Saudi Arabia and Yemen at the Crossroads →

Yemen has been effectively partitioned by the war between the Saudi-backed government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Zaydi Shia Houthi rebels. The United Nations’ new "roadmap" is unlikely to put the country back together, but it may keep the fragile ceasefire in place...

How Much Does It Cost to Raise a Child? →

It's a lot.

Figuring out how much Americans spend on their children — the diapers and baby food, the sports teams and braces, not to mention housing and education — is a daunting task. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has attempted just that since 1960. Its most recent data is from 2013.
In general, the cost of child care alone, when adjusted for inflation, has climbed nearly twice as fast as overall prices since the recession ended in 2009. The figures below are based on what a middle-income family spends per child. (To determine these income groups, the USDA divided the sample of two-parent households into equal thirds.)
Calculate your costs here, based on the child’s birth year:..

In Orlando, as Usual, Domestic Violence Was Ignored Red Flag →

As Huffington Post reporter Melissa Jeltsen wrote last year, "The untold story of mass shootings in America is one of domestic violence." According to a conservative estimate by the FBI, 57 percent of the mass shootings (involving more than four victims) between January 2009 and June 2014 involved a perpetrator killing an intimate partner or other family member. In other words, men killing women intimates and their children and relatives are the country's prototypical mass shooters; these killings are horrifyingly common. In fact, on Sunday, while the world watched in horror as news poured out of Orlando, a man in New Mexico was arrested in the fatal shooting deaths of his wife and four daughters.
Even when intimate partners are not involved, gender and the dynamics of gender are salient. According to one detailed analysis, 64 percent of the victims of mass murders are women and children, and yet the role that masculinity and aggrieved male entitlement plays is largely sidelined. Schools, for example, make up 10 percent of the sites of mass shootings in the U.S., and women and girls are twice as likely to die in school shootings. Gyms, shopping malls and places of worship are also frequent targets, and are similarly places where women and girls are predictably present in greater numbers.

What Mass Killers Really Have in Common →

But if Trump and Gingrich are truly looking to stem terrorism and mass violence of the sort that happened in Nice, they might do better to look to a different kind of litmus test: domestic violence and grievances against women. Early reports suggest that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who drove a rented truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers on Thursday night, killing more than 80 including at least ten children, may not have been devout, but he did have a criminal record of domestic violence. A neighbor claimed he would “rant about his wife,” who left him two years ago.
This history of domestic violence puts Bouhlel in the horrific company of many mass murderers. Omar Mateen, who last month killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a mass shooting at an Orlando gay club, had an extensive history of domestic abuse. His former wife has claimed that in addition to taking her paychecks and forbidding her from leaving the house, Mateen also beat her if she failed to live up to traditional wifely responsibilities.
And before anyone jumps to the conclusion that killers with Muslim backgrounds have uniquely bad histories with women, recall that Robert Lewis Dear, the devout Christian who killed three people and wounded nine at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic in November, had a lengthy history of violence against women, including a 1992 arrest for rape and sexual violence. According to the Washington Post, two of his three ex-wives had accused him of domestic abuse.
When Elliot Rodger went on a shooting rampage in Southern California in 2014, killing seven, including himself, he left a video in which he detailedhis fury, particularly at women who had rejected him. “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it …You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male.”
Dylann Roof’s racist massacre of nine churchgoers in Charleston last year was tinged with a sense of patriarchal control over women:...

Machine Bias →

Predictive software is very new. Techniques have been around for decades, but only now is computing powerful and cheap enough to use outside government and big corporations. Not surprisingly, a lot of people who are new to it are making a lot of mistakes. And it's one thing if you're Amazon and you miss a few sales. But it's another if you're a company making software to "predict" where crime will happen, and the data you rely on to create your algorithms is racially and/or economically biased. All of the sudden, you're reinforcing an unjust situation.

"Computer algorithm" does not automatically mean "unbiased".

The End of the End of the Library →

...That is, these places aren’t necessarily surging because of the books in the newfangled libraries, but because of everything else these spaces can now offer. And that’s exactly how I thought these places would possibly survive.
...Libraries are seemingly doing what it takes to transform into the communal spaces they always have been, but no longer solely wrapped around the physical book as they have been in the past. They’re morphing to be just as much about technology and classes — even art.
 

Real-World Security and the Internet of Things →

Classic information security is a triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. You'll see it called "CIA," which admittedly is confusing in the context of national security. But basically, the three things I can do with your data are steal it (confidentiality), modify it (integrity), or prevent you from getting it (availability).
...
On the Internet of Things, integrity and availability threats are much worse than confidentiality threats. It's one thing if your smart door lock can be eavesdropped upon to know who is home. It's another thing entirely if it can be hacked to allow a burglar to open the door -- or prevent you from opening your door. A hacker who can deny you control of your car, or take over control, is much more dangerous than one who can eavesdrop on your conversations or track your car's location.
With the advent of the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in general, we've given the Internethands and feet: the ability to directly affect the physical world. What used to be attacks against data and information have become attacks against flesh, steel, and concrete.
Today's threats include hackers crashing airplanes by hacking into computer networks, and remotely disabling cars, either when they're turned off and parked or while they're speeding down the highway. We're worried about manipulated counts from electronic voting machines, frozen water pipes through