It had only been about 10 years since the last "required to rent phones form the phone company" went away, so maybe having a fancy looking landline on the desk was seen as pertinent to a "cool work environment" and the author wanted to make sure that you didn't think it was some beige box he made this call on.

It's not covid that killed the theaters, it's the incessant talking and cell phone use. If I wanted to listen to someone make a phone call, I could hang out somewhere else for cheaper. The response has been to increase volume to the point of discomfort. I will pass.

I remember very similar articles to this when the tech bubble burst saying things along the lines of , "Computers increased productivity, but not as much as people expected." That was after 20 years of figuring out how computers fit into the workplace. AI has been shoehorned in over two years and we are expecting to be able to have ANY idea how this is going to play out?

I hope they didn't as I think it was useful. In depth algorithm classes were harder imho than calculus, so having the math requirement up front would help avoid having people get a couple of years in and realize they can't do the math.

The FDA was created to address snake oil. The rules are that you must prove efficacy(the drug does what it says it's going to do) and safety. Uncommon side effects will only rarely be found in phase I trials. The opportunity to take small studies and wildly extrapolate will be exploited to someones benefit. That someone may or may not be the patient. I hope there is at least a documentation burden that makes them keep track of side effects.

The difference in ease of use was massive. Taxis had no reason to innovate, so you had to call, then sit there hoping they didn't pick up someone else, while at the same time trying to find them. It really was a big hassle. A fixed route, set time shuttle is a bus, but if it gets people to use it and avoids the stigma that bus service currently seems to have everywhere but major metropolitan centers, then it might be a good thing.

Though it is very imperfect, the barrier to the creation of an audiobook seemed to have some bearing on the quality of the work. As in, if the book had an audiobook it was more likely that the author actually put effort into it. I am now worried that we will be very soon inundated with mediocre AI assisted fiction read by lifeless AI and trying to make a decision on whether to buy a book based on AI written reviews.

Hmmm. I hate that poe's law continues to be so true.

worse comes to worse, just record the voltages coming off your sound card, put it in a .wav file and encode that with codec of your choice.