Jump to content

Scylla Rhiadra

Resident
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    20,160

  • Joined

  • Days Won

    184

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Scylla Rhiadra

  1. Scylla Rhiadra
    Yeah, this. Drama is boring. It really really is. Actual engagement with each other over interesting questions that matter is where it's at. The problem is that the system isn't sufficiently nuanced and sophisticated to distinguish between the two. So we get rid of the one . . . and the other is collateral damage. And the result is indeed that the most active and "interesting" thread on the board is one about LL's purchase of a vending system. Totally legit, but . . . a tad narrow.
  2. Scylla Rhiadra
    I'm not concerned. Taylor knows how to liven a place up.
  3. Scylla Rhiadra
    Wow. Not as I remember her! Lovely pic! And, er, what hair is that?
  4. Scylla Rhiadra
    Staying off topic, but I love Rosie. She's smart, articulate, and lovely. I think it is reciprocally cool that you know her!
  5. Scylla Rhiadra
    Thanks Sylvia. I wondered, and was going to ask Rosie Gray about it, as my understanding last time I spoke to her was that CDS was pretty healthy.
  6. Scylla Rhiadra
    For what it's worth, while there are a number of elements to Bellisseria that I like -- things like the infrastructure, provision for community space, navigable space on land, air, and water, etc., I similarly have zero interest in moving into suburbia in SL. I am a bit surprised to hear that CDS, New Babbage, and Caledon have lost people to Belli though, as the main attraction of these places is a particular character, aesthetic, or (in the case of CDS) ideology that is certainly not to be found in the new Linden Homes. The region where I currently rent, Voroznia (which is a mock up of a 70s era Soviet city) has had no problem apparently attracting residents. I wonder what the difference is?
  7. Scylla Rhiadra
    I suspect you're right, of course -- just as building a new highway will likely lead to an increase in taxes in RL. The one thing I hope they don't do (and I've NO reason to think they're even contemplating this, but the thought did occur to me) is to restrict deployment of the vending or rental systems to Premium members. That would unquestionably drive some creators and landlords out.
  8. Scylla Rhiadra
    The power of FOMO is irresistible, isn't it? 😏 Patch, Casper, and others have actually done a pretty good and conscientious job of answering a lot of these questions here. There is a great deal that we can't know about the future -- and that LL itself may not know yet -- but so far this is seeming like a pretty positive thing: a "friendly acquisition" that seems to actually keep Casper Warden in the picture as well.
  9. Scylla Rhiadra
    Economics 101 demonstrates that there is a price point at which an increase in prices leads to diminishing returns. LL may not always seem like they know what they're doing -- and they've certainly made mistakes over the years -- but on the whole they've done a pretty impressive job of keeping an incredibly complicated economic model working. I'm sure they're aware of this. I actually think of this a little as I would the paying of taxes for public infrastructure. Yes, I know that LL isn't really a "government," and certainly not a democratic one, and I also know that there are some for whom taxation is the Primal Sin. But CasperVend has become absolutely vital infrastructure in SL -- analogous to highways and ports in RL. And if we all pay a slight cost to keep it running reliably and efficiently, I think that's preferable to the kind of economic disaster that we'd experience if the service went down or disappeared, as the case of Hippo demonstrated.
  10. Scylla Rhiadra
    Because it's frankly got a little dull here of late?
  11. Scylla Rhiadra
    This. I don't know of instances of LL applying selective restrictions to residents. If you're banned or suspended, that applies to access to everything in-world. I can't imagine any reason why they'd change that now. They can have little interest in applying sanctions that were imposed by someone else for unknown reasons.
  12. Scylla Rhiadra
    Or is it to harvest their data?
  13. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh dear. First of all, can we be careful not to conflate terms here? Not all that is "beautiful" is "art." And not all that is "art" is beautiful. Beauty is often a component, a tool of art, but it's not a necessary requirement, and never has been. Caravaggio's "Judith and Holofernes" (ca. 1600), which features a gruesomely graphic decapitation, is hardly "beautiful," but it is most assuredly art. I could produce hundreds of similar examples harvested from several thousand years of art history. You don't like Duchamp's "Fountain." Fair enough! I am going to assume you don't like much of Cubism, Dadaism, or modernism and postmodernism either, for the same reason. But I could (given enough time to research it properly) write a very lengthy paper on the meanings produced by Duchamp's piece. The AI you've presented here, on the other hand . . . not so much. And that's because, while it is very "pretty" and impressive looking, it has literally been generated by pulling cliches and stock motifs from existing work of art. It is a tissue of "this has already been done." That's how this kind of AI works: it generates images created from a pastiche of existing art, and in so doing simply reproduces stock tropes and motifs. It is incapable of innovation: it can only recycle. And because of that, it really isn't great at producing "meaning," except (ironically) in a way that interrogates the pretensions of art itself in almost exactly the same way that Duchamp does. Accepting your AI work as "art" represents a kind of satire or critique on the very concept of art -- which is, oddly enough, in part what the Dadaists were doing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking things that are beautiful or pretty even if they don't produce meaning, and aren't "art." But reducing the value of art to mere aesthetics is a different matter.
  14. Scylla Rhiadra
    Is there evidence that this is happening? This is not a rhetorical question -- is there? I know estates are down now, but Linden Homes have been around for a while now, and the current dip in the numbers surely has more to do with the turn in the real world economy than anything else. Was there a loss of estates in the immediate aftermath of the creation of Belli? And, although I'm sure this is hard to determine, has there been specifically been a depression in estate or mainland rentals? Not all estates are for rental properties, after all, although many use a limited number of rental spaces as a means of supporting the cost of the land. I've heard a bit of complaining about the putative impact of Belli, but it's all been anecdotal. Has anyone looked into the situation of private rentals?
  15. Scylla Rhiadra
    To be honest, I don't, as a consumer, see much of a difference between using the service of one business or another, assuming that they are mostly on par in most respects. If LL "leverages" this to jack up prices, I might have reason to complain, but it's more likely that they will be improving it by making it interoperable with other systems. How much actual competition from other user-created systems did CasperVend actually have, anyway? Who is being "crushed" or disadvantaged by this? I'll note that what was, I think, a FAR more obtrusive move by LL, the creation of Bellisseria and the new Linden Homes, has succeeded as well as it has because it provided things that people weren't getting from mainland or estate rentals. Yes, LL was using its unique tools to ensure that this was the case, but it hasn't strong-armed people into taking Linden Homes. They have instead provided value for money, and the kind of rental / residential experience people evidently want. Maybe private land barons should pay some attention, and ask themselves how they might be able to replicate or even better this success?
  16. Scylla Rhiadra
    I will agree totally with this. There is no question that the LeLutka Evos are better heads in all sorts of ways. What I hope will happen is that future updates and issues from Genus will bring their heads up to par. But . . . we'll see. In the meantime, I am staying put anyway.
  17. Scylla Rhiadra
    What?????
  18. Scylla Rhiadra
    As a Genus user, I'm as frustrated as anyone about the lack of updates. There are things that definitely need to be fixed: the HUDs, the neck, and the eyes foremost. However, I have spent a lot of time getting my "look" to where I want it to be, and vital components of that are the head itself, and the Session skin I use, that is only available for Genus. And so long as my Genus continues to be functional -- and, really, mostly it is now -- I'll be sticking with it. Your point about the RL reasons for the tardiness are, I think, right on. First there was the whole DMCA thing that really threw them for a loop for months and months. Then, I think, there was a pregnancy and a childbirth in there -- at least, that was my impression. And finally, yes, I think they've been hit by the war in Ukraine, although I'm not clear on exactly how. They DO need to upgrade soonish, if only to stop the bleeding. But, were I them, I'd be holding off on releasing any new products for a while. LeLutka is the flavour of the year, and it's pretty much crushing anything it's coming up against. The CatwaPro, which seemed on paper to be a good competitor, is a case in point. I'd be waiting for people to start getting bored of the EvoX, which they inevitably will at some point, and cash in when they start looking around for new shiny.
  19. Scylla Rhiadra
    Oh I'm sure. Although, whenever I receive anything from CasperVend I get a notification of that fact which is obviously routed through SL's systems. This is all a bit of a red herring I think in any case: the bottom line is that there is no reason to believe that LL is going to do anything with this data that they aren't doing with what they currently have. And so far as I know, they are not selling it. (Who on earth would want to buy it?)
  20. Scylla Rhiadra
    Only 100,000??? HURRY!!! 🙃
  21. Scylla Rhiadra
    That's great, but I've been using CasperVend forever, and I've never been asked to agree to it, that I can recall? Although maybe I've just forgotten? Is there a popup when you first use it? My point was not that CasperVend can't be trusted. I'm sure it can. It was merely that LL itself seems more transparent than any other in-world service provided by residents that I've ever seen.
  22. Scylla Rhiadra
    What data in SL do you think LL doesn't have access to currently? Your SL would literally not function unless it was all available to them.
  23. Scylla Rhiadra
    Possibly because they don't yet know?
  24. Scylla Rhiadra
    Sorry, my point wasn't that LL has access to CasperTech's data, but rather that it has the ability, by tracing exchanges of the L$ and deliveries to inventories, to reconstruct any kind of transaction they might want. There is nothing that CasperTech does that doesn't leave traces in SL's code. Were the point to sell data, they really wouldn't need CasperTech's own database. I am glad to hear, however, that you'll be contacting users about their data. Transparency is a great thing.
  25. Scylla Rhiadra
    LL surely has access to this data now: the CasparVend system piggybacks on existing SL code, including the exchange of L$. Why would you think they'd make nefarious use of it now, if they haven't already? Honestly, I trust LL more with this data than a private vendor. Have you ever seen a ToS from CasperTech?
×
×
  • Create New...