Discord Issues

 

If you were having trouble getting on Discord on Friday September 29, you weren't alone. Numerous users using the client software were getting a while screen with the words "You have been blocked."

 

Someone posting on Twitter to Discord Support stated, "I suddenly get a Cloudflare "Sorry, you have been blocked" page when opening the Discord desktop client. Is something wrong on your end or am I false positive in some DoS detection?"

The problem is described as lasting for hours, and the company pinned the issue on the service experiencing "unusual traffic spikes."  It has been suggested that the reason was issues at Cloudfare, which Discord works with to improve it's service. 

The issue came up in a couple group chats in Second Life. Later in the day after the problem seemed to be resolved, it was suggested to users still having trouble that restarting the client, or their computers, would resolve the problem. A suggestion that Discord itself had been making.

 

Sources: Techcrunch,  Bleepingcomputer, Twitter,

Bixyl Shuftan

Cutlass Hospital Ship

 

 

 It's been, interesting times, for the Sunweaver community. A few days ago, community leader Rita Mariner came back home from the hospital after a precautionary check in some days earlier due to an infection on her leg. She's been far from the only Sunny in not so sunny times. A week and a half ago, Zorro Wuramunga was checked in the hospital, and a few weeks ago so was Valkyrie Ice. Others such as Penny Shuftan, Snowbuns Lefavre, and Mattie Carlton have also not been feeling well lately.

Shockwave Yareach mused that the way things were going, Club Cutlass would soon need it's own Intensive Care Unit. So when he DJed on Friday the 13th at Cutlass, the club sported the red cross symbol on the sides, there was a heart monitor near the DJ booth, and the dance poles had IV bags. He commented with his luck, he'd be the one in the hospital next. Rita, who was there, had a chuckle over the dark humor. There was no comment from Zorro, who was also there.

 

Bixyl Shuftan.

Login Issues Keep Many Residents Offline

If you're having trouble logging in today, it's not just you. Today at 11:48AM SL time, it was announced on the Grid Status Report that there was an outage going on with parts of Second Life.

Some Second Life services are currently experiencing an outage. During this time, some Second Life services may be unavailable including, but not limited to: logging in, teleporting, and object rezzing. Please refrain from rezzing in-world, in addition to transacting in-world, on the Marketplace, or on the Lindex during this time. 

This follows an Unscheduled Inventory Maintenance on Friday October 25, in which some residents had similar issues.

Although much of California is expecting brownouts and blackouts due to massive wildfires, which could affect as many as two million people, San Francisco, where Linden Lab is located, is not expected to be affected.

Addition: As of 4PM SL time, the Lab is still trying to fix the issue behind the outage.

Source: CNN, San Francisco Chronicle

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

"Unscheduled Maintenance" Leads to Avatar Glitches Inworld

If you had trouble with your avatar loading properly yesterday, or not loading at all, you weren't alone. In Discord and Facebook, residents were saying their avatars wouldn't fully rezz. As it turned out, Second Life was having "Unscheduled Maintenance" at the time.

At this time we are undergoing unscheduled maintenance that may cause some avatars to appear as a cloud for an extended period of time. We expect this issue to clear up gradually over the next hour or two, and inventory is not affected by this maintenance. Please note that at this time relogging will not resolve an avatar appearing as a cloud and mass relogging may extend the timeline for resolution. We thank you for your patience, and apologize for the inconvenience. Please follow this blog for more updates. 

At 12:14PM SL time, Linden Lab declared the problem resolved.

It was two weeks ago that the Grid had a number of times in which avatars would crash and be unable to login for a while. Sunday the 28th was the worst day, blamed on DDoS attacks, but not the only day.

Image Credit: Brandi Streusel

Bixyl Shuftan

More Login Troubles

It's been a frustrating week for Second Life residents. On Sunday, people had trouble logging in over the course of the day. On Wednesday, April Linden admitted it was a Distributed Denial of Service attack. But the trouble happened again that night for a couple hours. And once again on Thursday, there were people getting disconnected and unable to log on, at some times worse than others.


We are currently experiencing issues with log ins that is currently being investigated. Residents may experience log outs at this time. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

The chatter I heard in local chat and group chat online, as well as a thread of the forums, was full of irritated comments. More than one wished the "script kiddies" would be caught and thrown in the slammer. Catching DDoSing hackers is difficult, but it can be done. A couple months ago, two were arrested after being exposed. In April, what was claimed to be "the largest DDoS website" was shut down, the hackers doing the deeds for hire, boasting they had been behind six million such attacks.

Sources: CSO, Forbes 

Bixyl Shuftan

April Linden Confirms Sunday DDoS Attack

 Second Life residents often found themselves disconnected and/or had trouble logging in. On Wednesday afternoon, April Linden announced in the Tools and Technology part of the official forums that it was the reason some residents suspected: A Directed Denial of Service attack.
On Sunday,

Hello amazing Residents of Second Life!

 

A few days ago (on Sunday, October 28th, 2018) we had a really rough day on the grid. For a few hours it was nearly impossible to be connected to Second Life at all, and this repeated several times during the day.

 

The reason this happened is that Second Life was being DDoSed.

 

Attacks of this type are pretty common. We’re able to handle nearly all of them without any Resident-visible impact to the grid, but the attacks on Sunday were particularly severe. The folks whothat were on call this weekend did their best to keep the grid stable during this time, and I’m grateful they did.

 

Sunday is our busiest day in Second Life each week, and we know there’s lot of events folks plan during it. We’re sorry those plans got interrupted. Like most of y’all, I too have an active life as a Resident, and my group had to work around the downtime as well. It was super frustrating.

 

As always, the place to stay informed of what’s going on is the Second Life Grid Status Blog. We do our best to keep it updated during periods of trouble on the grid.

 

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you inworld!

 

April Linden

 
Second Life Operations Team Lead

 

But Second Life's troubles weren't over quite yet. Later that day in the evening hours, it happened again, residents getting logged off and unable to log back in. Yours truly was able to log back in after a few hours. There was talk about another DDoS attack by some residents. But the Grid Status Report didn't show any problems.

Hopefully that's the last of the trouble this week.

Hat Tip: Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan

Login Issues Yesterday

If you had trouble logging in Second Life yesterday, Sunday October 29, you weren't alone. Facebook had a number of people asking, "anyone else having trouble logging on?" As it turned out, plenty were. In various groups I am in, and among those I ran into, people were complaining that it took multiple tries for them to get on, and were sometimes crashing. On the Grid Status Report, throughout the day, it was stated that these troubles were an issue, and Linden Lab was working on it.

We are currently experiencing issues with log ins that is currently being investigated. Residents may experience log outs at this time. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

As of 9PM SL time (Midnight EST), these problems were still going on.

Nydia Tungsten Speaks on Recent Events

How does one respond when one of your best friends, or perhaps your mentor, has to deal with not just her way of communicating with the outside world being severely disrupted, but also the tragic loss of a parent? This was the question faced by the friends of Nydia Tungsten as she faced these blows last night. But the support of her friends kept her going. Not just the financial support by one friend, but also the emotional support of so many friends. A few days ago, Nydia contacted me, asking to speak about the matter.

Read the story in People.

Reaction to Nydia's Tragedy

After the announcement of the passing of Nydia Tungsten's mother on Tuesday Night, friends from around Second Life have given her messages of condolences on her Facebook account. Among her Angels group in Second Life was this announcement by Ranchan Weidman:

I have been asked to pass this along to all Angels. Nydia's mother has passed on.  She expresses her love of all the angels, and cherishes every one she has met.  

In this time of full mourning, please remember to keep Nydia and her real life family in your thoughts and prayers.

We are here for you Nydia. 

Next to Nydia's home, Mouse Hold Manor Sora Anubis Kraditzio Shizuka (jamestkirk2323) and Umbra75 Bigbear erected a cross for the mother of their friend and her real-life family. Several people left candles and flowers at the base. The memorial is at Sunlight Bay (230/51/24).

Nydia's problems have only grown recently when her mother's funeral insurance suddenly told she and her family they would not be paying for the actual burial, threatening an expense they can barely afford. With this latest development, talk about how to send flowers has turned into how they can help their valued friend and neighbor.

Bixyl Shuftan

Sad News About Nydia Tungsten

Nydia Tungsten has made a name for herself in the Sunweaver community over the past several years. Part wild child, part wise woman, one wasn't always sure which side they'd run into, or a little bit of both. Her mixture of naughtiness, wisdom, humor, and a willingness to always listen to one's friends in their moments of need, has long earned the "little white vixen" a place in the hearts of many. Because of her name and steadfastness, she's sometimes been called the "Steel Vixen."

But even the strongest of steel bends when the weight is just too much.

In recent months, her mother has been in poor health, and recently it has taken a turn for the worst. Days ago, the doctors sent her home so she could face the end with family. She was not expected to survive much longer. Circumstances that have left Nydia in tears. To complicate matters, her pets knocked her computer off her table, breaking it. She has been keeping in touch with friends via Facebook, email, and g-chat though an old laptop that simply can't handle Second Life.

Finally on Tuesday night, her mother passed away, leaving the family in mourning.

Between these events, she has told her friends that she does not know when she will be back.

The Sunweavers, and the Newser, wish Nydia all the luck and strength in these most trying of times.

Technical Difficulties

Computers can be buggy little things, and sometimes an attempt to fix things can backfire. A website a friend recommended to see that might be slowing down my computer instead of giving me a certain freeware program instead led to something else. What did was try to get rid of files it considered "junk," and this unfortunately included access to most of my screenshots on this computer.

What this means is work on several articles and possible articles will be delayed until I can get new screenshots of the areas in questions, at least unless I can regain access to the pictures. It's also likely there may not be more cartoons for a week or two. It depends whether or not I come across scenes with potential humor. While a darn nuisance, it's not truly devastating.

On a related matter, the Singularity viewer I've been using lately has been having some problems. At first, I would see an occasional mesh object that was invisible or stretched. While still uncommon, it's been happening more and more often. Using Firestorm seems to solve this problem. Trouble is, Firestorm is much more likely to crash on my computer, which means doing interviews on it is taking a chance.

Hopefully there will soon be an update for Singularity that will take care of this mess.

Bumps in the road in my journey in Second Life. Hopefully I won't run into one that does the equivalent of breaking an axle.

Bixyl Shuftan

No Convention This Year: SLCC 2012 Won't Take Place

Second Life fans whom enjoyed going to their yearly convention got some disappointing news. AvaCon, the group that organized last year's Second Life Community Convention (before, it was done by The Future United) announced it would not be doing another. There would be no SLCC 2012. The only reason given was "changes in the terms of the contract offered by Linden Lab this year," which they did not mention. The event would have been the 8th SLCC convention, and likely would have taken place on August 11th or 18th.

With few facts available at first, most of what there was to report on immediately afterward was opinion and speculation. Most people expressed disappointment, a few charging Linden Labs had held off on announcing the SLCC's cancelation in order to make sure there wasn't enough time to residents to organize one of their own.

Fleep Tuque (Chris Collins in real life), whom had been a director at previous SLCCs, including last one. In her blog, she described some reasons as to why there would be no convention this year. The short answer was Linden Lab: they would not be sponsoring one.


I can’t say I was completely surprised considering the meeting we had with Linden Lab at their offices after SLCC last year. Instead of being treated like valuable customers who had just volunteered months of our lives working for no pay to organize a fan event for their product, we basically got chewed out for not producing the equivalent of BlizzCon. Seriously, that’s what they said. (Note to Linden Lab, if you want BlizzCon, you have to pay for it – BlizzCon had a budget in the millions.)


"Second Life isn't the draw it once was," she explained, and a dwindling number of people made it more expensive per person, "even last year it was almost on the edge of being unsustainable, given the resources we had." If Linden Lab had been more willing to help market the event, making it a top priority, Fleep felt the convention would have gone on. But instead, "As with the Second Life Birthdays … they basically said AvaCon could use the name, but we were on our own. … there would be no financial support, no sims (for SLCC inworld), no marketing, and no participation from them." Another SLCC just didn't seem feasible to her.

Linden Lab, however, was just the big reason Fleep felt, not the only reason. The residents of Second Life, or rather a troublesome fraction of them, were another. She described many as being unsympathetic to the volunteers, and some just plain nasty, "Some of the celebrities and thought leaders in Second Life seem to enjoy trashing the event. … I'd guess some folks are right this very moment pointing gleefully at how it has failed." Griefers and lawsuits were another factor, " Linden Lab wasn't on the hook if something went wrong or someone got hurt, WE were." She described last year as having to deal with personal vendettas, threats of harm against congoers, booths being vandalized, and threats of lawsuits, "At some point, you have to ask yourself, is it really worth this much grief ... especially if people's physical safety is at risk."

Fleep also cited the lack of volunteers as another reason, there just simply weren't enough this year "without requiring some people to basically have no life outside of SLCC for months on end, and that's not sustainable or fair for anyone. ... It takes willing partners on all sides of the equation to pull something like this off, and this year, it just wasn't there."

Others expressed their opinions on the matter. Hamlet Au commented this was another sign of a trend in Second Life, "Linden Lab has lost any real interest in being involved with the user community." Others have expressed similar opinions. Following the canceling of last year's Winterfest, the Valentines Day "Kiss a Linden," the Second Life Birthday, and now the SLCC, this points to a Linden Lab that just simply isn't interested in interacting and involvement with the residents.

Can SLCC 2012 be resurrected? Most expressed strong doubts that it could be done in time. Could one be held next year without the support of the Lab? A number have expressed pessimism on the matter. Still, given how residents came together to organize the SL9B on their own, it's possible a SLCC 2013 could be pulled off, either on it's own or part of a larger convention such as "DragonCon." But the obstacles, as stated by Fleep, will take some effort to overcome.

In any event, the canceling of SLCC 2012 points to another sign of how the relationship between Linden Lab and the residents of Second Life have changed. Gone are the days of the town meetings, of Blue Linden and others being seen at everyday Second Life events. Now, we have Linden Lab quietly fixing things from inside their "flameproof bunker" on occasion making an announcement to the residents, one made anonymously instead from an individual Linden.

Bixyl Shuftan

For a history of the SLCC, Click Here

Sources: AvaCon, Fleep's Deep Thoughts, New World Notes , Daniel Voyager

Other articles: Modem World, Natales' Things, SL forums

Bixyl Shuftan