Technology

I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice

Published

1 month ago

November 25, 2024

I have some notes on Sam Altman’s note-taking advice

Nilay’s main love language is trolling, and so he sent me this video of Sam Altman talking about note-taking, because he knew it would annoy me.

Now I recognize there is a school of thought which will say something like “Whatever it is that will get you to successfully take notes is correct.” This is true if you are some kind of loser who doesn’t care about pens and paper, in which case, vaya con dios I guess.

Let’s start with what Altman is doing right: physically writing stuff down. I love my colleague David Pierce, but he is hideously wrong about basically every productivity tool because he insists on using a computer. At this point, we have multiple studies showing that writing by hand is better for learning and memory. You want to remember something? Write, don’t type.

And now we will continue with what Altman is doing wrong: most of the rest of it. I am not the world’s biggest fan of spiral-bound notebooks, but if you are going to use them, I recommend a reporter’s notebook. Besides lying flat, a top-bound reporter’s notebook is sized such that you can easily hold it in one hand and write with the other — making it much more convenient and portable than the one Altman is holding, which looks like an A6.

I do not rip pages out of my notebook regularly because I am not deranged

The only real advantage the A6 has is that it might be easier to put in a pocket, which Altman notes as an important quality. I say “might be” because I don’t wear men’s clothes — and women’s pockets are notoriously small or nonexistent. I have spent more time than I care to think about focusing on pockets in my clothing because these fucking phones are too big. But if you can fit a full-size phone in your pocket, I’m pretty sure you can get a reporter’s notebook in there. There is are some other solutions, too. Obviously, a bag. There are also Katherine Hepburn-style trousers, which are in fashion at the moment and have large, capacious pockets. The third possible solution is a shirt jacket, which frequently also feature large pockets.

What Altman is talking about here — writing stuff down, tearing it out of the notebook, crumpling it up when you’re done, and throwing it on the floor so someone else will pick it up — is disposable writing. You can fuss about paper quality when it comes to this type of writing, as he does, but if that’s less important to you, you might consider a stack of index cards held together with a rubber band or binder clip.

The things spiral notebooks have going for them is that they do truly lie flat, and they are fairly cheap. If I am not using a reporter’s notebook, I spring for thread binding, which also lies flat: Leuchtturm1917, either B5 or A5. I do not rip pages out of my notebook regularly because I am not deranged. For those of you who do feel ripping pages out is important, you might consider a notebook with micro-perforations — it’s less mess.

I am not going to fuss too much about high-quality paper because if you are the kind of person who cares about this, you already have strong feelings about Tomoe River vs. Rhodia vs. Clairefontaine. Feel free to get mad that I slighted Midori or whoever in the comments.

If you are doing a lot of hand-writing, you want something that will glide effortlessly on the page

This is all wind-up to the thing Nilay was trying to troll me about: the pens. Altman recommends the Uni-Ball Micro 0.5, which made me hiss. The other Altman recommendation is the “Muji 0.36 or 0.37” in dark blue ink. After some exploration on the Muji site, I think what he means is the Muji Gel Ink Cap Ballpoint Pen in 0.38mm.

Perhaps he simply doesn’t write by hand as much as I do, which is one explanation. (I have spent entire days in courtrooms taking notes by hand, which I expect is not a part of his job brief.) But if you are doing a lot of hand-writing, you want something that will glide effortlessly on the page — otherwise your hand will cramp. This is a Pilot Precise v5 or v7, which is about as good as you can get without moving to a fountain pen.

I am not going to get into the fountain pens question because it, like the paper discussion, is for sickos.

As for the Muji pen: I have not used it, but I am biased against ballpoint pens generally. They are a hand cramp waiting to happen. Ballpoint pens just don’t glide as well, which means you really have to exert effort to get a ballpoint across the page, especially if it’s cheap. That’s what’s making your hand hurt. If you are a lefty and concerned about smears, use something with a quick-drying ink like the Zebra Sarasa. Love yourself. Do not use a biro.

Finally, blue ink is unserious. Use black like an adult.

I do find the video revealing. This is a man who has not carefully considered his tools and expects someone else to pick up after him. That does explain a lot about OpenAI, doesn’t it?

Technology

Tim Cook is donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, too

Published

2 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Tim Cook is donating million to Trump’s inauguration, too

Apple CEO Tim Cook is the next tech exec to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, according to Axios. Cook’s donation follows similar commitments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and Meta as Big Tech companies and executives work to curry favor with the incoming administration.

Cook famously built a personal relationship with Trump during his first term that other tech CEOs are looking to replicate. He was one of many to congratulate Trump after his Election Day victory, and Axios reports that Cook has met with Trump at Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Unnamed sources tell Axios that “Cook, a proud Alabama native, believes the inauguration is a great American tradition, and is donating to the inauguration in the spirit of unity.” Apple is “not expected” to donate to the inauguration. The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

Technology

The step I take to clear my inbox every January

Published

2 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

The step I take to clear my inbox every January

Right now, I’m sitting here beaming because my inbox is empty. Really! Did I read and reply to every single message? Well, no. I’m not an “Inbox Zero” person. Watch this quick video if you have no clue what that means.

Before I took back control, I had 409 unread emails. But I have a trick to starting each year with a clean slate. You can do it, too!

Win a pair of $329 Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Enter here, no purchase necessary!

THE BIGGEST WI-FI MISTAKE YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE MAKING

Clear out your inbox

You could try sorting your emails into a maze of folders, but who has the time for that? Here’s a surprisingly easy fix to start the new year right: Archive your inbox. It’s like a magic wand for your digital clutter!

What’s email archiving, you ask? Picture this: A digital vault where every email you’ve ever sent or received is safely stored, complete with attachments. No more scrolling endlessly through a jam-packed inbox!

So, are you ready to beat the email bloat? Here’s your quickstart guide to mastering your inbox with the power of archiving.

Archiving your inbox is the quickest way to ease your email burden going into the New Year. (Photo Illustration by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

Steps to archive emails in Gmail

Open your Gmail account on a computer and click the Inbox folder on the left.
Above your emails, there’s an empty checkbox. Click the small arrow next to it, and choose All to get the conversations visible on your screen.
To select all emails, click Select all [number] conversations in Inbox, then hit the Archive icon. (It looks like a folder with a downward-pointing arrow.)

Gmail will take some time to process your request, so be patient. You may have to do this step a few times to get everything.

Once you’ve archived a message, you can hit All Mail to the left, under “Inbox” and your other email folders, to find it. Search by a term you know was in the email or by the sender.

Filters 101: How to sort your Gmail like a pro

Using Apple Mail? Here’s what to do

Open the Mail app on your Mac. Look through your inbox or other folders and find those emails you want to stash away. Click on an email to select it, or, if you’ve got a bunch, hold down Cmd and click each one you want to archive.
Got an Archive button (it looks like a small box) on your toolbar? Click that and you’re golden. No button? Click Message at the top, then choose Archive from the dropdown. For a shortcut, hit Ctrl + Cmd + A to send those emails right into your archive.
To see your archived emails, head to the Archive folder in the sidebar under “Mailboxes.” Got more than one email account? Each has its own “Archive” folder.

SCAMMERS ARE TARGETING TEENS WITH THESE NASTY TRICKS

How to archive emails in Microsoft Outlook

Outlook doesn’t put archived messages into a separate folder. Instead, they’ll go straight to a data file you can access whenever you want.

Select File > Cleanup Tools > Archive, then hit Archive this folder and all subfolders. Choose the folder you want to archive (in this case, your inbox).
Under Archive items older than, enter a date. For example, you may want to archive everything from before 2012. Then, check the box that says Include items with “Do not AutoArchive.” Click OK, and you’re good to go.

You’ll see emails disappear from your inbox and subfolders. Find them again under the “Archives” heading.

RELATED: How to make sure emails you want to see don’t end up lost in spam

Photo of a man that opened a phishing email.

You can archive emails in GMail, Outlook, and even Yahoo. (Photo by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

Got a Yahoo email? Here’s what to do

Hold your mouse over Inbox in the left panel, and click the dropdown arrow that appears. From the options, choose Clean Your Inbox.
A pop-up window will appear. Choose Archive emails. Be warned, this might take a while.

Want to take a message out of the archive? Open the “Archive” folder, tap on the email you want and select Restore to Inbox.

Smart tech how-to: Save precious voicemails and text messages

Worried you missed something?

Archiving isn’t the same as deleting. It’s like putting stuff in a storage box. Even if you archive emails, they can be subpoenaed for legal cases. I don’t give legal advice, so consult a lawyer if you have any questions.

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Technology

Answering your questions about AI, smart glasses, TikTok, and more

Published

11 hours ago

January 3, 2025

Press Room

Answering your questions about AI, smart glasses, TikTok, and more

As promised, I’ve got a special mailbag issue this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. Like last year, I picked a handful that hit some of the themes I plan to continue covering in 2025.

I’m really concerned / worried / curious about the near-term future. Between now and 10 years from now, I think it is very clear AI will be replacing many job functions. What are we all going to do?

The leaders at the AI labs say that, yes, there will be job loss, but that doesn’t mean catastrophe. The optimistic take is that humans are creative and will invent new jobs, like they always have when technology changes things. At the moment, there’s also a macro belief among the CEOs driving a lot of the spending on infrastructure for AI that its impact will be deflationary and lead to GDP growth.

Job displacement will still be painful, of course. Sam Altman and others believe that some form of universal basic income will be necessary to offset the economic impacts of AGI. Altman has his other startup, Tools for Humanity, already scanning eyeballs and distributing cryptocurrency. But I think it’s way too early to be seriously concerned. As Altman himself recently said, AGI is going to be declared soon and we probably won’t notice.

How much better is the reasoning on AI models, and is it actually something I should care about?

I know people who have tried ChatGPT’s o1 pro mode and notice a difference. But I haven’t seen anything mind-blowing from o1 or what Noam Shazeer at Google just put out, though perhaps I am a bit jaded by the last two years of AI hype. My advice would be to play with what you can access / afford and see for yourself.

The expense of running these cutting-edge “reasoning” models is currently keeping them at bay for a lot of people. I expect access to widen significantly in 2025. Knowing how to prompt these different kinds of models effectively remains a struggle, and I’d like to see more interface improvements in apps like ChatGPT to help teach people why they should use a reasoning model. An even better move would be to abstract away all these definitions and focus on what tools can do for people.

What kind of outlook do you see for Snap in 2025 and beyond?

Snap’s biggest problem going into 2025 is the same problem it had going into 2024: its business isn’t growing fast enough. The app itself is bigger than ever and growing quickly, but yearly revenue growth last quarter was less than Meta’s. That’s not a compelling pitch to Wall Street when you are already viewed as the underdog. Even with ads being placed in the Chat tab and the new Spotlight redesign slowly rolling out, the jury is out on if the business can rebound to the pace it needs to this year.

A depressed stock price makes it harder to recruit and retain talent, which has become more of a problem for Snap in the last couple of years. I do think the vibe could shift quickly if TikTok does end up being banned in the US or severely hamstrung by a new ownership structure.

I continue to be skeptical of Evan Spiegel’s commitment to hardware with Spectacles. As I’ve written before, his foresight and ambition to build AR glasses is admirable. But Snap looks increasingly outgunned in hardware.

What do you expect from Meta’s glasses in 2025?

There have been a couple of reports recently saying that Meta is planning to ship a pair of smart glasses with a heads-up display this year. I first reported this was going to happen in February 2023. Hypernova, as the product is internally referred to at Meta, will have a viewfinder for interacting with things like Meta AI and notifications.

In my write-up of the Orion prototype, I spent a lot of time on the neural wristband because it’s going to ship with Hypernova as a way to control them (while Orion’s commercial successor is still a couple years out at least). I expect this band to be the part of the glasses that surprises people the most. Using it for the first time feels like magic. As I reported in 2023, Meta is also planning a separate smartwatch as an optional upgrade with the neural capability and more features for health tracking, etc. It’s going to be a very interesting year for Meta on the hardware front.

Is TikTok going to actually be banned?

No one I’ve spoken with who is in a position to know thinks that China will let TikTok be fully divested from ByteDance. The algorithm definitely won’t be sold, but as I’ve explained before, that isn’t as important a factor as it was the last time TikTok was facing a ban.

At the same time, there is too much money and power at stake for TikTok to just disappear. President-elect Donald Trump wants to make a deal. The most likely outcome is a different version of the frankensteinian “TikTok Global” joint venture proposal that ByteDance agreed to back in 2020.

I could see Oracle staying involved this second time given Larry Ellison’s ongoing influence at Mar-a-Lago. ByteDance will most likely continue running TikTok day-to-day while divesting some of its ownership stake. The real wild card in all this, however, is Elon Musk, who has had serious TikTok envy since he bought X…

Are you more bullish or bearish on Google than you were a year ago?

Honestly, bullish. It’s going to be difficult to achieve Sundar Pichai’s 2025 mandate of making Gemini a serious rival to ChatGPT on the consumer side, but Google has a fountain of money, the technical talent, and unrivaled distribution.

The company’s challenge is more of a cultural one. The more you have, the more you have to protect. It’s hard to get such a large, sprawling conglomerate to move fast and not care about the risk of backlash. Pichai seems well aware of this and the threats he faces, though.

Even if Google has to end its Search default payments to Apple (which I predict will be the most likely outcome of the DOJ antitrust case), doing so probably hurt Apple’s bottom line more than Google’s, as Eddy Cue himself argued last week.

Then there’s Waymo, which may end up paying for all of Google’s “other bets” failures over the years — and then some.

What is a good book you recommend that falls in line with the things you report on?

A curse of already reading so much for my job is that I rarely want to spend time on a book. The last book I read in full was The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova, which has nothing to do with tech but is super valuable if you are getting into poker. I enjoyed how her story of becoming a pro player is woven into explaining the technicalities of the game.