Laptops Are Great, But Not During a Lecture or a Meeting - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/22/business/laptops-not-during-lecture-or-meeting.html <comment><USER2> I will sit there in a meeting (or retrospectively in a university lecture) and regularly derive nothing of value at all from my notes, be they written or typed. It's the media that is wrong, not the note taking medium. You can't rewind a meeting or a lecture. You can't pause to think. You can't review the text in the middle. Everything is immediate, transient. If you lose the pace, then everything after that point is wasted.

Lectures and meetings are broken, not the notes.

Now I will tend to write up my own notes in my own time on matters (in Pages for lack of any motivation to try anything else).

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. I went to college before tablets and affordable laptops became ubiquitous, but the same problem applied to handwritten notes. After a few tries to keep notes and re-read them at my leisure I gave up, it was exhausting to take them and in the end I was missing too much.

The best solution is audio/video recording. I think every lecturer can record their lectures and publish them online later in the college's database or wherever. Cheap, easy and you don't have to worry about taking notes and missing anything

<comment><USER4> Yeah I stopped taking notes after I realized I never looked at them. Even when studying for an exam, I'd always make new notes from scratch rather than rewrite or read old ones.

It doesn't work for all classes, but I found that listening closely to the lecture and maybe writing down some main points and then reviewing or studying later worked for me.

<comment><USER5> I'll have to dig for a citation, but I thought the act of writing the notes was educational (helps with retention) in and of itself.

<comment><USER6> I had one professor in college who told us that when she was in undergrad, she would take pages of notes every lecture and then literally throw them in the garbage on her way out of the lecture hall. She just discovered through trial and error that this was the most effective way for her to learn the material. And she did well enough to become a professor at a top-20 institution.

Conversely, I never took notes in her class (or any other), and that didn't stop me from doing well.

The moral of the story is, people are different and find what works for yourself. There are a lot of oddball strategies out there that some people swear by, and I bet it really works for them, but you don't need to try them yourself unless you're unsatisfied with the effectiveness of your current approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be honest, I found lectures to be a complete waste of time at University, with or without a laptop. You could just download the lecturer's slides and speaker notes outside of class and learn the material ahead of exams/coursework.

I managed to come near the top of my class this way with something like 5% attendance at lectures.

I expect this isn't the case in the top Universities, but I left my University thinking I could have just paid to take the exams and self-taught the rest of the material. In hindsight, I was really taking out huge loans for a few years of drinking, socialising and playing video games.

In the working world, I've found meetings to be similarly pointless. 95% of the time I'd rather hash out a problem on an email thread where thoughts are expressed clearly, re-read and understood by others in their own time.

<comment><USER8> I found that the usefulness of lectures depends very strongly on how good the lecturer is, as well as the topic being discussed. When studying physics I found that the lectures were incredibly useful, because it's quite hard to get in the "zone" of understanding the derivation being discussed when at home. However, with mathematics subjects the textbook was almost always a much better learning tool, because the derivation did not require a discussion of the physics that justified said derivation. Computer Science lectures were almost unilaterally a waste of time.

<comment><USER9> I had an engineering mathematics lecture where the lecturer was so bad attending was a _net negative_ , as in, not only did he add nothing to the notes, but his frequent mistakes and side tangents led us down so many useless avenues we'd end up more confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My experience is that the bad professors are almost always the ones to ban laptops. Students pay attention to engaging professors and use their laptops for notes, and those good professors aren't phased by the laptops and rarely ban them.

But When students listen out of one ear and spend the rest of the class processing email, it's almost always an indication that the lecture is poor. That's what I've seen over and over in 7 years of post secondary classes. I don't know much about the professor in the article, but I would suspect improving his lectures will be more effective in helping students learn than banning laptops.

<comment><USER11> I have a counterexample - CMU's 15-112 bans laptops. The professor for it for the previous 8 years, David Kosbie, is one of the most highly regarded professors in the university.

His primary rationale for it is the "externalized cost" effect described in the article, which I can attest is quite true in my experience teaching.

When you look out at a sea of faces, you can see where the laptops are because of the reactions of people _around_ them -- eyes keep flicking involuntarily to the interesting stuff happening on the screen, and then they peel themselves back to the lecture. It amounts to a long sequence of micro- distractions that have a pretty pronounced effect on learning. Humans are very attuned to things like motion, flickering, and changes in their field of view, and those are very present when browsing the web or reading facebook on your laptop in class. Second, laptop screens are backlit, which means that they may be the _brightest_ object in someone's field of view in the class.

Zoning out on a kindle or printed newspaper has much less of an effect on the people around you. I don't care if someone ignores my class -- that's their choice. I used to not ban laptops, but I've become convinced that it's worth it for the _other_ students.

Also, think about the numbers. It's very possible to have a lecture that's very engaging for about 95% of the class (which is a pretty impressive rate all-told). But the remaining 5% have about 10 students each in a field behind them that can see their laptop screen, so a very small number of students goofing off on laptops can have a disproportionate effect on the class.

<comment><USER12> People like Professor Kosbie drive me up the wall. Let me show you why. Here are the notes I took on my tablet PC for a week-long Tandberg TCTE+TMS certification class:

[https://shared.irtnog.org/Tandberg-TCTA-TCTE- TMS.pdf](https://shared.irtnog.org/Tandberg-TCTA-TCTE-TMS.pdf)

Admittedly, it's a big PDF because I didn't bother converting my handwriting to text, but it's still a pretty useful reference when it comes to video conferencing stuff, even though I don't do that kind of work any more.

Now here are my notes that I was forced to take on paper for a week-long ITIL V3 Foundation class, because the instructor thought he knew better than I did on how to learn:

''

Oh that's right, they were on paper, so I can't easily back them up, digitize, and share them. In fact, over the course of several moves, I've managed to misplace both the notebook and the PDF scans. I live and breathe enterprise IT operations management and support. It'd be nice to have more than my memory as a reference, especially since I think ITIL had some useful models for conceptualizing this stuff. None of the official ITIL materials are public, so instead of my curated notes, I have to make do with what I can scrounge off the web. In my mind this wastes the time and money I spent taking the class.

I realize that I am paying for my instructors' knowledge, experience, and insight---that sometimes I won't agree with them but need to trust them regardless. Conversely, as an engaged student I need them to stop actively interfering with the tools and methods that I've developed over my academic and professional career to teach myself and to retain what I've learned.

<comment><USER11> I don't feel like you're hearing my point:

It's not about you. It's about the people _around_ you. But you're right: I'm not willing to let you (bleep) up the educational experience for the people around you, because (in my class), everyone around you has _also_ forked over $60,000 per year to be there.

But it's also about context: 15-112 is not a "dump facts at you" class, which the courses you're describing sound much more like. 112 is an intro to programming course, where half of what happens is in-class demonstration of how to solve problems with programming. Most of the real learning in the class happens in recitation and by students doing a _lot_ of programming with a lot of TA support.

It's also a first-year student course. You're welcome to make a prediction about how many of those 17 and 18-year-old students are actually using their bright distracting shiny to take notes vs. having blingy bleepies popping up on facebook. (Answer: handwav-ily about half, where a lot of students attempt to "multitask" between distractions and note-taking.) I'm pretty happy with a blanket ban, because it improves the net educational outcomes in my classes. _shrug_ (I still allow laptops in my grad classes. I may revisit it, but I figure in general that with experience comes some greater degree of self- control. That's a hunch, not a data-driven conclusion.)

The thread later on about the flipped classroom is the one to really look at for resolving this issue -- it's entirely possible that we should get rid of many of the conventional lectures and replace class-time with structured- activity time (which would involve laptops). The problem, however, is that in most flipped approaches, you have to get the students to watch -- often solo -- a video of the lecture material, and/or solo read it. The number who actually do so is somewhat low, even at a top school. The jury's still a little out, but the potential is high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NY times makes an amazing discovery: being distracted from whatever it is you're trying to do isn't good for productivity.

The idea of 'multitasking' is a foolish thing, and I think most people have discovered now that to be successful at any task you need to focus without distractions. Singletasking is much more productive than multitasking. I might even argue that multitasking isn't possible, since humans can't switch context as fast as computers.

<comment><USER14> Agreed that this seems to be a no-brainer. But then again, if you look at the responses in this thread, apparently it's not a no-brainer to some people.

On the other hand, if you read the article in full, the debate isn't just about distractions and multi-tasking. Even when not being distracted, the use of a laptop to take notes is less effective than hand-writing notes. This is because laptops encourage a note-taking style where you don't necessarily need to actually process the information before typing it out:

> The researchers hypothesized that, because students can type faster than > they can write, the lecturer's words flowed right to the students' typing > fingers without stopping in their brains for substantive processing. > Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material > simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes > of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture > summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the > salient issues discussed in the lecture.

In another study[1], it was found that this happens even when students are warned against this "transcript" style of note-taking.

It all very much depends on the person doing the note taking, the information being taught, _and_ the person doing the speaking, but in general it appears that laptops encourage bad note-taking and bad listening habits that hand- writing notes don't.

1: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by- hand-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-hand-could- improve-memory-wt/)

<comment><USER13> That's why I never take notes. I just give 100% of my focus and retain a lot more information.

<comment><USER14> That's great for some situations (like some college lectures or a daily scrum meeting) but simply doesn't fly in others. At my job, for example, missing a single detail in one of our interviews can be the difference between the success and complete failure of a project. Retaining just "a lot more" of the information isn't enough, you must retain (or record) _all_ of the information. In such situations, note taking is mandatory.

Those are the same situations that encourage the "transcription" style of notes though, which as discussed above, presents its own problems. It's all about finding a balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sick to death of old school instructors making me put my tablet PC away on the assumption that I lack self-control or won't pay attention or can't take good notes. The whole point of a device capable of drawing stuff is the synthesis of digital recording and writing/drawing. Dunno about anyone else but OneNote has made me a way better student as a result, plus it makes my logs and notes available (and shareable) in ways that no paper lab notebook can replicate. By all means let's encourage students to not simply take dictation during lectures, but let's also not simply throw away a great tool in the process.

</comment><comment><USER15> While I worked at Google, laptops @ meeting were pretty much the norm. A note- taker (in our case the oncall person, or build master) would open a Google Docs document, or continue from a long going one (well known to everyone) and start typing notes, agenda, action items. At the same time the rest of the team can join (especially useful, if meeting is happening in more than one room, with people working from home, remote offices, etc.). And everyone can correct, fix, assign, comment.

Now there is a time, when the manager would say - please close your laptops, there is something important, sensitive, etc needs to be discussed.

I've never seen more productive use of them. And the oncall person for the week can respond to alerts, msgs, etc. - the build master person can check updates. I mean technically you can do whatever you like, as long as your attention is not needed.

People can leave if they see that this part of the meeting no longer concern them, or any other reason.

<comment><USER16> I can second this; at Google I've found that meetings are unusually productive because of the practice. For the most part, regular meetings will follow a fairly strict agenda, which keeps them moving and stops them from going off on tangents (not always, sometimes tangents do happen, for better or worse, but I've found that it's for better significantly more often than at previous workplaces). And the presence of laptops helps here -- people can add bullet items to upcoming agenda items to ensure that they are discussed, without having to interrupt the conversation currently in progress, and the use of a single document means that the historical record is easily accessible.

For meetings that are more oriented as design sessions or free-form discussions, the laptops tend to go away because they are not useful in that situation, unless you're at a point where data that can be quickly acquired can be useful.

<comment><USER15> To a degree, the same happens with a design doc - you may start it with a peer, or have manager oversee it, or pull someone from a team, from which you rely on specific technology to gain more confidence for you, and whoever later reads the design doc that all important bits are covered... For example decision to use system A (from your point of view) may be good idea, but owners of system A may no longer support it, or may have in plans to deprecate it soon, but haven't announced it yet, so adding key personnel there would help for sure.

I'm trying this new model at my new workplace, but I'm already seeing pain doing this with Outlook (the desktop version), the Mobile version is much better in this respect, though the comment system need some features, that I got used to (assigning action-items). The other approach would be google for business, but I'm not a decision maker here.

(Or some other cool product - EtherPad?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a former economics professor, I did exactly the same thing these authors were suggesting. While some students did use their technology effectively, the vast majority of whom were just distracted, not to mention probably taking far worse notes.

One small story, I was teaching a class during March one year and I had a student obviously not paying attention. Then, all of a sudden, this student's hands went in the air and an audible "Yes!" came out. I then asked him if there was something important - "Kentucky just won in a buzzer beater!" The vividness of this memory and the difficulty I had in containing my rage is still at the forefront of my mind.

For me, the impact was that while students should be able to do what they want for the most effective solution, it becomes a problem when activities disrupt the learning of the students around them. Someone not paying attention and watching cat videos is infectious as there is a lower percentage of participation and others start to watch the offending student's screen.

My perspective is (although unproven) is that the real reason laptops don't work is because of the temptation to do something else, not necessarily because of the medium.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you want me to remember more than just some big picture, let me write it down. And if you let me write it down, please let me use my tools.

Just teach people how to use tech right, the younger generation is surprisingly much better at this. I have a full screen white on black text editor and turn off the display while not typing (sometimes I even keep it off while typing).

And yea, lectures... just gave me the stream so I can play it at double speed and repeat the interesting parts.

The only things I need paper for are geometry, layout and surprisingly: math. With math for me it's super valuable to keep something like nested contexts. I write things down to free the brain for more, but need to be able to jump back in on demand. Easier on a 2D pane than in a linear way.

With OpalCal/Soulver i tend to do more on the PC though, variables are damn nice.

</comment><comment><USER19> Laptops are tools that can be used to help you with your tasks, or to waste time. I'm sure the article is correct that many people use them poorly, but that doesn't mean banning the tool is the right answer. Maybe training better usage of them would be wise.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not the laptops that are the problem, it's the lectures. Check out flipped classroom [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom) \- watch lectures/read a book/etc on your own time and attend problem solving with teachers / TAs available.

<comment><USER21> Wow! Yes, this seems much better. The key opportunity of being all together in a room is interactivity. Large lectures mostly waste that: the time gap between having a question and getting it answered can be large. (E.g., having to wait until discussion section puts a gap of hours to days between the Q and the A.)

But when I'm trying to apply the material, I'm not in passive listening mode. There, hopefully my feedback loop with the material is in the seconds-to- minutes range. If I'm stuck, being able to get a question answered can keep me in the zone of fast learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Student here.

200 people in a class, I can't even get my questions answered. True story, miss one sentence, and you're lost at a point of no return. It makes sense for me to learn it on my own pace outside of class and visit during office hours. Let me use my laptop in class so that I can still continue to be productive during the hour. (doing other work)

Whether I take notes or not should be up to me as a student. Banning electronics does not guarantee learning. If I don't want to learn/listen, then I won't. You can take a horse to the water, but you can't get it to drink.

<comment><USER23> From the article: "The strongest argument against allowing that choice is that one student's use of a laptop harms the learning of students around them. In a series of lab experiments, researchers at York University and McMaster University in Canada tested the effect of laptops on students who weren't using them. Some students were told to perform small tasks on their laptops unrelated to the lecture, like looking up movie times. As expected, these students retained less of the lecture material. But what is really interesting is that the learning of students seated near the laptop users was also negatively affected."

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material > simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes > of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture > summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the > salient issues discussed in the lecture.

This seems to be the key point -- when taking notes by hand, you have to think about what you're hearing and writing down. In a way, you're translating the lecturer's language to your own, and that seems to help retain the information better.

<comment><USER25> There's no reason why one can't type notes the same way as well, first listening and understanding before distilling that information into a few choice sentences.

I find writing better because you can freely draw on your lecture notes. The benefit is twofold: one, you don't have have to slavishly transcribe everything your professor says if it's already in the slides. Two, the mental overhead is very low as your thoughts go straight from pen to paper.

If you type from scratch, you end having having to 'transcribe'. If you annotate the slides on your laptop, you have to deal with the high overhead of textbox and geometric shape manipulation with a keyboard and trackpad.

If my lectures didn't have so much diagrams or equations(unlikely in an engineering major), I think a purely text based notetaking software like org- mode would be pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have never been able to stay awake in lectures. _Never_. Being able to have a laptop in class helped me stay awake, and get through graduate school.

I'll never ban them in my classes. Students know what they need.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have long known this to be the case for myself, and switched back to pen and paper for taking notes. I also learned shorthand to reduce the amount of time and mental effort I spend on taking notes, though I sometimes revert to longhand when I need something to be more readable. It is also great for diagrams, math notation, etc. Touchscreens may someday get there, but so far I have found that even the best touchscreens/tablets (yes, even the iPad Pro) still wind up slowing me down.

<comment><USER28> Research on disfluency implies that you might be better off with longhand after all. Increasing the mental effort in taking the notes has a positive effect on how well people absorb material (subject to a few caveats).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think it's better to take notes with a pen and paper, because you need to summarize what you hear, and you can't just write everything.

This helps a lot the learning process, because summarizing makes you understand better the content, and the relations between concepts

</comment><comment><USER30> I always allowed laptops in my lectures. I encouraged the kids to google things and challenge me when they thought me wrong. If i was unsure of a fact id have them look it up. That back-and-forth kept them engaged, and made my life much easier. If your lecture isnt more interesting than facebook you have to up your game.

<comment><USER31> Education isn't entertainment.

That's not to say it _cannot_ be entertaining, at times, but there's also a lot of POHW: plain old hard work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This story was posted 5 times within the past 3 days (never by me). I was wondering why it never took off because it's one of those HN stories. Anyway, Monday morning at 7am EST seemed to do the trick.

For anyone wondering why their stories don't initially gain traction, timing is important.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's pretty common where I work to bring laptops to meetings. If the meeting is engaging they close, and sometimes in deep meetings they are asked to be closed. In other meetings it helps to have many hands on keyboards updating the sprint board in jira and entering new tasks, or the meeting is rolling attention and people are there and do work until they are needed by the meeting. This is often what happens in all hands on deck situations or launches.

People who are holding meetings where I work realize when they're wasting time and generally dismiss people if they're not needed and everyone is generally free to just leave if the meeting isn't of use to them.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interesting how many people prefer videos, my experience is that some professors are bad but the others are good, you can skip writing notes and just listen and later xerox the notes from others or get the book from the library. The advantages or the lectures is that you can ask questions, the professor gets feedback and provide more examples then needed, the professors will tell some interesting side story that you will remember it forever and it will help you remember the concepts. I am wondering if the people that hate lectures are more likely to have paid for the university studies so maybe they resent the entire institution and prefer learning from internet.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am not sure about meetings since I do not have much experience with them. But if you do not want people to use laptops during lectures 1\. Record your lectures and make them available later (course website, internal network anywhere). 2\. Create PDF of your own notes and distribute them BEFORE lecture. 3\. Ideally, though this is a huge amount of work, so not always possible, write down in detail the steps in your lecture like a book chapter and distibute this BEFORE lecture. Alternatively, assign a book chapter pre- reading.

In short, if you want people to pay attention to the content during the lecture, remove the incentive to take notes during the lecture.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oddly, I've found that I pay better attention if I use a laptop during a meeting, but not for taking notes. Rather I will either lightly browse related information, or look for the answer to a question that pops in my mind. It can't be intense usage, but just simple. It seems to keep my mind more alert and I'm able to absorb the meeting better. I also can tune out if they are talking about something I already know. If I don't have a laptop or phone, I tend to zone out or fall asleep.

On the other hand, I get pissed if someone is in my meeting using a laptop and isn't paying attention at all. It's a weird thing.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am reading the book "Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint (2012)" on the iPad

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15745202)

and it seems that PowerPoint kind of "solved" the first half of interactive classroom information exchange: presentation (output). Note taking (with laptop or tablet) can be think of as the second half of the problem (input).

Perhaps we need to rethink the challenge of "realtime face-to-face group interactive information exchange" in a more integrated way and come up with more revolutionary solutions.

</comment><comment><USER38> I prefer a notebook to a laptop in business meetings, but then I have to spend time afterward transcribing the notes so I can share them (something expected at my workplace).

I'm experimenting with using Evernote on a tablet computer along with a Bluetooth keyboard. So far this is working well - there's no laptop screen separating me from my colleagues, I can sketch diagrams and the notes are instantly available.

I have no disagreement that paper is better for learning. Computers were first starting to be available in lectures when I was an undergrad, and while I could type like mad I wouldn't retain as much information.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's unfortunate to see laptops conflated with "all electronics" here. I benefitted greatly from using SoundNote on an iPad in grad school, which allowed me to make recordings of lectures that I could then annotate in real time. Rather than taking a transcript or feeling I had to record all key concepts, I could stick to noting where in the lecture was an especially important concept, or where I had spaced out and should re-listen. More valuable than any written notes I could have taken.

</comment><comment><USER40> It seems like the more obvious conclusion from the facts stated in the article would be: lectures are more efficient when people can dedicate their brain to understanding the content instead of having to write down everything being said/shown. I never understood why some lecturers thought that making students write things down would be a good way to teach them anything. Certainly did not work for me. I got much more value from mentally following the lecture and thinking about the topic.

</comment><comment><USER41> For a very long time in university, I never took notes and suffered nothing for it. Near the end, the only exceptions were classes taught from very succinct paper material where a lot of supplementary examples were only treated in lectures and so complicated as not to be (easily) found on the internet.

Beyond that I always got a much better return on paying more attention to the lecture, and trying to see how what is told fits with what I know rather than how to fit it into my notes.

</comment><comment><USER42> I have such terrible attention problems that I have secretly recorded just about every class, meeting, and discussion in the last ten years. Legalities and ethics aside, afterward I'll listen and make detailed notes, then depending on the content, destroy or keep the audio. The legalities and ethics will always trouble me but without the audio I get very lost. The medium has never made a difference, nor the delivery method.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think an effective strategy depends highly on the subject matter. Also, appropriate use of technology by the lecturer makes a huge difference.

For mathematics (my field) or something similar like theoretical physics, the pace at which the lecturer can write on a blackboard with a piece of chalk is just about the right information rate for the audience to absorb. Not to say one cannot teach well using more modern media, but it has to be done with careful thought and planning to be effective. (Same applies to lecturing at the board; we just have more practice at it.)

As for note-taking, I used to write everything down in class when I was in college & grad school. Sometimes this worked, sometimes not -- what's right for a course in abstract algebra isn't going to be right for a course in computational neuroscience. What I think is very effective, but requires some discipline, is: \- take minimal notes (or even photos) in class \- reconstruct lecture after class \- go to office hours and clear up any questions that arise. It would be hard to do this for everything. For the subjects you really care about, this might be a useful approach.

</comment><comment><USER44> I didn't get much value from notes until I started using fountain pens and focusing on my penmanship. Once I did, I had to slow down and take more concise notes to avoid falling behind, which in turn lead to my needing to actually understand what was being presented so I could write it in fewer words instead of just writing down key points verbatim.

</comment><comment> another-dave I think banning laptops is a good idea, but I think it should be coupled with other study aids, like fully recorded lectures to let students learn in their own way.

One of the best lecturers I had at university passed round a printed copy of the lecture summary at the start, allowing students to concentrate on making their own notes & transcribing the lecture that the article talks about.

Many, many other lecturers objected though to lectures being recorded (by individual students, e.g. dictaphone, we didn't have campus-wide video/audio recording).

Most meetings are completely different beasts to lectures, I think — e.g. if you have ten people round a table in a room, people should be participants not audience members; the dynamic is completely different. That said, I would agree with banning laptops from meetings for the most part!

</comment><comment><USER45> Little late, but my two cents as someone who majored in a humanities field (although working in tech now):

Our lectures were almost always intended to be heard after doing the readings. They were comprised of helpful info professors knew from academic experience, not easily found in any print material. Relevant historical context was especially hard to pick up without knowing what exactly to look for.

I felt like my humanities lectures were more analogous to demos and labs in my STEM courses, learning that relies on a certain spontaneity and physical presence, even if not all of the material is strictly "necessary". As for a counterpart to my STEM lectures, I too would've been bored out of my mind listening to most humanities professors read our readings to us...

</comment><comment><USER46> I took notes in college in org-mode on a little eeepc and graduated summa. Instead of banning laptops to cater to the least common denominator, why not just tell the kids not to surf the web during lectures? Have the TA sit in the back of the class or make a video recording from the back if it's a problem.

It's hard not to imagine that the ones who surf the net on their laptops are the same ones who would be busy doodling in their notebooks otherwise.

And I'm not too sure about the study they cite that claims that other people are distracted. The assumption seems to be that people using laptops are ipso facto on Youtube and Twitter all the time. And the questionnaires they gave the test subjects beforehand practically begged them to be distracted during the test.

<comment><USER14> It's not just about distractions. Laptops also encourage a note taking style where you simply are transcribing every word that the lecturer says. This is a less effective way to learn material, as you can go on "auto pilot" where the words flow from your ears to your fingers without you really having to synthesize any information or really understand it. Studies[1] have shown that this happens even when students are warned against doing this.

Hand-writing notes, on the other hand, encourages you to process the information you are hearing and summarize it into your own words, improving understanding and memory of the information.

Anecdotally, my entire school (the business school at UT Austin) banned laptops in all classrooms, and I think it was hugely beneficial to my understanding of the materials. In other, non-business classes that allowed laptops, I tended to have to spend a lot longer re-reading my notes and textbooks before I felt like I really understood the information.

1: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by- hand-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/taking-notes-by-hand-could- improve-memory-wt/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > The researchers hypothesized that, because students can type faster than > they can write, the lecturer's words flowed right to the students' typing > fingers without stopping in their brains for substantive processing. > Students writing by hand had to process and condense the spoken material > simply to enable their pens to keep up with the lecture. Indeed, the notes > of the laptop users more closely resembled transcripts than lecture > summaries. The handwritten versions were more succinct but included the > salient issues discussed in the lecture.

I mean, that's possible, but my experience is if I'm using my laptop during a lecture I'm more likely to start surfing the Web and not pay attention to the lecture.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm so glad that I attended university before it was the done thing for students to be on laptops during lectures. If nothing else, it's simply a distraction to have all the other peoples' bright and animated screens in your field of vision.

<comment><USER49> >> I'm so glad that I attended university before it was the done thing for students to be on laptops during lectures.

I'm also glad I finished before laptops (and even www) became a thing.

For me, the clicking and clacking of the keyboards would drive me bonkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I don't think taking notes is the most important part of learning from a lecture. For me, throughout the years, actively participating in lectures through asking questions or discussing the concept being talked about, either with the lecturer or the person I'm sitting beside. Compared to taking notes, this has lead to me gaining a deeper understanding than when writing or typing everything that is being said during the meeting or the lecture. Usually, the only things I write down in meetings and lectures are words or concepts I don't already understand so I can research those later, or specific tasks that I am going to do as a result of the meeting or lecture.

<comment><USER51> I've never understood the thing about taking notes myself (mind you I never did any higher education); what is the lecture explaining that isn't in the textbook? The textbook should be all the notes and information you need, maybe supplemented with online; not keeping notes will allow you to focus on the lecture itself, which should be an extra on top of the book.

<comment><USER14> The actual act of taking the information and processing it into your own words, and then also the act of actually writing those words down, has been shown to improve memory retention and understanding of that information over what you would get from simply reading the same information in a textbook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The idea that we can't use laptops in meetings is outdated. You can do active listening while taking notes, as long as you practice good note-taking instead of verbatim transcription. I typically use a concept-mapping tool such as CMapTools from the great folks at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Florida. That lets me capture the essential concepts from the meeting and the relations among those concepts.

<comment><USER14> One of the arguments against laptops is that even when people are aware of the fact that they shouldn't take verbatim transcriptions, they still tend to do so when using laptops. Hand-writing notes tends to make it almost impossible to write verbatim transcriptions, which forces active listening and processing the information as it comes in.

It's very much a "YMMV" thing, as it's certainly _possible_ to take great notes and listen well while using a laptop, but for the average person, laptops encourage bad meeting/lecture habits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Btw, an executive at Twitter did this. And well, it seems like it's working well: [http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired- workplace/2017/11/...](http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired- workplace/2017/11/twitter-executive-banished-laptops-his-meeting-and- reactions-were-excellent/142367/)

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't remember needing to take notes for any lecture I've been in.

Either the lecture was designed to take "notes", i.e. the prof would literally explain and write a nice recap on the board that he wanted us to copy.

Or we got prints of the slides, where we could just add a few comments were needed.

Or we just got a printed "textbook" that the prof wrote, and the lecture was just to get an overview and see which parts are important...

</comment><comment><USER55> If I have my laptop or phone our during a meeting it's because I've either already had this meeting with whoever if giving out the information and don't need to pay full attention to it or I'm in a meeting that I shouldnt be in because I have nothing to add.

I assume everyone else is the same way and It's a really easy way to tell who does and doesnt need to be in future meetings for me.

</comment><comment><USER56> I used OneNote with a microphone on my 2003 PC Tablet. Syncing my lecture notes with my the professor was amazing in Graduate School.

I searched my notes for test and the audio of the professor was right there.

Had to repeat Art History and do a Freshman Course due to a mess up from the registrar's office = Civ 3 but still got an A.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've found (full-sized) tablets to work out better in these environments than laptops. Both in terms of focused-usage as a information recording or reference/retrieval tool, and the favorable reception it gets from other participants when used for such purposes.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm at university and often find myself ignoring the lecturer and reading through the slides in my own time, making my own notes. The only reason I show up is because the lecturers often give extra information they don't put on the slides, so I always keep an ear open.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't mind laptops being used in meetings, so long as their use is relevant to the meeting. But I find it highly distracting when somebody is pounding away on a keyboard while paying no attention to what the rest of us in the room are trying to accomplish.

</comment><comment><USER60> In a digital age, where we should be recording lectures, we still talk about the merits of note taking (whatever medium) vs. learning.

I agree the value is in the teaching itself and learning in the moment; however, I would still like to go back and access that lecture/class.

</comment><comment><USER61> I think my preference is a table with a stylus followed by pencil and paper over a computer. I never found computers to be useful in meetings but something I can write on and get handwriting recognition has been useful for me.

</comment><comment><USER62> I dislike the style of note taking described in the article, i.e. mindlessly writing down what the professor is saying. I don't believe however that this is necessarily tied to typing rather than writing with pen and paper. I have a lecture where no notes or textbook is provided and it is required that you copy everything written on the board. Personally I'm not great at writing fast, so I usually lag behind a bit with writing which makes it that much harder to follow along with what the professor is saying. In a situation like this, writing with pen and paper may be worse than typing (except the specific course I'm talking about is maths and short of writing LaTeX in real time, handwriting is necessary).

From my personal experience as a student the most effective way for me to take notes is to annotate existing material, i.e. slides or lecture notes. In some classes where material is available beforehand that would be possible by printing it all, bringing it to class, annotating it and then digitalizing it again to make it searchable (and create backups). However I feel this is highly inefficient and a massive waste of paper. Suppose there are roughly 60 slides per lecture, 8 lectures a week across courses and I can get roughly 4 slides on a sheet of paper in such a way that I can work with them comfortably; that is 120 pages of paper a week!

For many lectures where material is not provided in advance, but only at the beginning of the lecture, presumably to prevent students to only selectively attend the lectures it would be impossible to work in the way I find to be best for me.

That is not to say, the problems described in the article don't exist. I remember many instances of people browsing social media rather than following the lecture. Ignoring any detriment it has on themselves (it is their choice to not pay attention after all) we are left with the negative impact it has on others.

As I outlined in another comment, there are approaches to combating this that I feel to be more appropriate than a blanket ban. One is to have people using electronic devices to sit somewhere else, usually behind people not using them, so they can only distract other people using electronic devices. This offers people the choice of either using their devices and being potentially exposed to visual noise or not use them and be free from these distractions.

I also had a professor that disallowed electronic devices for everything but slides of the lecture and related material. I can only hypothesize how he managed to do this consistently, but I believe he was able to tell by the expressions on peoples' faces and if people sitting nearby stole glances at other screens.

</comment><comment><USER63> I bought an iPad Pro 2 this september and it immediately replace my laptop for meetings. Light computing when I need it, but primarily a note-taking advice. Really great.

<comment><USER64> What software do you use on the iPad? I also have one but have things scattered between Nebo, GoodNotes, Apple Notes, Bear, Pages, and Evernote. I really need to pick the best app and focus everything there, but each one has different strengths.

<comment><USER63> yeah they're all kidna terrible. I started a roundup review but gave up due to costs of downloading each app.

I've settled so far on Linea. It has plenty of problems but hit my key points. I was aiming for a paper-like experience to replace my favorite tools: a technical pen/pencil and a nice graph paper pad.

\- Use finger to erase (like a whiteboard). \- Focus mode with no toolbars / chrome. \- Good-looking graph paper background. \- Technical pens and pencils. \- Zoomable.

All the apps have layers - that's table stakes. Linea does NOT allow you to make selections and move components individually. I think I might do better design work with a few technical restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I studied computer science while WoW was hyped.

Many students sat in the back row and played it in the lectures.

</comment><comment><USER66> Dear NYTimes, please write a story in why Laptops are great and why meetings suck.

</comment><comment><USER67> Actually laptops in a meetings can be useful as they can replace a lot of paper.

<comment><USER67> Really down voted ever worked in properly run organisations with proper procedures ISO 9000 or BS 7570? even more so in parliamentary based orgs having to lug around 4 or 5 ring binders of paper gets old quickly

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> If the professor is really interesting, why would someone look into a laptop?

</comment><comment><USER69> The problem here lies not with the laptops or with their use. It lies with the continued existence of such radically and absurdly inefficient and pointless traditions as 'lectures' and 'meetings'. They were started because physical co-location was necessary for knowledge transmission. Physical co-location is no longer necessary for, and indeed is severely hampering of, knowledge transmission.

Anyone who proposes an in-person meeting is planning to abuse the frailties of human biology rather than meet with you honestly. They intend to use bluster and charm to convince you of ostensibly objective claims - and it will probably work. It usually does. That's one of the reasons they fight so hard to avoid being put on an actual even playing field where their ideas must stand or fall solely on their own merits.

<comment><USER11> [Citation needed]

Here's a competing citation that disagrees with you and suggests that people pay more attention in-person: [https://www.maritzmotivation.com/~/media/Files/MaritzInstitu...](https://www.maritzmotivation.com/~/media/Files/MaritzInstitute/White- Papers/The-Case-for-Face-to-Face-Meetings-The-Maritz-Institute.pdf)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Crowdsourced Object Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://www.crowdsend.com/

<comment><USER3> This is a really cool idea and I'm glad someone's doing it. Have you considered talking to Amazon about it? It's definitely in their best interest for products to be easily identifiable, and they're already doing work on it in a different way with Price Check[1].

Unfortunately there are other companies with a strong incentive to make identifying specific products as difficult as possible[2]. And clothing companies have never been good about sticking with a specific product anyway. I got a Ralph Lauren suit last year that I liked enough to consider ordering another one, but they had already stopped making that style. Maybe dresses or something I could understand, but men's suits?

If you can't buy a product even if you can identify it, then what's the point? Do you have any thoughts on how to get around this problem? One idea that comes to mind is that you could use your data to build a ranking of how long clothing companies (or any companies) stick with their products. I'd certainly find it useful.

Best of luck!

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pri...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pricecheck)

[2] [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457717...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577177242516227440.html)

<comment><USER4> thanks for the comment mate!

yeah - we currently actually work with a heap of retailers and we do match to where you buy them - we've around 90 or so at the moment (love to get your thoughts on <http://about.crowdsend.com>).

publishers can do a bunch of stuff too - but we think the bigger problem rests with the community than with publishers.

basically once a product's been identified then we match it to a bunch of retailers if we can find it!

<comment><USER5> Love the idea, sent through a beta invite request. Not sure about the fade in on the images on about.crowdsend I find it a bit annoying combined with scrolling - its like having two transitions on a powerpoint slide.

<comment><USER4> thanks mate. yeah i tried playing with that a bit - the idea was to stop people reading ahead so they focus on the content they are viewing and don't skip stuff

i can totally appreciate its annoying. kinda tough how to balance it

<comment><USER5> Yeah I can't think of any tricks that would work better for that. Although I think letting people skip through the way they normally read sites would be a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I tried to put those slide buttons on the right side to help with that prob but ill try to think how to fix what you mention. Thanks heaps for the feedback

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey Guys,

Thanks for checking out our product. Been working hard on it to resolve the problem of object recognition and trying to produce something thats different to what's out there right now.

If you know anyone that want's to help or get involved - love to speak to them or if you want an invite just let me know and I'll send it right now.

Love your feedback on <http://about.crowdsend.com> too if you can! Open to anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Btw, Tim's from Australia and has been staying at my house in Los Altos for a month or so. Gotten to know him well, great guy and fantastic front-end hacker.

We've been working together putting some finishing touches on CrowdSend. I think it's going to be a winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting product. What's the incentive for someone to do the research to figure out what's in an image?

<comment><USER7> I deal a bit with arty types, and they tend to pride themselves on being able to identify products, along with designers and quoting how many hundred $'s something "costs"

I think it's a bit like nerds and bragging rights in being able to produce good explanations for difficult technical questions. Along that line of thinking, perhaps a stackoverflow karma / community recognition style system might be enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Really cool concept mate, congrats! Keep up the good work. One small feedback - The photo of the guy on the frontpage looks more like Justin Beiber (I thought it was him, for a second) :D Other than that, everything else is perfect!

Cheers, Good luck!

<comment><USER4> thanks mate :) been a lot of work to get here and its only the start!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a (mostly) non-consumer myself using this doesn't really interest me but I can see how the Pinterest crowd would love it as well as the businesses who make the products.

Do you automate some of the product identification or is it only by users?

<comment><USER4> At the moment - we are just focusing on getting data together from users which has been a fair bit of work. We do some automation in the background - <USER2> we're bootstrapped so its all what time we have!

We think being able to ask what something is and getting a response from a community is something thats a bit different in the image space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great idea. Make a mobile app with an incentive so people can ID images to waste time. Focus on fine tuning an algorithm by checking against what people say and we could be on our way to making a really good image processor.

<comment><USER4> yeah thats in the works at the moment mate. great idea with the algorithm

we're totally bootstrapped so just trying to get the web app sorted at the moment and then we'll get that out!

<comment><USER11> you could do a game. i've seen people getting really addicted to those iOS logo ID games.

for the incentives, just use something like kiip.

<comment><USER4> yeah we've got a few ideas but at the moment we are just trying to figure out the best way to do it! thanks for the comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats on launch! Not to spoil your party, there is another startup that is working in the similar space - www.luminate.com

What will be the primary use case of your product?

<comment><USER4> What we solve - which we think is the biggest problem - is being able to ask what is inside an image.

You as a user, can grab any image, from any website - and ask what is inside it and others can help you. That's what we believe is the biggest problem.

The problem isn't arriving at an image and knowing - its arriving and not knowing. Luminate (and others) require the publishers to tag - however what if you arrive at some website (like the entire of instagram as one tiny example) and want to know what's in an image - where do you go ? Google - nope. That's just similar images they don't tell you any more. Luminate won't help you either.

So that's the difference - luminate and everyone else doesn't actually help you solve a problem as you surf the web.

Love to give you a preview if you're interested - we've done all this bootstrapped. We are only in beta so there will be bugs!

<comment><USER5> Not to mention rolling over something in luminate pops up a lightbox that obscures the image and has to be closed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I dragged a box over the ipod demo image and tried to identify as an ipod. It told me it couldn't find anything called "ipod"?

<comment><USER4> yeah sorry - the server is getting smashed at the moment - have to free up some mem!

but let me know what browser so i can double check ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really Google doing something like this a long while ago. They turned it into a game of some mind. (My memory fails me)

<comment><USER4> Yeah but we are a bit different in our approach and the way we are trying to resolve it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome man, I would like to integrate it on my Website and my iOS/Android app. Hope you guys open the API soon. <3

</comment><comment><USER16> good luck, mate! Loving to be behind the scenes :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Good luck men, great idea.

<comment><USER4> thanks a heap. if you're after an invite just let us know</comment></comment>


Joel on Software: Exploding Offer Season - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html

<comment><USER2> I interned at Apple Summer of 2006. I got great reviews and they even asked me to work part-time during the school year, I agreed and mentioned that we can figure out the whole full time thing later (i.e. what group I would work in - I really wanted to work on Apple TV, iTunes, etc...).

Then, one day, I was asked to come into my manager's office. She said "Congratulations, here's your full time offer!" I saw the deadline of 9/11 (2 weeks) and asked if I could have an extension. She quickly said that everyone was expecting that I would sign today and there is no way she can extend it. The recruiter also told me that she couldn't extend it and that she "didn't care about my school's rules." I went to my career counselor to see if he could make something happen (The offer was ok but all my friends got offered at least 10% more - and the recruiter said the don't negotiate).

Then I get a call from my manager, she asks me to come to the office. I walk in, she says "We're going to have to rescind the offer and ask that you stop working part time." It was pretty traumatic, couldn't even check-in my latest work - just had to pack my things and leave - I was actually fired!

Next spring applied to Y-combinator, got rejected...I now work for a search engine in Mountain View, CA where they not only gave me my best offer but gave me a 20% raise within my first year. Still, I wish I had a chance to work full-time at the mothership in Cupertino.

<comment><USER3> I truly would believe that some companies like this one really don't fit in with the fake pushing of deadlines. They believe that they really are _the_ company to work for, nay, not just a company, but a movement. If you don't want to give it all up for the idea, then they don't want you. That's the kind of thing to stay away from, unless you really do believe in the idea, whether its your own or someone else's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly off-topic, but another really important thing to consider when evaluating offers is the IP agreement: Make sure that you retain your rights to work that you do on your own time.

If you're not careful, you might inadvertently sign away all title to that cool little startup that you get going on the side. As a corollary, just because "everybody signs the same contract," it doesn't mean that yours can't be different -- but make sure it's changed before you sign.

<comment><USER5> Truly. The converse is also true, it has got companies into trouble when these companies offer great opportunities ( names, tasks, relationship, etc ) to students, these students or their professors start to get really cheesy...

nasty stuffs.. IP, lots of companies/people learnt their lessons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a simple approach - just say yes to exploding offers. Then, when you get the better offer, you can send the other employer an "exploding neg".

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't that be an imploding neg, for symmetry?

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's much better!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any college students that don't know this? I think Joel's growing old :)

But, here's what I think is going to happen during this recruiting cycle, the big name companies will stay on hiring freezes but still go to campus, some people will get offer letters that are later rescinded. Happened during '01-'03 and will happen again. Not sure about the smaller profitable companies, I don't think they'll hire at all, as sales cycles grow longer and revenues drop.

Great way to pitch Fog Creek's internships though.

<comment><USER9> _Are there any college students that don't know this? I think Joel's growing old_

Yes. For a lot of college students-- probably a majority of those aiming for private-sector corporate work, since it seems to be the default for the unimaginative-- the "job problem" is this annoying project that emerges in the senior year. Because it's an annoying project, as little time should be spent on it as possible, at least during the "golden years" of college.

Even the college students who are relatively "on the ball" have very little experience with the job search process and generally don't know what to expect.

<comment><USER10> There is also an information gap here. If you're a typical American middle class undergraduate:

1) You have negligible work experience at anything even close to important.

2) Your social circle is 100% composed of people who have as little experience as you, or less.

3) Your adult mentors are mostly university professors. They operate in a very quixotic labor market, mistakenly believe the rest of the world operates the same way, and often have the business sense of a tadpole. Not a particularly intelligent tadpole, either.

4) The only gainfully employed adults you know outside of academia are your parents, and you have never discussed job searching with them. That may be as well, since they have not been on the fresh meat labor market for a few decades, and they are not in your industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's a quite legitimate reason to use exploding offers (beyond the implied "bad" reasons Joel cites): to ensure that companies get exactly the number of college hires that they want.

If you've got budget for "no more than 20" and a real desire to hit 20 on the dot, then it's entirely rational (and I think reasonable) to extend exploding offers to your top 30 candidates, and then as the prior offers expire or are turned down, to extend offers to the "waitlist". It's not particularly different from the college admissions process, or a season ticket renewal process, daycare/pre-school admissions waitlisting, or any other means of efficiently allocating limited resources over a period of time, and is certainly not inherently evil.

<comment><USER12> If people were merely assets then I might agree with this, but they are not, they are _people_. They are people who one day you will work with, have lunch with, and maybe have over to your house on the weekend for a BBQ. As such, I find that for my own sense of worth I need to know that I treated them like people from when I first met them.

There is a risk trade-off: risk of missing your target vs. risk of making people feel like an asset. I'd rather miss my target by a little bit..

<comment><USER11> That's one legitimate viewpoint, but on the flipside, realize that I truly believe I work for (and represent) a fantastic employer, and that everyone on the waitlist who needlessly ends up working someplace else in the parallel universe, in which we didn't use exploding offers, has been "harmed" by that outcome.

IMO, it's not just about treating your first choice potential employee as a person, but about treating your last choice potential employee as a person too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Replace "recruiter" with "venture capitalist", "college student" with "entrepreneur", and "offer" with "term sheet" and you have an equally valid essay.

<comment><USER14> Same asymmetric relationship where stronger leverage strength to increase the asymmetry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would this be the right place to advice a bit of caution against tech companies that institute psychometric tests??

"would you run over a lady crossing a street? Yes, No, Maybe!"

Cant believe I didnt see that warning sign!!

<comment><USER16> The correct answer is "Yes", right?

<comment><USER15> well it depends... the cost of cleaning up your car and the legal costs vs the outright satisfaction... choices, choices!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Joel is still an amazing writer, regardless of how relevant his topics are these days.

I can't help but to instantly read anything I see that pops up in my inbox from him.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like patent lawyers more than I like tech recruiters. Really. The ones I hate the most are the guys that call up a company directory and dial every extension pretending like they have a relationship with you. I want to sue one of those guys for harassment or something one day.

<comment><USER19> Don't sue them...toy with them. Waste their time. Make them call you back, put them on hold, string them along, then disappear. Like car salesmen, unethical recruiters have a high tolerance for rude behavior. The only way that you make an impact is by hurting their paycheck.

(I used to date a recruiter who did cold calls like this. She could handle any type of rejection, but she _hated_ it when a candidate played her. Every time she would rant about it, my faith in the world was restored.)

<comment><USER13> Genius, scambaiting salespeople and recruiters.

We need a variant of 419eater.com for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Eh. There are other reasons for an exploding offer. One is that companies don't want to get into a bidding war, so they offer a tradeoff: accept a certain offer, or find someone else willing to engage in a bidding war.

If you had exactly two job opportunities, and they were willing to negotiate _down_ ("Oh, you'll take $80K? Great. $75K is the most we can do"), you'd probably want to use an exploding offer, too.

</comment><comment><USER15> gees where was this 10 years ago when I got "tricked" into working for a telco... was an absolute waste of 3 years of my time... i had cancelled another interview at a really fine tech company to avoid the uncertainty...

ok again "tricked" is harsh as it was still my choice, prepared or not... well live and learn!!

</comment><comment><USER21> Perhaps there is a market for an agent who can negotiate salary and benefits once you've been offered a job.

In theory, the agent will be experienced and can go toe-to-toe with the recruiter on your behalf.</comment>


Biggest Explosions in the Universe Powered by Strongest Magnets - <AUTHOR> http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1527/

<comment><USER2> I'm still not clear on the process they're describing. According to the article, a Supernova was "powered by the decaying super-strong magnetic fields around an exotic object called a magnetar". This is what caused the ultra-long GRB.

What I'm wondering is, was the object a Magnetar, prior to the Supernova? In which case, the prospect of a Magnetar going nova is pretty novel in and of itself. Or, was the Magnetar created during the nova? In which case, the ultra-long GRB was the result of creating a magnetar.

<comment><USER3> _> Or, was the Magnetar created during the nova?_

Yes, it's a neutron star with an exceptionally strong magnetic field. Under the right conditions, a star collapsing into a neutron star can become a dynamo-like object. The magnetic field lines around a magnetar constantly twist and turn, and sometimes a large amount of energy builds up and ultimately gets released that way.

Magnetars are rare, mainly because they last only a very short time (a couple of thousands of years, we believe), after that they're pretty much ordinary neutron stars.

 _> What I'm wondering is, was the object a Magnetar, prior to the Supernova?_

Stars do have pretty strong magnetic fields in general. This has nothing to do with magnetars, but consider that solar flares happen when plasma from the star gets trapped in magnetic loops that are then suddenly released.

<comment><USER2> Right, magnetars are neutron stars, which are produced during supernovae. So, what is it about this event that makes it unique (i.e. produce ultra-long GRB).

According to Wikipedia (thx tvmalsv!), ~10% of supernovae produce a Magnetar. However, the article states that only 1 in 10,000 - 100,000 supernovae will produce an UL-GRB. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar)

I see two options: 1) This was a star going nova, producing a Magnetar with a particularly strong magnetic field or 2) This was a Magnetar whose magnetic field decayed to the point that it caused a massive explosion/release of energy from the object.

Curious that they didn't explain this better, or perhaps I'm missing something obvious here.

<comment><USER3> I think the misunderstanding might come from the fact that a Magnetar produces many gamma ray bursts over thousands of years until it finally runs out of energy, but a supernova is a completely different process which happens only once per star.

 _> So, what is it about this event that makes it unique (i.e. produce ultra- long GRB)._

In the case of supernovae, I believe the current model for producing UL-GRBs is that it has to be a massive star collapsing into a black hole, possibly followed by a relatively prolonged period of intense feeding on the star's remnants.

By contrast, a Magnetar discharging some of its built-up electromagnetic energy in our direction, could potentially be the more likely cause of any given long-lasting GRB.

 _> 1) This was a star going nova, producing a Magnetar with a particularly strong magnetic field _

The GRB caused by a collapsing star would not be different based on whether the end product is a Magnetar or a normal neutron star.

 _> 2) This was a Magnetar whose magnetic field decayed to the point that it caused a massive explosion/release of energy from the object._

It's not the decay of the magnetic field that causes this, rather it's a localized build-up caused by the stresses of huge electromagnetic structures pushing and twisting against each other, until suddenly the whole things snaps and unwinds violently (much like a clock that gets wound up very tightly until it breaks).</comment></comment></comment></comment>