Probably worth mentioning Deepmind's SIMA if you haven't seen it yet [0]. It definitely pushes the state of the art for agent behavior in a typical game environment.
Perhaps in the future we won't code NPCs any differently from player characters- they'll have access to the full action space, with long-term memory and natural language prompts guiding their behavior.
Yes, or use a ZK rollup between the publisher and the client to collect transactions off-chain and then settle when it reaches an appropriate amount.
Or even better, have a ZK rollup between each client and a single intermediary, who manages ZK rollups with all publishers. Then you, as a client, don't have to worry about large amounts being trapped in escrow, and publisher payouts happen more regularly.
Part of this issue is that most podcasts were designed to be free from the beginning, whereas music was always paid.
As a user, it makes sense to pay Spotify for music access, because Spotify, in turn, pays out a few fractions of a cent to the artist. But it doesn't really make sense to use Spotify premium for podcasts, when you can just download them directly or use various free RSS-based clients.
So why do so many people still consume podcasts on Spotify? 1. Because they're already on Spotify, so it's convenient, but more importantly... 2. Because Spotify realized they make more money if most of their users are paying, yet still consuming free (podcast) content. They don't pay out on podcasts per-stream like they do for a typical song. So ultimately, a premium user who consumes 100% podcast material is more profitable than a user who consumes 100% label-published music.
It's not a coincidence that Spotify has gradually taken over its homepage with podcast promotions, and promoted your "podcast library" as a first-class citizen, even placing it above your music library. It's all about profit margins, baby!
Indira Gandhi National Open University has over 4 million students, and in China about 40% of university students are in STEM. It's certainly not impossible that this is coming from a single institution.
Reach out to a monetization partner. They'll have dozens of ways to help find ad demand quickly. It will be more work than AdSense, but it will work- unlike AdSense. Here's a list of options: https://www.google.com/ads/publisher/partners/find-a-partner
Look for resellers or programmatic direct services to get started.
+1 for The Odyssey. I started it during an off year, almost as an intentionally-irrelevant book to pick up and forget about, but it ended up being a genuine gem; one I remember fondly, and often.
Perhaps in the future we won't code NPCs any differently from player characters- they'll have access to the full action space, with long-term memory and natural language prompts guiding their behavior.
[0]: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/sima-generalist-ai-age...