Avatar seducers and beggars

Ashley Madison' Sensuous Kitten, Gizmodo

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A New World Notes post today was titled: With Ashley Madison's Babe Bots, Life (Once Again) Imitates Second Life. If you'll remember Second Life is that virtual world that seems to have faded into obscurity. It hasn't died yet, though. It still has residents, around 43 million of them, not all necessarily actively playing.

Keeper of New World Notes, Wagner James Au, in his article links to Annalee Newitz's How Ashley Madison Hid Its Fembot Con From Users and Investigators. She writes:

The developers at Ashley Madison created their first artificial woman sometime in early 2002. Her nickname was Sensuous Kitten, and she is listed as the tenth member of Ashley Madison in the company’s leaked user database. On her profile, she announces: “I’m having trouble with my computer ... send a message!”

Sensuous Kitten was the vanguard of a robot army. As I reported last week, Ashley Madison created tens of thousands of fembots to lure men into paying for credits on the “have an affair” site. When men signed up for a free account, they would immediately be shown profiles of what internal documents call “Angels,” or fake women whose details and photos had been batch-generated using specially designed software. To bring the fake women to life, the company’s developers also created software bots to animate these Angels, sending email and chat messages on their behalf.

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Second Life: Sign at a high traffic shop, New World Notes

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And speaking of avatars that act as decoys meant to suck your money, take a look at beggar bots in Second Life (aka flatterbots). Here's a sample:

James Au: I didn't reply [to Flatterbot1] or give her any money, she just ran through her script from start to finish, even after I'd left the area. Now compare the speech above with this snippet from the second flatterbot I dealt with that day:
Flatterbot2: don't you be pushin me!
Flatterbot2: I'm just kidding but we can be bumper car avatars!
Flatterbot2: holy crap you have an amazing avatar!
Flatterbot2: I am art retarded, I never make good avatars! Did you make yours?
Flatterbot2: I just got back to SL from a long break, omfg everything is so different
Flatterbot2: you look like you have been in SL for a long time, have you?
Flatterbot2: being back here after so long I don't remember anything about the sliders at all, I keep making a chubby round face lol

Apparently, while some scripts are automated, some are being run by a person at a keyboard. James reports on Flatterbot3:

This morning I popped over to a store with a heavy bot presence and while I received the same tired story from today's bot-du-jour, she was simultaneously arguing with a customer in local chat who had presumably called her out:
Flatterbot3: I can just tell by what you say that SL is all you have
Flatterbot3: that is reserved for fat people who are quite invested in a subreality
Flatterbot3: because they can't make stuff happen irl

This is a virtual world that simply mirrors "real life (rl)."

-- Marge

DIY: Try a new game in an Improbable world

Worlds Adrift, Bossa Studios

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Currently, one of the major drawbacks in virtual worlds like Second Life, Landmark Game, and most MMOs is lag. If the program is trying to render too much in-world stuff or too many players are in one area at a time, a user experiences slower player input to game reaction times. Sometimes this is the result of the equipment the user is using, sometimes its caused by latency.

Some fellows at Cambridge University are developing a new type of engine that may change the nature of MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). This is how they describe their work:

Improbable is developing an operating environment that makes building simulated worlds possible. Worlds which can be run in real time, simulating the behaviours and interactions of millions of entities. Spaces with their own rules and properties that a multitude of people can simultaneously change, explore and visualise in as many different ways as developers can imagine.

Simulated worlds provide unique insight to those asking questions of complex systems. As well as enabling completely new experiences in gaming, simulated worlds can solve significant problems in areas as diverse as defence, energy, city efficiency, health, and finance.

Gamemaker Bossa Studios is working on a project based on this engine called Worlds Adrift. The folks at Bossa Studios want us to be "a part of the development and let us know what you think." You can sign up by entering your email address at the site. Here's one of their latest videos.

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There is a Worlds Adrift channel on YouTube. If you like your information filtered and expanded, keep an eye out for Rock, Paper, Shotgun's always interesting reports.

News of Improbable and Worlds Adrift was first caught by me at New World Notes.

-- Marge

Virtual Reality: Oculus Rift vs. CastAR

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While gamers eagerly await the release of Oculus Rift in July (you can preorder Oculus Rift DK2, a developer kit, now), problems have been identified with its use.  Wagner James Au at New World Notes asks "Does Virtual Reality Literally Make Most Women Sick?."  His article was based on another one "Is the Oculus Rift sexist?"

According to Livescience "Men and Women Really Do See the World Differently." The report is based on research by Israel Abramov and others.

Today I'm looking at two candidates for VR (virtual reality)/AR (augmented reality) wearable consumer devices--Oculus Rift and CastAR.  (There are others, such as Sony's CES2014.)  From what I can gather Oculus Rift projects the images onto your eyes, while CastAR projects the images onto a screen in front of your eyes.  Both are headsets. And both projects were presented on Kickstarter (and have been funded).

Here's the trailer for Oculus Rift:

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And here's a video that explains the CastAR technology and contains elements of the Kickstarter video:

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There's a much longer video about CastAR featuring developer Jeri Ellsworth that has some interesting details about how the project got started. You can also preorder the CastAR.

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-- Marge

DIY money laundering

Many of us don't need to launder money, mostly because we don't have that much money and and don't need to cover up its source.  However, it seems to me you might be interested in how easy it is and how it's done.

To do it yourself, sign up for an account with a virtual world that has its own virtual currency, such as Second Life, then download and install the Bitcoin client.  Then start converting real life dollars to Linden dollars, then Linden dollars to Bitcoins.  If you think this is silly, take a look at this article from New World Notes.  Here's a current Bitcoin chart tracking Second Life transactions. The Economist explains how Bitcoin works.

And you thought virtual worlds are silly.

This Alex comic strip (Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor) from The Telegraph (U.K.) might explain money laundering a little more (click on the image to see it larger).

 

Word on the street says the U.S. will be applying money-laundering laws to Bitcoin and other 'virtual currencies.  The Wall Street Journal concurs.

What's a shady entrepreneur to do?  You could ignore the new rules, since you're probably doing something illegal anyway.  Or you could be too-big-to-fail, like HSBC.  This cartoon by Adam Zyglis sums it up nicely:

This whole too-big-to-fail thing is just plain wrong.

-- Marge

Second Life therapy

It's my firm belief that frequenting virtual worlds has more benefits than simply entertainment.  In support of this is an article, Woman with Parkinson's Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life - Academics Researching, published by Wagner James Au at New World Notes. A follow up article about the support site was published the next day.  Here's a screenshot:

Many research projects studying virtual worlds and articles discussing such worlds, especially Second Life, are available online.  For background, take a look at Newsmaker: A brief history of the virtual world, written by Daniel Terdiman and published by c/net in 2005. Duke University has a case study -- Reality in the Virtual World - A Study of Second Life -- available online.  The University of North Carolina at  Pembroke has a Center for the Study of Virtual Worlds (data copyrighted 2011).  MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has what looks like a virtual world portal, where it invites you to  "Step into another world and explore the 'other' MIT..."  How to get there is not clear.  Checking in Second Life, I found that a number of other universities have campuses there, but not MIT.

One university very active in Second Life's art scene is the U of Western Australia.  Here's a screenshot of the campus' enchanted forest.

Virtual worlds as interactive 3D virtual environments, especially ones that offer the opportunity to build, interest me most.  If you would like to see what building in a virtual world is like, try a visit to Bowling Green State University's sandbox and rez something there (menu items: build/select build tool/create tool, then place the object on the ground).  You'll need to download a viewer and join first -- both free.

Careful, you might get sucked in.

-- Marge

Sim-on-a-stick, part 1: the basic idea

This information in an October 22nd article by James Au at New World Notes caught my attention the other day:

Last week I wrote about how Sim-on-a-Stick, a portable, offline version of OpenSim, was used to generate $300K in services for real world clients working on a contract for product placement in several dozen movie theaters. In Comments, Renee "Ener Hax" Miller, who led development on that project, explained why Sim-on-a-Stick (or SoaS) was better for this purpose (simulating these cinema spaces) than an online Second Life (or for that matter, I suppose an online OpenSim), for this application...

This is an interesting use for a virtual world instance and could be applicable for many businesses where a sale is dependent on visualizing a 3D space, such as architecture, real estate, interior design, and home renovation.

For better understanding, in the next few posts I will be discussing -- and showing -- how virtual worlds work and the language used when describing them.  We will be visiting some of the worlds, namely OSGrid, Kitely and Second Life.

Later, then.

-- Marge

Artificial life in virtual worlds

Interesting news from the Second Life front:  In an article titled "Student Creates Code Which Generates Second Life/OpenSim Avatars... Based on Simulated Genetics!" Wagner James Au reports on a project being developed by "the University of Western Sydney and the Federation of American Scientists." Here's the video that demonstrates the work:

Envirtech is the group doing this work and they call the project Artificial Life Lab. For background, see the Wikipedia article on artificial life (aka Alife); note that the article directs you to the talk page -- there are a number of "challenges" to the article.

Knowing that MIT has been working with artificial intelligence for a long time, on a hunch I looked to see what might be going on with respect to virtual worlds and found this page on Digital Humanities and this quote mid-page:

It used to be that we in English departments were fond of saying there was nothing outside of the text. Increasingly, though, texts take the form of worlds as much as words. Worlds are emerging as the consummate genre of the new century, whether it’s the virtual worlds of Second Life or World of Warcraft or the more specialized venues seen in high-end simulation and visualization environments. Virtual worlds will be to the new century what cinema was to the last one and the novel to the century before that.

As an aside, I also found the article "‘Artificial leaf’ moves closer to reality" at the MIT site.  It fits in with the artificial photosynthesis article of a few days ago.

I love it when things mesh together.


-- Marge

News from Second Life and some machinima

As a semi-retired citizen of Second Life (SL), the virtual world, I still watch the happenings there.  One of my main sources of news is the New World Notes (NWN) by Wagner James Au.

Second Life is an immersive experience and host to some of the finest, most eclectic artists I've seen.  Here are some photos of the build, Twomoons Island (no longer on the grid), where JAS store is located.  If you've never been to Second Life, you'll need to sign up (it's free), and download/install a viewer, to see this location in person.

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Machinima is very popular with Linden Lab, the creator and overlord of Second Life.  By definition machinima is produced by fans, and this is the case with SL as well.  And some of the works produced are indeed outstanding.

This first video was produced by Douglas Gayeton, whose site is called RumpleFarm; he's an accomplished multimedia director.  To see the back story, check out this article in NWN.

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This second video was submitted as an entry by Nitwacket for a competition titled "Seek Wisdom," sponsored by the University of Western Australia (UWA).  To me, the video oddly exhilarating:

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-- Marge