[HN Gopher] My Hacker News knowledge assimilation stack
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My Hacker News knowledge assimilation stack
Author : Abishek_Muthian
Score : 159 points
Date : 2021-11-14 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (abishekmuthian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (abishekmuthian.com)
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I've been reading HN pretty religiously for years and I've only
| saved one or two comments. Hell, I've only even saved a few dozen
| links. How many people here find the comments valuable enough to
| save and meticulously categorize them?
|
| Also, "knowledge assimilation stack"? Surely there is a less
| pretentious name for this.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| I think the name is tongue-in-cheek like the devices of
| Aperture Science.
| shane_b wrote:
| I don't meticulously categorize but I probably save 1-2 useful
| links or comments a week.
|
| I run a small agency so it's usually around
| estimating/planning, why people don't like their job, libraries
| to improve dev workflow, product dev, etc.
| tomcam wrote:
| I'm working on an open source static site thing that might be
| interesting to you. Would be delighted if you contacted me
| through my profile.
| perth wrote:
| I've certainly seen a lot of yc links to older comments in
| newer comment threads, so certainly a lot of people are saving
| comments in a way where they can retrieve them relatively
| painlessly.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I don't mind how anyone choose to use HN, I detailed how I do
| it.
|
| > Also, "knowledge assimilation stack"? Surely there is a less
| pretentious name for this.
|
| These are my reasoning behind the title, If you have better
| suggestions let me know.
|
| Knowledge: Since there is difference between comments which
| have information vs comments which have knowledge from
| experience. Since I wish to save and recall the latter it's
| knowledge.
|
| Assimilation: an act, process, or instance of assimilating,
| Assimilate: to learn (something) so that it is fully understood
| and can be used[1].
|
| Stack: A common term (loosely based on data structures) used to
| define combination of software technologies used in an
| architecture to solve a problem.
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assimilate#h1
| dymk wrote:
| Linking to the dictionary definitions of each constituent
| word is somehow even more pretentious than the original
| title!
|
| We just call this "note taking" in college
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| > We just call this "note taking" in college
|
| Note-taking is just one aspect of the entire process, I
| even have a sub-heading for that. Calling the entire
| process just that doesn't do justice to it.
| dymk wrote:
| It basically does do it justice. It's not _just_ note
| taking (there's a bookmarking equivalent in there too),
| but it's basically just that.
|
| As for the title of the post... As Kevin Malone famously
| put it, "Me think, why waste time say lot word, when few
| word do trick".
| [deleted]
| orzig wrote:
| I, for one, find it inspiring that Abishek_Muthian takes this
| seriously enough to think hard about the name, rather than
| going with something bland. Just the length conveys the depth
| of his though, and now we get to know exactly what he meant
| by it as well.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "More pretentious name for X" is 90% of bay area startups.
| orzig wrote:
| Pretentiousness seems, at worst, annoying. At best, I'm
| thrilled that there are people who 'overthink' things. Every
| technology that I use is the result of someone who took
| something 'too seriously', especially the open source ones.
|
| For a concrete example, how pretentious was Wes Mckinney to
| build Pandas?
|
| Podcast story: https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/data-
| science-tool-bu...
| pas wrote:
| I use a google docs to note stuff I spend time with (started
| with lectures, TED talks, long reads, HN threads). I usually
| add my extremely raw naive snarky reactions/impressions...
|
| Just from the top of my mind, aviation related comments have
| been useful. One of the recent flexport threads had a comment
| that linked to a YT video about the flexport guy (CEO).
|
| These comments about MRI are basically invaluable:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064223
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29064222
|
| The recent Zillow fuckup thread had a few quant traders comment
| that I found interesting.
|
| This comment about Oracle DB:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
|
| This comment about Newcomb's paradox:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28589691
| alphadog wrote:
| I save the HN page as a PDF and send to DevonThink via the
| DevonThink browser extension. This way I have all the comments
| indexed and searchable via Finder or DevonThink. I tried
| webarchive but found PDF to be more efficient.
| GoodD0ctor wrote:
| This is awesome, will definitely be trying out. Thanks for
| sharing!
| Issaclabs wrote:
| I just use materialistic app on mobile and the website on other
| devices. I can save the posts on the app and for the website i
| just save it all as a list on dynalist that I have open all the
| time.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| Been using the same app (Android) for a while. I think it's not
| in active development anymore but still works.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I used it on Android too, but frequently the app would not
| open submitted links, i.e., after clicking a story, I would
| only see a blank page. Have you experienced this issue?
| xrayarx wrote:
| Tl;dr: requires kindle and obsidian and money.
|
| OP seems to be reading HN on the Kindle with a pay for
| subscription kindle app, that he sells. Via a free kindle to
| obsidian plug-in for obsidian, these are transferred into
| obsidian, which is a freemium knowledge management app.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| You're correct, I realized subscription details aren't
| available on 'HN to Kindle' to those who haven't logged in It's
| 5 USD(parity adjusted for other countries) one time payment for
| lifetime subscription.
|
| Edit: I have added a sentence about the subscription details
| now.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Also 'HN to Kindle' works with Kindle app on phones too, The
| highlights need to be exported individually for each book but
| there are wide variety of options available for storing that
| data on a phone.
| csdvrx wrote:
| YAGNI.
|
| If it's interesting, bookmark, if you need something, Ctrl-F in
| your bookmarks.
|
| If it's immediately related to your work in a way that can be
| applied right now, don't bookmark it or make a note or anything.
|
| Just... apply that to your work.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| To extend on the bookmarking, there have been several
| comments[1] asking for topic classification to the HN story for
| easier bookmarking.
|
| It's one of the reasons I added classifier to 'HN to Kindle',
| Instead of manually adding tags to stories now I receive
| stories according to the categories I want.
|
| If plain bookmarks works then it's great, but I use Markdown
| for majority of non-code content anyways(From reminders to this
| very blog) and referencing to a content already on Obsidian
| saves me time.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805483
| bloopernova wrote:
| For those like me who blanked on what YAGNI means:
|
| You Aren't Going To Need It.
|
| EDIT: You Ain't Gonna Need It. Thank you for the correction!
| webmaven wrote:
| _> For those like me who blanked on what YAGNI means:_
|
| _> You Aren 't Going To Need It._
|
| There is no T in YAGNI, the phrase is 'Gonna' rather than
| 'Going To'.
|
| The original also used Ain't rather than Aren't, but that
| doesn't affect the acronym.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I have a wallabag instance and its only purpose is to help me
| file and forget and not experience FOMO or guilt or stress. I
| know it's there if I ever need it but in 4 years I have read
| maybe 20 articles out of 7000.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > in 4 years I have read maybe 20 articles out of 7000
|
| So true. Eventually you'll give up, given enough evidence
| that it's useless.
|
| I mean, 20/7000 is like 0.28% and optimizing for a fraction
| of a percent is what I define as "overkill"
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Well, the main purpose is to free me from "what if" so it's
| doing _that_ job fine. The instance is dockerized and
| requires 0 maintenance, it 's a click in Firefox to add an
| article and forget so I think it's staying for a while.
|
| I do confess I am a digital hoarder and it is complicating
| my life.
|
| Edit: and of course there are no backups and the
| installation is so old that the sqlite DB can't be migrated
| to mysql :D
| [deleted]
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Personally, I just use Sturgeon's law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
| penjelly wrote:
| YAGNI has merit for sure, and bookmarks may work for you, but
| they certainly are not enough for everyone. You cant do search
| within of all bookmarks at once, highlights, notes or spaced
| repetition integration of highlights with simple bookmarks.
|
| I applaud your minimalistic workflow, however, ive always found
| bookmarks next to useless (i still use them). Of course thats
| my own problem, just pointing out what benefits I get using
| other tools.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > You cant do search within of all bookmarks at once,
| highlights, notes or spaced repetition integration of
| highlights with simple bookmarks.
|
| Yes you can. Use sqlite on the underlying datasource and some
| minor scripting.
|
| > ive always found bookmarks next to useless
|
| You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are mostly a
| data source.
|
| Nobody maintains a carefully crafted tree of bookmarks, if
| only because interests and personal ontologies change with
| time.
|
| Instead of expecting yourself to click on your bookmarks, see
| them as providing extra data to create your own JIT approach,
| that will depend on algorithms and automation instead of
| requiring you to do many things by hand (including reading
| and summarizing)
|
| If you want to write something, here's a simple candidate
| heuristic for such a score:
|
| - level 0 is if you've visited the page at least once (if you
| haven't, you can't include it in your search)
|
| - level 1 is if you've visited the page more than once, then
| and how frequently / recently
|
| - level 2 is if you've bookmarked the page
|
| - level 3 is if you still have a tab or a collection (in
| Edge) featuring this page
|
| The Ctrl-F approach is the simplest way to test the
| efficiency of a JIT approach, and to let you compare it to
| the complex proactive approaches often suggested (which
| require effort, and will waste a lot of time for sure on the
| 99.99% cases where YAGNI)
|
| Notice how without even touching sqlite, you can Ctrl-F in
| different places to hit level 0 (history), level 2
| (bookmarks), level 3 (this one depends on your OS and how you
| can search active windows)
|
| You'll get over 80% of the benefits for far less time spent
| on it.
|
| If you really insist on making some DIY solution, using the
| time gained to improve the way you can use these datasources
| by putting them under one umbrella is likely to give you more
| gains than any approach requiring so many manual steps and
| tweaks.
|
| It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a while
| because of the effort/commitment required.
|
| Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and money
| creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack, while
| you could have use the same amount of effort to do something
| you're more likely to stick to, as it requires less effort.
|
| The approach suggested here still requires highlighting and
| writing a note. I have no time for that: I read, and if
| something is interesting, I bookmark and hope I will remember
| the keywords.
|
| And if I didn't even bookmark, as long as I more or less
| remember some keywords, I will be able to find that on DDG in
| a few minutes.
| penjelly wrote:
| let me start by saying i love this idea.
|
| > You need to change your view on bookmarks: they are
| mostly a data source.
|
| ill try to integrate this mental model.
|
| But still this seems far less flexible for me then what is
| currently set up. I spend very little time maintaining my
| setup, actually to me its conducive to how i read articles
| in general. Highlighting for example, if i see something
| important ill reread the sentence until im sure i
| understand what of its point/implications. i nearly always
| have time to highlight something..
|
| > I bookmark and hope I will remember the keywords.
|
| i dont see this as a reliable system. My memory is not
| perfect.
|
| > Except it's worse, because you'll have wasted time and
| money creating a complicated knowledge assimilation stack
|
| its no different then your 4 level process just outlined,
| which even relies on sql, a deal breaker for ~95% of the
| population. you still have a mental model for your system,
| same as i do. You're correct on the money aspect. But to me
| the value far exceeds the cost. The setup is frankly very
| simple, save article for now or later, read, highlight
| anything interesting and add my thoughts, those
| automatically appear anywhere i need them device wise, and
| spaced reptition is automatically sent to me each morning.
| I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of
| bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me.
|
| > It's like new years resolution: you'll give up after a
| while because of the effort/commitment required
|
| On the contrary.. i rely on simple short habits and system
| building to be efficient long term. My setup fits both
| those criteria.
|
| --
|
| But again, this stuff ultimately is a preference, your tone
| almost seems to suggest _everyone_ should only set
| bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries,
| which is mind boggling to me. Your perspective is
| appreciated however.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > But still this seems far less flexible for me then what
| is currently set up
|
| It totally is. It's also far less costly in time.
|
| > i nearly always have time to highlight something..
|
| I don't. I guess we have different usecase
|
| > My memory is not perfect
|
| Exactly! And it's a feature!! See that as a mechanism to
| purge an entry from the cache if it hasn't been refreshed
| for a while.
|
| The problem with bookmarks (and TODO, and everything) is
| that they tend to accumulate, since there's no natural
| pruning mechanism. So you need to only use them as a data
| source, or augment them with some algorithm to extract
| what remains relevant.
|
| > you still have a mental model for your system, same as
| i do
|
| My model runs in the background, and doesn't depend on
| any action.
|
| If at any point in time I need something, I'll fire up a
| query that will hit all datasources to give me a list of
| possibilities sorted by this rough score, so something in
| edge collections (level 4) will be above something in
| level 3 etc.
|
| Someone here gave stats: in 4 years, for 7000 entries,
| they used their system 20 times. That's like a 0.28%
| usefulness. It's not worth spending much time on.
|
| > I wouldnt switch to manually writing SQL queries of
| bookmarks and relying on my memory if you paid me.
|
| Well, if your system makes you happy, stick to it.
|
| Personally, I prefer to optimize my workflow for 99.72%
| of the usecases than the 0.28%
|
| > this stuff ultimately is a preference
|
| Totally
|
| > your tone almost seems to suggest everyone should only
| set bookmarks and search their contents using SQL queries
|
| If you got that impression, sorry. I think your system
| would work for people who are say researchers and need to
| carefully read and categorize everything.
|
| My personal belief is that isn't the case for the modal
| HN reader, and that they'll be best served by being lazy
| and avoiding premature optimization - and if they really
| want to optimize, maybe they can start tapping into the
| data that's already collected (bookmarks, timestamped
| visit) some of it automatically instead of creating a
| parallel workflow that's highly dependent on their
| ability to do some manual tasks (highlighting, reading,
| annotating) that will require a lot of effort considering
| it will be useless about 99.72% of the time
| freediver wrote:
| For the longest time I used to "email to self" interesting
| stories for reading (through the comments) later.
|
| Then I created tinygem.org [1] to automate this process with a
| browser bookmarklet. Now I had a place to send stories I want to
| read later.
|
| Finally I added auto-discovery based on my saved links, because a
| lot of interesting content gets lost in HN New, Reddit and other
| places that I simply do not have time to check daily.
|
| [1] https://tinygem.org
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| This looks pretty sweet! I like the "listen" feature a lot.
|
| I would use your tool, if you had a super simple mobile app
| that would pop-up as one of the "share to" options in other
| apps. For example, I am on Android and whenever I come across a
| useful link or story, e.g., in a HN app (I use Hews), I tap
| "share" and select Pushbullet from a list, which saves the
| links in my Pushbullet account. If Tinygem was one of the
| options, I can absolutely see myself using it, because
| Pushbullet is pretty clunky for "knowledge assimilation" (no
| search, tags, etc.).
| coltoneakins wrote:
| Emacs + Org Mode is a great tool for this too. Although Emacs
| itself has a learning curve, it is well suited for a task like
| this.
|
| I use Org Capture to bookmark links using a Chrome extension on
| my desktop. Org Capture also allows me to clip comments too from
| a thread. I highly recommend it for a process like this.
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Yes, I use the upvote feature (or Like on other platforms) or
| email a link to myself, to keep track of useful information.
|
| Especially in HN comments or Twitter treads (careful who you
| follow!)
| penjelly wrote:
| i use instapaper which covers pretty much what you do here except
| it works for any webpage/link not just HN, also hooks into
| readwise a spaced reptition app on my phone, though this feature
| is not free. Also hooks into a Notion page for anytime reviewing
| of highlights.
|
| instapaper, readwise and Notion are not perfect (standalone or in
| conjuction). But they do work pretty well for now. I eagerly
| await a future where these tools become more robust.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Does instapaper have HN formatting service now (or) do you
| manually send HN story through it? 'Send to Kindle' extension
| of Amazon can do the same if anyone is looking for a free
| option, But 'HN to Kindle' formats the HN page and sends as a
| book.
|
| Before Obsidian, I tried 'Kindle 2 Notion'[1] to sync My
| clippings.txt from Kindle to notion, But Notion is too heavy
| for my liking and I didn't use it for any other purpose.
|
| Obsidian is built upon self-hosting principles, The obsidian-
| kindle-plugin referenced in the post is useful for anyone to
| self-host a read-wise type setup.
|
| [1] https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion (Warning: Project
| is likely abandoned).
| penjelly wrote:
| instapaper wouldnt do any special formatting no. Thats a
| special usecase.
|
| ill be looking into obsidian in the future, for now Notion
| works well for a lot of different things i do
| ahevia wrote:
| How do you sync readwise and Notion? I also have use Instapaper
| & Readwise but would like a center page for all highlights for
| easy searching
| penjelly wrote:
| there is an integration. Its in Beta and i believe it wasnt
| free but it does work.
|
| go to readwise -> dashboard -> export -> Notion.
|
| be sure to test its working by doing the flow over a week or
| so, i remember the initial setup was not seamless, but i just
| went to look now and its been doing its job well for a while
| now. Youll want to ensure it exports when you take new notes,
| so you dont have to manually export. Cheers.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| I don't save individual comments but I do "favorite" posts when i
| want to go back to them. Sometimes I do that as a bookmark to the
| post itself, sometimes it's specifically for the discussion. I
| have found myself going back to my favorites list quite often but
| it's annoying to search through. I Ctrl+f but then I have to deal
| with pagination and sometimes the thing I want is 5 or more pages
| deep. I have considered building something to help me with that
| but also hasn't been so huge of an issue that I have started
| anything. Balance between minor inconvenience of searching or
| maintaining something to help me search. I am choosing the former
| for now.
| rounakdatta wrote:
| Love your work and the setup!
|
| However in this context, I wanted to ask, why not use tools like
| https://hypothes.is/ for annotation, notetaking on websites?
| Ideally it is a disconnection of HN notes and Kindle book
| highlights, but I've derived a lot of value from the Hypothesis
| tool (it's self-hostable as well!).
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Thank you, Essentially since I already use Kindle for reading
| HN it was natural for me to extend from it.
|
| I've heard good things about Hypothesis but I haven't used it
| yet. This thread has various tools for knowledge management
| with each sharing how and what they use it for; Exactly what I
| wanted from this discussion.
| antman wrote:
| Have you managed to self host hypothesis? I failed to find
| anyone who claimed to have set it up through the provided
| docker files
| thecodrr wrote:
| The critical issue with this so-called stack is the effort to set
| this up. It seems simple in words but consider how many steps,
| tools, plugins, devices, human intervention are required to
| achieve it. Is it reliable? Nope. Is it better? Nope.
|
| You still have to remember those keywords you added so you
| haven't gotten rid of the memory problem. If even one moving part
| fails to function properly, the whole system will break so you
| haven't solved the maintainability problem. And clearly, this
| doesn't solve the time problem either.
|
| When I bookmark something on HN, it is usually because I don't
| have enough time to read it or I want to read it again later on.
| I don't bookmark comments or save them. Not because they aren't
| interesting but because informal content like comments are really
| easy to understand. They are short and to the point.
|
| So I take what information I can and move on. If I forget...well,
| maybe it wasn't that important to remember in the first place. If
| I forget but want to remember, which is rare, I can just go
| through the bookmarks, open the relevant link, and go through the
| comments again or Ctrl + F if I remember something. This is rare.
| So rare that I can afford to do it manually.
|
| The problem with "knowledge assimilation" aka note taking is that
| after a certain point, you have more "knowledge" than you even
| want. The extra becomes noise. At first, the idea to clip and
| save anything interesting seems so fascinating but soon you
| realize that you have saved so much that it's become a problem.
|
| That's why using the right tool for the right job is important.
| Bookmarks are perfect for things you want to save without them
| getting in the way of more important things. They are just a
| list. Nothing overkill. No complex organization. No complicated
| processes. Just press a button and viola!
|
| I do, however, commend the ingenuity of the OP in making such a
| system. I wonder how long it took to set this all up.
| shane_b wrote:
| I do end up with more knowledge than I want when I add links to
| a long file.
|
| It's important to look a second time to remove the noise. For
| me, I prune every other week and usually takes 10 mins tops.
|
| If nothing else, my brain gets a second chance to add the idea
| to memory.
| BoysenberryPi wrote:
| I agree with you for the most part but
|
| >The problem with "knowledge assimilation" aka note taking is
| that after a certain point, you have more "knowledge" than you
| even want. The extra becomes noise. At first, the idea to clip
| and save anything interesting seems so fascinating but soon you
| realize that you have saved so much that it's become a problem.
|
| This doesn't matter at all. The thing with Obsidian and other
| bidirectional linking tools is that if you never see a note
| again, if you never link to it again then it doesn't matter.
| There is no cluttering the system.
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(page generated 2021-11-14 23:00 UTC)