LarrySanger.org

Author: Larry Sanger

  • Protected: Ad Astra Per Aspera

    There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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  • Cloud smackdown: NAS vs. Resilio Sync vs. Zero-Knowledge Cloud!

    In my ongoing effort to lock down my cyber-life, I jettisoned Dropbox three weeks ago, and I’m quite happy I did. But I’m not done with the reconfiguration. So, if you have the patience and credulity, you may listen in while an amateur deliberates about the choices… People more expert about this stuff than I…

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  • The Meaning of Life

    …just in case you haven’t figured it out yet. In this old answer, which I still believe and endorse wholeheartedly, I integrate many of popular answers—happiness or flourishing, meaningful work, benefiting mankind, love and family, and integrity—into a single narrative. Three parts below:

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  • Gay activists and Hollywood liberals vs. traditional Muslims vs. free speech liberals

    Here’s a richly ironic slice of our strange, sad old world in 2019. Ellen Degeneres is (quite rightly) protesting the Sultan of Brunei for introducing the death penalty (stoning to death) for gay sex. He’s also executing people for adultery, but Ellen doesn’t mention that: To this, a reply was posted by an account, “Jihyo”…

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  • Zuckerberg Is Wrong: Don’t Regulate Our Content

    Last Sunday, Mark Zuckerberg made another Facebook strategy post. (This is his second major policy post in as many months. I responded to his March 6 missive as well.) Unsurprisingly, it was a disaster. I want to shake him by his lapels and say, “Mark! Mark! Wrong way! Stop going that way! We don’t want…

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  • Is Western civilization collapsing?

    A perennial topic for me (and many of us) is the notion that there is a deep malaise in Western civilization. There are, it seems to me, three main camps on the question, “Is Western civilization collapsing?” 1. The conservative position. “Yes. And it’s a horrible thing. For one thing, elites have basically stopped reproducing.…

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  • How I replaced Dropbox

    Updated April 2 at bottom. My main beef with Dropbox is that it’s not secure, not adequately encrypted, and there’s been a little too much indication that Dropbox is spying on user data. Ever since I decided to lock down my cyber-life, I had Dropbox in my sights. It was going to be a pain…

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  • How and why I got a VPN

    As part of my ongoing efforts to lock down my cyber-life, I finally decided to investigate VPNs (virtual private networks) and subscribe to one, if it seemed to be a good idea. Well, it is a good idea. So I got one, and it was pretty cheap. What is a VPN, anyway? A virtual private…

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  • A reply to Mark Zuckerberg’s “Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking”

    Yesterday (March 6), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined Facebook’s new “vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform.” The essential problem isn’t that they need a new app; rather, they need to reform their existing one. Rather than acknowledging the elephant in the room—that users are deeply incensed that their privacy…

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  • Should we be satisfied with mediocre schools?

    Michael J. Petrilli is president of the conservative educational thinktank, the Thomas J. Fordham Institute–whose tagline is “Advancing Educational Excellence.” Petrilli argues that it’s totally okay if his children study at a school that is “often mediocre.” This a breath of fresh air in regards to his honesty and candor, at least. What sort of…

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