Zak Smith
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Thoughts on software engineering, game development, and the tools I use.

Running production services on a free Oracle VM

How I host a small fleet of Docker services behind Caddy on Oracle Cloud's always-free tier, and what I learned locking it down.

April 25, 2026

Skepticism as a Service

Software engineering has always been about adopting new tech while keeping your bullshit detector on. AI is no different.

March 31, 2026

Google Genie and the Death of Game Engines

Everyone said world models would kill Unity overnight. The insider selling said something else entirely.

February 4, 2026

Building MappedMoment: From Idea to Open Source Maps

How I discovered OpenFreeMap and MapLibre, and built a custom map art platform from scratch.

January 3, 2026

UEFN and Verse: What Epic is actually building

Epic quietly turned Fortnite Creative into a real game development platform. After shipping a project in UEFN, here is what I think about where this is headed.

June 1, 2024

Why Tailwind clicked for me after years of fighting CSS

I thought utility classes in HTML were an abomination. Then I actually tried shipping something with Tailwind and couldn't go back.

September 5, 2022
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