Peter Gray/Peter Linden Leaving Linden Labs, To Join Facebook

One of the more familiar Lindens to Second Life residents, Peter Linden, will soon be departing Linden Labs. Known as Peter Gray in real life, he was known as the Lab's public relations spokesman, officialy their Senior Director of Communications. But no longer.On Tuesday January 2, Hamlet Au and Inara Pey had received emails from Gray that he was leaving Linden Lab. His new place of employment: Facebook. He will be working at the communications team of Facebook AI Research

"After about a dozen years doing marcom in the virtual worlds/VR space (starting way back in '06 as part of Linden's external PR team), it's time for a new adventure, and I'm excited to be moving on to join Facebook's comms team for AI."

"I'm not sure if anyone else has been doing marcom in the virtual worlds / VR space longer, but 12 years is a pretty long time (in the tech world, at least). What's helped to keep it interesting, exciting, and rewarding all these years is also a big part of what made becoming a Linden appealing in the first place: the enormous range of stories to tell. I'm grateful to all the SL and Sansar users who are doing such interesting and creative things with our platforms, and in particular to those who have gone out of their way to share their stories over the years. "

Peter Linden had spent over eight years at Linden Lab, joining in 2009 and serving under four different CEOs and went through a number of turning points in the company's history such as when 30% of it's staff was laid off. His avatar has been seen in a number of events such as the Second Life Birthday and Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education.  It is not clear who will replace him.

As for Peter Gray's new job. it's likely to be an eventful one as last year, Facebook had to squash rumors that they had pulled the plug on an AI that had gotten "dangerously smart."

Sources: New World Notes, Modem World, Gizmodo 

Bixyl Shuftan

Ceasar Xigalia Announces His Resignation As CDS Chancellor

On Sunday October 19, on the discussion forum of the Confederation of Democratic Simulators, Ceasar Xigalia announced his resignation as Chancellor of the community. Ceasar described his term as following "an extended period where laws and democratic process had become secondary to those who wished to hold on to their positions of power at all cost." Among the issues of the election was land, whether to expand or keep the community the size it was. Ceasar described himself as being stymied in his efforts to add a sim to the community's estate. "The actions of certain members" he wrote, "made it undeniable" that his opposition "would use its powers for political gain and to protect its own interests."

"I can no longer in good conscience support a system that claims it follows democratic principles but is in fact simply a closed group role playing democracy amongst themselves rather than a real social experiment in virtual community development. The system is corrupt and seeks to consolidate power in an elite. I find this morally indefensible and therefore I refuse to continue to take further part and resign my position as Chancellor."

The Confederation of Democratic Simulators describes itself on it's webpage as "the oldest democracy in Second Life. Originally founded in 2004 as the City of Neualtenburg in the Anzere region, the Confederation of Democratic Simulators (C.D.S.) is now a five-region community operated by the citizens." The CDS recently celebrated it's tenth anniversary.

Virtual Railway Consortium Gives Thanks to Former Leader

Second Life Newser recently reported on a resignation in the Virtual Railway Consortium, it's former Secretary Stryker Jenkins. Since then, there has been an official statement from the VRC, thanking him for his service.

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On behalf of all VRC members, thank you to Stryker Jenkins for his tireless service in the group, specifically in the official role of Secretary from which he recently resigned. Stryker's dedication to the group leadership work will be missed, and we're grateful that he plans to continue the many voluntary efforts he's done for the group, including mapmaking, building, recruiting new members, maintaining the website, and more.

Striker's hard work during his term has made it possible to manage the group with much less effort than before, but we do need to elect a new Secretary to fill the vacant position; we plan to initiate the formal election process after SL9B has concluded and well before major work begins on Rail Rally 2012.

The VRC is a bigger and more active group in Second Life than ever before, in many ways due to Stryker's diligent participation. We hope his interest will continue and grow along with the group.

Thank you Stryker!

Leadership Team
Virtual Railway Consortium

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For more on the Virtual Railway Consortium, check out it's website: http://www.virtualrailwayconsortium.org/ .

Gemma Cleanslate

Virtual Railway Consortium Secretary Stryker Jenkins Steps Down

It's been some time since Gemma Cleanslate last reported on the railroad in Second Life. She recently heard about some news about one of the more noted railroad groups, the Virtual Railroad Consortium. Stryker Jenkins, the group's Secretary, stepped down from his position.

Read more in People.

Fredrik Linden Leaving Linden Lab

Fredrik Linden, a software engineering director at Linden Lab for about 18 months, announced he will be leaving this Friday, August 5th. "I'm off to new adventures," he was quoted as saying.

Tatureu Nino stated Nya Linden, currently a program manager, "will be taking over from Fredrik at the Social user-group meetings from next week."

Sources: "Dwell on it," Daniel Voyager's Blog," pic from Marianne McCann.

The Emerald Team Part Ways

Yesterday, Arabella Steadham announced that the Emerald team would soon be folding it’s doors. Later, the post was amended, her saying there was “a hostile takeover was attempted by a portion of the Dev Team trying to gain unauthorized access to the Emerald servers without knowledge of the others,” Jessica Lyon fingered as leading this “takeover.” This was something of a surprise, as Arabella and Jessica appeared together on SL media to defend Emerald and give it's point of view together.

Jessica Lyon has started up her own blog, explaining her point of view.

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As of some time this morning, all access to the servers have been severed to all but Arabella Steadham and Lonely Bluebird. Neither me, nor any of the other Emerald Developers have the ability to put out releases at this time. Beyond the recent beta 2587, we also cannot certify the safety or validity of any future releases.

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Without access to the server and website, I am forced to make a very difficult decision as I will not allow myself to be held accountable to anything that happens from this day on in regards to Emerald.

With that said, I here by officially resign from the Emerald Viewer Project.

I no longer have access to post on the modular systems blog, so I have created a temporary personal blog here http://jessicalyons.wordpress.com . It will be on this blog where I will post future developments with myself and possibly the remaining Emerald Developers. We are considering, (only considering) the possibility of creating a new viewer, to be on the TPVD, picking up where Emerald left off. IF we do, you will have the same features as Emerald Viewer. The motivation for this would be purely to give the existing loyal Emerald users a TPVP compliant alternative with a fresh future.

I would like to thank, all of our dedicated and loyal users for your support through these difficult and confusing times. I would also like to thank our support team, for all of their hard work and relentless dedication to the emerald viewer project and to helping our users. Also to thank our beta testers who helped Emerald viewer be a quality product.

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The final (modified) Emerald Team post is Here.

Jessica's new blog can be found Here.

Both posts were soon followed by dozens of comments. Some were well wishes and thank you notes. Others expressed sadness that it ended this way, and wondering if there would ever be a viewer as good that they could use. And there were a few curses tossed in the direction of Linden Labs.

Unrelated to the team split, there was also an announcement in the Emerald blog of a griefer trying to "pervert the in world open Emerald viewer group. ... I tried to close the group down. Unfortunately, I could not do this in time, so many will now no doubt read disturbing notices put out ..."

Some residents vow to continue to use Emerald. Others are looking for alternatives, Snowglobe and Imprudence appearing to get the most attention (from my point of view). And there are those sticking with, or heading back, to the old SL viewer.

And so, the team started many months ago to provide an alternative to the official Linden Labs viewers, an alternative that won the hearts of many residents of Second Life, has come to an end. For now, the Emerald Viewer is still allowed to be in use. If or when this will change is unclear.

Bixyl Shuftan

Alleged DoS Attack by Emerald, Development Team Member Resigns - UPDATE: Emerald Removed from Linden Labs' Third Party Directory Page

In recent days, Modular Systems, the developers of the popular Emerald Viewer, has come under the spotlight. Last week, one of their team, LordGrerGreg, resigned, citing abuses by the team, notably slipping in code that made the viewer vulnerable to intrusion, “Emerald is no longer what it was to me. I have been dedicating ... my time to the project for nearly two years now, and it’s been difficult to see it go the way it has.”

This news got less attention after a few days when Qarl Fizz, the former Qarl Linden, joined the team. With Qarl’s impressive resume, one of Second Life’s more enthusiastic supporters on the Linden Team and having worked on big-budget movies, this helped Modular System’s claim that LordGregGreg was simply a “minor ex-developer” whom had been unable to agree with his teammates, “You can be assured that Emerald will maintain it’s high standard of integrity, honesty and ethics that have contributed to it’s development.”

Then on August 20, news spread about the website of a rival viewer getting shut down because of action by Emerald viewer’s makers. People began charging Modular Systems of engaging in a Denial of Service attack, involving everyone online whom was using their viewer by using vulnerabilities in the code to make the unaware users’ computers part of the attack. Such a move would be clearly be a violation not just against the terms of service of just about every Internet service provider, but also against the law. Wikipedia stated, “they can be a serious federal crime under the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 with penalties that include years of imprisonment.”

Modular Systems admitted to “shenanigans” on “a blog owned by a creator of a malicious viewer,” by denied they did such a move, “The method for doing this was to add links to the Emerald log in page linked to said blog. Each time anyone logged in, our page loaded up and also the other page loaded up – simply to show off our volume of traffic. This was not a DDoS. This was a poor attempt at boasting that failed miserably. Once we discovered this, these links were deleted and the dev concerned was disciplined.”

Today on Sunday August 22, Fractured Crystal made an announcement on the Modular Systems blog, admitting to supporting the code that made Emerald vulnerable and calling what happened on “this most recent incident” the result of tinkering with the viewer due to boredom and then forgetting about it.

Fractured Crystal had been scheduled, along with Emerald teammate Arabella Steadman, on the treet.tv show Tonight Live this evening at 6 PM SL time.

Events concerning Emerald have been developing quite rapidly. Second Life Newser postponed writing about earlier developments either due to time constraints or waiting for more news.

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UPDATE: Checking Linden Labs' Third Party Directory, Emerald is gone from the list.

Bixyl Shuftan