I've been writing novels for almost all my adult life. Bashing out 80,000-100,000 words is the easy part, and humans or AI can both do that.

People who don't know anything about writing a novel think - great, I'll get AI to 'write' it and then I'll publish it.

But editing, re-plotting, rewriting and polishing is where 90% of the work is. Re-reading the 100k words 10-15 times, cutting chunks out, adding or deleting a character, etc, etc ... and that's what you'd have to do with AI-written slop anyway.

There's no labour saving, and in fact it's worse because writing that 80k first draft means you're at least familiar with every sentence. Reading 80k words of garbage someone else wrote so you can polish it up - that's torture.

One way to avoid AI slop: only buy books published before 2020.

I'm on 24h2 and it's been doing this 'I will not shut down' thing for about a week.

My powerbank is a Worx drill battery with a two-port USB adaptor. I have a dozen of these batteries for my power tools, and 4 adaptors. Never going to run out of juice.

I switched from writing software and novels to carpentry.

People will often pick a movie or tv show because of one or more actors in it, because they enjoy their work. Some shows with a bunch of no-names succeed, but let's be honest, star power is a thing. If you steal that star power from actors, what do they have left?

More likely it's included as a freebie with the steam machine. Just like Steam itself was included with Half Life 2 back the day.

I agree, but the people sending in the DNA don't have murders in their past, and so they're not stupidly handing themselves to the authorities on a platter. It's that nice-as-pie extended family member they don't suspect of anything untoward who's getting caught for a murder that may have been committed 20 years ago.

Watch the user count shrink when they're asked to pay.

My first computer had 1kb of ram (ZX81) but I did end up fitting a 16kb ram pack in order to run more software and games on it.

Yep I think you guys missed out on the 2L turbo due to emissions regulations, and only got a 2.5L non-turbo? A pity, because the 2L turbo is an incredibly nimble little car.

I have an original Impreza WRX I bought new, and a Forester I bought earlier this year. Both came with cassette decks (since replaced with new-fangled CD players with a USB socket), and none of this full screen entertainment rubbish. They're both on about 100,000 miles and should last another 20 years. The Forester doesn't even have ABS or airbags, but it's a nice comfy ride.

Nowadays cars are smartphones crossed with xboxes crossed with ankle monitoring devices.

First off, kids will just find lesser-known social media sites that aren't blocked. Or they'll all install some free multiplayer mobile game that has public chat and use that to communicate.

Second, isn't Mozilla adding some kind of free web-based VPN to Firefox?

Third, I'd bet on many kids knowing more about the internet and getting around the rules than I trust a bunch of politicians to dream up and enforce those rules.

This is not going to open up any markets for your produce in countries with much stricter food safety regulations. But those countries will probably be happy to ship even more of their safer food to you.

GLWT. All my novels have wordplay and puns in them, none of which will translate.