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 

 

Update on Bonniebots

 

 Of our article on the Bonniebots on Friday, there were two responses. One lengthy one from an anonymous reader felt there was little if anything to worry about, "I have to say the bots seem benign, maybe even beneficial ... after having spoken with the creator and the lengths they go through to keep the data benign I have to say their activity appears to be more responsible than most bot operators, the bots even now provide links to show what their doing, when I first encountered them, they may of been in the testing phase, but they offer no data that isn't easily obtained within SL beyond showing where they've last seen people at ... I think the only reason these bots attract so much ire is because they don't hide the fact they have the same origin by giving them diversely different names which gives haters a clear target making them a little harder to dismiss as random. ...the data they collect is publicly available and easy to collect and isn't anything newly generated that breaches actual privacy unlike that trash from ... zfire and Monkey."

 

Nydia Tungsten's response was shorter, feeling there had to be some changes, "They should leave the Avatar search off and let people Opt IN, there will be a lot of people that have no clue about this. But MY main concern as someone that owns multiple sims is I would LIKE to see a way to opt my sims out completely. I am getting so very tired of bots popping in when and where ever in residential area's. Granted this could be a boon for business areas and more power to them, me, I detest all bots and want them to stay out of my sims period."

Since our article, there's been two changes. Early this week, the Bonniebot website now had an "About" page, at https://www.bonniebots.com/about . There were four sections: Bonnie, FAQ API, and Opt Out. Opt Out gave the following, "To opt-out, send an in-world message to bonniebelle86 containing the phrase 'opt-out'. The opt-out applies to Top Merchants and Avatar Search." At the bottom of the page are the names of the Bonniebots.

 

The FAQ page had questions such as "What data is being collected?" "How do I prevent Bonniebots from visiting my region?" "Do other people have databases like this?" and others, and when clicked in would reveal an answer. 

Later in the week, the Search page was gone. So people could no longer search for information on certain avatars, at least within the website (searching inworld is still very much fair game). So those who complained about that no longer have to worry about it. 

In the meantime, the Bonniebots, and their less visible counterparts, are still going about their business, hopping around the Grid and collecting information. But unlike other bots, it's as simple as going to a website to look up the Bonniebots' names so you can block them from your land.

Bixyl Shuftan

Bonniebots and The Debate About Them

 

In the past few days, a new controversy has come up in the Second Life forums: the Bonniebots. Some say they provide a useful service. Others call them a privacy threat and a violation of the Terms of Service. The topic was a hot one in the Second Life forums with four threads on the topic shut down by the Lindens. In the last one, Patch Linden stated they would soon be meeting up with the bots' team.

 

 Read the story in Design.

This Saturday at The Science Circle

 

Saturday, September 10

    ~*~

    

    At 10 AM PST   

    Beragon's Bistro: Alzheimer’s and Scientific Integrity

    Matt Burr/Beragon Betts

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/bb-alzheimers/

 

The Science Circle (225/230/28)

      

    ~*~

 

    At 9 PM PST   

    Dealing With Climate Change

    Jes Stannard

    https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/dealing-with-climate-change/

 

 The Science Circle (135/139/3499)

 

    ~*~

    

    NOTE: Non-members required to register once

    IM Jes Cobalt or Nymf Hathaway

╚══════════════════════════════ The Science Circle (72,129,30) ═╝

 

A Bad Week For Facebook and Twitch, Windows 11 Launched

It was not the best week for Facebook last week.  On Tuesday October 5, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook manager turned whistleblower, testified before Congress. She stated the company knew it's app Instagram could be hazardous to the mental health of teenage girls, and knew it was not doing enough to combat disinformation on it's social media website that contributed to the worsening political divide in the United States and led to the January 6 riot. While it could have taken measures to protect girls on Instagram and done more about misinformation on Facebook, it had not done so as the company didn't want to cut into it's profits, putting money over the safety of it's customers. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg would respond with a statement denying her accusations.

But then came more bad news in the form of a six hour outage of both Facebook and Instagram. While for most it was an annoyance, some small businesses have come to rely on Facebook for communication with their customers. Also affected were sets of Oculus VR headgear. The company would eventually offer an apology.  It's estimated that the company lost billions from this outage. Then on Friday, the company suffered another outage and once again Facebook and Instagram were down once more, another blow to it's reputation.

Facebook wasn't the only social media platform to face big trouble. On Wed Oct 6, there was a massive data leak targeting Twitch. Over 100 gigabytes of data was posted online on Wednesday October 6. This includes operational details that the company "fiercely guards," such as how many millions the top streamers made in revenue from broadcasting. "Aside from the salary details, the documents seems to contain the site's source code and even technical details for yet to be released products and platforms," Joe Tidy in an article on BBC News would say, adding if everything was confirmed it would be, "the biggest leak I have ever seen - an entire company's most valuable data cleaned out in one fell swoop." ThreatModeler founder and CEO Archie Agarwal would say of the data breach,"This is as bad as it could possibly be."

While there didn't seem to be any passwords included in the leaked data, it was listed as "part one," hinting there was more to come. Still, it is reccomended that Twitch users change their passwords anyway.

Tuesday October 5 was the release date of Windows 11. Six years ago, Microsoft was saying there would be only new installments of Windows 10. That has changed, and the company has launched a new version that promises to be "clean and fresh and simpler." If you're reluctant to change over to the new system, you'll have plenty of company. The list of machines the company says this version of Windows needs has been described as "ridiculously strict." In a review on PC Gamer, the writers thought Windows 11 had a few nice improvements, but nothing worth upgrading to the new system, and a number of reasons to wait. Officially, PC users have until October 2025 to wait. After that, Microsoft plans no more technical or security updates.

Sources: BBC News, PC Gamer, The Verge   

Bixyl Shuftan
  

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Precambrian-Cambrian Explosion of Marine Organisms". "Alien Exosociology"

 

"Precambrian-Cambrian Explosion of Marine Organisms: The Latest Fossil and Geologic Data from Virginia"

Saturday October 9,

10 AM to 11 AM SL time

"Precambrian-Cambrian Explosion of Marine Organisms: The Latest Fossil and Geologic Data from Virginia"

By Dr. William F. Schmachtenberg, SL: Dae Miami

Virginia contains excellent exposures of Late Precambrian and Early Cambrian rocks and fossils. In this talk, I will share pictures of those rocks and fossils and possible theories that can explain the explosion of life in the oceans during the Early Cambrian. There will also be pretty touristy landscape pictures for Chantal and others who love the mountains of Virginia! If time permits I would also like to discuss Perseverance rovers search for life on Mars and why Virginia may be a model for the search for life on Mars. So a little bit of something for everyone!

To read the announcement in full, Click Here. 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/125/132/22
 
*  *  *  *  *

"Alien Exosociology"

Saturday October 9

9PM to 10PM SL time

Recent military reports of unexplained objects flying in our skies have sparked renewed interest in alien visitors. Some scientists predict that we will have made contact with advanced civilizations on other worlds within 25 years. What might they be like, and — more importantly – how might they act? Steven Van Hook, a researcher in transcultural relations, will consider what universal social traits we could share in common with our galactic alien neighbors.

Dr. Steven R. Van Hook,
 
To read the announcement in full, Click Here.
 
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32
 

533 Million Facebook Users Personal Data Leaked Online

 

Personal data from 533 million Facebook accounts was discovered to have been leaked online. The data comes from users from over 100 countries, "including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses."

The leak was revealed a few days ago on April 3 by chief technology officer Alon Gal of Hudson Rock, a cybercrime intelligence group. It was posted online on a hacking forum by someone, and "available to anyone with rudimentary data skills." Gal would post his findings on Twitter, "I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data." 

Facebook responded that the reported data was the same as that of a 2019 data leak, "We found and fixed this issue in August 2019." But as many people continue to use the same phone numbers and email addresses, the data could still potentially be useful for scammers and other online schemes.

The leak is being investigated by Ireland's Data Protection Commission, which stated they will work with Facebook to make sure it's claim is true. Joe Tidy of BBC News commented, "The database has likely changed criminal hands many times before now being offered for free."

Sources: Business Insider, BBC News, Twitter 

Image Source: AP News

Bixyl Shuftan
 

"We Are Now In The Cloud"

 
It's been about a month since April Linden announced that the data from all the sims (aside from a few Linden ones) had been moved to Cloud servers. But there was still some work to be done. This week, there was some more news about the last stages of the move. On Tuesday, it was announced that "as part of our overall migration to the cloud, some of our web publishing tools ... may be unavailable for our internal editorial team." And so the Second Life Destination Guide was getting a temporary freeze on updates. Also on Tuesday, according to Inara Pey, at the Simulator User Group meeting April and Oz Linden had stated all Second Life systems and service were now running on Amazon Cloud Servers. So the Lab was clearing all of it's equipment from it's "former co-location facility in Arizona."

At the Wednesday Third Party Viewer Meeting, supposedly Oz Linden was more direct, "Actually, we disconnected the datacenter last night ... everything is now running in AWS."

It's not an announcement that's being celebrated by all. There's been a number of glitches on the Grid lately, and Inara Pey stated in the same article that the Lab was working to fix an issue on the map. While the move to the Cloud may be done, the job of taking care of the bugs and glitches as a result of the move remains.

Source: Modem World , SL forums 

Bixyl Shuftan

April Linden Announces All Sims Moved To The Cloud

 

It was just about a week ago in which it was announced half the sims had their data moved to the Cloud. So with all the time that had been done before, one would probably expect quite a bit of time before the other half were moved. Well, that's not quite what happened. Yesterday, Thursday November 19, April announced that all of the sims now had their data moved to Cloud servers.

The team just finished up moving all of the regions to the cloud! We did it, before our goal of Thanksgiving!!! Uplift isn't done, we still have things to move, but getting the regions done FEELS SO GOOD!

As April stated, this isn't the end of the work on the Cloud move. And there's still glitching going on. For instance, there were issues with group chat, teleporting, and reading the world map. But it is a notable milestone that hopefully will lead to an improved Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Fourmilab Cloud Halo, A Way Of Seeing If A Sim Has Gone To The Cloud

 

One of the big things in Second Life going on is the move of sim data to Amazon Cloud servers, also known as the move to the Cloud or the uplift to the Cloud. It was recently announced that just over half the sims were now uplifted. So how does one tell if a sim has gone to the Cloud? For most residents, there usually isn't a quick way. But there is one quick way that all one needs is a visit to the Second Life Marketplace, the Fourmilab Cloud Halo.

It is possible to determine whether a region is on an original host or the cloud by examining the host name of the simulation, but many users aren't familiar with the arcana of doing so. Fourmilab Cloud Halo is a light-hearted attachment which makes it easy to see the hosting status wherever you happen to visit and alert you to changes when you arrive in a new region.

There's no known location inworld to get the Cloud Halo. The sole known place is on Marketplace. Fortunately the item is free, so just "purchase" and the Halo folder will appear in your "Recieved Items." To put it on, just "add it." You may need to edit and adjust the height a little. Once it's worn, should the sim be uplifted into the Cloud, the halo should briefly glow and there should be a few seconds of harp music. If the sim data is still in the old servers, the halo appears as dull metal and there's a moment of "sad trombone" music. After five seconds, the halo will fade from view. Going from sim to sim, either by flying or running around or teleporting, the halo remains unchanged if the sim entered is the same as the one you just came from. If it's different, it briefly appears with the opposing appearance and music as last time. So it "appears only when you change to or from the Cloud."

The Cloud Halo comes with a user guide notecard, that allows for some adjustments. Trying it out, it did the "wah-wah" sound and faded after briefly appearing as metal. It took some time flying around, but eventually it lit up and did the harp sounds. Besides the pictures I took, one can also check out a Youtube.

John Walker (Fourmilab Resident) is the man behind the Cloud Halo. He has a number of other products on Marketplace, all of them free.

To get the Cloud Halo, Click Here: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Fourmilab-Cloud-Halo/20555301

Hat Tip: Hamlet Au

Bixyl Shuftan

Number of Sims Moved to The Cloud Passes 50%

 

Of the move of sim data to Cloud servers, a noteable milestone was achieved a few days ago, at least according to Daniel Voyager. In his blog, he reported that Stawberry Linden had told him that April Linden had told her that half the sims now had their data in The Cloud.

Hi Daniel, this is Strawberry. I have confirmed with our Sr. Engineering Manager, April Linden, that over half the regions in Second Life are now running in the cloud.

Since this was a few days ago, The Lab has no doubt continued it's work. How long will it take until the move is complete? Daniel Voyager himmself thought it would be "six weeks or so."

Source: Daniel Voyager's Blog
Image Source: Linden Lab

Announcement: This Saturday at The Science Circle - "Data Into Insight"

"Data Into Insight - Teasing How Molecules Behave"

Saturday, March 7
10 AM SLT

By Dr. Mike Shaw

My current research involves the exploration of electron-transfer events on models of biologically-relevant molecules such as the heme-nitric-oxide complex. My students learn how to work with air- and moisture-sensitive materials so as to prepare target compounds, and then we have to gather data on these materials so as to be able to prove they are what we set out to make. Once we have the materials in hand, we can start doing experiments which probe the chemical consequences of electron transfer on these compounds.

With examples from my research program, I’ll show you how data we collect tells us about the quality of the materials, and how the data reveals the consequences of electron-transfer events involving these materials. I’ll talk specifically about what we can learn from infrared spectroscopy, magnetic resonance, and an electrochemical technique called voltammetry.

To read more, Click Here.

https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Science%20Circle/67/129/32

Announcement: Geekspeak, "Will Dataism kill Humanism?"

Will Dataism kill Humanism?

We humans are, in this day and age, human-centric. But there is a time coming when Big Data will be the center of all our actions and decisions. Algorithms will make all our decisions for us. They will decide whom we will marry, whom we will vote for. Algorithms will know so much more about us than we know about ourselves.

When will we realize that we are not completely human anymore? When will ‘human’ mean something different? When will we be ruled by the algorithm? Will Dataism become a new religion? When will you be happy to give your life over to Google?

Come and discuss the transition from biological algorithms to electronic ones. Bring your brain processing unit.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Danmu/143/127/51

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: "Sterile Neutrinos"

“Sterile Neutrinos: a new particle not known to our Standard Model?”
Saturday September 1
10 AM - 11 AM PDT
By Rob Knop

"Over the last year, sterile neutrinos have been in the news. There is some suggestion that evidence for them is present in experimental data, but it’s still very uncertain. If they’re real, it would be very exciting for particle physics, which has the interesting conundrum of a model that is *too good* — in that it’s been decades since there has been any real surprises in particle physics.  A new and unknown particle would mean that we’re finally venturing into deeper explorations of the fundamental nature of high-energy physics; it could potentially have cosmological implications as well.  In this talk, I’ll give a summary of the Standard Model of Particle Physics, and describe how amazingly (and, indeed, disappointingly) successful it’s been in predicting and explaining the results of particle physics experiments. I will describe what neutrinos are, and how regular neutrinos differ from sterile neutrinos.  Finally, I’ll talk about the possibilities that we’ve seen sterile neutrinos, and what the implications are."

More information about Knop's presentation at https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/sterile-neutrinos-a-new-particle-not-known-to-our-standard-model/

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

Announcement: This Week At The Science Circle: "Big Data: Road to the Future or Just Weapons of Math Destruction?"

"Big Data: Road to the Future or Just Weapons of Math Destruction?"
Saturday June 23
10 AM - 11 AM PDT
By Professor Giuseppe Longo

Big Data are like the God Janus: on the one end they offer great advantages, make our lives easier by offering us unlimited possibility to better organize our work and our everyday life; they allow us to achieve a better understanding of the world around us and can be used to monitor and control the environment, in practice they are changing our world and our lives in ways which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. 

On the other end, however, if ill used -either by negligence or on purpose- they can become “Weapons of Math Destruction” leading to wrong decisions which can badly affect the weakest and poorest part of our society. The Data Anlytics phenomenon is only the most recent case of misuse of big data.

More information about Giuseppe's presentation at https://www.sciencecircle.org/event/big-data-weapons-of-math-destruction/

The Science Circle (61/126/32)

Commentary: Windows 10's Dark Secret

Microsoft is releasing their latest version of Windows: Windows 10. In development for over two years, Microsoft calls it, "the best Windows ever." And the company is giving it out for free. So what's the catch? It seems the Operating System collects quite a bit of your data that gets sent to Microsoft. Nydia Tungsten had a few things to say about it.

Read more in Extra.

Firestorm Viewer Undergoes Emergency Update

By Bixyl Shuftan

Users of Firestorm are having to upgrade their viewers once again, at least those whom had just upgraded to the version before. Linden Lab informed Team Firestorm the viewer was causing them problems. So the team went to work on a new update in a hurry.

It was June 26 when Firestorm released version 4.4.1 of their viewer. Jessica Lyon told the users this was a mandatory upgrade due to it's Project Sunshine and its upcoming rolling out of server-side baking, or server-side appearance as it's being called now. Five days later, The Firestorm blog had some bad news.


According to Jessica, when the viewer was being beta-tested, it was made to "enable special data logging." This sent a sizable amount of information to Linden Lab's servers and user logs, "mainly avatar appearance debugging data and usage data."  Unfortunately, this feature wasn't turned off for when the viewer was released. The "usage" information was the bigger problem as the viewers were sending this information "every 30 seconds … instead of the usual 10 minutes. The result according to Linden Lab was their statistic servers were being overwhelmed. So Team Firestorm had to act fast.

Version 4.4.1 was removed from their downloads page right away. The team then went to work on a new version of the viewer with the feature for the extra data disabled. They stated it would be available on July 2 at latest. Later in the day, work on it was finished and it was made available as Version 4.4.2. Team Firestorm then began blocking the logins of Viewer 4.4.1s in service.

Those whom had yet to upgrade from 4.4.0 do not have to upgrade right away as their viewer wasn't blocked, at least not for a few days when Linden Lab's server side appearance goes into effect.  But it was recommended they make a "clean install," that is "clearing the settings from the hard drive, along with uninstalling the application and manually wiping the cache."

Jessica accepted responsibility for the error, "we screwed up, and because of our screw-up, thousands of you are going to need to upgrade yet again, only this time with little to no notice or choice whatsoever. We acknowledge this will be, at the least, very inconvenient to most of you and on behalf of myself and the entire Firestorm Team, we extend our deepest apologies."

"… we won't make this mistake again."

Various residents across the Grid also acted. Hearing about the emergency update, they spread the news, telling friends in-avatar as well as IMs, group chats, and group notices.

Jessica stated July 9 is when Linden Labs rolls out server side appearance. For those still using Phoenix, she urged them to upgrade to Firestorm, or use another Third-Party viewer that can handle this new way avatar data is processed. Otherwise for them, Second Life may become a very colorless place.

Source: Firestorm Blog

Bixyl Shuftan

Contemplating Turing

Gemma Cleanslate this weekend attended to opening of the Turning Gallery in Extropia. An exhibition of works by Oberon Ommura, the artist made it a tribute to computer pionner Allen Turning. How does one describe the "infinite output" of the mix of science and art? Not easily.

Read about the gallery in Design.