I've tried obsidian so many times and want to love it but the sync situation - either the expensive official one, the approved options for mixed iOS/Windows clients (icloud) and third party tools like obsidain-livesync - were all way too issue-prone for me to ever trust it. I hope they figure this out

I recommend using syncthing. It's very easy to self host but I actually use a SaaS for it: syncding.com. It gets me 100gb to 1tb of disk in which I can create folders and keep them synced with my 2 laptops, my phone, my server etc... I have an Obsidian vault with Meld Encrypt to encrypt some files, a keepassxc file I share across my devices and my todo.txt

It's simple to setup and will work forever instead of paying for different providers that might shut down or increase their prices.

Haha now your comment might make it seem like I was trying to advertise for you, hence the downvotes.

As a disclaimer, no I wasn't paid and have never been contacted before by Syncding, just a happy customer.

At $4 per month, I don’t consider it expensive at all to have this whole category of problem solved for me. Mobile app, desktop, laptop synced flawlessly and quickly.

A lot of people view that as pretty costly for what is incredibly small amounts of data in the scope of things. for half that cost you can get 100gb of storage through google and have it synchronize all my docs AND my pictures and videos and anything else I want, so by comparison $4 can seem like a lot for note synchronization.

The main value proposition of Obsidian Sync isn't storage. Obsidian is primarily used with text files which are tiny. My 20 year old collection of notes is only about 1GB for 19,000 files and a few images/pdfs.

I'm biased but I'd say the benefits over Google Drive are: 1. end-to-end encryption, 2. seamless integration with the app (e.g. version history), 3. granular control over what settings and files are synced for each device, 4. shared vaults.

In addition Obsidian Sync helps keep Obsidian 100% user-supported. Obsidian is not subsidized by advertising or any investors. And you can actually contact the team if you need help. See also: https://stephango.com/vcware

Yes even for me in Spain 4$ is not bad. But for me I just want to sync with my local servers. I don't want any stuff in someone else's computer even if it is end to end. So I use the livesync plugin.

I'd pay for the option to host my own server with the official sync but they don't offer that for now.

This might not work for everyone who reads this, but I put all my Obsidian files on my iCloud drive. Since they're just markdown, they sync up on all my (Apple) devices and I can see the notes on my Macbook, iPad and iPhone at any time. I'm already paying for iCloud storage anyway for other stuff so it's very cost effective for me. (Obviously this wouldn't work if you're not in the walled garden of Apple)

I know it's probably no help on iOS, but for people on android or no mobile requirement, just push and pull to a git repo. You can probably even set up a cron or something to sync regularly.

What setup are you using to push and pull on Android?

GitSync works for me both on Android and iOS. I'm not using it that frequently tho, and you have make it a habit to open GitSync first, sync the changes (pull) and then open Obsidian. Also, after changing the notes you should again open GitSync and do a sync (commit + push).

https://gitsync.viscouspotenti.al/

I had the same issues, so I built a macOS menu-bar app that does one-click git pull/commit/push for any local folder, including Obsidian vaults. Uses the system git binary, fast-forward merges only (stops on conflict instead of silently merging), blocks secrets before push.

I personally just use git, there's even a plugin that automates pushing and pulling changes. Does that not cover your use case?

I just use github and have a nightly cron job to sync the vault repo

the dollar cost he's talking about does not include the large dollar cost the externalities burning gas creates

Does the offshore wind energy costs include externalities of fabricating, assembling, shipping, installing, maintaining and decommissioning the turbines? Does it also include bird losses and whale harms?

Does the gas turbine include externalities of fabricating, assembling, shipping installing, maintaining, and decommissioning oil drilling rigs? And of shipping, storing, and burning the gas? And the climate change caused by gas leaks? And the harms to humans, the fishing industry, and bird losses and whale harms by oil spills (I know you really care about those)?

I really want to know how in the hell whales are getting stuck in wind turbine blades. I want to see a video of this happening.

There's also the externality of paying for the natural gas, which is passed on to the consumer in the form of higher energy bills.

It probably also makes sense to include the $800M we are burning per day right now on patriot missiles (assuming the stockpile hasn't been depleted yet).

The argument is that vibrations of the wind power plants at sea disturb the whales.

Paying for the gas itself would not be an externality. Externalities are for example the worldwide damages caused by extreme weather which is caused by climate change, health problems caused by air pollution or the usage of clean water for cooling

Normally, I'd agree, but in this age of massive corruption, you need to be careful figuring out who the stakeholders are. The purpose of these new fossil plants is not to produce electricity. Their purpose is to line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy people building them, and of the politicians accepting bribes to get them built.

Fueling the power plant is an externality for the people building the power plant. You could argue that it increases their costs, but these things are monopolies, with prices set by bought-off politicians. The plant + fuel costs much more than renewables (so ratepayers get screwed), but I'll wager the plant without fuel is still a bit less than solar or wind construction.

> The argument is that vibrations of the wind power plants at sea disturb the whales.

It's an argument that's always reeked of whale shit to me. If they really cared about marine sound pollution they'd go after super yachts first.

The biggest harm to whales is indeed human-based, but more along the lines of being collateral damage from the fishing industry.

The project life cycle cost: yes. The birds and whales: no. But neither do the fossil power plants.

Yes.

There's many iOS only apps that either don't have anything comparable on android or the alternative is just nowhere near as good (a lot of it is more creative-focused stuff)

Would you mind mentioning at least one? Not something niche (as there is lotso of niche apps in Playstore which appstore will never see) but something sizeable userbase would install?

Flightly is really popular on iOS, there's not really a comparable android version. Gentler Streak and a lot of fitness app also don't have comparable android versions - most of the examples I can think of are apps that focus (and charge for) good design

A lot of people question the "effective" part of effective altruism, and simply saying "we support more effective giving" is not convincing, especially when the most public figurehead of the movement is/was a convicted fraudster.

I don't use beancount but if you're already in sheets, Tiller might be easier to switch to to get lots of built-in dashboards/metrics

It shouldn't be! Forcing big companies to unbundle product pricing would give new entrants to the market a fighting change at success.

Should they have to un-bundle Windows Explorer, Notepad, Photo Viewer, Control Panel, and all the other utilities as well, under the same logic? If not, why?

1) technically? yes, absolutely- apps like explorer or photo viewer should only use public APIs so other companies can make comparable apps on the OS with 90% market share 2) these are all OS utilities, not workplace apps - there's a big difference between Adobe/Microsoft Office/Google bundling their apps where there's a very clear, very powerful disincentive to compete vs something like explorer.

> these are all OS utilities

I think part of the problem is "what is an OS utility" and "what is an app". All your OS configuration could be done via a REST API, text files or some other well defined protocol. So you could have competing configuration apps that all help you manage your config in their own way and unbundle the control panel. Realistically looking at your average sparse linux distro shows just how "minimal" an OS can be, and even they bundle applications. Yet, I realistically don't thing consumers or the tech market at large would be assisted by a law mandating that all operating systems be as minimal as the linux kernel (no GNU/Linux, that's bundling!). And even if you did go that far, now we get into arguments over monolithic kernels and micro kernels.

>these are all OS utilities

sorry, no, that shouldn't be allowed either. as someone who's working on a cloud task scheduler, OS's should be forced to unbundle thread management. Linux needs to be banned in the EU until it doesn't come with a default thread manager.

multiple people at previous jobs joked about how using FMLA would get you fired or at minimum banned from promotion

If your company is even halfway legitimate they will have what they collect / monitor in your employee handbook or a privacy policy somewhere.

Zulip is more of a Slack-like instant chat system with threading as a first class citizen; CQ2 looks like threads only exist in the context of one "root" document vs a channel in zulip where threads can intermingle.

And neither Slack nor Zulip are suitable for complex discussions.

Zulip's core design goal is to make it effective for complex discussions, and our users tell us that it's working. E.g., cutting-edge math research https://zulip.com/case-studies/lean/; Rust language development https://zulip.com/case-studies/rust/.

$24 a year is too much?

When every other aspect of the app is basically free, yes. I would pay once for the functionality, not as a subscription.

They offer a lifetime price of $128.

https://www.photoprism.app/membership/faq

> Are there alternatives to a recurring subscription? > > Yes, our Plus members automatically receive a free Lifetime Essentials membership after 24 months