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Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

ankisrs.net

11–20 of 222 posts

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#11
post #2

>It's highly recommended that you install Anki from this package instead of relying on the version distributed with your OS, as the packages in the official repo are often very out of date. Why is this still a problem in Linux-land? Why can't we just make some but not all packages rolling-release? Making Anki rolling-release won't make the distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word.

To be fair, this is only really a problem if you're using one of the big waterfall distros like Debian or Ubuntu.

I'm on Arch and I get fresh Anki same day or week.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#12
post #3

[deleted]

The iPhone app came years after the free and open source desktop one; the boat had long since sailed on charging on the desktop. The Android one is unofficial.

I recall reading that because they didn't make the app friendly to casual newcomers, they didn't pick too low a price-point that would attract them and their support load.

That said, complaining about an app's price on HN is pretty disappointing. Though they might have found more success with a recurring/IAP approach that makes payments more palatable.

Seems development has largely stalled on the iPhone app though.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#13
post #3

[deleted]

> Maybe they feel like all Apple users are stupid & rich and will pay whatever they are asked for.

That's one way to couch it; another is charge what the market will bear. IOS devs routinely tout all the polls/studies that show Apple customers pay more and more often for software than Android customers.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#14
post #2

>It's highly recommended that you install Anki from this package instead of relying on the version distributed with your OS, as the packages in the official repo are often very out of date. Why is this still a problem in Linux-land? Why can't we just make some but not all packages rolling-release? Making Anki rolling-release won't make the distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word.

Frankly, "very out of date" when it is version 2.0.32 in debian testing and ubuntu current while the new, one month old version is 2.0.33 is overstated. What are the features that are not in the debian stable package (2.0.31) or in 2.0.32 but are in the cutting edge 2.0.33 version? None of the bugs reported in the debian bug tracker seem to have been fixed by later versions!

With that said, you can make some but not all packages rolling-release with apt-pinning and using stable and sid or testing which are rolling.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#15
post #5

I used Anki for 30 minutes to an hour each day for about a year to memorise around 1500 Japanese characters and their readings, with the aid of a mnemonic technique. So long as you have an hour a day to dedicate to the flashcards without fail , you will retain the memorised information. My problem was that a job and location change altered my daily routine entirely, so I stopped reviewing the cards. One year later, I…

SRS is best used to reinforce things you learned outside the flashcard environment. So put things into Anki that you have some real-world context to anchor that memory to, and use Anki to reinforce that memory, not to create new memories that lack any vivid context in your mind outside of the drab flashcard app window where you first discovered the term in isolation. Ideally you're consuming native media, talking with natives, etc. and drawing from that to create your flashcards, since you'll come across a lot of terms that you learn once and then have otherwise forgotten by the time you see them again in the wild; this is where SRS helps.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#17

This is really great! I'm building a SaaS that is similar to this, but I was feeling bummed about not releasing it as open source; but now I can just point people to this if they want to run their own. awesome!

Is it in a ready enough state to share?

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#18
Anki is great - the original Supermemo algorithm on which Anki is based[2], makes for fascinating reading [1]

However, I daresay that this is a usecase that is tailormade for the mobile rather than the desktop in any which way.

I wonder why the core team is spending effort behind a desktop app, rather than go full mobile.

[1] https://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_w...

[2] https://www.supermemo.com/help/smalg.htm#Anki_will_work_grea...

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#19
post #8
post #2

>It's highly recommended that you install Anki from this package instead of relying on the version distributed with your OS, as the packages in the official repo are often very out of date. Why is this still a problem in Linux-land? Why can't we just make some but not all packages rolling-release? Making Anki rolling-release won't make the distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word.

>Why can't we just make some but not all packages rolling-release? Does that include Anki's dependencies? And if it does, does it include all other packages that depend upon Anki's dependencies? Also, does it include thousands of other packages similar to Anki that also "won't make the distro unstable by any sensible meaning of the word"? Don't think you'll have a "just some rolling-release packages" distro by the en…

If the new version of Anki needs a new version of a dependency, just install the new version alongside the old one. Whatever happened when I installed this deb may also be an option.

If handling this is a huge problem, why not have all the rolling-release programs include their own dependencies. Most of us have so much storage space that, without films/games/music, we couldn't fill it even if we tried. It's cool to use minimal amounts of storage when you're on a virtualized machine on Azure/AWS, but those machines aren't used to run Anki anyway. Storage for executable usage is effectively infinite nowadays on consumer devices.

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