Happy Monday.
Today we're making a few updates/announcements.
First up: our nonprofit ETCH is alive on the web.
etch-humanity.org
ETCH: Ethical Technology and Computing for Humanity.
ETCH is not another AI nonprofit. It is a nonprofit that explicitly prioritizes people over AI.
whoever this is, they are amazing
expectation vs reality 🦁 ✨
Draft2Digital has about 330,000 authors in its system. If 70% of those authors earn less than $100, that's 231,000 accounts that will be charged the $12 fee, which is $2.7 million in reoccurring revenue.
In two years it'll get upped to $14 to "fight spam".
This is staying and only ever increasing.
“Draft2Digital is introducing an innovative subscription plan of $12 a year, a powerful, financial unlock on its user base of hundreds of thousands.” - some financial turd, probably
they got the Church of England supporting the Pope now
We made a mistake. That's on us. We really dropped the ball on this one. We are hearing and learning.
BLUESKY IS A WEBSITE THAT TURNS (post by jay.bsky.team claiming that bluesky is made with AI) INTO (picture of bluesky not working)
Screenshot of mobile bsky not loading
Screenshot of Lord of the Rings. The main character says "All right, then. Keep your secrets."
*swivels a chair around and sits on it backward to connect with the kids*
I think you should stop worrying about LOOKsmaxxing and start worrying about BOOKsmaxxing
Donald John Trump's appetite for retaliation and revenge are boundless
side by side lotr meme text: Never thought i would die fighting side by side with Roman Catholic Church What about side by side with a wise guy pope from chicago Aye. I could do that.
very same
The most bad-ass rebuttal from Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach.
"A ... federal judge has dismissed a writer's lawsuit accusing a bestselling fiction author of stealing her romance-fantasy book drafts to create the popular 'Crave' series, issuing a lengthy opinion finding tropes of the genre —such as 'hot, sexy, dangerous boys'— are not protected by copyright."
I gotta take some extra paper routes 😭
I want to hear how much of their user base makes less than $100. I've seen exactly zero how this will solve the issue, but more and more of how they just want to take their slice of the ai slop, and an extra (annual) slice out of low performing authors.
Now they’ll try to figure out how to charge us a desk fee 😭
75% of all ebooks go through Kindle. 50% of all physical books are sold on Amazon. Policies like this aren't encouraging anyone to get out of that ecosystem, especially when marketing to other retailers is difficult. This is just squeezing as many people as possible before the doors shut.
D2D already has a natural defense against ai slop, since slop isn't made to be purchased. The purchase price is too much of a hurdle to convince enough people to be profitable. Something like KU has to worry about the system being gamed to get payouts.
The classic "Charge the people struggling the most" plan. Never fails to fail.
And after merging with a competitor too to squeeze as many authors as possible.
Mozart with his green frog toy
Mozart being a good boy
Incredible sequel. Edge of my seat!
Farer Integra Perlarum
These recent Tudors all have been looking great! I keep wishing the markers are lume blocks with the tops painted black though, like Farer did with the Perlarum.
I watched about a quarter of it and went "huh" then turned it off. It was vaguely interesting.
Your Kindle's not obsolete, it just needs a jailbreak — and I'll show you how it's done
You can transform your old Kindle — even a bricked device — into the ultimate open-source reader. Here's how.
www.zdnet.com/article/your...
I had to see the surviving Goomba prosthetic from the 90s Super Mario Bros movie, SO NOW YOU ALL HAVE TO KNOW MY TERROR TOO.
It’s profoundly ignorant to suggest that the Pope should be fighting crime on behalf of the Catholic Church. Anyone who was remotely familiar with Roman Catholicism would know that that’s what Daredevil is for
