Interestingly, the article differentiated between belief in an afterlife and belief in a religion. Our youth may even believe in an afterlife more strongly than previous generations; they just don’t put as much stock in their parents’ religious institutions.

Again, this is hardly surprising. As we learn more about how the world works, it seems only natural for religion to appear anachronistic. The earliest religions were little more than superstitions created in a desperate effort to explain a mysterious and frightening the world. Today, with the benefit of various technologies and, more importantly, with the benefit of the Scientific Method, we have been able to objectively explain many of the natural phenomena that vexed us as early hominids.

But the benefit of science over religion is not just about better explanations. This week we were also reminded how religion can hurt its own adherents. America is going through its worst case of measles in over a generation, in large part due to the bad choices made by one religious community. The latest outbreak seems to stem from the refusal of some religious Jews in New York City to give their children the measles vaccine. Up until now that refusal was legal because religious exemptions were available. But, because of the obstinacy of that community and the danger that their actions pose to the rest of the population, New York State is now poised to rescind those exemptions.

The queerest part of this story is that the the New York parents don’t seem to be refusing the vaccinations on religious grounds; it seems to be a result of the spread of bad information. But there is still a religious angle here; the isolation of religious communities makes it easier for bad information to take hold in such an insular setting. And it is the religious exemption that is providing the community with the excuse to ignore a law that is meant to protect everyone.

As a society we have to decide how much we want to protect the right of our citizens to live in ignorance. Future progress can really only come through the objectivity of the sciences. Science is not necessarily truth but, by definition, so long as it is rigorous it is the best approximation to truth that we have at any instant of time. For religious groups to deny scientific evidence on the basis of their faith may be fine for adults who choose to do so. But if their actions threaten the rest of the population or, some may argue, if their actions threaten their own children, then that is where the line must be drawn regarding religious freedom.

We will probably always have the deniers: those that think the world is flat, that the space program was an illusion, that modern medicine goes against the will of a supreme being, that there is a world banking conspiracy, that vaccinations don’t work. But with improved education and a refusal to indulge those who would threaten the lives of others, we can better progress as a civilization and as a species.

When humans lived in caves everyone was probably, in some sense, religious. Today the percentage in the West is well under 50%. As we learn more about the world and as we demand solid evidence for the important decisions we make in life, that percentage is destined to trend toward zero. For the population at large and for the future of those communities that today refuse to accept scientific fact, that can only be a good thing.

Any accounts that were created before Wednesday 27 February 2019 will therefore have to be re-created.

So what to do?  Politicians and diplomats may say that arguments over trade should not spill over into security arrangements.  But that just doesn’t make sense.  One thing that this President has made abundantly clear to everyone, including allies, is that he cannot be trusted to honour agreements.  So how can allies trust that America will honour its security agreements?

It’s time for a new world order in the Western world.  Like minded countries, like those in Europe, along with Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand, should combine together in a political, economic and security bloc.  Time for Europe and Canada to leave NATO.  Time for Canada to leave NORAD.  Time to give the United States the cold shoulder and leave Mr Trump to his new-found friends like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin.

If the United States ever re-discovers its moral compass then, by all means, let’s discuss including it within a new global order.  But, if not, let the US fester on its own.  In the short term it will be a costly exercise for Western countries to pay for an expanded military and to live with reduced trade with the United States.  But it will make the world a better, stronger place in the long term.

It’s a shame.  But it’s necessary.

It is a shame that the United States has become a nation hostile to children, women, minorities and the disadvantaged.  Trump and the Republicans seem to be interested only in factual misrepresentation and the reduction of support for America’s most needy citizens.  That is why this New York Times opinion piece is so important to take seriously.  It’s a concrete warning to Americans that the great country they have always believed in is no more.  And that the solution is to start looking to the rest of the world for answers.

Film maker Michael Moore’s 2015 documentary “Where to Invade Next” offers yet another wake-up call to Americans.  He also argues that the US can learn from other countries.

There are still good things about the United States, but it is no longer the greatest nation on earth.  The time has come its citizens to recognize the deficiencies.

This last summer everything changed when Crashplan cancelled it’s unlimited service for Home users.  It was a shock, to be sure.  The only conclusion I could draw was that Crashplan could not be profitable in competing with the likes of Backblaze.  It is this conclusion, along with one other recent event, that made me realize that Backblaze is the only backup service for me.

It’s not that Backblaze’s backup is the best.  There are other backup systems that are faster and/or more sophisticated.  And it’s not that Backblaze’s backup is the cheapest.  Though it is the cheapest unlimited backup service out there, it’s not cheapest by much.  For example, Crashplan had recommended that its users migrate to Carbonite, a service that, at $60/year, is only $10 more than Backblaze.  It’s that, as a company, Backblaze is one of the most open technology companies out there.  And it seems to be genuinely interested in ensuring, not only that its customers are properly backed up, but that they are also able to restore their data at crunch time.

So why is Backblaze such a good company?  I have already alluded to its transparency, something which is becoming very important in the online backup space.  Backblaze has always shown how it builds its backup systems using pods and vaults.  Early in its life it even published the hardware specs for its backup pod.  It has also shown how much it costs to build its backup systems, presumably in order to allay any fears that its low prices were unsustainable.  In my opinion, this strategy has worked well.  Crashplan may have closed its doors, but there are no signs that Backblaze will.  And we have many of the numbers to prove that from Backblaze itself.  This transparency has also given its customers confidence that Backblaze is reasonably competent.  It’s difficult to disseminate so much internal information about yourself without giving outsiders a glimpse into your soul.  And so far Backblaze’s soul looks pretty darn good.

Yet, despite all the good things I had to say about Backblaze, I didn’t post my change of heart this past summer after Crashplan closed its doors.  So what is it recently that made me take the time to affirm my support of Backblaze?  It was a an e-mail I received from the company this week.  I use two-factor authentication for all the services I use and Backblaze is no exception.  I received an e-mail warning me that, although I was using two-factor authentication, I had not created backup keys or enabled SMS fallbackup in case I lost my two-factor device.  I was surprised when I received the e-mail.  First, I was shocked that backup keys or SMS fallbackup settings were available.  (In my own defense, I do not believe they were available when I enabled two-factor authentication.)  But, more importantly, I was shocked that Backblaze would have had the forethought to warn its customers about the possible pitfalls of a single point of failure like two-factor authentication.  The e-mail made very clear that if I lost my two-factor device, I would be unable to recover my backed up data.  Perhaps Backblaze had sent out the e-mail because some customers had lost their backups as a result of a similar oversight.  Perhaps backup keys and SMS fallback settings were added because of those same customers.  It doesn’t matter.  Backblaze recognized a shortcoming in their customers’ configurations and decided to advise them.

Wow.  It really doesn’t get better than this.  And that’s why I now think Backblaze is the best online backup company out there bar none.  And that’s why I have expanded my backups to also use their B2 service.  And that’s why I’m sticking with them.

Why should patriotism, or any belief, enjoy blind support?  Would anyone think patriotism in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was reasonable?   Or in South Africa during apartheid?  Or in Germany during World War II?  A blind support of one’s own country is just that, blind.  Reasonable, thoughtful people don’t give blind support to anything because nothing is perfect and nothing is static.  This outlook doesn’t mean that support for one’s country cannot happen.  But should it happen just because it’s the country in which one is born?  Everyone is born as a citizen of some country and that choice of country is not a choice; it is a happenstance.  There is no reason why the country into which each of us is born should be the best in the world or even that it should be satisfactory.  So there is no reason it should deserve unqualified support.  That doesn’t mean that it can’t earn our support; it just means that we should always look at our own countries with a critical eye.  Yesterday might have been different and tomorrow might be different still.

The United States is a case in point.  I can’t think of another country today with a greater sense of patriotism than the United States.  A generation ago that patriotism may have even been deserved on a limit basis.  But today I see little good coming out of America.  The two party system is now completely broken, with the population highly polarized in outlook.  The latest President, Donald Trump, is self-serving, cruel, bigoted neanderthal with a contempt for the truth.  That doesn’t mean that there is nothing good to take from his Presidency, just the there is not much good.  So how was he elected?  Firstly, the American people have been ill served by an inward looking educational system that is little concerned with the rest of the world.  Many Americans therefore seem wholly unaware how heartless their society is to the poor, needy and even the middle classes.  There is no guarantee of health care nor is there a decent country-wide social safety net.  I’m not suggesting that there are not serious problems in other countries related to the provision of these services, but the US is the outlier.  Yet the average American continues to be patriotic, to the point of dismissing other countries as inferior, without even understanding how far behind the US is in terms of the global progression of basic human values.

Instead of Patriotism, we should be encouraging personal intellectual growth.  Each person should be encouraged to understand his place in the world, his country’s place in the world, and how he and/or his country could be improved.  Each person has to understand his country’s political, economic and electoral systems in order to make the best possible choice for his country’s future.  It’s no longer enough for each resident to cast a vote for his own personal interest; rather, everyone needs to push for the future improvement of the country as a whole.  And this is not necessarily an altruistic vote for the welfare of strangers; this is a vote for the future of our children and their progeny ad infinitum.

Returning to America as the example, it seems clear that Donald Trump was elected on a wave of frustration against the political classes.  On that basis, his election is understandable.  But he was also elected to improve the lot of those who voted for him at any cost.  His supporters appear to support a lashing out at immigrants (and immigration in general).  They don’t seem to mind racist slurs against other cultures or races, even when they are their neighbours.  They don’t seem to mind bashing other countries and their products if that will preserve American jobs.  Yet this support is made without an understanding of the basic economics of trade.  Block others’ products and American goods will be blocked too.  Block others’ products and American goods will become more expensive.  Block others’ products and the American economy will contract.

The supporters of Donald Trump also seem to be taking a long time to understand that the White House and the Republicans are not in fact helping the hard working people who elected them but are, rather, simply lining their own pockets.  It seems clear that the latest tax cut proposal will hugely benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else.  (Although there are now provisions for a small tax cut for the middle classes, a cut which at best can best described as bait-and-switch, since over the life of the legislation the middle classes will not benefit financially.)  Again, this goes back to a poor educational system and a lack of understand of the way the system works.

Time to stop being patriotic without cause.  Most countries are a mix of good and bad.  The best countries educate their populations so that they can understand what they are voting for.  The worst keep their populations in a swill of fuzzy clichés.  It’s time to change that status quo by standing up as an individual, not as a citizen blinded by fallacious patriotism.

But that America seems to be disappearing. I was always surprised that the richest country in the world should treat its most unfortunate citizens so shabbily. Unlike the rest of the Western world, America has not provided decent support to its poor, or provided a minimum standard of universal health care to everyone, or provided good, unbiased education for every resident. Shocking though that heartlessness may have been, an attempt was finally made recently to improve on that health care situation. But the election of Donald Trump, with his unconscionable quest to take away minimal health care from the neediest among you, has been the last nail in the coffin of an already dying American compassion-ism.

Think about his approach so far: heartless attacks on basic health care for those who cannot afford it; unequivocal racism, including support of those who march with Nazis; uncountable lies that have been repeatedly proven as such by third parties.

I and, I suspect, much of the rest of the world do not understand how Americans can sit idly by and accept this sort of behavior. Because of your current President, America has lost the last remnants of its moral authority. Moreover, the rest of the world is not going to accept unilateral attacks against it, like Mr Trump’s attacks against mutually-agreed trade agreements. His rabid anti-global stance may well encourage a free trade deal between all Western countries that would exclude America and its companies. And what if America were to be evicted from its European military bases, paving the way for a new pan-European armed forces? Many countries, including America, fought two world wars to prevent such a military build-up in Europe. Such a reversion would be a catastrophe for the world and an insult to the memories of all those brave soldiers who gave their lives to protect our freedoms.

Please, please America. Get back to the great country you used to be. Support your citizens. Unequivocally reject racism and violence. Return again to be a beacon of hope, goodness and justice for the rest of the world. The world will welcome you back if you can find your way. (But you will need to do it soon.)

New Ways of Viewing the World on Biteable.

The best of breed

For online backups, PC Magazine currently recommends IDrive, Crashplan and SOS Online Backup.  However, when I first began using an online backup service almost six years ago, Backblaze was recommended by many of the more reputable reviewers.  So it has been Backblaze that I have been using ever since to back up my primary desktop online.

Backblaze

Backblaze‘s main selling point is simplicity, but I have always suspected that simplicity could be a shortcoming.  Simplicity can sacrifice flexibility and may even cause problems by hiding underlying behavior.  Yet I have stuck with Backblaze because it supported the key features I required: (1) security through a personal encryption key, (2) a fixed fee for unlimited storage, (3) reliability, and (4) decent customer service.

Unfortunately, I have had cause to re-examine my choice of Backblaze.  I recently noticed that an entire directory of irreplaceable data was not being backed up.  Ever.  After working through the possible causes, I finally discovered the problem.  The missing directory was exclusively composed of log files (with a .log extension) and it turned out that Backblaze skipped log files by default.  This decision was both unexpected and unfortunate.  After all, many of Backblaze‘s default settings, such as the omission of program files (eg. .exe, .dll on a Windows computer), made perfect sense.  Restoration of these programs files would normally be done through re-installation so a backup would not be required.  But log files are data files and, in my case, contained critical and irreplaceable data.

A second issue I discovered once I enabled the backup of the log files, was that these files were not being compressed during backup.  This meant that the backup of these files took more than twice as long as it should have.  I subsequently contacted Backblaze support detailing my findings and was shocked to learn that Backblaze does not compress data at all.

As an aside, I should add that I have recently begun evaluating Backblaze‘s B2 service, which is not an unlimited desktop backup service, but rather is meant as an alternative to Amazon’s S3 storage service.  It still has some bugs but, at $0.005/GB/month for storage, it is a very interesting alternative to Amazon’s S3 and its other competitors.

Despite my recent issues, Backblaze is still a good online backup solution and a good option for many people.  But, for those of us who don’t mind a little added complexity, I no longer believe it is the best choice.

CrashPlan

So what’s the alternative?  Six years ago, when I had selected Backblaze as my backup service, a close runner-up had been CrashPlan.  It currently costs 20% more than Backblaze ($59.99 vs $50.00 per year) but for the extra cost CrashPlan will keep different file versions and deleted files forever.  (Backblaze only keeps this historical data for a maximum of 30 days.)  CrashPlan also backs up all files by default and provides a slew of configuration options that Backblaze does not provide.

What’s better/worse?

Before committing to switch to CrashPlan, I wanted to identify those features I would be adding/losing from Backblaze.  Aside from the issues listed above, the main differences between the two services relate to the process of file restoration.

One Backblaze feature that I will miss is the ability to order a flash or hard drive containing the entire backup.  I have never had to use this facility (for which Backblaze does charge a fee) but I can imagine saving a lot of time in case of a catastrophic failure.  No matter what internet speed you have, a mammoth download will take time.  CrashPlan does not offer this facility.

As convenient as ordering a flash or hard drive may be, restoring data through downloads with Backblaze was somewhat painful.  The online selection of directories was slow to load and the restoration of files was only possible by downloading a zip file containing the data.  And the zip file could take a while to create.  This was a cumbersome way to restore a lot of data.  CrashPlan, by contrast, provides a more direct means of restoration through their application or their online portal.  And, unlike Backblaze, CrashPlan does compress data on upload, potentially making CrashPlan much faster, especially for the crucial initial backup period.

CrashPlan also supports more than online backups.  It supports backups to local or network disks and backups to other CrashPlan clients.  And it provides these facilities for free.  So if friends or associates living in different locations all have nice large disks, they can provide backups for one another without having to pay a penny.  It also provides support for Linux and offers a family plan for up to ten computers, neither of which is currently available with Backblaze.

In my initial testing of CrashPlan I concluded that it provided all of the features I required.  It even provided a few extra features that Backblaze did not provide, like an encryption key generator if a personal encryption key was required.

The only real unknown would be CrashPlan‘s reliability and customer service.  Over the years Backblaze never seemed to go down and its support team usually replied within a business day, so I hope that CrashPlan does the same.  My fingers are crossed.

Time to switch

So my plan is to switch to CrashPlan as I near the end of my current Backblaze contract.  I still consider both services to be good value compared to the other major online backup vendors.  But I now think that CrashPlan is the better option of the two for anyone willing to spend a little extra time on configuration.  The chances of getting exactly the backup result desired with CrashPlan seem higher and the backup speed should be faster.  By skipping some files and directories by default, Backblaze made it possible for the user to be lured into a false sense of confidence.  It might work for some simple situations but it’s probably not the best approach for many. CrashPlan, here I come.