How I hijacked my Hacker News habit to learn Spanish
I have been learning Spanish intermittently for several years, using a bunch of<br>different methods. Eventually I settled on reviewing flashcards, mostly in Anki.<br>The problem was that I would often forget to open the app. The cards would pile up,<br>which made it even harder to open, and the usual cycle of procrastination would set<br>in.
So I started experimenting with ways to fight this sad state of affairs.
Experiment one: force myself to review
I set up a phone block that would only unlock after I reviewed some cards. I soon<br>realized that it was too annoying and disruptive, especially when I needed to use<br>the phone quickly. I would dismiss the card window or do a superficial review just<br>to get the required clicks.
Experiment two: put cards in the feed
Next I tried something less disruptive. My idea was to inject cards into my X feed<br>and show them in the normal flow of posts. Both are mostly text, so I was already in<br>reading mode.
But after playing with a few prototypes, I could not get the flow right. I would<br>swipe past the cards without really reviewing them. They still felt like obstacles<br>between me and the next post, and they were too easy to ignore. X also changes often,<br>so keeping the integration working was taking too much time.
Experiment three: use the pause between Hacker News stories
Hacker News turned out to be a better fit for three reasons:
I already had an HN reader that I built for myself, so I controlled the interface.
HN is primarily text, with a reading mode that suits flashcards.
Most importantly, the way I read HN contains a natural break.
In my reader, opening a story shows its comments first. I browse the discussion for a<br>while, then return to the story list to choose something else. That moment between<br>leaving one discussion and selecting the next story is where I decided to show a<br>flashcard.
It worked surprisingly well. The card does not interrupt a story I am reading, and it<br>is not a toll blocking something urgent. It appears during a pause that was already<br>there. I genuinely started reviewing several cards at a time, without blocks or<br>reminders.
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Leaving a discussion creates the transition. The flashcard appears before the next<br>story is selected.
The result
It has been surprisingly effective for light review and for staying in the learning<br>flow. I now review cards almost every day. I have not noticed any new resistance to<br>opening Hacker News, so the procrastination cycle does not kick in. Showing a card at<br>a natural break feels very different from forcing one into the middle of another task.
How it works
HN Reader is a web-based Hacker News client that I originally built for myself. It<br>runs as a regular website on desktop and mobile, but because I control the interface,<br>I can change the reading flow. For example, it opens comments first and can show a<br>flashcard when the reader returns to the story list.
A card is not shown after every click. A story or discussion has to remain open for<br>at least 20 seconds, and at least one minute has to have passed since the previous<br>flashcard. Even then, the card appears only when you start returning to the story<br>list, and no more than once during the same story visit. If no card is due, nothing is<br>shown. On mobile, the first eligible return can show a card; after that, a card appears<br>on every second eligible return.
Decks are imported locally rather than uploaded to a server. You select an Anki<br>.apkg file, and HN Reader unpacks it inside the browser, reads its cards<br>and bundled media, and converts them into a simpler internal format. Before a card is<br>stored or displayed, its HTML and styling are sanitized. Scripts and potentially<br>unsafe elements are removed, remote media is blocked, and only supported images and<br>audio included in the deck are retained. The original .apkg file is not<br>kept.
The imported cards, media, and review history are stored locally in the browser.<br>Reviewing is similar to Anki: see the prompt, reveal the answer, and grade your recall.<br>However, HN Reader does not reproduce Anki's scheduler exactly. There are no accounts<br>or synchronization yet, reviews do not flow back into Anki, and each browser maintains<br>its own deck and review history.
Try it yourself in OrangeCrumbs HN Reader. You can use the<br>built-in demo deck or import your own Anki deck. Imports are processed locally, and<br>the card data stays in your browser.