Disqus - Latest Comments for Prokofy

Re: Facebook Wants to Build a Hi-Res Version of 'Second Life' It's Calling the 'Metaverse'

Prokofy — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 21:38:43 -0000

No one cares about Linux.

Re: Facebook Wants to Build a Hi-Res Version of 'Second Life' It's Calling the 'Metaverse'

Prokofy — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 21:37:35 -0000

I'm not a Facebook hater as I appreciate its usefulness for news from friends and colleagues in Russia and Central Asia especially, where it can bypass censorship. But I have to say, whatever FB does in the Metaverse space will only reinforce and highlight the incredible achievements of Linden Lab in making Second Life, which still very much thrives, in terms of not only commerce and protection of creators' rights but organizing civic spaces and handling griefing and governance issues. I'm a critic of SL but like democracy, it's the worst one -- except for all the others. I wonder if the former Linden Lab employees now at FB but I don't think on this project could explain a thing or two to Zuckerman. Probably not. Missing from this article is likely the real motive: getting cheap programmers and graphic designers, and not from Germany but Poland, Ukraine, etc.

Re: Small Places Loosely Joined

Prokofy — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:42:36 -0000

I always read your posts with interest, but they don't make sense to me. And that's NOT because they're technical; they aren't technical, and by now, I should have at least a B.S. in physics for having simply been in SL and run sims for 17 years, you know? The issue is how you SEE the world. Which is different than people who actually live and work in it do. Oz Linden may have been rather categorical when he said sim seams (region crossings) aren't an issue, really, worth chasing so hard, because most people stay on their sims -- their private islands or homesteads. They don't go out. They have a partner and a close circle of friends, or they create content and don't really come in the world except to set it for sale. Or the sit in their $25/50 prim skybox rental on the Mainland, with or without a partner. I actually have observed that most of the activity in SL is not what you think -- it's shopping, and conversations in IM. So the shopping can be done on the online MP, or by going to an overcrowded merchants' events -- there are now "cam sims" to fly in next to them and peep in if you can't get in as the limit is 40 or 60, however they set it.

So who has this need to either walk or ski or drive or ride a giant Megapuss through one region after another? Well, that's a small subset of users. I'm one of them. It works well enough. Now that there is "Experience," one of which functions is kind of a zoomy teleport without any Linden Lab message on it, directly, i.e. not landing in the middle of a sim, but at a precise point, you can speed that up. So I can make a quest where you click on the potion and it zooms you off to the elf cave, etc. Experience has certain annoyances and even bugs but generally it works for that purpose of either quests or more organized rentals or whatever you use it for.

I never understand why geeks have to have portals and p2p and hate the contiguous world so much. I suppose aside from hating versimilitude, and wanting the Metaverse to be a unicorn realm, you don't want heavy stuff, those sticks and bricks that in fact are under a sim in the form of server farms. Of course, now with the move to AWS, this is supposed to work better. It doesn't. It works worse. The VP of Engineering has retired, and isn't replaced. Maybe you could come back? Anyway, it will get fixed eventually.

Re: A Tall Dark Stranger

Prokofy — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:31:47 -0000

I don't see anyone actually complaining about this as an issue. They set their avatars to "adult" for maximum freedom, and their search etc so they can go to adult regions. If they were anxious not to have "adult" and put "m," they will face nuisances as I explain -- which drives most people to put the max sliders on even if modestly addressed. So what is the use case where someone who has labelled their avatar "adult"? They can't go to a "G" educational sim? That's not a use case, that's an edge case. And if they are super keen on going to some G activity on a G sim that some nervous nellie has rated G, after they experience one bump in the road, they change their avatar to "G". Which is likely already essentially is, anyway. Countries are not the issue here.

Re: A Tall Dark Stranger

Prokofy — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:29:15 -0000

There are filters you can choose for your avatar among G, M, A, and there are filters for search with the same G, M, A. So if I put G and M on search so I don't have to look at what is at times hideously extreme Adult content, like hentai or Capture Roleplay, then I can't go to some of my own properties which happen to be in Adult, you have to keep at least some of this to be in business, it seems. So the other problem is that some of my customers, who may not even be in Zindra, the Adult grid, chose to put their entire avatar on "adult," even without anything especially "adult" leaping to the eye, just so they never experience a jar or a stop or a halt. So then if I want to see and talk to them to wait on them, I need to keep "adult" on. So, back to seeing dreck on search I guess.

But now search is broken on the regular SL viewer, and maps, too, so it doesn't matter : )

Re: Hackers are stealing Second Life's player-made lootboxes and selling them for profit

Prokofy — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 18:21:10 -0000

Why, that's an excellent way to win an argument when someone counters your statements and you can't think up a reply. The answer is: never, because I have customers and you don't? I dunno. Your notion that "literally nobody wants you" is a finite, tiny set of 1) griefers 2) extremist script-kiddie incompetent coders; 3) leftist Brits who hate Americans generically 4) whatever other tiny category of people you create. Most people a) never heard of me b) if they have, don't care c) agree with me d) don't like the minority of people you resent. I realize this may come as shattering news to you. I don't care.

Re: Eurovision 2020 in Rotterdam is cancelled

Prokofy — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 09:44:03 -0000

Could we just declare Iceland the winner and be done with it. Thank you.

Re: Foreshadowing Facetime

Prokofy — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 01:23:33 -0000

Maybe it's like a casino, they are concerned about the privacy of their other patrons.

Re: Foreshadowing Facetime

Prokofy — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:45:05 -0000

Very cool! I remember in the early 1970s, my father, who worked as an engineer at Xerox at the time, said he drew on a computer screen with something called a "light pen". I worked there summers in the mid-1970s where we had a "telecopier" which was essentially a fax. I took dictation about something that seemed to be the PC they later gave away to Apple essentially. Yes, TVs and radios and smart phones all seem to be predicted even centuries early. But did anyone predict social media?

Re: Fifty-Eight

Prokofy — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 21:48:38 -0000

Happy Birthday, belatedly! You are so young, your whole life is ahead of you!

Re: Labor Shortages

Prokofy — Sat, 07 Sep 2019 21:45:10 -0000

I'm all for expanding immigration. And I don't think we can reasonably and humanely stop immigration from Latin America. There are so many wars in the world that we can and should take in refugees -- we have the space and affluence. And there are so many areas where labour is needed as you say that we should take in immigrants. A related issue, of course, is housing. Lots of low-paying jobs in my neighbourhood not so far from Union Square as clerks or waiters are unfilled because the $5.50 per day they would have to take from their meager wages, and the hour or longer commute, is too hard to take. And yet there are grocery store clerks and busboys here I know who are in fact getting up very early in the morning to commute from very far away. The housing in this area, even with many low-come buildings, is still too high rent for people at this level of wages. I don't know if all this means that we will see more company towns where companies control housing and stores with the help of robots and automation...

Re: Video Of The Week: A Reminder

Prokofy — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 03:43:42 -0000

Everything you say is true, and is well said. In addition to freedom from government, you need the rule of law over government and freedom from other people and their excesses (which range from nuisance trespassing to assault and murder). And it's the "freedom from other people" part they I worry about with Bitcoin *because of its anonymity*. Anonymity on the Internet gives us many great things like pseudonymous avatars that provide at least some protection from direct assault of a real person online, but they also breed lack of accountability.

Why does Bitcoin have to be anonymous? Anonymous like 4chan or 8chan or Anonymous which are definitely not as cool as they once were seen, eh? Couldn't it be all the wonderful things you say yet encourage public accountability? Think of what that might mean. Why does decentralization have to mean lack of personal accountability?

Re: Streaks

Prokofy — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 03:38:10 -0000

You really are an inspiration, Fred!

Re: Pivot or Fail?

Prokofy — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:29:40 -0000

Very good post.

Re: Bleeding

Prokofy — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:28:32 -0000

This is why I think it's time to cash out and close my Acorn.

Re: What Bear Markets Look Like

Prokofy — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:26:04 -0000

Generally, you make a good point about the Internet and tech and its ups and downs and booms and busts before it stabilizes.

But there's a big difference between Amazon and Bitcoin/Crypto. Amazon, even if it is all Internet-y and digitalized, is a basic American old-fashioned premise: you offer something for sale, you deliver it, like a Sears catalogue. Even at its beginning, there was transparency as to the merchants, the products, and the processes. Sure, it wasn't always ideal but there were complaint processes built into it. The premise is basically like an old-fashioned American General Store -- lots of things for sale from different manufacturers, a market that managers preside over and adjudicate and advertise but the makers set the price -- and you can see who they are, and there is feedback within the system.

Not so Bitcoin. It is anonymous, secretive, irresponsible -- and based on the geeky notions of privacy and secrecy for me, not for thee. Crypto, that enables it is called -- what? Crypto. Because it seeks to make secret and non-transparent the marketing system. The mantra now is to say, oh, Crypto is the thing, Bitcoin is corrupt -- even the supreme hacker Edward Snowden says this today. Like Silk Road and Tor, no sooner do anonymous, unaccountable systems appear than you get crime, corruption, child porn, illegal drugs, and then even assassins for hire. Amazon hasn't spawned assassins for hire, only disgruntled techs who make games that ridicule it and legions of lefty press articles about how horrible this latest version of capitalism is for humanity.

Generally, don't you think the stock market reflects the valuation of the old-fashioned premises of transparency and accountability rather than secrecy and unaccountability? That is what makes for the long-term. The tech that serves the former and not the latter.

Re: Mourning John Perry Barlow, the Bard of the Internet

Prokofy — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 17:57:07 -0000

We have always needed a manifesto to oppose the oppression and destruction of livelihood that John Perry Barlow brought to the complex enterprise of the Internet. I drafted it in 2010 and debated him many times. I couldn't have predicted that time that in addition to destroying entire industries and introducing crime on a massive scale, JPB would actively undermine national security with the crypto-anarchist Snowden who cannot abide by the organic rule of law and imposes "code-as-law" on all of us as an unelected hacker. I couldn't have dreamed he would help usher in a Russian hack of our elections here in America. I did try to reason with him, however. I used to like the Dead. He has gone from "I Need a Miracle" to "Black Peter" now. What a trail of destruction! http://3dblogger.typepad.co...

Re: Beyond The Bitcoin Bubble

Prokofy — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 01:22:43 -0000

Well, I don't want you to be "censorship resistant" so that I don't have to suffer the consequences of illegal drugs, child pornography, bids for assassinations and endless hacking forever to preserve your citadel. But there's room for dialogue as at least you want your song royalties which means you aren't letting the kids copying them for free instead of using encryption on digital creation, you know, like they want on privacy.

Re: Beyond The Bitcoin Bubble

Prokofy — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 01:19:58 -0000

Your own reasons for not wanting to invest in bitcoin money frenzy per se and to look beyond to the putatively more valuable blockchain technology are all good, I understand them, even though I don't agree with the idea with the idea of them as salvation for humankind, because any anonymous and unaccountable technology that does not answer to the rule of organic law will doom us. But it's an especially good thing that you are staying away from the Telegram IPO for many reasons that ultimately speak to the ties that bind even those "in the ether" as they say in Russia, to states, and not always good states. https://themoscowtimes.com/...

I wouldn't mind if you took up the leadership of a "Digital Nation" because you're my neighbour, I know you, I've met you in a coffee shop or a conference, and you're a good man who shows your work even if I don't agree with your theories. But Zuckerberg or Durov are different https://www.facebook.com/ca... Organic ties still matter not only for trust but for good governance.

Re: Tech Guru, Who Helped WikiLeaks Get Clinton Emails, Found Dead

Prokofy — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 17:26:45 -0000

Aaron Swartz was not "persecuted" but quite properly prosecuted under the law for massive theft of scholarly journals on MIT's computer network. He was offered a very light sentence in exchange for admission of guilt, and the judge also ordered psychiatric treatment for him. He was depressed, as James Dolan was. There isn't any incentive to kill coders of this "DropBox" when the files are published anyway, and there is absolutely no evidence provided by WikiLeaks for any government involvement in these deaths. WikiLeaks should explain rather why they are in bed with the Kremlin.

Re: Hackers are stealing Second Life's player-made lootboxes and selling them for profit

Prokofy — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 04:33:49 -0000

Some sort of sour grapes here.

I'm a critic of the gacha empires and even run a gacha addiction treatment center.

But the reality is, many people in fact furnish their homes and clothe their avatars for a tiny fraction of the price they are led to pay buying in stores or on the marketplace. Obviously if a house rare is $50 and you get that, it's better than $500 or $5000. The problem is people pull $2500 worth of tries to get that house, then they might have gone to buy the house. But then that's why the Marketplace exists

I usually find people savaging the gacha market either a) filled with some Puritan or socialist hatred of consumerism or b) unable to compete in that market with their wares which aren't good enough.

Because in fact, gacha items are very well made -- the top, most talented creators in SL sell through them. Sure, there are a lot of shoddy items. But regular shoppers know the difference and know where to go to get a range of goods. The price has edged up from $25 a pull to even $100 now, but the items are mesh, no longer prim, and far, far higher quality than the early years of SL or the freebie and newbie markets. And there are yard sales, where you can always find bargains.

The resales aren't at absurd prices. To be sure, in the first weeks of an event after release, there might be $1500 or $2000 rares for sale. Then the prices come down. And far from everything is at those huge prices. You should have to shop the way you do in RL for bargains.

No, the creator who cares about their customers doesn't lock them into possession forever but enables them to SELL or TRADE that item by putting it on TRANSFER and no-copy. That's the normal thing to do to create a market approximately real life.

Re: Hackers are stealing Second Life's player-made lootboxes and selling them for profit

Prokofy — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 04:28:21 -0000

Do you make and sell holodecks, is that it?

Re: Hackers are stealing Second Life's player-made lootboxes and selling them for profit

Prokofy — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 04:26:37 -0000

First, when this author thought he was going to someone who "didn't make his living" through SL, he must not have realized that Wagner James Au *did* make his living for some years in SL because Linden Lab paid him to be their blogger. And while he no longer has that relationship, he will still be reluctant to bite the hand that fed him because he'd lose access and also possibly his fan base -- he is part of the SL community and and least in part makes his living that way still with ads on his blog.

Second, he's simply wrong about the problems of copying or the gacha market. In fact, most of the gacha experience *is* in world -- not on the Marketplace -- that's only the reselling market and that's not all of it. The gachas are largely sold at large recurrent merchants' events in world, and resold at yardsales inworld.

Third, whether inworld or on the marketplace, copying is the same problem. It's not as if copying occurs more or less technically if sold as a transfer-only gacha or on the marketplace. Obviously any copier can buy something on the MP and copy it.

The obvious problem with Linden Lab is they refuse to block anonymizer and proxy sites. This is why they can't stop griefing, either. They have the illusion that these sites are also used heavily by people in oppressive countries for Second Life, or by vulnerable groups of people like transgender. But that's just not true, as those repressive countries have tiny or zero SL populations, and people already have pseudonymous avatars, and they have to put a form of payment with a RL name on their account if they want to buy or sell anything. So there really are not the reasons not to block these sites and tools. It's really an ideological problem more than a technical problem.

The DMCA process is a sop, meant to force creators in to endless rounds of faxing (they won't take emails) with their RL names (not everyone wants to do that) every incident and that's like trying to capture Niagara Falls. It's meant by the whole "California model" of Internet business to wear out creators while they can cry "save haven" and keep people copying so they can keep more customers. They endless invoke the "analog hole" and the impossibility of stopping copying -- although obviously, they love crypto and use that for privacy, and it could be used for securing private *property* as well. Again, this is an ideological problem, not a technological one.

One of the things I don't like about PocketGacha is that it only encourages more reckless gacha buying by making it so that you don't even go to the event in person to browse the offerings.

It also turns over to one manager loads and loads of business information that I think should be only the property and knowledge of those creators. Perhaps they get something out of it more than they do from events, where they have to pay fees for booths (but surely they pay him for space on the HUD). But then he gets miles of their sales information which he can exploit in any way he wishes (just as the ubiquitous CASPER vendor system can).

Re: Joyce Maynard Can’t Stop Writing About Herself

Prokofy — Sat, 09 Dec 2017 05:39:03 -0000

What some of you don't remember because you aren't as old as Joyce is that we started to hate her even in the 8th grade when she appeared in our Weekly Reader at the age of 12 or something. We all wondered who her parents were, what kind of pull they had with the Weekly Reader, to their Precious Cargo into the magazine. Whatever she wrote wasn't memorable, but I do remember our attituide: we hated it. Maybe we were just jealous.

I wasn't a bit surprised when I saw her on the cover of NYT Magazine at the age of 18 -- of course! And then that she hooked up with J.D. Salinger. So many wanted to do that, or at least, find Holden Caulfield or Seymour Glass and save them from themselves -- and she did that. Or something. All that was missing was that job at the New Yorker.

Re: Facebook's Reckoning Draws Nearer

Prokofy — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 23:30:11 -0000

Funny how someone like Madrigal whom you associate with "Internet freedom" and tech company privileges will jettison them if he feels they were used for the wrong sort of politics. Turn the tables, he would likely not care. The tech giants depend on automated ad systems to thrive. And people who have Google Ad Sense on their blogs or YouTube channels thrive on automation, too. There's already an abusive, arbitrary and unfair system in place because of this automation, where you can arbitrarily lose your account over someone vindictively reporting you for those own agenda (these companies usually only respond to complaints and don't work proactively), and there is no recourse or appeal or human being to access live. So what Madrigal is saying is to grant an abusive operation like Facebook that already arbitrarily bans people or doesn't ban people for cause further powers to dictate political ad conditions. That is, because it will become too big and impossible to control, they will apply it unfairly and arbitrarily, and political ad violations will become yet another thing like showing a woman's breast on your page for which you can be dumped from the service.

There's another way, of course, putting in real human systems with humans to operate them, and thereby creating real jobs that pay people instead of destroying jobs which is what the tech giants tend to do with their inventions. But they don't want to spend the revenue on that. They sit on a lot of cash, but they don't want to spend it on help desks. Watching more political ads with real humans in live time should also mean more appeals processes with humans in real time, but it never does.

Because the tech giants hate government regulation, and their boosters like Madrigal do as well -- although things like CISPA would have given us the rule of law instead of what we are getting now -- crypto anarchy -- what we'll get are more abusive self-regulation regimes.