Graph showing “normal” log-ins over the course of a day compared with Sunday, October 28th. Credit: April Linden
In my week #44/1 User Group update, I noted that April Linden had indicated the issues Second Life users experienced with the platform on Sunday, October 28th through Monday October 29th, 2018 were the result of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.
April has now issued a blog post expanding on her original forum comments, with the full text of her post reading:
Hello amazing Residents of Second Life!
A few days ago (on Sunday, October 28th, 2018) we had a really rough day on the grid. For a few hours it was nearly impossible to be connected to Second Life at all, and this repeated several times during the day.
The reason this happened is that Second Life was being DDoSed.
Attacks of this type are pretty common. We’re able to handle nearly all of them without any Resident-visible impact to the grid, but the attacks on Sunday were particularly severe. The folks who were on call this weekend did their best to keep the grid stable during this time, and I’m grateful they did.
Sunday is our busiest day in Second Life each week, and we know there’s lot of events folks plan during it. We’re sorry those plans got interrupted. Like most of y’all, I too have an active life as a Resident, and my group had to work around the downtime as well. It was super frustrating.
As always, the place to stay informed of what’s going on is the Second Life Grid Status Blog. We do our best to keep it updated during periods of trouble on the grid.
Thanks for listening. I’ll see you in-world!
April Linden Second Life Operations Team Lead
Shug Maitland kept an eye on the ups and downs of log-ins during the DDOS attack via https://etitsup.com/slstats/ through Sunday, October 28th, 2018 and into the early hours of Monday, October 29th, sending me the above screen capture
There not a lot more that can be added – DDOS attacks are an unfortunate fact of life, and while the Lab has learned to try to deal with them without impacting the normal flow of activities for Second Life users, it’s also unfortunate that at time this cannot always be the case.
Thanks once again to April for the update on the situation.
Linden Lab has announced the next in their series of Town Hall meetings, this one again featuring three of the decision-makers for Second Life’s ongoing development: Director of Product, Grumpity Linden, Technical Director Oz Linden, and Senior Director of Product Operations, Patch Linden.
Like the September 13th event, this will be a single session, the date and time being:
Thursday, November 15th 2018 from 10:00 SLT onwards.
Collectively, these three have over 28 (!) years of experience working on Second Life and work closely with all the Second Life teams to continue to improve this platform that we’ve all come to love.
They are some of the biggest stakeholders in the direction of the product development roadmap each year, and know the product inside and out!
If you have a question that you would like to ask these Lindens, please take a moment to post it in the Community Forum thread “Town Hall Meeting with Grumpity, Oz, and Patch Linden – November 15” in advance of the Town Hall. Questions will be selected from all submissions made prior to November 9th, so be sure to get your question in before then.
The Town Hall meeting venue
For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with Patch, Oz and Grumpity, the following is a brief outline of their responsibilities which I hope may help when considering questions to submit for consideration at the meeting.
Oz Linden is the Technical Director for Second Life, having joined in 2010 with initial responsibility managing the viewer open-source project and rebuild what had become a fractious relationship with TPVs, with his role expanding over time to encompass more and more of the engineering side of Second Life.
As work on Sansar started to progress in earnest, he pro-actively campaigned within the Lab for the role of Technical Director of SL, building a team of people around him who specifically wanted to remain solely focused on Second Life and developing it. His team works closely with the product and operations team to ensure SL constantly evolves without (as far as is possible) breaking anything – a process he refers to as rebuilding the railway from a moving train.
Grumpity Linden is the Director of Product for Second Life. She originally came to Linden Lab while working for The Product Engine, a company providing end-to-end consulting and software development services, and which supports viewer development at the Lab. Grumipty was initially involved in the development and viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio).
She became a “full-time Linden” in 2014. Her current position involves coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life (e.g. Engineering and QA), liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, etc. This work can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.
Grumpity jokingly refers to herself, Patch and Oz as the “hydra” or troika, responsible for the development and direction of all aspects of Second Life.
Patch Linden is the Senior Director of Product Operations at Linden Lab. Originally a Second Life resident, he joined linden Lab in 2007, after being invited to apply to the company as a result of his work as a community leader and mentor from 2004 through until the invitation was extended.
His role is the only one of the three here that also encompasses Sansar, as he manages the respective support teams for both platforms. In this regard, he recently established a support centre in Atlanta, Georgia. For Second Life, his work also involves overseeing the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles, and managing the account support team.
After pause of a couple of weeks when a last-minute hitch held up deployment, the latest Marketplace update rolled out during week #41, with the Lab blogging about it on Wednesday, October 10th, 2018.
It’s an update that sees a trio of new features added to the MP, all of which have been the subject of numerous requests – wish lists and favourites / follows. The update also includes a number of bug fixes.
For this article, I’m looking purely at the wish list and favourites options:
Wish lists:
Add items you’re not ready to buy to your personal wish list.
Make purchases from your wish list.
Share your wish list with friends (so they can buy you rez day gifts, etc.).
Favourites:
Add favourite items to a personal list for easy relocation.
Make purchases from your list.
Add favourite products to your wish list.
Add favourite stores to your list (use them to check on new releases more easily).
View one of your favourite stores from the list.
Adding Items to Your Wish List and Favourites Lists
Individual items are added to your wish list / favourites list by viewing them in the Marketplace and then click on the Add to Wishlist or Add to Favourites options, located on the right of the item display.
Individual items can easily be added to your personal wish list or favourites list
Add A Store to Your Favourites
To add a store to your favourites, open the store’s main page in the Marketplace, and click the Add To Favourite Stores option on the left of the store’s main page.
Adding a Marketplace store to your Favourites
Viewing Your Favourites
You can view your favourites whilst on the Marketplace by clicking on your account name (top right) to go to your account page, then clicking the My Favourites drop-down, which will display the options: Products (favourites), Stores, Wishlist. The Products page will open by default, but may be blank if you have not selected any favourites.
You can access your lists from your Marketplace account page : click your account name at the top (arrowed) then click the My Favourites drop-down (circled, left). This will display the list options and open your Products (favourites) page (shown). Note the Add To Wishlist button, arrowed at the bottom.
With these lists:
Clicking on an item in the Product or Wishlist pages will take you to the Marketplace listing for that item.
Stores in the stores list will be displayed with up to four of their most recent releases.
Clicking on a store in the Stores page will (unsurprisingly) take you to the store.
Listed items / stores can be removed individually or in bulk by clicking on the check box on the left of an item / store and then clicking the delete button.
Favourite items can be added to your wish list via the Add To Wishlist button on the Product page.
You can share your wish list with friend using a dedicated URL:
Click the View and Share Wishlist link at the end of your wish list page.
This opens a fresh page displaying your wish list.
The re-vamped Linden Realms and rock monsters. Credit: Linden Lab
Since it first opened in 2011, Linden Realms has proved to be an enduring game within Second Life. It’s seem various updates over the years, with the most notable (until now) occurring earlier this year when the existing playing regions were effectively fire-bombed as a part of an ongoing saga involving the wicked Ruth, she of the villainy in Tyrah and the Curse of the Magical Glytches (see my review here) and named for the original default avatar of Second Life.
On Tuesday, October 9th, linden Lab announced the latest revamp of the game, which sees it completely overhauled in looks and aims, building further on the backstory of Ruth and possibly – just maybe, perhaps – (I’m not going to give everything away) seeing the return of Old Boozehound himself, Magellan Linden.
In the new version of the game, the Linden Realms regions get a much-needed face-lift with much more modern-looking mesh items (most notably the rock monsters). In terms of game play, players must complete tasks and try to reassemble Ruth’s magical amulet … the breaking of which might have led to Magellan faking his own death in order to escape her wrath. (If this all sounds like the script from a soap opera, wait until Tyrah wakes up and finds Magellan stepping out of the shower*. Just kidding! Although on second thoughts, I wish I hadn’t; the mental image of an undressed Magellan is now fixed in my head.)
Part of the re-vamped Linden Realms. Credit: Linden Lab
Anyway, I’m not going to go into great depth here, on account that LL have themselves with a veritable tome of documentation and images on the updated game. Suffice it to say, collecting crystals (exchangeable for L$) is still very much a part of things, so expect the new Linden Realms to be as popular as previous iterations.
I can say the new look is refreshing when compared to the old, and the detailing such that the locations spread across the 12 regions of each game area shouldn’t place too much extra load on things when avatars are running hither and thither in their hunt for crystals and amulet bits.
The game HUD has also been nicely updated, and looks the part – the old one really was looking long in the tooth.
The updated game HUD
As always, accessing the game is done via the Portal Parks (links below). As with previous iterations, those new to the game will have to accept the experience to gain access, but if you’ve previously played and have not revoked the game, you’ll be automatically granted access. And no, this isn’t anything to do with Project SSR 😀 .
More is promised by the Lab on Linden Realms, by way of an article on how this new version was developed and built, as a part of the Lab’s efforts to show creators how tools such as Experience Keys might be used.
*Yes folks, A Dallas reference!
Portal Park SLurls
Note the portal Parks and Linden Realms are all rated General.
Oz Linden, Technical Director for the Second Life platform at Linden Lab, has issued a blog post indicating the Android client “IM To SecondLife” has been blocked from accessing Second Life.
While no specifics have obviously been given, the blog post notes the reason for the blocking is due to the committing “serious violations of the Policy on Third Party Viewers relating to user account security and user privacy.”
The blog post goes on to provide direct security advice for users who may have downloaded and made use of “IM to SecondLife”:
If you have ever used that viewer, Linden Lab strongly suggests that you secure your Second Life account, beginning with updating your password on the Second Life account page: https://accounts.secondlife.com/change_password/
We may need to temporarily hold some accounts in connection with this incident. Please ensure that your contact information is up to date and verify your email address:https://accounts.secondlife.com/change_email/
Oz Linden, Technical Director for Second Life
concerning the “IM to SecondLife” Android client
Within the notice, Oz goes on to remind Second Life users:
As a reminder, although you may connect to Second Life using software released by a third-party developer, as explained in our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions, you do so at your own risk. Linden Lab provides a Policy on Third-Party Viewers to promote a positive and predictable experience for all Second Life Residents. Extra caution must be taken with third-party viewers that are not in the Viewer Directory: they have either declined to self-certify their compliance with Linden Lab policies or have been refused for non-compliance with the policies.
(Above emphasis my own.)
According to Google Play, “IM to SecondLife” was released in September 2015, and since then has seen more than 10,000 downloads. If you have at any time used “IM to SecondLife”, or know someone who has, please ensure you read the blog post from the Lab and take the recommended action, or direct those you believe to be using it to read the post.
On Wednesday, October 3rd, 2018, Linden Lab officially announced the opening up of EEP testing to Second Life users.
EEP is the Environmental Enhancement Project – in short as series of in-development updates to the existing windlight capabilities in the viewer, and to environment settings / rendering across the board. In brief and in part EEP:
Gives region and parcel owners the ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
Provides new environment asset types (Sky, Water, Day) – referred to as “settings” – that can be created in the viewer, stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with other users.
Allows the Sun, Moon and Cloud textures to be replaced with custom textures.
An extended day cycle, supporting up to 7 days a week and 24-hour day / night cycles.
And that’s just to start. The project will also include rendering updates to allow for atmospheric effects such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”), plus scripted and experience support for the new environment asset types (e.g. assign specific environment settings to an experience, which all participants will automatically have applied in their view when visiting the experience).
A simple 5-minute (including uploading the textures) demo of replacing the Sun and Moon with Mars and Jupiter respectively, then adjusting their respective sizes & putting them in the same quadrant of the sky. Note the windlight clouds drifting in front of Mars.
Testing EEP can only be carried out on Aditi (the beta grid) for the time being, where there is a limited number of parcels available for purchase. Testing can only be carried out using the EEP project viewer.
At the time of writing, the viewer was version 5.1.10.520121 – but use the above link to get the most recent version.
Test region: Aditi EEP Testing (secondlife://Aditi/secondlife/EEPTesting/128/128/23).
Parcels cost L$1, but as Aditi funds are provided by Linden Lab, you are not paying for anything with your own money.
You MUST be using the EEP test viewer why trying to purchase a parcel on the test region – if you are using any other viewer, your purchase will time out.
Should you opt to test EEP and find issues, please be sure to raise a bug report, using the [EEP] tag. Reasonably feature requests may also be considered.
The parcel-level controls for using EEP, showing the Sun / Moon options and day cycle track
If you do not successfully purchase a parcel, or wish to see what others are doing with EEP, you can still visit the test region – but you will need to be using the EEP test viewer in order to see anything.
There are a number of resources already available for EEP to get people started
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 