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Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

anytype.io

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Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#31

Post by menacingly »

This is really nice, but I think the perennial curse of technology people is producing ", but with "

People want a thing, not an ideal, and they'll sell their soul to get the thing. At this point, it's actually being surprised by this that is the ludicrous position. Philosophies are a differentiator for a very small portion of population.

If you want them to buy into ideals, you've taken on two problems: Make a thing they want with its own differentiators outside of the noble pursuit, _and_ trojan in your principles.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#32

Post by medstrom »

smokel wrote: post #30
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Operating systems should be providing spellcheck to textboxes everywhere anyway. Makes no sense every app rolling their own and not using my operating system dictionary with my own corrections. Extremely frustrating every Electron app just rolls their own rubbish spellcheck, or doesn't have it at all.

That's an interesting take on things. Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well? To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well. I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software. A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper intera…

It's kinda-sorta possible on Linux distros, you know, with cliphist and all these little programs, but you have to do a lot of custom stitching, adding Firefox extensions to interoperate in such-and-such ways, and most programs don't have extensions. Until mainstream OSes make it a priority, I'll stay in my Emacs corner.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#33

Post by qbasic_forever »

taminka wrote: post #6

i've been following anytype since 2019, when the initial public release plan was for autumn of 2020 (lol), and since then it has transitioned from being a libp2p based google docs alternative into something more complicated, with relationships, sets, etc, and tbh i just never use it, because it's become too complicated every time i open the app, which uses electron btw ;(, i catch myself looking at the explainer vide…

It really is amazing how little competition Google docs has with free or open tools. I just want something that lets me write a never ending river of rich text documents. I don't want to write markdown source (by default), I don't want a "preview" as I type, etc.--I want WYSIWYG. I don't want to micromanage folders and hierarchies and classifications and tags and whatnot, I don't even want to think about storage or files. Just an app that instantly starts, lets me capture rich text, and search through documents. I've never found anything close to that outside Google docs and it's frustrating.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#34

Post by amarshall »

lewisjoe wrote: post #17
jitl wrote: post #5

(I work at Notion) The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion. However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their d…

Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven't advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it's good how they've implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product. They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assista…

Did they? https://support.google.com/docs/answer/10519035?sjid=6574250...

> Multiple collaborators can work on the same file at different times, but you can’t collaborate in real-time in encrypted files

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#35

Post by rchaud »

taminka wrote: post #6

i've been following anytype since 2019, when the initial public release plan was for autumn of 2020 (lol), and since then it has transitioned from being a libp2p based google docs alternative into something more complicated, with relationships, sets, etc, and tbh i just never use it, because it's become too complicated every time i open the app, which uses electron btw ;(, i catch myself looking at the explainer vide…

It's not unusual to need several hours of use to understand if a tool is right for you. I use Logseq and Obsidian, and without going to the forums and watching how the features are supposed to be used, I would have continued to use it like Notepad++, becuase out of the box, that's all it looks like it does.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#36

Post by 16bitvoid »

catapart wrote: post #22

This is awesome! Love to see more local-first, security-focused apps! Especially ones that are free. Asking because I'm currently working on a local-first app that I am gaming out how to sync to non-local networks: The docs state that the app syncs to local P2P networks. Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet? If so, is that because of the cost of maintaining/renting a TURN server? Or is there a technical…

> Does that mean it doesn't sync across the internet?

They currently host their own backup node, so it does sync across the internet, but you only get 1GB of storage (or 10GB if you were in the alpha) on their backup node. Once that's exceeded, additional files are only synced P2P.

They're planning on providing extra storage for a cost and soon anyone will be able to self-host their own backup node.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#37

Post by rchaud »

derbOac wrote: post #7

Can someone explain this is — what it does and what it's used for? I'm not familiar with Notion at all and the page — which basically says you can use it for everything — is not helpful in this regard. It sounds like a P2P shared note and document app but it's not clear to me.

Think of it as a CMS with custom fields and widgets, for a personal website or knowledgebase.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#38

Post by cj »

menacingly wrote: post #31

This is really nice, but I think the perennial curse of technology people is producing " , but with " People want a thing, not an ideal, and they'll sell their soul to get the thing. At this point, it's actually being surprised by this that is the ludicrous position. Philosophies are a differentiator for a very small portion of population. If you want them to buy into ideals, you've taken on two problems: Make a thin…

Normally I would agree with this.

But with Notion in particular, and how heavily they're pushing Notion AI, I could see some c-level exec types being uncomfortable with the idea of Notion (or any managed/hosted service) to store trade secrets, company IP, etc.

When a company is pushing AI features as heavily as Notion is, it raises questions how Notion is planning to (or already using) your private data for fine tuning, model training, potentially scooping up your company's IP in the process.

Re: Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative

#40

Post by emptysongglass »

I'm sorry to hijack the thread but as someone forced to use Notion as a team wiki, please improve the performance! I can't emphasize this enough. The Notion subreddit is filled with complaints: if that's not a wake up call to every single PM at Notion, I don't know what is.

Stop shipping features until the perf is a joy to your users. It's mind-boggling to me that companies would prio anything over fixing perf outside of fixing bugs.

Notion is the single biggest frustration of any workplace tool I've ever used in my entire software career and it all comes down to its performance.

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