Cartoon of The Day: Rezzing Dinner Problem

 

 Taken at the SL23B. How is a guy supposed to eat with only a skull for a face? Maybe that rezzed before the rest of his head did.

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

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 

 

Cartoon of The Day: Don't Laugh

 

 

 Taken at the shopping event. Not sure what inspired that fashion statement, but my imagination came up with a few things.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of The Day: Red Faced

 

 

 A bakes on mesh error led to my avatar's head turning red. Which made for a picture, and punch line. 

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of The Day: Sunny Attitude

 

 

 Taken at a Relay event

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: Bad Lips

 

From Bliss Mundy on the Second Life Friends group on Facebook. She described her avatar as looking like this after using Voice. But I could think of one other thing that could cause that.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of the Day: Face Time

 
Taken at the Happy Vixen. As with this avatar, that could just as easily be her nose, I could have  gone with some other punch line.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Cartoon of the Day: Beauty Mud

 

Taken at the Home and Garden during Patch Linden's interview by Saffia Widdershins. Most everyone, Patch included, was taking a while to load. And at one point my viewer was showing his face half-rezzed in a way that reminded me of a certain product some women use.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at the new continent. Someone was driving down the streets of the Linden Homes, and her face was the last thing to rezz. You can guess what was the first thing I thought of.

By Bixyl Shuftan

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

Taken at the Bay City Anniversary. How the lady's face appeared that way, who knows. But it does make one wonder who could have caused it.

By Bisyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at the SLB Cake Stage. Memes are nothing new, but what usually comes to mind are those catchy phrases and pictures on the internet that just rapidly spread from person to person, Some hate them, some love them, and others don't especially care that much. Someone thought it was cute to take a certain one and make an avatar head out of it. Oh well, good for a laugh.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at last week's Creations for Parkinson's event, one avatar's face just stayed grey after the others came into view.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

This picture was from Gemma's "Wearable Art" article. It was funny enough to use in a cartoon. ;-)

By Bixyl Shuftan