Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

domenic.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 538 posts

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#381

Post by mfranzs »

kqr wrote: post #318
aaldrick wrote: post #232

I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

Agree - making cards yourself is like programming yourself for how you want to understand and remember an idea.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#382

Post by Buttons840 »

I would pay for an e-ink tablet dedicated to notes and spaced repetition. (I know there are e-ink note taking tablets, but none of them have spaced repetition.)

I'd like to be able to take freehand notes, and then be able to block out, or blur, certain sections and each blocked or blurred area becomes a spaced repetition entry.

Or, in more detail. I'd like to look at a page of notes and loop select a certain area. That selected area becomes a spaced repetition item. After the initial loop selection I can do another loop selection to blur one or more areas that would be blurred. Etc, etc.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#383

Post by andy12_ »

paulluuk wrote: post #367
kqr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc. Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively. This is also a very diffi…

> They try, write bad flashcards, don't see results, and give up. But if that's the case, then wouldn't a program that takes a long text (like a book) and creates GOOD flashcards, be way superior over someone making their own bad flashcards?

I have just tried this afternoon to create with Gemini 2.5 Pro Anki cards to study for my exams. I've been doing it raw: I just paste the whole material (like 100k worth of tokens) into aistudio and generate the flashcards in txt format.

For now it's going great, and I think that the cards are good enough as they are (there might be a couple here and there that I would remove or edit, but they don't get in the way of learning).

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#384

Post by windowshopping »

Hmm, I have Anki and I don't see an option for this algorithm. Anyone know how to enable it? The preferences say I'm on the "V3 scheduler" but have no option for an algorithm. I don't think I'm on the algorithm described in the blog post because whenever I don't know a card it goes back to 1 day as if it was new. Or maybe I am on it and I'm just misunderstanding how this works? I'm on Mac, Version ⁨2.1.66 (70506aeb)⁩.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#385

Post by yearesadpeople »

That tutorial guy on YouTube, Derek Banas, swears by Anki. He's quite the voracious learner as well as being a pretty good contractor. I've used it myself (sparingly, when taking on new projects with new technology stacks), and never really committed to it because of the somewhat static and predictable nature of the learning session (as described in the article; the algorithm). However, from learning about the upgrade (well, 2023 upgrade), I will try it out again: high hopes.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#386

Post by andy12_ »

300hoogen wrote: post #176

how to ace any uni theory course > download all pdfs > merge pdfs into one > compress > write a very specific prompt for gemini to turn these into anki cards separated by a semicolon > do 50 anki cards a day for 3/4 weeks before exam not a single lecture attended top of my class (ku leuven). feels like cheating honestly

You are so right. I just began doing this today for my exams, and it really feels like cheating with how easy it is. That, and also creating a podcast with NotebookLM with all the pdfs as source and using as a prompt "Make this a long summary for studying".

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#387

Post by coldcache »

mfranzs wrote: post #380
aaldrick wrote: post #232

I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…

This is what we've built RemNote for! You can add your sources (PDFs, websites, YouTube, etc.) and create cards directly from them. Either with AI (click on a sentence => get an AI card), or by highlighting a sentence and writing your own card. It's not at the OS level, but I think a focused standalone all-in-one experience is actually better. We've explored a chrome extension here that does something similar to what…

Love RemNote -- ability to take notes and create SRS cards within the notes is so sick

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#388

Post by david_allison »

windowshopping wrote: post #384

Hmm, I have Anki and I don't see an option for this algorithm. Anyone know how to enable it? The preferences say I'm on the "V3 scheduler" but have no option for an algorithm. I don't think I'm on the algorithm described in the blog post because whenever I don't know a card it goes back to 1 day as if it was new. Or maybe I am on it and I'm just misunderstanding how this works? I'm on Mac, Version ⁨2.1.66 (70506aeb)⁩…

You're on an old version of Anki.

Once you upgrade, FSRS is available under the deck options.

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#389

Post by jonahhorowitz »

mfranzs wrote: post #380
aaldrick wrote: post #232

I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved. What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important: It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should wo…

This is what we've built RemNote for! You can add your sources (PDFs, websites, YouTube, etc.) and create cards directly from them. Either with AI (click on a sentence => get an AI card), or by highlighting a sentence and writing your own card. It's not at the OS level, but I think a focused standalone all-in-one experience is actually better. We've explored a chrome extension here that does something similar to what…

Does RemNote use the algorithm described in the link or something else?

Re: Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

#390

Post by david_allison »

Buttons840 wrote: post #382

I would pay for an e-ink tablet dedicated to notes and spaced repetition. (I know there are e-ink note taking tablets, but none of them have spaced repetition.) I'd like to be able to take freehand notes, and then be able to block out, or blur, certain sections and each blocked or blurred area becomes a spaced repetition entry. Or, in more detail. I'd like to look at a page of notes and loop select a certain area. Th…

There's a number of happy Onyx Boox users using AnkiDroid.

You can probably do what you want with the in-built image occlusion feature. Might be worth downloading an Android emulator and seeing if we meet your workflow requirements.

Post reply on HN