Emerald Crystal Golf Course In Trouble

 

 

The Emerald Crystal Golf Course is a good place to golf in Second Life. The Newser has written about it, twice (1) (2). Unfortunately, it's been having some trouble. 

On October 1, Laz Dresler, the owner, or greenskeeper, of Emerald, posted the following in the golf course's group.

I always promised I would communicate when the Situation at Emerald Crystal Golf  Course became Grim.
Its  officially Grim. This Summer i hoped  for change. I thought  maybe  everyone was on Vacation and things would turn around and we would make a come back financially. Our Traffic has been good. Sadly our donations  are no longer supporting the 25K we need by the first of each month. September  we were short by half.

If things don't change for October ...

 

 A week later, Laz stated people had been donating, for which she was grateful for, but they still needed more help.

 

You are all gems  - However, among  you we have individuals in our Group that are jewels who appreciate our history and what Emerald Crystal means to Second Life.  

FYI - We are not close to meeting our Goal for next month yet. 

Please don't forget Every Linden matters to our survival  Tiers never stop being collected,  Every month it takes  25,000 Linden to keep the sim. We are officially out of the little cushion that use to make up for our shortages.   

 

For those wishing to donate, there's a wishing well not from from the entrance at Dark Sun Island (31/59/23). Donate to that, and the Lindens will go to paying for the sim. Or you can send them to  CrystalZalari . You can also go to the weekly event at their "19th hole" every Sunday at 12:30 PM.

 

Hopefully for Emerald Crystal, soon the only scary things for Halloween will be the spooks, bats, and wolves.  

 

 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dark%20Sun%20Island/31/59/23

 

Hat tip: Charlee Harmony 

 

 Bixyl Shuftan

Trouble With ABC Breedables

Breedable virtual pets have been a part of Second Life for most of it's history. And over time there have been a number of companies who have made them. But sometimes they run into trouble. One of the first to make it big was Ozimals. But in 2017, the company folded due to an internal dispute. Thankfully it's last act was to save the pet bunnies it's customers had. But those of another company may not be so fortunate. 

For some years, Awesome Breed Creations has been in the business of selling breedable horses and the feed for them, as well as medicine and accessories. People would breed them for desired traits, as well as auction them and hold races. But a few days ago came some trouble that may spell the end of the business. The person in charge of the scripts that brought the horses to life, Sentire Bravin, had resigned. 

I am writing to formally announce my resignation from my role as a software and content developer, effective immediately. This decision was not made lightly, and I deeply regret having to take this step.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for the staff and developers I’ve had the privilege of working alongside. Their dedication, talent, and passion for creating one of the finest breedable experiences in Second Life have been both inspiring and enriching. It has been an honor to collaborate with such a talented and exceptional team.

But, he stated he hadn't been paid in over a year. As a result, he was quitting, and had turned the scripts off.

As a result of the prolonged lack of payment, I have removed all of my code and data from ABC servers. Additionally, I have formally notified the owner of ABC to cease and desist from any unauthorized use of my code. I understand this will impact the functionality of ABC products, but this is a matter that Stephanie (the owner of ABC) must address. ...

Unfortunately, the results of the code and data removal was that the horses became frozen, the stats display above them showing red. They were now little more than props, static, not able to walk around, breed, be ridden, or anything else. Kitacelia, an ABC breeder for a number of years told me the "Pasture" where horses can be stored was inoperable and nothing could be taken back from there. The ABC website was also down. 

"I lost 1000's of dollars worth of pets," Kitacelia told me, "... not be able to turn on accessories/horns/wings on them or movement/sound ... I can't even get my remaining pets out of pasture ...  can't turn movement on or off or add accessories to the ones in inventory or inworld." Checking Penny Shuftan's horses in the Sunweaver community where the Newser office is, they were glitched as well.

Besides Sentire, there was also an announcement of two others on the team resigning, Saphear Saunders and Krystal Silverweb

After an incredible 10+ years as the artists behind Awesome Breed Creations, it’s with a heavy heart that we share the news of our departure from the development team. This decision has not been made lightly, but unfortunately, we’ve reached a point where it’s no longer financially sustainable for us to continue under the current circumstances.

Since August of this year, our development team has not been paid, and despite numerous attempts to contact Stephanie Merrienboer (the owner and CEO of ABC), we’ve been met with silence. We’ve received no explanation or reasoning as to why this has happened. We are aware that Stephanie has internet access and has been in touch with others, so there’s no reason why she couldn’t have spoken to us or even laid us off respectfully if the company was experiencing financial hardships (which, to our knowledge, it wasn’t). We’ve poured countless hours, effort, and love into ABC over the years, and we feel deeply disrespected to be treated in this manner. It isn’t right.

As a result, we’ve had to find other work and make the difficult decision to halt the development of any new horses or content for ABC.

Nikki Detritus, the Racing Commissioner, would also comment. 

I need you all to know that the RA and myself are all saddened by what has happened. I am still trying to hold out with some hope but that is hard to hold on to when you have no clue what has happened. None of us.. Not the RA, the VSRs, the auctioneers, the managers knew about this. The only ones who knew are obviously the ones not getting paid. BUT even THEY held on for so long because the loved ABC.  I know people are angry and emotions are high and rightly so.. But please lets stick together as family and treat each other nice as it is none of our faults and we are all sick over this. Jockeys and Owners.. I need you to know ONE thing..  I NEVER wanted to be the Commissioner.. I have worked as an RA member for close to 10 years now and I never wanted that position BUT I am so glad that I did take it. I learned a lot and I got to know all of you.  It was some of the BEST times of my SL life!  I care about each and everyone of you and will always cherish the memories of the great times!

While at the ABC store, I ran into a couple people, one who was quite upset, "I spent 30000 Linden ...  I had 150 horses cost me in food almost $ 150 a month. ... There are breeders who have 500 horses ... we have all been scammed!" He mentioned the Auction House had been closed for a month.

As of the writing of this article, there has been no comment from ABC's owner. What we do know is the horses are broken, and there are many upset and sad owners. 

Bixyl Shuftan

EOTB: Linden Lab Acknowledges Some Residents Are Having PBR Related Issues

 

If you've been having issues with the viewer in Second Life since the PBR (Physical Based Rendering) updates, you're not alone. Numbers of people have complained since it's introduction of increased lag, longer rezzing times, and crashes.

 

In their latest post on the official blog, Linden Lab was basically acknowledging there was a problem,  

We are always striving to add more improvements to Second Life and we’ve been particularly excited to roll out integration of PBR Materials, which has the potential to improve and modernize much of the look and feel of our virtual world. However, the introduction of PBR has not gone as smoothly as we would like and we have heard community frustrations and feedback with recent PBR-enabled Viewer releases of both the Official Second Life Viewer and Firestorm Viewer.

We share your frustration and are taking steps to make things better for everyone on both lower-end and high-end systems. This means that we’re actively focused on improving the performance in a variety of areas including improved FPS, VRAM management, texture loading, alpha blending, and even how lighting is rendered within the world. Additional fixes are already in our development pipeline and will head to QA soon.

Of what to do, the Lab suggested that those using the Linden Viewer download this update (link).

If you are having issues with the Official Second Life Viewer, you can immediately download an update here that addresses many of the issues affecting performance, particularly among those who may be using older or less powerful computers. We are continuing to work on additional fixes that will further address texture loading issues and low framerates. If you don’t update proactively now, you’ll soon see a prompt when you go to login to Second Life in the coming days encouraging you to update. 

 

For those using Firestorm, the Lab stated, "We are working closely with the Firestorm team to coordinate the rollout of updates that will improve your performance." They would mention that Team Firestorm made the decision to keep their last pre-PBR viewer around indefinitely .

 

The next release of the Firestorm viewer will include all the performance fixes we are working on. You’ll be prompted to update your Firestorm Viewer once it is ready in the next few days, but you can also be one of the first to try it by joining the Firestorm Preview Group inworld and continue to stay connected with their development progress on the official Firestorm Viewer website and its dedicated download page.

For the blogpost in full, Click Here. 

Bixyl Shuftan

Sunweaver Resident Sets Up Gofundme For Help

 

One of the Sunweavers is having some problems.

 

It was recently posted in Discord, and later as a Sunweaver group notice, "Hey, I don't know if you remember a Kattywampus Oh in Second Life, but she's needing financial help, in a pretty bad situation. Also a member of the Sunweavers.  But if you could take a look at her GoFundMe and pass it around, I would appreciate it.  https://gofund.me/2495d614 "

 

 

Hi, I'm Katty, and I hate to ask for help!

But this time, I really don't know what else to do.

I am a 45-year old BIPOC artist and bluecollar grunt surviving on a parcel of land in the desert around Three Points, AZ.

Here's part of my story: I ended up camping in a small unincorporated area about 22 miles from Tucson, AZ last year, due to how ridiculous the housing market is. I eventually moved into a 5th wheel RV after living in some hotels, a van, and a tent. After an abusive situation including my spouse and my landlord a few months ago, I ended up in my friends' 45 year old RV you see in the banner image.

If you've ever been at your wit's end with a loved one with a severe addiction issue, you unfortunately know where my money went. I was determined to keep going, getting professional help for my PTSD, anxiety, and suicidal depression. I started doing great at work and enrolled in night classes that my employer paid for, in order to attempt to score a juicy promotion! 

 

Katty had a goal of $10,000 for her fundraiser. As of the writing of this article, almost $2000 had been raised, close to half from one anonymous donor.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Real-Life News: Burning Man 2023 A Muddy Mess

 

 For fans of Burning Man, this was a year that will be remembered not so much for the art, music, and the Burning of The Man, but for the mud.

Last weekend was the high point of the Burning Man art and music festival in Black Rock Nevada, which normally has the high point of the event, the Burning of The Man, a huge wooden effigy, on Saturday night. But then the normally dry desert ended up getting heavy rains. The result was ground turning into a muddy mess. People ended up covering their shoes in plastic bags so they wouldn't get stuck in the thick muck. With people unable to leave, or order fresh supplies, people were asked to conserve food and water. Some grumbled at their festival quite literally dampened. Others just took things it stride. There was also a death at the event when a man was discovered having died for reasons still unknown. The Burning of The Man ended up postponed until Monday so things could dry out. But by then, many had taken advantage of the roads finally being driveable again, and there was a jam of people trying to leave.

For Second Life, Burning Man has had a long-lasting connection. In the late 1990s, many of the original staff of Linden Lab, including it's founder and first CEO Philip Rosedale, would attend and be impressed by the temporary city of attendees having been so quickly created out of nothing, which helped inspire the creation of Second Life. Second Life would have reflections of the Burning Man festival almost since the beginning, taking place in October. They would be sponsored by Linden Lab until 2010, called Burning Life. In 2010, Linden Lab would cut off it's support, and the Burners would run the event on their own, renaming it Burn2. Eventually there would be spinoff events at other times of the year. In 2022, a split among Burning Man fans in real life would be reflected in Second Life with a "Renegade" Burn being held in the virtual world, as well as real life.

 

 Image credit: BBC

Sources: BBC, AP News

Bixyl Shuftan

Back Online

 

I often say the Newser updates 364 days a year, allowing a day for technical difficulties and the unexpected. Well, on Sunday came the unexpected technical difficulties, which a simple rebooting of the Internet equipment didn't solve, and had to call the company. It's fixed now, and we'll soon be posting as before.

Once again, sorry about the crash.

Image Credit: Erik Mondrain
 

Bixyl Shuftan, Editor, SL Newser

No "Plan B" For Mieville, Fate of Community's Estate Uncertain Following Passing of Founder

 

 Last week, the founder and leader of the Mieville community, Perryn Peterson, was declared missing and presumed dead following a long absence with his last known location having been the hospital for a few months. While this was a sad development in itself, it leaves the future of the sims where Mieville makes it's home an unknown one as there were no plans set on how to pay for them if Perryn was unable to.

Talking to the community's assistant mayor, Wyvvy (Wyvern Dryke), he did say there was an effort to make backup plans, "The original Plan B was to combine our money and buy some sims." But there was a not so small problem, "But Plan B poofed when I realized that Mieville does not make enough rent to support even one sim for one month. And Perryn never gave me any RL contact info, despite my asking over and over."

 

And how long do the sims have left? "No one knows," Wyvvy told me, "The Lindens refuse to speak with us." He has talked to others in the community, but nobody seems to have much of an idea what to do.

Wyvvy has decided to do at least something, creating a Gofundme to save a small part of the estate.

For the last year, I have been working on a huge, virtual art build called "Haunted Nawlins." I have been building it in a meta-grid called Second Life. The project had a benefactor, who contributed the virtual real estate necessary to hold it. Unfortunately, shortly after giving me permission to use his rented "region" of real estate, my benefactor became seriously ill. He went to the hospital in March 2022, and by mid-October, his Second Life account had become deactivated. This means that he cannot pay his virtual "rent." Therefore, the region on which "Haunted Nawlins" sits will soon disappear.

My build is a representation of New Orleans, circa 1901. It is spooky and Halloween-esque. It juxtaposes beauty with decay, rich glory with poverty and despair. There are gorgeous, rotting mansions of the Garden District; muddy cobblestone streets of the haunted French Quarter; rustling, secret branches of the Bayou; and the echoing columns of the silent Lafayette Cemetery.

I have also made interactive vehicles, people, and creatures for the build. I am currently working on a simple AI system for them to tell the stories of their lives and the history of New Orleans. This is a Work in Progress; it is not finished. I have so much planned, and I do not know if I will get to complete it....

Furthermore, New Orleans has always been very special to me, so this project means a great deal. Its loss would affect me on a deep level, not just because of the work and energy I've put in, but also because the region on which it sits is central to a large community to which I've become attached. When that region disappears, I can't shake the feeling that the associated community will also disappear. I don't want to lose those friends any more than I want to lose the art.

To see the message in it's entirety, click here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/haunted-nawlins .

The situation is in some ways comparable to the Steelhead community several years ago, an active Steampunk community in which the sims were all owned by one man. In the case of Steelhead in Sept 2015, it's landowner had a number of difficult RL situations before him, and then the Lab locked his main account. That was the final straw, and he announced he could no longer maintain the community sims, all but one which would shut down less than three months later. Although one of the community would eventually get a sim for a new home, it was still pretty small compered to the old Steelhead.

In the meantime, the people of Mieville continue to go about their way, continuing to have events, such as an upcoming Thanksgiving-themed hunt. Exactly what the future truly has to hold for Mieville, hopefully it will be brighter than it currently seems.

Bixyl Shuftan

How to Prevent And Deal With Doxing

 

After some time away to take care of matters, Angel Fencer is back. Sadly, one of the matters she had to deal with was being doxed and harrassed online. In her article today, she talks about her experience with the issue, and what to do about it should it happen to you.

Read Angel's story in Extra.
 

Techinical Difficulties

I had some computer trouble this weekend. While it appears to be more or less fixed, it took some time. So some things I was working on may be a little delayed.

Bixyl Shuftan

Daniel Voyager's Blog On Hiatus

 

Noted SL blogger Daniel Voyager hasn't been doing well. It's been several weeks since his blog, Daniel Voyager's Blog, published an article.  Taking a look at his Twitter, it seems he's been dealing with some real life issues that will take some time to resolve. In his last post, he expressed hope at being active again sometime in June.

Best of luck Daniel, and hope you'll be back soon.
 

Technical Difficulties For The Grid on Tuesday

 *

Tuesday January was the day rolling restarts were done this week around the Grid. Usually they go routine. But this time something went wrong. Some residents would have trouble logging in, and others noted some sims looked offline. When I tried logging in on Sunweaver Bay, the login screen got stuck in the middle of the progress. In various Second Life Discord channels, people noted their difficulties.

Eventually, the Lab noticed there was a problem, and posted on the Grid Status Report.

We are aware rolling restarts are taking longer than normal, and we are working to bring these regions back online as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience! Please follow this blog for further updates. - 08:06 PST

We apologize for the delay, and are continuing to work to bring these regions back online as quickly as possible. We thank you for your patience! Please follow this blog for further updates. - 09:10 PST 

 

We are continuing to work on restoring the regions still offline from this morning's Rolling Restarts, and are making progress. Please watch this blog for updates. - 09:45 PST

 

Getting online, there was chatter about it in several groups I was in, including the Bellisserian chat. At one point, Abnor Mole spoke up, "The restarts this week have been going... poorly. The region your home is in it probably one of those affected, but it is not alone. The Lindens are well aware of the problem and working on it."

Eventually, the Lab finally fixed whatever the problem was, but decided to restart some of the sims again to make sure.

We believe this issue has been resolved but will be restarting some regions as part of the final process. Thank you for your continued patience! - 12:45 PST

Eventually, all was back to normal, with the usual lag, and the residents went on.
 
Bixyl Shuftan
 

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
  

Mermaid Retreat in Trouble, Saved For Another Month

On Sunday over group chat in the Safe Waters Foundation, there was chatter among the merfolk of an underawater place in trouble, "We have a mer sim in trouble, and want us mers to come together to help out. ... It's short of L(inden dollars), by about 8K or so. ... The Mermaid Retreat ... great mer sim. So I am reaching out to see if anyone could help them."

"The owner Lady Scarlet (Luckxe Resident) is here," the person would continue, "taking donation and applying ot the land instantly." Someone else asked if help had been requested. The answer was, "Yes, she is just a bundle of nerves. (I) won't go into it, but she is one and this place means a lot, but went from sad to now almost crying form people wanting to help."

People did help. About forty minutes after the chat started, "WE SAVED IT FOR A MONTH!!!!!!! THANK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!"

The place itself is an underwater area with a few small rocky island on the surface. There are luminous underwater plants, and a large dancing area with a DJ booth. The description of the place is, "An island of tranquility and relaxation for the mind and body. Come and get lost with a sense of mythical mystery of merfolk and bonding with each other in a dreamlike state." A notecard describes the location as raising "awareness for a different charity every month," having group discussion, and a number of events and parties. Those wanting a party or wedding at the place are free to ask. The location is owned by Vivienne Koisera (Vivien0Koisera Resident) and Lady Scarlett Momobami (Luckxe Resident).

Flicker page: https://www.flickr.com/groups/themermaidretreat/

SURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Frozen%20Field/74/48/2

Bixyl Shuftan

Jasmine Dawn on The Halloween Haunt And Her New Computer

 

Halloween is here, and it's time for clubs across Second Life to do something for spooky fun. Some just put up a few small decorations. But the Happy Vixen goes all out with a special Halloween area. For these builds, Jasmine Dawn has graciously donated her time so others can have a little spooky fun. This year, she had planned a challenging maze and a spooky house. But trouble came when unexpected computer trouble broke her machine. Fortunately, help would soon be on the way, and she was able to complete her creation. Yours truly would have a few words with her about the maze, and the effort to get her a new computer.

Read more in People.

 

Genus Project Wins DMCA Suit, Reopens Today

Things haven't been the best for the Genus Project store this year. Twice this year, someone hit them with DMCA takedown notices, the second just hours after the store reopened. Finally, after two months, the case has been resolved and the store is set to reopen today. So how was the suit pulled off and why did it take time to resolve? The owner of Genus would explain.

Read more in Extra.

EOTB: April Linden Explains Last Weekend's Issues

If you had some trouble getting on Second Life on Sunday August 30, it wasn't just your imagination. April Linden would explain things this week in the Tools and Technology section of the Linden Blog.

A lot of people had trouble connecting to Second Life yesterday (Aug 30th, 2020), and I want to explain a bit about what happened, and why we didn’t post on the Second Life Status page right away.
Early in the morning (US time) yesterday one of the major Internet providers had an issue that impacted a lot of the Internet as a whole, including Second Life. Several other Internet companies have written their own really good blog posts about what happened. We got caught up in the same thing. 

The reason we were slow to post on the Second Life Status page is because, from our monitoring systems’ point of view, Second Life itself and all our systems were functioning normally. That means, our operations team wasn’t getting alerted. Of course, from the Resident point of view, Second Life was effectively down in some parts of the world, and that’s really what matters.
To help us react quicker in the future we’ve made a few changes. 

Yesterday evening we added a new monitoring service that checks on some of Second Life’s core systems from all around the globe. It’s a service that a lot of other companies use too, so we’ll get alerted better in the future. When Internet-scale events like yesterday happen there’s not a lot we can do about it, but we can post on the status page quicker to let our Residents know we’re aware things aren’t right.

April Linden would apologize for the earlier lack of communication, "We know how important Second Life is to our Residents, and we’re taking steps to increase our visibility into issues outside of our servers. It’s our hope that these steps will enable us to communicate better with y’all in the future."

Source: Linden Lab

Hat Tip: Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life Store Hit With Two DMCA Shutdowns, Second Hours After Reopening

While the Second Life Birthday and the buyout of Linden Lab have been in the headlines, there have been other news stories that might have gotten more attention otherwise. Among the companies making use of Bento mesh is Genus, which has gotten attention for it's Bento heads. But a few months ago, they were hit with a DMCA takedown order, which shut them down for a while. Earlier this month, they reopened, only to be hit with a second takedown order in just a few hours.

Read the story in Extra.

Second Norway In Trouble, Economic Effects of Coronavirus Blamed

Sad news. It appears the Second Norway area, the easternmost part of the Blake Sea could be closed soon. The Newser was tipped by a user on Facebook, Karasu Ravinbyrd Tori, whom stated she received the following notice in one of her groups.

I am sorry to inform that due to year of deficit and the current corona crisis, job loss and failing krone exchange rate, Ey Ren are no longer able to keep the ship afloat. LL has closed his account. Ey has contacted LL and the other owners of Blake Sea in hopes of reaching an agreement for further existence of SN and SCE. Make sure that you pick up your no copy objects. I don't know the timeframe when the region goes offline. Unfortunately, I have no more information at this time.

Checking the Second Norway group, there was a similar notice:

Hello everyone, as you might have heard the SN estate is closing. This is mainly due to the current financial situation you see all around now a days. The owner is in contact with LL and other estate owner around to see if there is a possibility to keep some regions down in SCE, We do not have an exact time frame when things will go down yet. We will give out more information as we learn it.

I would like to thank everyone who has rented and enjoyed the estate, we have had a blast hosting

As it turns out, the value of Norway's currency has gone down quite a bit in the past few months. According to Wikipedia, "as of October 2019 is worth about 9 NOK. During the corona crisis 2020, the NOK fell heavily, making one USD cost 12.00 NOK on 19 March 2020."

Second Norway is located at the east end of the Blake Sea area, consisting of a little more than forty sims.

Tori wondered that it might not belong before there would soon be more estates closing, "My advice is... DO NOT pay your tier more than a week or two ahead at a time so as to cut your potential losses if they tank on you." With the shutdowns around the world due to the Coronavirus, with people out of work and businesses closed, this very well could start to happen in places in which the owner was already in trouble or didn't plan ahead.

Bixyl Shuftan

More Sansar Layoffs, Kona Linden Among Those Cut

For the second time in three months, Linden Lab is laying off a number of Sansar's already small staff. Following a report by Ryan Schultz on his blog, CEO Ebbe Altberg would confirm on the Sansar Discord channel that some of the virtual world's staff were dismissed.


Yes, there were layoffs today. A truly wonderful group of people. But as you can see, Sansar is up and running. We are still in discussion about next steps. Including with the wonderful group of people. More to come. Don't give up yet. Go create and have fun. Not much point in speculating until we can tell you more.


Schultz had originally written that "a very reliable source" had told him "there were over 40 people laid off, and a small number of software developers were moved from Sansar to Second Life." The source had also told him that further development of Sansar had been shut down, though not the virtual world itself. This number of those laid off, as well as the claimed state of development have not been confirmed by other sources. What has been confirmed is one name among those dismissed. Kona Linden (Kona Gurion in real life), would contact Hamlet Au and inform him he was among those laid off. Hamlet would call Kona's layoff particularly sad, "With his layoff, Linden Lab loses its last known link to Second Life during its founding, and glory days of 2006-2008."

Sansar was already reportedly operating under a "skeleton crew" following the previous round of layoffs. Inara Pey would state that Sansar will still be running events in March. But with this latest round of dismissals, the long term future of Linden Lab's next-generation virtual world has become more uncertain than ever.

Sources: Ryan Schultz, New World Notes, Modem World

Bixyl Shuftan

High Fidelity Fading Away

When the Newser last wrote about High Fidelity in July, the company was in trouble, having laid of a quarter of it's staff and made other cutbacks. But these moves failed to turn things around and the situation has continued to go downhill. Today, while High Fidelity isn't dead yet, it certainly seems close.

Earlier this month, Philip Rosedale, the co-founder of the company, had an announcement titled "Updates and a New Beginning," which had some bad news for fans of the virtual world platform. Among the things announced, High Fidelity was going to "turn over control of the codebase to the community. As of January 15, 2020, we’re going to make High Fidelity’s Github repository private. We want to give community leaders time to create their own repositories and systems as desired."

There were more layoffs announced, "we will reduce our team size in half effective today."

All High Fidelity applications are being removed from online stores and no further accounts are being created, "we’ll also be withdrawing our apps on the Steam Store, Oculus Store and our Virtual You: 3D Avatar Creator app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Since there are no High Fidelity supported environments, we’re not offering registration for new accounts which these enable."

Taking a look at a "User FAQ" page on the forum, High Fidelity's Marketplace is closing, and there will soon be no more cashout's of the virtual currency, "The Marketplace will close. The public Marketplace pages will be removed, you will not be able to purchase new items, you will not be able to add new items available for sale, and you will not be able to edit existing items’ details. We will also no longer offer cash-out of HFC after January 15, 2020."

Philip Linden felt that the reason for High Fidelity's failure to succeed was that virtual reality had yet to take off due to technical limitations that had yet to be solved, "four fundamental advances in hardware need to happen before HMDs replace mobile and desktop general-computing use. Until VR headsets don’t feel like, as The New Yorker’s Patricia Marx puts it, “a gerbil’s casket [has] been plastered onto the upper half of my face,” compelling social virtual worlds won’t gain traction. So where does that leave High Fidelity?"

Philip's parting words to High Fidelity's users were, "Your passion and dedication to the possibilities of VR and virtual worlds is inspiring. We’re grateful for your support over the years and hope you’ll try out our new product once launched." But the reaction by some users was quite negative. In the forums, one thread was, "Never Forgive, Never Forget," the poster remarking, "I call on the community to never forget the actions of High Fidelity corporate. How they have treated their users and how they have treated their employees. If or when High Fidelity comes out with their next project or a updated version of this project. We should remind High Fidelity of their past and educate their perspectives users of their past. Philip we do not forget. We do not forgive." But not everyone was so critical, DrFran saying, "I don’t know about you, but when people constantly criticize, belittle, and second guess everything you do, you tend to distance yourself from therm. I think HiFi realized the toxicity of the user base, and had to decamp. I don’t blame them for their actions. Their ball; their game."

Ryan Schultz commented of the announcement, "High Fidelity will soon be a dead platform, the first major victim of the social VR wars (but probably not the last). R.I.P." Hamlet Au's assessment was more optimistic, "High Fidelity's underlying code can still be developed by the community under an open source license. ... This seems to open up the possibility of the High Fidelity virtual world becoming the basis for... OpenSim 2." One of High Fidelity's users, Theanie, had his comments, "I ... am not in a state of mourning. The High Fidelity code is thankfully open source, and that means the platform will never really 'die.' There are already multiple forked projects in the works that could prove to be viable successors to the now-defunct platform. However, before we can move on toward that bright virtual future that awaits us, it’s critical to spend time on reflection. As the old saying goes, “Those that don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.” We need to analyze the mistakes that were made, so as to prevent them from happening again."

In any event, the sun is setting for what was the next virtual world made by the man whom led the building of Second Life.

Bixyl Shuftan