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Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#361

Post by joethei »

sasas wrote: post #304
joethei wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we do not use AWS. The Sync and Publish servers are running in Digital Ocean datacenters in the US. How sync encrypts the data is documented here: https://help.obsidian.md/Obsidian+Sync/Security+and+privacy As others have already pointed out, Sync is not the only option to synchronize notes, Obsidian sync is just a convenience option. For compliance, I am guessing you mean certs like SOC 2 / ISO 27001?, or what a…

From the link: > AES-256 is a military-grade encryption specification that's widely used in for example online banking. The term “military grade” is meaningless and if anything raises a red flag (at least to me). What would be more useful is a detailed spec on the implementation. Are the crypto routines implemented in house or has a well tested library been used? If in house, had there been an external code audit don…

We did not implement the crypto part ourselves. We use the SuptleCrypto Web API implementation and a library called scrypt (this one: https://github.com/ricmoo/scrypt-js).

We also had someone from the EteSync/EteBase project take a look at the code before Obsidian Sync was released.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#363

Post by sasas »

joethei wrote: post #361
sasas wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: > AES-256 is a military-grade encryption specification that's widely used in for example online banking. The term “military grade” is meaningless and if anything raises a red flag (at least to me). What would be more useful is a detailed spec on the implementation. Are the crypto routines implemented in house or has a well tested library been used? If in house, had there been an external code audit don…

We did not implement the crypto part ourselves. We use the SuptleCrypto Web API implementation and a library called scrypt (this one: https://github.com/ricmoo/scrypt-js ). We also had someone from the EteSync/EteBase project take a look at the code before Obsidian Sync was released.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. As SuptleCrypto's states themselves:

> Warning: This API provides a number of low-level cryptographic primitives. It's very easy to misuse them, and the pitfalls involved can be very subtle. Even assuming you use the basic cryptographic functions correctly, secure key management and overall security system design are extremely hard to get right, and are generally the domain of specialist security experts.

Errors in security system design and implementation can make the security of the system completely ineffective.

Given the potential volume of people's personal data that might be stored, this is certainly an area you would want to get right.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#364

Post by nine_k »

digdugdirk wrote: post #328
qbasic_forever wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most apps aren't built to use it, especially on mobile. Think of the use case of your grocery list--you want one tap, open the list, type type type, and done. Anything else--having to tap save, sync, write a commit message, etc... anything, is a fail in my opinion. Git is great to use behind the scenes but I don't want to see it in the UI or slow down my workflow.

Why the need for another step? Just have it auto save/commit/merge/push in the background once you finish typing.

Indeed, this can be done, but usually isn't. And when it is done, it looks like another proprietary syncing protocol.

The thing is that you should not expect a user to explicitly host a git repo somewhere to for a grocery list app. Most apps are designed for users who are unwilling to do that, and are actually ready to pay to avoid whatever technical hurdles.

OTOH I see a niche for an app geared towards more technical users, chich would, among other things, allow you to point at a git / hg / whatever repo to use as the synchronization point.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#365

Post by pantulis »

v9v wrote: post #144
jghn wrote: post #42

With the caveat that I'm very far from a power user, I'm struggling to picture how I'd use this. Not as in I think it's a bad idea, but rather it looks cool but I believe I don't quite understand it. I think the following is an example of an intended use case? Can anyone confirm/deny? For my work related notes, there's some hierarchical structure to them even though it's hard to see that at the note level. There's al…

It's as you think it is, the main benefit is that it's like a notebook that you can zoom in/out of as you wish. Some of my more visually-inclined friends use a similar program called Miro to keep track of their projects. At the conception stage they collect links to similar projects, scribble notes and draw sketches to create a moodboard. As the design takes form, they create some subsections in the canvas dedicated…

Yup, design people are very fond of things like Miro, but this is very behind that. Here's hoping that some Diagrams-like capabilities are added to this (yes, I am aware of unofficial plugins for Excalidraw or Draw.io)

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#366

Post by jcul »

s0ulphire wrote: post #333
sasas wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link: > AES-256 is a military-grade encryption specification that's widely used in for example online banking. The term “military grade” is meaningless and if anything raises a red flag (at least to me). What would be more useful is a detailed spec on the implementation. Are the crypto routines implemented in house or has a well tested library been used? If in house, had there been an external code audit don…

The data is successfully encrypted before it's sent (which you can verify with wireshark). What exactly are your concerns, given that the data isn't encrypted locally in the first place? And seriously with the question...what do you think is more likely, that the tiny team of 6 invested a ton of time reinventing the wheel with a custom in-house AES implementation, OR that they used any of the readily available and ex…

Small nit: I'd guess it is not that easy to verify this in wireshark.

I'm not an obsidian user or familiar with the code base, so could be wrong here.

The data is probably encrypted with AES before being sent (the E2E bit), though probably there is some metadata unencrypted.

When the data is actually sent, the entire thing would likely be encrypted again with TLS while it is in transit. This means, for example, your ISP cannot see the unencrypted metadata or the encrypted data.

So if you open a capture in wireshark then you would likely see this. Of course it is possible to decrypt the TLS to check the underlying data is encrypted, but it is not trivial for most people.

An easier way to see what it is doing may be to run ltrace on it and check what it is writing to the sockets. Or gdb, break on the SSL write function and inspect the registers to see what is being written.

e.g. gdb --args wget "https://www.google.com"

    b SSL_write
    r
    x/s $rsi

    > "GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: www.google.com\r\nUser-Agent: Wget/1.21.3\r\nAccept: */*\r\nAccept-Encoding: identity\r\nConnection: Keep-Alive\r\n\r\n"
Though it would just tell you if the data looks encrypted, not much else.

For example they could use a super secure key, or the "1234" for everyone, just looking at the data probably wouldn't tell you this.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#367

Post by rcarr »

kbd wrote: post #195
rcarr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m looking forward to seeing what their implementation of tasks looks like and how it stacks up next to org mode and its agenda. The user implemented task plugins aren’t up to job I don’t think. If it’s mega then I might switch to using it for task management but I am finding the combination of taskpaper and OmniFocus to be awesome at the minute

Hey, cool, thanks for pointing out they're working on task management. I currently use the Tasks plugin and it works ok, but it took some fiddling with queries to get the right display, it's a little flaky (doesn't update results all the time), and there's no concept of subtasks. I still haven't found my perfect task management system... really interested to see how Obsidian folks tackle this as a core plugin.

If you can stomach the cost, OmniFocus and Taskpaper combined is the best I’ve found so far after trying more apps and systems than I could count using both hands and feet.

In Taskpaper you can very quickly write out a detailed project with all kinds of sub tasks. Then when you’re finished you simply copy it and paste it into OmniFocus which automatically turns it into a full project. You get the best of both worlds with this; really quick project planning in the early stages and then the full capabilities of dedicated task management software for your day to day.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#368

Post by misnome »

rcarr wrote: post #203
misnome wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation of their word “faster” was in terms of UI design, not physical app speed. Please, we don’t need to have the electron rant every single time an app that uses it is discussed.

You can't just declare your interpretation of faster to be correct and then denigrate someone else's interpretation by classifying it as a rant. The comment: > it's faster and easier to create a note in Apple Notes, retrieve it (as they as are sorted from most recent by default, and also I can pin some notes), search, and navigate in folders (especially on mobile, navigating across folders is so much better with Appl…

> You can't just declare your interpretation of faster to be correct and then denigrate someone else's interpretation by classifying it as a rant.

I'm not declaring anything. I gave my interpretation of the intended meaning, which didn't mention speed or electron at all. Thus, there were two options:

- My interpretation was correct, and it was _the exact same rant every electron app thread ever has_

- Your interpretation was correct, and it was _the exact same rant every electron app thread ever has_

As it happens - it was the first.

The electron rant is about as useful an opinion as the "Python 2 to python 3 migration was botched" that is brought up in every single thread about python.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#369

Post by PurpleRamen »

tianqi wrote: post #46

While the feature itself was interesting, adding such a feature made alarm in my head. I don't think this is necessarily a good trend. Please Obsidian needs to be very, very cautious about adding such large features. I won't forget why I, and many others, gave up Evernote. It did too much, not too little.

> It did too much, not too little.

Not sure whether this is true. Evernote did much, but on the wrongs parts, in the wrong ways, and then abounded them often in poor state. So in fact they did not enough on the important parts. They barely added the things people demanded, instead added features barely anyone asked for, or rewrote the clients for third or fourth time.

Obsidian on the other side has a sleak core, and everything else is in extensions. Even the core-app itself comes with most parts in extensions. While also allowing the users themselves to add extensions for their demand. This is significant more healthy than whatever evernote did.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian Canvas – An infinite space for your ideas

#370

Post by ss48 »

brap wrote: post #305

I really don’t get Obsidian and why HN seems so obsessed with it. Can anyone please enlighten me? Why do they call these notes “a second brain”? How is this “a new way of thinking”? What are you people even writing that requires this? It just seems silly, honestly. What am I missing?

I don't think it's terribly special. Second brain seems to value the connections between fragments of thought over the thoughts themselves, that these connections will guide the creation or your outlook on thoughts originating from them, a focus on process rather than output, assuming that the output is the result of the process (oftentimes not true). Alternatively, when you are thinking about something, you can quickly find the related thoughts quickly by this organization that can help you advance it faster or more creatively. This assumes that your past thoughts are relevant to your future thoughts which are oftentimes not the case.

It can work well for technical topics that are not quickly outdated and usually have less transitory interpretations, but not as great for subjective things. If you want to have a consistency in your thinking, it can be helpful, but the value of that is also questionable. The last is more psychological, but if you keep getting distracted by a lot of thoughts, by putting them down there and being able to retrieve them when you want, it lets you focus more on things in the present without being distracted by them. If you are exploring a topic over a long span of time, and need to keep reorienting yourself back to the topic, it can be helpful.

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