New World Notes

Linden Lab Hit By Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Alleging Discrimination & Retaliation for Raising Concerns About Its New Payment Service, Tilia

Kavya Pearlman, an award-winning cybersecurity expert, just went public about a wrongful termination lawsuit she filed yesterday against Linden Lab, where she worked last year. A Muslim-American woman of color, Ms. Pearlman alleges the company discriminated against her, and retaliated against her after she raised security concerns related to Tilia, the company's new payment service which all Second Life users are required to register with by tomorrow.

Ms. Pearlman shared the full text of her legal complaint with me, and it contains a number of highly serious allegations. For instance this passage, summarizing the red flags related to Tilia that she claims she brought up with senior staff: 

In the last year of her employment with Linden Lab serving as the Director of Information Security, Kavya Pearlman raised concerns on multiple occasions to her supervisors, top company executives regarding security risks and possible violations of important laws she observed in Linden’s Second Life and Tilia currency program which prohibit money laundering, child pornography, pedophilia, compromise financial and data security, and other related laws.

She goes on to allege that the company did not respond to these issues, but went ahead with Tilia's launch as scheduled:

Cajsa's Flickr Pick: Grief & Loss in Real Life Expressed By Second Life Images

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“Start Again” is a gorgeous photo in the Flickr Group, "And in the end ... Grief & Loss in SL", dedicated to images created in Second Life to paingful real life changes, such as "the death of a spouse, a parent, a child, a friend, a pet. The loss of a job, of a home."  Sometimes I love taking a dive into a group photo pool as a way to discover new artists. Just paging through, I found a dozen new-to-me artists. One of them (above) is Charly Keating who kindly includes SLurls to his exploratory photos. Generally speaking, you should try to avoid centering, but when it works, it works, and wow, it really works in this beautifully simple photo with an amazing sky.

Crowdfunder Saves Second Life's Hangars Liquides from Imminent Extinction -- But Cyberpunk City's Long-Term Survival Still Not Assured

From left to right: Indiegogo donors Softparade Bing (China), Hangars creator Djehan Kidd, 5Sasha (Russia), Ruby Beta Sabaea (UK), Silverhaze Koenkamp (Japan), and Bixyl Shuftan (USA)

Good news: With just days left to go, Hangars Liquides, Second Life's masterpiece cyberpunk city -- scheduled to be dematerialized at the end of this month -- has been saved. An Indiegogo crowdfunder launched by its lead creator has raised over 50% of its target goal, enough to cover its immediate land tier expenses.

"I can send a wire transfer to Linden Lab on August 1st," Djehan Kidd tells me. "I'll keep fundraising until the final goal... It is a 'by the day' approach now, but this gives me more time to think about future funding methods in the medium term future."

Donors from around the world rallied to save Hangars Liquides, from across the European Union, Finland, Russia, China, Japan, Singapore, the United States, Costa Rica, and beyond. (Some of those donors depicted above.) "It is amazing," Djehan says. "They are amazing, I feel so grateful..."

However, this initial round will only keep Hangars Liquides operational for awhile:

Tim Sweeney Has an Epic Vision for an Open Metaverse -- But Unanswered Questions "Who Needs It?" & "Who Wants It?" Remain

Master VR podcaster Kent Bye has a valuable Twitter thread on a SIGGRAPH 2019 talk by Epic's Tim Sweeney, who just laid out his vision for an open metaverse. (No surprise Epic has plans to build one, as that was evident when the company rolled out user-creation tools for Fortnite last year.) In opposition to say, Facebook, Sweeney's metaverse is admirably open and not a walled garden: 

.@TimSweeneyEpic
What is the Metaverse?
Real-time social medium to share experiences & ceators need to be able to create their own stuff.
Needs to have an open economy that participants can participate & survive w free market economics without corporate dystopian control.

— Kent Bye VoicesOfVR (@kentbye) July 30, 2019

As with any other metaverse framework, however, two basic questions (far as I can tell) remain unaddressed:

Cajsa's SL Flickr Pick: Junn's Elegant Virtual Self-Portrait & Landscape Photos

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

“To the future” announces the temporary closure of Reverie sim, but it also suggests all sorts of activity. There’s the platform for watching swimmers, the bikes, the suitcases. There are people on the beach and if we can’t see them, it doesn’t matter. We know they’re having fun. I like the composition, the bike and fence leading our eyes to the platform which suggests swimming and water polo.

Metaverse Artist AM Radio On the Ephemeral, Communal Nature of Digital Art

Great conversation around last week's interview with art critic Cristina García-Lasuén, on the nature of VR-based art, and the criterion required to call a VR installation "art" at all. (Which shows you just how smart and engaged NWN readers are!). One key comment came from someone imminently qualified to discuss this top: Jeff "AM Radio" Berg, whose Second Life-based installations are generally considered among the very best works of art created on the platform.

Responding to García-Lasuén's criteria that VR-based art "must respond to very elaborate intellectual criteria and not merely aesthetic ones", Berg (who graduated from an East Coast art college before going into technology) had this contrary thought:

"Having been formally trained, I understand the academic foundation of philosophical evolution desired in celebrated artists and their work. I'd qualify on paper maybe.

"Digital [art] however presents a new challenge...

Summer Reading: JP Delaney's The Perfect Wife, the Story of a Woman Who Wakes Up Dead And An Artificial Intelligence

Cajsa Lilliehook has a review of an intriguing new high-tech thriller on her book blog: The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney, which seems like Philip K. Dick meets Gone Girl.

"It starts out like a conventional women's thriller," Cajsa explains. "She wakes up, feels strange, memories are there but confusing. It seems like the usual waking-up-after-accident-thriller where someone dies or loses memory. But no, son and husband are alive. She's dead. And a cobot (companion robot) is waking up with her consciousness."

As that suggests, the novel touches on themes and ideas many New World Notes readers may find appealing. More from Cajsa:

Top 5 Posts Last Week, Including: How Face Morphing Can Manipulate Voters, and A Metaverse for Minecraft, Doom, and Beyond

• Nylon Pinkney Is Online: How Summertimes In Second Life Are Spent
• What Makes A Virtual Reality Installation A Work Of Art, Rather Than Just A Fun Immersive Experience? A Veteran Art Critic Makes Her Case
• Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty As Depicted By Deep Dream AI & Nettrice Gaskins
• Man Making Metaverse Connecting Minecraft Servers, Latest Version Of Doom
• One Scary Way Face-Capture Apps Like FaceApp Can Be Used To Manipulate Voters: By Morphing A User's Face With The Face Of A Preferred Candidate

Nylon Pinkney is Online: How Summertimes in Second Life Are Spent

Watch: How to Create Audio Reactive Clothing in Sinespace

Update, 1:35pm: Live masterclass is over, but watch the full video above!

In today's 11:00am PST tutorial for development in Sinespace (a proud NWN partner!) lead developer Adam Frisby shows off a pretty cool feature: How to create Sinespace clothing with an Audio Reactive component. Which as that suggests, means that the clothing item can literally react to audio around it -- for example, a metallic dress that lights up and pulses in synchronized rhythm to the beat in the nightclub. Watch the YouTube stream live above, or on Sinespace's Twitch channel.

Post questions in Comments below, or perhaps even better, join Sinespace's official Discord for quickest answers from the creators.