boznz

Lots of the comments here are about porting to older kindles or eReaders, but the firmware is currently for the ESP32 chipset which none of these use.

Already happens in NZ, we got a few years grace, but now we pay the same as diesel vehicles up to 3.5T weight NZ$76/1000KM (US 7 cents/mile), and NZ$38 for plug in hybrids. I don't personally mind paying so long as it does go on maintaining the roads.

Good post which basically states the f*cking obvious about how any "prize" or "winner" of any subjective category works.

When I write a character, I picture not just the character but the voice, same with reading, and going from a paper or eBook to an audio book usually breaks both. Books I write rarely include characters from Manchester (UK), so reading voices with my strong accent would definitely break a lot of my books. It is also the reason I sometimes don't enjoy movies if I have read the book. It is not a one way street though, some really good narrators can improve the experience a lot, same with good directors.

Thank you for this, I'm going to give it a read.

I am unfortunately very bearish on politics in general. All politicians think short term, look after themselves, their families, their friends, and their interests first; Facts, and working simulations just get in the way. (I am still looking for a politician that is an exception to this rule) Human nature is unfortunately real, and the only way I can see to "solve politics" is to remove human's entirely, but that comes with a whole new set of issues and is another book I guess.

Yes unfortunately any system can be gamified once the incentives are there: Best wine, best movie, best album, best keyboard, best monitor, the list goes on. Hugo or Nebula winners, and any other "winner" for that matter are usually actively sponsored and artificially pushed onto the nomination lists by their publishers/influencers/etc, there is just no way the judges can read the 1000's of novels that come out each year.

Occasionally indie authors beat the system like Andy Weir with the Martian, but that took both good writing and a lot of traction from his online community for it to go viral and for it to get recognition.

Totally amazing. Deserves a second look

Still occasionally bring out my old jaguar for Alien vs Predator to try and remember what the excitement was all about, but as to putting Linux on it, amazing effort, but I think I'm going to pass :-)

But how do you know the books you want to buy in the first place? That's the Indie creators dilemma, sometimes good creators are terrible marketers, or have no budget, and their creation is undiscovered from the others that spend, market or game the system.

Many of us do. But the majority of ebook readers will: a)never find us and b)just want to click buy now not download epub (from a site they have never heard of) then transfer to kindle manually. So best to cover your bases and give them the Amazon option too.

Easy solution, make a show that lasts exactly one season, put all the good plot elements in it, and give it a proper ending, so it doesn't become a fucking never-ending soap opera.

Vive la révolution :-)

With the whole ecosystem stacked against new and indie authors, and AI getting so good I can see why some people could easily fall for this. I made the tough decision at the start of my Sci-Fi novel writing career to work 100% on the book and 0% on the marketing. It meant I got zero traction and attention in the market (except by word of mouth), and I had to keep my day job, but totally took away all the stress and anxiety.

When I retired last year I took the next logical step and now I give my eBooks away for free, being content with the fact I've achieved something good and I'm giving back to the community.

Gutenberg might be ugly, but it was fast to load, had all the data I needed and I was downloading the ePub within 5 seconds.

That wasn't a defense, that was me saying it worked well for me. Looking at it again in light of your comment, I might even not even use the "ugly", it is actually quite a clean layout, easy to use, doesn't waste screen space, and I would double-down on it being perfectly fit for purpose. each to his own I guess.

The Rolls Royce modular reactor update page [1] leaves me scratching my head as to where they are, it seems they've passed some really hard UK regulation though, maybe the official source is not the best:

[1] https://www.rolls-royce-smr.com/our-progress

Gutenberg might be ugly, but it was fast to load, had all the data I needed and I was downloading the ePub within 5 seconds. That's a winning formulla these days in my book (no pun intended)

The book has aged, but humanity hasn't

Add both my Sci-Fi/Techno-Thriller ePub books to this list DRM Free, and Free as in Beer if you download them off my website. https://rodyne.com/

I take your point, but an IC is not pure silicon

There are still plenty of us writing the book start to finish with all our own words and plots, it is very tempting to use AI to get the cover art correct, but going to a cover artist will these days likely get you the same "AI assisted" creation.

I do have one freely downloadble Sci-Fi book from 2022 which took 10 years in total to write so it might safely pass all your standards, but if a fixed cut off date is your criteria for a good book then there really is no hope for writers like me continuing.

And get confirmation bias on whatever they write from like-minded cronies, without the usual anonymous piss-takers.. kinda sad really!

Yeah, based on the people and organizations moving there, RedSky would be more appropriate.

I receive a dozen or so emails a year from people who read my free sci-fi books. they are generally to say thanks, or to point out spelling errors or something factually incorrect that I have usually fixed. Most are shocked I reply. I guess quite a few also get zapped by my aggressive spam filters, which with the amount of spam I get is going to make it a real problem in the future.

This is a technical site (or was at one point in time), I for one would be happy with zero of this shit.

Neither are the politicians, or the influencers, or Hollywood, they all have an end-game, a message or something to sell, none of these people are better than you, yet people pick someone and agrees with everything they say.

The world has lost the ability to critically think.

For my free novels which I deliberately keep the styles to header2 and body text, it is surprising the amount of crud that all the ePub conversion softwares generate, especially since they are just zipped web-pages.

These days I usually get 90% of the way on google docs, then do the final editing on LibreOffice which can add things like tables of contents and cover image, if it opens on Kindle, Kobo and Calibre I consider it job done.

A shame electricity is not the whole picture when it comes to energy. The resurgence in EV sales off the back of high gas prices is awesome, but almost 100% of bulk transport costs still rely on oil. Also, unlike EV's which can be plugged in at home for most of their needs, bulk-transport will require considerable new infrastructure to make the transition. Still a way to go.

Not just the US, a lot of developed countries have outsourced the problem to China (or other countries) to look good on paper, and tanked their local manufacturing as a by-product. It will be interesting how history records this moment.

Traveled the world in my youth and regretfully did not visit several notable locations when I lived close-by. Now I'm partially retired I am making up for it big time - though it helps having a great starting point.

Last week I hiked the Paparoa trail (West coast NZ) for 4 days through old mining trails with one of my friends who was a local historian and gold prospector, the whole experience was fascinating, and great inspiration for my next novel.

The various CERN web pages such as this were a treasure trove of information when I was working on my last novel. I actually included a few paragraphs on Castor thinking of using it as a side-plot, but my editor cut the plot out along with a few other technical niceties. Sigh!