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Ashley Capes

@ashcapes.bsky.social

970 followers 520 following 2.2K posts

Australian writer of fantasy fiction, free verse poetry, haiku and other stuff. See more at his website below: www.ashleycapes.com

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Pinned

Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · Dec 27

Pinned posts are here! Here's a pic with most of my 'Never' books: epic fantasy, adventure and sarcasm :D

Start with the free prequel story linked below!

books2read.com/u/3RBg9Y

Collection of novellas and novels from 'The Book of Never' series - featuring an (winged) adventurer in various poses across 8 images

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 16h

Visited a park in the city today - don’t know the name of the flowers, though, otherwise I'd mention them XD

A close up mix of green leaves and purple flowers on a hillside, with trees and budding leaves above. A glimpse of blue sky is visible at the top of the frame.

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

Joyce (Wolf) Chng/Ch'ng 🐺 @jolantru.bsky.social · 3d

Yes, I have a YA fantasy out!

www.snowywingspublishing.com/book/fire-he...

www.snowywingspublishing.com/book/cold-st...

#YAfantasy #sapphic #swords

The promo graphic/banner for the Fire Heart duology. Cover art is by Yasu Matsuoka.

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 2d

GenAI tech really pushing hard to supplant artists with slot machines, to reduce the art industry and opportunities, and to put those slot machines in the place of artists - and thereafter, charge everyone rent to use their slot (slop) machines.

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 4d

They cover a few metal sub-genres across the first track, awesome

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ9a...

For the Love of Pain

YouTube video by Testament - Topic

www.youtube.com

Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 4d

Just topping up my debt by purchasing some printer ink XD

Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 5d

As a kid, I just accepted this album exactly as is - loved it all and was happy there was one more Led Zeppelin album.

Now, I have my favs (and a few tracks I only listen to occasionally) but from those favs, something about 'Walter's Walk' stays on top.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RunT...

Led Zeppelin - Coda (1982) (Full Album)

YouTube video by Dale Gribble

www.youtube.com

Reposted by Ashley Capes

Brad Frederiksen @bradfrederiksen.bsky.social · 5d

A family of emus stroll through a rest area by the Barrier Highway near Broken Hill.
#mobile #photography

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

Seliel the Shaper @seliel-the-shaper.itch.io · Jun 25

I just released an indie RPG Starter Pack featuring Mana Seed pixel art assets! It's got everything you need to set the foundation for a Secret of Mana style action RPG, and it's totally FREE! 🥳 Start your gamedev journey today!
seliel-the-shaper.itch.io/rpg-starter-...
#pixelart #gamedev #manaseed

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 6d

This might well be it for this year - and maybe just one new release in 2026 (maybe).

However, I am still pleased as this was plenty XD

Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 7d

Ordered 2 posters lately - shouldn't have, since I have no free wallspace and don't want to take down what is currently on display XD

Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 7d

Excited to find this 'Cowboy Bebop' reference within the dialogue (and character design, to some extent) of 'Octopath Traveller II' :D

In a rundown room, two characters from the game 'Octopath Traveller 2' face one another.

One lies abed and the other is standing. The man in bed, who is balding and wears a beard, says to the standing fellow:

'So you wouldn't really call it "beef and veggie stir-freak surprise," now would you?'

in a fun reference to anime 'Cowboy Bebop' :D

Reposted by Ashley Capes

Kittie @kittiepeters.com · 7d

delete chatgpt and stop using generative AI 🖤🤍

Sam Altman’s AI empire will devour as much power as New York City and San Diego combined. Experts say it’s ‘scary’ | Fortune

Andrew Chien told Fortune he’s been a computer scientist for 40 years but we’re close to “some seminal moments for how we think about AI and its impact on society.”

fortune.com

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 8d

Finally - more sunlight here, as the blessing of daylight saving time has landed!

Reposted by Ashley Capes

Des Walsh @deswalsh.bsky.social · 10d

People will say “what can we do it’s inevitable we better embrace it” but the companies are running at these kind of profit margins or lack there of so the question is how long can they last or even be cheap enough for companies to chose to use over staff who will always do better meaningful work.

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 10d

OpenAI has only made $4.3 billion in the first half of 2025, meaning that it will likely miss its $13bn revenue projection. Worse still, its burnrate is abominable, with $6.7bn on R&D compute, $2.5bn on inference, and *$2bn* on sales and marketing.
www.wheresyoured.at/sora2-openai...

OpenAI Is On Track To Miss Its Revenue Projections - And Its Burnrate Is Worse Than Ever
So, The Information recently put out one of the most weirdly-worded pieces in history, starting with the title: OpenAI's First Half Results: $4.3 Billion in Sales, $2.5 Billion in Cash Burn.

Reading this title, you might be forgiven for thinking that OpenAI was profitable, when it actually appear to be finding new, innovative ways to lose money at a never-before-seen scale. In fact, when you read the piece, you get a sense of how bad things actually are.

Also, keep in mind that these are numbers for the six months beginning January 1 2025 through the end of July 2025.

$4.3 Billion In Revenue Should Be Cause For Concern - And Suggests User Churn (While Also Feeling A Little Suspicious)
When I put out my piece about how much OpenAI and Anthropic actually make, some believed me alarmist when I said that I believed it brought in $5.26 billion in revenue by the end of the first half of 2025, a number I estimated using its leaked revenue numbers from January and May and guessing at compound growth rates.

I believe that this means that OpenAI has had some weird months of revenue. OpenAI hit $5.5 billion annualized (which translates to a single month times 12 — so $458 million) revenue in December 2024 (which I estimate was similar to January 2025), $10 billion in May 2025 ($833 million), and then, according to CFO Sarah Friar, "[its] first $1 billion month" in July 2025, though I'll add she signed off on projections that involve OpenAI making more than NVIDIA in 2029.

Let's Talk About OpenAI's Leaked Costs
$2.5 Billion "Cash Burn" - AKA The Cost of Goods Sold
OpenAI deliberately — I assume it leaked these numbers included the phrase "$2.5 billion cash burn" as a means of suggesting that it was actually making money, but having read the piece, I believe this refers to the "cost of revenue," so the literal cost of providing the services to both their ChatGPT users and API customers.

This bit needs a bit of clarity. According to The Information, the “cost of revenue” includes the cash that OpenAI has paid out for compute for inference — and not, it seems, anything significant beyond that, like employee salaries, sales and marketing (which is an entirely different subcategory within the piece), and so on.

Now, AI boosters will likely say “wow, $2.5 billion burn on $4.3 billion in revenue, that’s profitability!”

Yeah man, if a company didn’t have expenses, OpenAI would be super profitable.

Sadly, OpenAI has lots of expenses.

$6.7 Billion in Research & Development Burn
OpenAI is playing extremely silly buggers with these numbers, but this was $6.7 billion out the door, accounting for 155.81% of its revenue.

And, as a reminder, $6.7bn is also nearly 40% of its cash-on-hand at the end of the period. We’ll talk about this more shortly.

I am guessing here, but I believe this number is entirely compute for both training models and post-training, the process where you try and "teach" a model what outputs are good (and bad) once it's been fully trained.

A peer of mine suggested this number might also include salaries. I don't think that's the case, as OpenAI has previously broken out salaries separately in leaks, but it also used to break out the revenue from API and ChatGPT subscriptions.

Nevertheless, number go down.

Operating Loss: $7.8 Billion - Net Loss $13.5 Billion
This is a weird one, made weirder by The Information's choice of wording.

An operating loss in this case is OpenAI's revenue minus their operating expenses, but not including things like stock-based compensation and legal fees.

Its (much higher) net loss includes more unspecified losses, and OpenAI said that more than half of these losses were "due to remeasurement of convertible interest rights."

OpenAI Spent More Than $2.60 To Make $1 In The First Half Of 2025
The specific weasel wording (in OpenAI's case) of these (alleged) cash flow statements reported by The Information suggests that things are pretty bad.

In 2024, OpenAI made about $3.7 billion, and it burned $5 billion in the process, working out to it spending $2.35 to make $1.

Depending on how you slice OpenAI's current numbers, things are worse on a sliding scale. Between the $2.5 billion COGS, $2 billion on sales and marketing, and $6.7 billion on R&D, OpenAI is currently spending $2.60 to make $1.

If you take its "net loss" number — which I add involves a number of non-cash expenses — OpenAI is currently spending $4.14 to make $1.

This company SUCKS!

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

Niranjan 🇮🇳 @ormakal.bsky.social · 10d

Check out these hidden gems on Kobo Plus and find your next favourite read!

💙📚 🌈🚀💫 📚🌎 📢📚 🩷🧙♂️⚔️ 🪐📚

books.bookfunnel.com/koboplusless...

#booksky #readersky #readersonbluesky #koboplus #bookfunnel #books #whattoread #bookrecs #newbooks

An apocalyptic landscape and a samurai is standing in the foreground holding a fiery sword and at a distance on a hill a person with another fiery sword is standing. Caption says Kobo Plus Fantasy and Sci Fi October 1 to 31 on Bookfunnel

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 12d

Print edition re-covers are now complete!

Soon as I get a moment, I'll share the front covers - but for now, the spines lined up are very satisfying to me :D

Reposted by Ashley Capes

🎮 THE LAST WORLDS - LIVE NOW ON KICKSTARTER @lupiostudios.bsky.social · 12d

⏰ 12 hours in. Something CRAZY happened: we already hit 50% of our goal!
⚡ Now, here’s the IMPOSSIBLE challenge: can we reach 100% in the next 12 hours?
💥 Do you accept the challenge?
❓ Impossible? Maybe.
💎 Worth trying? Absolutely.
#indiegame #gamingcommunity #gamedev #kickstarter #indiedev

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

cpuk (trampoline park connoisseur and occasional comic printer) @comicprintinguk.bsky.social · 15d

"Hi, I'm Mr. Beast and I am offering one hundred thousand dollars to anyone who will spend just ONE HOUR... with me. I'm so alone."

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 16d

Scrolling back through my posts to find a picture of bamboo (which I did find) and I came across this, one of my most-liked posts with '5' XD

Reposted by Ashley Capes

Brett "Solidarity 2025" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 16d

Hi. It's me. 2 weeks later. This is done. 58 frames over 3 seconds, *50* layers in the final image. WOO. This was a long edit, felt like ACTUAL work so unless I get it again with the actual sunset I doubt I'll be editing more like this. Psyched for the final piece tho! 🪶

Three pelicans diving after sunset, with a sailboat and a tanker in the distance, 2 terns also fly, the pelicans are shown in their dive motion

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

Brad Frederiksen @bradfrederiksen.bsky.social · 16d

Composition with shallow depth of field in a manicured garden this morning.
#photography

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

Mosha Winter ☕❄ @moewanders.bsky.social · 19d

Some awesome book things!

🔸 TWOW is only a few sales from breaking 400
🔸 11,000+ KU pages read this month -- new record!
🔸 Booked third interview
🔸 Broke 20 ratings on Amazon (it's tough on there!)
🔸 Nearly to 50 ratings on GR
🔸 More Winds in the Wild! ⤵️

So grateful. ☺️

// #Writing #Booksky

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Reposted by Ashley Capes

merritt @merrittk.com · 18d

"please rate your package delivery" i mean ill click the smiley face because i assume it impacts the poor bastard who delivered it but i must impress upon you that forcing both him and i into this situation is an act of utter inhumanity and furthermore that god frowns upon your deeds

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Ashley Capes @ashcapes.bsky.social · 18d

Nice being able to use the word 'never' in a story for a change XD

Reposted by Ashley Capes

Indie Book Spotlight @bookspotlight.bsky.social · 18d

SPOOKY BOOK BUNDLE TIME 👻🪦🍂

itch.io/b/3260/spook...

Spooky Bundle on itch.io. Graphic shows a bat and two cats over the ebooks that are on sale, with pumpkins on bottom.

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