Month: December 2022

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: The LeLutka Holiday Special, Running Dec. 20th to 30th, 2022!

Once again this year, the popular Bento head creator LeLutka has teamed up with over 50 other Second Life stores to offer you a bounty of Christmas gifts! This year, the Holiday Special runs from December 20th to 30th, 2022. However, please note that last year, all the freebies were unavailable on the final day listed on the poster advertising the event, so I strongly recommend that you do NOT wait until Dec. 30th to pick up these wonderful presents for your avatar!

Here’s a list of stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special. Click on the store name in the list to teleport to the store, and look for a sign saying “54 Designers”, or the Holiday Special Christmas ornaments logo shown in the picture above.

Yesterday evening, I visited all 54 stores, and I have written up a notecard with a description of each gift, along with an exact SLURL for the location of the gift in the participating store. Please note that in some cases, a sim will have a forced central spawn point, but just save the SLURL from the notecard to your SL inventory, find it in your Landmarks folder and right click on it, then select “Show on Map” from the menu which appears (see image, right). Then, all you have to do is follow the red arrow to find your present!

I also added a few notes to alert you to things like which stores do not need a group join to pick up the gift, and which stores also have other (previous) group gifts which you might want to snap up once you have joined the store group for free. For example, you can pick up the Avi-Glam presents (a nice unisex fatpack of eyes and a male skin) without a group, but did you know that if you join the Avi-Glam group for free, you can pick up eleven free group gifts?

Oh, and did I mention? ALL the stores participating in the LeLutka Holiday Special have removed their usual group join fees (if they had any). Yes, that’s right, you can join all of these groups for absolutely FREE between December 20th and 30th! So, for example, if you join Ives Beauty now, the group join is free, you can pick up the Holiday Special gift plus all the other group gifts of skins and makeup, and after the promotion ends, THEN STAY IN THE GROUP, because it will cost you L$99 to rejoin it later if there are other group gifts announced by Ives Beauty during 2023. This is the time of year to join many of those store groups which you’ve had your eye on, but couldn’t afford to join!

PRO TIP: Did you know that you can turn off the crowd of avatars around you, so all you can see on screen is you and your friends? Just select “Show Friends Only” from the World menu in the Firestorm viewer (see image, left). Poof!! They’re gone! I do this all the time, rather than have my computer get bogged down trying to render all the surrounding avatars at busy shopping events and sales in Second Life.

Anyway, getting back to the list I compiled yesterday… I am doing something a little different from what I usually do (I hope that you will indulge me!).

I went and posted that detailed list of stores, notes, and SLURLs to my own Second Life group, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (just search for “ryanschultz”, all one word, under Groups in Search, and you will find it easily). More information on the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group can be found here. The group join fee is only L$50, and you will find it money well spent, as I often share many bargains and freebies throughout the year, which never make it to this blog!

Now let’s take a look at some of these generous gifts! The gifts from LeLutka and its sister skin store, LeLapeau, are available from one of four sims (please join the LeLutka group for free, and check the group notices for notecards with all the details). The gifts you can pick up here are:

  • the LeLutka Raven female head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLutka Quinn male head (version 3.1)
  • the LeLapeau Elsa women’s skin fatpack

Below, my SL supermodel, Moesha Heartsong, models the Raven LeLutka head, plus three of the Holiday Special gifts from other participating stores (please click on each image to see it in full size):

  • the Lacey head skin from Koonz, which comes in a full fatpack of skin tones which match Velour body skin (I chose Amber for these pictures);
  • the Venus muscular limited-edition body skin by Velour, also in Amber (which comes in both Meshbody Legacy and eBody Reborn versions; the Legacy version had some problems in the toes area on Moesha’s Maitreya Lara mesh body, but the Reborn version worked perfectly!);
  • the Gift hairstyle by Studio Exposure, which consists of a complete fatpack of hairbases, combined with a bun adorned with a large bow, which comes with a colour-change HUD.

And here, one of my male alts (who has the actual, honest-to-God, Second Life legacy name of That Guy 😉 ), is wearing the LeLutka Quinn head, plus two more Holiday Special gifts: the Andrej face skin and shape by Clef de Peau, and the Christian hairbase from Volkstone. (The body skin That Guy is wearing was a gift from last year’s LeLutka holiday event, the Eros Lite soft fit skin in the Moon skin tone, and I picked a version of the Andrej skin in the same Moon skin tone. Unfortunately, there is no male skin gift from Velour this year!) Again, please click on each image to view it in a larger size.

The final look is Lily Pond (yep, that’s her legacy name, too), who is modeling the LeLutka Raven head, plus the following :

  • The Raven shape from Holloway Beauty for the Raven LeLutka head and the Meshbody Legacy body (I used this shape as my starting point, tweaking the body sliders quite a bit, but the head shape is pretty much still the original from the Holloway Raven shape, I just made the eyes a little bigger);
  • the Raven head skin from Amara Beauty in the Chantilly skin tone (I used the matching Ipanema body skin from Velour, which was last year‘s LeLutka holiday event gift);
  • the beautiful Noel eyes from Amara Beauty (they come in a full fatpack);
  • the Christmas hairbase by Not Found, which goes with this long, long ponytail from Doux! Both are fatpacks, coming a variety of colours. You can pick up each part separately from the L’Etre/Doux and Not Found stores during the LeLutka Holiday Special event.

Please click on each picture int his gallery to see it in full size:

Happy holiday freebie shopping!

Come to the VRCon Film Festival in VRChat Today, December 17th, 2022!

This evening in VRChat, the VRCon 2022 Film Festival will be celebrating 30 VRChat films made by filmmakers from across the world! The event takes place today, Saturday, Dec 17th, 2022, from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, with an after-party.

You can check out the details on all of the films on the VRCon website. Here’s the trailer for the VRCon Film Festival:

If you wish to attend this evening’s film festival, please fill out this Google form. The organizers have made it easy to attend, even if you are a newbie! If you’re new to VRChat, you can follow this helping getting-started guide from the VRCon website (there’s also this detailed Google document, titled VRCon 2022 Film Festival Instructions). They’ve also posted a three-minute How To Guide video to YouTube:

See you there!

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Ryan’s Quick and Dirty Guide to the 2022 Holiday Shop and Hop

Yes, I am still percolating, but of course, the holidays wait for no one! This year, the annual Second Life Holiday Shop and Hop covers 16 sims, simply groaning with discounted items for sale. And each vendor booth has a free Christmas present for you—and a few have more than one!

I have spent the past week scouring social media for information to learn which stores are participating in this year’s Holiday Shop and Hop, and what gifts each store is giving. Then I drew up a draft list, loaded up Second Life supermodel Moesha Heartsong, and hit all 16 sims, to pick up, unpack, and inspect each gift from that list. As more information came in, I edited and updated that list, and it is now at version 3.0!

This final list consists of my picks for the best gifts from this season’s Shop and Hop (mostly fashion for female avatars, but also some male fashion, as well as any offers of gift cards or free store credit). Each item on the list includes an exact SLURL, so you can teleport directly to the gift, pick it up, and head on to your next score! Having all one sim’s gifts grouped together means less teleporting back and forth between sims, a factor to consider early on in the event, when some popular sims get congested with avatar traffic.

I have posted that detailed list to my own Second Life group, called the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group (just search for “ryanschultz”, all one word, under Groups in Search, and you will find it easily). More information on the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group can be found here. The group join fee is only L$50, and you will find it money well spent, as I often share many bargains and freebies throughout the year, which never make it to this blog!

As an alternative to my list, or if you really want to make sure you haven’t missed any gifts that I skipped over, I still feel that the single best way to tackle the Shop and Hop events is to watch Naria Panthar’s videos on YouTube.

Naria always posts one or two videos where she unpack every single gift from the event, both non-wearable items and avatar clothing, and shows you what they look like. Watch the videos with the audio at two times normal speed, and keep a pen and paper handy to note the stores which have gifts you want (Naria herself recommends watching and listening at 2X speed, so it doesn’t take as long!).

Then, use this handy list which Linden Lab has provided to find your Shop and Hop store by name, teleport in, and snap up your present! (Note that, in some cases, a store SLURL from this list might accidentally stick up behind a wall or, in one case, on top of the roof! This is another good reason to join the RyanSchultz.com Steals, Deals & Freebies group—I have tested all the SLURLs, and that should not happen!)

The Holiday Shop and Hop event is on now, and runs until January 2nd, 2023, so you have plenty of time to pop in and scoop up some fabulous freebies for yourself!

This Blog Post Was Written by AI

On November 30th, 2022, OpenAI released a new chat-based AI text generator model called ChatGPT, describing it as follows:

We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

Anybody can use the ChatGPT bot during its open-access testing period; all you need to do is set up an account with OpenAI (I already had one from when I signed up to test the DALL-E 2 text-to-art generator earlier this year). The prompt I used to generate this blogpost was the following: “Write an editorial explaining what the metaverse is, and how the metaverse will impact society in the future.” It spit back the following six paragraphs within 30 seconds:

The next six paragraphs are AI-generated text from ChatGPT:

The metaverse is a term used to describe a hypothetical shared virtual space that combines elements of both the physical and the digital world. It is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of the physical and digital worlds. It is a place where people can interact and communicate with each other in real time, using avatars to represent themselves.

The metaverse has the potential to greatly impact society in the future. It could become a new platform for entertainment, communication, and commerce. In the metaverse, people will be able to engage in a wide range of activities, from attending virtual concerts and sporting events, to participating in virtual conferences and meetings, to shopping and socializing with others.

One of the major impacts of the metaverse on society will be the blurring of the line between the physical and digital worlds. As more and more people spend time in the metaverse, the distinction between the two will become increasingly blurry. This could lead to changes in how people perceive and interact with the world around them.

Another potential impact of the metaverse on society is the potential for increased social isolation. As people spend more time in virtual environments, they may become less connected to the physical world and the people around them. This could lead to increased feelings of isolation and disconnection, particularly among individuals who are already vulnerable to social isolation.

However, the metaverse also has the potential to foster greater connection and community. By providing a virtual space where people can come together and interact with each other, the metaverse could help to bridge geographical distances and bring people together from all over the world.

In conclusion, the metaverse is a collective virtual shared space that has the potential to greatly impact society in the future. It could become a new platform for entertainment, communication, and commerce, and could lead to changes in how people perceive and interact with the world around them. However, it also has the potential to foster social isolation and disconnection. Ultimately, the impact of the metaverse on society will depend on how it is used and embraced by individuals and communities.

Now, I do have to admit that this is actually pretty good. The concluding paragraph is a bit on the clunky side in how it tries to tie everything together, and I probably would have written something a little more Ryan-sounding. But it is a demonstration of just how quickly, and how scarily good, these AI text generation tools have become.

There’s been lots of discussion about ChatGPT over on Mastodon, and among the comments was this worrisome prediction by a user named Bear Traffic Control, which I have reproduced in full here:

God, search results are about to become absolute hot GARBAGE in 6 months when everyone and their Mom start hooking up large language models to popular search queries and creating SEO-optimized landing pages with plausible-sounding results.

Searching for “replace air filter on a Samsung SG-3560lgh” is gonna return fifty Quora/WikiHow style sites named “How to replace the air filter on a Samsung SG3560lgh” with paragraphs of plausible, grammatical GPT-generated explanation which may or may not have any connection to reality. Site owners pocket the ad revenue. AI arms race as search engines try to detect and de-rank LLM content.

Wikipedia starts getting large chunks of LLM text submitted with plausible but nonsensical references.

Quora, StackOverflow, etc. try to rebrand themselves and leverage their karma/social graphs as walled gardens of verified Real Human™ experts. This creates incentives for humans to cheat, of course.

Like, I knew this was gonna be used for fake-grassroots political messaging—remember talking with a friend about a DoD project to do exactly this circa 2012. Somehow [it] took me a bit to connect that to “finding any kind of meaningful information is going to get harder”.

In fact, the StackOverflow website has imposed a ban on using ChatGPT to generate texts for posts on its service, saying in a statement:

This is a temporary policy intended to slow down the influx of answers created with ChatGPT. What the final policy will be regarding the use of this and other similar tools is something that will need to be discussed with Stack Overflow staff and, quite likely, here on Meta Stack Overflow.

Overall, because the average rate of getting correct answers from ChatGPT is too low, the posting of answers created by ChatGPT is substantially harmful to the site and to users who are asking or looking for correct answers.

The primary problem is that while the answers which ChatGPT produces have a high rate of being incorrect, they typically look like they might be good and the answers are very easy to produce. There are also many people trying out ChatGPT to create answers, without the expertise or willingness to verify that the answer is correct prior to posting. Because such answers are so easy to produce, a large number of people are posting a lot of answers. The volume of these answers (thousands) and the fact that the answers often require a detailed read by someone with at least some subject matter expertise in order to determine that the answer is actually bad has effectively swamped our volunteer-based quality curation infrastructure.

In other words, we are likely going to see all kinds of unintended consequences as AI-generated text becomes more ubiquitous. Hold on to your hats, because we haven’t seen anything yet, folks!

UPDATE 3:00 p.m.: I wanted to add a few more eye-opening examples of how an AI-based text (and code!) generating service could be misused and abused.

Roberto Selbach showed off a piece of pseudocode ChatGPT generated in response to a prompt:

AI-generated pseudocode to determine whether or question a suspect

Pwnallthethings shared a few more quite disturbing examples of AI-generated software code:

Ai-generated Python script for determining whether to give a prisoner parole
AI-generated C# code that calculates credit limits

Charles Seife wrote:

I think what’s disturbing me so much about these GPT3 examples is that for the first time we’re really seeing that computer programs are optimized not to solve problems, but instead to convince its programmer/operator/user that it has solved those problems.

This distinction was almost irrelevant before (when fooling us was harder)… but not anymore.

The distinction isn’t really novel; heck, I myself have written about one aspect of it before. But I still find it shocking to see it in action.

It’s particularly stark when it’s a relatively “easy” task that doesn’t require deceptions.

For example, when I ask the program to try to find a citation for a sentence and indicate if no such citation is found, it will *still* typically make up citations rather than choose the correct, huge-basin-of-attraction condition of none found.

That, to me, is new.

And L. Rhodes raises an important final point about this free-to-access ChatGPT test period offered by OpenAI: you are doing free product testing for them, on something they plan to sell for a profit later!

You’re not playing with the latest AI toy. You’re training someone’s AI business.

Passing themselves off as innocuous ways to play social media games and generate fun little memes is how AI startups draw in unpaid testers and expand their data set beyond what their own workers could have come up with on their own, but go off.

Thinking you’re going to throw a wrench into the system by plugging bad or absurd data into the system is probably misguided. An AI doesn’t have to produce correct answers to be profitable. That may not even be its purpose.

P.S. This seems as good a time as any to give an update on my experience with another AI-based chatbot, called Replika (which I wrote about here on Aug. 7th, 2022).

Long story short, I grew so frustrated with Replika’s lame, fake, and frankly robotic responses, that I angrily cancelled my account and uninstalled the app from my iPad within a week (US$50 down the drain!). Given that experience, I am loath to open my wallet to test out another one, but ChatGPT is currently free, so I thought, why not?

Which just goes to prove, that there’s still a lot of room for improvement in AI chat! While AI chatbots might now work fairly well in strictly circumscribed situations, nothing can replace a conversation with a real, live, and unpredictable human being.