Tag: SL News

LL give further clarification on tax requirements via e-mail

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn 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.

LL issue notice on concierge phone and chat support for Thanksgiving Day

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeThis 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.

LL issue password security warning

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeFollowing-on from their reminder / warning about purchasing L$, the Lab has issued a warning about keeping SL passwords secure.

The main reason for the warning is as a result of the recent Adobe security breach which resulted in the details of some 152 million Adobe users accounts –  almost four times the amount admitted to by Adobe for incidents in October.

The blog post from the Lab carries the title Keep Your Account Secure – Never Reuse Passwords, and reads:

A recent security breach at Adobe gave hackers access to private information for users of Adobe sites and services. This included Adobe passwords, email addresses, and password hints. Second Life has not been compromised, but, this is a good reminder that it’s important to never use the same password for Second Life that you use elsewhere.

If you have reused your Second Life password on other services, particularly if you used it for an Adobe service, you should change it immediately.

After every large breach, fraudsters search for users who reuse their passwords on other sites, so if you use the same password for Second Life and other services, your Second Life account could be at risk if one of those other services suffers a security breach.

You can easily change your Second Life password by following this link, and for more info, check out this Knowledge Base article on Passwords and Account Information.

Anyone who has used their Second Life password with other on-line services may wish to consider taking the advice and changing their passwords as a precaution and for peace of mind.

Lance provides further news on Dolphin

Posted on by Inara Pey

dolphin-logoIt’s been several months since the release of the last Dolphin viewer update (March 2013). This means the viewer is lagging behind many of the 2013 updates from the Lab, including things like Server-side Appearance, materials, etc.

Lance Corrimal, the man behind Dolphin is not unaware that this is the situation. His real life this year has been such that it has required almost all of his attention (including starting a new job which sees him travelling and away from home a lot of the time), all of which has limited the time he can devote to the viewer, as much as he’d like to be able to do so.

In July and August he gave a couple of short updates on his situation, which I also passed on through these pages, and on November 22nd, he posted a further update on the Dolphin website, which reads in part:

I am not exactly happy about what I have to announce here, but this is how it is going to be:

The next Dolphin Viewer is not going to be around any time soon.

I have looked at the mess that my current state of the sources would produce, and I have (finally but far too late) come to this decision:

I will start from scratch.

Right now, taking the current Dolphin Viewer source and just “shoe-horning” in everything new from the official sources produces a terrible mess that does not compile cleanly, let alone works. Besides, the last Dolphin Viewer has a quite large number of features that don’t work any more, due to changes that the Lab has made in the meantime, temp uploads being one of them.

So, I’ll basically have to reinvent everything. That will of course take some time. I’m guessing “several months” right now, not the least due to the fact that with my new job that I have been doing since April, I’m travelling a lot, so I’m not even home all that much. I’ll see how much I can do on my company laptop.

I will go back to my usual “release early, release often” policy, as soon as I have something that is properly branded as Dolphin Viewer and has more to offer than just the name.  I will plan to release at least a public beta as soon as I have something.

This would suggest that an updated Dolphin viewer is unlikely to emerge before the end of the year, and that we may be a few months into 2014 before one does. However, the upside of this is that Lance is not abandoning the viewer, which has enjoyed a loyal following. Patience remains the order of the day as he tries to balance the demands of real life and Second Life on his time.

One additional consequence of everything going-on for Lance right now is that he plans to  eventually stop building / providing openSUSE rpm packages for some of the other third-party viewers; as he notes himself, he just can’t seem to pack more than 24 hours into a day.

Further news / updates from Lance will be reported as they become available.

Fitted mesh: “LL’s assessment here is mostly good” – Qarl

Posted on by Inara Pey

The major topic of conversation during the course of the week has been the Lab’s announcement that they have released a new project viewer which can be used to make suitably rigged mesh garments deform to match an avatars shape as it is adjusted using the viewer Edit Shape sliders. It does so by using a modified version of the avatar skeleton and collision bones, as I was able to preview just before the project viewer was launched.

Rigged mesh deforming to changes to the pectoral sliders in the Fitted Mesh project viewer
Rigged mesh deforming to changes to the pectoral sliders in the Fitted Mesh project viewer

Since the Lab’s announcement, the response from various sections of the community have been mixed. Some have welcomed the new with open arms; some have questioned the overall flexibility of the solution compared to others, some have regretted the “loss” of the deformer and some have reacted in outright hostility towards the Lab.

In terms of the technical aspects of the solution, Karl Stiefvater (Qarl Fizz), who coded the mesh deformer, took time out to leave a comment on STORM-1716, the JIRA for that project, which reads:

Several people have asked me – this seems like the best place to answer.

LL’s assessment here is mostly good. In almost all situations, the simplest solution is the best one – and collision bones are indeed MUCH simpler than the mesh deformer. As I see it, collision bones have two downsides: 1) they are substantially harder to use for the person creating the garment and 2) probably don’t track as well to the avatar shape.

In the end, the evaluation must be made by the content creators who use the tool.

I will reiterate that the two-year delay and refusal to communicate are unacceptable.

Avatar collision bones (image courtesy of Gaia Clary)
Avatar collision bones (image courtesy of Gaia Clary)

This would seem to be a reasonable assessment. The use of collision bones is technically easier and, as noted elsewhere, is less reliant upon a large amount of code being added to the viewer which then needs to be managed and maintained as the viewer evolves, but it does have some drawbacks.

Commenting further on the subject in the Metareality podcast on Friday November 22nd, Karl added:

It [the avatar skeleton] already had a bunch of these bones in it for collisions. I have never, ever notices that someone shoots a bullet at me, and my avatar is fat, it actually hits me as if I were fat … It’s incredible that they put that kind of detail into it ten years ago. But, OK, they did. So my feeling – just to head-off any drama – is that it’s a nice solution. It is definitely a simpler solution, which is preferred in all software engineering, and probably all of life.

He went on to reiterate the fact that a downside of the approach is that it can making creating and rigging mesh garments harder, although as William Reed Seal-Foss observed:

Well, speaking from an artistic standpoint … and knowing how to rig, that’s already not fun, and it’ll make it more not fun, but it’s not going to be like you have to learn to do something new.

Pressed on the matter, Karl reconfirmed that while the Fitted Mesh approach may have weaknesses, he does feel that it is a good solution, noting, “Obviously, I’m invested with the one that we did, but this is good. This is good,” before also noting that as a technically simpler approach, Fitted Mesh is likely to hold-up better over time when compared to the deformer.

This still leaves the question as to whether personality may have played a part in the Lab’s decision. In the podcast, Kimberley asks Karl outright if he believes this to be the case, and he indicates that he believes so, stating, “I heard back from two different people inside the lab that told me that Linden Lab would never accept my code.” One would very much hope that matters weren’t influenced on the basis of personality; but the fact that the Lab previously rejected code from Karl for reasons which appeared tenuous at the time, would seem to be point to there being an issue of some description.

The debate over the pros and cons of each system will doubtless carry on in some quarters, as will the theories as to why one was selected over the other. In the meantime, feedback on the Fitted Mesh viewer is being generated and the Lab is working on updates. In terms of the technical aspects  / limitations of the system, it remains to be seen how they may impact things. As it is, the approach has arguably been used to good effect by the likes of Redgrave and other designers and has proven popular among consumers. Hopefully the same will prove to be the case as this solution proceeds through to a release status and as it is adopted by third-party viewers.

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Leap Motion integration coming to SL?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Most people are already aware that Linden Lab are working to integrate the Oculus Rift headset, and are also probably aware that at the start of 2013, Simon Linden did some initial work in enabling the Leap Motion controller to work with Second Life with very basic movement / action controls.

Simon’s work was not a part of any official project, but acted as a proof-of-concept as to what might be achieved using Leap Motion as an alternative means of avatar control  to the keyboard / mouse, and he made the code available for anyone wishing to make use of it.

Since then, other have looked into the use of Leap Motion, with perhaps Draxtor Despres being the most noticeable of late, after he recently produced a video showing his work in SL / Leap Motion connectivity through the use of the GameWAVE software application which can be obtained from the Leap Motion Airspace online app store.

Now it looks as if Leap Motion integration into Second Life may become part of a combined project featuring Linden Lab, third-party viewer and open-source developers and Leap Motion themselves.

A surprise guest at the Third-party Developer meeting on Friday November 22nd was a representative from Leap Motion. However, as he was unable to speak due to voice issues, Oz spoke on his behalf, revealing that the company is very interested in having their controller “well-integrated” into the viewer.

“So they have been very gracious and provided us with some controllers to play with,” Oz informed those attending the meeting. “And they’re prepared to provide consulting and help for people who want to do it.”

As the Lab is already running a number of viewer-related projects (not all of which have yet been revealed), they are hoping the open-source / TPV developers will be willing to work on the project in order to get code contributed and integrated into the viewer.

It is hoped that the Leap Motion device can be "well integrated" into the SL viewer (image courtesy of leapmotion.com)
It is hoped that the Leap Motion device can be “well-integrated” into the SL viewer (image courtesy of leapmotion.com)

Whether the work will build on Simon’s initial proof-of-concept or form a totally separate project is currently unclear at this point, but at least the Lab have the code should it prove useful in giving the work an initial boost.

There is no official timescale for the project as yet, however developers who are interested in being involved are encouraged to contact both Oz Linden at the usual e-mail address, and the Leap Motion rep.

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