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Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

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Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#371

Post by gravyboat »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Obsidian seems very cool. One thing I noticed on install as someone with a Windows device is that the install location cannot be specified. It would be great if your team supported this as it's pretty standard for many Windows apps and aids in system organization. I was able to move Obsidian and the obsidian-installer and things seem okay but I have no idea if this will break the updater at a later point in time.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#372

Post by smhmd »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Could you add the releases on Arch Linux's AUR? Downloading a binary from a website is not something Linux users often do. I couldn't find Obsidian on the snap store[0] either.

[0]: https://snapcraft.io/search?q=obsidian

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#373

Post by xpe »

libria wrote: post #329
codezero wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be more concerned if you had a hard time getting reimbursed for this kind of software at your job.

What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying requests like this.

I'll respond with a connected set of questions...

Is it worth the time to deny a (well intentioned) $150 request made by a software developer who costs a company (for example) $150K total (salary, benefits, and fixed costs)? $150 is 0.1% of $150K.

What are the benefits and costs? Some questions to ask include:

- How much time did the company spend in the process of denying this request? By the time you include emails, research, context switching, etc, I think it is fair to say this might consume 15 minutes of the engineer's time and 15 minutes of the denier's time. That would be 0.5 hours; assuming $80/hr, that is $40.

- What is the likely effect? Will it discourage an employee from trying a new tool? Might it encourage a culture of "build it here" rather than pay to use something that already exists? Might it encourage an employee to abuse the license? Might this increase the legal risk of the company? In the case of, say, online learning, it might encourage employees to browse dozens of crappy web resources rather than simply paying for a high quality learning resource. My point: being stingy has real effects on human behavior.

- Does the company pay the same level of detail to other areas that could easily save more money? Three examples: (1) Does a company need to spend $200/year/person on junk food or bottled water? (2) Does a company look carefully at ways to improve energy efficiency? (3) Does a company have a smart, regularly practiced, data-recovery plan in place? I could go on; I think you see my point: it is wiser to allocate effort and oversight in proportion to impact.

- To what degree does the company have issues with trust and accountability? What is the effect on morale are discouraged from trying and paying for useful software and tooling?

I think my overarching point is, again, illustrated by questions: What does a company truly value? Are they mindful and realistic about their costs and benefits?

P.S. This may be obvious to some (but not all): paying for software is not necessarily a bad thing. Open source has many advantages, but without ongoing contributions and/or a funding strategy, open source software is not necessarily a "safer" bet than closed-source software. A better litmus test is "can I export my data in a useful way if I decide to leave or switch?"

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#374

Post by ken »

ericax wrote: post #57
loughnane wrote: post #36

I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of anything that isn’t open source. 5y is a long time and 10y is an eternity for these sorts of products but its just a fraction of my working life. My own personal setup is a bunch of markdown files and it’s great, so I like that approach, but I’m very cautious about investing time for something so important in a product i don’t control.

We'll likely make a formal guarantee to open source in the case of us shutting down. Didn't realize that was a possibility, thanks for the suggestion!

"Open source" is both a license and a development model. You're talking about a license, but someone interested in workflow longevity will probably not be satisfied with a source dump from a dead company. They're looking for a community which knows how to maintain it.

As JWZ once said: "You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of 'open source,' and have everything magically work out." Has there ever been a case where a company as its last act released their software as open-source, and a community formed and picked it up?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#375

Post by ALittleLight »

xpe wrote: post #373
libria wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the concern for? A lot of great jobs still have penny-pinching managers. I've worked somewhere notoriously Frugal that was good and paid well but had no problem denying requests like this.

I'll respond with a connected set of questions... Is it worth the time to deny a (well intentioned) $150 request made by a software developer who costs a company (for example) $150K total (salary, benefits, and fixed costs)? $150 is 0.1% of $150K. What are the benefits and costs? Some questions to ask include: - How much time did the company spend in the process of denying this request? By the time you include emails…

This seems like an argument for buying SDEs needed software. It doesn't seem like an argument against the idea that you can work somewhere where they refuse to buy things like this, and still have it be a good job.

If your job pays well, work is interesting, good commute, good benefits, good manager, good coworkers, important mission, or a net positive combination of these things, that seems way more important than whether or not they'll buy you arbitrary software.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#376

Post by [deleted] »

Aeolun wrote: post #326
loughnane wrote: post #36

I will never again build any kind of workflow for my knowledge on top of anything that isn’t open source. 5y is a long time and 10y is an eternity for these sorts of products but its just a fraction of my working life. My own personal setup is a bunch of markdown files and it’s great, so I like that approach, but I’m very cautious about investing time for something so important in a product i don’t control.

I don’t follow. This app would work on top of your existing markdown files, and if they go out of business there is nothing preventing you from either keep using the app, or take your markdown files and take them elsewhere.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#377

Post by igravious »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Unless you follow the semantic wiki model (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_wiki) rather than the plain wiki model what the user is building is neither a knowledge base nor a second brain. Nearly all software in this area makes this mistake so it's not your fault. Links in human brains are typed (not untyped) and the regular wiki model (and web, and Obsidian) only support untyped links. If you are truly aiming to deliver software that allows users to create a personal knowledge base then please consider spending some time researching semantic web technology.

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#378

Post by 627467 »

rhezab wrote: post #157
ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

Interesting stuff! I currently use Andy Matuschak's [1] system, using his note-link-janitor script [2] to generate backlinks and Typora to edit. The only thing Obsidian adds is the graph view for me, but it seems that Obsidian generates backlinks using file name, not title. I prefer linking by title. Perhaps this can be an option? The editor also seems to be lacking a little... for instance I can't seem to render mat…

I discovered andy's notes in the past and has been trying to determined what he uses to publish those clean yet powerfull notes. The janitor is only one part. do you also publish your notes as HTML? How to you make use of the backlinks generated by janitor?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#379

Post by bananamerica »

ericax wrote: post #7

Maker here, excited to be on Hacker News. Obsidian is going into public beta today! (We're also on Product Hunt, come check us out!) We made Obsidian to be your long-term second brain and personal knowledge base. As you put in more notes and make more connections, the knowledge base gets more valuable, so we think it's important that you can 100% own your data and not rely on any cloud services. We believe you second…

How does it compare to Emacs Org Mode?

Re: Show HN: Obsidian – A knowledge base that works on local Markdown files

#380

Post by rhezab »

627467 wrote: post #378
rhezab wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting stuff! I currently use Andy Matuschak's [1] system, using his note-link-janitor script [2] to generate backlinks and Typora to edit. The only thing Obsidian adds is the graph view for me, but it seems that Obsidian generates backlinks using file name, not title. I prefer linking by title. Perhaps this can be an option? The editor also seems to be lacking a little... for instance I can't seem to render mat…

I discovered andy's notes in the past and has been trying to determined what he uses to publish those clean yet powerfull notes. The janitor is only one part. do you also publish your notes as HTML? How to you make use of the backlinks generated by janitor?

I don't. I share my notes with some friends as a private GitHub repo. The backlinks I just use as click-throughs to help me navigate my own notes. I too admire his notes site. Making my own is too much effort for me right now, but it is something I really want...
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