Welp, it’s official. I will not be part of the closed alpha test of Facebook Horizon. (Boo hoo.)
But somebody who was accepted shared the following email message:
We can learn a few new things from this email:
There will be a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which all alpha testers must sign before being accepted. Facebook will, unsurprisingly, keep a tight lid on any information about its new social VR platform. (I expected this.)
Things are moving much more quickly than I expected; it would appear that Facebook will indeed launch the closed alpha “in the next few weeks” with this first accepted group of testers, as I previously reported.
And (as I expected), my private email to Janet Lee, the Product Marketing Manager of VR/AR Experiences and the executive who appears to be in charge of this closed alpha, has gone unanswered.
But it would appear that Facebook is not letting a coronavirus pandemic get in the way of their plans to launch Facebook Horizon, as I had speculated earlier this year. Good for them. A new social VR platform could prove to be very popular in these times of global pandemic!
Well, this is inevitable, wasn’t it? (I’ll admit, the bat costume was a cute touch.)
(And yes, this is of questionable taste as people are dying of COVID-19. But sometimes you gotta laugh, or else you’re just gonna stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head because of all the bad news…)
Diego Verez kissed his boyfriend, Alex Gil, while holding their 9-month-old Pomeranian, Gio, inside the subway on Wednesday. (photo by Brittainy Newman of The New York Times)
A new case has popped up in Edmonton, Alberta, 1193 kilometers (741 miles) by airplane from where I am in Winnipeg, Manitoba. My brother and his family live just south of Edmonton, and I am extremely worried for their health and safety. I spent Friday and Saturday texting him reams of instructions on what to do, how to prepare, and what to buy. He assured me that he and his family are as prepared as they can be; the whole family was involved in Scouts Canada for many years, so they are better prepared than most.
By this point, everyone I contacted yesterday was already well aware of the danger of a pandemic, thanks to the excellent coverage of the outbreak by the Canadian news media. Even my unflappable, long-suffering best friend (with whom I have a $50 bet that there will be pandemic cases in Winnipeg), was up-to-speed on his hand-washing knowledge! I was suitably impressed.
Shortly after midnight, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree affecting 16 million people in the country’s prosperous north, including the Lombardy region and at least 14 provinces in neighbouring regions, including the cities of Venice, Modena, Parma, and Rimini. The extraordinary measures will be in place until April 3.
The decree says people should “avoid any movement in and out” of those regions and also any trips within this area, barring journeys “for proven work needs or situations of necessity for health reasons.” Anyone in quarantine because they have coronavirus is forbidden from leaving home.
The decree does not mention the transport of goods in and out of these areas and does not say how the rules will be enforced. The fate of foreign visitors stuck in red zones in northern Italy was not immediately clear.
There was chaos and confusion in the hours before Conte signed the decree, as word leaked to the news media about the planned quarantine. Students at the University of Padua in northern Italy who had been out at bars on a Saturday night saw the rumours on their cellphones and rushed back to their apartments to grab their belongings and head to the train station.
Hundreds of passengers, some wearing face masks and rubber gloves, crammed onto the last local train leaving Padua at 11:30 p.m. Anxious students wrapped scarves around their heads, shared sanitizing gel, and sat on their suitcases in the aisles. No conductor came by to check tickets.
That train was stopped in Rome, and it is not yet clear how the Italian authorities will deal with all the escaping passengers on the train. This is an example of how people can start to act irrationally, and rebel against social distancing and quarantine measures. Other recent examples:
I’m not going to repeat all the instructions I’ve posted so many times before on this blog. You can find them all here (including this one). If by now you are not convinced that there will be a pandemic that will severely disrupt both your everyday life and society around the world, then nothing I say will convince you until it’s too late. The United States is doing an extraordinarily piss-poor job of risk communication to its citizens, which means many people still don’t fully realize the implications of a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over a century.
“Our experience with this so far has shown that the virus is volatile and unpredictable,” Killian said. “We’ve had patients who, within an hour’s time, show no symptoms to going to acute symptoms and being transferred to the hospital. And we’ve had patients die relatively quickly under those circumstances…We know very little about how fast this may act.”
This is also going to have all kinds of unexpected spin-off effects. For example, I’m quite sure that the coronavirus will complicate Linden Lab’s efforts to find another company to take over the Sansar project, at a time when dozens of tech firms are more focused on managing their responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and keeping their employees safe.
Fasten your seatbelts; we’re all in for a bumpy ride.
Did you know that everybody who creates an account in Sinespace automatically gets a free region for their home? If you set up an account a long time ago, you received the following small modern home, surrounded by a twilight forest and a white picket fence:
And if you set up your account more recently, your default region is a huge, spacious modern home on a beautifully landscaped open lot:
Today I am going to talk a little bit about your home region, and how you can change it. The following aspects of your region depend on what level of user account you have in Sinespace:
Maximum region size (in megabytes of storage);
Maximum number of regions you can have active at one time;
Maximum number of guests you can host at one time.
To find out what your current account level is, sign into the Sinespace website, and click on the pink Sign In button in the upper-right hand corner (or, if you are brand new, click the Sign Up button below):
Once you are signed in, click on the My Account button up top, as shown by the red arrow:
You will be taken to your account display, which tells you what level of account you have, and includes a button to change it:
Here is a link to all the available account levels. Your basic free account gives you 128 MB of space, for 1 active region that can support up to 10 visitors. Moving up to a Premium account gives you more room (512 MB) and more visitors (up to 25).
Please note that both Basic and Premium accounts allow you to create more than one region. However, only one region can be active at a time. To change your home region, click on the Home button in the line of blue buttons along the bottom of your client. You will see a listing of all the regions you have created:
You can use the Enable and Disable buttons to select which region you want to use as your home region.
To shop for regions, just click on the Shop button in the line of blue buttons along the bottom of your client, then select the Region tab:
You can sort the display by price by clicking on either Silver or Gold (sorting either by cheapest or most expensive as you prefer). Here’s an example of a lovely free domain you can get for zero Silver:
To change your region, all you have to do is click the pink Edit Room button when you are in your home region:
Then click on the pink Inventory button along the bottom:
Then, in the Inventory window, click on Regions and then click on the thumbnail of the region you want to use:
You will be asked to confirm your choice:
So here is the front and back views of the wonderful free Bighouse by La Livene, located on a small island with lonesome pine trees, with plenty of room to decorate and landscape as you please!
