Day: March 31, 2020

2020 Simulator User Group week #14 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Villa Eirini, Calas Galadhon, February 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken at the Simulator User Group meeting held on Tuesday, March 31st.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the simulator deployment thread for updates.

llTargetedEmail() Concerns

The llTargetedEmail() function has caused concern among users, partially due to a lack of any forewarning to users.  Specific concerns that have been raised since the deployment thread was published, with concerns such as the following being raised:

Example then. If someone make 10 alts, then get an item created by me that is modifiable (from Marketplace for example) and drop a script with TARGETED_EMAIL_ROOT_CREATOR in it that sends mails in loop… Even with 20 seconds delay that’s 3 emails per minute. 180 emails per hour. Per user. With 10 alts it’s almost 2000 messages per hour on my mailbox. Because owner of said alts can spam my mailbox via Lab’s servers without even knowing my SL-only email address for getting emails from grid.

In response to seeing these issues, Oz Linden stated at the SUG meeting:

That function was added as part of an ongoing effort to clean up how we send emails from SL… we wanted a way to send some of the emails that creators might want without having to have people put email addresses into scripts. It sends to whatever address you’ve verified. The concerns about the ROOT_CREATOR version are being discussed; exactly what we’ll do about that remains to be seen, but we’ll try hard to make it difficult to abuse.

In Brief

  • BUG-228399 “Script deletion disables vehicle controls until re-rez” appears to be an issue arising from a recent simulator update. The cause for the problem isn’t currently known, but the report has been imported by the Lab to their internal Jira for investigation.
  • BUG-228405 “Residents attempting to log into any region which use an SL Experience for access (Key Experience) get sent to welcome hub despite having allowed the SL Experience”. This appears to be the result of a region /parcel with access control via an experience removing an avatar that is being logged-in prior to all of the avatar’s data (including its permission to be in the region / parcel) having loaded – thus causing the region to assume avatar is not supposed to be there. It is an issue known to the Lab.

Previewing Lab Gab 20: cloud uplift and engineering

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 20th edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, April 3rd at 10:00 SLT (18:00 UK; 19:00 CET). For those who have not seen the official blog post about it, the segment will feature members of the Second Life Engineering team: Oz Linden, April Linden and Ekim Linden.

Oz Linden is the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering and a member of the company’s management team. Together with Grumpity Linden and Patch Linden, he is responsible for SL’s technical and operational directions. He specifically overseas the Lab’s engineering teams to manage all aspects of the Lab’s server environment (hardware and software) and the teams engaged in all aspects of viewer development and testing.

April Linden has become familiar to many SL residents for her honest and informative blog posts explaining what happened and how things were fixed when Second Life suffers a significant system upset and / or outage. As the Lab’s Systems Engineering Manager, she particularly coordinates and manages all aspects of the Lab’s server operations, including dealing with the third-party teams who physically care for the Lab’s hardware at its data co-location centre.

Ekim Linden is the Lab’s Director of Web Engineering, as manages the engineering team directly responsible for the Lab’s web properties (such as the Marketplace, the secondlife.com website, etc).

Ekim Linden (l), Oz Linden and April Linden (r) on the Lab Gab set. Credit: Linden Lab

All three are responsible for managing and coordinating the extensive work in transitioning all of the Lab’s services from their dedicated hardware and infrastructure and to recognised cloud services operated by Amazon (AWS) and Google. As such, they are appearing on Lab Gab to talk about this work – which the Lab refers to as the Cloud Uplift – although doubtless, other subjects will come up for discussion.

If you have a question you’d like to put to Oz, April or Ekim (or all of them), particularly on the uplift, make sure you submit it via the Lab Gab Google form.

As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

Men in Focus: April 2020 edition in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

 

Men In Focus, April 2020

Men in Focus, the gallery owned and sponsored by Men in Motion in support of the Movember Foundation (donations to which are accepted at the entrance to the gallery) and curated by JMB Balogh, will launch its latest ensemble exhibition on April 1st, 2020.

As I’ve previously noted in writing about Men in Focus, it is something of a unique location in that it focuses solely on male avatar studies and art my male artists in Second life, featuring art from invited artists and by members of the Men in Motion group. For this exhibition, the gallery features as 2D guest artists AlCyan, BanagherLinks, Patrick Ireland and Hobbit Zenfold; and 3D artists Reycharles, Harry Cover (ImpossibleIsNotFrench), Mistero Hifeng and Luc Lameth.

Men In Focus: Patrick Ireland

The range of art offered is once again impressive, each of the 2D artists utilising rich styles and approaches. On the ground floor, Patrick Ireland offers a fabulous series of images that run from self-portraits through social commentary and historical settings to provocative pokes at our imaginations, and reflections of popular culture, all wrapped within pieces that carry their own stories.

On the floor above, Hobbit Zenfold – an artist I’ve not previously encountered – offers a range of pieces that might be more closely focused as self-portraits, but which are equally rich in narrative, with several offering a fantasy or fashion element to them. A link in the form of face paint from both Hobbit and Patrick coincidentally flows between their individual exhibit spaces, the pieces containing it also offering an echo of cinematic wickedness.

Men in Focus, April 2020: Hobbit Zenfold

Above Hobbit, on the next two floors, AlCyan and BanagherLinks offer expressions of their Second Lives as avatars and photographers, each constraining his display to colour images that have depth and narrative before they in turn give way to pieces by members of Men in Motion on the upper floors of the gallery.

Spread between the floors are the 3D pieces by Harry, Mistero, Reycharles and Luc Lameth – the latter of whom I’ve also not previously encountered, and I found his Autumn Fairies selection a unique and charming turn in presenting fae folk (whom are so often presented in the female form), while his Shaolin Buddy (a play on Buddha) figurines are utterly charming – as is Harry Cover’s Nuts and Bolts Band.

Men in Focus, April 2020: Luc Lameth

April is Testicular Cancer Awareness Month, and Men in Focus is raising awareness of the disease, including how to self-test for possible signs of the disease through s series of information boards at the gallery’s landing space. Given that testicular cancer tends to be very prevalent among men of younger age ranges than we perhaps tend to associated with cancer (15-49 being the common age range), these boards are very much worth taking time to read if you are male.

Another excellent exhibition at Men in Focus, carrying with it a focused aim. The formal opening will be held between 18:00-20:00 SLT on April 1st, 2020, although the exhibition is already open for preview.

Men in Focus, April 2020: AlCyan an BanagherLinks

SLurl Details