Day: May 15, 2020

Join Us for a Lockdown Dance Party in High Fidelity, Presented by XaosPrincess and Tivoli Cloud VR, and Help Fight COVID-19!

If you miss the sometimes-raucous dance parties High Fidelity used to hold before they folded, are you in luck! The irrepressible XaosPrincess is throwing the second of her Lockdown Dance Parties, presented by Tivoli Cloud VR! (The first party had over 70 avatars in attendance.)

The festivities run from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, May 16th, 2020:

Now, I did inquire, and I can confirm that the Lockdown Dance Party will take place in High Fidelity, on a private server hosted by Tivoli Cloud VR. This is because Tivoli Cloud VR has not yet launched their platform. Here are the complete instructions for those of you who are interested in attending (courtesy of XaosPrincess):

Follow these steps to join the LOCKDOWN DANCE PARTY on May 16th:
– Download and install the client for your OS
Windows:
https://tivolicloud.com/highfidelity/HighFidelity-Beta-Interface-latest.exe
MacOS:
https://tivolicloud.com/highfidelity/HighFidelity-Beta-Interface-latest.dmg
– If you are familiar with High Fidelity, fire up the interface
    and type “xaos.tivolicloud.com” into the GOTO
– If not, activate this link in your browser window: hifi://xaos.tivolicloud.com
    which will start the interface
– On the login screen click on “take me inworld!” in the bottom right corner
    to arrive on location in our club’s cloakroom where you can choose your avatar
– Toggle between the modes by pressing Ctrl 1 for desktop and Ctrl 2 for VR
– Have fun and dance the cabin fever away 
    while channeling cloud computing power to Covid-19 research 

Minimum system requirements:
– OS: Windows 10, 64-bit / MacOS High Sierra (10.13)
– CPU: Intel i5 equivalent or greater
– RAM: 8GB+
– GPU: NVIDIA GTX 970 equivalent or greater
– Internet Connection:  20 Mbps download / 5 Mbps upload
– tethered HMD for VR

XaosPrincess tells me:

Saturday’s party will run on the HiFi client version 0.86 – to be safe it’d be good to check this in your installed software Windows window.

So, if you already have that version of the High Fidelity client software sitting on your computer, you don’t need to download and install the client from Tivoli Vloud VR’s servers. When I asked if users could still create new user accounts on HiFi, her response was:

Yes – that works by clicking on “take me inworld!” in the bottom right corner of the login screen…It’ll take users in as “anonymous” while they’ll still be able to create a screen name to their liking.

Apparently, the High Fidelity servers might actually still be up and working for creating new user accounts, but obviously, they could be taken down at any time now.

And the best part is, your presence will actually help in the fight against coronavirus! Here’s the info from XaosPrincess’ page promoting the Lockdown Dance Party:

Donating computing power to fight coronavirus

While the psychological intention of our party is to offer a relieving, virtual remedy for the emotional distress of social isolation, we also want to contribute to the recovery of our physical world. And once again TIVOLI CLOUD VR is here to help us with a very charitable offer: 

When the LOCKDOWN DANCE PARTY is over, their server will continue to run! 

For every person attending the party, we are  going to donate $10 in cloud computing power to fight coronavirus via the distributed computing project FOLDING@HOME which is researching Covid-19 in order to create a vaccine and drugs to restrain the pandemic.

With our last party we have been able to gather $750 in cloud computing power, and we hope that we can outshine this result with an even larger crowd on May 16th. 

So come on out, meet some old and new friends, and help donate computing power to fight COVID-19. Thanks to Tivoli Cloud VR for their generous donation, and thanks to XaosPrincess for hosting this event. (By the way, Xaos now works for Tivoli Cloud VR. Congratulations!)

Google Adsense Follies, Part V: WHAT THE F@#%?!??

You might be interested to learn that my Google AdSense follies have continued (for previous updates, see here, here, here, and here). I have long ago given up on trying to fix blogposts which are flagged by their automated algorithms, and mistakenly determined to be “adult” content.

Well, I recently received an email from Google AdSense, informing me that because of what they politely call “invalid traffic concerns”, they are pulling advertising from my blog.

In the email I received, they say:

We found potentially invalid traffic being used to generate ad revenue on your account. As a reminder, invalid traffic is strictly prohibited by the AdSense Program policies. Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Publishers may not ask others to click their ads. This includes asking users to support your site, offering rewards to users for viewing ads, and promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior. Additionally, clicking your own ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software are also prohibited.

We understand that you may want to know more about the activity we’ve detected. Because this information could be used to circumvent our proprietary detection systems, we’re unable to provide our publishers with information about specific account activity, including users that may have been involved.

So basically:

  • Their algorithms have decided that there is invalid clicking on their ads;
  • And no, they can’t give me any more information (trade secrets, yaknow…)

I hereby give up, and I will be removing Google Adsense from my blog this evening. I have had enough of this bullshit. I will stick with WordPress’s own WordAds program.

Email I received from Google AdSense: Enough is enough…

High Fidelity Relaunches as a 2D Space with 3D Spatialized Audio

High Fidelity’s new homepage

Credit Wagner James Au of the long-running virtual world blog New World Notes for the scoop: High Fidelity’s next step after their failed social VR platform essentially closed up shop on January 15th, 2020::

After months or more of relative secrecy and silence, High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale just unveiled Limited Early-Access invites to a 3D audio version of his virtual world platform, writing on his Facebook wall:

“We now have a way to bring people together using 3D Audio. It’s a lot easier to try than to explain, but the basic idea is you can get in with one click on any computer or phone, no download. You can move around in a big space where all the audio is High Fidelity (haha but very true) and in 3D. So everyone can talk together at the same time and you hear them all, or you can break off into discussion groups, or use different areas for different purposes.

This work is part of a larger project to build a whole new huge virtual world that is accessible from any device, but COVID made us decide to release what we had working. You can use it for things like performing live DJ/Music, events, family gathering, all-hands meetings, or whatever you can think up. The experience is very warm and connected – and very different than video conferencing.”

And, as Wagner writes, you can now request early access to this new virtual world via the revamped High Fidelity website (just click the “Spin Up a Server” button and enter your particulars). If you decide to fill out the form, you will get the following flashy message back:

And if you want a brief demo of HiFi’s near-field, spatialized audio in action, here is a YouTube video from March 2018:

Thanks to Wagner James Au for the heads up!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Signature is Having a 30% Off Flash Sale on Gianni, Geralt, and Alice Bento Mesh Bodies and Heads!

If you are fan of the Gianni, Geralt, and Alice mesh avatar bodies by Signature, but have held off because of the cost, have I got a deal for you!

As the latest skirmish of the Great Bento War of 2020, Signature has sent out the following announcement via their group:

Today is the chance to get your favourite body discounted 😍

All Signature items, heads and bodies will be up to 50% OFF 🎉

We wish you the best, and as always thank you for your support!

Signature Body, the body for everyone <3

START : 15 MAY 12PM SLT — FINISH : 17 MAY 12PM SLT

Here’s s SLURL to take you to the Signature store. If you already have a Signature body, perhaps you might be interested in a half-off item from their small selection of clothing for Signature mesh bodies?

Happy shopping! Remember, this promotion ends at 12 noon Pacific Time/SL TIme on May 17th, 2020.

Update 3:48 p.m.: Just an update to say that I have visited the sim to see for myself, and the Giannai and Geralt bodies and heads (which are sold separately) are NOT 50% off; they are only 30% off, selling for L$2,800 each. The Alice body is on sale for 33% off, or L$2,300. However, almost everything else in the store is 50% off.

I note that the notecard above says “up to 50% off”, so this is not really misleading; I just read the card wrong, as many people will no doubt do (and obviously, as Signature is hoping, to drive up traffic to their store).