“Ente Paste is a simple way to share sensitive text, fast: API keys, snippets, notes, or instructions. It’s built for privacy first:
End-to-end encrypted links
Anonymous use (no account required)
One-time access (opening consumes the paste)
Automatic expiry after 24 hours
4,000-character limit for quick, practical sharing
Preview crawler protections to avoid accidental consumption”
This is a fantastic tool!
What are Notesnook and Proton waiting for?
I can’t help but feel frustrated with Notesnook and Proton (Standard Notes) for lagging on this.I constantly find myself in situations where I need to send private notes that expire to complete strangers on the internet, but also people I work with.
Both Proton and Notesnook should have developed a free note sharing service on web that is private (E2EE), has rich text formatting, and lets you set limitations to them. It would be a great way to attract more people to their service, like Tresorit Send attracts more people to Tresorit.
Password managers are great for private notes but are limited
My current default way to do that is to use my password manager (1Password or Proton Pass). According to Proton Pass and 1Password, their share links cannot be traced back to an account, which is great. Sharing private notes via password manager is fantastic tool, but it has limitations, such as not having any rich text formatting, which is where services like Notesnook and Standard Notes should come in.
The Problem with Notesnook
Notesnook has the ability to share private notes via link. But as I reported 2 years ago, Notesnook share links never get renewed. Meaning that every time you generate a share link for a note it is the exact same URL every single time, which is both a privacy and security issue.
Moreover, Notesnook doesn’t give you a lot of settings to play with, like letting you choose how long a link is valid for or how many times it can be viewed. I don’t know what they are waiting for. Same for Proton.
Final thoughts
I’m definitely going to start using Ente Paste Bin from now on, at least for short notes I need to send to strangers. But I really hope Notesnook and Proton step up to the plate on this. IMO, this should be easy for them.
Can I ask: why do you comment like you’re writing an essay to be submitted for academic evaluation? I can’t be the only one thinking this.
You’d think it’s off-topic, but it’s actually not. A lot of times, I realize that I have way more to say about a topic than I expected, and I end up with a big wall of text. I am aware that most people, including myself, would be reluctant to read huge walls of text, hence why I use spaces and rich text formatting to make it easier on the eyes.
The first goal of course is to be as succinct as possible, but If I still end up with lots of text, despite my best efforts to be succinct, I believe formatting makes a significant positive difference to the reader.
And the way it relates to the topic is a lot of private note sharing services, including password managers, don’t have rich text formatting, when it can come it handy. This is why I hope Notesnook and Proton will get on it.
Here’s my off-topic question.
How did you make your text hidden when you asked your off-topic question?
Seems interesting.
However, very limited in features for now I will stick to https://privatebin.info.
It lacks to set a password, custom expiry time, comments, file attachments and one time read.
A lot of times, I realize that I have way more to say about a topic than I expected, and I end up with a big wall of text. I am aware that most people, including myself, would be reluctant to read huge walls of text, hence why I use spaces and rich text formatting to make it easier on the eyes.
I understand the intention and goal.
But often I think your comments are made with an LLM. I don’t know why I have this feeling. It is more of a guts feeling.
This might be due the fact that most people do not format like this, but an LLM does similar formats.
To be clear, I don’t say or suggest you should stop writing in your way or formatting it this way.
To change your behavior, for the reason that people might think you text is from an LLM, because LLMs write like this would be ridicules.
How did you make your text hidden when you asked your off-topic question?
Here is the format you would need:
(Everything inside the brackets is a placeholder for your text)
[details="{title}"]
{This text will be hidden}
[/details]
You can also get this by going to the “+” symbol in the format taskbar and then click on the item “Hide Details”,
Literally what prompted me to ask.
I don’t think ente’s speed can be matched by anyone. They are launching products left and right. Sometimes, I actually wonder if tomorrow I will be greeted with a new email from ente saying “good morning, here is the new product you can try”.
Looks like it was reprashed with AI, but not entirely made with it.
I actually don’t mind that. A little bit of rephrasing with AI is not a bad thing. At least, it can make the text look more coherent and easy to understand in some cases.
I don’t necessarily, but at the same time it can then be too long and increase the quantity of content, burdening others. (Not saying it’s the case here).
Do not use this at work. There’s no identity associated with who can or cannot access the paste & who created it. If the vanishing paste (no pun) was potent enough to warrant e2ee, I imagine it to also be important enough to warrant proof of identities before access (in a professional setting).
That is so interesting, because I am one of the most AI skeptics in the PG community. I think @em is the only person I know here who is more skeptic than me. I’m pretty much anti AI. I don’t use any LLM or AI service. I played with Lumo for 5 seconds when it launched and that’s about it. Some services force AI on me like Duck Duck Go and other search engine that give you AI answers, but it’s not something I seek to use.
Thanks.
I understand. Thanks for letting me know.
I agree that it’s very limited in features. As I said, this is something both Notesnook and Proton should get into and offer it for free.
I hear you. I believe I misspoke. When I said work, I didn’t mean at my job. I meant that when I do life admin stuff, and I hire people to do a job, I often send them encrypted notes because I don’t want the information I share to be recorded by Gmail or WhatsApp, which is what they use.
You can add noai to duckduckgo
Thanks.
Is it possible to add it to the Firefox and Brave’s search bars so that every time I search something I am automatically directed to the NO AI version of DDG?
Just right click the search field and press “Add Search Engine”
Then you can change your default in the settings at about:preferences#search
First perform a search with the noai version of it, then go to brave://settings/searchEngines Inactive shortcuts, press activate and then press on the 3 dots next to it and set it to default.
I can open it without problems, so yeah …
The interaction above was a great example of being excellent to each other here. Great to see. Thanks for the open conversarion.
It is with Mullvad! I use Mullvad as my daily browser with noai.duckduckgo.com as one of my default search engines in the search bar. It’s much better.
If we expand our suite of AI products and features, noai.duckduckgo.com will remain a way for you to search privately on DuckDuckGo without AI.
About noai.duckduckgo.com - DuckDuckGo Help Pages
- In no-ai solidarity 
Wait till normies find out how much “AI” is already prevalent in Information Retrieval (IR) systems like web scale search engines…
Besides, LLMs (or “AI”, if you will) are very, very good at IR.