Category: Theory
-
Remarks on the drug crisis
As a drug-legalization libertarian, watching this video wasn’t easy: It’s a highly opinionated piece of propaganda; but it is also extremely persuasive. Thinking about this might make me moderate my position on drug legalization. I bear a few things in mind, which I will list simply: Cities like San Francisco and Seattle are being garbage…
-
Reply to Prof. Sears’ rant against free speech defenders
Updates below. Here’s a quickly-assembled response to this interesting Twitter thread, by a Matthew A. Sears, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of New Brunswick. When classics professors say the sorts of things he did early morning on April 28, I think a response is in order. (I’m not responding on Twitter,…
-
How I securely sync my passwords (and why you should, too)
With a uber-geeky bonus: How I synced my Enpass passwords over my Synology NAS using WebDAV You need a password manager that syncs Let’s begin with what I hope will be a useful review. You should be using a password manager. What’s that, and why? A password manager simply holds all your passwords and makes…
-
The NAS revolution: Get your data out of the cloud
It turns out the cloud is kind of evil. We blithely put all our data online, right in the hands of giant corporations (and by extension, hackers and governments) who only too happily control, sell, datamine, steal, and spy on it. But you can take control of your data. Now. Here’s how. When most people…
-
Are we becoming indifferent to freedom and democracy?
Originally posted December 19, 2015. Reposting. More relevant than ever. I know, I know: That title sounds ridiculously click-baity. But if you’ll look at my blog, you’ll see that I don’t really go in for click-bait titles. Unfortunately, I mean it quite literally. It’s an enormous problem that we aren’t talking about enough. And I…
-
Vendors must start adding physical on/off switches to devices that can spy on us
Update (May 15, 2019): This post was linked and its author quoted as a source in this Fast Company article on the same subject. Where’s my webcam’s off switch? Have you ever noticed that your webcam doesn’t have an “off” switch? I looked on Amazon, and I couldn’t find any webcams for sale that had…
-
How I chose a NAS
A network-attached storage (NAS) device is your own Internet server—your very own “cloud”! I decided to get one for my own reasons. But which, and configured how, exactly? Here’s what I came up with for myself. After dropping Dropbox, and then ditching Resilio Sync, I decided to get a NAS. To pull this off, it…
-
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…
-
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”…