Current Online Users !! WTF !!!

Dunno about those numbers you all post here:

OK suckers check this out.

Go here: http://secondlife.com/xmlhttp/homepage.php
Note timestamp at very bottom of page.
Refresh
Note it changes

The data you are seeing may be right it's just coming from random crazy time stamps.

I collected a bunch of data and sorted it by timestamp and got this which seems utterly plausible.

type value unix slt
inworld 47840 1242990302 2009-05-22 04:05:02
inworld 48147 1242990602 2009-05-22 04:10:02
inworld 55227 1242997502 2009-05-22 06:05:02
inworld 55550 1242997802 2009-05-22 06:10:02
inworld 59062 1243001401 2009-05-22 07:10:01
inworld 61726 1243004701 2009-05-22 08:05:01


Stand by while I make big fancy graphs out of it.

I noticed that over a few hours today, the login screen was showing 55,227

It's just borked.
Move along please. Nothing to see here.

You're not understanding. It's *always* one of ten numbers. They've been the same ten numbers since at least 6am SLT this morning, and it looks like the numbers from yesterday are in this same set, though nobody tried to get them all.

That, and those numbers change just too quickly. There's a range of about 23,000 in the set, and it can go from one to any other in a second, and then back.

Edit: Nevermind. The timestamps you're looking at aren't from today.

Question is then, why are they reporting inworld numbers that aren't current? And why are they reporting ten of them, none of them current.

Here's the full set as far as I can tell.

value slt
70828 2009-05-21 16:05:02
47840 2009-05-22 04:05:02
48147 2009-05-22 04:10:02
51063 2009-05-22 05:05:01
51439 2009-05-22 05:10:01
55227 2009-05-22 06:05:02
55550 2009-05-22 06:10:02
58790 2009-05-22 07:05:02
59062 2009-05-22 07:10:01
61726 2009-05-22 08:05:01

Not just yesterday. It was borked the day before too (Saturday 23rd) and I recognise at least one from then. Of course I didn't do multiple refreshes on Saturday, so I didn't get used to some of the numbers until yesterday.

Good discovery, Elan.

Maybe we should stop chit chatting about it and put in a jira ticket or something?

I'm all for leaving them to notice it themselves

Because the process broke and they haven't noticed.
Load balancing between ten servers that last updated at different times.


Edit: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-1125

At this point can anyone really deny that the fluctuating sets of numbers are actually coded communications to some unknown recipients?

If you take Elan's set of numbers and total them, it comes to 559672
Add the digits together and you get 34
Add 3 to 4 and you get.....

SEVEN!!!!

I thing the conclusion is inescapable.

Many will try to flee by that path when the pelagic argosy sights land.

hehe, like in an emergency trying to find a phone to get off the grid.

Being on a cruise ship could complicate that effort.

We have a new number - 77,835. It looks like they fixed it. I can't even get a different number now, no matter how many time I refresh the page.

Well at least they fixed it and we don't have to hear about conspiracy theories around the bot policy.

I'm sure we can drum up some conspiracy theories if you like

As of today, there is still no change in the big users of trafficbots, and that's almost a month since the new policy came into force. That's got be good for a page or two

Notice the repeats.

What Victoria was trying to explain to the non-techies here about the backend numbers is that the frontend numbers come out a backend database.

That database is not live numbers, but it isn't necessary made up numbers either. It's snapshots taken at random points in time, and then placed into the database.

When you load the frontend page, the backend creates the html of that page and in that html it inserts a randomly -chosen- value from the column in the table that holds the snapshot numbers.

One really big dead giveaway that the frontend page you're seeing is made this way... that it ends in .php.
- That's a language used to make dynamically generated webpages based on database contents.

Well that's not a conspiracy theory, that's just a statement of fact so I think we're doing OK still.

Yes but it was the seed from which some conspiracy theories could grow. Sadly, none did.

Learned colleagues, it would appear that, lying just beneath the surface of this everyday virtual world is another world we would be hard pressed to recognise: a world where existence is as spontaneous as it is fleeting, where residents are mere sparks in the ether, petty shadows of quark, strangeness and charm refuting all of nature's laws in their half-realised struggle for existence ...

... rending the very fabric of the space-time continuum itself.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing busy sims in which the parcels traffic counts are all 0 (again).

What could be happening here is that LL are running low on digits with which to make numbers, so they go and take some from the parcels.