jaslar wrote:

It happened in February (see
https://thenextweb.com/google/2019/02/05/google-has-quietly-dropped-ban-on-personally-identifiable-web-tracking/
Google is also revising software to block Chrome ad-blocking extensions.
(https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011266/google-chrome-ad-blocker-features

Thanks for this. I missed the first bit of news. Yes, that's troubling.

As for the ad-block plans, I'm hoping that clever people will be able to provide some tools to circumvent that, just like uBlock Origin guy or that Google come to their senses and stand down on this.

I'm aware that I made a deal with the devil. But as long as I'm able to block out all advertising, I don't mind if Google analyses my patterns and monetises it in exchange for the services that I do like to use.

But if I'm unable to block the ads, the deal is off.

The questions that worry me: (1) through the adoption of our cheap
subscriptions and devices, do we hand over every click, driven ever more
precisely to our deepest preferences (by a scattershot of images)
((linked to sales)). (((linked to us, specifically)))? Yes. We do. (2)
who has access to that information? Answer to this one: anyone with a
warrant. Any third party commercial partners, unknown to us. Hackers.
(3) Who can get a warrant? Local practice varies. But an officer of the
court does not necessarily mean judicial review. (4) Has this personally
identifiable information been misused by law enforcement, or by those
unnamed third parties? Oy. Maybe this is a new thread.

But those two news items seem to be driving the heightened concern about
privacy in the Googleverse.

These questions seem to be valid for most OS's, and especially for mobile phones, and particularly for users of Facebook-type social network services, so I don't think it's just a Google-related issue. This is the brave new world we're finding ourselves now, unfortunately.

Dr Andus, if you get a chance, and perhaps in a new thread, I would be quite interested in how you use Dynalist for research as a Zettelkasten. Now that I am primarily using a Chromebook, and loving it, I have wondered about using Dynalist more intentionally for notes and bibdata. I would use date and time as a unique identifier - 2019 06 23 2045h, and appropriate tags.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, time permitting. Thank you.

Daly

Dr Andus wrote:

jaslar wrote:
>Dr. Andus, is Dynalist replacing Workflowy for you?

The way things are going I'll probably be subscribing to both.

It's a bit of a luxury, as I could just switch everything over to
Dynalist, but I do like to use WorkFlowy for most things (managing
day-to-day tasks, an external brain, memory management), and keep
Dynalist for my academic research only (basically a Zettelkasten), given
its extra capabilities.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Can you provide more details and/or some specific reference on this?


washere wrote:
>MS is not going to keep Windows as is if leaks are correct.

washere wrote:
>If the leaks from inside MS are correct, Windows will change in a few
>years in big ways, and will be in trouble.

I read a couple of tech news articles last month about leaks from MS, you'll have to Google around yourself if interested. Basically they're thinking of killing off office and making office only cloud based, 365 version. But goes further, they're thinking of migrating Windows from a desktop os to a cloud OS. Pre-empt Chromebook popularity. Apparently not caring about some areas of third world, rural etc where broadband or even internet might not be available constantly or at all. No money there anyway comparatively for them. I don't think these are leaks, they're probably sending up balloons to test reactions. Eventually though, if not a couple of years, they will. Hence Linux.

______________

Also someone else asked about Google privacy here IIRC, you can now delete your whole location timeline generated from your Android phone etc, older article:

https://trendblog.net/how-to-delete-your-google-location-history-data/

Due to protests, can do more now as Google relented somewhat, recent article:

https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/google-will-now-let-you-automatically-delete-location-and-activity-history-heres-how-to-use-it/

Also You can download your whole Google (Gmail based) data as a giant zip file, Google it and you'll find how. Data is collected by Google constantly from Android phones, tablets, Chromebooks, wear os, Google update processes + chrome browsers on desktops, Google apps & extensions, etc. and indexed by your Gmail (play store, Chromebook, browser snooping by chrome etc). Not everyone believes what Google let's you delete, is all they have or give up. It's a murky area by Google, intentionally so.

Thanks for the feedback; I have no doubt about the cloud trends. It's an irony that this is happening as more processing power is available in one's pocket than ever before.


washere wrote:

I read a couple of tech news articles last month about leaks from MS,
you'll have to Google around yourself if interested. Basically they're
thinking of killing off office and making office only cloud based, 365
version. But goes further, they're thinking of migrating Windows from a
desktop os to a cloud OS. Pre-empt Chromebook popularity. Apparently not
caring about some areas of third world, rural etc where broadband or
even internet might not be available constantly or at all. No money
there anyway comparatively for them. I don't think these are leaks,
they're probably sending up balloons to test reactions. Eventually
though, if not a couple of years, they will. Hence Linux.

Yes, Linux is looking more attractive by the day!

I've been taking a closer look at ZorinOS, a relatively recent Linux distro that looks pretty darn cool. I shall install it on a VM and play.

But what would I do without my favourite macOS apps? Could I cope?

No, is the short answer. Oh dear.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Thanks for the feedback; I have no doubt about the cloud trends. It's an
irony that this is happening as more processing power is available in
one's pocket than ever before.


washere wrote:
>I read a couple of tech news articles last month about leaks from MS,
>you'll have to Google around yourself if interested. Basically they're
>thinking of killing off office and making office only cloud based, 365
>version. But goes further, they're thinking of migrating Windows from a
>desktop os to a cloud OS. Pre-empt Chromebook popularity. Apparently
not
>caring about some areas of third world, rural etc where broadband or
>even internet might not be available constantly or at all. No money
>there anyway comparatively for them. I don't think these are leaks,
>they're probably sending up balloons to test reactions. Eventually
>though, if not a couple of years, they will. Hence Linux.

It's basically a beefed up version of MS Lite os for which screenshots and more details are available and might be released this year as a beta, taking over Windows proper in time completely. Cloud OS is unavoidable for commercial OSes and is a creeping coup already, not just in chrome os.

The reasons for move towards Linux:

+ Many preferring desktop os to cloud OSes for various reasons
+ Linux distros gradually getting better whereby one or more becoming popular for masses within a couple of years is very possible
+ Full privacy control vs commercial OSes
+ Open source, community driven + afew corp backed for funding
+ Hardware & driver support getting as good, again some corp funding
+ More & more incremental under the bonnet sys updates, vs complete overhaul updates, + easy hardware upgrade portability even beyond commercial OSes emerging in a few distros
+ Customization of sys theming, docks, font packs, languages, etc much more due to open source etc
+ Last and not the least: APPS, light to medium to heavy, increasing considerably in quantity & quality, many of which are free or cheap.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Dr Andus, if you get a chance, and perhaps in a new thread, I would be
quite interested in how you use Dynalist for research as a Zettelkasten.
Now that I am primarily using a Chromebook, and loving it, I have
wondered about using Dynalist more intentionally for notes and bibdata.
I would use date and time as a unique identifier - 2019 06 23 2045h,
and appropriate tags.

My system is quite simple. I have a separate file for Zettelkasten, which only holds my reading notes.

Each entry's title starts with a date identifier: 2019-06-29 15:25 Author (pub. year) descriptive title of entry

Then in the note section of the entry there is either a quote or my summary of the point.

I may have an additional "NOTE" section for some meta observation.

Then comes a "See also" section where I add the links to other already existing Zettels in the system.

Then comes the bibliographic info, and URL link to the source, if a web source. Plus "Date accessed:"

And at the bottom I list all the categories in a single row: @Einstein if it relates to a human, and #topic for all other categories.

I also use a few CSS style sheets with the Stylus extension in Chrome, to enhance the visual presentation. Row separator creates the "Zettel" (or card) effect, and the Darknest Hour colours in URLs and tags, so they can be more easily spotted. Coloured Pills is for marking out Zettels for further attention.

Darknest Hour v.1.2
https://userstyles.org/styles/141020/darknest-hour-v-1-2

Dynalist Row Separator
https://userstyles.org/styles/134412/dynalist-row-separator

Dynalist coloured pills
https://userstyles.org/styles/161369/dynalist-coloured-pills

The Create Link Chrome extension is also helpful for pasting in Markdown-formatted links of web sources.

Hey Dr. Andus,

I've been in a similar situation. I've narrowed it down to Standard Notes (pro) and Joplin. Both are open source and awesome in their own ways.

Standard Notes Advantages:
- Best Security
- Different editors & extensions (new secure spreadsheet option & vim emulator are really cool)
- I like the head dev's philosophy on software a bunch
- Solid as a rock (or so I'm told, I'm new to actually using it)
- Paid & long-term maintenance commitment

Standard Notes Cons
- No keyboard shortcuts (apparently in development)
- No bulk selection or dragging of notes
- No multiple windows but can open multiple notes in browser (though I wouldn't try editing more than one note at a time)
- Paid & relatively costly unless you pony up for 5 year investment.

Joplin Advantages
- Completely Free
- Supports external editors (hello vim, emacs)
- Has a solid webclipper
- End to End encryption
- A few basic keyboard shortcuts
- Can do basic bulk editing + drag and drop
- Free (with large audience)

Joplin Disadvantages
- Not quite as pretty
- Unencrypted on filesystem (can't password protect a note or folder)
- Some people have said it's less stable (though I've had no issues)
- Free (could it disappear?)

I'll honestly probably keep both around until one of them gets the advantages of the other. SN for more security based stuff and Joplin as the real workhorse.

Thank you, Dr Andus. This is helpful.

I am using date and time as you suggest.

With regard to the individual sections, are these all in the same note, or in subnotes?

Daly

Dr Andus wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
Dr Andus, if you get a chance, and perhaps in a new thread, I would be
>quite interested in how you use Dynalist for research as a
Zettelkasten.
>Now that I am primarily using a Chromebook, and loving it, I have
>wondered about using Dynalist more intentionally for notes and bibdata.
>I would use date and time as a unique identifier - 2019 06 23 2045h,
>and appropriate tags.

My system is quite simple. I have a separate file for Zettelkasten,
which only holds my reading notes.

Each entry's title starts with a date identifier: 2019-06-29 15:25
Author (pub. year) descriptive title of entry

Then in the note section of the entry there is either a quote or my
summary of the point.

I may have an additional "NOTE" section for some meta observation.

Then comes a "See also" section where I add the links to other already
existing Zettels in the system.

Then comes the bibliographic info, and URL link to the source, if a web
source. Plus "Date accessed:"

And at the bottom I list all the categories in a single row: @Einstein
if it relates to a human, and #topic for all other categories.

I also use a few CSS style sheets with the Stylus extension in Chrome,
to enhance the visual presentation. Row separator creates the "Zettel"
(or card) effect, and the Darknest Hour colours in URLs and tags, so
they can be more easily spotted. Coloured Pills is for marking out
Zettels for further attention.

Darknest Hour v.1.2
https://userstyles.org/styles/141020/darknest-hour-v-1-2

Dynalist Row Separator
https://userstyles.org/styles/134412/dynalist-row-separator

Dynalist coloured pills
https://userstyles.org/styles/161369/dynalist-coloured-pills

The Create Link Chrome extension is also helpful for pasting in
Markdown-formatted links of web sources.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

With regard to the individual sections, are these all in the same note,
or in subnotes?

I keep everything in the same note. One advantage of that is that should I move (export) my notes into another system, all the information pertaining to the same note would be kept together.

Dr Andus wrote:

Daly de Gagne wrote:
>With regard to the individual sections, are these all in the same note,
>or in subnotes?

I keep everything in the same note. One advantage of that is that should
I move (export) my notes into another system, all the information
pertaining to the same note would be kept together.

My Zettelkasten varies slightly. The rule is that one chunk of information goes in one note. Other chunks of information go in other notes and are tagged and linked. This keeps your notes shorter and they become more flexible as one note could link to several different contexts. If you're on mac/ios [The Archive](https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ is excellent.

I'm not so sure about narrowing. Outside of the workplace, most I know are in one Eco system.

It’s the big greedy tech giant corps vs open communities plus other big corps funding open source platforms to kill off MS/Apple/Google.

I’ve never succumbed to saying this before over the last twenty years, but finally I think the future of desktops is going to be Linux.

I actually think Desktops are on the wane. They certainly won't be dominant if they survive. Tablet computing is replacing laptop computing which has replaced desktop computing for many. Walk into any café and see laptops replaced by tablets (certainly in my area). My iPad Pro has 1TB storage. The missing piece is coming this autumn with file transfer via USB-C (finally Apple! Only 10 years behind everybody else).

I can handle a whole meeting on my iPhone using the excellent Drafts 5 and 2Do. At the end of the meeting I can email out the minutes from Drafts 5 to all present and I can move all actions to 2Do 5 min after the meeting and I'm job done.

I’d argue that the general theme is convergence.

I don't think the separate vendors will allow that. It benefits them to make it as hard as possible for you to move your data and it is. Try moving from Android to iOS or vice versa. You will lose data or need to store it as it become to time consuming to copy.

I’m just not sure in what domains “Linux will be king”.

I agree. Linux is missing one key component - mobile. Many people remain with Apple for one simple reason. It works. My contacts are on all devices as are my photos and music. That alone will never allow Linux to be king.

Huawei is a state owned military Intel corp in disguise as a private company. Yesterday Spain said yes to 5g infrastructure by Huawei.

That's the truly concerning thought. I've never approved of using China or India as trade partners. Their oppressive regimes and human rights abuses are sufficient a warning. Plus China is only after one thing and that is espionage. I know a number of clients who will not allow their business partners to install any Chinese or RuRussian apps on their devices whilst working with them.

- https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/bloomberg-super-micro-motherboards-used-by-apple-amazon-contained-chinese-spy-chips/
- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/huawei-employee-accused-of-spying-for-china-was-arrested-in-poland/
- https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/chinas-democracy-includes-mandatory-apps-mass-chat-surveillance/

This is also a reason I've cut my tie with Google. Google has no moral ethics in its practice and no values as an organisation. They profit by snooping and recently helped China oppress its people further through their restrictive search engines. Absolutely appalling for any democratic based business to help oppress others.

Interestingly in talking to family in Germany there is still quite a widespread boycott of Windows 10 amongst government officials due to its controversial key logging feature.

Basically they’re thinking of killing off office and making office only cloud based

I think office apps are on their way out anyway. I do nearly all my writing in multimarkdown (or some markdown variant), I then PDF the document and send it off. The only reason I have office around is to open all those office files I've had since the early 90s


I work in a completely macOS/iOS eco system. I could realistically just use Emacs and most of my needs would be met. There is sadly no iOS Emacs system. However, I now spend 50% of my time on iOS and desktop only apps are a problem. Especially when they do something that could easily be done on an iPad. I do my graphics on affinity on iPad, all my teaching/preaching is compiled in plain text and I use [Ulysses](https://ulysses.app/ for that. My Zettelkasten is in [The Archive](https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/ My Zettelkasten archive is stored in iCloud and accessible with [1Writer](http://1writerapp.com/ on iOS. [Drafts 5](https://getdrafts.com/ has been a game changer for me. It is the most useful app on my iPhone. In fact, it has become so central that I normally only need my iPhone for any meeting I go to. It has a permanent place as the first app on my taskbar.

I used and loved Workflowy. I now use Dynalist, but am massively disappointed. Their mobile offering is worse than woeful. I hardly open it anymore as I just cannot get productive using it on iOS. I am unlikely to renew my subscription as mobile should be a priority in my opinion, especially for an outliner and text based system.

From where I sit, office apps (specifically Office -- as in Microsoft) are far from waning. My gov't clients eat this stuff up and churn out .docx .pptx .xlsx as fast as they can. The billions spent on O365/M365 in government clouds keeps Microsoft swimming in low overhead / high margin gravy.

Simon wrote

I think office apps are on their way out anyway.

I actually think Desktops are on the wane. They
certainly won’t be dominant if they survive. Tablet
computing is replacing laptop computing

Ultrabooks!

This piqued my curiosity. See this chart: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-forecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/

Some takeaways:
- from 2010 through a projected 2023, more laptops were shipped worldwide than desktop units
- in 2013 through 2017, more tablets were shipped worldwide than laptops
- but it looks like laptops are projected to catch up and overturn tablets again.

Why? I think the reason is business. Tablets are great for consumption. But knowledge workers, even if they've moved from Word to markdown word processors, still need spreadsheets and presentations. I'm sitting in a coffee shop right now. 8 laptops, 1 tablet. It's easier (and cheaper) for me to get work done on a Chromebook than an iPad. Bottom line: both office suites and laptops are around for awhile.

washere wrote:

I actually think Desktops are on the wane. They
> certainly won’t be dominant if they survive. Tablet
> computing is replacing laptop computing

Ultrabooks!

Yes I was going to say the same, tablets for consumers & teens/moms/elderly are still selling. But NVM techies, producers & workforce & serious pro people? Something else. Interesting data that tablets sales peakedv already. Phablets ate into it too. Discounting several e-readers, I think I have more than five good spec tablets, not sure. Haven't turned on any of them since winter.

With a good Ultrabook one can attach anything at amazing specs, not just speedwise, with thunderbolt 3 which most don't know what it can do or that it exists. Thunderbolt 4 spec rumors are even Wilder. Wonder how many of the public know what egpu boxes are, which are used to attach to Ultrabooks to do any level of desktop graphics from CGI to Adobe stuff to gaming to 3D etc.

Windows might focus on cloud & Macs (superb OS compared to windows) might retreat to graphics as Cook takes his eye off & Linux might rise. Who knows. But desktops & heavy productivity apps will remain strong as the world is run by them.

It's not just wafer thin super Powerful laptops, Ultrabooks, that are doing well. Pocket laptops or Handhelds, like the GPD series or the new Chuwi minibook etc, also with lots of i/o might get big, beyond gaming & novelty factor. But rumors of the demise of big computing power for heavy productivity apps & a keyboard & lots of connectivity to devices plus running cheap multi monitors very well, are grossly exaggerated.

And tiny desktops have already taken off. It depends what one considers a PC these days, doesn't have to be a huge box humming away under the table.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WReJAsg0tw