[HN Gopher] Show HN: I combined spaced repetition with emails so...
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Show HN: I combined spaced repetition with emails so you can
remember anything
Hey HN, I am a student shipping apps in my free time. This is my
4th for the year! Non-fic books and podcasts have been part of my
life for years now but I always struggled with remembering what
I've read or listened to. I wanted it to stick even after years.
My notes list grew large but I never really revisited them. That's
why I created GinkgoNotes. You can enter notes you want to recall
and leave it to the app to create a personalised (based on spaced
repetition) email schedule. That means you'll get your notes
emailed to you a couple of times exactly when you should read them
again (based on Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve) so it's certain that
you'll remember them. I hope this will be helpful as it was for
me. Would love some feedback! Iskren
Author : iskrataa
Score : 229 points
Date : 2024-12-04 13:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ginkgonotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ginkgonotes.com)
| bturtel wrote:
| This is very cool. Reminds me of Quantum Country
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30467585) but for
| everything else in life.
| gravity2060 wrote:
| This is so cool and something I've wanted for a long time, but it
| isn't quite right yet (for what I personally want in an app like
| this.)
|
| I am your target market, and I'd buy the lifetime /annual sub in
| a second if it had these features:
|
| I want control of the SR sequence or, I want to know what SR algo
| you are using and know it is best practice model. The landing
| page says 4 sends, but that isn't true SR.
|
| The next thing, I'd want to see all of my "cards" or information
| pieces when I am logged in, so I can see and edit and delete and
| keep the database clean with a total view of content. The next
| thing I'd need (maybe you have this?) is for the email to
| effectively be a flash card, where the email content is the front
| and a link the email takes me to the "back" of the card so I
| can't use cloze delete and other techniques. The last thing is
| bulk upload of content via a csv so I can bulk import mochi /anki
| / llm generated content.
|
| I wish you luck with this and would (selfishly) encourage you to
| not ship so many different things, and instead encourage you to
| pick one and make it best in class for niche users like me who
| would spend and spend on premium solutions, but won't spend on
| superficial implementations.
| iskrataa wrote:
| Can't thank you enough for the feedback. These are all great
| ideas which I'll look into.
|
| I was wondering what is your experience with Anki? Are there
| reasons you are looking into alternatives or do you just like
| the idea of getting stuff by email? Thanks again!
| latentsea wrote:
| Why email at this point and not just Anki?
| ozim wrote:
| Not the person you asked - but for me it is that I check
| emails compulsively any other app I have to remember/tend to
| forget. Like Todoist is great but I can go weeks without
| opening it and I skip tasks because of it unless I set email
| notifications.
| latentsea wrote:
| Hmm. SRS is a daily commitment though. If you skip it the
| reviews just pile up, which tends to be painful enough that
| you quickly learn it's a daily commitment. I couldn't
| imagine getting 150 emails a day to review stuff, or that
| being a workable UX.
| ozim wrote:
| I think 10-20 flashcards a day is better than 0. But on
| the other hand it might not be rate to learn something
| quickly enough.
| latentsea wrote:
| With the original Anki algorithm the rule of thumb is
| your daily review load will be 5x your rate of new cards
| per day. So 10 to 20 reviews per day is between 2 to 4
| new cards per day. Definitely not enough for language
| learning, which is my use-case, but may be ok for certain
| other things.
| e12e wrote:
| > 2 to 4 new cards per day. Definitely not enough for
| language learning
|
| What is your expected rate of acquisition for a new
| language?
|
| 40*365 ~ 14 000 new cards a year - that's a ten thousand
| word vocabulary with four thousand cards to spare for
| grammar, idioms etc?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Hey not to distract from OPs post, but I wanted to get into SR
| for a while, and your "what is your algo" question aligns with
| my line of thinking when approaching new methodology.
|
| Could you please share your SR tech stack? Are there good apps
| etc., that can make the process a bit easier? The pen-and-paper
| approach I used in uni for learning kanji / new languages has
| scarred me somewhat, so I am eager to try something tech-heavy.
| iskrataa wrote:
| Hey, happy to help here.
|
| During my research, I found this Reddit post which was in
| lots of help, especially for beginners.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/comments/17u01ge/spaced_repeti.
| ..
|
| They expand their work on their GitHub as well.
|
| https://github.com/open-spaced-
| repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/Spa...
| safety1st wrote:
| On the topic of SR specifically, what does it mean to be best
| in class? I am just a layperson who uses a SR tool or two and
| has a passing interest in the topic, but the Wikipedia article
| on SR gives the impression that there are a variety of
| algorithms out there and none are established by research to be
| definitively better than the others, in fact the Criticism
| section mentions a study which found that absolute spacing was
| just as good.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition#Research_and...
|
| The OP said he's using Ebbinghaus' "forgetting curve" which is
| not exactly a SR algorithm but something similar, there is an
| actual formula associated with it -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve
| komuW wrote:
| Take a look at FSRS.
|
| The paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3534678.3539081?cid
| =996605471...
|
| Various implementations: https://github.com/open-spaced-
| repetition/awesome-fsrs
|
| Some benchmarks of various srs algorithms:
| https://expertium.github.io/Benchmark.html
| simple10 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! I second the request for lifetime
| pricing option.
|
| Also, the jump between $4/mo to $59/mo could use more
| explanation to justify the price gap.
|
| It's worth considering listing GinkoNotes on AppSumo if you
| decide to offer a lifetime deal. I think it would do extremely
| well.
| TripleChecker wrote:
| Neat idea! I might consider pushing a free trial more since this
| feels like the type of product someone could begin to rely on and
| then be more likely to upgrade. A few positive testimonials
| wouldn't hurt.
|
| A couple minor link fixes on your homepage, see here:
| https://triplechecker.com/s/230357/ginkgonotes.com.
|
| 1) Blog on footer is broken link 2) Affiliates on footer doesn't
| take you anywhere
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, I agree with both statements. Although I'm just starting
| and don't have any testimonials yet, I was thinking of sending
| an email to users requesting testimonials in exchange for the
| premium plan.
|
| Just fixed the footer, nice catch! Shipping fast comes with
| some faulty copy pastes I guess...
| TripleChecker wrote:
| That could work. Happy to help!
| iknownthing wrote:
| Wish this existed when I was in school
| wrboyce wrote:
| Very interesting concept! I was about to dive right in when a
| voice in my head reminded me that my inbox discipline is terrible
| and I don't need even more automated emails that will serve only
| to increase my unread count (which currently stands at 16878 in
| my Personal inbox).
|
| Have you considered expanding this to notify via other mediums
| such as iMessage (if possible, this would be my preference) or
| the presumably easier WhatsApp/Telegram (the Telegram Bot API is
| pretty great, I'd imagine would be very easy)?
|
| I'd also echo the free trial sentiment expressed elsewhere in the
| comments, take the mythical drug dealer approach and get 'em
| hooked on freebies!
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, that's definitely a major drawback for people who are not
| so active via email (or got their inboxes spammed by marketing
| haha).
|
| Will explore some options with the messaging apps, thank you!
| Do you think at this point it's not easier to open a specific
| app for that or there's a reason you prefer it to be via a
| messaging app?
| andai wrote:
| Getting messaged is different from opening Anki, which I
| often avoid for months at a time. I imagine I'd be much more
| likely to respond to a notification just because of how
| strong of a habit that is.
| wrboyce wrote:
| I feel like writing a specific app is not only more effort on
| your part but easier to ignore on mine (and more friction, a
| lot of people are hesitant to install new apps).
|
| Personally I'm a big iMessage/Telegram user and as such
| unlikely to leave things unread on those mediums (they're one
| of the few apps that I allow to push notifications and
| display an "unread" badge); my reading of your post was that
| a selling point of GinkgoNotes is that it appears in already
| established workflows.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is an interesting approach. Congrats on shipping!
|
| I worry that it won't be effective. Systems like Supermemo and
| Anki work because of:
|
| 1) Spaced repetition (showing you the thing at the right time).
|
| 2) Retrieval practice (having your brain practice retrieving the
| thing you're about to forget).
|
| 3) Feedback and automation (using your self-rating to schedule
| the next review).
|
| You are doing #1 and #3.
|
| But you totally skip #2, because you show all the info in the
| email. So, unlike Anki, Supermemo or Quantum Country (which
| someone mentioned in another comment), there's no front/back or
| cloze deletion, and no retrieval practice happening.
|
| Perhaps putting the question in the email subject and the answer
| in the email body would work?
| iskrataa wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| I agree, and this is something I thought about a lot during the
| design process. In my experience, just looking at the note (#1
| in your example) helps a lot more than no repetitions (which is
| obvious of course), but it's still a huge improvement compared
| to my previous flow.
|
| As for repetition, I was thinking of replying to the email with
| what you think is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you
| remember correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to
| you?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I was thinking of replying to the email with what you think
| is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you remember
| correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to you?
|
| The nice thing about your tool is the simplicity and low-
| friction due to using email. For retrieval, replies might
| work, but I wonder whether the people who are willing to do
| that work are the same people who would just install Anki
| instead.
| passwordreset wrote:
| Email seems like a no-go here. It would feel like spam. If
| you wanted a something more conversational, I'd consider
| doing this over text messages.
| 85392_school wrote:
| You can practice retrieving something without entering and
| checking it.
| a3w wrote:
| For Pete sake, don't use an LLM.
|
| Just use CSS to hide/show the answers, or a little bit of
| JavaScript for just that. Or scrolling, if it is text only.
| Or links to the answer an http server.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Just create a "show answer" link.
|
| The link can literally encode the answer in the URL, which
| you can just hide the raw url it in the emails's HTML. (Fox
| examples, put it as base64 chars in query parameters)
|
| Then you can host a (static) webpage that renders the text.
| This lets you host any users text w/o an interactive site. No
| live database, no ops burden, etc.
|
| If you wanted to get fancy (which users of such a product
| probably would probably want) throw in "success/failure"
| links so your users can report the results and get changed
| frequency of spaced repetitions based on their success rate.
| david_allison wrote:
| More information on #2 (colloquially known as 'active recall'):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
| moojacob wrote:
| I really like how you can create a note from the landing page. 1)
| it helped me understand how the app worked better than any
| screenshots or videos while 2) nudging me to sign up.
| pugworthy wrote:
| It seems you've made a digital mnemometer!
| guluarte wrote:
| I'm a big fan of SuperMemo16, if you could add incremental
| reading that would be great.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| I have 3 email in-boxes. One ancient rarely used since the early
| 2000, my personal daily email and my work email. Between then
| there are some 100k unread emails.
|
| I am not the target audience for this service.
| iskrataa wrote:
| I think there are a lot of people like you, so I would
| definitely look into other ways of communicating. Thanks for
| the feedback!
|
| If it was over WhatsApp, for example, would you be interested?
| exe34 wrote:
| I do an annual amnesty, every email goes into archive on the
| first of January.
| vundercind wrote:
| I sometimes go most of a week without checking any email
| address. I've gone a month without looking at my personal one.
| It's basically just for transactional mail, I don't get things
| from people there.
| Cotterzz wrote:
| Interesting. I couldn't see myself using a tool like this for
| bulk remembering of things. And I don't think it would be
| practical for that. But for specifically important things like
| certain words my brain like to forget from time to time, numbers
| I need to remember or a very important hospital appointment, this
| could be very useful.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Email is the only thing I have conditioned myself to reliably
| check so this system probably has the best shot for me. Nice job,
| will try it out. Ive been meaning to make a real attempt at
| learning Japanese.
| iskrataa wrote:
| Thank you! Have fun learning Japanese!
| wowsoleet wrote:
| The idea is good but:
|
| 1) Paid model, $10 for an email on timer? Copilot, Spotify and
| Windsurf charge the same. Won't pay on principle THIS amount of
| money for a service which is done self-hosted in 30 minutes with
| ChatGPT, neither will a normie buy paid calendar, no offense. $1
| is realistic, still you're gonna be profitable and much more
| scalable imo. Trial period of 2 weeks is mandatory
|
| 2) I almost never read mails, plus email notifications are
| inconsistent if you're not inside an ecosystem, e.g.
| Apple/Google. For me it is not a reliable way of communication
| slwvx wrote:
| Could be a good feature for AnkiWeb.net
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I made the exact same thing except with notifications instead of
| email.
|
| I called my app "Mnemonist".
|
| My last as just hasn't gotten around to shipping it yet...
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| With the number of cards I have in Anki, something like this is
| going to fill up my inbox. Recent Anki versions ship a much more
| advanced algorithm called FSRS which performs much better (fewer
| reviews for the same recall). If you haven't tried it in some
| time, I recommend taking another look. Also, many note taking
| programs have ways to export to anki, which is probably more
| pleasant than adding notes directly.
| tsekiguchi wrote:
| Readwise also has this feature. I get a daily email with a random
| assortment of highlights that have been pulled in from multiple
| sources (Reader, Notion, Kindle, etc.)
|
| The product benefit in their case is that it's kind of like
| Zapier, but for notes.
|
| https://readwise.io/
| andai wrote:
| The comments here remind me of the HN comments when Dropbox
| launched!
| andai wrote:
| Cool idea! What were your other 3 projects this year?
| dirkc wrote:
| This looks like it might have been one of them?
| https://ginkgovest.com/.
|
| *edit* seems different - google search led me astray. I didn't
| realize ginkgo is a tree with a distinctive leave
| joshdavham wrote:
| This is a super cool idea!
|
| Also, which spaced repetition scheduler are you using for this?
| FSRS?
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, it's FSRS based on this article
|
| https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/Spa...
|
| Huge thanks to the dude.
| kazinator wrote:
| I can't find them who would use this over Anki or AnkiDroid.
|
| I have hundreds of items to review. I wouldn't want that in my
| inbox.
| iskrataa wrote:
| I get you. In cases where you have that many cards, that's
| definitely not for you.
|
| My case is rather 2-3 quotes from a book I just read of 5ish
| articles per week which I find interesting and don't want to
| forget (so it will email them again to me after some time so I
| can reread). Thanks for the feedback!
| christin369 wrote:
| This is really impressive! Would you mind sharing some analytics
| like subscriber count or DAU? I'm curious to learn more about how
| your platform is performing. Thanks!"
| iskrataa wrote:
| Thank you! Sadly, it's just at the start of the project so I
| don't have anything to share yet.
|
| I'll give an update after some time of collecting metrics. You
| can also follow me on X to be in touch with the project.
| BenMorris-Rains wrote:
| Cool idea, can it just be an app that sends me notifications
| instead of the email? Anything that goes to my email is basically
| a black box and I won't see it. I am an email hoarder and I don't
| clean them up... Once every other year or so I'll try.
|
| The only thing that helped was routing "updates" and "promotions"
| straight to my trash, but I miss things sometimes that way.
| Scea91 wrote:
| Seems like the root cause is not email.
|
| I am curious how "another app" would be better in your
| situation than just setting up an email rule (3 min task at
| most) for this mailer if you truly care about it.
| dirkc wrote:
| Well done shipping your project! I like the low-friction demo on
| the page! I assume I'll receive an email in a few days from now?
| Are you using those emails for marketing/a mailing list?
| iskrataa wrote:
| Thank you! You're both right--you'll get your repetitions, and
| I'll add you to the user mailing list (unless you opt-out).
| aboardRat4 wrote:
| Where is the code?
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Gingko notes have been a thing maybe 10 years ago? I'm not sure
| if I remember correctly, but wasn't graph-based note taking? Was
| really cool!
|
| The idea of spaced repetition via email reminds me of readwise as
| well.
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, Readwise was sort of an inspiration for me too, but looked
| like wasted potential as they don't track or use any algorithms
| for you to remember, and lack support for external
| links/sources (I may be wrong here).
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| You're thinking of this [1]. Super duper cool idea, ahead of
| its time. Author seems to have transitioned to a ludicrous
| pricing model, but I suspect it's because the people who like
| it really _love_ it. I used to be among them, but then switched
| to org-mode .
|
| [1] https://gingkowriter.com/
| namaria wrote:
| Storing facts is a poor proxy for acquired knowledge or skill.
| When you are good at something, you know a lot of facts. Trying
| to memorize facts to get good at something is inverting the order
| of factors. You memorize a lot of facts about a domain because
| you spent a lot of time and attention in it. But finding
| shortcuts to memorize facts won't in fact give you the actual
| knowledge and skills, just a way to mimic them convincingly.
| nefrix wrote:
| This is such a smart answer. i am adding this comment so i can
| remember where to look when I am thinking of re-reading your
| comment about memory;
|
| For me, more than memorising things, is creating paths in order
| to find that piece of information when need it; and yes, you
| are right, we memorise when we need that information to apply
| it in a specific moment;
| namaria wrote:
| I think you're making fun of me, which is fine.
|
| But memorizing in stead of learning is an anxiety driven
| behavior that leads to inefficient use of time. You're
| welcome to do it but I am trying to contribute my own hard
| earned lesson that you don't need to fret about retaining
| facts. Just spend time doing the things you want to learn
| about and the useful facts will be retained.
| smeej wrote:
| I finally admitted to myself that a robust PKM can store and
| recall more information more easily than I ever could. It's
| quite a bit of work to process things I read or listen to
| _into_ my PKM, but whenever I decide to revisit an idea, I
| can immediately pull up and review everything I 've
| previously thought it would be useful to remember about it.
|
| My PKM of choice (Logseq) does have a built-in SRS, though,
| so maybe I should consider having putting things I really,
| really, really want to remember into it so they're stored in
| my brain as well.
| gimmecoffee wrote:
| I recently started learning Japanese and "storing facts" using
| spaced repetition, and it's great for learning Hiragana /
| Katakana.
|
| It's also very useful for things like passphrases.
|
| Sometimes, you just need to memorize things.
| namaria wrote:
| I have acquired several languages, and I can tell you that
| naive memorization is a poor proxy for language acquisition.
| The best way to acquire a language is to use it a lot,
| consume a lot and produce a lot of language. Memorizing words
| and grammar may feel like learning a language, but it's very
| inefficient compared to just consuming and producing language
| in a natural setting.
| gimmecoffee wrote:
| But for the task of learning the letters, this does
| wonders.
|
| This is just a tiny part of learning the language, but it's
| a great tool for quickly learning letters and new words.
| gwervc wrote:
| Research disagrees with you. Memorizing vocabulary list is
| one of the most efficient use of time for learning a
| language. Sure it's not sufficient alone, and not fun but
| it works. It's especially useful at the start when learning
| even a few hundred words makes a huge difference.
| devjab wrote:
| Which research? I know this is mainly related to
| Duolingo, and it's in Danish, but outside of confidence,
| grammar and vocabulary there doesn't seem to much benefit
| in memorising vocabulary lists in terms of actually
| learning a language.
|
| http://www.carstenbuus.com/da/00007-jagten-paa-det-
| graeske-s...
| j16sdiz wrote:
| (not the parent poster)
|
| https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol05/04/
| 25....
|
| > Abstract -- There are disputes over the role of
| memorization in language learning. Memorized language, a
| mainstay of education for almost all of recorded history,
| was widely repudiated for suppressing creativity,
| understanding and enjoyment in learners. This paper aims
| at highlighting the fact that, despite these criticisms,
| memorization is a helpful strategy which can be employed
| by the learners and teachers in their process of language
| learning and teaching. It is discussed that memorization:
| 1) provides the learner with linguistic data; 2) is the
| first step to understanding; 3) enhances association in
| memory; 4) causes cognitive development as a learning
| strategy; 5) helps noticing; 6) provides rehearsal; 7) is
| especially helpful in early stages of learning. It is
| also pointed out that all these become possible when
| memorization is accompanied and complemented by other
| strategies and techniques.
| vundercind wrote:
| > but outside of confidence, grammar and vocabulary
|
| Just those, huh?
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| s/Romans/Duolingo/g
| namaria wrote:
| I don't know why you're getting downvoted. Acquisition of
| a second language is a very narrow field of research and
| to claim that there is a clear consensus on what works
| best is showing very little insight.
| siva7 wrote:
| This is a common fallacy around science students who use anki
| for the first time. Smashing a deck without accompanying
| learning ressources won't lead to connecting the dots like you
| would in a traditional learning setting. So given an exam you
| would probably fail as you can't connect the dots because you
| just memorized facts in a random order. The exception is of
| course language learning for which anki and spaced repetition
| was made originally because random order doesn't matter and
| connecting facts neither.
| exe34 wrote:
| > Smashing a deck without accompanying learning ressources
|
| why does everybody keep pretending this is a dichotomy?
| geros wrote:
| I developed an open source app that tries to solve this
| problem. Active recall at the topic level with spaced
| repetition email reminders using FSRS algorithm.
| https://github.com/Gerosullivan/Learntime
| complianceowl wrote:
| What the --
|
| This is such a great idea! I've had this same problem for as long
| as I can remember, and I feel like most intellectually-oriented
| folks have this same problem, as well.
|
| My work firewall blocked the site, but I will check this out
| later :)
| betimsl wrote:
| I use mochi.cards and am very happy. It has a really good app and
| it's very privacy friendly. I recommend it to anyone who is
| studying or preparing for any event that requires efficient
| memorizing.
| recursive wrote:
| > you can remember anything
|
| Except to check your emails.
| MaxPock wrote:
| I wish there's a away I could upload my screenshots then they get
| e-mailed at intervals
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