The college degree loan thing was already becoming a problem when I was an undergrad over 20 years ago. It was fine when one might be borrowing $5000 per year as even entry-level college grad jobs that actually used degrees paid enough to make repayment of those loans doable, but the trouble was that far too many truly entry-level jobs started preferring college degrees when they didn't really contribute, so more and more demand for college degrees among people drove up prices for the limited seats. Which led to a balloon in both traditional colleges increasing their programs and their tuition, and for-profit colleges springing up to try to get in on the act.

Funny, I got a good job in the late nineties doing just that. I was cold-calling and I got hired onto the quality assurance team for a specialized software product. Unfortunately despite the company not being a dotcom they were in investment-building mode and the investor got cold feet so they went under anyway, but it was a good job and the people who hired me did so based on or technical conversations when I cold-called.

My current job I got by having experience with this team when I was at a different employer. They liked me enough they asked me to interview when a prior teammate retired.

There was a crude joke back in the day, that Java was great because it worked on all computers exactly the same way that anal sex was great because it worked on all genders.

Little did we know exactly how prescient that crude joke was going to be as Oracle hadn't yet taken over.

I've seen some temp jobs work out well, but I've seen others where it was not so good.

Temp-to-hire where the employer actually really does intend to hire-on, and uses the temp-process to get to know candidates before making offers is fine. It's actually not a bad idea if basically everyone is on the same page. Temp agency needs to be ready to move people around if various employers do or don't like candidates, and temp-employees need to understand that there could be periods of downtime, and might themselves need to ask the agency for alternate placement if they don't like where they're temping.

On the other hand I've seen temps that were abused very heavily, because regular employees didn't want to do shit-jobs or didn't really want to work at all, with no intent on actually hiring. I've also seen rather odd people working as temps because even in a temp-to-hire arrangement the business didn't like some of the temps but still needed work to be done so kept them around for longer than normal just to complete the task before releasing them.

That's all well and good to say, but that neither addresses what actually changes, versus how some changes have proven harmful and should be avoided if possible even if they're common.

...that a business whose name evokes a movie scene where a hostile alien entity forcibly envelops and implants its offspring into an unsuspecting space merchant-marine doctor would host nonconsensual sexual content?

..."Armagh," is what the forecaster said when he realized how miserable the weather was going to be that day.

I haven't seen it either, other than catching snippets of it on TV from time to time. I'm assuming that he's paying for exclusivity, so that she isn't working for other clients.

That said, that's an awful lot of money, better part of $400,000 per year. It seems ... unlikely that the client would directly pay that much. I would see a much more likely scenario where he's putting her up in accommodations and has lines of credit at various stores that she can use, but where she's otherwise on a short-ish lease. Similarly a distaff-counterpart in George Peppard's character as a struggling writer turned gigolo in Breakfast at Tiffany's where his benefactor is providing him with his apartment but he isn't getting a whole lot of actual money from her so that she can maintain control over him and can keep the arrangement somewhat secretive.

I didn't think I'd see Usenet's 'Eternal September' apply to scientific research.

If the number of scientists and doctoral-students increased then it would follow that the number of publications would need to increase, but it sounds like at some point the wheels came off and the rigor in evaluating research was left behind.

Which is why you review their social media profiles to see if they're worth offering any sort of comps to.

I have no doubt that the restaurants that cater to the wealthy and basically only the wealthy have always done this, following "the social pages" and the Who's Who books, and the sorts of other documentation about rich and/or famous people. They want those rich customers to feel known, to feel welcome, so they spend more money.

The only difference here is that they're acknowledging their sources now include a wider array of Internet sources, not just the complications put together and maintained by others.

When I had to drive to a particular part of town every now and then I'd use the carwash near my destination since they did a decent job and weren't overpriced. They always offered lifetime car washes as a rather expensive package.

Last time I was there they were still offering those expensive lifetime packages. Next time after that I was in that part of town, perhaps three weeks later, the carwash was fenced-off with rental chain-link fencing. When I drove past a month later the carwash wasn't only torn-down, but a crew was pouring a new foundation for an apartment complex.

Given the amount of time it takes to go through the permitting process for such construction, they would've known for well over a year before that the place was closing. They probably sold the land and worked out an agreement with the buyer to continue running the carwash until the buyer was ready to start construction.

I'm not inclined to purchase 'lifetime' anything unless my fairly short-term usage is going to be enough to offset it, because you never know for how long the place will be there, even if they are honest and attempting to keep operations running in perpetuity.

No, they aren't.

But if say, Madonna's daughter comes in, they might well ask her about how the 'season' is going, as she spends time in various parts of the world that nepotism has granted her access to, or if one of Bill Gates' offspring comes in, to ask how things are with the foundation that their now-divorced parents ran, or they might use what they've read to specifically steer-clear of topics that could cause offense.

This is sensationalism reporting. I would be very surprised if anyone who buys a $500-a-plate meal even reads this site.

When you're paying what's frankly ridiculous money for a meal then it's not the meal you're paying for, it's the whole experience from the moment you enter their establishment until you're walking out. It makes sense that a business catering to that sort of 'experience' is keeping records, you're their cash-cow, you're spending unnecessary money on a luxury experience and they want to do whatever they can to give you the experience sufficient for you to come back, and that means personalizing it for you, both to cater to what they know you want from dining, plus making it fit in to your greater life.

It sounds like the majority of what they're doing here is transitioning from paper records to electronic records, and cross-referencing to that which you as a customer are already vanity-publishing.

What's in it for me?

I have not been shown a particular use-case where I would directly use AI to my benefit. I don't make digital art, I don't need it to summarize any meetings were an "AI notetaker" would be permitted, I've found most AI-generated summaries are of questionable accuracy, and to be frank about it, technologies where it might be 'under the hood' that I use seem to be worse for it, like search results. I don't work with huge datasets as a researcher or clinician, and much of my professional time is spent troubleshooting things that are messed up by mistakes made by tech companies themselves.

What's AI supposed to do for me? If all I'm doing is making it generate things that I didn't need before, then it sounds like it's just a further waste of my time.