Americans Aren’t Saving Enough for Retirement, but One Change Could Help →

Here is something every non-rich American family should know: The odds are that you will run out of money in retirement.

On average, a typical working family in the anteroom of retirement — headed by somebody 55 to 64 years old — has only about $104,000 in retirement savings, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

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The standard prescription is that Americans should put more money aside in investments. The recommendation, however, glosses over a critical driver of unpreparedness: Wall Street is bleeding savers dry.

“Everybody’s big focus is that we have to save more,” said John C. Bogle, founder and former chief executive of Vanguard, the investment management colossus. “A greater part of the problem is the failure of investors to earn their fair share of market returns.”

Not to mention the several recessions (including the recent Great Financial Crisis) that wiped out the average US citizen's savings because of fraudulent investments sold to them by the big banks (often through small, local banks).

Here's a primer on net neutrality from What's Tech →

On this week's episode of What's Tech? Verge Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel explains net neutrality. The recent historic vote by the FCC in favor of net neutrality will have a decisive impact on the future of the internet. But when did the pursuit of net neutrality begin? And what exactly is it?

Fewer Women Run Big Companies Than Men Named John →

Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James. We’re calling this ratio the Glass Ceiling Index, and an index value above one means that Jims, Bobs, Jacks and Bills — combined — outnumber the total number of women, including every women’s name, from Abby to Zara...
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The Glass Ceiling Index is a fun but quite imperfect way of measuring the permeability of the glass ceiling. (Especially because in a few decades, the millennial Jacobs, Tylers and Zacharys will outnumber baby boomer Bills and Bobs.) But it does point to an important truth — that in many important decision-making areas of American life, women remain vastly outnumbered.

Figures From U.S.-Led Coalition Show Heavy 2014 Losses for Afghan Army →

The Afghan Army lost more than 20,000 fighters and others last year largely because of desertions, discharges and deaths in combat, according to figures to be released Tuesday, casting further doubt on Afghanistan’s ability to maintain security without help from United States-led coalition forces.

The nearly 11 percent decline from January to November 2014, to roughly 169,000 uniformed and civilian members from 190,000, is now an issue of deep concern among some in the American military. For example, the former No. 2 American commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, called the rate of combat deaths unsustainable before he departed at the end of last year.

Concern over how soon Afghan forces will be ready to stand on their own is one reason that the Obama administration is weighing whether it should slow the withdrawal of American troops, the bulk of whom are supposed to be out by the end of 2016.

Ferguson’s True Criminals →

Per the Justice Department, the sheer disparate impact of Ferguson police actions is enough to prove racial bias. But actual prejudice also influenced police practices and behavior. The Justice Department records multiple instances in which officers used racial slurs—including “nigger”—against black residents, and it finds evidence of racial bias among city officials, including a series of emails sent by Ferguson officials using city accounts.
But while racial bias informed the actions of the Ferguson Police Department, the chief driver was city coffers. In 2013, for example, fines and forfeitures accounted for 20 percent of Ferguson’s $12.7 million operating budget. Or as the Justice Department writes, “City officials have consistently set maximizing revenue as the priority for Ferguson’s law enforcement activity.”
Officers weren’t protecting citizens as much as they were corralling potential offenders and sources of revenue, with a huge assist from the city municipal court...
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When I was in Ferguson, I talked to white residents who were baffled by the anger of their black neighbors. What was so bad about the city? they asked. Why are you so upset?
It’s not hard to grok. In Ferguson, if you are black, you live in the shadow of lawlessness and plunder, directed by city officials and enforced by the police. You work, and you pay taxes, and those taxes go to fund a system that stops you, arrests you, and steals from you.
Which is all to say that we shouldn’t ask why Ferguson rioted. We should ask why it didn’t happen sooner.

Cleveland’s Worst →

Here’s the problem: While most professions will tolerate poor performance, they won’t stand for damaging behavior. A cook who occasionally flubs his order might keep his job; a cook who contaminates food and poisons customers will almost certainly lose it. But modern American policing is different.
Officers hold great power and discretion, but that doesn’t seem to come with responsibility or accountability. In all but the most egregious cases, bad and destructive cops are virtually immune from the consequences of their actions, even when they lead to death or serious injury. What’s more, unlike the journalist shunned for fabulism or the lawyer disbarred for theft, the officer accused of brutality can expect the full support of his colleagues and superiors. Some of this is understandable: It’s often hard to know exactly what happened in a police-abuse case, and it makes sense to err on the side of the officer. But there are times when that choice is ludicrous—when an officer is clearly in the wrong, but the department stands with him anyway.
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More broadly, where are the actual good cops in all of this? Where are the men and women who have to deal with the fallout from the death of Rice? They exist, and of everyone in this drama, they should be the loudest voices for better training and accountability, if only because it helps them and their jobs. As always, they’re quiet. They may not like the Loehmanns and Garmbacks of the world, but right now they look awfully content to let the actions of such poorly suited officers speak for the whole.

The Democratization of Cyberattack →

When I was working with the Guardian on the Snowden documents, the one top-secret program the NSA desperately did not want us to expose was QUANTUM. This is the NSA's program for what is called packet injection--basically, a technology that allows the agency to hack into computers.

Turns out, though, that the NSA was not alone in its use of this technology. The Chinese government uses packet injection to attack computers. The cyberweapons manufacturer Hacking Team sells packet injection technology to any government willing to pay for it. Criminals use it. And there are hacker tools that give the capability to individuals as well.

All of these existed before I wrote about QUANTUM. By using its knowledge to attack others rather than to build up the internet's defenses, the NSA has worked to ensure that anyone can use packet injection to hack into computers...

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These are the stories you need to keep in mind when thinking about proposals to ensure that all communications systems can be eavesdropped on by government. Both the FBI's James Comey and UK Prime Minister David Cameron recently proposed limiting secure cryptography in favor of cryptography they can have access to.

But here's the problem: technological capabilities cannot distinguish based on morality, nationality, or legality; if the US government is able to use a backdoor in a communications system to spy on its enemies, the Chinese government can use the same backdoor to spy on its dissidents.

Even worse, modern computer technology is inherently democratizing. Today's NSA secrets become tomorrow's PhD theses and the next day's hacker tools. As long as we're all using the same computers, phones, social networking platforms, and computer networks, a vulnerability that allows us to spy also allows us to be spied upon.

John Oliver reports on the sorry state of US infrastructure →

Oliver says US dams are too old: “Like most Botox recipients and competitive cloggers, the age of the average dam is 52 years old, and probably has something deeply broken inside of it.” Bridges are falling apart: In 2014, the US Department of Transportation reported that 61,365 bridges in the US were structurally deficient, and roads nicked with potholes and cracks are not being repaved. Oliver reports that the US Highway Trust Fund is the single largest source of highway infrastructure funding, and it’s set to go bankrupt this summer unless Congress saves it.