I looked into Obsidian a few years ago but decided against it due to the lack of encryption and self-hosting options. Are there now any workarounds or solutions available that provide encryption and self-hosting capabilities?
Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
31–40 of 92 posts
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#32why the H does this have the same opening line as moby dick why are emacs users like this
I'm not seeing any "Call me Ishmael".
some years ago
> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#33> Obsidian: An Org-Mode replacement? I doubt it. Obsidian is not open source, and the core is maintained by a small group of people, rather than a community. What happens when the company dies? That said, I am willing to have more faith in Obsidian, than many other things since they are not [VC funded]( https://stephango.com/vcware )
It doesn’t matter if Obsidian dies. The files are standard markdown you control and there is no lock-in. You can simply move on to another tool.
You seem to be saying that the tool doesn’t matter. However, people who use Obsidian typically use it for a reason (other than the file format) over other tools.
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not seeing any "Call me Ishmael".
some years ago > Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world
“Some years ago” isn’t a Moby Dick-ism, it’s perfectly normal English to open an anecdote with.
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also sell a business license. I wonder how much money they make with that compared to the sync service.
I believe it's now free for commercial use. https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
The money is not the problem - you want the source code so that if the company disappears,
you can still maintain the software.
I would prefer to buy from those commercial players that have a clause in their license saying upon sunsetting the commercial offering or closure of the company the source code becomes open source. In the absence of such a clause, I prefer open source solutions.
[RMS was right saying "Free as in 'freedom' is not about payment." There can be paid-for open source software, and there can be free-of-charge commercial software, but the freedom to edit and recompile is the most important aspect of "being free".]
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
some years ago > Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world
“Some years ago” isn’t a Moby Dick-ism, it’s perfectly normal English to open an anecdote with.
'some years ago I went through a phase' in an introduction is plausibly a moby dick reference
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#37> Obsidian: An Org-Mode replacement? I doubt it. Obsidian is not open source, and the core is maintained by a small group of people, rather than a community. What happens when the company dies? That said, I am willing to have more faith in Obsidian, than many other things since they are not [VC funded]( https://stephango.com/vcware )
It doesn’t matter if Obsidian dies. The files are standard markdown you control and there is no lock-in. You can simply move on to another tool.
This depends how deep down the rabbit hole someone goes. At a basic level, yes, this is true. However, if someone has built a complex system around properties, data views, and various other plugins, they're going to have a hard time.
There is a lot to be said for the value of simplicity, if one of the goals is portability.
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#38> Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together from various sources. I gradually stopped using Emacs in favor of more modern tools that are less flexible but also less of a hassle.
I don't know how many times I've read a variation on this. It took me a very long time, but now I pretty much made my peace with that: I use Emacs (for certain things), I use VS Code (with Emacs bindings), I use Apple Notes.. I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all. The same for messaging apps, chatbots, etc.. I now embrace extreme diversity.
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#39The author doesn't mention what I consider the true value of writing and organizing your notes yourself: that work is the work that drives learning and understanding. I experimented with feeding my notes into an LLM model for RAG and was underwhelmed. The resulting output was repetitive, stilted, dry, and uninspiring. I wanted it to see if it find relationships between my ideas that I had not found on my own, but was…
Yes. People seem to be forgetting that, in many contexts, the greater part (or at least a major part) of work's desired outcome is to make changes to the conscious and subconscious minds that enable them to better handle future situations.
I'm all about automated solutions for things — but I find that my desires are typically for unrewarding physical activities. I still don't have a virtually costless robot butler, driver, farmer, chef, and maid to anticipate my needs around the house and home office; to transport my family and me around town safely and on time; to grow microplastic-free food hydroponically; to do my meal planning, shopping, cooking, cleaning, tidying, and laundry with effectively no intervention and supervision on my part. Why not?
Now that would really 10x my productivity.
Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
#40Crazy coincidence as I just started setting up my PARA system on Logseq.
I couldn't wrap my head around PARA. The waters were too muddy between projects, areas, and resources.
Take travel for example. I have travel resources (packing lists, loyalty reward numbers, etc). I would presumably have a travel area, as it's something I'd like to be a semi-major part of my life long-term. But I'd also think whatever trips I'm currently planning are "projects". Does this mean 3 travel folders, in 3 different parents, so I have to go 3 places for one topic?
It all seemed so confusing.