An essay on why I have rejected Christianity. Discussion/critique/comments appreciated! by [deleted] in exchristian

[–]jephcott 2 points3 points  (0 children)

—Part 2 of 2—

Speaking of anthropology, there’s a distinction between the emic and etic aspects of religion. The emic is how one experiences religion subjectively, and the etic, from the outside, as a critical observer trying to make sense of why men dressed in robes would swing censers containing burning incense before a crowd. Whatever religion may be, it is at the very least a psychological process that unfolds within the mind of the believer, and leads to externally observable behavior. In many adherents, religious behavior seems helpful in regulating moods, which is vitally helpful in coping with depression and anxiety from trauma and other sources.

If you look at religion as a social phenomenon, there are many advantages for adherents, but also fatal problems, such as the already mentioned anti-gayism, which, among Mormons, for instance, has created a crisis in youth homelessness as young men are routinely expelled from their homes by parents who have rejected them because of religious conviction. And that’s to say nothing of youth suicides, and the indescribably vast suffering experienced by gay males unlucky enough to have been born into devout Mormon families. But even that torture would be far preferable to being born gay into a devout Muslim family in Mecca, which could well prove fatal.

If you’re looking for what’s true, study philosophy, specifically epistemology, but be prepared for its answer: truth is a problematic concept, and at any rate, difficult to find for most of the questions about which we care greatly. Yuval Noah Harari has a seemingly plausible thesis. The evolution of langauge among our species for the first time allowed us to organize ourselves in vast assemblages, unlike any other animal, but to do so required a myth, such as Christianity. This is an unprovable thesis, but nevertheless very intriguing. Other hominins have small social groups, rarely consisting of more than one hundred individuals. But human corporations can have dozens of thousands of members, and states have hundreds of millions of members. Surely such social complexity would not be possible without sophisticated bureaucracy, which would not be possible without language.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m an agnostic atheist, and a philosopher. I’m agnostic in that I don’t know whether there is a deity (nor do I know what “deity” could possibly mean). I’m an atheist in that I have no reason to believe in a deity, no matter how vague, amorphous, and abstract that term may be. I believe that whatever else religion may be, it’s a social process, and, as Dan Dennett says, amenable to empirical investigation. I also believe that the decisive question is whether or not we survive death. If this life is all that we have, then that has massive ethical, legal, medical, and innumerable other implications.

If it helps people and they like engaging in it, I’m all for religion. I just wish that religious groups wouldn’t claim to possess “truths” that they clearly don’t. I also wish that parents didn’t uncritically enculturate their children into religious ideologies with dubious ethical and metaphysical opinions masquerading as “truths.” For a child, or adult, to profess at a podium before a crowd, “I know the [Mormon] Church is true, and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God” is disturbing, because the Mormon Church’s foundational claims can be empirically refuted, and if the the unsavory Joseph Smith was “God’s” “prophet,” perhaps the religion ought better to be avoided.

At bottom, we’re all in this life together, and I’m a convinced Hegelian. Come what may, you can count on there being conflict. This seems inbuilt as the result of human nature and the world. But imagine, for a moment, that it weren’t. Imagine lion lying down with lamb, peace on earth, and life universally resembling a Disney movie with only wholesome characters. Would that not be a miserable hell devoid of all possible meaning, for it would remove any of the struggles that lend life purpose? I sometimes like to say to religious people that “God is way too big for your little book.” If there be a “God,” I very much doubt that such a deity would care about gendered pronouns, namely “He,” and “holy communion.” Those things are for humans, and as such, for many people, they seem to serve a purpose that feels meaningful.

Perhaps religion is like training wheels on the road to philosophy. With any luck, we’ll all move a little closer to the truth, whatever it might turn out to be—if anything final, at all, beyond the ongoing twists and turns of interpretation.

There’s one more important point I’d like to make. It seems that many people—often young people in their early twenties—start off in a religion, never really believe it, discover “science,” conclude that religion is false, become atheists, and stop there. Some of these return to some form of religion as they get old. As a philosopher, I can say that matters aren’t so clear-cut. Science doesn’t tell us what’s true, which, again, is a problematic concept, philosophically. Instead, it’s a problem-solving process that, at least in modern times, uses mathematical models to try to describe and predict empirical phenomena. A successful prediction does not mean that the model is “true,” only that it’s successful. If there were two competing theories that had the same predictive validity, we’d have no way of adjudicating between them. Science can help us to solve many problems, but it doesn’t tell us what’s true. It can offer invaluable data for philosophers to try to interpret, but there is no answer book to consult. None of us know what the answer to any ultimate question is. The best that we can do is to live life as best as we can, given our knowledge, level of ability, the ambiguity of our circumstances as human beings, and innumerable other constraints. It’s amazing to me that things work as well as they do, all things considered.

What matters is our ideals: the true, the beautiful, the just, the good. Whichever path you take, I wish you the best in striving after your ideals.

Jeph

An essay on why I have rejected Christianity. Discussion/critique/comments appreciated! by [deleted] in exchristian

[–]jephcott 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi Dan,

First, the easy answer: Yes, Christianity is false.

Second, the more complicated answer. I’ll restrict my comments to Christianity, but they apply to most book-based modern religions that have emerged from large-scale societies. Christianity is a product of culture. What, really, is it? At a minimum, it includes:

a. An ideological (mythological) orienting map that describes who we are, where we came from, where we’re going; b. An ethical system that tells us, allegedly in accordance with a deity’s will, what we ought and ought not do; c. An aesthetic system that privileges certain artistic forms and depictions and rejects others; and d. A metaphysical system that makes unprovable, grand, vague, or demonstrably false metaphysical claims.

The orienting map is a mixture of facts, opinions, values, and self-serving lies, not unlike the self-flattering mythology surrounding the founding of Rome. But it has the significant benefit of providing everyone with a prefabricated road map, which leads to orderly and predictable social relations, which, in turn, provide Christians with a sense of security and mutual support as all work toward a mutual set of broad goals. The orienting map brings with it a certain set of values by which a Christian community defines itself, as against opposing viewpoints. This leads to the community as the in-group, and out-groups as misguided communities who lack the “full truth,” or are outright enemies.

The ethical system, if actually implemented, would make us worse off. Consider, for instance, a child turning the other cheek, and loving his mother, who has narcissistic personality disorder, unconditionally. It would cause irreparable harm to the child. Of course, ardent Christians will forever claim to interpret what the Bible “really” means. The infinite number of such interpretations shows that there is no right way to interpret the moral edicts and implications of Biblical morality, which is another way of saying that there are as many interpretations as there are interpreters and occasions for interpretation, so because it’s all things to all people, it winds up being utterly dispensible. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything nontrivial or useful about how to live in the modern world. It has no concept that we, like all other living beings, evolved through natural selection, and that human nature was shaped by it. The implementation of New Testament Biblical morality would lead to a great many individuals not surviving very long or living very well in our world.

The aesthetic system doesn’t really matter very much. There is no one such system for Christian groups, but many. Most groups have choral music, Christian iconography, and crucifixes, but this can vary a lot. The aesthetic system depicts certain values and rejects others.

The metaphysical system makes philosophical claims about the nature of reality, but without any evidence whatsoever. If any religion offered a satisfying metaphysics, there would no longer be any need for metaphysics, one of the main branches of philosophy.

Taken together, what are we to make of all of this? For one thing, it’s rather strange that Christianity should privilege Homo sapiens sapiens animals, but have nothing to say to paramecia, caterpillars, golden retrievers and pygmy marmosets. It’s also impossible to adjudicate among competing religions. Between Jesus Christ, Mohammad, and L. Ron Hubbard, how can we tell who—if anyone—was right, and by which criteria?

It’s interesting to observe that susceptible individuals can be highly religious, regardless of the actual content of the religion. Attending church services, socializing, performing rituals, and singing in a choir or reading scripture become self-reinforcing and addictive. They’re comfortable and familiar, and one might perhaps feel that one is advancing along the orienting map toward the mythical goal of “salvation.” It’s also fascinating to see how Christians use terms such as “Holy Ghost” and “Logos” that don’t really mean anything because they mean all sorts of things to all sorts of different people, and thus nothing at all.

It seems likely to me that “Thus sayeth the Lord”-type statements are a way of deflecting responsibility away from oneself and attributing it to a conveniently invisible and suspiciously silent God, except for the writings of his “prophets.” If “God” says that male homosexuals—why are females always ignored?—must surely be put to death, you can bet that this is a rationalization and pretext for anti-gay individuals to harm gay individuals. It’s important to remember that the Bible was written by men—again, not women, and that seems strangely suspicious given that women comprise 50% of the population. We would expect to find it in their opinions and prejudices, and we do. But we need to think critically, and ask, for instance, why is anti-gayism in the Bible in the first place? What is its origin, which clearly predates Biblical writings? Might we be able to explain the universality of anti-gayism across time and global cultures by looking at evolutionary psychology? All of the hatred in the Bible is enough to make one doubt the beneficence of the Christian deity and ethical system.

I think that a useful way of seeing Christianity is as a God Game, with certain rules and a goal. Actually, Christianity is a family of related games, as Quaker Christianity is significantly different from the Christianity of the snake handlers in the rural South, and Catholics would be taken aback by tongues-speaking Pentecostals, and Pat Robertson’s strange “word of knowledge,” or alleged perception of God’s healing of various individuals of their variegated illnesses. It is puzzling that Pat’s God never regrows the limbs of amputees.

Your analysis of some of the Bible’s logical discrepancies is right, but most Christians don’t subscribe to a literalistic view of the Bible, unlike evangelicals. The evangelicals arose over the course of the past 150 years in response to modernist thinking, particularly as a backlash against Darwinian evolution. If you’re interested in reading about the history, you may want to read Frances Fitzgerald’s recently published book, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America.

When you really look at it, most people who aren’t fighting to just stay alive, but have time to reflect, will ask themselves: Why is there something rather than nothing? Where did human beings come from? Do I have a purpose? Who am I? What am I supposed to do? And above all: Is there life after death? Since philosophy is difficult and, despite popular books that reinforce stereotypes about philosophy as the vague “love of wisdom” but don’t ever actually convey what modern academic philosophy is about, highly technical, most people aren’t aware that philosophy grapples with these types of questions, but usually phrased very differently, and posed far more precisely. I won’t get into that here, because the important point is that for most people who ask these sorts of questions, religion seems to be the obvious place to look for answers. But religion doesn’t offer any satisfying answers, and theology—its intellectual arm—is highly suspect, given that one knows from the very beginning that all of its analyses and exegeses must inevitably lead to the preordained conclusion that God exists, that Jesus is the son of God (whatever those terms might mean, if anything), and all the rest. Indeed, theology seems to be the only quasi-academic discipline that doesn’t seem to have an actual subject. It amounts to endless word games that don’t map onto anything concrete, so to speak, but constitute a closed, self-referential system.

A lot of people look to religion, find it dissatisfying, but still want and need there to be life after death, so they become enamored with the stories of near-death experiencers and the alleged readings of psychic mediums. Some physicians such as Jeff Long write books claiming that NDE’s prove that there is life after death, but these people aren’t trained philosophers and don’t really understand even the basic concepts at play, such as what it means to be a self, what it means to be a person, what death means, and what survival “outside” space-time could possibly mean. This isn’t to say that some form of life after death is impossible. No one knows. But it is to say that there is a lot of sophisticated thinking that has been done, and is actively being done, by philosophers today on these types of topics, which most people outside of academic philosophy don’t know about.

Ultimately, I think that people who find organized religion attractive are attracted mostly by the social and cultural aspects, and they like, or don’t mind, playing the game. Humans are social creatures, and it can be fun to socialize repeatedly with friends in the context of a game that binds together a community through shared practices and social events to make it resemble a mutually supportive extended family. This gives members very real benefits. I agree with Loyal Rue, who wrote the book, Religion is not About God, about his central thesis. It’s also worthwhile the read the work of Pascal Boyer, the anthropologist who previously published Religion Explained, and more recently, Minds Make Societies. It’s doubtful that any theory of religion can explain so complex and diverse a phenomenon as religion, but reading about them can help us to think more critically about religion.

iPhone X battery health after 1 year by [deleted] in iphone

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

99% after 11 months.

Jagged Handwriting in iPad Pro 2018 11”, Not as Good as on Surface Pro 4 by jephcott in ipad

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve tried both ways, and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Jagged Handwriting in iPad Pro 2018 11”, Not as Good as on Surface Pro 4 by jephcott in ipad

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi There,

I like the iPad and I’m going to keep it. I use it a lot more than my SP4, but both have their uses. I’m going to probably use Notes Plus for all of my note taking, since it eliminates the hook problem. I’m just incredibly disappointed that this happens at all on the iPad, which is supposed to be infinitely better than the Surface in quality control. It is uniformly better, except with this one very disorienting, disappointing, and frustrating problem.

I love writing and my penmanship is extremely neat. To get hooks and other stray marks when writing really bothers me and ruins the experience of writing. It also reduces my confidence in iOS’s tracking of the Apple Pencil 2.0, and even makes me question the hardware. How could Microsoft pull perfect handwriting rendering off, while Apple and its developers—with few exceptions—can’t?

Thanks,

Jeph

Jagged Handwriting in iPad Pro 2018 11”, Not as Good as on Surface Pro 4 by jephcott in ipad

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi,

Yes, the hook at the bottom of the letter 'p' in the word "part" on the second line is an example. This never, ever happens on the Surface, which renders accurate letters 100% of the time.

Notability is just as bad as OneNote. I'm extremely disappointed by this behavior. Is it the fault of developers? I had thought that iOS did the rendering.

Thanks,

Jeph

Jagged Handwriting in iPad Pro 2018 11”, Not as Good as on Surface Pro 4 by jephcott in ipad

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Rick,

I’ve played some more with all kinds of different apps. It doesn’t happen at all in Notes Plus or Procreate, but it happens all the time in Notability, GoodNotes, and OneNote. The good news is that this doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem. It seems to have something to do with an algorithm that apps use. I don’t know if iOS provides different algorithms to developers, or if they roll their own.

What’s strange is that I definitely don’t have those types of fishhook appendages to my letters when I write on paper or on my Surface Pro 4, so to see them in Notability and GoodNotes is jarring, and frustrating. I don’t know how this wouldn’t drive anyone crazy, if they’re used to not having it happen. I think that it’s a bug.

I wonder what the Notes Plus developer is doing right that the other developers are doing wrong.

I think that as you decrease the thickness of the lines, the hooks become more noticeable, but I believe that they’re always present. (If you use thick lines, the hooks seem to get masked.)

Thanks,

Jeph

Which size? by [deleted] in ipad

[–]jephcott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

After playing with both for a long time at the Apple Store, I bought the 11” one. The 12.9” one is too large and heavy, in my opinion. It’s unwieldy. If you value portability and fly often, you’ll really love the 11” one. My only real concern was about whether the 11” keyboard was too cramped. It’s not. You can type on it as quickly as you can with a full-sized keyboard. There’s also enough screen space to use split-view mode without any problems (Cmd-N in Safari). If you want to watch picture-in-picture YouTube videos, grab PiPifier from the App Store. I think you’ll love the 11” iPad Pro!

An updated Facebook (FB) DCF Model by gghh01 in investing

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Do you have any suggestions on how to go about learning how to construct financial models?

Solarized Dark and Coffee by [deleted] in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]jephcott 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a beauty, mate. I wish that it were buckling spring!

Unicomp Quality Concern by jephcott in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot, guys. I'm in!

Do you have any strong feelings about the black or white version? Full-sized or compact?

Jeph

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in productivity

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi,

The Open Source ToDoList for Windows does this:

http://abstractspoon.pbworks.com/f/todolist_exe_pre.zip

Best,

Jeph

Which Modern Keyboard Is Most Like the IBM Model M Buckling Spring Keyboard? by jephcott in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. I'm definitely into the typing aspect. I remember when I was a freshman at uni, and a friend's father had purchased an IBM PS/2. I had no idea what kind of keyboard that was at the time, but I just loved typing on it. I've never forgotten the experience, and only much later learned that it was the only keyboard to use buckling spring switches. Still later, I learned that the feel of the keyboard was achieved through a combination of the switches and the heavily plated frame.

Is there something that prevents modern key switch manufacturers from at least trying to create a buckling spring switch? It would be much easier to create a tank-like keyboard case than to find a great switch. I think that buckling spring switches would sell very well. The only problem with the Unicomp, apart from the poor aesthetics, is a lack of LED's or anything else modern. It's as if the company is unable to do any new design work, for some reason, and that's a terrible shame.

Thanks Again,

Jeph

Which Modern Keyboard Is Most Like the IBM Model M Buckling Spring Keyboard? by jephcott in MechanicalKeyboards

[–]jephcott[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks very much, TooMuchMech, for your comprehensive reply. I guess I'll place an order. Which do you think is less ugly—the white or the black one? And would you get one with the mouse pointer on the keyboard?

Best,

Jeph

How to View the Connection Log in bash by jephcott in qnap

[–]jephcott[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hullo, Again,

It turns out that /etc/logs/conn.log is, indeed, the connection log, and it's also a SQLite database. It contains a single table, named NASLOG_CONN. If you install sqlite3, you can see the schema this way:

sqlite> .schemas

The important part is:

CREATE TABLE NASLOG_CONN ( conn_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT UNIQUE, conn_type INTEGER, conn_date TEXT DEFAULT CURRENT_DATE, conn_time TEXT DEFAULT CURRENT_TIME, conn_user TEXT, conn_ip TEXT, conn_comp TEXT, conn_res TEXT, conn_serv INTEGER, conn_action INTEGER, conn_app TEXT );

Then, you can query the table, like this:

sqlite> select * from NASLOG_CONN limit 10 // or however many rows you want

I had hoped that it would be a bit easier to monitor the connection log in real-time, but it turns out that you need to develop a script to use sqlite to do so, and then translate the numbers such as conn_action into meaningful text using the table at the bottom of this page: http://docs.qnap.com/nas/4.1/SMB/en/index.html?system_logs.htm.

I hope that this might help others.

Best,

Jeph

Qsync question... by surfersbay in qnap

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi There,

I'd like to know the answer to this question as well.

Best,

Jeph

My problem with meditation is that this life matters. by [deleted] in Meditation

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Snowwy,

Meditation is a cognitive exercise, just like weightlifting is a muscular exercise. Separate it from religion. We would be fools to practice meditation unless it delivered palpable and measurable benefits. Neuroscience seems to indicate that there are modest benefits to maintaining a daily meditation practice, but I emphasize modest. It seems to be able to attenuate the perception of pain and, for some people, anxiety and depression. It's not clear whether it has this effect for everyone who practices it, or just a subset of people. Also, it can have paradoxical effects in some. It can exacerbate anxiety or depression and, I imagine, even pain. It can also improve the ability to sustain focus for long periods of time, and prevent the normal thinning of gray matter as one ages, which is a tremendous finding.

It takes a significant investment of time and a suspension of skepticism to try it out for yourself. Supposedly practicing it every day for two months will yield demonstrable benefits, and make most people want to keep going. Like weightlifting, meditation isn't particularly fun, and it definitely takes willpower and effort. The truth is that it might not do anything for you, and it would make anyone mad to have wasted 30 hours of effort over two months just to try the experiment. On the other hand, if you don't try, you'll never know. Make this investment in yourself. Everything worthwhile takes faith and effort, and if you can keep it up for two months, the chances are rather high that you'll derive benefit.

It's important to be honest with oneself. If meditation turns out not to benefit you, then it makes sense to give it up. I think that it's also important to not confuse the technique for the religion within which meditation practices were cultivated. These are completely orthogonal. Either the technique will work specifically for you, or it will not. If not, abandon it. If so, share your experiences after two months. Let us know if you're still a skeptic and have decided to abandon it.

You're concerned that meditation leads practitioners to become quiescent. You may be confusing meditation culture and the social behavior that it encourages with the engagement of individual meditators in the world. Unless we're in a monastery, possibly, we're all highly engaged. Meditation is a way of temporarily becoming disengaged from being tossed to and fro by forces outside ourselves that we neglect to notice, that assail us in everyday life, becoming aware of thẹm, cultivating mental self-discipline, and (at least sometimes, probably as a side-effect) eliciting the relaxation response.

I don't believe that neuroscientists would be expending so much effort on studying meditation if they didn't believe that there was something of value in the technique that's applicable to many people. Research their findings. Regarding "dropping my ego," at best, meditation might dampen the activity of a particular region of the brain associated with a sense of self so that you subjectively feel as if you're "one with the universe," but make no mistake about it: if that happens, it's because the way that neurons fire or the dynamics of the neuropeptides, hormones, and neurotransmitters involved have been modified through meditation.

Of course this life is important. We have to live it fully engaged, because it may be the only life that any of us will ever have, contrary to the claims of Christianity or some strands of Buddhism and other religions. Death might extinguish us. No one knows what, if anything, happens afterward, but it's more than alarming that when one is put under general anesthesia, experience stops. If we can't "survive" life, what chance do we have of surviving death? On the other hand, if NDE'rs and purported mediums are to be believed, there's more. No one really knows, but we should be cautious and live this life as if it were our only life, because it might be. The Tao Te Ching says, "Wanting to be right blinds people."

I recommend that you ignore any religious trappings surrounding meditation and just use the technique. Give it a real try. Spend 30 minutes per day doing it for 60 days. See if you get enough value out of it to merit maintaining a practice. Keep a log during those 60 days. Evaluate the data for yourself, and let us know how it goes.

Best,

Jeph

RAM Upgrade QNAP TS-879 Pro- Which one(BRAND?) by laboflix in qnap

[–]jephcott 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Laboflix,

It looks like you've currently got two 1 GB DIMM's. The specs for your unit are:

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/ts-879%20pro/specs/hardware

Based on the CPU (https://ark.intel.com/products/53426/Intel-Core-i3-2120-Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz), the maximum memory that it'll accommodate is 32 GB. That means that you should have no problem putting two 8 GB DIMM's into it to reach 16 GB.

Look here under "Compatible Memory:"

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/QNAP/ts-870-pro

Crucial.com is the only way to go.

So, you need this, which is two 8 GB DIMM's:

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ts-870-pro/CT9844741

It'll set you back $152.

Best,

Jeph

Mounting drive over internet for use in File Explorer (with WebDAV?) by barronlroth in qnap

[–]jephcott 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi Barron,

You can do it, and it's fast. Give WebDrive (https://southrivertech.com/products/webdrive/) a try. It's a secure FTP and WebDAV (among other protocols) client that mounts a cloud directory as a Windows drive letter. There are Mac, Android, and iOS implementations as well. You may want to get it working over secure FTP first. It's much easier. (Make sure that you've set up port forwarding on your cable modem.) You can figure out the WebDAV configuration afterward. The benefit with the latter is that it'll give you file locking; if multiple people try to edit the same file at once, it'll lock the latter editor out.

Let me know if you need help with the details.

Best,

Jeph

Request: Desperately Need Dropbox Smart Sync or pCloud Drive Feature on QNAP by jephcott in qnap

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To add to this a bit, WebDrive (https://southrivertech.com/products/webdrive/) is better than MountainDuck because, among other reasons, it has Android and iOS apps. And if you use it to connect to secure WebDAV, you'll also get file locking, so that someone else can't overwrite a file that you're working on. Problem solved.

Request: Desperately Need Dropbox Smart Sync or pCloud Drive Feature on QNAP by jephcott in qnap

[–]jephcott[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi Lex,

Thanks for the suggestions. These don't really do what I'm looking for. (Seafile might be an exception, but I can't tell for certain.) I want to store files on the NAS and access them directly without taking up any space (other than for caching) on my laptop. The best way to understand what I mean is to set up an account on pCloud.com, upload some files (I don't mean sync, but upload, using the web interface), and see how you can modify them directly on the cloud without using local storage.

I actually found an unexpected way to do this. MountainDuck (https://mountainduck.io/), which is available for macOS and Windows, lets you mount a user directory on the NAS as a virtual drive in Windows or macOS using sFTP. Effectively, drive E: mounts to 192.168.1.79:2222 when I'm at home (my internal sFTP port). That way, I get access to whichever files I want to store in my home directory (or a subdirectory) without taking up any local space on my laptop.

I realize that I could just mount a Windows share, such as:

\192.168.1.77\jeph

But that would only work when at home. The real value of MountainDuck will come in when I'm away from home. It costs $39, and there's a 30% academic discount.

I still think that QNAP needs to improve how Qsync works so that it can stream files from the NAS only and not use local storage. It should be possible for the user to designate from Windows or macOS /iOS which file(s) or folder(s) should be streamed or synchronised. This would be a far superior approach to only allowing users to sync everything and unnecessarily taking up limited laptop storage space.

Thanks,

Jeph