Forem: Derek Ardolf

When Schools Spy on Kids and Their Families

Derek Ardolf — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 14:31:41 +0000

Imagine this: a school accuses a 15-year-old of taking illegal drugs, but that isn't the most concerning part for the student. The evidence is strange.

The school shows photos of him at home. In his bedroom!
The pills? A photo featuring him...eating "Mike and Ike" candies.

The school has been taking photos of him through his student-issued laptop webcam.

How long were they watching him?
Were there photos of him changing clothes?
What about other students? And family members?

This actually happened in 2010, and his family was asking these questions.

A federal class-action lawsuit, against the Lower Merion School District in Philadelphia, revealed school laptops had collected over 57,000 images (mix of photos and screenshots). The true total was somewhere higher, due to images thought to have been deleted before investigations.

Software, meant to track down lost laptops, had taken webcam photos and screenshots. Retrieved laptops would sometimes leave the software active. Other times? Photos were allegedly taken to snoop on students that they had suspicions of.

The school didn't tell students or parents since it would "defeat its purpose." A student tech intern became aware of the software long before this incident. Concerned, they sent an urgent email to the IT Director.

The response:

"...If we were going to monitor student use at home, we would have stated so. Think about it—why would we do that? There is no purpose. We are not a police state. ... There is no way that I would approve or advocate for the monitoring of students at home. I suggest you take a breath and relax."

Another response from the IT Department agreed with the Director:

"...Being a student intern with us means that you are privy to some things that others rarely get to see, and some things that might even work against us. I assure you that we in no way, shape, or form employ any Big Brother tactics..."

TheftTrack, the software now discontinued, cost the school ~$156,000 to rollout. Legal fees and settlement costs of the lawsuit resulted in over $1.8 million (liability insurance covered $1.2 million).

If you're wondering why people place stickers or post-it notes on their laptop webcams, this is just one example of why.

This entire story is a fiasco. Yes, there are takeaways across the board around privacy and security. But I hope that intern made it somewhere where their words carry weight. Interns and juniors bring insights that aren't blurred by old patterns, blind spots, or "this is how we've always done things"-style justifications. They are more than an extra pair of hands.

And in the case of this school district, they may literally have million-dollar ideas.

Resources

I first learned about this lawsuit while reading Cory Doctorow's book, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age.
Wikipedia has a great article about the lawsuit, where I was able to learn more about the outcomes.

What do you think?

I wonder how many other similar lawsuits have unfolded, and how often student-issued laptops are still treated this way across schools.

How many students have been disciplined by a school the way this school had tried, but without people batting an eye as to how a device was used, leaving everything to continue?

I can't imagine being comfortable bringing those devices into the home unless the parents were unaware as to what the software was capable of doing, which often is a mystery (until something like this lawsuit pops up).

Contribute to the conversation:

Did you know of this story? What are your thoughts?
Do you know of similar news stories, or anecdotal ones?
Do you have kids in school, and has this been a concern where you are?
Do you work in education, and have you seen similar issues, or perhaps good solutions to privacy concerns?

2021 Dendron New User Survey Results

Derek Ardolf — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 20:51:32 +0000

The new user survey was open for several months in 2021, where we were prompting new Dendron users within VS Code itself. We had a few thousand respondents take the opportunity to give us feedback.

What backgrounds do our users have?

Users were asked about their backgrounds. Just over half of respondents had a background as Software Developers (53%), while the next largest group were Students (14%).

Approximations of remaining background options:

Researcher (7%)
Manager (7%)
DevOps (7%)
Technical Writer (4%)

The Other (8%) were spread across the following groups:

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

Systems/Infrastructure/IT/InfoSec Administrators/Engineers (13%)
- Solutions Architects
- InfoSec / CyberSecurity
- Systems Engineers/Administrators
- etc.
General Hobbyist/Multipotentialite/Polymath (8%)
Data Scientist (6%)
Artist (Designer/Musician/etc.) (5%)
Author/Writer/Blogger (3%)
Teacher/Professor (3%)

There were some smaller groups that stood out in the Other category, having one to three respondents:

Therapists
Legal (Lawyers/Law Graduates)
GeoChemistry
Pharmacist
Biologist
D&D Player
Dentist

What are people using Dendron for?

New users were able to select all that applied. A majority of users are coming to Dendron, first and foremost, for a Personal Knowledge Base (80%) solution.

Approximations of remaining uses:

Todos and Agenda (57%)
Research (47%)
Meeting notes (45%)
Team knowledge base (29%)
Publishing (22%)

The Other (18%) included the following groups:

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

Student/Learning/Class/Academia Notes (4%)
Journaling (4%)
Content Creation and Non-fiction/Fiction Writing (3%)
Project / Software Documentation (2%)
System/Product Configuration and Design (2%)
CRM (1%)
Second Brain (1%)
Gaming Notes (D&D, RPGs, General) (1%)

There were some smaller groups that stood out in the Other category, having one to three respondents:

Scripted/Automated documentation creation
Tracking, Reading, and Taking Notes on Books
Recipes / Cookbook
Drafting GitHub issues/MRs
Event planning
Presentations

Are users coming from any existing tools?

New users were able to select all that applied. More users said they were coming from No Previous Tool (26%) than users who found themselves looking at Dendron after something else, with OneNote (25%) coming in a close second.

Approximations of remaining previous (or parallel) tools:

Notion (23%)
Google Keep (19%)
Obsidian (18%)
Evernote (14%)
Roam (5%)
Logseq (5%)
Foam (5%)

15% of respondents provided additional information under Other, providing a total of over 70 different tools and workflows. Here are the top Other tools listed.

The percentages are in relation to the total number of respondents in Other

Joplin (9%)
org-mode / org-roam / emacs (6%)
Bear (6%)
Apple Notes (4%)
Plain Markdown or text files (4%)
Trello / Confluence / Jira (4%)
Typora (3%)
Physical notes (2%)

Do users have plans on publishing their notes?

New users were only able to select a single response, if they were to respond to this question at all. A majority of users were Curious (39%) about publishing, or otherwise already saying Yes (36%) to planning publishing. The remaining respondents said No (25%) and were not interested.

What's Next

We've set aside the majority of this quarter, and the last, to iterate on the feedback you've given us (specific details to come in a future blog post).
We are committed to making Dendron the absolute best tool and community for thought in 2022 and beyond!

If you like to be part of the effort, please take part in the 2022 Dendron User Survey and help us build a better tool for thought 🌱

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Interested in creating your own knowledge base using markdown, git, and VSCode? Get started with Dendron today.

The Five Minute Journal with Dendron and Visual Studio Code

Derek Ardolf — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 16:39:05 +0000

It's 2022 and you're looking to start off the year right by keeping a journal. Where to start? The Five Minute Journal (5MJ)¹ is a simple but effective way to get started with note taking.

The Five Minute Journal

Tim Ferriss,² world-famous entrepreneur and author of books such as Tribe of Mentors,³ uploaded a video in 2020 all about his approach to note taking with physical notebooks.⁴ 5MJ helps him express gratitude, make days better, and focus on mindfulness.

In this post, we'll be going over how to create your own 5MJ using Dendron. Dendron is a structured note taking tool for developers that is open source, local first, and integrated with Visual Studio Code (VS Code).

Prerequisites

This post expects that you've gone through the Dendron Getting Started Guide and have a workspace opened to work with. If you're new to Dendron, make sure to take a look.

Concepts

Daily journal notes

Daily journal notes are special notes meant to easily track your everyday life. Dendron also has a built-in Calendar View that helps you visually navigate and create new journal entries.

Templates

Templates are notes with pre-outlined content meant for reuse. Templates can either be inserted into an open note with the Dendron: Insert Note command, or automatically applied at note creation with Schemas. These are meant to reduce friction in the creation of new content, providing standardized outlines to your notes.

Schemas

As you end up creating more notes, it can be hard to keep track of them all. This is why Dendron has schemas to help you manage your notes at scale. Think of schemas as an optional type system for your notes. They describe the hierarchy of your data and are themselves, represented as a hierarchy.

Steps

Create 5MJ template

Open lookup (Ctrl+L / Cmd+L)
Type templates.daily-5mj in the text prompt and hit enter to create the template
Copy and paste the following markdown:

<!--
Based on the journaling method created by Intelligent Change:
- [Intelligent Change: Our Story](https://www.intelligentchange.com/pages/our-story)
- [The Five Minute Journal](https://www.intelligentchange.com/products/the-five-minute-journal)
-->

## Morning

<!-- Fill out this section after waking up -->

### Gratitude

I am grateful for:

1.
2.
3.

### What would make today great?

1.
2.
3.

### Daily affirmations

I am...

## Evening

<!-- Fill out this section before going to sleep, reflecting on your day -->

### Amazing things that happened today

1.
2.
3.

### How could I have made today even better?

I could have made today better by

Save the file.

You now have a new template with the 5MJ outline.

Create 5MJ schema

Templates can be used with or without schemas. Run Insert Note to insert a template into a currently opened note.

Open schema lookup (Ctrl+Shift+L / Cmd+Shift+L)
Type 5mj in the text prompt and hit enter to create the schema, which should look like the following:

version: 1
imports: []
schemas:
  - id: 5mj
    children: []
    title: 5mj
    parent: root

Update 5MJ schema contents

We are going to use Inline Schema, a simpler schema format that takes less lines and uses indentation for visual understanding.

Replace the content of 5mj.schema.yml with the following:

version: 1
schemas:
# Daily is the top most schema since its parent is 'root' it must have an identifier
# this identifier 'daily' will be used when using 'Lookup (schema)' command.
- id: daily
  parent: root
  title: daily
  desc: ""
  # Children of the top most schema do not need to contain identifier and just 
  # require a 'pattern' to be set to match the hierarchy of notes.
  children:
    - pattern: journal
      children:
          # This pattern matches the YYYY (year) child hierarchy
        - pattern: "[0-2][0-9][0-9][0-9]"
          children:
              # This pattern matches the MM (month) child hierarchy
            - pattern: "[0-1][0-9]"
              children:
                  # This pattern matches the DD (day) child hierarchy
                - pattern: "[0-3][0-9]"
                  # As with regular schema we can set the template to be used with
                  # the match of our notes. Below is an example usage of shorthand template
                  # definition (which defaults to type: note). 
                  desc: Five Minute Journal
                  template: templates.daily-5mj

The pattern attribute is using a Glob Pattern, which is an expression used to match ranges and combinations of characters.

To match with the daily journal structure:

Example: daily.journal.2021.12.31
Patterns:
- Year: [0-2][0-9][0-9][0-9] means match the range 0000 - 2999
- Month: [0-1][0-9] means match the range 00 - 19
- Day: [0-3][0-9] means match the range 00 - 39

This means all new daily journal notes are within pattern ranges.

Create a new daily journal

Creating a daily journal entry results in the templates.daily-5mj template automatically inserted.

Run Create Daily Journal Note (Ctrl+Shift+I / Cmd+Shift+I)

You should see a new daily journal note with the 5MJ template inserted.

Congratulations!

Key takeaways

After doing this, you've now:

Created a 5MJ template
Created a 5MJ schema
Created your first daily journal with the 5MJ template applied via schema

Next steps

Now what? You have daily journals using templates, but Dendron can do much more. It's an open source, local-first knowledge management solution that scales as you do.

Learn to swiftly create schema by targeting existing note hierarchies
Learn to level-up your daily life with the bullet journaling workflow
Learn to explore your schema visually using the schema graph
Check out an end-to-end workstyle, managing 20k notes, using schemas and daily journals from A Day in Dendron
Dendron FAQ
Dendron Concepts

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The Five Minute Journal, by Intelligent Change ↩
It's hard to use one sentence to describe all the things Tim Ferris does. He has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, and has authored several books from all of his notes and interview content. He seems shorter in person. Anyway, learn more at his website! ↩
For a list of books, see Books by Tim Ferriss. ↩
The video: How I Journal and Take Notes: Brainstorming + Focusing + Reducing Anxiety. For a companion guide to the video, take a look at How Tim Ferriss Uses The Five Minute Journal: 6 Tips For New Journalers. ↩

Share Your Notes Online: Publish Dendron with Netlify and GitHub

Derek Ardolf — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 19:29:06 +0000

Dendron helps people and products organize with notes, docs, and knowledge of all the things. Let's see how easy it is to publish and have a static site hosted on Netlify!

You'll learn how to publish your Dendron notes using Netlify and GitHub, which looks like this demo website. This tutorial assumes that you have basic knowledge of GitHub and Visual Studio Code (VSCode).

This uses a brand new Dendron Workspace you can later configure to work with your own vaults. Do you already have a workspace you'd prefer using? Reference the Dendron docs for in-depth details on how the template, and other workspaces, can publish to Netlify: Publishing with Netlify.

Part 1: GitHub

When logged into GitHub, click here to generate a new Dendron Workspace pre-configured for Netlify publishing. If you're wondering, we're using this template on GitHub.

Nice! That's all we need to do for this minimal Dendron setup. To understand what is going on behind the scenes, you can read the template README.

Note that this tutorial will work with both private and public repositories.

Part 2: Netlify

The rest of the steps are done in the Netlify portal.

Step 1: Import your repository

When logged into Netlify, you start on your Team Overview page.

Click New site from Git
Under Connect to Git provider, select GitHub
- You'll be asked configure Dendron for permissions. It's best practice to go with Only select repositories, and selecting the repository you made from the template

Once permissions are configured, select the repository in Netlify. There is no need to change any of default values, since the GitHub template is providing them from netlify.toml. Scroll to the bottom, and click Deploy site.

Your website should now be building!

For more information on Netlify app permissions, to GitHub, refer to Netlify Docs: Authentication with the Netlify GitHub App

Step 2: Configure your website name

By default, Netlify generates a random combination of strings. In the example so far, the website is named elastic-hugle-37bfd5.netlify.app. If you don't want to own your own domain name, you can at least change the elastic-hugle-37bfd5 section.

Site settings
Under Site information, click Change site name
Enter new name, and if it is available, click Save

For more information on custom domains, beyond the above, refer to Netlify Docs: Custom domains

Step 3: View deploy status

Under the Deploys tab, in Netlify, you can view the status of your website. This is where build information will be posted whenever new commits are posted to the main branch of your repository on GitHub.

This is a great way to check whether build have failed, or are still in progress. If you run into any errors, and aren't sure what to do next, jump into the Dendron Discord where we have a #questions channel.

Summary

You're done! From now on, all new commits you make to your repository on GitHub will trigger a new publishing update to your website.

In this tutorial, you learned how to:

Create a pre-configured, minimal Dendron Workspace from a template
Import a repository into Netlify
Create a custom name for your Netlify website
View deploy status in Netlify

Next steps

Now what? Publishing is set, but Dendron isn't just for what you want to share with the world. It's an open source, local-first knowledge management solution that scales as you do.

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Highlights from VSCode 1.62

Derek Ardolf — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 22:33:29 +0000

The open source VSCode project, along with VSCodium¹, completed their latest monthly release with v1.62². For those of us that haven't been using the Insider's Build,³ it's time to look at what's new.

Make sure to checkout the VSCode 1.62 Release Party on YouTube!

Live Share session sharing in Virtual Workspaces

Virtual Workspaces⁴, such as vscode.dev and github.dev, now support this superpower: sharing a session directly from the browser.

Haven't used Live Share before? Many people are attracted to Google Docs due to how easy it is to collaborate, comment, and highlight sections in order to give each other scathing reviews. Introducing Live Share: instead of waiting for the PR review, you can provide non-constructive feedback to your peers!

Take note: if you are a VSCodium user, sharing/joining sessions won't work. I learned this after spending too much time confused. Be aware of the live-share license agreement, including the information about data collection, which may be part of the incompatibility with VSCodium. There are alternatives, though, such as CodeTogether.

Release Party: Live Share (in vscode.dev)

Bracket pairs

I enjoy whenever features lessen confusion for my eyeballs. I never bought a pair of Google Glass, even as men everywhere were accidentally taking photos while using urinals in pubic restrooms. Bracket pair highlighting, though, to show where I am in the russian dolls of nested loops? Yes, please.

Settings of interest:

"editor.guides.bracketPairs": "active": Only show guides for only the active bracket pair.

"editor.guides.bracketPairs": "true": Show guides for all bracket pairs, with different colors.

Release Party: Bracket pair colorization

Verified publishers

When installing extensions, it's nice knowing you're installing the real deal. Microsoft could have gone the whimsically difficult route that Twitter has taken with their blue checkmarks, but instead they have made it an easy process. This was how I learned GitLens was acquired by GitKraken: the truth is out there.

Found a duplicate extension? Check whether one is from a verified publisher by jumping into the Marketplace.

Release Party: Verification for extensions publishers

Other notables

General tip: Wondering what shortcuts are configured in VSCode? One shortcut to rule them all: Ctrl+K Ctrl+S

Or Ctrl+Shift+P -> Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts

A CVE was addressed involving characters that became invisible, leading to code that could compile differently than visually expected.
Extension note: GitHub PRs and Issues brings issue and PR interaction directly into VSCode. Have you taken a look yet?
- Latest updates can be seen in the extension changelog.
Issues resolved in point releases, referred to as "Recovery" releases, can be found on GitHub: 1.62.1, 1.62.2, and 1.62.3.

Enjoy the blog? Subscribe to our newsletter!

Newsletters not your thing? You can also follow us elsewhere on the interwebs:

Interested in creating your own knowledge base using markdown, git, and VSCode? Get started with Dendron today.

Checkout VSCodium, for the truly MIT-licensed version of the VSCode IDE (with telemetry/tracking disabled). ↩
VSCode release notes for 1.62, along with release notes for previous monthly releases. ↩
The VSCode Insiders Build allows users to get VSCode with new features as soon as they are available, rather than at the monthly cadence. ↩
Reference the VSCode Blog Post on vscode.dev for a full rundown on Virtual Workspaces and bringing VSCode to the browser. Last month, there was a livestream all about it! Watch VS Code for the Web: vscode.dev on YouTube. ↩

Horrifying Vulnerabilities in the Death/Birth Certificate System

Derek Ardolf — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 04:46:38 +0000

Premise: Death and birth certificates can be filed online, with practically no oversight.
DefCon Response: Let's show the world how easy it is to kill anyone, and/or profit from the birthing/killing of virtual…babies?

This is one of my DefCon 23 Debriefs, from the blog archives back in 2015! If you ever have the opportunity to get your work to ship you to Defcon, take it. If you ever get the opportunity to ship yourself, don't think: just go.

Presentation Title: I Will Kill You
The Presenter: Chris Rock
Published Book: The Baby Harvest

Chris Rock gave a crazy presentation about how terrifyingly vulnerable the systems are surrounding death certificates and birth certificates. It's incredibly vulnerable due to how easy it is to register yourself in the online systems currently available, in order to cause mayhem. With all of the necessary information needed to falsify deaths and births being freely available online, anyone can do this.

In the presentation, he walks through how anyone can make someone legally dead — including themselves. Why would anyone want to do that?

Collect on Life Insurance
Falsely create wills for others, that are then collected on
Make life incredibly difficult for absolutely anyone. (NOTE: See Bulk Upload mode in video below for how wild this can become!)

Chris even wrote a book on creating false birth certificates and identities, then profiting from the false deaths of the virtual babies.

His presentation was uploaded to YouTube on the Official DefConConference YouTube Channel, so now the world knows. Will this bring any sort of change quickly? Or will we be seeing many people confusingly finding themselves "dead," and needing to re-register themselves as living human beings?

You can find his presentation below:

Want to see some more about how big of a problem this is? Check out the 60 Minutes video, from earlier this year, about the Death Master File and it's incredible flaws. People are interviewed who have been fighting to be recognized as alive in the system. You can also see an article written by Paul Ford, of the New Republic, who wrote about his exploration of the Death Master File. You should take a look. Oh yeah, and you should also check here to make sure you're not already dead.

When IoT Attacks: Hacking a Linux-Powered Rifle

Derek Ardolf — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 21:33:45 +0000

Premise: Let's place a computer on a gun, and give it WiFi.
DefCon Response: Let's hijack it, and install our own malicious updates.

This is one of my DefCon 23 Debriefs, from the blog archives back in 2015! If you ever have the opportunity to get your work to ship you to Defcon, take it. If you ever get the opportunity to ship yourself, don't think: just go.

Presentation Title: When IoT Attacks: Hacking a Linux-Powered Rifle
The Presenters: Runa Sandvik and Michael Auger
The Twitters: @RunaSand /// @LM4K
The YouTubes: Runa A. Sandvik

If you weren't aware, TrackingPoint creates guns that use "lock-and-launch technology found in military fighter jets in its Precision-Guided Firearms." Using a Linux OS, these guns allow for the ability to strengthen your abilities to shoot targets. Gun scopes on these can even record your hunts, and you can use the WiFi on the rifle to upload photos or view live stream feeds.

They even sell smart glasses that sync with the rifle, which "empowers you to shoot around corners and record your hunt." You know, in case what you are hunting is shooting back.

Though, something is amiss! There is currently a warning on the TrackingPoint Official Site:

Valued TrackingPoint Community,

Wired Magazine recently reported that information security consultants discovered software vulnerabilities in TrackingPoint guns. We are working with the consultants to verify their assessment and will provide you with a software update if necessary. Until then, please note the following: Since your gun does not have the ability to connect to the internet, the gun can only be compromised if the hacker is actually physically with you. You can continue to use WiFi (to download photos or connect to ShotView) if you are confident no hackers are within 100 feet.

We will keep you updated, and hope you continue to have exhilarating TrackingPoint shooting experiences!

In addition to articles out there, like the one linked above for Wired magazine, Runa also posted a link to her slides and links to a good handful of YouTube videos.

Some YouTube Demos by Runa:

Highlights from VSCode 1.61

Derek Ardolf — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:45:36 +0000

The open source VSCode project, along with VSCodium¹, completed their latest monthly release with v1.61². For those of us that haven't been using the Insider's Build,³ it's time to look at what's new.

As a bonus for this release, Microsoft held a little VSCode 1.61 Release Party on YouTube. Watch the recording, see the devs show off features, and feel like you were actually invited to a party!

Locked editor groups

Note: this is an experimental feature.

Don't lose track of a file or terminal you are bouncing back-and-forth between in your gigantic list of editor tabs: use locked editor groups. These prevent VSCode from opening more editor tabs in a group (a collection of tabs).

I like this feature, as I'm often opening new files in the wrong area of the screen. I want those side-by-side, computer!

Release Party: Editor and workspace improvements demo

Split an editor without creating a new group

Do you find yourself looking at large files, and wish you could scroll down while staying in place elsewhere? Now you can, by doing the splits without creating a new group. Test it out with View: Split Editor in Group in the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) or with the keybinding shortcut: Ctrl+K Ctrl+Shift+\. This is useful when converting pieces of code into functions, trimming fat, copy/pasting comment blocks, and whatever else your heart desires.

No new group means not having yet another tab open in your editor!

Release Party: Editor and workspace improvements demo

Webview UI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code

For extension authors making use of the webview API for customizable views in the editor, life is about to become easier: say hello to the Webview UI Toolkit. This is an open-source component library, providing Visual Studio Code design language, which matches the look and feel of VSCode/VSCodium. This is compatible with your tech stack of choice, bet it React, Vue, or OMGNewJSFramework!

Other notables

General tip: Wondering what shortcuts are configured in VSCode? One shortcut to rule them all: Ctrl+K Ctrl+S

Or Ctrl+Shift+P -> Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts

Confusion was caused by a new telemetry config option, telemetry.telemetryLevel, which would display that telemetry was enabled (even if it was previously disabled). The full discussion can be found on GitHub, which led to improvements being implemented in the 1.61.1 update.
Platform-specific extensions: no longer try installing a MacOS-only extension on your Windows system, or vice-versa. That is, if the extension developer specifies the supported OS targets. This was previewed at the release party.
I often came back to my laptop to find that my terminal was having a stroke in the VSCode editor. This seems to be resolved!
The latest point releases⁴ include fixes for other problems, such as high CPU consumption. Make sure to keep up-to-date!

I can't forget: want to take a look at VSCode in your web browser, without installing a thing? These are called Virtual Workspaces, such as vscode.dev and github.dev. Reference the VSCode Blog Post on vscode.dev for a full rundown on bringing VSCode to the browser.

Enjoy the blog? Subscribe to our newsletter!

Newsletters not your thing? You can also follow us elsewhere on the interwebs:

Interested in creating your own knowledge base using markdown, git, and VSCode? Get started with Dendron today.

Checkout VSCodium, for the truly MIT-licensed version of the VSCode IDE (with telemetry/tracking disabled). ↩
VSCode release notes for 1.61, along with release notes for previous monthly releases. ↩
The VSCode Insiders Build allows users to get VSCode with new features as soon as they are available, rather than at the monthly cadence. ↩
Issues resolved in point releases, referred to as "Recovery" releases, can be found on GitHub: 1.61.1 and 1.61.2. ↩

Best Mobile Note-Taking Apps for Markdown

Derek Ardolf — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 19:25:00 +0000

On the desktop, markdown-based notes can be taken in any plain-text editor of choice. If you're using Dendron, you can use VSCode/VSCodium as well as a suite of powerful commands to manage your notes. Though, what happens when you walk out the door? It turns out that your phone can work with markdown, too!

What we're looking at today:

Obsidian
GitJournal
Markor
iA Writer
Other apps of interest
- Markdown notes
- Git clients
Last thoughts

Obsidian

"Obsidian is a powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files."

Cost: Free for personal use (or paid options for business use and other features)
OS: Android, iOS / iPad / Mac, Windows
Open Source: No
Built-in git integration: No

Obsidian is a PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) tool that provides a sleek UI to Markdown files. It had the best mobile experience, for me, out of the apps I tested. Though it doesn't have git support built-in, other mobile apps can assist in providing that backend. I recommend MGit (Android).

Obsidian uses wikilink style links (ex. [[my.other.note]]), like Dendron, which is a nice plus.

Paid options can assist note-takers with automatic syncing, publishing of notes, and other perks. Note that obsidian is free for personal use but requires at least a paid commercial license for business use.

GitJournal

"Mobile first Markdown Notes integrated with Git."

Cost: Free (or a paid Pro option)
OS: Android, iOS
Open Source: Yes (AGPL-3.0)
Built-in git integration: Yes

GitJournal has gained quite a bit of interest: it works on your mobile device of choice, free to jump into, open to contributions, and can sync notes to a repo (or multiple repos with the Pro version). The project is built with Flutter, making life easier when it comes to multiple-platforms as target exports.

GitJournal also supports wikilinks and can therefore be used with Dendron and Obsidian.

I'm really interested in seeing where GitJournal goes. I couldn't find other mobile apps that covered both notes in Markdown and git-integration, without needing to juggle multiple apps. With my Dendron vaults, I mostly take scratch notes or edit already-existing notes when using my phone. For more extensive usage, I hop on the laptop.

I will say, though, that I ran into so many problems in trying to get my first demo repository setup that I stopped using GitJournal. Other users are running into issues at the moment having to do with syncing and setup, some of which might be tied to a hardcoded expectation of branch names (such as master). I now use mgit for managing my repos, and Obsidian for managing notes.

iA Writer

"iA Writer offers a unique writing experience that lets you concentrate and clarify your message. Used by half a million people worldwide, its powerful interface is crafted to cut out noise, let you focus on what you want to say, and help you structure and trim your text."

Cost: $29.99
OS: Android, iOS / iPad / Mac, Windows
Open Source: No
Built-in git integration: No

iA Writer was initially released 10 years ago, and has since evolved to work on multiple platforms. Though it doesn't have git integration, other apps like GitJournal or MGit (Android) can be used for that.

Want to feel like a designer, in a sleek interface with minimalist and Apple-like branding? This is made for you. The editor can work across all devices: phones, tablets, and desktops.

Being a feature-full piece of software, including:

Style-checking to help improve note quality
Can export to Word
A larger list of all-the-things can be found on their main landing page.

Markor

"Markor is a TextEditor for Android. This project aims to make an editor that is versatile, flexible, and lightweight. Markor utilizes simple markup formats like Markdown and todo.txt for note-taking and list management."

Cost: Free
OS: Android
Open Source: Yes (Apache 2.0, w/ special note on commercial license)
Built-in git integration: No

Markor is without git integration, but can be combined with an app like GitJournal or MGit (Android) for syncing to a source repo.

I liked both the editor and preview rendering in Markor more than the other apps I tried. Syntax highlighting is a nice touch while editing, and the previews look cleaner than both iA Writer and GitJournal.

Though, the cons here are that Markor only works on Android and needs another app to handle git integration. Outside of that, I can quickly see why thousands of ratings have led to nearly a 5/5 on the Google Play.

Other apps of interest

There are many mobile note-taking solutions that work with Markdown. Below are some additional tools that Dendrologists have used for markdown on the go.

Markdown notes

Working Copy (iOS)
- Git client, paid (free version can't push commits). This app comes up quite a bit for iOS users and within the Dendron Discord in our #mobile channel, so I'm listing it at the top.
Noteless (Android)
- Open source, free, includes AsciiMath, KaTeX, mermaidjs
- An experimental feature option supports Dendron formatted wiki links
Neutrinote (Android)
- Open source, free, includes LaTeX / math rendering support
Editorial (iOS)
- iPad + iPhone, paid, integrated Python bonus
Taio (iOS)
- iPad + iPhone + Mac, free (or paid option has perks, such as Javascript-supported actions)
Textastic (iOS)
- iPad + iPhone + Mac, paid, code-highlighting, ssh/FTP/SFTP/Dropbox/Google Drive support

Git clients

MGit (Android)
- Git client, open source, free. There is a reason I repeatedly mention it in this article, when it comes to Android users, because it handles git repos well.
Working Copy (iOS)
- Git client, paid (free version can't push commits)

Final thoughts

Users may also be interested in future development around the GitHub mobile client, which currently does not support being able to edit or contribute new files. For now, people can use the app to post "LGTM" to PRs, add thumbs-down emojis to issues, and get notified when your PRs are rejected.

git is not the only way to sync/backup your notes, since tools like Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, and Keybase can also help provide that functionality. I, and other Dendrologists, have a bias toward git due to a variety of reasons:

Following the Docs as Code approach
Treating all documentation as part of a distributed wiki system that can import docs, from any source, into a single workspace
git versioning
Anyone that has used GitHub, GitLab, or other git-hosting solutions will have git installed

If I had to choose what combinations to use, on Android, I'd recommend Obsidian with MGit (Android). The two, together, have worked very well for me. I'm also a fan of setting up SSH keys to have project/repo-limited permissions as Deploy Keys on GitHub (with Allow write access enabled). This prevents users from setting up SSH keys with user-wide permissions across GitHub.

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Highlights from VSCode 1.59

Derek Ardolf — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 18:25:57 +0000

The open source VSCode project, along with VSCodium¹, completed their latest monthly release with v1.59². Let's take a look at some features that the insiders build³ had their impatient, bleeding-edge hands on (before we all forget what 1.59 brought before the upcoming August 2021 release).

Share view state

VSCode users are often bouncing around different files in their workspaces. By default, if you close out a file tab, VSCode doesn't track where you were in that file. This can be annoying if you didn't mean to close out the file, or because you were playing whack a mole with the new new workspace trust popups.

Say hello to shared view states across editor groups⁴. Editor groups are the windows of tab collections within the VSCode editor⁵ that grow whenever Split Editor/Open to the Side commands are used. These groups can remember your past so that your rampant mind doesn't need to.

Ah yes, that's right, I left off at the pig people.⁶

Terminal magic tricks

By default, a new terminal can be created with Ctrl+Tilde(~), where it pops up in the bottom as an entryway into the powerful, dark underbelly of shells. VSCode 1.59 highlights some wizardry alternatives.

Create terminals to the side

Are you one of those people who spins a monitor into portrait mode, because of some insatiable love for 90^o angles? Maybe you simply prefer tall terminals? Ctrl+Shift+P and Terminal: Create Terminal in Editor Area to the Side⁷, will be exactly what you're looking for.

Drag and drop terminals across windows

How many VSCode windows are sitting open on your desktop? Are you taking notes in one workspace, while continuing your commands in a separate VSCode window? Make your life easier, retain all your in-shell variables, and drag the active terminal from one window to another.

This can be helpful when improving the documentation in one window as active development is happening in another.

An excellent bonus: remember when typos were just typos? The worst thing that could happen was other people making fun of your lack of oxford comma's. Now, with terminal editors, your typo can shutdown your production database! Fun!

Live preview

The Live Preview extension⁸, originally released in June, has continued along. For users working in JavaScript land, Live Preview: Show Debug Preview ensures a built-in JavaScript debugger⁹.

Note that this extension has the warning:

WARNING: this is extension is still under development!

For the brave javascripters among you all, who want the beautiful reflections of instant-progress within the editor, take it for a test drive. Report any issues to the microsoft/vscode-livepreview repo.

Other notables

General tip: Wondering what shortcuts are configured in VSCode? One shortcut to rule them all: Ctrl+K Ctrl+S

Or Ctrl+Shift+P -> Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts

If you're using an M1 Mac, you should get the latest VSCode 1.59.1¹⁰ point release, as it addresses a bug where VSCode may crash.
A preview feature¹¹ has been added for automatic language detection in unsaved/untitled files. experimentalLanguageDetection¹² (search against settings via Ctrl+Comma) can be set to true, which uses an ML model from yoeo/Guesslang¹³ with the open-source ML library Tensorflow.js¹⁴. VSCode is planning for this feature to be true by default in the future, so that code is recognized out-of-box, instead of always relying on the file extension or force Change Language Mode (Ctrl+K M).

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Checkout VSCodium, for the truly MIT-licensed version of the VSCode IDE (with telemetry/tracking disabled). ↩
VSCode release notes for 1.59, along with release notes for previous monthly releases. ↩
The VSCode Insiders Build allows users to get VSCode with new features as soon as they are available, rather than at the monthly cadence. ↩
Read about Shared View State Across Editor Groups in the release notes. ↩
Read about Editor Groups in the VSCode docs. ↩
The House on the Borderland, by William Hope Hodgson, is a freely available novel via Project Gutenberg. ↩
workbench.action.createTerminalEditorSide provides this functionality, and is an alternative that can be entered after Ctrl+Shift+P. ↩
Live Preview is developed by Microsoft, and can be installed via Ctrl+P and ext install ms-vscode.live-server. ↩
For more information, see latest highlights around Live Preview. Observe the animated bunny stuck waving in an infinite loop, trapped in a simulation. More in-depth information (on the extension, not the bunny) can be found directly within the extension release notes. ↩
See all issues addressed in VSCode 1.59.1 on GitHub. For the macOS bug fix, see Perma-hang/crash on M1 MBP with universal build. ↩
Normally, release notes include this snippet about preview features and what they are: "Preview features are not ready for release but are functional enough to use. We welcome your early feedback while they are under development." ↩
Read about Automatic Language Detection of Untitled Files in the release notes. ↩
Guesslang, by GitHub user yoeo, is an MIT-licensed ML model and Python package that can help detect the programming language of source code. It's been trained on over a million source code files. ↩
Tensorflow.js makes development and useage of ML available within the browser or Node.js. For more about Tensorflow, checkout the Why TensorFlow page. ↩

WriteTheDocs Portland 2020, Writing Day Debrief Notes

Derek Ardolf — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 01:02:01 +0000

The Good Docs Project (TGD) had a session table on Writing Day during the Write The Docs 2020 - Portland virtual conference. I wanted to write up a debrief on all the cool links and topics that were shared during the session. The table started as discussions around TGD templates repository on GitHub.

If any of these ideas excite you, then consider joining us at The Good Docs Project!

About The Good Docs Project

From The Good Docs Project (TGD) homepage:

"Every project deserves a minimum level of Good Docs that help users understand and solve problems with your product. But it can be really hard to know where to start or what to write. How do you structure docs? What does a docs website look like? How do I keep docs consistently formatted? The list of questions far outweigh the answers.

That's where The Good Docs Project fits in. Our open-source Minimum Viable Docset (MVD) will help you create a baseline set of Good Docs using a suite of templates."

Erin McKean also did a Write The Docs meetup presentation on the project:

Documentation Templates for Fun & Profit

Style Guide

How do you write a style guide for your project or organization which ideally is just a light wrapper over an existing style guide? TGD project is working on a template as a place for people to get started:

The Good Docs Project in-progress style guide template

Converting TGD Templates to Your Favorite Formats

I opened a GitHub issue with thoughts around using Pandoc as a tool to convert TGD templates into wanted formats:

Write The Docs (WTD Portland) 2020: Transform templates to your wiki format

Linters

Linters can be implemented in documentation projects in order to analyze and catch issues automatically. This can help maintainers of projects, contributors, and ultimately empower anyone to write better docs.

They can help with:

Grammar and spelling
Inclusive language
Helping enforce style guides
Validating proper file format and best practices (markdown, rst, etc.)
And more!

The `README.md` file: Templates and resources

When a new repository is created, usually one file is crucial: the README (often README.md or README.rst in code repositories). It's the first thing that greets people to your project, and can be what sparks interest in potential users or contributors.

GitHub and GitLab don't have templates to choose from, by default, but merely give the option to initialize a file with a single header referencing the project name. Perhaps TGD could have example README templates, and also suggest feature requests to GitHub/GitLab for including optional README templates at initialization of project repositories?

For example, TGD has a repository that is missing a README, and could make use of it!

The Good Docs Project website source code

An issue has been opened here to track this:

TGDP needs a template for a README

Glossary: Word list and term collections

We are kicking off a pilot to define best practices for cross-domain management of glossaries. We are focusing on the spatial domain, and drawing on volunteers from communities associated with spatial standards, ISO standards, open source spatial projects, schema design, documentation and metadata management, and tech writing.

Misc resource links

Docs as Code - From the WTD site: "Documentation as Code (Docs as Code) refers to a philosophy that you should be writing documentation with the same tools as code: Issue Trackers, Version Control (Git), Plain Text Markup (Markdown, reStructuredText, Asciidoc), Code Reviews, Automated Tests..."
Just Not Sorry chrome extension for GMail: Helps avoid self-deprecating language when writing emails.
How to Make a Documentation Culture: Blog Post
Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond book, referenced and used by people who were attending the session
Axe Linter, by Deque - From the site: "Powered by Deque Systems, axe Linter helps you automatically find and fix accessibility issues. Axe Linter analyzes the changed or added code of your GitHub pull requests, reports issues and intelligently requests changes for common issues- all before your pull request gets reviewed and the code gets merged."

Fighting COVID-19: How You Can Download Folding@Home to Join Universities in Battling It

Derek Ardolf — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 00:57:41 +0000

UPDATE (03/26/2020): Folding@Home has lept into exascale computing!
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UPDATE (03/23/2020): Folding@Home has done an AMA, with the full thread available here.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is officially a pandemic, as stated by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Though, did you know that you can have the unused resources of your computers join multiple universities in actively hunting for therapeutic solutions? You do now.

TL;DR Call To Action

Download Folding@Home and checkout the Installation Guide for your system(s) to put unused resources to work.

Want more information about what this means, and how it works? Read on.

Folding@Home

"Folding@Home is a distributed computing research project that involves 11 universities world wide...

Our volunteers are donating computing power. The way this works is a bit like the cloud. We are using really big simulations to better understand protein folding within cancer research, Parkinson's, Huntington's..."

— Anton Thynell, Head of Communications and Partnerships for Folding@Home

Now they are researching COVID-19, and anyone can become part of a distributed super computer. If you want a more detailed description of the program, checkout the Wikipedia entry all about it. Here's a snippet from there:

In March 2020, Folding@home launched a program to assist researchers around the world who are working on finding a cure and learning more about the COVID-19 outbreak. The initial wave of projects simulate potentially druggable protein targets from SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the related SARS-CoV virus, of which there is significantly more data available.

I don't work in this field.

I don't understand the science.

You don't need to, either. They've made a nice helpful client for us to easily get running. Others are jumping on board:

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Here is my unused gaming rig now sharing the power:

In my first screenshot, toward the top left, you can see that mine is working on Project 14328 which was automatically assigned to my client. Which project is that? How do I know it is COVID-19 related?

According to the this Reddit post (CPUs and GPUs are both supporting COVID-19 now, so ignore that part of the article title), the related projects are:

Current Corona specific projects (you don't need to do anything to get them, the software will do it for you):

14530/14531 Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease - potential drug target

14328 - Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease - potential drug target

11741: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2.

11746: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) receptor binding domain in complex with human receptor ACE2 (alternative structure to 11741).

11742: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease in complex with an inhibitor.

11743: Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) protease – potential drug target.

11744: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

11745: Coronavirus SARS-CoV (SARS causing virus) receptor binding domain mutated to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19 causing virus) trapped by a SARS-CoV S230 antibody.

All these are under the default "any" selection in settings. We don't currently have a coronavirus specific selection, so all related projects will be grouped up and sent under the ANY setting to your PC as needed!

Good. This means my GPU is getting put to use!

UPDATE (03/15/2020): BleepingComputer now says:

The Current Folding@home project IDs that correspond with Coronavirus (COVID-19) research are 11741, 11742, 11743, 11744, 11745, 11746, 11747, 11748, 11749, 11750, 11751, 11752, 11759, 11760, 11761, 11762, 11763, 11764, 14328, 14329, 14530, 14531, and 14532.

The overall project listing can be found at the Folding@Home Project Summaries page.

Using the browser client viewer (must first have the fahclient installed and running), people can get a better idea of what is being worked on. Here is a shot later on, when my CPU and GPU were working on some newer work units:

What You Can Do to Join

The client can simply use what resources are free, and can be set to become active when the computer is idle. It will make use of your CPU and/or GPU (graphics/video card).

Straight from the latest Folding@Home article, Coronavirus - What Whe're Doing and How You Can Help in Simple Terms:

Downloading Folding@home and helping us run simulations is the primary way to contribute. These calculations are enormous and every little bit helps! Each simulation you run is like buying a lottery ticket. The more tickets we buy, the better our chances of hitting the jackpot. Usually, your computer will never be idle, but we’ve had such an enthusiastic response to our COVID-19 work that you will see some intermittent downtime as we sprint to setup more simulations. Please be patient with us! There is a lot of valuable science to be done, and we’re getting it running as quickly as we can.

If you don’t have computers to contribute or are feeling particularly generous, you can also make donations through Washington University in St. Louis. These funds are used for a number of purposes, including: 1) supporting our software engineering and server-side hardware (particularly important right now as we scale up rapidly!) and 2) buying compounds to test experimentally based on insight from our simulations.

Of course, please take precautions to help prevent the spread of the virus by washing your hands, social distancing, etc. Doing so helps sustain the medical system and buys scientists time to hunt for therapies.

Dev.To Articles of Note

Running Folding@home on Amazon EC2 instances

Julien Simon for AWS ・ Mar 15 '20

#aws #tutorial

Donate Your Unused CPU Cycles to Fight the Coronavirus

Jeremy Morgan for Pluralsight ・ Mar 15 '20

#programming #webdev #news #watercooler

Fighting COVID-19 with Folding@Home & AWS CDK

Nathan Glover ・ Mar 9 '20

#cdk #tutorial #aws #beginners

Other Resources

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For more information on the VMware Appliance: A Force for Good: VMware Appliance for Folding@Home

Discussion / Challenge

Will you join the fight?

Here are the specs of the rig I'm using:

OS	GPU/Video Card	CPU	Team #*
Pop!_OS	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960	AMD A6-3500 (Triple-Core)	225605

*Teams simply track collective work that's been done by computers, and it gamifies contribution by tracking completed work units in groups. I joined the PCMR team since they got my attention with this via Reddit.

If you're in, share your own by using my template where you can just add extra rows if you have more than one system:

|OS|GPU/Video Card|CPU|Team #|
|--|--|--|--|
|[Pop!_OS](https://system76.com/pop)|NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960|AMD A6-3500 (Triple-Core)|225605|

Forem: Derek Ardolf

When Schools Spy on Kids and Their Families

Resources

What do you think?

2021 Dendron New User Survey Results

What backgrounds do our users have?

What are people using Dendron for?

Are users coming from any existing tools?

Do users have plans on publishing their notes?

What's Next

The Five Minute Journal with Dendron and Visual Studio Code

The Five Minute Journal

Prerequisites

Concepts

Daily journal notes

Templates

Schemas

Steps

Create 5MJ template

Create 5MJ schema

Update 5MJ schema contents

Create a new daily journal

Congratulations!

Key takeaways

Next steps

Share Your Notes Online: Publish Dendron with Netlify and GitHub

Part 1: GitHub

Part 2: Netlify

Step 1: Import your repository

Step 2: Configure your website name

Step 3: View deploy status

Summary

Next steps

Highlights from VSCode 1.62

Live Share session sharing in Virtual Workspaces

Bracket pairs

Verified publishers

Other notables

Horrifying Vulnerabilities in the Death/Birth Certificate System

When IoT Attacks: Hacking a Linux-Powered Rifle

Highlights from VSCode 1.61

Locked editor groups

Split an editor without creating a new group

Webview UI Toolkit for Visual Studio Code

Other notables

Best Mobile Note-Taking Apps for Markdown

Obsidian

GitJournal

iA Writer

Markor

Other apps of interest

Markdown notes

Git clients

Final thoughts

Highlights from VSCode 1.59

Share view state

Terminal magic tricks

Create terminals to the side

Drag and drop terminals across windows

Live preview

Other notables

WriteTheDocs Portland 2020, Writing Day Debrief Notes

About The Good Docs Project

Style Guide

Links

Converting TGD Templates to Your Favorite Formats

Linters

Links

The README.md file: Templates and resources

Links

Glossary: Word list and term collections

Links

Misc resource links

Fighting COVID-19: How You Can Download Folding@Home to Join Universities in Battling It

TL;DR Call To Action

Folding@Home

What You Can Do to Join

Dev.To Articles of Note

Running Folding@home on Amazon EC2 instances

Julien Simon for AWS ・ Mar 15 '20

The `README.md` file: Templates and resources