frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Sanctum – An LLM-Guided Learning App

1•JTan2231•7mo ago
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/athenaeum-sanctum/id6744429496

It's in an infant stage as I figure out exactly how I want this.

In a more marketing speech style,

---

I love learning things and soaking in information, but I constantly run into 3 ergonomic problems with doing so:

- Quality study materials are often so dense as to require an extended session of focus

- Ergonomic study materials require too much work to find + aren't always flexible to what I want to learn/study

- Social media feeds have rotted my UI tastes to prefer short-form, transient interfaces that build familiarity with repeated, intermittent exposure

So, I'm making a flashcard app to address these points. In short,

- Reference-based deck generation

  - LLMs are great, but human sources are always best.

  - Give it a PDF or web page, and it'll reference that resource in creating your deck

 - AI-powered grading

  - The vector math powering LLMs allows for much more loosely structured answer grading than just naive keyword matching.

  - Know the concept, but can't phrase it in the colloquial terms? Don't worry, phrase it as best you can and it can tell how well you get the idea.

 - Natural deck progression

  - If you've been performing well enough on a deck, take a quiz to see if you're ready to expand the flashcards in your study.
---

There are a few things I still am looking to iron out:

- I don't think flashcards are the optimal UI for learning

  - They're great for memorizing + I do think improving pattern-matching is essentially learning is, but I don't think flashcards are the most optimal vehicle for meaningful learning

  - i.e., Life is more than just trivia
- Personalization

  - Right now, you take a quiz to expand the deck along the same lines as the existing subject matter. I think this is okay at best and could very much be improved.

  - One of the ideas I had initially around this is that LLMs can be used to traverse the embedding space of accumulated knowledge in a way that subverts/transcends the traditional academic taxonomization of studies. 

  - i.e., I think UI is the bottleneck in soaking in more information/ideas. I think LLMs do well enough in pattern-matching requests to information that they could act as librarians for the internet--then, it's just a matter of scrunching down the information into more convenient interfaces (e.g., mobile).
- Sourcing, references, etc.--I prefer something human-made at the other end of the tunnel, but I'm not sure how long that will last.

- The name--far too esoteric

This is an active WIP--would love to hear what you all think.

Water Heater Mines Bitcoin. It Could Help Solve AI's Energy Problem

https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/superheat-bitcoin-water-heater-ces-2026/
1•rmason•3m ago•0 comments

Tips to Read More This Coming Year

https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/10-tips-to-read-more-this-coming-year
2•ingve•5m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT is losing market share as Google Gemini gains ground

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-is-losing-market-share-as-g...
1•speckx•5m ago•0 comments

Study examines carbon footprint of wearable health tech

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/01/study-examines-carbon-footprint-wearable-health-tech
1•JeanKage•6m ago•0 comments

Why sports stars who head the ball are more likely to die of Alzheimer's

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260106-the-health-dangers-of-heading-the-ball-in-sport
1•breve•7m ago•0 comments

Search your past ChatGPT, Claude and perplexity chats with context

https://github.com/siv-io/Index-AI-Chat-Search
2•siv_io_•7m ago•0 comments

Operation Absolute Resolve: How the US Captured Nicolas Maduro

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15435381/Nicolas-Maduro-captured-reconstruction-Trump-Op...
1•febed•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An LLM response cache that's aware of dynamic data

https://blog.butter.dev/on-automatic-template-induction-for-response-caching
3•raymondtana•9m ago•0 comments

Programming Languages in 2025 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzFiPcuMnWM
1•todsacerdoti•12m ago•0 comments

Per-query energy consumption of LLMs

https://muxup.com/2026q1/per-query-energy-consumption-of-llms
2•hasheddan•12m ago•0 comments

SSDs, power loss protection and fsync latency

http://smalldatum.blogspot.com/2026/01/ssds-power-loss-protection-and-fsync.html
2•ingve•13m ago•0 comments

The Post-American Internet

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
2•csense•13m ago•1 comments

Book Review: The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/07/29/book-review-the-jakarta-method-washingtons-an...
1•wahnfrieden•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tool for Testing MCP Servers

https://www.mcp-workbench.ai/
2•opiniateddev•17m ago•0 comments

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to Shut Down

https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2026/01/07/pittsburgh-post-gazette-final-edition/stories/...
2•keiferski•21m ago•1 comments

JPMorgan Chase Reaches a Deal to Take over the Apple Credit Card

https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/jpmorgan-chase-reaches-a-deal-to-take-over-the-apple-credit-c...
4•stalfosknight•21m ago•0 comments

Coffeezilla: The most overrated scam investigator

https://greyenlightenment.com/2026/01/06/coffeezilla-the-most-overrated-scam-investigator/
4•paulpauper•21m ago•3 comments

Runkit.com has been down for months

https://runkit.com/
1•NeverBehave•25m ago•1 comments

Rare Iron Age war trumpet and boar standard found

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7jvj8d39eo
2•breve•27m ago•0 comments

LLM from scratch, part 29 – using DDP to train a base model in the cloud

https://www.gilesthomas.com/2026/01/llm-from-scratch-29-ddp-training-a-base-model-in-the-cloud
2•gpjt•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: bikemap.nyc – visualization of the entire history of Citi Bike

https://github.com/freeman-jiang/bikemap.nyc
6•freemanjiang•29m ago•2 comments

We're Thinking About Addiction Wrong

https://jacobin.com/2026/01/social-causes-drug-addiction
1•wahnfrieden•29m ago•1 comments

Amazon wants to know what every corporate employee accomplished last year

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-corporate-employees-performance-reviews-accomplish-last-ye...
2•petethomas•31m ago•2 comments

AI Keeps Building the Same Purple Gradient Website

https://prg.sh/ramblings/Why-Your-AI-Keeps-Building-the-Same-Purple-Gradient-Website
2•satvikpendem•32m ago•0 comments

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Announces It Will Cease Operations

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/business/media/pittsburgh-post-gazette-closing.html
1•bookofjoe•32m ago•1 comments

The Silence of the LLaMbs: Getting LLMs to Shut Up

https://ossa-ma.github.io/blog/silence-of-the-llambs
4•ossa-ma•33m ago•1 comments

Columbia Univ. Center on Global Energy Policy: Q&A on US Actions in Venezuela

https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/qa-on-us-actions-in-venezuela/
2•TMWNN•34m ago•0 comments

Key open source challenges in developing countries (2023)

https://opensource.com/article/23/4/challenges-open-source-developing-countries
4•devonnull•34m ago•0 comments

EMF Exposure from a Substation Could Be Cause of 49ers' Tendon Rupture Epidemic

https://peteranthonycowan.substack.com/p/could-chronic-emf-exposure-from-a
3•CGMthrowaway•35m ago•1 comments

Show HN: MakeMe – A Makefile tool rewritten from Fish to Go

3•OakNinja•36m ago•0 comments