Qie Niangao

Whether it's using avatar video or a standard issue talking-heads interview format, I'd barely notice because I treat YouTube (by far the most valuable media service on the planet) as a poor podcast player with annoying video I ignore except for the subtitles. Why don't these LabGabs have the automatically generated transcripts anymore? Those were really useful. Is this yet another way YouTube disappoints?

I think the answer is yes, but there's a part of the question I don't understand: What would you do "to start the process in July"? To be able to downgrade, you'll need to remove your tier contribution to the land-owning group; presumably you'll want to do that just before your renewal date. You won't disband the group nor be forced to abandon the land at that time. In fact, even after nobody is contributing tier, the Lab won't immediately reclaim the group's land, in hopes some group member may yet contribute tier. Of course if you wanted to sell the land, you might need some time for that. It doesn't sound as if that's the plan, but whereas (perhaps obviously) a group can't buy land without enough contributed tier, until that land is reclaimed the group can try to sell it or otherwise dispose of it even with nobody covering tier. There's no guarantee the land won't go poof at any moment, and I've never personally done this, but I've seen it done (way back when Admin mode revealed tier contributions to any group).

There's one point with which I once would have agreed: "2) It protects the creation from getting broken". When I was just starting out scripting, I couldn't figure out how to let customers adjust the size and shape of a prim assembly (yeah, all prims back then) while preserving geometric invariants to keep the assembly looking reasonable while the script was running. I think I'd know what to do now, so I could give that object Modify permission, but for other objects and for less experienced scripters, I could excuse having to resort to no-mod objects. If I'd made it Copy/Modify, it would have been okay because "6) No matter what, the customer is protected anyway, as the product can be redelivered at any time". In this specific case, the object served a role-play purpose that required it to be Transfer/No-Copy, so redelivery wasn't an option; #6 really only applies to Copy perm objects, No-Mod or Mod (and I don't understand what specific risk the No-Mod objects would otherwise face). So clearly "3) I only want you to have ONE instance of the item" relates to a disjoint class of product from that "protected" by redelivery in #6. But #3 applies to all No-Copy objects, regardless of Mod/No-Mod, same as #6 applies to all Copiable objects Mod or No-Mod. One note about the combination of No-Copy and No-Mod: Never use this combination if the item contains a script. Just don't do it. Every one is a time bomb waiting for the next simulator glitch that stops the script with no possibility of recovery. (Really, all No-Copy objects, even without scripts, even modifiable, are just waiting for the next simulator glitch to poof them from the grid. Unless you're sure you won't mind when they eventually, inevitably vanish, No-Copy = sorrow. Thread after thread after thread of woe.) I don't think I understand "5) The product is intended to be used as a composition, and not a building set" which seems to be about selling structures such as houses without Mod permission, products that I can't imagine anybody buying on purpose. (Maybe this is a thing with prefab backdrops? I don't really understand those products.) Anyway, reading that discussion about Land Impact, I was reminded of a very big reason for Mod permission: the ability to reduce total Land Impact by relinking elements of a scene. Many items have way more Download weight than System weight, and some are just the opposite. Link them together—only possible if they're both Modifiable—and watch them absorb each other's excesses! (Note: if they have scripts, try in a sandbox first, in case a script doesn't know to find links again after the linkset changes.) I won't pile-on about "4) To protect IP or to discourage reverse engineering a product" because I think it's pretty clear by now that nobody who sets out to steal IP is at all deterred by a No-Mod server-side setting, whatever superstition may yet prevail. And "1) Because we reserve the right to set any permissions we want, and don't really owe anyone any explanation" is dilute beyond substance: I have the right to dress up like Bozo and play a kazoo and nobody is entitled to an explanation, but that doesn't make me immune from criticism—especially my kazoo playing.

1. Earlier in this thread we were reminded that VRChat signed up as a Tilia customer, but per Oberwolf, Tilia was apparently back down to just SL as its sole customer. Some messy transcription: (Could just be rhetorical rounding error though, because VRChat still talks about Tilia in its ToS.) 2. About Oberwolf's "doubling-down" on SL. I think it's helpful to hear him present the hopeful side of M&A. In the case of Tilia, it turns a big liability on the Linden balance sheet into, for Thunes, a real asset: money transmitter licensing in the US. The thing is, if ever there's a Thunes-equivalent for Second Life—another venture that can make SL more valuable for their business than it is as a standalone company—that would likely be for the best, even though it would mean change. I'm not arguing they should sell the place, and it's a nice vibe that he's so enthusiastic about extending its success, I'm just saying businesses don't do M&A to screw over customers. 3. Did I miss mention of Adult content? (I was multi-tasking so I could have spaced it off.)

What they sell or keep is an exercise in portfolio management. I'm sure they sold Tilia at the very peak of its potential value as a semi-standalone Linden subsidiary, and sold it to somebody who can take it beyond that peak by integrating it with other products and services they offer. That will apply to Second Life, too: if it gets to be more valuable sold than kept, it'll become somebody else's asset to manage as part of that new owner's portfolio. At the moment it's pretty difficult (for me) to tell if the substantial investments they're making in Second Life is to gussy it up for sale or to maintain and expand its ongoing earnings potential. Either way, if the virtual reality metaverse weren't in a stagnant backwater of the hype cycle, they'd target (re-)development of that instead of mobile and industry-compatible content creation (glTF, viewer-side LUA, …). But a new owner, with other related products, would have different development priorities. So if you don't like mobile, pray SL sells to… oh, why not? Salesforce! (One minor point: There is zero chance they'll retire debt they took on a few years ago. They may redirect that capital in arbitrary ways, but they could make a profit just buying T-bills with those old loans.)

I was trying to summarize all this to a friend in like two paragraphs and suddenly wondered: What if Thunes bought Tilia because it's been handling SL, adult content and all? There may be other businesses interested in such a service. Right?

Yeah, I don't know what happened with that forums post link. I thought I tested it, and I see it got the right comment number but in a totally different URI format, so… dunno. I'm not sure this helps, but at the Concierge and Land user group yesterday, I asked: That meeting is mostly in voice, so this is the best I could transcribe from Keira's response in Pantera Północy's YouTube recording: In retrospect I feel a little guilty about putting Keira on the spot like that; she was just in the audience with the rest of us, not on stage with Wendi, Vir, and Izzy, so… What can I say? I'm a boor.

I just want to say that the Lab Billing department was actually wonderfully helpful getting me through this mess. I never understood why I suddenly needed to pay from a bank in the country where SL knows I live, but it was Billing support who suggested the PayPal workaround, and I'm still grateful for their help with that.

You know, yeah, this change might help me. It's a long convoluted story that bores even me, but around the time the Lab formed this Tilia subsidiary, they could no longer handle payments from my US bank. The only way I could avoid eating double currency exchange fees (to the looney and back to the greenback) was through PayPal. Now that works fine but it's really silly and I'd love to cut them out of the loop in the name of parsimony if nothing else.

Yeah, one expects the "partnership" is just a contract specifying what each party is committed to do for the other and what contingencies can change those commitments. (Yeah, those will include what happens if either party is sold or is unable to perform on its commitments, etc.) It's just an agreement. Both parties need it, so they negotiated its terms, in this case with a five year interval (by which time they might negotiate different terms, extend, or cancel). Of course it exists—and it would be ever so interesting to read.

Yeah… until they need to find/build a replacement, or expend time and effort to minimize the Thunes Tax that will now skim from the SL economy without much flowing back to Linden coffers.

I just have to grab this from BlueSky because text search is a thing and Invision doesn't seem to embed bsky: To the extent they're about Tilia tomfoolery, we can't really be sure of that, can we? I mean, Marketplace being more b0rked than usual is challenging to detect, but Tilia delay is pretty objectively quantifiable. And conceivably someone could benefit from "special timing" of transactions until this deal closes. Or not. Hanlon's Razor, eh wot?

Thanks, yeah, that seems to seal off L$ sources. That being the case, I'm not sure there's much point in bypassing Tilia for sinks (such as the hypothetical L$-denominated tier payment). I guess we don't really know how much Tilia takes from the US$ subscription fee. (Do we? It's sorta none of our business but might matter to the Lab going forward.)

God help the moderator. The image is obviously ironic (I mean, "Aliens"?), poking fun at all the dopiest of conspiracy theories. But then there's Poe's Law.

Oh, I'd assume so, yeah. But that raises an interesting question: if the Lab sells L$s on the LindeX to maintain the exchange rate, do they use a Tilia account to receive the US$s, same as residents selling L$s? That seems insane but… hmm.