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My Hacker News knowledge assimilation stack

csdvrx 5y ago
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.
- penjelly 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      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 5y ago
        > 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
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805483
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
      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
- sbmthakur 5y ago
  Personally, I just use Sturgeon's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
- bloopernova 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    > 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
alexpotato 5y ago
This is already a few days old but this is how I manage learning from HN: - I use Pinboard - I tag interesting comments with my own set of tags e.g. "culture", "persuasion" etc That's it! my Pinboard has all of my favourite pages, tweets, comments etc so fits in nicely.
Invictus0 5y ago
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 5y ago
  I think the name is tongue-in-cheek like the devices of Aperture Science.
- shane_b 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assimilate#h1
Issaclabs 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Been using the same app (Android) for a while. I think it's not in active development anymore but still works.
  - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
    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?
    - jerrygoyal 5y ago
      yes half of the stories won't open in the embedded browser. I think app uses some outdated version of webview. There's an option to open article link in browser that I use always.
      - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
        Makes sense. Thanks!
xrayarx 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- Hitton 5y ago
  You can read it just as an inspiration. Getting HN to Kindle would be fairly simple - just use a script to download it, basic formatting, convert to mobi and send to email (though OP apparently supports also some kind of category classification, which might not be so simple to set up). But for 5 bucks for lifetime, without needing to have a machine running... Replicating the obsidian plug-in functionality to suit your own note/knowledge management app would be probably even easier. What I don't like is the tagging part - kindles are terrible to type in. And if you want to avoid it by using your phone/tablet, you'd be better to avoid kindle app altogether and do the note taking using browser extension or something.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    > What I don't like is the tagging part - kindles are terrible to type in. Did you get a chance to try the recent Kindle SW update(> v.5.13.7)? Performance has improved a lot, Tagging (Notes) is smooth due to a surprisingly responsive keyboard. The browser is out of experminetal too. I wrote this comment from a Kindle Oasis 9th gen.
erwincoumans 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
- ahevia 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  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 https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion (Warning: Project is likely abandoned).
  - penjelly 5y ago
flanbiscuit 5y ago
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.
alphadog 5y ago
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.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Why are PDFs more efficient? I’d think web archive is better. So far I’ve been doing web archives with Devonthink recently. Dumping a ton of content into it but have not searched much yet.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  This is the closest setup to what I have, I too convert the HN page to .pdf first before converting it to .mobi. I've had Devonthink recommended to me before, Unfortunately I don't use macOS anymore but I'm glad it exists for those who do.
rounakdatta 5y ago
Love your work and the setup! However in this context, I wanted to ask, why not use tools like https://hypothes.is/ 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  Have you managed to self host hypothesis? I failed to find anyone who claimed to have set it up through the provided docker files
freediver 5y ago
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 https://tinygem.org
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  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.).
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I use iOS shortcuts to add custom things to my share menu. For example, I have one to search meta.org, one to create a to do, etc. The cool thing is that it even works on selected text. I couldn't check to see the feasibility of doing the same with tinygem because the registration page is broken.
    - freediver 5y ago
      I also use iOS shortcuts for TinyGem. How is the registration page broken?
      - nefitty 5y ago
        On iOS Chrome, the registration page gives me a "Can't open this page" error. It's like when you run out of memory, but it's the only page affected.
GoodD0ctor 5y ago
This is awesome, will definitely be trying out. Thanks for sharing!
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  Thank you, I hope it serves your purpose.
thecodrr 5y ago
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.
- BoysenberryPi 5y ago
  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.
- 5y ago
coltoneakins 5y ago
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.
- npsimons 5y ago
  Second org-mode - I used to have Firefox setup similarly to your Chrome setup, but that extension broke, and I've missed it ever since. It's not perfect, but C-l followed by C-c will get me the URI for pasting in org buffers. Or I can browse in 'M-x w3m' and capture links and text from there. As for Emacs learning curve, it's small when compared to the amount of time I would have had to spend learning other systems (over and over and over . . . ) over the past two decades. Emacs lasts, and so does the learning you spend on it.
black_13 5y ago
The crap about sf and startups and cults around the mega rich nope. But the posts and comments computer science are gold.
raghavbali 5y ago
Thanks OP for sharing this interesting work/stack. My kindle has been pretty useless (I prefer reading novels on paperbacks), plus I have been itching to try our obsidian for quite some time as my pile of bookmarks is becoming quite difficult to manage too. Will give it try (or a derivative of it)
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  TBH, My Kindle gets its maximum use in reading HN on it now as I've switched to audio-books. I hope you'd find this stack useful for your needs.
gbrindisi 5y ago
I love reading about this personal automation hacks. I do also live in my note taking app, Bear, and I tried a similar system with bookmarks: I was using Pinboard and set up automation to ingest bookmarks into Bear directly. It didn't work out because 1) too clunky, too many moving parts 2) automation was removing ME from the process, I was not able to "curate". What I do now is just dropping relevant links in my notes, creating new ones when needed. It's dead simple and ugly and yet works way better than any other bookmarking system I tried. Creating notes from ebooks is definitely more complicated, because we are constrained by the Kindle interface. I have yet to try connecting the highlights to my notes, thanks for the inspiration!
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  I agree that it's fun to read about automation workflows, I like yours too. Using highlights, notes on Kindle and exporting `My Clippings.txt` opens a wide range of possibilities and should address your problem too. It's too bad that Amazon doesn't store the highlights, notes in the .txt file on its mobile apps and the cloud sync works only with the books bought from Amazon; Though individual highlights/notes can be exported as .html from each book regardless of where the books is from.
speg 5y ago
I built a thing to scrape my saved/upvoted comments (and stories). It saves the text and uses the built in full text search of Postgres. Let’s me query: “what was that comment I read about X last month?” Pretty well. I haven’t touched it in over a year but I think it’s still scanning each night…

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.

penjelly 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      > 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
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18805483
johnchristopher 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
    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
sbmthakur 5y ago
Personally, I just use Sturgeon's law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
bloopernova 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > 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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

alexpotato 5y ago

This is already a few days old but this is how I manage learning from HN: - I use Pinboard - I tag interesting comments with my own set of tags e.g. "culture", "persuasion" etc That's it! my Pinboard has all of my favourite pages, tweets, comments etc so fits in nicely.

Invictus0 5y ago

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 5y ago
I think the name is tongue-in-cheek like the devices of Aperture Science.
shane_b 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assimilate#h1

Issaclabs 5y ago

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 5y ago
Been using the same app (Android) for a while. I think it's not in active development anymore but still works.
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  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?
  - jerrygoyal 5y ago
    yes half of the stories won't open in the embedded browser. I think app uses some outdated version of webview. There's an option to open article link in browser that I use always.
    - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
      Makes sense. Thanks!

xrayarx 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
Hitton 5y ago
You can read it just as an inspiration. Getting HN to Kindle would be fairly simple - just use a script to download it, basic formatting, convert to mobi and send to email (though OP apparently supports also some kind of category classification, which might not be so simple to set up). But for 5 bucks for lifetime, without needing to have a machine running... Replicating the obsidian plug-in functionality to suit your own note/knowledge management app would be probably even easier. What I don't like is the tagging part - kindles are terrible to type in. And if you want to avoid it by using your phone/tablet, you'd be better to avoid kindle app altogether and do the note taking using browser extension or something.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > What I don't like is the tagging part - kindles are terrible to type in. Did you get a chance to try the recent Kindle SW update(> v.5.13.7)? Performance has improved a lot, Tagging (Notes) is smooth due to a surprisingly responsive keyboard. The browser is out of experminetal too. I wrote this comment from a Kindle Oasis 9th gen.

erwincoumans 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

ahevia 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
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 https://github.com/paperboi/kindle2notion (Warning: Project is likely abandoned).
- penjelly 5y ago

flanbiscuit 5y ago

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.

alphadog 5y ago

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.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Why are PDFs more efficient? I’d think web archive is better. So far I’ve been doing web archives with Devonthink recently. Dumping a ton of content into it but have not searched much yet.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
This is the closest setup to what I have, I too convert the HN page to .pdf first before converting it to .mobi. I've had Devonthink recommended to me before, Unfortunately I don't use macOS anymore but I'm glad it exists for those who do.

rounakdatta 5y ago

Love your work and the setup! However in this context, I wanted to ask, why not use tools like https://hypothes.is/ 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 5y ago
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 5y ago
Have you managed to self host hypothesis? I failed to find anyone who claimed to have set it up through the provided docker files

freediver 5y ago

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 https://tinygem.org

dr_kiszonka 5y ago
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.).
- nefitty 5y ago
  I use iOS shortcuts to add custom things to my share menu. For example, I have one to search meta.org, one to create a to do, etc. The cool thing is that it even works on selected text. I couldn't check to see the feasibility of doing the same with tinygem because the registration page is broken.
  - freediver 5y ago
    I also use iOS shortcuts for TinyGem. How is the registration page broken?
    - nefitty 5y ago
      On iOS Chrome, the registration page gives me a "Can't open this page" error. It's like when you run out of memory, but it's the only page affected.

GoodD0ctor 5y ago

This is awesome, will definitely be trying out. Thanks for sharing!

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
Thank you, I hope it serves your purpose.

thecodrr 5y ago

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.

BoysenberryPi 5y ago
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.
5y ago

coltoneakins 5y ago

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.

npsimons 5y ago
Second org-mode - I used to have Firefox setup similarly to your Chrome setup, but that extension broke, and I've missed it ever since. It's not perfect, but C-l followed by C-c will get me the URI for pasting in org buffers. Or I can browse in 'M-x w3m' and capture links and text from there. As for Emacs learning curve, it's small when compared to the amount of time I would have had to spend learning other systems (over and over and over . . . ) over the past two decades. Emacs lasts, and so does the learning you spend on it.

black_13 5y ago

The crap about sf and startups and cults around the mega rich nope. But the posts and comments computer science are gold.

raghavbali 5y ago

Thanks OP for sharing this interesting work/stack. My kindle has been pretty useless (I prefer reading novels on paperbacks), plus I have been itching to try our obsidian for quite some time as my pile of bookmarks is becoming quite difficult to manage too. Will give it try (or a derivative of it)

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
TBH, My Kindle gets its maximum use in reading HN on it now as I've switched to audio-books. I hope you'd find this stack useful for your needs.

gbrindisi 5y ago

I love reading about this personal automation hacks. I do also live in my note taking app, Bear, and I tried a similar system with bookmarks: I was using Pinboard and set up automation to ingest bookmarks into Bear directly. It didn't work out because 1) too clunky, too many moving parts 2) automation was removing ME from the process, I was not able to "curate". What I do now is just dropping relevant links in my notes, creating new ones when needed. It's dead simple and ugly and yet works way better than any other bookmarking system I tried. Creating notes from ebooks is definitely more complicated, because we are constrained by the Kindle interface. I have yet to try connecting the highlights to my notes, thanks for the inspiration!

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I agree that it's fun to read about automation workflows, I like yours too. Using highlights, notes on Kindle and exporting `My Clippings.txt` opens a wide range of possibilities and should address your problem too. It's too bad that Amazon doesn't store the highlights, notes in the .txt file on its mobile apps and the cloud sync works only with the books bought from Amazon; Though individual highlights/notes can be exported as .html from each book regardless of where the books is from.

speg 5y ago

I built a thing to scrape my saved/upvoted comments (and stories). It saves the text and uses the built in full text search of Postgres. Let’s me query: “what was that comment I read about X last month?” Pretty well. I haven’t touched it in over a year but I think it’s still scanning each night…