Some Technical Difficulties

 

Been crashing a little more lately, and coming back, it sometimes looks like this. So bear with me for the next few days. It'll resolve itself, I hope. 

Linden Lab Explains "February 1st Outage"

 

With the scale of the disruptions on Wednesday February 1st, it was likely Linden Lab would find themselves obligated to their customer base, the residents, to try and explain what happened. It turns out they made a statement about the "Recent February 1st Outage" the following day in the "Tools and Technology" section of the official blog. 

This Wednesday, February 1st, was a rocky one for Second Life, especially for regions on our Release Candidate (RC) channels. As with many large-scale services, we experience service interruptions from time to time, but yesterday's problems were unique and noteworthy enough that they deserve a sincere apology and more thorough explanation. 

 

The Lab stated the main cause was "a bug in object inventory behavior that was introduced by new code" saying the bug, "caused some objects' scripts to enter a non-running state."

RC rolls are regularly scheduled for 7AM Pacific (SLT) every Wednesday. While conducting one of these deployments, we received initial reports of issues relating to script behavior at 8:30AM. We immediately started investigating, and by 9AM it was clear that we needed to stop the roll, because the issue was pervasive and clearly related to the new changes. As we do in these situations, we declared an “Incident” and an Incident Commander took charge. 

By 9:30 we started a rollback, reverting the affected simulators to their previous version. We also evaluated what additional actions we would need to take, as it was unclear that a rollback alone would start the scripts which had stopped. This quickly proved to be the case, and we came up with a new plan - one that would ensure that scripts would perform as expected going forward, but possibly undo the changes our residents had been making since the time we had introduced the bug. Although this meant more downtime, it prevented further content loss, and proved to be the best way to put the grid back in order. The team came up with a quick, clean, and efficient way to achieve this and get everyone back on track. 

By 12PM the decision was made to take this direction. By 1:15PM the code was complete, by 1:40PM we confirmed that it worked. By 2:25PM all regions were brought back up.  

The report in full, signed by Grumpity Linden "and the Second Life team," can be found (here).

"I’m grateful to know that while we may make mistakes, we will not sweep them under the rug, nor look for someone to blame - we will come together and make it right."

Viewer Glitch

Logging in yesterday, I found myself staring at the screen in surprise. Not only was I clouded, but my name was replaced with a bunch of question marks. And only a fraction of the location was rezzing.

Fortunately, all it took was a relog to get things right.

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Nvidia Card Graphics Issues

When it comes to graphics cards, NVIDIA is one of two brands Linden Lab recommends your computer uses. But lately, it seems the latest driver programing is causing glitches and problems.

The Firestorm Wiki states a bug "appeared with Nvidia driver 515 and 516," with some also saying the issue is on driver 512.95, causing lines and/or flashing objects to appear on the screen, "and occurs when Advanced Lighting Model is enabled. ... Symptoms include horizontal lines on the screen, objects repeatedly flashing visible/non-visible, shadow issues on objects & avatars, and a wood-grain effect on some objects or avatars."

The solution, at least until the bug is fixed, is to "roll back the driver or use the Nvidia Studio Drivers instead." Or one can turn off Advanced Lighting.

This is not the only issue. The wiki also reported recent updates on Nvidia, "including driver version 381.65," may stop Firestorm from starting up, "The crash is reported to occur on the “Detecting Hardware' step."

Another issue is with 378.49 Nvidia drivers is there may be a blue tint on 64-bit viewers when Advanced Lighting is turned off.

Team Firestorm filed about the issue with Nvidia (here).

To read more about the issue, check out the page on Firestorm's Wiki, or this article on Modem World.

Image from Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Grand Theft Auto Online Player Gets $10,000 For Fixing Long Loading Time

 

Grand Theft Auto Online, like the previous games in the series, has proven a popular game since it's release in 2013. But there was a problem. The game has a long loading time. One 2020 Reddit poll of 271 players had almost half taking three to six minutes and some were needing over fifteen. Finally, one player calling himself T0ast decided to look into the problem. He found the cause was badly optimized code and bottlenecking from the came loading from just one CPU. After some fixes, he found he loading time was reduced by almost 70 percent. He uploaded the fixed code, though pointed out it was more of a "proof of concept" than a solution, and called on the game's producers at Rockstar to fix the code, "the problems shouldn’t take more than a day for a single dev to solve."

Word soon spread about T0ast's fix, and eventually Rockstar took a look, and concluded, "After a thorough investigation, we can confirm that player t0st did, in fact, reveal an aspect of the game code related to load times for the PC version of GTA Online that could be improved. As a result of these investigations, we have made some changes that will be implemented in a forthcoming title update."

T0ast would state he was awarded $10,000 USD from Rockstar, sayng amounts of this size were usually given out for helping with security and privacy issues, but were making an exception with him, "Thanks to R* for taking the time to look into this and the generous bounty!"

Source: PC Gamer 

Hat Tip: Spooked Dreamscape, Khyra Ares

Bixyl Shuftan

SL Poetry: "Oh TP Crash"

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Just when I want to simply go home,
You lock me up and throw me to the gnomes,

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

Here is my hope for Linden wootmas gifts,
They only get smelly coal and malware bits.

Oh tp crash,
Oh tp crash,
How I love the tp crash,

The End , Thank you and Merry Wootmas 

by Caleb Kit, on the Raglan Shire Discord channel

Update on the "Teleport Disconnects"

Earlier this month, Linden Lab came out and admitted what the residents had more or less figured out, Second Life was much buggier than usual, especially when it came to teleporting from sim to sim or crossing sim borders. So has there been improvement since then? Maybe some. Checking "Modem World," Inara Pey stated "There have been mixed reports on the outcome of the deployment made on Thursday, April 18th, 2019, with some indicating matters have improved, others reporting no real change. In particular, people visiting Fantasy Faire and travelling around the new Linden Homes continent appear to be faring a lot better than had been the case."

Simon Linden was quoted as saying at the Simulator User Group, " for server news, many of us are focused on the teleport issues … I hate to promise anything, but we all know a lot more about TP internal problems than we used to (smile) . We do understand they’re annoying and a frustrating problem – we definitely want to fix it and make it better."

Earlier, some residents wondered if the Lab moving data to Cloud servers was the cause of the glitches. Lately, there's been a new suspect, the EEP or Environmental Enhancement Project. Simon did admit that the problems appearing just after the release of EEP was "suspicious" and they were "trying to sort out is if somehow the environmental work caused the TP problems." He didn't think the glitches were related to avatar complecity, though stated "that said, the more complex your AV is, the more work it needs to change regions. It’s always been better to have fewer scripts and data for teleports and region crossings."

On a personal note, I myself seem to be having fewer problems with teleport disconnects, though there are still other glitches such as the viewer freezing for a bit. Some friends of mine are still crashing when teleporting around, so it seems the problem is still around.

Source: Modem World, SL Wiki

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab's Linux OS Update Suspected in Grid Troubles

It's been almost two weeks since Linden Lab admitted what many residents had suspected for a while, that residents were having more issues on the Grid, notably teleporting between sims or walking between them. However, the Lab may have identified a cause of the trouble. Inara Pey recently wrote that last week on Thursday April 18 at the Content Creation User Group meeting, Vir Linden stated the problem might be an update of theirs on the servers for Linux OS.

"Yeah, we've been having some issues on the simulator side where people tend to get disconnected between teleports, it's been common enough that it shows up as a significant blip in our stats. And that issue seems to have come along, basically when we upgraded our version of Linux that we're using on our simulators. So we've had some rollbacks there, just to try and get that issue to go away.

"That kinda pushes out the timeline for (deploying) all the things based on Jessie, the later version (of Linux) that we're trying to update to. Hopefully we can get those out soon, but I can't tell you anything about the timeline. ..."

So now that the Lab says they might have found the cause of the trouble, will this soon mean not so many issues on the Grid? Time will tell.

Source: Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

"Hover Bug" To Be Fixed Today

On Friday January 11, dozens of tiny avatars and friends of held a protest at Governor Linden's Mansion to draw attention to the "Hover Bug" which was making some mesh avatars, tinies included, appear to float a few feet off the ground. Linden Lab listened, and it is delivering. On the webpage for Second Life on Monday January 15, the Grid Status Report area stated there would be a "Bake Service Update" for early this morning. A closer look revealed this update was the one that would fix the glitch that's caused the mesh tinies so much trouble.

We're floating a new update to help you get back on the ground! You may encounter issues changing outfits during this time.

Once the update has completed, any avatars experiencing issues with hover height will need to change outfits in order to help you stand on the ground. 

Oldesoul Eldemar, who spends part of the time in the Relay For Life as a Tiny, had a few comments about it, "Have an issue- call a tiny! Still lockin em up at Fantasy Faire! I mean dis is jest silliness!" There were a number in the comments section of the protest article, "A big box of choco waffas and a box of Wootjoos to the Lindens! Hugggles!" "On behalf of my dinky and titchy friends, thank you for fixing this!" "Thank you programmers for helping me, my frens, my frens' frens, and all those affected by involuntary flight."

So the issue seems to have been resolved, and the tinies can, to paraphrase a quote from World of Warcraft, keep their feet on the ground.

Bixyl Shuftan

Tinies Protest at Governor Linden's Mansion

So what do the tinies of Raglan Shire worry about? Usually they'll tell you it's about where their next waffles are coming from. But lately, there's been a "Hover bug" in the mesh tinies that's been driving them to distraction. So they decided to get Linden Lab's attention with a protest at Governor Linden's Mansion in Clementina. And they did so in a way of seriousness and humor only they could pull off.

Read the story in Events.

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at the Happy Vixen. You'd be worried too if a two foot butterfly landed on your head.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: Moth Avatar

Found at an accidental encounter at a "Safe Zone." I don't see insect avatars often. Hopefully there aren't any "bugs" with them.

by Bixyl Shuftan

News in Brief : Possible Viewer Trouble, Updated Linden Game, Google Plus Shut Down

 Once again, there's a lot more news than there is time to go over it in detail. So here's more brief descriptions of several things that have been going on.

Is Animesh Update Causing Viewer Trouble? - Has your viewer been having problems lately? A couple people have come to me, saying they've been crashing a lot lately. My attention was directed to JIRA BUG-225584 done by the creator of the Black Dragon viewer, saying ever since the Animesh update to Second Life, his viewer has had "massive performance loss" with frame rate. The problem isn't limited to Black Dragon, but could hit any Second Life Viewer. Linden Lab is investigating the issue, and people with problems, are encouraged to discuss it on this thread in the official forums.

Source: New World Notes

New Linden Realms - On the Linden Blog, there was an announcement that one of the older Linden games has been given a new twist. Linden Realms is now "Linden Realms: The Search For Magellan."

New Sunweaver Halloween Attractions - The Sunweaver community has two new Halloween-themed attractions. These are Shockwave's Haunted Maze at Sunweaver Eclipse (102/39/2201) and the Happy Vixen Haunted Manor.

Google Plus Shut Down After Data Breach Exposed - Google announced on Monday October 8 that it would be shutting down it's social network Google Plus. This announcement came shortly after a Wall Street Journal article that there had been a data leak affecting a half million users, and Google made the decision not to warn people fearing disclosure might mean bad press and possibly increased regulation as a result.

Source: Ars Technica 

Dysphoria to Euphoria. The Newser was alerted to a sim that had been recreated by it's fans. Dysphoria was an Alice-in-Wonderland style sim that it's owner announced would be closing due to her changing real life. When an attempt to save it failed, fans made the decision to rebuild it, under the new name Euphoria.

Source: Euphoria Wonderland

More on these stories, and others, when time permits.

Bixyl Shuftan

Windows 10 October Update Postponed Due To File-Deleting Bug

Windows 10 has had a number of problems since it's release by Microsoft. Last month, it was "warning" users not to use more popular web browsers and use Microsoft's own. But this time there's a more serious problem. On October 2, the "Windows 10 October 2018 Update" was released for Windows 10 insider testers and anyone else whom wanted to go ahead with the update. Soon after, some people were finding important files deleted, including music recordings and pictures. One user posted on the Microsoft forums, "it deleted all my files of 23 years in amount of 220gb. This is unbelievable, I have been using Microsoft products since 1995 and nothing like that ever happened to me." Fortunately, he had backed up his files a couple months earlier, but more recent ones were still gone.

Those whom had already updated were urged to migrate documents in their user directory, and those Windows 10 users whom hadn't to temporarily disable updates. Eventually, Microsoft suspended the update due to the reports of deleted files.

If you use Windows 10, and you're not sure if your computer installed the update, "To check if your system downloaded and installed the update, click the Windows / Start key and then type 'View Installed Update History.' Click that result and then check the last version that was installed. If it wasn't 1809, you should be safe."


Sources: ZDNet, Forbes, Microsoft.com

Bixyl Shuftan

Error Messages

A couple people have been telling me the Newser doesn't always come up in their browser. Blogspot, which the Newser has it's pages on, seems to be glitching a little. If the paper has trouble loaded, refreshing the page once or twice should take care of it.

Hopefully the glitch will be fixed soon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Newser's Gemma Cleanslate Temporarily Offlined From Windows Trouble

Gemma Cleanslate messaged the Newser that her computer has been disabled and not able to connect to Second Life, at least for now. The trouble seems to be related to the Windows updates for recent computer chip flaws that we wrote about on Friday January 12. Hopefully, she will be back on soon.

Reader Submitted: "Before You Bento"

Kitty Vinje posted this image on Facebook of how someone with a Bento head appeared on her viewer, which she felt was a cautionary tale of just up and going and getting the newest thing before checking and seeing how well it would appear to others. One person commented, "How awful, you're gliding around thinking how glamorous you are looking but THIS is what everyone else sees!" Another posted, "Lends a whole no meaning to the term 'Happy Hippo.'"

Cartoon of the Day

From Club Cutlass. Sometimes being unpopular with the ladies can be a good thing ... if you're a predatory insect.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Man Buys Google.com For $12, Rewarded by Company

This Internet news story is several weeks old, but still worth talking about. It seems Google briefly lost the ownership of it's Internet domain name to a man in India, albeit for just a minute.

"I was learning more about the Google Domains interface," Sanmay Ved of Mandivi India would write in LinkedIn, "and typed google.com and clicked search domains. To my surprise, Google.com was showing as available!" He then used his credit card to purchase the domain, documenting his transactions on screenshots, and his transaction was confirmed, making him the new owner of Google's web domain.

But his ownership was brief. A minute later, he received an email stating his purchase was canceled, which Google could do as they owned the registration service, unlike a similar incident with Microsoft and it's domain in the United Kingdom. Some days later, he was contacted by their security team, stating he would get a reward for finding the error. Ved requested the reward go to charity, an educational group that runs 400 schools in India, "providing free education to more than 39,200 children in the slum, tribal and rural belts where child labor and poverty are widespread." Google agreed and doubled the amount.

"I can't shake that feeling that I actually owned Google.com," he was quoted as saying.

Reprinted from "Food on the Table"

Sources: LinkedIn, Business Insider, BBC News, PCmag.com

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at Club Cutlass. Not sure what happened to this guy as instead of dancing on the pole, he looks like he was stuck on it like what the bloodthirsty tyrant of Medieval Romania whom inspired Braum Stoker's "Dracula" did to those he didn't like.

By Bixyl Shuftan