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

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

#221

Post by Dangeranger »

pkulak wrote: post #206
e3bc54b2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried many note-taking apps. From Evernote to Google Keep to OneNote to Standard notes yo plain old notepad to Zotero to Word and really honestly many more. If you say this list is all over the place, then that is because requirements vary depending on purpose, not the other way around. After almost a decade of experimenting, I have come to realise that the best note-taking tool by far is org-mode. It is free,…

> I can edit it anywhere Can you pull it up on your phone when you're out and need to jot something down? (Honestly wondering, I've always toyed with org mode, but half my notes are taken on the run.)

Yes, you can use BeOrg or MobileOrg for mobile use.

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

#222

Post by actinium226 »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #8
legerdemain wrote: post #4

After clicking around in growing confusion, I finally found a single screenshot of the application in action in the GitHub README file. Spoiler: it looks like any other note-taking application.

Yeah if there's anything that will prevent me from downloading a free application like this.. it would be the complete lack of a preview of what the thing is. Strange decision not to include a screenshot or gif of the application in action ANYWHERE on the marketing site.

You can also use the web version. To me that's what I like about SN. Joplin/Obsidian seem cool, but I'd rather everything be in the cloud, so that if change computers I don't have to go through endless setup.

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

#223

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

thecodrr wrote: post #201
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > They don't allow any form of account recovery. Which sounds really epic on paper but once you forget your password, you lose all your data. You can't have both. If the service has account recovery after you lose your password or encryption…

> You can't have both. If the service has account recovery after you lose your password or encryption keys, it can only mean that there is no any meaningful encryption. Incorrect. Check Notesnook[1]. It solves both of those things. [1] https://notesnook.com/

It is obvious that you misunderstand something. Please respond with how exactly they achieve this.

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

#224

Post by thecodrr »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #223
thecodrr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have both. If the service has account recovery after you lose your password or encryption keys, it can only mean that there is no any meaningful encryption. Incorrect. Check Notesnook[1]. It solves both of those things. [1] https://notesnook.com/

It is obvious that you misunderstand something. Please respond with how exactly they achieve this.

It's very simple.

Since the encryption key is basically derived from your password, Notesnook allows you to backup the encryption key.

This encryption key + a random salt is used to encrypt all the data client-side.

In case you forget your password but have the encryption key somewhere safe, you can easily use the encryption key to have your data decrypted.

Notesnook does the above by sending a recovery link to your email. After you click on the email, it authenticates you for a short period of time (30m) and shows the recovery UI. You can put your recovery key in the input. The app downloads the encrypted data from the server, decrypts using the key you gave, and if successful, asks you for a new password. Once you give the new password, it re-encrypts everything using the new encryption key.

All this happens in 2 steps. You can try it out yourself.

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

#225

Post by thecodrr »

actinium226 wrote: post #219
thecodrr wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't have both. If the service has account recovery after you lose your password or encryption keys, it can only mean that there is no any meaningful encryption. Incorrect. Check Notesnook[1]. It solves both of those things. [1] https://notesnook.com/

How do they achieve it?

Check this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26845877

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

#226

Post by GekkePrutser »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #209
thecodrr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly hearsay. Electron is highly optimized (it's chromium after all). Making an electron app doesn't make it automatically slow and clunky. That's absurd. Sure it is a browser and it takes a little more Ram than you are used to (but most machines nowadays have 8 to 16 gigs of RAM so not a huge issue). What does make an electron app slow is the app itself. Obviously. You have VSCode that is blazing fast even fo…

VS Code is the exception to the rule. MS has spent lots of time optimising it. However most apps don't, and even MS' other apps are total crap, like MS Teams. If it was so easy to take the lessons learned from VS Code and apply it to their other apps they would do so I'm sure.

I meant MS' other electron apps by the way. Can't edit anymore.

Skype for Business for Mac also comes to mind. Sometimes it takes up 800MB of memory. For an IM app..... :X

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

#227

Post by anaerobicover »

thecodrr wrote: post #203
cyberlab wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3. They don't allow any form of account recovery. Which sounds really epic on paper but once you forget your password, you lose all your data. I actually like this. It's not a misfeature, but a feature. Too often email is a single point of failure and it's how the bulk of account takeover attacks happen. Compromise an email account, and you compromise every account attached to that email. Just don't forget your pas…

> It's not a misfeature, but a feature. It's inconvenient and unnecessary. I don't get what can be so hard about just giving the user the encryption key. In the recovery flow you can just ask the user for the recovery key to decrypt the data and reset the password. That's how Notesnook does it. The email can never become a single point of failure like this.

If there is another piece of data that can be used in the same way as the password (or to override/reset the password) then it is completely equivalent to the password itself from a security perspective.

If you can lose the password, what prevents you losing both the password and this secondary key at the same time? If you store them in separate places, then just store two copies of the original password in those two places.

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

#228

Post by thecodrr »

anaerobicover wrote: post #227
thecodrr wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a misfeature, but a feature. It's inconvenient and unnecessary. I don't get what can be so hard about just giving the user the encryption key. In the recovery flow you can just ask the user for the recovery key to decrypt the data and reset the password. That's how Notesnook does it. The email can never become a single point of failure like this.

If there is another piece of data that can be used in the same way as the password (or to override/reset the password) then it is completely equivalent to the password itself from a security perspective. If you can lose the password, what prevents you losing both the password and this secondary key at the same time? If you store them in separate places, then just store two copies of the original password in those two…

What you say is right and that is how password managers work. However, human habit is that people generally keep their password in their heads. The point of giving a secondary key is that:

1. Since it is longer, the user is forced to store it in a file or some other place

2. The message behind "recovery key" is different to the "password" so users react different to it. Giving it more value and attention.

3. Encryption keys are still rare in clients so it stands out and the user again gives it more attention.

With that said, it is entirely possible that the user won't save the key or lose it. In which case, nothing can be done.

It isn't an ideal solution to account recovery problem but so far I have found this to be the only solution if you are going the zero-knowledge route.

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

#230

Post by novok »

sldksk wrote: post #147
novok wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

For Joplin, review the sync settings. Sorry I forget which one it is but on iOS there was a bad default and once you change it the mobile app works like a dream.

No it was broken to the point where I couldn't even just write a note with a keyboard properly. Even if that was fixed the fact you have to change a bad default out of the box is indicative alone.
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