Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work • Hacker News Board

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#111

Post by novok » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:22 AM UTC

ericol wrote: post #16

zenjester wrote: post #2

tried it left because of price, lack of options, lack of reliable sync https://joplinapp.org/ is far better and cheaper option

Exactly this. Joplin kinda blows the competition out of the water in every aspect. The sync works flawlessly and this is one of the strongest features it has. I set it up using WebDAV and never ever had to worry about it working.

When I tried the joplin app 9 months ago, the mobile app on iOS was just plain broken.

As far as E2EE note apps with mobile and desktop apps that sync go when I last looked in 2020, you have Standard Notes, Joplin, Inkdrop, Amplenote, Day One and DevonThink. I tried out Inkdrop seriously, but it wasn't better enough for me to switch and was more expensive than standard notes.

A lot of these apps are $5/month, and I feel like that is too much compared to the $3/month far more sophisticated utility apps like 1password are sold for.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#112

Post by astaza123 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #50

astaza123 wrote: post #31

what's the point of "end-to-end encrypted" if the keys are still on the server?

Where does it say that? I see here - https://standardnotes.org/knowledge/2/what-is-end-to-end-enc... the claim is: "Whenever we move your encrypted data over a network, in order to deliver services to you, it is sent over a strictly secure connection to only our private servers. Because this data is encrypted, we can't read it, and we can’t sell it." (I use Standard Notes, and if there's some element of the security…

it doesn't say that anywhere indeed, but this is my understanding: if you reload the page your login is being preserved without re-entering your password. there's no way to maintain this without storing a key on the server (i.e. either the master key (MK), or a key that encrypts the MK, if the MK is stored locally

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#113

Post by ipiz0618 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:32 AM UTC

thecodrr wrote: post #80

Standard Notes is a phenomenal note taking app and one of the first to bring encryption in note taking. They take security very seriously and have multiple third party audits. With that said, the bad outweigh the good. I don't mean to be a pessimist here (SN is inspirational) but: 1. Their free plan is extremely lacking. You can't even try out many of their editors. 2. Their pro plan mostly only offers editors. I am…

Thanks for posting! It checks most of the boxes for me. I've been using Simplenote which is perfect and minimal for note taking. But when I start to blog I find the lack of live preview and spellcheck inconvenient.

Looking forward to the desktop apps and possibly offline support!

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#114

Post by jerednel » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

The comments here prove their marketing could use work. SN Extended is basically a completely different app than the free version. Nested folders, smart tags (i organized a workflow with untagged notes going to an inbox folder, notes with due:yyyy-mm-dd being pulled into a Next Items folder etc..)

Also there is a markdown editor, an editor that encrypts and stores attachments in an S3/webdav/drive/dropbox folder. There is a simple spreadsheet editor as well that I use for simple personal sheets.

None of this you would really internalize on a cursory view of the homepage or by really even downloading the free app.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#115

Post by thecodrr » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:57 AM UTC

ipiz0618 wrote: post #113

thecodrr wrote: post #80

Standard Notes is a phenomenal note taking app and one of the first to bring encryption in note taking. They take security very seriously and have multiple third party audits. With that said, the bad outweigh the good. I don't mean to be a pessimist here (SN is inspirational) but: 1. Their free plan is extremely lacking. You can't even try out many of their editors. 2. Their pro plan mostly only offers editors. I am…

Thanks for posting! It checks most of the boxes for me. I've been using Simplenote which is perfect and minimal for note taking. But when I start to blog I find the lack of live preview and spellcheck inconvenient. Looking forward to the desktop apps and possibly offline support!

> Thanks for posting! It checks most of the boxes for me.

That's awesome. I am glad you liked it!

> Looking forward to the desktop apps and possibly offline support!

The desktop apps are coming soon. You can track our roadmap on Github: https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook/blob/main/ROADMAP...

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#116

Post by mkl » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #106

mkl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they download the encryption key (unprotected so no password needed) as a file, and they keep the file safe? That's the kind of thing I've been thinking about for an idea of mine. What did those 10 users ask about? How to use the encryption key file?

The problem with that sort of thing is that you now have one of two situations 1. Either the key is only as secure as what ever random online service you have it backed up on (in which case, it might as well be stored at SN and save the user all kinds of headaches) 2. The key isn't backed up, and this won't be realized until the worst possible time.

Well, putting a couple of USB drives in a sock drawer, garden shed, etc. is pretty secure. Point 2 is the tricky one, as communicating that necessity seems challenging.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#117

Post by 1MachineElf » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

I use two open source note taking apps on my Android device. Anything that needs to be protected and private stays in Standard Notes. Everything else goes into Markor. Markor strikes an amazing balance between features and simplicity. Syncthing handles sync. Standard Notes does fine for the other stuff, but as said by other commenters, even it's Extended editor options are lacking, and there's also no convenient way to "share" content from another app into Standard Notes. People have been asking for that feature for years, but bizzarely it seems never to have been prioritized.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#118

Post by flyingfsck » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 5:09 AM UTC

zikzak wrote: post #20

zenjester wrote: post #2

tried it left because of price, lack of options, lack of reliable sync https://joplinapp.org/ is far better and cheaper option

I wish more apps used git as a sync option. GitJournal is a great client for Android phones and then any editor on desktop platform works fine (plain text or markdown notes). I use it with vs code and Dendron.

There’s a great iOS client too. I was overjoyed to stumble on it.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#119

Post by yarcob » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

I'm always curious who is behind a company. How many people work there, how it is funded, where they are based, type of corporation, etc.

These things make a big difference. Eg I typically trust a non profit that's been around for a couple of years more than a venture funded startup that just launched.

This company doesn't even state where they are based or what the name of the company is on the website. They have a statement on longevity on their website, but no mention at all who this company even is.

This does not inspire trust.

Re: Standard Notes is a safe place for your notes, thoughts, and life's work

#120

Post by ivansavz » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

kushan2020 wrote: post #102

GekkePrutser wrote: post #76

I really miss tomboy (not the new ng version). I used it for years and it was amazing. Rich text without having to use markdown. Razor fast responsiveness when searching. Instant hyperlinks just by typing the name of another note. Excellent keyboard shortcuts too. I really miss it but it was no longer maintained and falling into disrepair on newer OSes due to lacking support for DPI scaling and dark modes. I use onen…

Hey if you want to give my app https://bangle.io a try, it checks off your requirement of being a WYSIWYG note taking web editor. I would say the friction to try it out is pretty low as there is nothing to lock you in. It simply reads and writes data in a markdown format directly to your hard drive -- think VSCode but for notes.

Wow this is excellent. It's very nice it can access local filesystem like a regular app, but nothing to install (other than to open a webpage).

Good stuff!