This was a short meeting, 20 minutes. Not much new news. So, I’m mixing the third-party Dev Meeting review in with my Tuesday News. Check here tomorrow or…
The 20 minutes video of the meeting is this:
News Bits III 2018 w09
Skin Fair 2018
This is always an interesting fair. It runs from March 9 to 25. For a list of participants look here Website. The location of the fair is not yet accessible. Event organizer.
You can advertise there, on a billboard (PG only), by purchasing board space starting March 1 for L$3,000. Ad Office.
Blogger applications for early access are here.
Fashion Bloggers
I’m not that much into fashion review. My GA.EG Jennifer mesh head article provides the type of information that interests me. That article is like 1,500 words. I don’t see that in most fashion reviews. The amount of information normally provided by the hundreds of fashion sites popping up on iHeartSL is a picture and a list of stuff worn. It is sort of customary to include a link to where an item can be purchased, but not always.
What’s in My Head…
I’ve been looking for a mesh head for a long time. When it comes to my avatar’s appearance I get picky. My first skin was free and came from a strip club. I then spent months finding the just right skin. I finally decided on a Nomine WL Mocha skin by Munchflower Zaius, an artist that gave up creating because of copyboting (still in Marketplace). It was my first ever big purchase. Paid for from dancing-stripping, camping, and money trees in 2008.
I tend to spend months playing with demos and talking with people when I buy my first body anything. So, feet then hands, then body and now head. Also, I had hoped Slink would come out with a Bento head. But…
I like my classic head. So, I wanted a head that would allow me to have a very similar face. That was harder than I thought. I went through a lot of heads and spent days making shapes. I decided I would never get the look I wanted with some popular heads.
I decided on GA.EG’s Jennifer head. Very quickly I got near the shape/look I wanted. Plus, an included skin matched my favorite YS&YS’ Viola skin. That greatly simplified the addition. I had been planning on having to buy a new skin. My YS&YS to too old to have appliers for Omega and does not have any head applier. Still, I may get a skin with an applier for this new head.
DDoS Attacks of February 2018
The previously reported (Second Life DDoS Attack) DDoS is mostly over… for now. Oddly, I am having to search for news of the attack(s). It is there, but the media does not seem interested. On the net, you can find information. Like:
- Memcached Servers Being Exploited in Huge DDoS Attacks
- Surge in memcached-based reflected DDoS attacks is due to misconfigured servers
- The Consequences of DDoS Attacks are Rising
I suspect the reason for the lack of coverage is this type of information is too techy for most newscasters and writers to handle… maybe even understand.
From Internet searches, we can see a lot of people knew this type of attack was coming way before it happened. But, those that failed to protect their servers from misuse apparently didn’t. This failure of people to prepare for a known possibility is rampant in society.
Those of us that want solid Internet connections can take some steps to mitigate the impact such attacks have. The attacks often target the DNS servers, the units that translate secondlife.com into something the computer can use, IPv6 = 2001:578:3f::30 or IPv4 = 216.82.8.56. The bad actors get the most impact for their clicks by taking down DNS servers as without them your computer can’t find the machine addresses and cannot connect. Fail.
News Update 2018 w09
Earlier I reported (ref) on the DDoS attack and linked to the Linden post on the subject. Things seem to be getting better. Concurrent use was back to the mid 40k users.
In the Server-Scripting UG meeting, Simon Linden told us this has been on-going for about 24 hours. April Linden tells us the same in the SL Blog post.
However, from a credible source, I understand the SL Forum went nuts with fake news. So, be aware there are nuts posting on the forum that enjoy creating havoc. The sad part is some believe what they are saying and think they know something. Others know they are deliberately making mischief.
How do you tell which is real? If you go into the Answers section of the forum and look at the 3 to 6 posts threads, you will find a small number of people consistently answering questions. Those people are mostly trustworthy. When they don’t know, they have been known to say so…
So, the statement the asset servers went down and all SL content was lost was totally bogus. I’m not sure why anyone would make that statement. There are those always wanting to harm the Lab. Others think it fun to scare people. Others seem to believe whatever pops into their head.
I understand some new people will believe anything about SL and the Lab. But, I have the idea that with all the fake news, propaganda, and spin people would be more skeptical of what they hear. Silly me.
Second Life News 2018 w09
The last few days we have had some people complaining about login issues. I’m one of them. But, the problem is so erratic and apparently random I can’t put any useful information in a JIRA.
This morning there was some issue with logins. Only 17,000+ were on when I logged in at 10:45 Am SLT. On my trackers next update, 19,000+ were on. That 17k is an extraordinarily small number. The low for the day is about 7,000… but it may have been zero. My tracker only grabs data every 10 minutes. A lot can happen in the computer world and RL in 10 minutes.
I currently show 3,000 to 2,000 people logging in every 10 minutes. This is indicative of some grid wide problem.
Status only says they are investigating intermittent login issues.
Update 11:00 AM SLT – Seems the problem is a DDOS attack. See Unscheduled DDoS. This is not a Linden Lab specific attack. Early indications, often wrong, suggest it is possibly an attack on America. I would not be surprised to trace it back to North Korea. They will likely react to the sanctions just placed on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. So, appease them now and face a nuclear attack later or deal with them now?
Did you know the average duration of a mass shooting is three minutes? What is the response time of the police in your neighborhood, to your sports arena, movie theater, or school?