Comment on Roiling the Waters

By Sharon Rhodes Thoughtful gifts for friends and family are a Christmas tradition, showing loved ones that you’re thinking of them this holiday season. But a long shopping list can be pricey. If you are concerned about the cost of Christmas presents this year, these ideas will help you get gifts for everyone on your list on a budget. Christmas is a time to gather with loved ones, enjoy good food and experience holiday traditions, but gift giving is also a central part of the season.

Losing a smartphone or tablet stuffed with your life’s details can be a nightmare, but your privacy may also be at risk in less obvious situations — like if you leave your unlocked phone unattended or if the children know your tablet’s passcode. While apps for financial or medical matters typically require their own passwords (and Apple’s Photos and Google Photos can hide specific pictures), the latest versions of iOS and Android offer new tools for further shielding sensitive content on your device.

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration — among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools — some of them powered by AI — help make decisions over whether an immigrant should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a “Hurricane Score,” ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will “abscond” from the agency’s supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant — with a pending case — will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

It was bad enough that her second-grade teacher didn’t like her because she refused to sit on his lap to go over test grades. But when she had trouble learning to spell, he shamed her in front of the class, calling her stupid. Actually, Meghan Buchanan was dyslexic, and she would overcome her learning disability to become a rocket scientist.

Watching Matt Eberflus make Nathaniel Hackett look like Vince Lombardi on Thursday reinforced how bad NFL teams are at identifying head coaches. Ten were hired in the 2022 cycle. Five have been canned — Hackett was axed during his first season — and the Jaguars’ Doug Pederson and Giants’ Brian Dabol should join them in January. There is one true keeper in Minnesota’s Kevin O’Connell, a man the Broncos interviewed when they were catfished by Hackett. A confluence of factors makes this process hard, but the rate of failure remains staggering.

Dear Eric: My husband of six months and I do pretty much everything together. I recommended we watch a Netflix series together, and we are both deeply engrossed. The other night, I was tired from my workday, and he suggested I go to bed early. He mentioned finishing the latest episode, since it had just started.