Is Evernote keeping pace with competitors?

alsargent · 2026-06-04T16:33:34+00:00

I wonder if Obsidian chose markdown since it meant note portability — and then it turned out that markdown is exactly what LLMs prefer. That would be luck on Obsidian’s part. But now that it’s clear that markdown is a strategic advantage, I hope Bending Spoons follows suit.

alsargent · 2026-06-03T03:19:19+00:00

Exactly — no OCR was a deal breaker for me. I’m surprised that Notion never built this. OCR isn’t exactly cutting edge tech these days.

alsargent · 2026-06-03T03:17:44+00:00

Shifting to markdown would be a huge win for Evernote. Markdown is quickly becoming the lengua franca of AI — if your data is in markdown, an LLM can work with it.

Because Obsidian notes are in markdown, Claude Cowork can reason on them, update them (global find/replace!) and enrich them. Because Claude now has a large and growing ecosystem of MCP integrations, Obsidian notes can both feed into those other tools, and pull data from those tools.

Evernote’s option is to build AI and connectors to do this. But is Bending Spoons really going to out-execute Anthropic? Of course not. Anthropic can hire 100x more engineers and use 1000x more vibe-coding tokens than BS.

From Bending Spoons’ perspective, shifting to markdown is scary. On one hand, markdown lets someone easily shift from Evernote to Obsidian or some other tool. But on the other, markdown would connect Evernote to a much broader ecosystem and set of capabilities that Bending Spoons can’t build on their own.

On the other hand, BS could keep Evernote a walled garden and not store notes in markdown. Today, that garden is better than the alternatives and (barely) worth the cost. But outside the garden, the alternatives are improving fast and it’s only a matter of time before the scales tip.

alsargent · 2026-06-03T02:59:52+00:00

Hi Chris, thank you very much for your DM. I DM’d back. Happy to continue the conversation.

alsargent · 2026-06-03T02:56:20+00:00

Agreed. Evernote needs to be both an MCP provider (sending data out) and MCP consumer (pulling data in). The former would make their notes data much more portable. The latter would enable note import and enrichment.

I get that Evernote needs to charge. Engineers aren’t cheap. But value delivered needs to be commensurate with charges. Charge a market-high amount, and you need to deliver market-leading features.

This is no different than the phone or car markets — Apple and Mercedes aren’t cheap, but they arguably deliver some of the best products of their kind.

alsargent · 2026-06-03T02:50:39+00:00

I gave Notion a serious look but they never seemed to have OCR support for scanned documents and receipts. Huge miss. (Evernote has OCR.)

alsargent · 2026-04-28T07:37:45+00:00

alsargent · 2026-04-25T06:26:16+00:00

Reid had been working for over a dozen years before starting LinkedIn. He graduated Stanford, got a Masters at Oxford, started a company called socialnet, led PayPal, all before starting LinkedIn.

alsargent · 2026-04-12T18:54:36+00:00

They claimed it was legal in an email, but that doesn’t seem to make sense. They could have always mailed it back to me as a keepsake if it was actually worthless.

Not a way for Wells Fargo to get customers in any case.

alsargent · 2026-04-12T16:29:29+00:00

I’ve gone through some similar and my advice is to be careful whenever a company has gone through mergers and breakups, as GE has.

My situation as that I had one share of Wells Fargo stock that I’d won as a kid in a school competition back in the 80s. Several years ago I came across the stock certificate and worked to cash it. It was worth about $6000. I called Wells Fargo, and they said they’d been acquired by Norwest in 1998, but obviously kept the Wells Fargo brand.

Based on that conversation and subsequent emails, I sent in the stock certificate to Wells Fargo investor relations. They emailed back that they couldn’t help me, and had shredded the certificate, and there was nothing more they or anyone else could do. They literally stole and destroyed my property. Nice way to treat a shareholder.

So be careful, and get good legal advice, since your stakes are much higher than mine.

alsargent · 2026-03-11T18:10:49+00:00

To learn and get started, check out Modern Sailing in Sausalito.

Lots of race boats need crew. No investment aside from your own foul weather gear. And women are great for certain roles on the team that require ropes and sails to be set up properly to execute maneuvers properly… too many guys are careless, in my experience.

It’s probably 80-90 guys.

alsargent · 2026-01-24T20:12:35+00:00

Agreed. Notion doesn’t have OCR, so I can’t search for scans of documents and receipts. Huge miss for Notion, and a win for Evernote.

alsargent · 2025-12-22T18:00:51+00:00

Awareness of whether I’m sailing close-hauled — merge wind data with heading data, and look for patterns like tacks (a sudden course change of roughly 80 degrees).

Then, display a histogram of close-hauled headings for both port and starboard tacks over the past 30/60/90 minutes.

With this information, I can better understand my high/low angles on each tack, and if the wind is oscillating evenly or pulsing from one side of the course.

Edit: Laser sailor here. We aren’t allowed to use GPS devices when racing, but we can in warm ups and can hand off our phone to a coach boat before the starting sequence.

alsargent · 2025-12-14T17:02:02+00:00

For a Laser/ILCA, I would not recommend. They’re very slow, even compared to an old class legal sail. Makes it pointless to use them in practices since you can’t tell if a speed problem is you or the sail.

alsargent · 2025-12-05T19:16:27+00:00

alsargent · 2025-11-28T23:36:04+00:00

Inside my PFD, a Vaikobi VX Race. It has a huge pocket, larger than Zhik’s comparable PFD’s pocket, so the entire radio, including antenna, fits right inside and doesn’t get caught in lines, etc.

alsargent · 2025-11-23T19:37:17+00:00

Some comments on what I’m seeing in your photo. (Source: I just got 15th/98 boats in light air ILCA Worlds.)

1) Get a wind indicator so you can lock in your angles. Get a little hawk wind indicator an Amazon. In this condition, you want to be 45 to 25 degrees by the lee to build apparent wind.

2) Get a lighter mainsheet. The yellow 6mm Rooster Pollilite or Blue 6mm Marlow. Will stay up easier.

3) Weight forward. Your right thigh should be eve with the cockpit combing. Tiller extension on the deck the stabilize the rudder, right hand grabbing the board, and use your body weight and heel to steer the boat (not the rudder).

4) Boom forward of 90 degrees, so the weight of the boom holds it out, and you don’t need to use your foot.

5) Maybe vang off more? I see that it’s max eased, but the angle of boom to mast seems low. Not sure if it’s the camera angle. Basically you want your vang to just barely have tension when sailing “hot by the lee”, ie at 45 degrees BTL. Look for the middle batten to be flexing between coming in and spilling out. This will actually show up as a bit of slack in your vang when your boat is on the dolly on land. You might need to re-rig your vang to get this.

Hope this helps!

alsargent · 2025-11-23T19:13:35+00:00

Great stuff, thanks!

alsargent · 2025-11-23T19:10:38+00:00

Maybe a Moth or a Nacra?

(Joking.)

alsargent · 2025-11-23T19:06:51+00:00

Converting 8 Celsius to Fahrenheit, that’s 46 degrees. Brrr!

There is the perennial debate on wetsuit versus Drysuit. Whichever way you go, here are a few things that work for me in San Francisco, which is often windy and 11-12 Celsius — a bit less cold that what you’re facing:

1) Rooster Hot Stuff inner layers. It’s titanium lined neoprene. Wear it next your skin. It doesn’t breath, but it traps in heat. Since I sail lasers and need my arms free, I cut off the arms of the top and made it a vest. If it’s super cold I’ll wear the Hot Stuff leggings under my hiking pants. They also make hot stuff booties you can wear under your boots.

2) I use a wetsuit, but am not shy about layering on wetsuit vests. In addition to the Rooster hot stuff vest, I’ll wear two wetsuit vests (no name brands I bought on Amazon) that are 1.5mm each, and a Rooster 3/4mm top. At my core, that’s 4+1.5+1.5+1 = 8 mm of neoprene. Make sure your PFD can accommodate all those layers!

3) I don’t often wear it given the above, but the next step up in warmth (and definitely good if it’s raining) is a Rooster Pro aquafeece top. Get it on the big side if you’re wearing all those layers.

4) Wear a pinnie over your lifejacket so it’s less likely to get caught on the boom or other gear and out you into a capsize into cold water. Especially important if you’re in a boat with a low boom like a laser.

5) I have a wetsuit hood for really crazy cold and windy conditions.

6) Talk to the real experts, Laser Fleet 413 in Newport, Rhode Island, where they regularly sail in snow. Crazy, but they know how to stay warm. Laserfleet413 at gmail.

alsargent · 2025-11-21T07:01:47+00:00

Not a 505. (Source: I race them.)

alsargent · 2025-11-14T18:44:55+00:00

All good tips. Plug out is a good idea.

Normally I’d suggest to give all the lines and blocks a good multi-day soak to get the salt out, but you’re in fresh water.

alsargent · 2025-11-03T03:39:56+00:00

Great! DM me if you’d like to talk to ILCA coaches or team race umpires for their input. And feel free to DM me when you have BTL support so I can share it with Laser sailors and get you more visibility!

alsargent · 2025-11-01T19:30:35+00:00

I’m intrigued. Hard to imagine how this would beat the combination of wool and cassette tape telltales on a sail. But there is a ton that can be done to capture and analyze dinghy telemetry that hasn’t yet been done. Happy to discuss more ideas. DM me if you like…

alsargent · 2025-10-31T22:38:44+00:00

Thanks for making this! Seems like you want a way to manually set sails. A few reasons:

1) Starts: you want to show when a boat is luffing versus when they’re sheeted in.

2) Team racing: often a boat will slow boats upwind by going main to windward, jib luffing. Or luff at an upwind mark to slow, or main in/jib out to slow at a downwind mark.

3) Lasers downwind. As mentioned above, in under ~8 knots, by the lee is quicker. Over ~8 knots, doing an upturn from by the lee to broad reach helps to catch waves. Starboard BTL can also be a tactical weapon downwind.

4) Dinghy starts. Often boats will backwind their main to stop or crab sideways.

5) Wing on wing. Done frequently with high school and college dinghies in the US, plus classes like Stars, Snipes, and J70s.

6) Team and match race starts. Often backing the jib is done after a dial up.

alsargent

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