing into a Lightly Modded Valheim
9. EverQuest Starting Points – What Can I Even Say About Qeynos?
10. Quote of the Day – The Fourth A stands for… what now?
11. Quote of the Day – But Think of the Shareholder Value!
12. A Look into January 2024 Destruction in EVE Online

Once again, the direct traffic surge favored recent posts, so there were only two carry overs from last month.  The Lucky Eggs post is a Google search favorite, which is what keeps it on the list.

Search Terms of the Month

“wagering-agreement-meaning-in-nepali”
[I guess I keep this going by posting it]

“aveo-enterprise-agreement”
[Oh now what is this?]

battle of m2-xfe titans lost by corporation
[How about by alliance? I can do by alliance]

poe daily game like wordle
[There are many…]

“civ5-research-agreement-worth-it”
[Still yes…]

gay game
[Not my bag, but don’t let me stop you…]

gay game pc
[Still not much help here]

game java sex gay
[Does being in Java change anything?]

геи игры
[Saying it in Russian doesn’t go anywhere either]

Game Time from ManicTime

The numbers this month pretty much confirm what I probably could have told you based on my gut; I spent a lot of time playing Valheim, to the exclusion of other titles.

• Valheim – 89.63%
• EVE Online – 5.08%
• EverQuest – 3.40%
• Forza Horizon 4 – 1.13%
• Wreckfest – 0.50%
• WoW Classic – 0.26%

The biggest change was WoW Classic, which had been topping the list for months.  I clearly took a month off from Azeroth.

EVE Online

I did get in and go on a few fleets this past month.  I did not spend a lot of time playing in New Eden, but I kept my PI farm going.  That is my sole source of revenue these days, though with the demand for mechanical parts, which among other things are required for fuel blocks, PI is worth about a billion ISK a month to me.  That and SRP is what keeps me solvent.

EverQuest

I am not so much playing EverQuest as touring.  I have been and out for my posting series for the 25th anniversary.  A nostalgia tour of my own.  The visuals stimulate memories which I then take and turn into rambling, semi-coherent posts.  The touring will continue until my writing style improves… or I get bored… or we get past the anniversaries.  The $1,500 Fippy Fest 2024 in-person ticket price certainly did not endear me to Darkpaw.

Pokemon Go

My wife and I are very close to hitting level 45… or we would be if we had finished up that last task.  You have to defeat 50 Team Rocket Go bosses to get to 45, and I stand at 25 defeated and my wife at 20.  We still have some remedial work to do on that front.  It could take a bit.  But at least we can still earn xp towards level 46 while we do it.

• Level: 44 (75% of the way to 45 in xp, 3 of 4 level tasks complete)
• Pokedex status: 818 (+3) caught, 832 (+3) seen
• Vivillon Evolutions obtained: 15 of 20
• Pokemon I want: Three specific Scatterbugs; Sandstorm, Icy Snow, and Meadow
• Current buddy: Arctibax

Valheim

Whether or not Valheim was the right choice, it was the choice I jumped into in February.  I have pretty much taked a break from WoW all month to play Valheim, where there is always something to do.  We are currently in the mountains mining silver and search for the next boss.  I’ve geared up enough that I have ventured into the plains a few times and lived to tell the tale.  The mistlands await and maybe the Ashlands will be done before we burn out… so to speak.

WoW Classic

A very quiet month.  I did spend a little time in Wrath Classic working on my rogue, who is up to level 72 now.  Season of Discovery hasn’t held much interest for me since we got past Westfall.  That is kind part of the nostalgia barrier I guess.  Happy memories of Westfall and a bit after that.

Zwift

I managed to get on the bike every weekend this month.  Color that a win.  Meanwhile, the lower level curve meant I racked up three more undeserved levels.  Still no glowing neon tire sets available to me yet.

• Level – 21 (+2)
• Distanced cycled – 1,879 miles (+59 miles)
• Elevation climbed – 69,829 (+1,909 feet)
  
• Calories burned – 57,294 (+1,609)

Coming Up

Apparently one aspect of getting old is constantly asking things like “Is it March already? How did that happen?” aloud to your aging friends and family, who all declare their mystification as well.

So yeah, March.

That means that we will hit the EverQuest 25th anniversary on the 16th.  Expect a post.  Also, I will likely carry on with my own series of starting points posts.  A few more zones and then a couple about getting places.  I will have to run from Qeynos to Freeport.

You can expect some more Valheim I am sure.  Not done there yet.  At least not until we get to the mistlands… though reading up on that, things will get more complicated there.  Something about magic and a mana-like player resource.  We’ll see.  We still have the mountains to finish and the plains to conquor.

I will have to cast an eye towards WoW at some point.  Things are going on.  Cataclysm Classic looms.  Descisions will need to be made.

And then whatever news the wind might bring I suppose. I guess we already know that Microsoft is laying more people off in March.  We’ll have to see who else carries on with this trend.

The government and private companies spy on us.

My former employee, Naomi Brockwell, has become a privacy specialist. She advises people on how to protect their privacy.

In my new video, she tells me I should delete most of my apps on my phone.

I push back. I like that Google knows where I am and can recommend a "restaurant near me." I like that my Shell app lets me buy gas (almost) without getting out of the car.

I don't like that government gathers information about me via my phone, but so far, so what?

Brockwell tells me I'm being dumb because I don't know which government will get that data in the future.

Looking at my phone, she tells me, "You've given location permission, microphone permission. You have so many apps!"

She says I should delete most of them, starting with Google Chrome.

"This is a terrible app for privacy. Google Chrome is notorious for collecting every single thing that they can about you…[and] broadcasting that to thousands of people…auctioning off your eyeballs. It's not just advertisers collecting this information. Thousands of shell companies, shady companies of data brokers also collect it and in turn sell it."

Instead of Google, she recommends using a browser called Brave. It's just as good, she says, but it doesn't collect all the information that Chrome does. It's slightly faster, too, because it doesn't slow down to load ads.

Then she says, "Delete Google Maps."

"But I need Google Maps!"

"You don't." She replies, "You have an iPhone. You have Apple Maps…. Apple is better when it comes to privacy…. Apple at least tries to anonymize your data."

Instead of Gmail, she recommends more private alternatives, like Proton Mail or Tuta.

"There are many others." She points out, "The difference between them is that every email going into your inbox for Gmail is being analyzed, scanned, it's being added to a profile about you."

But I don't care. Nothing beats Google's convenience. It remembers my credit cards and passwords. It fills things in automatically. I tried Brave browser but, after a week, switched back to Google. I like that Google knows me.

Brockwell says that I could import my credit cards and passwords to Brave and autofill there, too.

"I do understand the trade-off," she adds. "But email is so personal. It's private correspondence about everything in your life. I think we should use companies that don't read our emails. Using those services is also a vote for privacy, giving a market signal that we think privacy is important. That's the only way we're going to get more privacy."

She also warns that even apps like WhatsApp, which I thought were private, aren't as private as we think.

"WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and better than standard SMS. But it collects a lot of data about you and shares it with its parent company, Facebook. It's nowhere near as private as an app like Signal."

She notices my Shell app and suggests I delete it.

Opening the app's "privacy nutrition label," something I never bother reading, she points out that I give Shell "your purchase history, your contact information, physical address, email address, your name, phone number, your product interaction, purchase history, search history, user ID, product interaction, crash data, performance data, precise location, course location."

The list goes on. No wonder I don't read it.

She says, "The first step before downloading an app, take a look at their permissions, see what information they're collecting."

I'm just not going to bother.

But she did convince me to delete some apps, pointing out that if I want the app later, I can always reinstall it.

"We think that we need an app for every interaction we do with a business. We don't realize what we give up as a result."

"They already have all my data. What's the point of going private now?" I ask.

"Privacy comes down to choice," She replies. "It's not that I want everything that I do to remain private. It's that I deserve to have the right to selectively reveal to the world what I want them to see. Currently, that's not the world."

COPYRIGHT 2023 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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