1		
Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal		
BY the time you finish reading this column, you would be foolish not to download the messaging app Signal onto your smartphone and computer.		
The free encrypted messaging service has won the acclaim of security researchers and privacy advocates, including Edward J. Snowden. All have said that Signal goes above and beyond other chat tools in keeping electronic communications private.		
And now more than ever, we may need it. That’s because hacks are on the rise — look at how the activist group WikiLeaks posted a trove of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, for all to see. Many are also watching for how government surveillance may grow under Donald J. Trump, who has chosen Mike Pompeo, who advocates greater surveillance, to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.		
Signal is one of many encrypted messaging services, but it stands out for its uncompromising security and ease of use. The chat service retains virtually no information from users, including messages and address books, on its servers. What’s more, messages remain encrypted when passing through Signal’s servers, meaning that the app’s creators can’t read them.		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/technology/personaltech/worried-about-the-privacy-of-your-messages-download-signal.html?action=click&contentCollection=topics&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection		
		
2		
The Robot Revolution Will Be the Quietest One		
Though the first fatal crash involving an autonomous car took place in July 2016, self-driving vehicles have been adopted around the world.		
In 2016, self-driving cars made inroads in several countries, many of which rewrote their laws to accommodate the new technology. As a science-fiction writer, it’s my duty to warn the human race that the robot revolution has begun — even if no one has noticed yet.		
When a few autonomous test cars appeared on the roads over the last few years, we didn’t think of them as robots because they didn’t have the humanoid shape that science-fiction movies taught us to expect. In 2016, they were adopted widely: as buses in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, taxis in Singapore and private cars in the United States and China. There was a fatal accident in Florida involving an autonomous car, which caused some concerns, but this did not significantly affect our embrace of this technology.		
The driverless vehicles, some of which had no steering wheels or gas pedals, merged into traffic and stopped at stop signs, smoothly taking us to our destinations. We lounged in comfort, occasionally taking selfies.		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/opinion/the-robot-revolution-will-be-the-quietest-one.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips		

		
3		
The Future of Privacy		
Apple resists the F.B.I. in unlocking an iPhone in the San Bernardino terrorism case.		
I’ve never been able to fit the concepts of privacy, history and encryption together in a satisfying way, though it continues to seem that I should. Each concept has to do with information; each can be considered to concern the public and the private; and each involves aspects of society, and perhaps particularly digital society. But experience has taught me that all I can hope to do with these three concepts is demonstrate the problems that considering them together causes.		
Privacy confuses me, beyond my simplest understanding, which is that individuals prefer, to different degrees, that information about them not be freely available to others. I desire privacy myself, and I understand why other individuals want it. But when the entity desiring privacy is a state, a corporation or some other human institution, my understanding of privacy becomes confused.		
While it’s true that states and corporations often desire privacy, they just as often desire that I myself have less privacy. What does it mean, in an ostensible democracy, for the state to keep secrets from its citizens? 		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opinion/the-future-of-privacy.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips		

		
4		
Marie Kondo: How to Choose Happiness		
An executive at Ikea declared that the West has reached “peak stuff,” with people owning too many things.		
The Japanese word “tokimeku” means “to spark joy.” Someone who is adopting my method of tidying must take a possession of hers and ask: “Does this spark joy for me?” This question is the sole basis for choosing what things to keep in one’s home and what to discard.		
But can we apply this notion of sparking joy on a larger scale?		
We live in a disorganized and chaotic world, much of it outside our control. I read recently that more than 80 billion articles of clothing are produced each year, but only a negligible few are recycled. As people’s buying habits shift and technology moves most everything to the cloud, people have been valuing experiences over material things. Some have even pointed out that we may have reached a critical point in terms of mass consumption — we’ve reached peak stuff.		
Though it sometimes may seem like our things are threatening to take over our world, we can focus our energy and determination on choosing what makes us happy, and ultimately change our lives. Asking ourselves whether something sparks joy seems like such a simple process — so simple that many people wonder whether it can really be effective. 		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/opinion/marie-kondo-how-to-choose-happiness.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips		

5		
One Money Question to Rule Them All: How Much Is Enough?		
As we enter this season of contemplation and reflection, we all have more than the usual number of everyday financial questions weighing on us.		
How much more might we pay for health care under President-elect Donald Trump? How will any new trade policies affect our household budgets and job prospects? How much less will some of us pay in taxes after his promised reforms, and what might we do with what could be many thousands of dollars of extra money?		
Step back a bit, however, and you will see that every money question eventually boils down to a single line of inquiry: How much is enough?		
It is a quantitative question for sure. How much insurance is enough, how much federal revenue and how much personal income and spending. But the question’s qualitative nature is what makes it special and singular. It is about how money makes us feel and, ultimately, it is an inquiry into the nature of our values — about what our spending, saving and giving say about us and what we and our families ultimately stand for.		
But addressing the question is an appropriate task right now, given an unpredictable president-elect and a Congress nominally behind him poised to make good on at least some promises to change our financial lives.		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/your-money/one-money-question-to-rule-them-all-how-much-is-enough.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips		
		
6		
Is Social Media Disconnecting Us From the Big Picture?		
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that Donald Trump could be elected president, but I was. I live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan, two of the most liberal places in the country. But even online, I wasn’t seeing many signs of support for him. How did that blindness occur? Social media is my portal into the rest of the world — my periscope into the communities next to my community, into how the rest of the world thinks and feels. And it completely failed me.		
In hindsight, that failure makes sense. I’ve spent nearly 10 years coaching Facebook — and Instagram and Twitter — on what kinds of news and photos I don’t want to see, and they all behaved accordingly. Each time I liked an article, or clicked on a link, or hid another, the algorithms that curate my streams took notice and showed me only what they thought I wanted to see. That meant I didn’t realize that most of my family members, who live in rural Virginia, were voicing their support for Trump online, and I didn’t see any of the pro-Trump memes that were in heavy circulation before the election. I never saw a Trump hat or a sign or a shirt in my feeds, and the only Election Day selfies I saw were of people declaring their support for Hillary Clinton.		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/magazine/is-social-media-disconnecting-us-from-the-big-picture.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips		

		
7		
What Women Really Think of Men		
At the kickoff for his postelection victory lap in Cincinnati this month, Donald J. Trump bluntly told men, “Hate to tell you,” but women, “generally speaking, they’re better than you are.”		
As a feminist, I disagree. It does women, and society, no favors to grouse about female superiority as a way to let men off the hook. When society writes off men as irredeemable, we all lose.		
Some 53 percent of white women voters — although thanks to minority women, not a majority of all women — rejected Hillary Clinton’s plea to break the glass ceiling and voted for Mr. Trump instead. I’ve talked to some of these women. They don’t think much of men, either.		
“Trump is a narcissist,” a middle-aged white woman in East Stroudsburg, Pa., told me in the early evening on Election Day. “I know,” she added, “because my husband is one, too.” She said she disliked both candidates, but she voted for Mr. Trump.		
As the country prepares to revert to white male rule, our common condition for all but eight of the last 240 years, we should think harder about why we assume so little of men, including ones we may be married to. Too many men don’t prove those expectations wrong, and are rewarded anyway with prizes like the presidency.		
		
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/09/opinion/sunday/what-women-really-think-of-men.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Ftimes-tips&_r=0