I read Dune back in the day, and, given its presence on my bookshelf, I also read Dune: Messiah, but I'm not convinced that I read it to completion. Perusing the summary of the series of books on Wikipedia, it seems that while the first one was well-written, despite relying on a little more fantasy than I'd prefer, as you go from one book to the next, the level of absurdity ratchets up well into the realm of self-parody.

Can we have a filter that blocks Amazon-related stories posted by msmash? They're all straight-up propaganda.

You're missing the point: if you're good enough at something, and enjoy doing it, you should be able to find a way to earn money doing just that thing.

I'm fortunate enough to work at a job that I love. Sure, there are phases when it isn't so great, and phases when I would give up my first-born to continue working on my projects, but on balance it's solidly in the plus column. Of the many things I could do in life to earn my keep, what I do now is very, very close to the top of what I'd like to be doing. That I get frelling paid to do it is amazing. And thus, there isn't a real limit to the number of hours I'm happily spending on my work.

What I don't get is that I'm not special. I don't have particularly unusual skills. While I have put in an unusual amount of time and school to develop them, there are lots like me. Most of them have also put in similar amounts of time and school, and they also love their jobs. The common thread among them is that they have taken to heart that old adage about investing in yourself.

So, to all of the people who are responding here with various versions of, "screw the man, my off hours are mine," I ask: why haven't you found something that motivates you? Is there nothing productive that you enjoy doing so much that you would do it for free? Have you not put in the time to figure out how to develop the skills necessary for that position, and work toward it? No? Then the best time to start is right now.

It's unfortunate, but nobody is entitled to make a living the way they want it - you are and always will be at the whims of those that pay you, unless you manage to provide all your own necessities as a subsistence farmer or hunter/gatherer.

There will always be a market for live performers and human artists. But as the post above said, that market is going to be eroded by the "industrial" production of entertainment.

So long as the AI stuff isn't breaking copyright, these artists will just be SOL if they don't have a compelling enough product to make multiple millions (or billions) of dollars in the new world.

Basically, welcome to "the real world" where you just blend in with the rest of the crowd.

Literally? That *would* be a nice April Fool's trick.

You miss the point. The *drug* contained in the preparation is the same; the preparation is NOT the same.

Water contained in a household preparation of ammonia is just water. But you might be ill-advised to buy a bottle of ammonia because you're thirsty for water.

Hint: Do NOT drink ammonia because you're thirsty.

Tasks for Slashdot editor coming on-shift.

1. Go to desk, drop stuff, coat, etc.
2. Grab a cup of favorite hot liquid, chat with colleagues.
3. Review headlines from last 24 hours.
4. Start actual work.

In our school district, kids are out because they have been sick more, to a previously unprecedented level. It's as if now that the masks are off again, all of the non-COVID bugs are having a heyday, making up for lost time. When we've taken our kids to the doctor's office, they corroborate what the school district has been saying about absenteeism: kids have been sick a lot recently, and it (mostly) isn't COVID. For our kids, it isn't even any of the usual suspects.

Isn't this more "adding a connection to the AI compute cluster" more accurate than "adding AI to the glasses"?

Automotive was already at 35nm a few years ago, so getting something as large as 90nm is probably actually difficult.

Incidentally, you probably prefer larger process nodes for critical systems anyway - the smaller nodes are way more susceptible to SEUs, "strange" hardware effects, crosstalk, and side-channel issues because the useful electric fields are now quite difficult to confine to a single transistor.

Gross Profit.

Remember that tear-down and rebuild also includes profit. Nothing is sold "at cost" unless it's for inventory clear-out or other disposition.

Note I said "gross profit" not net, because if you're a homebuilder, you have to use that profit from a house to pay salaries etc. If you pay yourself say $30k per house built assuming you build 3 houses per year, you might price the house so you make $45k per house, so that if your demand changes, you have a delay, a spike in input costs, you can still pay yourself $90k/year on average.

And this isn't even "greedy profit seeking" this is just "making sure you have a going concern." I wish more people actually tried to run a business... they would quickly see that selling things "at cost" means you go out of business rapidly.

I don't know how much "helping" tools like this give in the long run. I mean it's a voice-activated search that can look up trivia. It reads stuff and summarizes it so you don't have to exercise your own brain cells. It tells you if food is healthy or not, so you don't have to think about it.

The only thing that is actually helpful is the translation. Even that, though, while helpful, basically removes any responsibility for the individual to actually have to put forth any effort to try and learn a different culture's language.

Nobody is going to have to think with these things, and they are going to lose the ability to reason about what is a correct answer versus just some propaganda answer. I mean if the AI is summarizing things, and we just take it for Truth, is that where we want to be?

That's why I suggested it's the lesser of the percent of revenue or $0.50. If it's a truly free app, they'd pay the $0 x 30%. You'd only switch to the $0.50 fee if your revenue per install was $1.67 or higher.

Free apps - just the $100 dev fee.

Thing is, small developers benefitted massively from the $100+15/30% scheme, because their price of entry to a massive market was really small.

It's only the big players that are complaining about that structure.

If I were Apple, I would have just said "ok, 15/30% including subscription and in-app purchases or $0.50 per install, whichever is less." This way the "viral free app" author doesn't get demolished, but the Epic and Spotify and Meta and whoever don't get a free ride with the mere $100 plus hardware costs per developer. Seems like a reasonable compromise, but I'm not an Apple C-suite or board member.