Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending November 8, 2013)

A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

November 8, 2013

Video: The NSA’s Evolution
The New York Times offers a brief history of the NSA and sheds light on how the agency acquired its wide-ranging powers of surveillance.
-Kyanna Sutton, senior web producer

That Goddamned Blue Bird and Me: How Twitter Hijacked My Mind
A timely reflection on Twitter’s addictive properties.
—Will Knight, news and analysis editor

When Privacy Is Theft
Margaret Atwood reviews Dave Eggers’s new book, which examines a troubled, technology-mediated vision of the future.
—Will Knight

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Where Cats Glow Green: Weird Feline Science in New Orleans
A great video about scientists trying to save endangered cat species with cloning leaves us with an important question: What’s the point of helping these species reproduce if they have no habitat to call home?
—Susan Young, biomedicine editor

Call Me i$Hm@eL
The art of choosing a hacker nickname.
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor

A Mind-Boggling Sculpture That Crawls with a Mind of Its Own
Project by Malta-based architect William Bondin will bring walking sculptures to a public park near you.
-J. Juniper Friedman, editorial assistant

Google Is Ordered to Block Images in Privacy Case
Quelle horreur for Google in Europe. A French judge delivers a lesson in how an alleged privacy invasion against one individual can become a legal or regulatory tipping point for huge Internet businesses.
—David Talbot, chief correspondent

Researchers Give Urine-Powered Robot New “Heart”
Good to see that “fully autonomous robots that collect human urine to power themselves” are no longer a dream.
—Will Knight

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