[Philip Rosedale interview - Singularity University]

Throwing around the new buzzwords of the year, like "NTFs" and "VR" currently, has always been a way to gain investor money.

[Why are so few bodies moddable? A discussion topic!]

One of the old and non-imaginary reasons I have heard for the no-mod body practice was to make walled-gardens and/or control who is allowed to make content for their body. Though much of that now comes down to devkit access (or lack of), if the no-mod body supports BOM that is, and how much time and effort an "unauthorized" creator wishes to put in to making stuff blind or doing reverse-engineering.

I guess that is a valid reason, but its kinda mean. I am coming from the furry side though where mod tends to be default on everything, and a) dev kits are available to anybody and usually b) either they are included in the box or are a public download on the creators' website/wiki/kb/blog/discord. Still seems like a weird practice to me every time non-furry friends rant about how the devkit for some mesh body is very expensive and also only available to select people (ie. not them). I might be missing something, but it seems like it'd be better for them if there was more creators making stuff for their mesh bods, not less...

 

On 3/26/2022 at 6:10 AM, Ajay McDowwll said:

why the body doesn't work when you've unlinked and relinked

Because bad/lazy scripting? A basic functionality I would expect for a thing that has to interact with linked objects is that that the order of those links does not have to be immutable. I should be able to remove or add to the linkset without breaking functionality as long as the object names are what it expects.

[Wiki format change?]

On 2/22/2022 at 11:08 PM, Quistess Alpha said:

I usually do a ctrl-f on https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Category:LSL_Functions rather than using the search-bar.

That would only work for functions, I'm often pulling up non-LSL-function pages. Also requires navigating to that page vs just tabbing in to the search box, typing a few chars, arrow down, enter.

The standard Mediawiki autocomplete suggestions works fine for providing a dropdown list of matching page titles without having to actually perform a search.  After the update, it only sort of works, like the autocomplete database is about 10% populated. I'm not sure what/if-any search extension was used before, like if it was something like TitleKey or just the stock autocomplete suggests, but its likely they did not update the config and/or extension(s) to account for the differences between the old version and current, or the index is just borked.

Not sure what broke it, been a lot of years since I've admin'd a Mediawiki install. Still my preferred wiki solution though.

[Wiki format change?]

The new search box doesn't work anywhere nearly as well as before. The autocomplete is only working for maybe 5% of the keywords I have tried. So pretty much every single LSL function I try to look up turns from typing a few chars and picking the first, in to type out most/all of the function name, submit search, then click first search result.

[group notices barely working at best]

TL'DR
Group notice off-line delivery is extremely unreliable, failure rates in my testing were between 40-100%. I would not recommend using group notices for anything that you expect/want to be delivered to most of your group members.

 

Group notice delivery has been borked for a very long time. I did a lot of testing years ago and found that which notices that get through will vary per user and per group. Some groups would have much more fail than others across all test users, and one test users was extra unlucky and got almost no notices, having a failure rate between 90-100% though all tests.

Offline group notices to email are also affected, but the failure isn't fully 1:1, eg. you might get a group notice in-world while offline but not in email.

I was tracking and reporting failures for a while, but Lindens didn't seem to have any dev time to look in to it. The "good" thing is that the issue is stupidly easy to reproduce with any random selection of test accounts and groups. When they do get around to having time to deal with the issue, it's only a matter of joining some random public groups that regularly send notices, then waiting a day or so and checking the results.

Here's the Jira I filed back in 2016 on this with all of my test results: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-40824

 

Most users will only be aware of group chat not working because that is far easier to see it not working due to interacting with chat in real time and such. Notices on the other hand require being able to tell when you didn't get something without an signs that you should have. Unless somebody (or another notice you do actually get) mentions a group notice you should have gotten, but didn't, about the only other way to tell what is missing is to manually open the group profile and compare what you did get against the past notices list.

 

In general, everything form of communication involving groups is in need of a lot of work, or a complete overhaul. It would be super nice if groups could be fixed and made more useful. As-is, its possibly better all-around to get group members to join something like a Discord server.

[Wiki format change?]

The new search box position keeps throwing me off.

Other than the semi modern flat UI design BS, its workable and not massively annoying so far.

[New Gacha Policy Discussion]

16 minutes ago, diamond Marchant said:

Patch, when you do your FAQ, please address

1. What laws in what countries and what regulatory climate are you concerned with? Has anyone be convicted or lost a lawsuit so far?

2. If you use the criterion of "paying and receiving something  back by chance"... then will you also outlaw the following:

- Current Linden Home allocation

- Sploders

- 7Seas Fishing using bait

Number 1 is falling in to lawyers territory so do not expect much.

SL Premium isn't purely for only Linden Homes, those are just one of the land types it allows for. Though the current why to get them could be improved.

Pretty sure sploders (if they are what I remember from forever ago) are likely running afoul of a number of existing and older gambling type regulations in a lot of jurisdictions.

7Seas would be a micro-transaction game mechanic instead of loot box. Would be affected by different, but similar laws against predatory monetization schemes.

 

Predatory loot boxes from triple A and mobile game studios are the issue. The problem is the regulatory net needed to effectively capture them needs to be wide since the studios behind predatory loot boxes will just slightly tweak the mechanics, or simply just the vocabulary, as to get it reclassified to something similar that may still be allowed.

We are talking about studios who, if they could get away with it (and I wouldn't be surprised if they are already doing this...), would make the drop chances "personalized" per-user via an analysis of their activity on social and other medias.

[Two new limited edition last names]

13 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Nooo! Nobody should trust a semicolon in a database!

If your database and backend can't handle a semicolon in a data field, there's already something wrong. lol

[A New Look For Second Life]

Exact same design but Modern Flat and in generic Modern UI ""dark"" Blue #1 instead of trademarked Linden Green. Ok then.

I do appreciate, that other than the color, its pretty much the same general logo as the original classic logo (not whatever that weird 2010's App Store stylized encircled thing was).

Given the trend of corporate logo redesigns when moving to the offensively-inaccessibility of modern UI designs, I was fully expecting the new SL logo to be completely different by being a generic, meaningless, and "inoffensive", arrangement of basic shapes in two colors, where one of those colors is transparent the other is so neutral that it  compatible (ie. barely works) on either dark theme light dark-gray or light theme dark light-gray backgrounds. Nothing like ruining your brand recognition by making your long standing logo something existing customers can't identify and new or non-customers still can't care about. lol

I'm mostly relieved they settled on "fine, lets just make it blue then."  

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

9 hours ago, Grumpity Linden said:

 

We have approximately 90,000 basic members with 36 or more groups.  We have approximately 10,000 premium subscribers with 55 or more groups.  This is not a 1:1 change.  Does that help with the confusion?  

 

Hmmm, likely safe to bet about 2-15% of that 90k are still active accounts. If I assume 20% active, that's max <3% affected. That's slightly higher than I would have guessed.

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

1 hour ago, Grumpity Linden said:

There will be a new and shiny premium level, which you would be able to upgrade to from your old yet still pretty awesome premium level.  The specifics of how upgrades (and downgrades) will work are going to be announced at a later date, but the general idea is - you will get credit for the "old" premium towards the new shiny.  

If its increased script mem limits or adding something useful to experiences, I'm on board for that.

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

1 minute ago, ananoelle said:

Maybe ill hold off on the alts premium until this new level is out in the open. 

The downside to that would be not getting the first year for $27 less per account.

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

1 hour ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I own a webhosting/vpn/vps business and have since 1998,  our visa CREDIT card fee's just went through the roof, so we have stopped taking them as a form of payment,  we still accept paypal which just went up and we still take mastercards which just went up,  now I'm not talking bank cards, debit cards are fine,  it's the credit cards, the processors like paypal and our other merchant accounts is where the fee's are going a bit bonkers.   

Speaking of other fee's.   depending on how LL has things setup,  payroll, power, datacenter fee's,  up and down stream providers,  all kinds of fee's.   people are way goign LL IS FORCING THIS OR THAT, when reality is, this is a business decision to help them along and keep our SL running and going.  sorry people are so upset they are just all over the place.  

Yes I know LL I know, I'm trying to be the voice of reason , Even if I'm not correct on what fee's and such are what is happening, I am giving a gist, because of the rates the fee's have gone too from my end.

LL is also based in California. You can assume everything in this state costs between 30-200000% more than it would in any other place, outside of Manhattan and Hawaii.

9 minutes ago, Grumpity Linden said:

There are few things I feel as strongly about as the outcome of that attempt - you may know them as web profiles and the profile feed.  A facebook clone is hardly possible without the facebook budget - otherwise you end up with what we have. 

Your larger point about needing better solutions than the current overloaded group system is absolutely fair, and we're very much aware of it. 

Projects to fix the various problems with groups have been going longer than Grumpity has been a Linden.

I think we're past the point where we just make a new group system from scratch and migrate over.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

9 hours ago, RuffertasAlt said:

First, Thank you for the spreadsheet. I was trying to do the calculations myself last night, but this makes it a lot easier. I had been automatically assuming that having more premium alts would result in lower tier costs (what with group ownership reduction) but it looks like I am going to have to do some more thinking. I should add that I prefer to do the once-a-year premium payment rather than paying monthly tier because my outgoing expenses are irregular and some months I have a little more unallocated income than others.

If you would otherwise buy the >$60 worth of L$ per year, then it starts being cheaper to have more than one premium account. The way the land tier prices scale as they increase makes it hard to beat just going up a tier verse getting another premium sub with an additional lower tier level. When the L$ stipend factors in, and only when you would buy L$ regardless, then the numbers shift towards something more complex.

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

6 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

@Kat Linden  what about concierge membership (without Premium) — will we get IMs capped like basic accounts or premium?

How is that even possible? I thought region ownership also required premium.

5 hours ago, xxSaltandPepperxx said:

For creators it's the main advertising tool. Now it will be even harder for especially new creators to bring people into their groups to get the word out and to bring more content to SL. As a premium myself I would rather not have more than 60 groups and therefore the basic accounts maybe could keep theirs. As @Blueberryxx already mentioned, maybe there is a way to fix those group issue as many jiras have been filed. The impact on cutting groups is tremendous for SL population 

Offline group notices fail 50-95% of the time going back at least over 2.5 years. The causes for these issues and others with groups is often very hard to determine and solutions may not even be possible without complete replacements.

Any project to fix the group problems is going to be a very long undertaking and massive scope.

2 hours ago, Elvina Ewing said:

*I* didn't see any reduction on *my* rent. Not even a 1$. And my landlord seems to be doing just fine to this day. I was hoping he would indeed need to compete, but apparently not at all.

Mainland or private region? The previous discounts were only for mainland.

[A brief note on pricing changes, which ran long.]

Let me buy-down and I will use the unpoisoned and not-on-fire pitchfork instead. :V

1 hour ago, Grumpity Linden said:

We’re not lowering limits out of spite, groups really are quite a strain on our back end for a variety of painful historical reasons, including overloading group functionality instead of having other tools.  This subject alone is worth a novel liberally sprinkled with tears. So anyway, we don’t hate basic users, and in fact we work hard to retain our free-to-play offering as one of the most generous across many industries. But yes, no big surprise, we do want to nudge active residents to become subscribers, because we think it’s a great value, and - as many have noted - we’re also running a business. But no, we're not shutting our doors to non-premium residents. Rumors of our insanity and villainy have been slightly exaggerated.  

Should have lead with that in the original post. I know what I say has little weight with other residents, but I will still add that the group backend is really taxed. Many-to-many instant message chat on the scale SL does is not an easy feat, and it's only something recent new chat platforms have managed to overcome with the power of massive distributed computing. (On that note, SL should add Discord support :V)
Maybe the new Basic group limit should have applied to new residents. Or maybe at least promise that when the group backend gets its long past-due overhaul, Basic will get its 42 back.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

36 minutes ago, Kadah Coba said:

You're right. I thought my sheet had accounted for L$ but it didn't. I had forgotten I had left that out as I haven't bought L$ in many years due to the small amount of rent income I get doing that for me.

I updated my workbook to account for the stipend and the new and old premium pricing. I converted the stipend to an even $60/yr value as that is about where L$15600 (300/7*365) comes to without fees.

 

Above assumes you would otherwise buy the L$. This one does not and would be annual price paid.

 

The separate charts were annoying me, so I made a combined condensed one.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

29 minutes ago, Ani Aunerfal said:

Yeah, agreed.

I feel like this blow could've relatively easily been softened by just adding value to premium membership that is more universal. An increase to the stipend or perhaps an entirely new feature - it doesn't need to be anything huge. But it would've been tactful to ship these changes along with a better offering.

It's hard to avoid making people mad with a price increase, but there's a lot you can do to smooth the reaction.

 

The transition fee increase should have been a separate thing done at least 6 months away from the other changes. These type of fee increases within the industry have been happening for years due to the added regulations. I'm surprised LL didn't do them earlier, but I''m guessing they waited to do one single increase rather than several smaller ones.

Had they done it separately, they could have passed the blame off on regulatory compliance and increased payment processor costs.

By combining it with the premium increase with its tiny crab apple treat than only a few of us horses will even get, plus also saying the ponies will get fewer carrots, it was more of an insult to all.

Sorry for the equine analogies. I'm tired and was saw a lot of horses at the park this evening after work. x3

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

45 minutes ago, WillowTenage said:

300 a week, it adds up  Before this change, you could almost justify having a premium account on the linden you earned alone.   The extra 1024 land was enough to push you well into justifying the membership.  It still is worth it, I'm keeping two premium accounts active, I might do so for the third if my tax return actually gets here before the shutoff date before the price changes.  

You're right. I thought my sheet had accounted for L$ but it didn't. I had forgotten I had left that out as I haven't bought L$ in many years due to the small amount of rent income I get doing that for me.

I updated my workbook to account for the stipend and the new and old premium pricing. I converted the stipend to an even $60/yr value as that is about where L$15600 (300/7*365) comes to without fees.

Above assumes you would otherwise buy the L$. This one does not and would be annual price paid.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

3 minutes ago, Ani Aunerfal said:

It may not be a huge increase (for us. it is for some people) but it's still essentially a devaluing of the product, adding more cost without much in the way of meaningful increase in gain for the buyer. If you don't use premium homes, cap your groups or your offline IMs (which is actually more people than you'd think), this is basically just a price increase with no benefit. My land is allocated to a sim, i am not in that many groups and my IMs don't cap. So i'm just paying more money and that's it.

Totally. Any premium user who owns less than a full private region is getting screwed by this. The only defend-able point about the premium increase is its the first one in a very long time and less than inflation. Combined with the changes to Basic and the translation fee changes, this whole thing is coming off as more of an insult to residents.

I'm in the small class of residents that will get any benefit from this and its a >7% savings. Its a nice gesture, but not really going to change much. I guess I can treat myself to Wendy's twice a month now.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

Just now, Denim Robonaught said:

1) Full sim mainland from 195$ to 175$

This only correct for grandfathered pricing or buy-down regions. Most (like me) will be $249 down to $229. If you own one region and renew premium annually, you only save $17.75/m. Coming from $255/m, that's not really much savings.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

2 minutes ago, WillowTenage said:

Currently, it is $61.91 for 15,600 linden, in addition to that it is another $84 for 1,200 sqm a year, which is $145.94 a year..  This is still a bargain for premium accounts, if you are interested in land and linden, at $72 a year it was succulent even at the new prices it is a bargain.  I think premium is still worth it, but as I said there is a definite sense of loss, especially for people trying to keep to a budget, I don't know why linden let it go on for this long to begin with.

Was that the old larger stipends or the 300L one? I did all my calculations last year with the 300L since that it what I am able to get.

[$99 problems]

4 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Ah, so it was 2006 when they upped it to 25. Just seemed longer. Thanks!

I thought it was 2008 initially as that was what the wiki history turned, but dug further as I couldn't trust that result as the wiki was started in 2008. Anything before the end of 2008 is before my time.

Just now, Selene Gregoire said:

In case you didn't know, when you highlight to quote someone quoted in another post it won't show the original OP's name. It shows the other person. Like it's showing you quoted me when it was someone else. Not the first time it's happened. 

I don't doubt it, Invision is only a little better than Lithium garbage.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

27 minutes ago, Randy Pole said:

The price increase for premium membership is $2.49 which, considering there has been no price increase in over 10 years comes out at an increase only slightly above the rate of inflation.

Yes any increase is unwelcome but in all honesty to have no increase in so long is good going.

This. The annual increase (there is no reason not to do it annually) is only $2.25/m. Generally, the only reason now to get premium is for owning land directly and an extra $2.25 is not a huge difference.

18 minutes ago, WillowTenage said:

That is true, but when you have multiple alts, that adds up quickly. 

3 accounts at the old price for a year subscription = $216 USD

3 accounts at the new price for a year subscription = $297 USD

Now, I'm going to drop my third subscription and be charged $198 USD, which is close to what I would have paid for three accounts, results in 1024 sqm of lost land allocation, and $15,600 lindens a year.  So, there is a real loss of value there.  

I am not going to spend too much time fretting over it, but it does have an impact.  I do still think it is worth it in the long run, of course, I do think I have lost something as well.  

It is cheaper to get additional tier on a single premium account than to have multiple premium accounts. Before this raise, there was only a few edge cases where specific total tier was cheaper and only slightly.

[What are your opinions on the new "Land Price Reductions, New Premium Perks, and Pricing Changes "?]

42 minutes ago, Ani Aunerfal said:

You're quite right, forgive my wording.

I own a region, so I'm going to see a $17.75 savings, but that's off $255/m, so basically a token gesture. Residents that own many regions will benefit a lot more and the premium increase will be unnoticeable for them.