In a blog post dated Tuesday 17th December, the Lab has asked for feedback on the SL Marketplace search functionality, and have set-up a survey for people to take as a means of offering their views.
Next year, we’ll be making some improvements to the Second Life Marketplace search functionality. To help focus those efforts, we’d like to get some feedback from Marketplace users (both buyers and merchants) about how Marketplace search is working for you today and, more importantly, what you’d like to see in the future.
Please take a few minutes to help us improve this feature for all Residents by completing this brief survey here.
The survey will be available for feedback through January 6, 2014, and your input is greatly appreciated!
The survey presents a dozen sections, some of which are multi-part, asking for elements of the search functionality to be rated, and some of which offer users the opportunity to provide direct input / suggestions on things like the current search filters, relevance and sorting of results, presentation of search results, etc., and any specific changes people would like to see. It takes about 5 minutes to complete.
For those frustrated by Marketplace search, this would appear to be a good opportunity to provide feedback as to how things might be improved, which will hopefully be taken on-board. A discussion thread on the survey and feedback given has been started within the Merchant’s forum.
He’s been one of the longest-serving members of the Lab’s team, and actually out-lasted Philip Rosedale for time put in with the company, but after more than eleven years with Linden Lab, Andrew Linden is saying “farewell”.
He broke the news during his regular appearance at the Tuesday Simulator User Group meeting on December 17th, saying, “This is going to be my last User Group meeting as a Linden: I’ve decided to leave LL and pursue other things. I’ve really enjoyed these User Group meetings, which is why I’ve been showing up all these years.”
He confirmed that he will be joining Rosedale at the latter’s latest venture, High Fidelity, saying, “”I’m going to join Philip and his new project. Not because I don’t love SL or am not excited about what LL is working on, but because I’m ready for a change, and I really like working with Philip.”
Andrew’s final day with the Lab will be on Thursday December 19th, after which he’ll be off to join the High Fidelity team.
As a long-serving member of the Lab’s staff, he will be sorely missed. Over the years he’s been exceptionally popular among residents, and he has worked on many of the Lab’s server-side and other projects. Most recently, he has been instrumental in overhauling the platform’s interest list, massively improving the way in which in-world scenes and managed and loaded between the servers and the viewer, and which has also seen an overhaul of the viewer’s object caching capabilities (which are currently available through a release candidate viewer), all of which has significantly improved scene loading and rendering. This work was recently featured in a video narrated by Torley Linden.
The video demonstrating the interest list work: the last large-scale undertaking Andrew worked on
Also of late, Andrew has worked on a number of anti-griefing measures within the platform, and has currently project has involved LSL updates to enable the uniform scaling of objects and linksets (such as uniformly increasing or decreasing a linksets size by a factor of 2). This work should be appearing in an RC release in the New Year.
Andrew’s profile: testimony to his time at the Lab
In the time I’ve been attending the Simulator User Group meeting (formerly the Server/Sim/Scripting group), Andrew has always been polite, inquisitive and helpful to all, and demonstrated a willingness to readily delve into issues and see what he can find and / or put right. In response to the direct enquiries I’ve put to him in the past, he’s always been more than helpful in his replies, willing to provide concise explanations and offer additional information and guidance.
The news of his departure was met with a mix of sadness and best wishes from those at the meeting. For my part, I’d like to again extend my thanks to Andrew for his input to, and work on Second Life over the years, for his support of the Simulator User Group and to wish him all the best for the future.
News has been breaking that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA, “infiltrated” various on-line gaming platforms and virtual worlds as part of the anti-terrorist activities.
Revelations form a part of The Guardian’s “The NSA Files” series
Information on the operations, obtained via Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee / NSA contractor, who released some 200,000 documents to the press, is at the centre of a series of reports the Guardian newspaper in the UK in partnership with The New York Times and ProPublica, and which have been widely picked-up by the on-line media on both sides of the Atlantic. The reports show that both the NSA and GCHQ were so concerned about the various methods nefarious individuals might use to communicate with one another, that they started targeting various on-line platforms – often on the thinnest of reasoning.
The actual activities were varied in scope, ranging from specific data gathering through the use of “mass-collection capabilities”, through to operatives posing as players on various platforms seeking information and also charged with recruiting potential informants from the more technically aware members of the various communities – with Second Life being one of the targeted platforms.
In some respects, the interest in virtual world and games platforms is unsurprising; I’d frankly be more concerned if the security agencies hadn’t considered the potential for such platforms to be used by militant or terrorist groups (which, I would also add, should not be taken to mean I necessarily condone their actions). However, what I do find to be eyebrow-raising, and doubtless what other people will as well, is the degree to which GVEs – games and virtual environments – were subjected to surveillance and what went on.
For example, ProPublica reports that in 2009, a 3-day “test” of capabilities to gather data from within Second Life, Britain’s GCHQ gathered real-time data on chats, IMs and L$ transactions which amounted to some 176,677 lines of data. How widespread this data-gathering was, who was affected by it and what happened to the data, is unclear.
GCHQ’s interest in Second Life appears to have started out as a legitimate activity. Towards the end of 2008, they were involved in tracking down a credit card fraud ring in what was known as “Operation Galician”. When the fraud ring attempted to move some of their activities to Second Life, GCHQ and the police followed. Even so, the success (or otherwise) of that operation doesn’t seem to stand up as justification for the wholesale gathering of data as occurred in 2009.
The UK’s GCHQ – gathered over 176,000 lines of data pertaining to SL users chat, IM and L$ transactions in a single real-time “test” of their ability to gather SL data (images via Gizmodo)
The British security agency was no slouch when it came to other virtual and gaming environments, either, as the Guardian’s report reveals:
At the request of GCHQ, the NSA had begun a deliberate effort to extract World of Warcraft metadata from their troves of intelligence, and trying to link “accounts, characters and guilds” to Islamic extremism and arms dealing efforts. A later memo noted that among the game’s active subscribers were “telecom engineers, embassy drivers, scientists, the military and other intelligence agencies.”
GCHQ was also the motivating force behind data gathering activities directed at the Xbox Live console network, and developed “exploitation modules” for various platforms. Much of this activity appears to have been carried out at Menwith Hill, a Royal Air Force base which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and where GCHQ and NSA operatives worked side-by-side to infiltrate World of Warcraft.
January 2014 will see the launch of The Drax Files Radio Hour, a new weekly radio / podcast to be hosted by Draxtor Despres and Jo Yardley.
Tooting my horn a little, I’ve actually known about the series for a while. It’s pretty fair to say that the seed of the idea was likely planted during one of the many back-and-forth discussions Drax and I had and have about each segment of The Drax Files (he prodded me a number of times to do a podcast with him. While I passed at the time, I may still contribute to the show if there is interest from Drax and Jo in having me do so).
Balanced discussion of Second Life tends to be in short supply nowadays. While Metareality has returned, I have to say that I’d personally found that show to be increasingly biased (and at times under-informed) prior to if going off-air over summer, which is a pity. Hopefully, The Drax Files Radio Hour will be able to shine a light on the good, the bad, the strange and the wonderful within Second Life and virtual worlds as a whole and provide good, informed discussion across all.
The show is set to be broadcast “without permission somewhere from an attic in 1920s Berlin”, and will feature discussions, guests, visits to regions in-world, looks at emerging technology, and so on. I’m laying odds that two hot topics on the tech side which will be featuring are the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion, particularly given both Jo and Drax have an interest in each, and both are set to be coming to Second Life in 2014 :).
If you want to stay abreast of plans, there is a Facebook page for the show, but no website (as yet – I might prod Drax on that as well on behalf of all of us Facebook avoiders :)).
The first broadcast for the show is currently scheduled for Thursday, January 10th, 2014. I’ll be following things here, and will hopefully be able to help people keep up-to-date on things as the show develops and we move closer to the premiere. In the meantime, make a note in your diary!
On November 21st, I posted an article about LL requesting tax information from some customers. Specifically, people had started receiving e-mails from the Lab asking them to complete IRS form W9, Request for Taxpayer Information, which caused some concern and confusion.
As a result, on Tuesday 19th November, Linden Lab moved to try to clarify matters, issuing a blog post entitled Required Tax Documentation. This indicated that the Lab is required by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to collect and retain either Form W-9 (for US citizens) or Form W-8BEN (for non-US citizens) “at certain transaction volumes”. The blog post also noted that those falling under the criteria who fail to submit a completed W-9 or W-8BEN risk having 28% of their gross amounts received withheld. Finally, the post indicated that the Lab is required to file Form 1099-K with the IRS for US residents “with 200 or more transactions with a total amount in excess of $20,000” in a calendar year.
While this went some way towards clarifying the situation, it still left a number of questions and concerns unanswered; one of these being what exactly constitutes a “transaction”, as I noted at the time:
Is it related solely to cashing-out from Second Life, or is it based on the number of user-to-user transaction through the LindeX (i.e. the number of L$ sales a person makes per amount of L$ they offer on the LindeX? Or is it somewhere in between?
Long-term SL user and LL customer Desmond Shang decided to try to seek further information and answers from the Lab. As a result, he’s posted a couple of useful pieces on the SL Universe thread where some of the discussion on the matter has been taking place.
In the first, he recommends that anyone with specific questions / concerns should contact Linden Billing, noting that they have been reasonably responsive. He also points-out that while circumstances will vary from individual to individual, depending upon a range of factors, those who might be regarded as a “hobbyist” in SL might be able to claim some relief on revenue they receive through the platform. In particular he suggests IRS Publication 529 Miscellaneous Deductions might be worth a read, together with Can You Deduct Your Expenses From a Hobby? from Nolo.com.
More specifically, Desmond posts the Lab’s definition of a “transaction”:
Transactions are currently defined as sell orders placed on the LindeX and applies per person not per avatar. How that order is filled does not currently impact the transaction count. For example, if you place a sell order for L$5,000 and that order is matched with three different residents while being filled, it counts as one transaction.
The Lab also note that IRS criteria on withholding taxes is only on the transaction count itself and is only required if they do not have a valid W-9 or W-8BEN on file.
The key points here remain that firstly, these requirements will not impact everyone in Second Life. Secondly, if you have received a request for tax information from the Lab, it is important you do not ignore it, as you risk 28% of your gross amounts received withheld if you do. This applies whether or not you are a US citizen.
Additionally, those who have received a request from the Lab and who have questions / concerns should consider: a) contacting Linden Lab Billing for further information / with specific questions; b) seeking the advice of a tax professional.
This week is Thanksgiving week in the United States, which means that not only will Americans be celebrating on Thursday and the weekend, it also means some disruption to the modus operandi in Second Life.
As I’ve noted in mt recent SL project updates, this week is a code freeze week, which means there are no planned server deployments or viewer RC releases. It also means that there will be some reduction in support for users in order to allow staff to enjoy time off with their families. In particular, concierge phone and chat support will be closed on Thursday November 28th, as announced in a Grid Status update which reads:
Concierge phone and chat support will be offline this coming Thursday, 28 November, so that team members can spend the Thanksgiving holiday with their friends and family. Both services will close at midnight Wednesday evening and will re-open at 8am Pacific on Friday morning.
All other Customer Support departments will be staffed at customary levels.
In a blog post dated Tuesday 17th December, the Lab has asked for feedback on the SL Marketplace search functionality, and have set-up a survey for people to take as a means of offering their views.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 