Prokofy Neva

I wonder what you see as SL's assets. Servers with content on them aren't assets, they're cost centers, they have to be run, billed, fixed, etc. The content is an asset I guess but where else can it be used? Most of it only in SL. The users are assets only if they are bundled with the other things, the servers and content, if those aren't there, they flee. So how can it strip? What can it strip? I wouldn't assume it will go the way of say, Toys 'R Us.

I realize that you wish to be cynical to appear cool, but seriously, why is Tilia even a thing in a world of not only PayPal but Venmo and everything else? They can handle small amounts of currencies, too. If the value-add is micro-currencies, well, there are plenty of wallet projects including some bought by Facebook but just not implemented because they are a management and regulatory and security chore. They need constant watching. It isn't Tilia that has that experience of watching and implementing, but Tilia. And again, if there's nothing to buy with your microcurrency, it's as useless as Joe's Bitcoin, so content is still at the center.

I don't see how it can be a jewel. The deal is still waiting regulators' approval because they are a money service. But then so is PayPal and much larger and better known and B2B as well. I don't see it. Content creation -- and sale -- is supposed to be the jewel of SL's crown. But as I already said, microcurrency management IS content creation/sale so it's maybe all the same thing.

It's not Ebbe's to sell. He's not the owner, but the CEO hired to run it by the investors. He may have stock but he may not be consulted on the sale.

What does NFC mean? Near Field Communication?

I don't have an informed opinion on this, other than from watching the black box that is the Lab for the last nearly 16 years. So, my first thought was: Mitch Kapor will at last get a payday, probably his biggest (or only?) since Lotus-1-2-3, and since his life is now devoted to philanthropy, with his main causes being the end of copyright, freeing of content, undermining of government encryption, on the one hand (which I don't support), and helping of Blacks, underprivileged youths, human rights, etc. which I do support, I guess we can expect more havoc/good from that quarter. My next thought was that this fellow buying the outfit seems to have more business success (with this sort of better Task Rabbit thing called Jyve) and more experience than the past lab technicians, and that's a good thing. My third thought was: why the emphasis on Tilia, money. licensing etc when it's supposed to be about virtual content creation? Or maybe those are the same thing, essentially. My fourth thought was: no, I don't think SL will die. Look at Sansar, once it was out of the Lindens' hands, it seemingly has thrived with big rock concerts and such. Even I visited it. OK, maybe not. But still. When the Lindens said they didn't have any more sims to sell, I thought that was very, very, very weird, in a world suddenly forced to go online. So I guess it was about this. Does it mean they were hurting? SL is actually one of the rare online virtual world success stories. So many others have failed, or they don't enable their users to make money. Users make more money in total using SL than they can using FB, since basically only screened app engineers can make money from FB. Instagram doesn't help you make money. What does? But SL has something like $450 million in profits *for users* which is rare and exceptional. So maybe its worth is recognized. Yet it does have all kinds of problems, whether sim seams, or my bugabear, the edit window opening up and blocking the very thing you're trying to edit. Lindens used to say that fixing SL would be like trying to swap out the engine of a plane while it was flying. But "going to the cloud" or whatever it is -- that has to be done. Usually when there's an acquisition, the current CEO is replaced, yet Ebbe didn't seem to talk that way. But likely he will be. It would be folly to raise the price and chase away loyal users already made skittish by the announcement. Yet they will raise the price because -- see above. They will have some kind of developers' license you can buy that will enable you to upload unlimited textures, sounds, and mesh but will cost you something to be using this platform to make money. I predict they will keep Oz because he basically runs the place. Others are going to be let go. There are certain ones I'd like to see in that number but they manage to survive through every change of regime so it's not likely. Basically, SL is too complicated and rare a toy to buy if you merely plan to put it out of business. That is, if you are Google, and making your own thing, sure, it would make sense. But not for this guy. He likely imagines he can turn it into a virtual meeting space on demand.

SL is broken, so... Go and see the new conference chat thing made by Philip Rosedale (founder of Second Life)/ Visit Sansar (made by LL and sold to another company). I think the rock concert might still be going. Go and see SL's YouTube chanel.

Group accounts work on a 24-hour basis so you don't receive the payment right away, you receive it the next day.

Yes, thank you for making a field trip and confirming my point: no rules are being enforced. If they were, merchants could take out lamp scripts because the prim will stay lighted. As we all have to do at SL17B or FF or any other event. Hello! There isn't the policing, and there should be. I will have to say the Moles haven't remove their lights, either, however, as I said in the OP, naming one of the objects.

It's a given that avatars crowd events like this and their rendering points are a big factor in lagging. But that's harder to control for, unless there are guards at the door and scanners and rejections of those over a certain limit. My point is THE MOLES THEMSELVES can control for the OTHER PIECE of the lag -- which is the Mole build itself, and the individual merchant builds. Every single one of these can meet the standards of every other event and remove unneeded scripts, use 512 textures, put on phantom, etc. Did they? No. And yet you are strangely resistant to simply acknowledging that yes, this is an area where improvement is more easily made than in trying to police avatars.

Have you been to Stop 'n Shop? It's nothing like Fantasy Faire or really anything. It has these big RL mall-style pools with fountains and seating that no one uses. These are laggers and avatar traps. The huge ceilings are the gigantism. I don't see that they add anything.

Go and examine the mall build itself, I think that's creating the problem as to complexity of build, vertices, scripts not removed that could be etc. Also some of the merchants have made quite complex builds.

As a computer programming expert and builder in SL, you probably have a better/more expensive computer with a better/more expensive graphics card. Most people experience lag. And there is no reason not to take the steps I've mentioned that are in every single other event, including Linden events, and remove the bling scripts out of those dreadful hanging hedges, just to take one example, plus all that moving water in all those ridiculous pools.

Yes, right on cue, the usual contrarians step up and contraire. "Works on My Machine". It's not about turning off scripts in furniture that YOU sell and someone might want to test. It's about removing scripts for light or rotation or other things that either leave their effect on the prim, or else are not needed for something like sitting down. So that means you can remove all scripts in lamps, candles, etc.; all shrink/re-size scripts; rotate scripts (who needs spinning things anyway, they're annoying); texture change scripts (those can be big script time eaters -- pick one texture and leave it, unless it is a feature of the thing you are selling). The overwhelming majority of merchants use one essentially monopoly vendor.

As I said, there are always contrarians to what I say, and you're always one. I personally think setting physics to "none" isn't advisable as it generates a scary error message about how prims "can't" have "no shape". You can put "convex hull" just as easy which reduces prims, but not always, and "phantom". You can wear a script sensor and that will give you a list of scripted things, you don't have to hand-examine every single one. You're wrong about light, as the point is not what you/the viewer/the client side sees, but *the script itself". A candle script can be removed, as surely you know, and the prim will stay lit, so that way you have eliminated the script. Lindens tell you to do this, so I don't think it is mere "lore". "Inspect" isn't on the SL viewer.

I did all that. You don't even have to show friends. I already have low draw distance, particle etc. And it's still laggy. Which is what I think you are confirming. There is a list of all the stores with direct TPs, that helps but that still lands you inside builds that trap you much of the time: Also, once this blog entry disappears after the day it is posted, like all Linden blogs, it is HELLA HARD to find. You have to look and look through all the stuff they have. You see posts from 2019. But you can't find last week's easily. Trying again with a better link - see what I mean?

Since I'm a white person, some will find that I can't speak to this legitimately. I have an Asian avatar, which gives me some little insight to this issue -- people treat me as if I am invisible or "the help" at times. But generally, I don't find the level of racism there is in RL inside SL. I have Black tenants who have reported racist attacks on me, and after I investigate them, those other tenants are expelled and reported. Sometimes reports go "nowhere". Sometimes they work. Fortunately this has not been a common occurrence. Most of the incidents of racism I have seen in 15 years come from a notorious commuter college group related to 4chan involving white kids going around in what amounts to blackface, which should have been instantly discredited -- but was not. They went around in Black avatars with large 1960s Afros and the "Pool's Out" meme. They were most definitely not Black or Hispanic but white kids as they were happy to tell you at SL meet-ups and on social media. They would spam Bill Cosby jello ads and other strange racist and anti-semitic memes, and crash sims. They even had a RL professor who also dressed in this blackface and did not hide this fact. It's the sort of thing that cost people their jobs now in RL. But instead, this group was treated as "edgy" and various left-wing professors would write thinky studies of how they were "transgressive" -- when really they were criminals. And this sort of Internet group tragically has spilled over into RL with RL racist and terrorist attacks. So I think it was always the right thing to AR these miscreants, even if "virtual". And eventually I think it works. I would like to think they could not get away with these antics now. But I could be wrong. I remember for a time -- again about 14 years ago -- when there was a set of white bloggers absolutely convinced that there were no Black skins in SL, and this was a sign of racism. This was so patently false, and there were so many people with Black skins (and I remember for a time I had an Indian avatar with a Nehru jacket) that it just made no sense. It was one of these white liberal concoctions that they needed to invoke about SL because it's real crime, in their minds, was that they protected copyright. I find the capture roleplay sites absolutely abominable and I think LL should outlaw them. They are also based on a racist meme often, and involve denigrating women. But there are so many of them, and I guess some high-value patrons, that LL thinks they need to keep them in them of free expression.

The Shop and Hop, which I have come to think of as the Drop and Hop, as you CRAAAAAWL like a sleepy fly in molasses throughout the whole thing, could be far less laggy than it is, and it is not due to 40 avatars on a sim. The build itself and the lack of rules enforcement is at least in part to blame. Since I know there's a certain cadre on the forums that disputes anything I say, and an overlapping cadre that rejects anything critical of the beloved Moles, I'll address this one over their heads in the hopes that Moles, who I find far more receptive than their fan base, might hear this. Events in SL are laggy. This is a given. We all know the recipes to make them less laggy, starting with ourselves -- remove all the attachments and bling that make rendering hard. And turn off the view of avatars, and for that matter, other things (surface patch) to reduce lag for yourself. But we also know that all kinds of things can be done to optimize a heavy-use sim. It's done all the time. Huge events recently like Fantasy Faire, Relay for Life, Home & Garden Expo Design Contest, and the SL 17th Birthday all had strict rules for lightening sim loads. At Fantasy Faire, which I was fortunate to take part in for the first time this year as a small merchant, has very strict rules that are vigorously enforced. A matron comes around and looks over EVERY SINGLE THING on your lot. Does it violate copyright? Has a script been removed? Is it on topic? But wait, are you SURE you took the script out of that lamp/candle/glowy thing. Then they come around AGAIN. They start with a set of rules (no 1024 textures, take out scripts, take off light, etc.) and they enforce them -- and it works. And please don't tell me FF has less of a load than Shop 'N Hop. FF has MORE. It has far, far more elaborate builds. More avatars. And way more vendors, as it has lots of shop vendors plus the RFL vendors. It has more shops per sim in some cases, and events on those same sims. But if you feel as if you must argue about FF or any other big event as being "less" than Shop 'n Hop, then look at SL17B. Yes, SL17B do not always have as many people per sim, but even event-packed sims are not as laggy as Shop 'n Hop. Because at SL17B -- same set of rules as FF or any other big event, Linden-sponsored or not. Take out scripts -- and then take out MORE scripts. Put everything on "phantom" so there are no collisions. Lindens or Moles come and check and tell you to reduce, and reduce some more. And check AGAIN. You keep whittling and battling til you get down below their norm, which is I believe 0.06 script time per parcel (and below .01 per item). Much of the work of your build comes in doing this paring of prims and scripts and optimizing things. I don't think this is being done with anywhere near the scrupulousness of other Linden-sponsored or Linden-facilitated events at Shop 'n Hop. I see merchants that have not removed obvious scripts from lamps and other lit things -- and they don't need them to be there in a sample as they have vendors. I don't know how you tell whether a texture is at 512 or 1024 (I'd love to know if there is a test) -- but persistent grey squares may indicate that. More to the point, which is easier to police in a way, is the Moles' build. Now, I realize this is a very awesome and beloved build. It looks like Midtown Plaza, the first mall in Rochester, NY, which we used to go to as teenagers in the 1970s and buy things called "records" at "record stores" (which later my daughter called "Those big CDs you have in the closet"). Midtown Plaza -- with the same swirly arches and rounded effects and hanging plants and pools and more plants was torn down a few years ago because not only was it expensive to heat in the winter and cool in the summer, stores were dying due to the Internet. So here we all are on the Internet, and the thought is, "Let's re-create virtually that fabulous 1970s mall experience that Prok and other teens buying record and posters and beads in head shops look upon so nostalgically". Except this build is not only a lag monster, in my view, it's an avatar trap. Most of the time when I just click on a sim, I land under the build or trapped by the benches and pools, unable to break away easily. There is no need for all those pools and benches. No one sits at them. Ever. They fight their way FROM them. ONE per sim would be plenty. The hanging plants have lights in them, for example: 0.01331 ms, 1792 KB, (28/28) : Gleaming Hedge E2 I flew around with my Xoph script sensor and that was just one of the high script time lit things I saw that could have been removed. In fact the entire overhanging plant-filled mall could go. A lot of the big events merchants have finally changed their big, avatar-trapping, elaborate builds. Remember We ❤️ RP's old medieval town builds? You had to DRAAAAG yourself through these wending dirt roads past dark medieval pubs and fences and stalls and castles that made the whole experience dark and depressing. You could never find the thing you were looking for. You would grind away at it, trying to cam, and give up. Finally the owners realized this cost them sales, they ditched all that stuff, and made a spacious, clean round building with simple stalls which is 10 times easier to navigate, find what you want, buy, browse, and get out without torture. Same with Sanarae, even Shiny Shabby -- all of them have ditched their elaborate builds in favour of builds that reduce lag and therefore increase sales. After all, if you want to go look at a build, you can go to a Destination or some romantic spot, you don't need to go to a laggy event you can't even see. Arcade put the entire thing on a pier. I think it would make sense to put Shop 'n Hop on a pier with no ceiling, no plants, no impediments, and take out all the scripts possible. I realize that Soviet-style gigantism, or for that matter, 1950s American recreational gigantism, styles that Moles like other virtual architects fall back on because they are lacking in other models for the masses they wish to bring, dies very hard out of the repetoire. But it must. Merchants work hard to set up their stores, they give away gifts, they set things at half price, they take a loss, and while they can do what they should to reduce lag -- and rules should be enforced with them as much as they are for SL17B or other events -- the build itself has to change. Yes, I realize you can wait until the first very laggy days die down. Duh. It does last a month. But I'm talking about going there *yesterday* or *today* when it has 13 or 18 avatars per sim, and it is still grindingly slow. It doesn't have to be this way.

Here's an interesting critique of "White Fragility" - I find the author a loathsome creature on many topics but here he has a point. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility Here's a podcast (I think worth paying for) that interviews a woman who went through a year-long training with the author of "White Fragility" and found it lacking. https://www.patreon.com/posts/early-access-f-38424843 And there's more if you look. You can address the very real issues of racism without going down this sectarian rabbit hole. Here is an important article for example to understand the history: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/the-history-of-the-riot-report

Banking was banned in SL as well it should be under US law after a number of scandals involving banks, ponzi schemes, even a stock market. Google the terms with "Second Life". People lost thousands of RL dollars. In my view, there was some unnecessary panic around it by some individuals who were only interesting in advancing their careers and selling their books -- when does a high investment account become a ponzi? The definitions weren't clear and the actions hard to trace. All of these were tied to gambling in SL which was also outlawed.

I think NAACP is the least politicized and most respected of these organizations. Also, I think you can't go wrong donating to Legal Aid Society which helps more people directly in the courts than ACLU, which tends to do "impact litigation" and is more politicized.

Before I learn Blender, which I'm likely not going to be good at, I'm personally waiting for something like a global pandemic where I'm forced to stay at home and never -- oh.

For versimilitude, you'll need a Socialist Gun Club (anti-fa) commandos bearing arms in a no-gun zone (which would be most sandboxes) and you'd need to shoot people in safe areas and not let the police (Lindens) into the area. So -- I'll pass.

I wonder if you can tie this to Viewer 1 and its demise. The search was much better for Viewer 1. I must have been the last avatar clinging to Viewer 1 when they deprecated it. I agree with you that many more things are complicated now. I try all kinds of ways of explaining things to new people and I have various notecards and tutorial areas such as the infohub in Ross called Memory Bazaar, but it's just never enough. It's an enormous amount of lore that you "just have to know". I don't know the way out from this thicket but one thing I do is just rarely buy clothes or avatars, I never add an "AO," and that way I keep my sanity.

California is a completely different country than the rest of the United States. I recently bought a microwave oven. Scientists have proven for decades that microwaves do not cause damage to your health unless you do something stupid like put metal in it. But a big label on it said "For residents of California only" and proceeded to provide a warning that microwaves may be damaging to your health. Hilarious!