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    1. Three Cheers for Tildes (Android version) is open for alpha testing on the Google Play Store

      Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes Alternatively, opt-in to testing via web:...

      Play Store link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

      Alternatively, opt-in to testing via web: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.talklittle.android.tildes

      Three Cheers for Tildes is an unofficial mobile app for Tildes, originally announced on Tildes' 5th birthday. The original announcement answers some basic questions about the app.

      It is still missing tons of features—hence "alpha"—but I felt it would be better to release something instead of waiting too long. Alpha version 0.5 is currently good enough for light use, to help check on Tildes once or twice a day. You can log in, vote, and comment.

      Notable missing features as of v0.5: Submitting topics; Markdown editor; In-app notifications; Comment labels; Sort options.


      The iOS version is underway and I am aiming to have it done by the October deadline achieved during our June fundraiser.

      Other iOS apps are already in beta testing: Backtick by @wababa and Surfboard by @earlsweatshirt.


      I'll try to keep this post updated with changelogs and known bugs.

      I don't have a public issue tracker for feature requests; feel free to leave requests in comments here. Thanks my Tildren!

      552 votes
    2. How safe am I? (self hosting)

      I have a server running Unraid at home. I have ~20 docker containers running at the moment with almost all of them only available within my local network. I just stood up an instance of Seafile on...

      I have a server running Unraid at home. I have ~20 docker containers running at the moment with almost all of them only available within my local network. I just stood up an instance of Seafile on the server to act as a google drive replacement. Still in the early test phase before I commit to throwing important stuff on there. I have my domain proxied through Cloudflare so none of my local ports are exposed to the internet. Seafille has complicated passwords set for admin and user accounts (generated with Bitwarden, hot damn I love that app). I also enabled 2FA on each account. I know that I can further clamp it down using some of Cloudflare's extra access controls but in my admittedly limited experience, those all cause issues getting an app to authenticate with the service. Web apps don't have this issue of course.

      So am I ok with this setup? I can encrypt the data before uploading easily as it's a built in feature of Seafile. Or would it be better to just run with local only and run a VPN to access when I'm outside?

      I figure just about any effort along these lines I trust more than Google with my data. But I may be overconfident in that perhaps. I'm still learning the ropes with Linux and self-hosting in general.

      17 votes
    3. I interviewed the researcher behind the Misinformation Susceptibility Test

      https://youtu.be/vodNabH5qoM But some important context: Earlier this month I saw a post regarding a Misinformation Susceptibility Test and was curious how 20 binary questions could be an...

      https://youtu.be/vodNabH5qoM
      But some important context:

      Earlier this month I saw a post regarding a Misinformation Susceptibility Test and was curious how 20 binary questions could be an indicator of someones media biases.

      I started digging into the related paper and while the methods and analysis was interesting, there was still a lot of questions. So I reached out to Dr Rakoen Maertens who headed the study and we agreed to a discussion on the assessment and his experiences in social psychology.

      The video above is an unlisted, unedited cut of the interview and I'd love to get some feedback:

      Firstly: I have offered the Dr a tildes invite and he may engage with any questions or discussion. Time was limited and there were a lot of topics that was only briefly touched on or overlooked. Here is the original paper and supplementary resources if you want to see some of the language model work and bigger 100 question tests.

      Secondly: I am going to do a more through edit and posting this on a dedicated channel. Since cutting off reddit, twitter and tiktoc; I've sort of rediscovered a love learning and investigations. I'd like to know if people like this form of engagement and discussions. No fancy production, just simply engaging with the research and academics behind topical and interesting ideas.

      I'm already reading into fandom psychology, UV reflective paint, children's TV and CO2 scrubbing technology.

      72 votes
    4. My ginger carrot hot sauce is missing something, but I can't tell what

      Ever since I learned how easy homemade hot sauce is, I try to experiment with a new batch or recipe from time to time. My most recent batch highlights carrot and Ginger, with mild jalapeno heat....

      Ever since I learned how easy homemade hot sauce is, I try to experiment with a new batch or recipe from time to time. My most recent batch highlights carrot and Ginger, with mild jalapeno heat.

      It tastes good, and the ginger is very apparent, but my SO and I feel it's missing something. Of course you can't taste it through the internet, but based on the recipe, can you provide any suggestions for what can help round it out or take it from good to great?

      Ingredients:

      • 3 carrots, 4 oz
      • 1 knob of ginger, peeled, 2.5 oz
      • 4 jalapeños, 8 oz
      • 4 cloves garlic
      • 1/4 of a red onion, didn't weigh
      • 1/2c apple cider vinegar
      • 1/2c water
      • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
      • 1/2 bunch of cilantro, maybe a couple of tsp after chopping

      Method:

      1. Thinly sliced carrots, ginger, peppers, onion, and garlic
      2. Sautee until brown around the edges (carrots and ginger took longer, garlic was just for a minute to avoid burning)
      3. Blend with salt, water, vinegar, and cilantro.
      4. Strain solids

      Any ideas on what it's missing? Some kind of tomato product? Something earthy like cumin? More garlic or onion? Something else entirely?

      EDIT: Thanks for all the great feedback! I poured a few small samples to test various additions based on your suggestions, and I ended up adding another 1/2 tsp of salt (for a total of 1 tsp), 1/2 tsp MSG, the juice of half a small lime, 1 squeeze of honey (estimated just shy of 1 tsp) and then thickened with 1/8 tsp of xanthan gum since it was really thin.

      Next time, I definitely want to try roasting the peppers and veggies, and I'll try a blend of peppers. I'm curious about other ginger preparation methods, too, such as raw, roasted, or powder. But for a mildly hot ginger sauce, I'm calling this experiment a success!

      29 votes
    5. Nuclear fusion discussion

      I'm a big fan of nuclear fusion as a concept and hope to shift toward doing active research in the field at some point. I'd like to open this discussion to talk about topics regarding nuclear...

      I'm a big fan of nuclear fusion as a concept and hope to shift toward doing active research in the field at some point.

      I'd like to open this discussion to talk about topics regarding nuclear fusion as a future energy source. To start, I'll lost a couple of ongoing fusion efforts I'm familiar with.

      ITER:Of course the biggest fusion project is ITER, the massive multinational collaboration which is building a massive tokamak reactor in France. Unfortunately ITER will never produce power for average people, as it's purely a test reactor with no plans to be connected to the grid. The following effort to build a functional grid connected reactor, DEMO, isn't set to be built until at least 2050. This has resulted in a considerable number of private ventures trying iut experimental alternative approaches.

      HELION:At the time of writing this, there's quite a bit of buzz surrounding Helion energy, both because of the ambitious timeline theyve recently proposed as well as the investment of Sam Altman of OpenAI fame. Helion uses an FRC topology, which I personally think is a really cool idea. Basically it's a tokamak without the physical shell around it, and is kept sustained by the internal plasma physics. Helion also has another interesting quirk, they are not pursuing the typical DT fuel strategy, but are instead planning to use DD fusion to breed He3 and use DHe3 fusion as the primary energy source. I think this is a good idea because DHe3 fusion is "aneutronic", whereas DT fusion produces high energy neutrons that are somewhat of an unsolved problem to deal with. I wonder though, how they intend to deal with the inevitable tritium pollution that DD fusion creates, and how they will separate that out before Iit creates neutrons anyway.

      TRIALPHA:In addition, another major company TriAlpha Energy, also pursued FRCs, hoping to use an alternative proton-boron11 mix to achieve aneutronic operation. I think they've sort of pivoted toward being more a neutron source than working toward breakeven.

      HB11: A recent proposed approach is HB11, which is also going for proton-boron fusion. Now with Tri Alpha this seemed really dubious, because hydrogen boron has a much lower cross section for fusion than other options, even the DHe3 that Helion is doing. In addition, boron has way more electrons than hydrogen, so a proton boron plasma has more electrons with causes more bremsstrahlung loss. HB11, however, thinks they can overcome this through high energy laser acceleration. They want to use a high power laser to shoot a fuel pellet into a target. This supposedly will work much better than heating the stuff, because the laser will impart a specific impulse and thus the thermal spectrum of the impact will have a much higher Q factor centered around the cross sectional peak. I'm not really convinced on this, just because I feel like that thermal spectrum would only last for the first few atomic layers of impact before it doesn't really matter amymore.

      CFS: The next option I would consider to be one if the most popular fusion startups is Commonwealth Fusion Systems. They have what I'd consider the most conservative approach, they are attempting to build a Tokamak design like ITER, but hope to reduce the size considerably by taking advantage of advances in superconductor technology with REBCO tapes.

      W7X:The next reactor type I'll mention was in the news a lot a few years back, the Wendelstein-7X in Germany. This is a stellarator design, the crazy twisted car wreck of a thing you may have seen before. The stellarator is shaped that way so that it doesn't require an induced current like the tokamak to have magnetic helicity, because the shape does that automatically.

      ZAP:Another well liked dark horse is Zap Energy. They're not as flashy as the other reactors but seem to be working off solid physics that have been proven out over many years. They're trying to do sheared flow z-pinches, which is basically creating a lightning bolt that's perfectly straightened out and super dense.

      DPF:One more somewhat obscure option is Eric Lerner's Dense Plasma Focus approach. I'm a little puzzled by this option because it seems to be the exact opposite of Zap, where they make an incredibly twisty lightning bolt instead of a straight one.

      FUSOR/POLYWELL:There are a couple reactor types that get mentioned often but are more or less obsolete are the Fusor and the Polywell. A Fusor is a neat device that can be built to fit on a desktop and still produce actual fusion reactions, but has a fundamental design flaw of a physical electrode inside the plasma that introduces too much conductive heat loss. The Polywell is a more advanced concept thay tries to create a "virtual" cathode with orthogonal magnetic mirrors, but I think after many years of experimentation researchers were unable to validate the formation of such a virtual cathode.

      NIF:One option that is sort of tangential is the NIF, which you might have heard technically produced more energy than it produced. I dont think its necessarily going to go anywhere, mostly because it's more a weapons program than an energy program, but I think the chirped pulse amplification technology they use is really cool.

      GENERAL-FUSION:And finally I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the very highly funded and publicized General Fusion. I definitely give them points for pure childlike wonder. The original pitch was they were going to take a giant swirling tornado of molten metal, fire a ball of plasma into the eye of the storm, then smash the whole thing from all sides with a hundred giant hammers. To be honest is such a wild concept that I don't really know if it really makes any sense or if it's a fever dream. It's undergone a few revisions after finding out that certain parts of its concept just weren't going to work. This doesn't inspire a ton of confidence, but also shows flexibility in their thinking.

      There's definitely lots of other companies with other variations, but this gives a general idea of the huge range of ideas and approaches being pursued. I think it's a really cool field to explore and I'd love to hear all your thoughts about it.

      48 votes
    6. Nested noise collapse test

      To anyone reading this, please label all the comments I post as Noise and don't vote on them so this chain happens: - Comment collapsed by noise - Comment collapsed by noise - Comment collapsed by...

      To anyone reading this, please label all the comments I post as Noise and don't vote on them so this chain happens:

      - Comment collapsed by noise
        - Comment collapsed by noise
          - Comment collapsed by noise
            - Comment collapsed by noise
              - Comment collapsed by noise
      
      3 votes
    7. test

      italic? bold? what's up tildos? list more list yet more list it's tilding time

      1 vote
    8. Bambu Lab P1P 3D printer

      I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one...

      I don't intend this to be a sales pitch or anything, I just wanted to share my impression of the Bambu Labs P1P 3D printer in case anyone on here was curious and maybe considering buying one themselves.

      I have owned a few Prusa FDM printers over the years but recently tried the Bambu Labs P1P after seeing tons of rave reviews, especially in terms of how fast it prints. Anyone that has done any 3d prints knows that print time is among the least enjoyable aspects of the hobby: lots of waiting.

      Right out the gate, the P1P is a solid device with impressive construction given its relatively low price tag (I got it for $600 USD). And this thing easily rivals high performance machines in it's same "category", like the Prusa mk 3 and 4. And those are typically more expensive; the P1P comes 99.5% assembled at that price but a Prusa machine fully assembled is around 60% more expensive.

      Most of the "assembly" is just removing packaging, like zip ties, that kept the unit safe and secure during transit. Then you connect the power cable, screen, spool holder, and filament tube. And that's it. The whole thing took maybe 10 minutes.

      Getting the WiFi to connect is impossible for me at the moment, but I don't mind copying sliced gcode to the included microsd for printing. Sure, sending the gcode over WiFi would be super cool, but my Prusa doesn't do that so it's not like I've lost something. I'm hoping to eventually figure it out but that's not a deal breaker for me. I'm guessing I just need to temporarily move the printer next to the WiFi router but I haven't made time for it because I'm enjoying just printing off the card.

      With the included 0.4mm nozzle (a standard size), it prints typically 2 to 3 times faster. Something that takes 23 hours might take 11. Something that takes 3 hours might take 1. For larger and more complex prints, you can get stuff done so much faster. For smaller and simpler prints, you no longer need to plan batches either first thing in the morning or overnight, you can just start them whenever. Whatever you printed before, you can print 2 to 3 times as many in one go in the same amount of time.

      I don't have the AMS system but hope to get that at some point. If it has the same high quality build and performance as the P1P then I'm certain it will bring me simple multi-filament printing. And although I'm not nearly rich enough to afford more than 1 AMS, you can technically connect up to to 4 at once. Each unit holds up to 4 filament spools, so 4x4 means you could theoretically use 16 different filaments in a single print. The colors you could have! But each unit is like $350. Ouch.

      I only have 2 real gripes with it so far. First, it purges way too much filament at the start of a print. I get why it does that, it absolutely ensures that your filament is always properly primed to assist in printing that critical first layer correctly, but it feels very wasteful to have a seemingly-excessive amount of filament thrown away with each print.

      Second gripe is that the default spool holder is awful to access. You are likely to put the back of the machine facing a wall and that's where the spool holder will end up facing: the wall. You need to ensure the printer is a little more than two spool's width away from the wall - at the very least - so you can slide your spools on and off. Thankfully the bed doesn't move back and forth like with traditional fdm printers, thanks to the corexy technology, so you can more easily plan out where to put it and how much space it will need.

      I haven't messed around with them yet but I just got additional hotends for it that I will be testing soon. The pack I got contains 0.2mm for prints that require very fine detail, 0.6mm for prints where detail is slightly less important than speed, and 0.8mm for when you want to go fast and don't care how much detail you get. Because they use a proprietary construction of hotend, you must use theirs, but the upside is that it's fairly fast and simple to switch them out. Most hotends, you just replace the tip, the actual nozzle. But because filament can gunk up the threads, you need to run it hot to unscrew the nozzle, which is very dangerous. With the P1P, you just pull off the magnetic faceplate, undo a few screws, swap the hotend, put the screws back, and pop the faceplate back on. In just a few minutes, you're done. And no need to turn on the hotend either; just unload your filament prior, let it cool down, and swap away. A much safer and more pleasant experience.

      Overall, I'm in love with 3d printing all over again. It's the same feeling I got all those years ago when I did my very first 3d print. And sure, the Prusa is still great when you want high quality detailed prints. Going slow and steady wins that particular race still. But I get quality that is 90+% comparable to what the prusa gives me in exchange for literally 2x to 3x print speeds. That's an easy trade for me. And the slicer software estimates that some of my larger and less detailed prints could print in right 2/3 the time using the 0.6mm nozzle instead of the default 0.4mm. That translates to roughly 7 hours on my Prusa (0.4), 3.5 hours in my P1P (0.4), and 2 hours on my P1P (0.6). Given how much easier it is to swap out nozzles on the P1P, I can see myself actually doing that not frequently for certain prints that, like in my example, see substantial benefit.

      I'm very excited to see how this machine holds up in the long run!

      13 votes
    9. The US's flirtation with nuclear powered jet aircraft

      If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear...

      If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense

      Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear powered aircraft. This was part of a larger "nuclear craze" in the era where everything and anything was proposed to have nuclear technology applied to it. This led to all kinds of things like the Chrysler TV-8 and "peaceful" earthmoving construction projects. The only place where nuclear power or propulsion really took off was for large ocean going ships both for military navies as well as civilian tankers, cargo ships and icebreakers. Spacecraft technology was the only other "success story."

      Nuclear powered aircraft, while more realistic than say nuclear cars, never quite caught on except for a few experimental engines and just one actual working aircraft. The most extensive efforts towards this during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program were the HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 experimental nuclear reactors with heat transfer assemblies designed for nuclear powered aircraft at the Idaho National Laboratory. Rather than burning fuel, the jet turbine would use the heat from the nuclear reaction to heat air sent through a compressor which would then be expelled as exhaust for thrust.

      On of the more fascinating tests were the test flights of the NB-36H which while conventionally powered, flew while carrying a working nuclear reactor to test the protective shielding of the crew. It carried an air-cooled 1 megawatt reactor. The engineers and crew worked within a specially shielded nose cabin with 12-inch-thick lead-glass windows.

      The project was canceled by the Kennedy administration a few months after taking office in 1961 citing high costs, poor management, and little progress towards a flight ready reactor saying:

      At the time of termination, the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program was still in the research and development stage, with primary emphasis on high performance reactors. Although a number of research and development achievements can be credited to this program, at the time of termination an airplane had never been flown on nuclear power nor had a prototype airplane been built. - Joseph Campbell, Comptroller General

      and

      Nearly 15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote. - John F. Kennedy, POTUS

      Footnote: This post is a rework of a reddit post I made here a couple years back. It's not really meant to be a coherent or lengthy article but has some links and thoughts which I found interesting.

      20 votes
    10. What's a good way to test a website that runs on edge nodes?

      I have a little web app running on Deno Deploy and I want to see how it handles people connecting from multiple regions. There's a BroadcastChannel class that lets you send messages to any servers...

      I have a little web app running on Deno Deploy and I want to see how it handles people connecting from multiple regions. There's a BroadcastChannel class that lets you send messages to any servers running in other regions, but to test it, I need to make connections in multiple regions, so there's more than one server running.

      What are good ways to test this, either interactively or by writing tests? Maybe use a VPN? What's your favorite?

      4 votes
    11. testing <ins> markdown

      This example is on the wiki page, but it doesn't show what the rendered html looks like and I'm curious: I think this starts at 9 PM 10 PM

      1 vote
    12. Lockheed Martin teases next generation aircraft

      Recently Lockheed Martin put out a post on social media [1] where they showed a silhouette of a yet-to-be-revealed aircraft. Most people seem to believe it will be the reveal of their entry to the...

      Recently Lockheed Martin put out a post on social media [1] where they showed a silhouette of a yet-to-be-revealed aircraft. Most people seem to believe it will be the reveal of their entry to the NGAD program [2] (Next Generation Air Dominance).

      While not much is publically known one interesting tidbit is how much it looks like the silhouette of the Testor Corp [3] F-19 [4] model that was released back in the mid 80s. Testor said at the time that the model was based on intelligence (aka leaks) of what would eventually become the F-117.

      Aviation forums in the past have said F-19 model is what they WANTED the F-117 and it does look quite a bit like the Have Blue [5] test craft they built, however, the legend is that they couldn't get the math to work for radar deflection properly at that time due to lack of computational power and ended up with the geometrically simpler F117 design we got.

      [1] Lockheed Martin Teaser: https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/LM-NGAD-story.jpg
      [2] NGAD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Dominance
      [3] Testor F19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testor_Corporation#F-19
      [4] Testor F19 Image: https://test803.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/img_6712-1.jpg
      [5] Have Blue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue

      34 votes
    13. What do you look for in cooking related YouTube content?

      (I'm not looking for simple lists of YouTube channels that you like.) even though I'm about to dump a list of channels that I like There's a lot of YouTube cooking content. I was wondering what...

      (I'm not looking for simple lists of YouTube channels that you like.) even though I'm about to dump a list of channels that I like

      There's a lot of YouTube cooking content. I was wondering what you look for in that content, and what you want to avoid?

      I don't have a particularly coherent answer - I like a mix of content.

      I do like plain and simple information, or informative content that gives details about technique or science or why a thing is done the way it is. Examples of this would be America's Test Kitchen, or J. Kenji López-Alt or Helen Rennie, or French Cooking Academy.

      I also like recipes that I can actually make. I prefer recipes that don't have a massive array of ingredients that I don't have. Examples are Brian Lagerstrom (I like the way he tends to use a limited amount of equipment and he gives alternatives for ingredients if he thinks some thing is going to be hard to get) Not another cooking show has some nice recipes (his grilled cheese and tomato soup is fantastic).

      Some channels I watch have Michelin Starred chefs discussing a recipe. I like watching this because I can't replicate most of it, but I can get ideas for improving taste or texture. Italia Squisita has a lot of content, and some of their videos are comparing a traditional Italian recipe (and these are excellent) with an elevated restaurant version. The staff canteen is a bit frustrating - it's almost exactly what I want, but it ends up missing the mark a bit. But they talk to chefs, mostly in the UK, about being a chef or about a dish. La pâte de Dom is self-taught, but they have a high level of skill in pastry.

      And here's a list of videos that I can't categorise, and why I like them.

      The Biryani Expert (sadly, channel appears not to be making content any more) taught me that biryani covers a quite wide range of different dishes.

      Sheldo's Kitchen He seems like a nice bloke, and his food looks really nice and achievable to make. Again, sadly, he doesn't seem to have made any videos for a while, and he was saying that he has a lot on. But he has a calm style and I liked his content.

      Cool Daddy, YummyBoy and Street Foods TV expose me to a lot of food that I'm not used to. I can't recreate a lot of it (I don't have a camel I can cut up and cook but it gives me ideas for new ways to combine ingredients or new flavour profiles to try.

      So, what do you look for in content?

      (In this thread I avoided dunking on creators, because there's a few that I really don't enjoy but I don't think me yelling about them is good discussion. But I'd totally join in if someone created another thread.

      18 votes
    14. How you use YouTube in desktop and mobile devices. YouTube to limit usage of ad blockers soon.

      YouTube limits ad blocker usage in new test YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking (Update) So its clear now that YouTube is going to limit the usage of Ad blockers in the...

      YouTube limits ad blocker usage in new test
      YouTube could be testing a three-strikes policy for ad blocking (Update)
      So its clear now that YouTube is going to limit the usage of Ad blockers in the coming future
      I use Ublock Orgin with Firefox which basically used to block all ads and on mobile device I use NewPipe

      110 votes
    15. Tildes CSS and Android accessibility

      Hi all. On my Pixel phone I have the accessibility option for font size and display size turned up a notch or two but noticed that not all of the text in Tildes adheres to this. Some front page...

      Hi all. On my Pixel phone I have the accessibility option for font size and display size turned up a notch or two but noticed that not all of the text in Tildes adheres to this. Some front page topic text is bigger, some of them remain small.

      Is this something that can be quickly tested and fixed if it's a bug? It might drive poor sighted people away from the site.

      I'm assuming it's not me, as my Pixel 7 is quite new .... but I am on the Android beta program.

      Can anyone else try and see if it's a localised issue or more global?

      I can post screen shots of needed but not sure what image sharing sites you prefer to use in here!

      Edit:

      Fixed with a chrome flag....

      the text-scaling is being replaced by the "Accessibility Page Zoom" feature (currently hidden behind the feature flag in chrome://flags)

      23 votes
    16. Who’s into hiking or backpacking?

      Do you love a good trail? Are you a hiker, backpacker, trail runner, or neighborhood saunterer? If so, this conversation is for you! Share your favorite routes, dream trips, the gear you love,...

      Do you love a good trail? Are you a hiker, backpacker, trail runner, or neighborhood saunterer? If so, this conversation is for you! Share your favorite routes, dream trips, the gear you love, where you find inspiration, or essential advice. Got any cool trips planned, in the near or distant future? Whether you’re a newbie or trail-tested veteran, share what you know!

      36 votes
    17. What do you use to journal with?

      The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on...

      The recent PKM thread had me thinking about what folks are using as journaling app/portal. I do use Obsidian for my second brain right now and genuinely love it. But I find the mobile app on Android to be a bit clunky, if I'm honest. Seems slow to open even with very few plugins. For jounaling I've used DayOne for years. I started back when it was iOS/MacOS only, but then switched phone to Android and haven't been back. But now they have an app and web app for that. What I don't like is the somewhat goofy format it saves in and it's on their servers. They used to allow you to at least leverage your own Dropbox, but no longer.

      For the past several months I've tried several FOSS options. Main criteria is that I could host it myself, supports offline entries stored in an open file format (preferably MarkDown), and had either multi platform app or a decent web app. That lead me to try these:

      Memos
      Pros:

      • Great persistent web app
      • Slick UI that is light and snappy
      • markdown support
        Cons:
      • Stuffs the .md inside a database file so can be a bit cumbersome to export data
      • No offline support. There is a 3rd party app that hopes to implement it

      Flatnotes
      Pros:

      • Incredibly simple
      • Another easily deployed app
      • Flat Markdown files
        Cons:
      • Web app on mobile is almost unusable as in it doesn't scale well to smaller screens
      • Very early development, but very likely to stay as minimalistic as it is now.
      • No offline and very unlikely to ever have it

      Joplin
      Pros:

      • Multi platform apps that perform well
      • End-to-end encryption supported
      • Could replace both DayOne and my To-do solution (Google Keep)
      • Offline support
        Cons:
      • More database stuff instead of flat markdown files

      One solution I've been testing lately is using IAWriter to write to a 'Journal' folder within my Obsidian vault on Google drive Obsidian Vault > Journal > 2023.... for example. This works surprisingly well. Of course IAWriter is a bit spendy at $29 for Android and then more $ for other platforms as they're sold separately.

      So I'm curious what other people are using for just simple daily journaling, random thoughts, etc. If there's an approach I've missed I'd love to hear it. Joplin is so dang close but not having the structure of plaintext files is a no go for me as I don't want to be trapped by any one product should something happen to the development down the road. Doesn't have to be free, but I want control of the entries either on my own server or cloud storage.

      46 votes
    18. Test post

      Markdown header Smaller Smaller Smaller Smaller Smaller Quote deez I didn't mean it or did I... Banana Apple Orange Unordered Banana Apple Orange Interesting Link Edited

      2 votes