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Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

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Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#141

Post by omgdlight »

gjcourt wrote: post #92
cle wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it open source? Can I store and access the data locally? I have a very large Anki deck that I've spent years building and curating, I'm not interested in surrendering all that labor to a closed ecosystem that may or may not be around in the future....

We're not an open source tool so unfortunately no. I should say that we reached profitability only a few months after launch and our team has experience in 4 other startups before this one (if that helps in gaining your vote of confidence). I would love to have you be a member, email me and we can work something out.

Do you offer data export? I have similar concerns as cle, and am currently satisfied with anki, but am always interested in doing better.

On a different note, from reading through these comments it sounds kind of like you guys are specifically focused on full time students and the unique problems they face trying implement anki. Does your service offer benefits to people who aren't and don't have the resulting new card review burden or need for cramming?

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#142

Post by such_a_casual »

afarrell wrote: post #129
such_a_casual wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My concern is systems (software or otherwise) that do not treat the user as an equal or a superior. Systems that do not follow the goldern rule: "treat others how you want to be treated." Being able to read the source code is great, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether the system is going to resepect and serve its users.

> Systems that do not follow the goldern rule: "treat others how you want to be treated" This is a good first-approximation to an ethical system, but ultimately fails in many areas of the real world. I would prefer that the systems that provide me with food do so without demanding that I pay them money, but that is in direct conflict with the need to pay people to do the work to create and maintain that system. I wou…

You are misrepresenting my thesis by saying that respect and equality would mean that the user expects charity. It's about how you would expect and want to be treated if you were a user of the system. A company that provides you with food isn't necessarily trying to own your eating experience. A company that provides you with physical flash cards isn't trying to own your learning experience. It's very clear from their business model that they are not trying to sell a product that enables and empowers people to learn better and easier, but instead are seeking to own the learning experience of the user by giving away the tools for free. These are completely different models, so comparing their model to giving away free food is an unfair representation.

Additionally, do not give them credit for providing a paid privacy system. Their paid privacy system is not private. The admins still have access. Other companies have shown that they are able to share and sell this information with impunity. The past has also proven that these companies have no responsibility to adequately protect this data from attackers.

The owner presented their product as a better Anki. Anki is a product that you download. You are the only person who has access to the flash cards you create. You own and control your own creations. This is not a better version of Anki if you are forced to give away control of your own content so that others may profit off of it.

The business model here is not to sell you a better wrench, but to give you a better wrench in exchange for everything you create with it.

I could be ok with this, if the author was just honest about it. But instead the author is adamant that they are just selling you a better wrench. So because the creators are clearly not interested in being straight forward, because they use double-talk to try to placate people and hide their true business model, fuck them. And fuck anyone who's going to treat their users in ways they would never treat themselves.

Sorry that was so long. I appreciate you taking the time to read my previous rant and type up a response. I would love to continue this discussion.

edit: you are the same person who brought up the github argument. My argument there is that git can be used completely independently of github. In this case, github completely owns and controls the use of git. "They own the wrench".

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#143

Post by davydka »

paganel wrote: post #110
zappo2938 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef. Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a coo…

> "where the fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?" I'm stating the obvious here, but verbal abuse is not ok in a professional setting, never ever. There's nothing to justify it, not even "success" (a better cooked meal, more revenues coming in for the company etc).

I agree with this, but in some professions this is a very established way of doing things with a long history that's been passed down from mentor to students for a long time. If you refuse to work in these types of situations then you had better not try to still work in that profession.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#144

Post by markbao »

I use Anki as a part of my college strategy (http://markbao.com/notes/college-strategies) by using the Cornell notetaking method to write up questions and answers for my notes and piping those 'cues' into Anki. Turns out self-testing is one of the best ways to learn, so this combination is surprisingly effective.

It's no replacement for actually learning the concepts, but they help in drilling down the foundational knowledge that helps me understand the bigger-picture concepts better.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#145

Post by Steuard »

tangled_zans wrote: post #139

Ask HN: What's the coolest thing you've used Anki for?

It's not "cool", but I'm a professor who's always struggled to learn my students' names. A few years ago, I started to populate an Anki deck with their photos from the college lookbook paired with their names and a few other details. Now I usually recognize most people on the first day of class and just about everyone within the first couple of weeks. (I had trouble that year when I had identical twins in the class.) Anki has transformed a point of shame to a point of pride, and I'm grateful.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#146

Post by such_a_casual »

paganel wrote: post #110
zappo2938 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a career of being a chef with employees, I decided to return to school to learn how to write. There is one thing that struck me with the professors in college. While in the kitchen, if a cook made a mistake, the failure and responsibility fell on me whether I was a sous-chef or executive chef. Earlier in my career I was a chef de partie in a two Michelin star restaurant with a team of 4 cooks under me. If a coo…

> "where the fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?" I'm stating the obvious here, but verbal abuse is not ok in a professional setting, never ever. There's nothing to justify it, not even "success" (a better cooked meal, more revenues coming in for the company etc).

How do you define verbal abuse? We all have different codes of morality. Is manipulating your employees verbal abuse to you? Is lying or placating things verbal abuse to you? What about going behind your back and telling another employee to talk to you instead of telling you face to face? Is that verbal abuse? Well it is to me. Whereas, I could care less if someone said "Where the fuck do you think you work, McDonald's?" I am extremely offended by the other examples. I think they are never ok in a professional setting, "never ever". Not even justified by success, revenue, or majority vote. Please realize that your morale code is not the only morale code, that your way of communicating, is not everyone's way of communicating. Trying to say that your rules, that your methods, are the ones that everyone needs to follow is childish.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#147

Post by yermierc »

omgdlight wrote: post #141
gjcourt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not an open source tool so unfortunately no. I should say that we reached profitability only a few months after launch and our team has experience in 4 other startups before this one (if that helps in gaining your vote of confidence). I would love to have you be a member, email me and we can work something out.

Do you offer data export? I have similar concerns as cle, and am currently satisfied with anki, but am always interested in doing better. On a different note, from reading through these comments it sounds kind of like you guys are specifically focused on full time students and the unique problems they face trying implement anki. Does your service offer benefits to people who aren't and don't have the resulting new ca…

>Do you offer data export?

We have this at the admin level and plan on making this a user-accessible feature as soon as we can.

>Does your service offer benefits to people who aren't and don't have the resulting new card review burden or need for cramming?

It depends on your goal. In its current iteration, Memorang functions very well for mastering new concepts on a shorter-term scale (e.g. hours, days, or a semester). However, long-term retention on the order of years is something that we are working on a different implementation of. That will be a huge focus in the next semester after we finish shipping this 2.0 launch in January.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#148

Post by sheepmullet »

tangled_zans wrote: post #138
yermierc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you elaborate more on what exactly memorang does that keeps people "engaged in vivo" Between algorithm choices, learning modes, and other customization options there are dozens of ways you can learn the same material instead of simply flashcards like Anki. For the other components, some of these are works in progress and others are already present. I would encourage you to learn a subject towards 100% and you'll…

Sorry, but while the product may or may not be good, every sentence that I read from you sounds like OMG HYPE. "The ultimate goal would be to be perfectly guided to mastery"...? Yeah, and the ultimate goal of every NLP startup is to have 100% natural language understanding by the machine... but that doesn't mean that any of them can promise that in the foreseeable future, or that I won't laugh at them if they do. "I…

> It's patronising of you to assume that I don't, or to claim that your product is the only way to reach that.

I'm pretty sure he is saying "use our product to learn a single subject to 100% and you will see what I mean".

Often it is hard to explain the benefits of a platform with a few quick comments on hn.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#149

Post by nextos »

tangled_zans wrote: post #132
Ixiaus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second org-drill. Org-mode is my whole personal information manager including information learning w/ org-drill.

Any tips for how to implement that? I've tried org-mode for personal-information-management and I just get lost in all of the subtrees.

I was in that kind of situation too.

The problem is that org-mode is too flexible. I use it as a flattened kanban board.

Re: Anki – a program which makes remembering things easy

#150

Post by yermierc »

tangled_zans wrote: post #138
yermierc wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you elaborate more on what exactly memorang does that keeps people "engaged in vivo" Between algorithm choices, learning modes, and other customization options there are dozens of ways you can learn the same material instead of simply flashcards like Anki. For the other components, some of these are works in progress and others are already present. I would encourage you to learn a subject towards 100% and you'll…

Sorry, but while the product may or may not be good, every sentence that I read from you sounds like OMG HYPE. "The ultimate goal would be to be perfectly guided to mastery"...? Yeah, and the ultimate goal of every NLP startup is to have 100% natural language understanding by the machine... but that doesn't mean that any of them can promise that in the foreseeable future, or that I won't laugh at them if they do. "I…

I see that you're angry, but I think it's because you misread my comment.

When I wrote "I encourage you to learn a subject towards 100% mastery and you'll see exactly what we mean" it was purely meant to encourage you to learn a small subject on Memorang to help answer your questions about the methods you inquired regarding interacting with the learning system. It wasn't, as you seem to believe, a statement that you couldn't learn via alternative methodologies.

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