Anna Salyx

It sounded to me that while there might be a few customers signed on that they are not doing anything at scale and at the end of the day SL is effectively it's sole customer.

I custom built mine in 2019 and tried to future proof it as much as possible for several years into the future. I think I spent around 2000 on it and it's beginning to feel lower mid. But I've also replaced out the spinning drives for SDDS recently, and also the video too so that's helped a fair amount.

Ultima Online launched in 1997.... 27 ish years ago, give or take a couple of months. It's by no means what I would consider a commercial bonanza or cash cow. Yet it It's still got active development and must make enough to pay for it's underlying infrastructure (rent, servers, electric, comms, salaries, etc) to justify it's continue presence in the world of Online Entertainment. Not wholly apples to oranges, but a realistic take is that so long as Second Life has enough income to balance the sheets and then some for a modest profit to.... whomever, it's going to stick around. Ultima has been sold a couple of times I think, and the current owners being Broadsword Online Games who gives it enough love and attention to keep the heartbeat alive. So, will Second Life ultimately get sold? It's a possibility to be sure. That's just a cold reality. But the real kickers is is that we as residents really don't know what the balance sheets for Linden Lab are in regards this IP nor what projects they are piggy backing off of Second LIfe. For example, they are developing a new voice service to bring that tech in house and using Second Life as the test bed for it. That project may end up getting packaged up and sold to other interested parties down the line. So while for the residents Second Life is an online social platform, for Linden Lab, it that and maybe a little or a lot more. Whatever their plans are, keeping it as a test bed, keeping as just a virtual social space, or selling it off to a third party, so long as it's paying it's way and making someone money somewhere, I really don't see it going away for a long time. But then, I'm ever an optimist. I prefer to not live in a world of perpetual shadows.

No, I was referring to the name at the end of the sentence with the initials: M. W.

(failed my resist check with disadvantage)

But the question is "why would the necessarily look". Tilia is it's own company. If you go to the Tilia website you see only one passing reference to Second Life and Linden Lab. There a very opaque all between Tilia and the residents and between Tilia and the activity that happens in Second Life. Tilia (and whoever they become) just moves money around. So when a person buys some digital currency for Second Life, Tilia takes the money via whatever payment method is used, takes their cut, passes the rest to Linden Lab with a note saying "this is for xyz resident". And Linden Lab does the calculation to give xyz resident Linden Dollars. When xyz resident sells some Linden Dollars, Linden Lab does the reverse calculation and sends over a a stack of cash to Tilia with a note attached saying "take your cut and the rest is for the person who owns xyz resident". This is the same action take with other digital currencies and companies they deal with other than Second Life and Linden Lab. I highly doubt the companies are going to ask "and this bucket of cash, did it come from some naughty activity?" no, they shuffle the money and take their fees. I'd be knocked over unconscious surprised if they look any deeper than this.

My take and understanding is that Tilia was spun off as a wholly separate company with a parent company as a major steak holder. I've been there IRL when my department at big company was spun off to form a newer small company. We were fully independent with some board oversight. We did our own thing for a long time, moved from being a small company to a medium to large company. And so, at one point the original parent company decided to absorbed us back into the fold (as it were). By *buying us in a merger*. There was a lot of wailing over that because as the spun off company our benefits package was ***way*** superior and we as employees lost a lot being merged back into the original parent company. Surprisingly parent company kept us mostly whole as our own semi-autonomous departments again. It took me about 5 years to get back to where I was benefits wise, and I would never realize the lost upper tiers of benefits. (but they did bridge my time 'away' so that was bonus). So Tilia being sold off *can* impact Second Life in some ways but how directly impactful will probably be fairly minimal since it is a fully separate entity from Second Life. I could be wrong of course but my previous experience says it's not a wholly doom and gloom thing. We'll see going forward I guess. I doubt that is a real possibility. Tilia (soon to be Thune) will be a 3rd party payment processor. People will buy Linden Dollars (L$) and then spend them on clothes, shoes, houses, real estate, and yes, some adulty thing. People cashing out will have gotten the L$s from sales of clothes, shoes, houses, real estate, and yes (again) some adulty things. But at the Tilia/Thune level of interaction the L$ are never associated with any of that. They can't say "this bucket of currency came from this source, that bucket of currency came from that source, and this other bucket of currency was a mix of the two". They are all just a buckets of currency, nothing more and the clearinghouse/payment processor will do it's thing, collect their middleman fees and carry on. Since there is that insulating layer, I'm not sure how much actual control this new thing will have on a third company. It's not like Tumblr which was bought in whole by a company that then decided to make changes to their property. Second Life is not becoming a part of Thune, or even a subsidiary, as I understand it from my article reading. See my above. This is different in some significant ways from where banks and payment processes have worked to "moralize" their involvement in the adult entertainment industry. They have done this with specifically adult oriented enterprises. They mainly "moralize" it because they don't want to be on record as being a part of a specifically adult oriented business. Second Life is not a specifically an adult oriented business. any more than X née Twitter is. Yeah, a lot of adulty stuff exists on that platform but that not who they are as a platform and so Banks and Payment Processors don't have much leverage or muscles to flex in terms of content or content policy. So long as they can have a PR plausible separation form prurient enterprises, they move money and collect their fees. again just my first thoughts take.

tl;dr (yeah, I got wordy) - while that all may be true, the risks are are not confined to the use of a UUID, and the risks are fairly minimal if one uses common sense and easily eliminated with with a documented command to examine a given key. There is potential for doom and gloom in SL to be sure, but UUIDs are low on the threat list. With that, I stand by my original comment that UUIDs are either people/groups or assets. Any other UUID use is outside the scope of Second Life Processes. What all you said is basically true with any arbitrary text string which is what a UUID key ultimately is. Unless you're sending a specially formatted sentence in open chat, or a targeted IM, nothing is going to happen. If those doom scenarios are going to happen, they wouldn't in of themselves require a UUID key to do their nefarious work, just a very specific string sent in a very specific way to a very specific place. And that very specific string could be very innocent looking like "how's everyone doing todya" (deliberate typo). To send a message to the ID as an IM requires jumping through a lot of hoops and so it not going to be something that anyone with nefarious intents is going to expect people to do. Now all that said, as the second reply in this chain stated, using it as text input to an object's dialogue box *may* cause it do something so, yes, that would be risky and to be avoided Maybe saying it in open chat near a target object again *may* cause it to do something and, yes again, could be risky. But then you have to know what object it's intended for. So, yes, best avoid if your told to use it at a specific location or near a specifically named object. It's the same risk if someone told you go to some location and say "peanut butter jelly time" out loud. I personally wouldn't unless I really trusted the person and even then I'd be somewhat wary. So those risks are there with any arbitrary text string. and I'll grant with attachments and HUDS that listen your risk marginally increases. Though if you're wearing reputable/trusted items, then your risk is minimal, and that risk becomes a personal decision. However, doing an area search wouldn't be risky mainly because Firestorms area search doesn't allow you to search for UUIDs. Doing the general search from the search bar in any viewer never transmits your search term outside of the search system so that too would not be risky. Also, if you search for an ID in the general search you only get back results if the person or group put that literal string in their profile (about and/or pick). Lastly, you can easily (and safely) test if a key is associated with a person or group by using the command "secondlife:///app/agent/<UUID>/username" and if it's a person or group it'll come back with the name of the person or group, if it comes back with nothing then it's an asset or an unused key in the system. This is not some deep dark secret, but a documented command for scripting. Mostly. I probably wouldn't do it in open chat around other people, but not due to risks, but for the simple reason of not wanting to clutter local chat with mostly garbage. Lastly lastly: that's an actual user name in the original post's quoted block. The OP, @MatthewRiver, might want to edit and remove that.

from: llGetLinkKey: So, I would surmise (with no evidence to support mind you) that in regards to links the HUD will act similarly a "chair" in regards to link order. That when the HUD is attached, if there is a ad-hoc linkset created, the avatar would be added as the *last* link in the chain always and never the root.

Sounds, textures, object, animations, etc are assets. So Maitimo is mostly factually correct: the UUID given is either a user (or group) ID OR it's an asset ID, or it's just a "blank" UUID that is not associated either. There are easy ways to tell if it's associated with a user (or group) or not with a simple chat command. If it's not a user ID then, yes, you can't know if it's either an asset or a "blank" key, or what the asset is if there is one associated with it.

You think the sky will stop falling then? I love your optimism...

From my understanding the new 2k textures are meant primarily for big thing: terrain, buildings, etc. To this end the system that serves up the final texture to the person viewing them will make a determination on the best resolution to make available via MIP mapping. With that understanding* my take is that sure designers can create and upload 2k textures for skin, clothes, accessories, and make up and if the logic says "this object/thing only really needs the 512x texture that's all you'll get. If that is the case we might never see many of the "ultra-high" resolutions except in special circumstances like "big" things and texture dictionaries. (and even texture dictionaries might even get auto-scaled.) So for wearables I don't think it'll have that big of an impact. *I grants that my understanding might be flawed and and someone with more knowledge on the whole thing will gently correct me.

Just "put your balls to the wall, man." <ponders> whoops, still the wrong song....

One think you might consider to is on the on_rez event to have the object announce itself on a/the control channel with it's UUID key. The greenBall can then store this for later use. You could do it both ways even, if the redBall is already in world, when the greenBall is rezzed it can broadcast out "hey I'm here, redBall report in", and capture any replies. Expand from there for however many objects you need to have communicating back and forth.

You're still missing the most important element.....

I'll echo this as others have. I used to buy a lot of outfits from that store, but I looked at my redelivery page yesterday when I heard the news and noticed that i had not bought anything since mid/late last summer. And all of last year was somewhat sporadic with mostly TSS/Weekend specials. It just seemed to me that most of the new products coming out there were just variations on a theme/style/look and I didn't really need to buy new since I had it basically already..... more or less. I don't say this to be overly critical. Blueberry has been around for ~13 years or so, and put out a lot of product. I imagine that the creative well for coming up with new can, on the best of days, be a struggle. So.... I moved on to other designers who have different perspectives, different aesthetics, different styles. It's just the way of things, here and in IRL. With the pressures to produce, having to juggle so many bodies, and doing work on other platforms (as I have come to understand), I wouldn't blame anyone in that environment to need to pull back some and decompress for sanity if nothing else. Burnout is a real thing. Especially among creatives. all speculation aside, I'll say that 13 years, that's a career really and sometimes we just need new horizons, personally or professionally.

Solar power? how gauche. any true wastelander is going to be using the bicycle generator to power their personal grid. You gotta keep in shape somehow so you can fun from the zombie mutant vampires when they inevitably break in..... <ponders> or is that mutant zombie vampires? vampire zombie mutants? hmmmm..... oh heck, I can never remember the proper order of descriptors there....

Same really. I like event shopping in that it has the feel of going someplace and fairly well replicates the window shopping at the mall experience. Or what call wander shipping. HUD shopping for events is too much like catalog / website shopping. Sure it gets me the things, but I miss out on the dopamine and endorphins that come from in person retail therapy. and maybe that's just me, dunno, but it's what makes my second life brighter at least.