selfpublishing

Everyone has a story in them, as someone famous once said. A startup called Inkitt believes that it can use AI to turn the strongest of these into blockbusters and to build a new “Disney” for the 21st century around that content. Now, it’s raised $37 million in aid of that ambition. The startup’s eponymous app lets people self-publish stories, and then, using AI and data science, it selects what it believes are the most compelling of these to tweak and subsequently distribute and sell on a second app, Galatea. Its…

Marc Laidlaw, a writer for Valve‘s first two Half-Life games and their episodic follow-ups, has admitted it was “deranged” to post an early outline of Half-Life 2: Episode 3‘s plot to his website. In 2017 – one year after leaving Valve – Laidlaw published a short story titled ‘Epistle 3’ on his personal website. Upon its release, fans and journalists soon realised the piece was a thinly-veiled outline for Half-Life: Episode 3‘s plot, despite the game being cancelled by Valve. Speaking to Rock Paper Shotgun, Laidlaw has…

Credit: Robert P. Alvarez/Shutterstock Far-right extremists pose an increasing risk in Australia and around the world. In 2020, ASIO revealed that about 40% of its counter-terrorism work involved the far right. …