It Came From Relay (Discord) Chat: "'The Hair' On The Moon"

 

 

From Fuzzball Ortega when he was at the Thursday May 21 Moon Dance, "The Hair spotted on the moon." 

 

Cynthia Farshore would respond, "Yes and he had a rather 'hairy' landing."

 

Discord Backs Down: Age Verification Delayed

 

Earlier this month, Discord announced that it's users would need to submit to age verification. Either they would need to show some ID proving their age, or they would need to show a picture or short video of themselves. The result was numerous users complaining. Part of the backlash were concerns about the safety of data collected as in October hackers had stolen the information of 700,000 government IDs owned by the platform via a third party service it was working with at the time. There were further concerns when other hackers discovered "the frontend code for their partner Persona was publicly accessible on the open internet," and the code "compares your selfie to watchlist photos using facial recognition, screens you against 14 categories of adverse media (from mentions of terrorism to espionage), and tags reports with codenames from active intelligence programs consisting of public-private partnerships."

So on Tuesday February 24, Discord announced a change of plans. They were delaying age-verification checks. Discord's co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy would explain:
 

In hindsight, we should have provided more detail about our intentions and how the process works. The way this landed, many of you walked away thinking we're requiring face scans and ID uploads from everyone just to use Discord. That's not what's happening, but the fact that so many people believe it tells us we failed at our most basic job: clearly explaining what we're doing and why. That's on us.
 

Our goal is straightforward: keep the Discord experience completely unchanged for the vast majority of people while ensuring an age-appropriate experience for everyone. Over 90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today. This is powered in part by our internal safety systems, which can already make an age determination for many adult users without any user action. We'll publish the methodology behind this in a technical blog post before we launch globally.

Vishnevskiy would go on to say the age-verification was "being shaped by legislation already in effect in the UK and Australia, with Brazil quick to follow, and Europe and multiple US states close behind." They were also no longer in a partnership with Persona, the platform they were working with when the hacking breach happened. 

So Discord users can relax a little, though perhaps not for very long. An article by "The Verge" stated, "Age verification is a reality on a growing number of social media platforms, requiring an ID or facial scan for full access to everything from YouTube to Roblox. The age-gating wave is coming along with calls for stronger child safety measures online, despite concerns about privacy, security, and censorship. In the US, lawmakers are pushing forward bills like the App Store Accountability Act and Parents Over Platforms Act to have app stores themselves verify users’ ages." So users of platforms valuing privacy will likely be needing to be very watchful for a while

 

Sources: Discord, Arstechnica, International Business Times. The Verge  

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

In Brief ...

 

There's a lot going on, and only a little time to write. So, some things that would otherwise have been reported on earlier will have to wait for a larger article. For now ...

 

There's been a lot of talk about Discord Age Verification, and more than a little suspicion. That Discord lost data some months ago in a hack has not helped with peoples' confidence, and a number are talking about jumping ship and heading to another platform. 

 

The Premier Business Center has a Black History Museum. There was a grand opening party on Sunday February 8. The museum honors a number of Black Americans from musicians, civil rights activists, politicians, scientists, inventors, and others. 

 

And of course the mystery of the three strange boulders.

 

These and other stories when we have time to write.  

From Discord: Too Much New Years Eve Partying?

 

 

From Sheree Honeyflower (ShereeHoneyflower) on the Bay City Discord channel, her "'Annual Wasted at Prim Drop' photo with help from Frankie Lindman." (yes I messaged her first)

EOTB: Linden Lab Launches Official Second Life Discord

 

Yesterday on Wednesday March 20, Linden Lab announced they had launched a server on Discord, their official one for Second Life users.

 

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our official Second Life Discord Server! As a hub of community interactions and information exchange, this server is a vibrant space for all Second Lifers to connect, share, and learn together.  

Clicking on this link, https://discord.gg/secondlifeofficial ,  will take you to the SL Discord channel if you're already signed up for Steam. There was about one person or more signing up every minute much of the day and night, and as of the writing of this article there were hundreds signed up for it. There were various threads, from destinations to events, to scripting, and general subject matters. Drama, political and religious discussion, and hateful speech are prohibited, as well as what's considered excessive advertising and self=promotion.

 

To view the blog post in full, Click Here. 

 Bixyl Shuftan

 

Sneaky Discord Scam

 

 

 Been hearing about a diabolical scam on Discord. It's described as appearing as a very obvious one at first, but the REAL scam is the "dismiss message" link, which supposedly gives the scammer access to your computer. 

At the very least, it's a reminder to be a little careful with your computers. 

Discord Issues

 

If you were having trouble getting on Discord on Friday September 29, you weren't alone. Numerous users using the client software were getting a while screen with the words "You have been blocked."

 

Someone posting on Twitter to Discord Support stated, "I suddenly get a Cloudflare "Sorry, you have been blocked" page when opening the Discord desktop client. Is something wrong on your end or am I false positive in some DoS detection?"

The problem is described as lasting for hours, and the company pinned the issue on the service experiencing "unusual traffic spikes."  It has been suggested that the reason was issues at Cloudfare, which Discord works with to improve it's service. 

The issue came up in a couple group chats in Second Life. Later in the day after the problem seemed to be resolved, it was suggested to users still having trouble that restarting the client, or their computers, would resolve the problem. A suggestion that Discord itself had been making.

 

Sources: Techcrunch,  Bleepingcomputer, Twitter,

Bixyl Shuftan

Concerns About Suspicious Discord Posts

 

There's been a number of warnings on a few Discord channels about scammers trying to trick people ot click on a link that could lead to trouble. This was from the World of Warships Discord:

Players, good evening, morning and day!
It has come to our attention that lately there has been a rise in suspicious activity involving Discord users attempting to scam or share phishing links in our community and via direct messages.

Please do not click or open any suspicious links and report them immediately.
These scams often but not always involve fake Steam-related links such as "free" gifts or claims that your accounts were banned.

If you encounter suspicious activity please proceed to follow the instructions from the link below on how to properly report such users to Discord's Trust & Safety team or contact a member of our moderation team.

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000291932-How-to-Properly-Report-Issues-to-Trust-Safety

Enjoy your weekend
 

Picture of the Day: Tiny Pandataur

 

From the Jimx/Order of Centaurs Discord page, an image of Rayven Firebrand as a tiny panda-taur, by Emily Williams. It got quite a few comments over the rest of the day.
 

Luskwood Founder Michi Lumin Dealing With Impostor

Michi Lumin, one of the founders of Luskwood, Second Life's oldest active community, has a problem. Someone has been trying to fool others into thinking it's her.

Someone impersonating me on Discord and Twitch - maybe elsewhere There’s a “Michi Lumin #5428” on Discord and a twitch.tv/michi_lumin/ - out there… Neither of these people are me.

They are using my icons and images. It seems there’s nothing I can do about it but make people aware..

I have absolutely no clue whatsoever why someone would pretend to be me - complete with persona and everything, but it's happening and, I have no clue whatsoever what their intention is, but Discord and Twitch certainly won't do anything about it.

Hopefully the spoofer will soon be stopped.

News And Commentary: No Plans For Covering US Election in SL This Spring

Over the past few days, there's been quite a bit of chatter on my social media in Facebook at Discord about certain political issues, notably the unsuccessful impeachment of US President Donald Trump. But there were also comments about President Trump's State of the Union Address and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's reaction to it. While results of the vote itself were more or less as expected, there was still no shortage of angry comments. There were both people expressing their fury at the President and those who voted for him, and the President's opposition and those who voted for them. 

Like Election Night 2016, I ended up reflecting for some time at the Texas State Capitol Building in Antiquity Texas (153/132/22), the closest Second Life has to Capitol Hill. While I had thought of covering the election some this spring, the frequency and depth of the anger I've been hearing has convinced me to wait a little longer. There's plenty else to write about in the meantime.

Perhaps a little time will help calm the angry voices ... hopefully. As a reader of American history, I am all too aware of what can happen when there is no longer an agreement to disagree. 

Bixyl Shuftan

It Came From Discord: Relay Humor

One of the running gags of the Relay for Life is "The Hair," Fuzzball Ortega's enormous hairpiece that's so massive, it requires propellers to stay upright. Every year, he makes at least a partial lap with it. This time, Eugenia Burton "Genie" Ortega was there, carrying a little comment on her back.

SL Newser Discord Channel

We at the Newser do our best to give you news about the people, places, events, and things about Second Life. We've also invited feedback, especially reader submissions. We've been posting links to many of our stories on Facebook for many years, for instance. But as there have been more questions about the social network, some have stopped going there.

For some months, I've been on a few groups on Discord, a chat program that many have been using instead of Skype lately. So we're opening ours on SL Newser Discord channel ( https://discord.gg/SttVuj). It's still new, with plenty of informal though friendly comments so far. So feel free to join in (though behave yourselves as drama and other trouble is unwelcome).

Source: The Guardian 

Bixyl Shuftan

Islandz, Successor Grid to Inworldz, Closing Down

Following the closing of the InWorldz grid in July 2018, once second only in Second Life in size among open-ended virtual worlds, there were hopes among many of it's residents that Beth Reischl (Elenia Llewellyn) would get a new grid up and running. Finally on November 14, her new virtual world Islandz was online and open to all, especially former residents. Over time, some of InWorldz' residents moved in, and the grid grew slowly, eventually encompassing a few dozen sims.

Then on Saturday, Elenia dropped a bombshell. Islandz would soon be closing as she had run out of money to the point of being about to lose her home.


I'm just going to throw this out there now... the grid is not sustainable. We knew what our break even point was, we're not even remotely close. I'm being evicted from my home, my date of move out is Feb. 11. My mother is about to be evicted from her home because I'm working up here so they hiked her rent up as it's the same landlady. My phone is completely shut off. I have no electricity, hence why I'm up by my Mother's condo during the day. I've tried to sell my motorcycle in the States to no avail as it's not riding season.

People are disheartened at the lack of content we could restore, and I don't blame them
So, this is where we are at right now.

I woke up at 7 am trying to figure out the best way to say all this and I'm just beyond stressed, depressed and disheartened at this point.

Elenia stated she had kept things going about as long as she could, "That is where I'm at right now. I'm tired of crying every day, tired of stressing every day. ... I'm maxed out, in every way shape and form. ... I can't do this fight anymore. I have cried myself to sleep more times this past month than I care to admit to." Of the OARs content files, as she had to concentrate on her real-life family's needs, she didn't have the time to go through them to determine which content the creators had given their okay to use outside InWorldz and which didn't, "so I will simply email them out. ... no matter what I do, some of you will not be happy. ... I'd LOVE to give you all filtered oars, really, but I can't."

The response was some people upset that once again their grid was closing, plus content creators upset that their protection was gone. Elina thanked her fans for their continuing support over the months, "you guys have been great, seriously." To those who were upset at her, "I'm done with the metaverse. ... I have zero, zilch, zip, nada, just maxed out credit cards. ... I'm done. I have literally lost everything. Sorry if you all don't get that." After about an hour, Elenia made her last comment.

Over the weekend, people would continue to comment in Discord chat. Some were confused, "can someone tell me please what is going on, the only thing I read when I scroll back is that a lot of ppl are upset." Some were upset, "I am a consumer who was screwed royally." But there were many comments expressing sadness with little or no anger over their home closing once more and sadness for Elina's financial state. "Give Ele time to get over the emotion of what she told us today. It's a harder blow for her than for any of us." "This is very sad news. I have the greatest respect and admiration for Jim and Ele for fighting like lions to get Islandz up and running. I have the greatest respect for all the people I have met in Islandz who worked like Trojans to provide us all with free content. I have nothing but respect for all the selfless work done by so many here. It has been an amazing community and I am proud to have known you all." "My heart goes out to you Jim Tarber  and especially to Elenia. You have both moved heaven and earth to try to bring us back all together in Islandz. I appreciate all the months of hard work, sweat and tears you have put in. You both have my full respect for what you have done so far and tried to accomplish FOR ALL OF US."

Jim Tarber told people not to start another Gofundme to keep the grid afloat. He would go on to say, "I actually had a plan after IW shutdown to just fire up a couple of recovery servers and provide filtered OAR exports for folks for other grids. I didn't think it was realistic to try to recover everything on a new grid, with all the legal and ethical headaches (and costs) associated with that.  In hindsight, that would have saved a lot of trouble. However, Ele was so moved by the support of the community that she decided to try anyway. I'll give her credit for continuing when I didn't think it possible. But the real world has finally caught up."

There is some talk of a final farewell party. But unlike the last days of InWorldz, there is no talk of a successor grid. The only options are to choose between the Opensim worlds, or perhaps somewhere else like VRChat, Sansar, and of course Second Life. As for Elenia Llewellyn/Beth Reischl, it looks like sadly this will be the last we hear of her, at least for a long time.

Hat tip: Oldesoul Eldemar

Bixyl Shuftan