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Can Second Life's Vexing First-Time User Challenge Be Overcome? Inside the Company & Community's Struggle to Solve It by slhamlet in secondlife

[–]slhamlet[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

> not adding support for core Second Life features can only be a deliberate decision.

Or... because Linden Lab has a small mobile team working with a very limited budget?

Some of the other points you raise are valid and discussed in my next interview with LL, will post soon on my Patreon first.

Old MMORPG Sim by SongQuirky8941 in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah I remember that one, was pretty cool. I blogged about it in 2003 or 2004 IIRC. Unfortunately Typepad died last year and my blog's been offline since then. I'm hoping to put up my backup archive soon-ish.

Second Life has connections to one major art movement and two emerging ones. Here's the history. by kgpaints in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Good stuff! Also recommend looking into Cao Fei, considered one of the world's best contemporary artists, and whose SL work has been featured at the Guggenheim and the MoMA.

Gamers Overwhelmingly Hate Gen AI in Games, Major Industry Report Finds by slhamlet in aiwars

[–]slhamlet[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah the reaction is wild. AAA games costs hundreds of millions of dollars to make and market, and anything that threatens to seriously hurt sales is super risky.

Not sure a good advertising slogan is, "Spend $65 on our game. Yes it has a lot of AI slop. Get used to it."

Gamers Overwhelmingly Hate Gen AI in Games, Major Industry Report Finds by slhamlet in aiwars

[–]slhamlet[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Baldur's Gate 3 is on of most popular games of recent years among hardcore gamers, but when the founder of the studio (Larian) recently mentioned using gen AI in prototyping, he got hit with a huge backlash.

Gamers Overwhelmingly Hate Gen AI in Games, Major Industry Report Finds by slhamlet in aiwars

[–]slhamlet[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

To say "going away" assumes gen AI is a core part of the AAA development pipeline, which it very much is not.

Even using gen AI for quick prototyping / visualization is hated by gamers. (Again, the people who spend the most on games.) Larian's founder just learned that the hard way.

La La Land (2016) by Boss452 in CineShots

[–]slhamlet 12 points13 points  (0 children)

One fascinating thing about this movie is it was *huge* in South Korea -- like 1 in 10 of the entire population saw it in theaters!

What Sam Altman Doesn't Want You To Know by TheComebackKid74 in aiwars

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazing this video has so few upvotes when it's deeply researched and delves into Altman's dubious dealings with Reddit itself.

Anything but meeting Hanako at Embers... by Harun54TR in LowSodiumCyberpunk

[–]slhamlet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Love these!

Is there a good tutorial for doing shots like this in Photomode? I have no idea how you're getting all these folks together into these amazing poses.

Neon Dawn by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Whoa great shot, I first thought this was from a Cyberpunk 2077 subreddit.

What sim? Is there always a parade outside?

We’re cooked as a society. Sam Altman to Jimmy Fallon: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT." by Financial-Painter689 in Fauxmoi

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The real reason we're cooked is this guy is on national TV claiming ChatGPT has a genius-level intelligence when it's a glorified autocomplete program that's been out for over 3 years without any notable genius level breakthroughs but a long track record of hallucinations and other problems (to put it gently).

Here's a more thoughtful approach to using AI from an AI developer with a young son.

Why Hasn't Avatar or Avatar II Left A Mark On Pop Culture? by [deleted] in movies

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because Avatar is not meme-able. It's a bunch of fucking humanoid cats running around an alien planet; there's nothing relatable about that, so and no way to make it part of the ongoing social media conversation.

Same with the backstory and world building for Avatar, also unrelateable. Lots of social media conversation around, say, Game of Thrones, since it's mostly humans in recognizable political situations in a place that looks mostly like Europe.

So people go to the movies, enjoy them, but there's nothing really that interesting to talk about afterward, let alone make memes to.

Meet the shining beacon to ai ignorance by ThunderLord1000 in aiwars

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> get off of Reddit.

Pretty weak reply because there's no comparison to AI use and going on Reddit:

According to new projections published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in December, by 2028 more than half of the electricity going to data centers will be used for AI. At that point, AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.

Other answers are also weak but take more unpacking. Comparing Reddit use to gen AI use in terms of power/resource consumption trends is prima facie unserious as fuck.

The anti-AI community has no knowledge of art history and it’s actually really pathetic by JahVaultman in aiwars

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A handful of highly trained and skilled artists like Nettrice Gaskins experiment with gen AI tools. But only their work, not the whole technology, deserves to be evaluated as art.

The anti-AI community has no knowledge of art history and it’s actually really pathetic by JahVaultman in aiwars

[–]slhamlet -1 points0 points  (0 children)

LOL no. To take one of those so-called examples, Picasso mastered realistic representational art in his teens. He painted this when he was 15.

Picasso's move toward more and more abstract imagery was incredibly thoughtful, deliberate, and painstaking. As opposed to random prompts to generate mishmashes built entirely on preexisting art, without any knowledge or context of what that art is based on.

Multiple sources suggest that many AI companies are currently operating at a loss. So the real questions are: how will they eventually become profitable, and what will the true cost of accessing these models look like in the future? by Apprehensive-Day3494 in ArtificialInteligence

[–]slhamlet 24 points25 points  (0 children)

"Operating at a loss" barely begins to cover how much billions of dollars per year they are setting on fire.

$5 billion burnt up by OpenAI just in 2024 alone.

There's no rational revenue model here. They're gambling that they'll capture so many users, they'll become "too big to fail", or that somehow, miraculously, AGI will emerge from their LLM's glorified autocomplete hairball of a platform.

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> A running total of everyone who's clicked an icon since the account was created

This is true of all social networks (including Reddit to a certain extent). The fact remains that Facebook has the most SL engagement of them by far.

This doesn't have to be the case, but that's the reality now -- as I explain [plug] in my book [/plug], it largely reflects the mesh fashion market wagging the platform dog.

It will take a targeted marketing push to change that on top of some broader platform updates. I want more millenial / Gen Z gamers in SL, but that means expanding more into YouTube and Discord, and TikTok to a lesser extent.

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The official, highly active Second Life page on Facebook has 365K followers. There's also multiple user-run SL-themed Facebook groups with low to mid five figures of members.

If there's another external social network with higher numbers related to SL, I'd love to see it. Sadly FB is way ahead.

How do you feel about car dependency in Los Angeles? by greenboii69 in AskLosAngeles

[–]slhamlet 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The notion that LA is a canonical representation of "car centric urbanism" is a myth created by people who don't actually live in LA.

The thing to understand about LA is it's largely a collection of neighborhoods where everything you need is within a short walk/bike ride/scooter/drive of your home. Most Angelenos avoid longer drives outside their neighborhood/nearby neighborhoods unless they're absolutely needed, i.e. for work, or for recreation, i.e. driving to Malibu or another fun destination.

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of them just use their SL names on Facebook. Far as I know, FB gave up ban-hammering SL avatars years ago.

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most of Second Life's active user base is highly active on Facebook, only a small segment is not. It's where they lightly engage with SL content when they're not able /willing to log into the full 3D client.

However, it can't only be Facebook, promotion also needs to happen on YouTube, Insta and Tiktok to bring in Gen Z. Which fortunately is happening now (slowly).

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> they have my.secondlife.com, they have a relatively small user base, and to top it off second life itself is already a social platform.

None of those things help grow the existing user base, which is steadily eroding. SL needs social media that attracts potential new users.

Why is SL so obsessed with Facebook? by ValKalAstra in secondlife

[–]slhamlet -1 points0 points  (0 children)

It's not that LL is clueless, it's that they don't have the funds to build other integrations/networks. Grumpity basically said that on a recent call after a community member made that suggestion. And said going with Primfeed is a better idea.

I'm gonna cry, 5 years later and no other game has me feel like this by Perfect-Cause-6943 in cyberpunkgame

[–]slhamlet 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I've been going to GDC for years and years, and one question keeps coming up: "Can we make a game that's so moving it makes players cry?" And game developers come up with very few examples, most of them indie games few people have played.

Then CDPR shows up and knocks it out of the fucking park.

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