I also make my ePubs a free download off my website which prevents me as an author enrolling in this. So just about anything on Kindle Unlimited is only for their ecosystem.
Thank you for this. I can understand why many authors don't want to do this (running a store, etc) but I wish they all did. I'll take a gander; I could use some more sci-fi!
There's self published books and stories on other platforms. There's a bunch that are free too. There's some author's that only use Kindle, but there's plenty of independent stuff out there not Amazon.
Might depend on what you like to read. I haven't hit this a lot. There was one title my daughter wanted which was Kindle exclusive in the US but I was able to get as an Adobe epub from a European seller.
Honestly, I think the Kindle Unlimited (KU) program should be persecuted as an illegal monopoly. A lot of authors actually don't actually like it, but they have to do it because it is the only way to have viable income. This tends to happen with more niche genres though. As an example almost all books in the harem-lit (1 guy and a bunch of lovers) genre are tied to Kindle unlimited. Meanwhile, this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as pushing more readers to KU and thus making alternative methods of selling even more difficult. Though since KU forces exclusivity on only being sold through Amazon, the authors are forced to switch to it.
I could probably go on a similar rant with Audible too, but that is different story. In short, Amazon has way too much influence over the entire publishing industry.
I hadn't heard this, but looks like you are right.
Makes me feel a little conflicted having bought one of those SNK bundles a couple years ago on Steam or Humble Bundle or something. Don't love the idea of giving money to someone like that.
Probably why Ronaldo and Salvatore Gannaci were DLC in the new KOF game. There was a pretty audible collective groan from the fighting game community when that was announced.
I hate that we are in the era of Millennial dictators feeling the need to own things that they thought were cool when they were kids. I don't see how owning SNK could be considered a great investment opportunity.
The payoff for MBS was to use SNK's brand recognition to promote the esports World Cup (run by another of his foundations). He even got to buddy up with some celebrities (Christiano Ronaldo and some famous DJ) when he shoehorned real people into that new Fatal Fury game.
Of course it's many things, but people who claim that the US is especially dense, or especially sparse, or especially geographically difficult (LOL!) compared to Japan (and therefore cannot build rail) are deeply unserious commenters.
More generally, any argument of the form "the US is special for reason ____ and therefore rail is especially difficult here" is highly likely to be utter nonsense.
Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard, but after reading the article I can't help but agree. They saw the light way too easily and the sponsors didn't push back at all. That's how it's supposed to work, yeah, but it's a far cry from anything I've experienced in my entire lifetime. Something's up.
It's pretty common if you have IT and finance teams that are paying attention. Sure a lot of shops let them waste away on a shelf, but that's what it is, waste. If you have fungible inventory that isn't likely to get used soon it is just a mistake it let it sit around unutilized. If it is cash, it is easier to utilize on other projects.
My previous company was overly cost sensitive, but large enough to not notice the waste. IT and procurement managed relationships with the vendor (Lenovo IIRC), and we had the workstations for 3 years officially but most people were 5-6 years. The hardware 100% just went back into storage when we cycled and would be given out to new hires when they joined. We were using Threadrippers with 128GB RAM and NVMe SSDs anyway...
My old mac was supposed to be donated to some place, but they had forgotten me to tell the iCloud lock is still on there. They wrote me on LinkedIn and as they were a good employer, I did unlock it
Ours are on lease, but the leasing company will release some from time to time for auctions at $DAYJOB. I've won 2. Using one, son flipped the other one for a couple hundred dollar profit.
Idk if it's common anymore, but some companies rent equipment rather than purchase it. So they'd have to return everything back to the rental company, who is expecting normal wear and tear, not intentional "customization."
Something I often think about is how we can barely define what AGI, consciousness, etc are. We may be pretty sure that what we have currently is an illusion, but at which point is the illusion good enough that it no longer matters? Especially with regards to my first question.
It's hard to say it's not X when we can't really define X.
I would personally argue that it's a lot easier to say something definitely isn't x, with confidence, than to say it definitely is. I definitely don't know what the surface of jupiter looks like, but I can pretty confidently say it doesn't look like Kansas.
I think the better it gets, the easier it will be to spot the shortcomings, because the gap between what it can do well and what it can't will widen. Anything the technology is fundamentally incapable of ever achieving will be made obvious by the fact that it will simply continue to not achieve it. We may not be able to easily define the totality of what exactly it needs to have to count as AGI, but the further it progresses, the easier it will be to point out individual things it's definitely missing.
I'm not saying we can't build it, but what we have right now certainly is not it. Right now context is just a bunch of text. Surely the human mind's context resembles something more like a graph database. What if we could use a database for context?
There's plenty of people panicking, just not the ones in position to affect any change.
It's a fairly commonly-held belief that certain high up individuals want the protests to escalate so that they can point to them as examples of the lawlessness they've been warning about and/or declare martial law. That's just one reason protesters have been trying their utmost to not let things escalate. People are trying to do things "the right way" through legislation as well but that's extremely slow.
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