Buy Fee Change Discussion

[Davidlifetime]

well my  math skill say bs.  If you buy large lindens twice a month before with the old transaction 1.49 per transaction. Now 9.99 per transaction for the same amount, How does that help.... Clearly everyone is not going to be happy.

[Alwin Alcott]

10 minutes ago, Davidlifetime said:

well my  math skill say bs.  If you buy large lindens twice a month before with the old transaction 1.49 per transaction. Now 9.99 per transaction for the same amount, How does that help.... Clearly everyone is not going to be happy.

thats when you don't change your habbits. And i said people have to adjust or bleed. Your choice.
In the case as you said you rent a region, your landlord can help ... make rent possible by paypal.

[Qie Niangao]

On 4/16/2021 at 12:18 PM, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I would like to see bitcoin die. The way it mines coin is a big energy hog and causes shortages of video cards competing with their bots. One of my cousin's recently stop playing a MMORPG game due to the publisher's intent to integrate crypto into it and putting miners within the game's client.

This post is from a week ago and I "Like"d it back then. The environmental catastrophe that is cryptocurrency is kinda tangential to this thread, but finally this morning I got 'round to reading this article by Elizabeth Kolbert: 

 

Quote

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, bitcoin-mining operations worldwide now use energy at the rate of nearly a hundred and twenty terawatt-hours per year. This is about the annual domestic electricity consumption of the entire nation of Sweden. According to the Web site Digiconomist, a single bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of power that the average American household consumes in a month, and is responsible for roughly a million times more carbon emissions than a single Visa transaction. 

Note that in the case of bitcoin's disastrously primitive proof-of-work algorithm, it's not only mining but each individual transaction that counts as environmental terrorism. Thanks a whole effing lot there, Elon.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

This post is from a week ago and I "Like"d it back then. The environmental catastrophe that is cryptocurrency is kinda tangential to this thread, but finally this morning I got 'round to reading this article by Elizabeth Kolbert: 

 

Note that in the case of bitcoin's disastrously primitive proof-of-work algorithm, it's not only mining but each individual transaction that counts as environmental terrorism. Thanks a whole effing lot there, Elon.

I've seen this said of NFTs as well.

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I've seen this said of NFTs as well.

Isn't anyone "working for L$" in-world, adding to the environmental costs, similarly? The harder they "work" (essentially "mining" L$), the more the servers etc. use CPU, generate heat, lead to our demise? 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

This post is from a week ago and I "Like"d it back then. The environmental catastrophe that is cryptocurrency is kinda tangential to this thread, but finally this morning I got 'round to reading this article by Elizabeth Kolbert: 

 

Note that in the case of bitcoin's disastrously primitive proof-of-work algorithm, it's not only mining but each individual transaction that counts as environmental terrorism. Thanks a whole effing lot there, Elon.

So, when we move to 2FA, skip the blockchain?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Isn't anyone "working for L$" in-world, adding to the environmental costs, similarly? The harder they "work" (essentially "mining" L$), the more the servers etc. use CPU, generate heat, lead to our demise? 

 

There is of course an environmental cost associated with anything we do in SL -- including posting to this forum.

But NFTs (and cryptocurrencies) are special cases, and particularly destructive, because of the way that they are produced and "authenticated." Because NFTs are mostly traded using cryptocurrencies, they are implicated also in the costs of producing those.

Quote

Proof of work acts as a sort of security system for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and bitcoin since there’s no third party, like a bank, that oversees transactions. To keep financial records secure, the system forces people to solve complex puzzles using energy-guzzling machines. Solving the puzzles lets users, or “miners,” add a new “block” of verified transactions to a decentralized ledger called the blockchain. The miner then gets new tokens or transaction fees as a reward. The process is incredibly energy inefficient on purpose. The idea is that using up inordinate amounts of electricity — and probably paying a lot for it — makes it less profitable for someone to muck up the ledger. As a result, Ethereum uses about as much electricity as the entire country of Libya.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/15/22328203/nft-cryptoart-ethereum-blockchain-climate-change

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Love Zhaoying]

40 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

There is of course an environmental cost associated with anything we do in SL -- including posting to this forum.

I thought we were all posting from generator-exercycles! ( Instead of powering it from the normal kittens' tears, of course. )

[Aida Lundquist]

Come on LindenLab. If I want to buy L$ and I get shown a fee of 1.49 and after I click buy it tells me the cost instead of $19.79 is $20.99 an dit tlels "Due to fluctuations on the exchange ...." this is NOT OK! Then you have to refresh the fee display! A difference of more than 1 Dollar isn't acceptable. I buy about 10-15 times per month and this difference would make a sum more than 15 Dollar! by the way you display the fee? No this isnt bearable!! Are you crazy? 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Aida Lundquist
The amount I had to pay was $20.99 instead of 20.00

[animats]

Once Ethereum converts to Proof of Stake the cost of "mining" will disappear. That was scheduled for January 2020. It still doesn't work.

Think of NFT's as no-copy items that can be be moved between grids. That could be made to work in Open Simulator. If a grid supported an NFT system, it would check against the blockchain to make sure you own the object and it's currently assigned to that grid before letting you rez it in world. You could even do this from inside an object, in LSL, without grid support, by having the object connect to a blockchain node and checking the blockchain entry for that item. If it's not yours, it deletes itself.

Assets for Open Simulator could be stored on Arweave instead of just grid-specific servers. Arweave is a distributed file store. You pay once, about US$10/GB, and store forever, with a complicated crypto coin scheme to keep it funded. 

All this is technically possible, even if not that great an idea.

This doesn't make copybotting impossible, but it makes it possible to identify original uniques. It's all about artificial scarcity. If you like gachas and spend money on them, you might like this. If you want to actually do stuff in a virtual world, not so much. There are about a dozen blockchain-based "metaverses" right now, and they're all awful as worlds to visit. Some, like Upland, don't even bother building a 3D world; they're just a map on which you can stick things.

The NFT thing is in the process of collapsing. At least one of the highly publicized transactions for an expensive NFT art object turned out to be a wash sale between cooperating parties. The only people really making money are those who can mass-produce name brand collectables. Sports teams and celebrities, basically.

I hope LL doesn't try to get into this. They're so slow moving that the fad will be over by the time they get their version running.

[sugarcanelollipop]

I know there has to be price increases but my goodness, this is starting to get ridiculous. I have been purchasing my lindens (the same amount of purchase for more or less )through the trade exchange for years and NEVER had an issue until the last 4 to 5 months. When it gave the a fill time, you received it at the fill time. Now with all these changes, I am seeing longer fill time lasting days to weeks. Now you increasing the surcharge for larger linden purchases. Yeah, I could just buy directly but I invest more than enough in this game and I want my monies worth but this is getting ridiculous.  Starting to feel like a money grab with no added incentives for older users. If you are going to charge us more money for purchasing lindens then give us our linden on the time you say or give us the option of refunding our money instead of holding it a Tilla account.

[Evah Baxton]

On 4/21/2021 at 9:32 PM, Solar Legion said:

They're glorified Chuck-E-Cheese tokens that the store decided they'd buy back from you.

So what you are saying is that Second Life is filing for bankruptcy and planning a reorganization like Chuck E Cheese did?? So Second Life IS dying ... I knew it. I told you all. For 10 years I've been saying it. I knew the day would come.

[Love Zhaoying]

37 minutes ago, Evah Baxton said:

So what you are saying is that Second Life is filing for bankruptcy and planning a reorganization like Chuck E Cheese did?? So Second Life IS dying ... I knew it. I told you all. For 10 years I've been saying it. I knew the day would come.

Is sarcasm?

 

[Solar Legion]

1 hour ago, Evah Baxton said:

So what you are saying is that Second Life is filing for bankruptcy and planning a reorganization like Chuck E Cheese did?? So Second Life IS dying ... I knew it. I told you all. For 10 years I've been saying it. I knew the day would come.

If we had them, you'd be getting a Groan or Facepalm reaction right now as opposed to this post lamenting the lack of said reactions.

[Lindal Kidd]

Hmpf. I'm pretty glad now I sold my land and cashed out.

[FairreLilette]

24 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Hmpf. I'm pretty glad now I sold my land and cashed out.

You've been missed, Lindal!  But, this does affect me as I only splurge on excess lindens when there are 50% off sales anyways.  One of the top brands in SL has been having 50% sales probably every two months at least.  But, guess what, because of this fee on the amount I buy I will actually save $1 dollar a month by using a limit order.  With the amount I usually buy per month and a limit order my lindens are less, so this fee encouraged me to try a limit order, and I actually save $1 dollar and the limit order took ten minutes to fill.  It's not all bad.  There are ways to reduce this fee.  

See...(my cheaper price I will pay by using LIMIT BUY is on the right)

Edited April 25, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Bleach Kimono]

On 4/15/2021 at 3:13 PM, Paul Hexem said:

Server hosting continues to get cheaper and cheaper. Why do we keep seeing increased fees and charges everywhere, but still no significant changes to land costs or tiers?

Especially something like Homesteads, which should be ultra cheap and easy to offer now that you've gone to AWS. 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Bleach Kimono

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Bleach Kimono said:

I 1st started when the game was new, you only had restarts and maintenance maybe 3x a year

Then you haven't been in SL since 2003/4 and you don't know about the constant grid crashes and the grid being down for hours and days at a time or even the time it was  down for a week. See, I've been in SL since 2004 and I do remember very clearly just how bad things really were back then. Today is a vast improvement over back then.

 

Edited April 26, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Harley Linden]

Hi everyone! Tangents happen, but discussion here has started to deviate way off the original topic of the thread. Please remember to keep things on-topic so that we can keep the thread going and have healthy discussion. Thanks y'all!

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

On 4/24/2021 at 7:11 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

Hmpf. I'm pretty glad now I sold my land and cashed out.

Same on the land. Sold it to a friend and kept the $L on my avi since it wasn't that much.

I do think the increased fee is one of many things that will hit us from the new Lab owners.

[Sid Nagy]

So far my sales are up this week.
Just saying.

Edited April 26, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[Cinos Field]

1 hour ago, Sid Nagy said:

So far my sales are up this week.
Just saying.

Yeah, but that might be because people stocked up on lindens in anticipation. Too early to say much.

[Sorciaa]

27 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Yeah, but that might be because people stocked up on lindens in anticipation. Too early to say much.

I know I did

[Paul Hexem]

5 hours ago, Bleach Kimono said:

1st of all, I have been in sl almost since it began and it has never really been updated, the program it self that is, and now we are being lied to, if LLs tries to update SL itself instead of making a new and improved 2nd SL, then the sl that you are playing on now will completely break and no one will have an sl to play on, so you will lose everything, they say all the fees are to help with game improvement but thats pretty much a lie bc you cannot use new technology with almost 20 year old technology bc the old and new will conflict with eachother and then break the system that you are paying into and this new server bs, is also breaking down the system bc its new technology with very old and outdated technology, hence all the restarts and maintenance, for the past year or so, there has been restarts and maintenance every day and when I 1st started when the game was new, you only had restarts and maintenance maybe 3x a year and thats bc the sl program was new but now its not and LLs is also under new ownership with staff who have no idea how SL works programing wise, bc if they did have people who knew what they were doing, then they never would have changed their servers to AWS for the simple fact that sl is soooo outdated, all of us pay into sl but really see no relief and no change but LLs sure has our money to waste on themselves and other projects that are not even worth a damn. Also, tier or rent is mainly up to the estate people who you pay tier to, they are in it to make a profit just like LLs, so when sl prices go up, then users who rent out land usually take advantage of the rest of us and raise prices bc LLs raised prices, so they have to cover that extra cost that LLs upped or raised and most players in sl are on a fixed budget. LLs has no idea about the people who use their game and they dont care, they use to when it first started but now, all they care about is money and not the users and I know this from my almost 20 yrs of experience playing second life. Im sure I will probable get in trouble for saying this.

What?

Alex, I'd like to buy a line break.

My comment had nothing to do with the age of the technology. My comment was referencing how much easier it is today (especially with AWS) to spin up and take down new servers.

[LittleMe Jewell]

4 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Alex, I'd like to buy a line break.

🤣

 

Was originally going to 'laugh' at the post, but wanted to ensure you knew I was just laughing at this wonderful tidbit you tossed out.

I'm going to remember that for the next wall of text that someone publishes here.