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Scylla Rhiadra

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Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    This is an argument for deregulation of pretty much any and everything. Don't want to be slowly poisoned by pesticides? Stop eating veggies! Afraid your Tesla is going to suddenly accelerate into the back of a semi? Don't drive a Tesla! I have no such fears, myself. Anyone wanting info about me, personally, would be far far better served searching these forums: what they'd discover would serve as a wonderful soporific. The larger issue is how this might impact upon the platform as a whole, if it produces, intentionally or inadvertently, something that is, or is perceived to be, a "threat" to enough users.
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    Good question! I think, as I've said above, that one of the more likely answers to that is probably compiling information about shopping habits, where people go, what they do, etc., in a way that might be monetized -- although it's always seemed to me that SL commerce is on such a small scale that no one is likely to pay much for such information. I think there is potential for it to be used to (very poorly) identify alts. Such information would be, again as I've said, full of inaccuracies -- but then so is alt detection by IP address, and there were lots of people ready to pay money for that. As I've said -- the threat, if there is one, is not clear yet. But this bears watching.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah. Sorry, Keira, but that too ignores (deliberately?) the nature of what can be accomplished with a really large data set. And telling us that we should, for our own "safety," not use to its full potential a tool that the platform provides for our use is hardly a reassuring or useful answer.
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    Granted -- as I've said somewhere above, I'd love to hear their explanation of their motivations and intent. But it may not be anything more than selling the data to merchants, or enabling targeted ads / spam. Which, admittedly, is kind of awful too, but not a "threat" per se. I'm as, or more concerned about how this data might in turn be harvested by someone else with fewer scruples than the compilers might actually have.
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    Well, he was a POS of a whole different order, as borne out by the fact that he ended up facing RL charges for scams entirely unrelated to SL. I've seen no evidence that BB is anything other than well-intentioned and benign. I certainly don't see it being monetized, which was xFire's whole thing. But whatever the intentions, I think it's worth keeping a close eye on this, because its impacts may be wholly unrelated to the original purpose of the data set
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    As I said, it's far too early for lynch mobs or public executions. I've suggested this should be watched. I don't see that as a panicky or unreasonable response. You're also not really getting the "big / aggregate data" thing, are you? No one cares about your profile, Orwar.
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    I agree. I've said it merits attention, not that we should be breaking out the pitchforks and torches. It's mere foolishness not to keep an eye on things that pose potential threats.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    I don't know how LL would apply that here. But IF there are indications that the public accessibility of this mass of data is constraining people or impacting upon their use of the platform, LL should, and likely will, take action.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    Of course there are. Which is why I said that I'm not yet convinced this poses a threat. But there is potential here. And I think it merits some attention, and not a shrug. Because that IS how RZ started: with complacency.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    There's a lot of "missing the point" going on here. 1) That something is possible, or permitted by the ToS, does not make it desirable or ethical. And LL has changed its ToS before, and taken action against things that were permitted when they were seen as threats. RZ is an example. 2) There is a difference between data, aggregate data, and big data. I can collect a whole bunch of isolated first and last names that are essentially useless, but when I start pairing the former with the latter, I've got real information. Similarly, a phone number is an aggregate of 10 harmless numbers -- until they are assembled in a meaningful sequence. Someone posting my profile publicly is probably not much of a threat to anyone, including me. Posting my profile along with 10s of thousands of others? That's a very different thing. 3) LL may not "have" to do anything about this, but if it starts spooking people, or if there is enough noise, or if there is reasonable evidence that the data can be put to uses that harm SL's attractiveness, then they likely should, and possibly would take action. As they did with RZ. ALL of the "calm down," or "it's allowed!" or "it's all public info anyway!" arguments being made here were made, incessantly, by defenders of RZ. LL recognized, eventually, that there was a threat, and they did take action, largely because of the clamour made here on the forums and elsewhere. I am not yet convinced that BBB does represent a real threat. But I'm also not going to complacently shrug it off just because I'm pretty sure it doesn't directly threaten me.
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    Well, if the info is being collected by bots -- then get rid of the bots. If it's being culled from some sort of viewer or portal that circumvents user-determined privacy settings, then fix the code to close that option down. One could, in theory, produce this kind of database by just zipping around in-world, and copying profile information. But that would be such a lengthy and laborious process it would hardly be possible or worthwhile. So, this is being automated somehow. That needs to be determined, and plugged.
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    I think it would certainly take a much more sophisticated algorithm than I suspect they have available now to do it. Nor is there, at the moment, any reason to believe that whoever is collecting the information wants to . . . although it would be interesting to know why they are collecting it. But that data is now going to be freely available online to the next guy who thinks he can make a quick buck by leveraging it into an "alt detector." Or the kind of protection racket RedZone became. It may well not happen, but it is . . . disturbing. And, again, the actual data is being collected in-world, so LL sort of has a responsibility here, I think.
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    This kind of approach is going to lead to a great many false positives -- probably a lot more than you'd get with IP address scraping and matching. Which, of course, may actually make it worse.
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    I agree that this is a bit alarming -- and given that the data is being harvested within SL, LL really does have a responsibility to respond. But what sort of "analysis" is likely to reveal alts? If so, we may end up with Son of RedZone on our hands?
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    I've been having issues with this problem on my phone for . . . months? But it hasn't been impacting my access through my desktop so much. Now it is. And the fact that it's a problem on both my phone (Android, using Chrome) AND my desktop (Windows, using Firefox) certainly suggests that the problem is not at my end.
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    You know that moment in the movie when the central computer that guides all of the human-seeming bots is destroyed, and they all suddenly look lost and bewildered, and wander around bumping into walls and each other?
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    Why are some of the navigational links in this forum still broken? At the moment, the only way I can get into "My Avatar" is by clicking the link to the most recent posting there. Navigating up from there, or from anywhere else on this site, leads me to a black page -- "https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/318-your-avatar/" This has been a problem for months now, hasn't it? But it's worse today. I literary cannot view the "My Avatar" forum as a whole.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Well, exactly. Generally, I don't come in at more 3900 kgs or so. Something's clearly wrong with the scales. I'll drop you a LM when I'm next in, just on the off chance you're interested in looking around. It would be interesting to hear a professional's view of their layout!
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    So, @Laurel Aureliadiscovered a HUGE cluster of estate regions devoted to horse riding -- trails, paddocks, stables, and pretty much everything horsey. It's quite gorgeous -- and it sprawls across no less than 20 regions, so there's endless room for riding. It features events, lessons in dressage, and quite an active community, I think. It also features a veterinarian's "office," which immediately made me think of @Krystina Ferraris, so I took a pic there. There's a scale to weigh your horse. I was horrified to stand on it, by myself, and see it register 4582 kgs. Don't think I'll be going THERE again. My ego can't handle it.
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    I used to really enjoy building -- not that I was particularly good at it. I love the superior look of mesh, and wouldn't want to revert to a world of prims only, but one of the reasons I got into photography here was because I knew I wasn't going to be good at making mesh, or enjoy creating it off the grid as much, so I needed a new creative outlet. Fortunately, I realized that I could also employ building with photographs. Most of my pics use backdrops I have made myself, with a combination of prims and commercial building parts (as well, obviously, as mesh furnishings). One of the most enjoyable parts, for me, of setting up a pic is building the backdrop.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    Or if you want REALLY interesting adventures . . .
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    It took me a moment to realize that you weren't displaying your butt in that poster. "Now THAT will sell boots!" thought I.
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    I think I'll generally wait two until I get really annoyed, but I'll send a second notecard after one. So, he's got another day before he gets that. I bought a bus as a Christmas present for a friend last month. It arrived without issue, but he couldn't find the bus itself in package: just a bus stop using a rezzer, a texture HUD, and a pack of textures. So he and I both sent notecards to the creator. It took about a week and a half for her to get back to us, but when she did she was lovely -- apologetic and very nice. I wanted to put up a nice review, but apparently you can't do that if you've gifted something, so I am going to buy one of her cars (they aren't terribly pricey) so that I can leave one there instead. Turns out, btw, that you have to rez the bus stop, and then touch the sign on that to rez the bus -- a cute but not very practical way of getting the bus, particularly as there were no instructions. But she was sweet, so she gets a nice review anyway.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    So, how long does one have to wait for a response from a creator about a broken HUD before one can be officially "peeved" about it?
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