

Notesnook
2.7K posts

@notesnook
👀 Signal Messenger of note-taking apps 🤓 aka 100% open source and free (as in freedom) note taking app focused on your experience and your privacy. 🔑🛡️







Exporting = one-way door File over app = two-way door Do not mistake the map for the territory. Many apps allow you to export your data. That's better than nothing, but not the same as editing files directly. An export is a representation of your data. It's an output of the source. It's a one-way door. The file over app philosophy does not make a distinction between data and file. Both are one and the same. The source is the output, and vice versa. It's a two-way door. Exports are useful if you want to exit the tool. Exports are not useful if you want to directly manipulate your data. Exporting requires your explicit intention, whereas file over app requires no intention at all. File over app means you have possession of your data, it can be directly read and edited with multiple different tools at any time.


File over app File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom. File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data. In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last. The pyramids of Egypt contain hieroglyphs that were chiseled in stone thousands of years ago. The ideas hieroglyphs convey are more important than the type of chisel that was used to carve them. The world is filled with ideas from generations past, transmitted through many mediums, from clay tablets to manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. These artifacts are objects that you can touch, hold, own, store, preserve, and look at. To read something written on paper all you need is eyeballs. Today, we are creating innumerable digital artifacts, but most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service. Even the files on your hard drive use proprietary formats that make them incompatible with older systems. Paraphrasing something I wrote recently: > If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it’s important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s. You should want the files you create to be durable, not only for posterity, but also for your future self. You never know when you might want to go back to something you created years or decades ago. Don’t lock your data into a format you can’t retrieve. These days I write using an app I help make called Obsidian (@obsdmd), but it’s a delusion to think it will last forever. The app will eventually become obsolete. It’s the plain text files I create that are designed to last. Who knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is enough of an audience to make it worthwhile.



I want to debunk the claim that I see a lot around here that Obsidian is "just plain text markdown files" which means "you can take them anywhere and open them with any app" That simply isn't true Yes, maybe the raw text of the notes is markdown, but many other parts cannot be moved elsewhere and opened by other apps: 1. The .obsidian/ directory contains your JSON config with plugins, settings, hotkeys, workspace state, link format, attachment paths – those can't be moved elsewhere 2. Plugin state files – Readwise's path-to-ID map, Templater's settings, Tasks plugin's database, Excalidraw's drawing data – even if plugins can be recreated, these settings cannot 3. .canvas files – JSON, not markdown. They reference notes by path and won't survive a move 4. .base files – JSON-based database/views over your notes. Same path-fragility 5. .excalidraw.md files – markdown wrapper around an Excalidraw JSON blob. Looks like markdown, isn't really 6. The link graph itself – backlinks, graph view, "linked mentions" – all computed from filenames and link references. They survive because the references are in the markdown, but they require Obsidian (or an Obsidian-aware tool) to materialize 7. Plugin-managed folders – Readwise output, Web Clipper output, Daily Notes location, Templates folder. Each is a folder whose contents are owned by an external system tracked in plugin state 8. Sync state – Obsidian Sync, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive each maintain their own state about what's where and what's been resolved. Move operations interfere with this state 9. Embedded query results – Dataview queries, Tasks queries, Bases queries. The query is in the markdown; the result is computed live and never persisted So technically you CAN move your files elsewhere, but you'd destroy most of what makes them valuable – the graph, the plugin state, the canvases, the embedded queries, the sync state, and any structural intent encoded in folder placement Which means you're just as locked in to Obsidian as any other "proprietary" app, it's just a hidden lock-in that's obscured by inaccurate marketing Saying "Obsidian is just markdown files" is like saying "your house is just bricks" The bricks are real and moveable – but the architecture, plumbing, and wiring aren't bricks, and those are most of what makes the house function

Our servers are experiencing some downtime. We are looking into the issue. We'll keep you updated



We are very happy that today Apple issued a patch and a security advisory. This comes following @404mediaco reporting that the FBI accessed Signal message notification content via iOS despite the app being deleted. Apple’s advisory confirmed that the bugs that allowed this to happen have been fixed in the latest iOS release. You can read more here: support.apple.com/en-us/127002 Note that no action is needed for this fix to protect Signal users on iOS. Once you install the patch, all inadvertently-preserved notifications will be deleted and no forthcoming notifications will be preserved for deleted applications. We’re grateful to Apple for the quick action here, and for understanding and acting on the stakes of this kind of issue. It takes an ecosystem to preserve the fundamental human right to private communication.



Be honest guys, Do you still write notes while coding?






If only GrapheneOS could run on better hardware than shitty Pixels. I am really excited about the Motorola collab.



‼️ It amazes me that Signal, with "state-of-the-art E2E encryption" and a promise that "no one else can" read your messages, fails to turn off notification previews by default, while it has been known for over a decade that Apple stores them cleartext in notification storage.