Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending December 6, 2013)
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.
Inside China’s Version of Silicon Valley
An innovative area of Beijing challenges the “long-held idea that China’s Internet companies merely copy the products of the West.”
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor
The Overexposed Museum
Smartphones are invading. In this case, within the white-walled museum.
—J. Juniper Friedman, editorial assistant
23andMe Faces Class Action Lawsuit in California
“A very thinly disguised way of getting people to pay them to build a DNA database.” —class action lawyer
—Antonio Regalado, senior editor, business
As Online Ads Look More like News Articles, F.T.C. Warns Against Deception
FTC hearing on sponsored news.
—Antonio Regalado
Google Puts Money on Robots, Using the Man Behind Android
NY Times story describing Google’s robotics acquisitions.
—Antonio Regalado
Someone Bought a Tesla Using Bitcoin
As he puts it: U.S. dollars and gasoline are both obsolete.
—Kevin Bullis, senior editor, energy
Court Documents Reveal DOE-Backed Envia Isn’t the Breakthrough Battery Startup It Appeared
The story behind the decline of a once-promising battery company that appeared to have breakthrough tech.
—Kevin Bullis
NSA Tracking Cellphone Locations Worldwide, Snowden Documents Show
The National Security Agency has been harvesting billions of phone location records globally every day, the Washington Post reported this week in the latest revelation from the Snowden documents.
—David Talbot, chief correspondent
Netflix’s War on Mass Culture
Tim Wu explains how Netflix plans to rewire our entire culture.
—Will Knight, news and analysis editor
Baffling 400,000-Year-Old Clue to Human Origins
New techniques in purifying DNA from fossils are giving us an exciting and sometimes surprising glimpse of early human life.
—Susan Young, biomedicine editor
Getting in a Tangle Over Men’s and Women’s Brain Wiring
A quick analyis debunking “a new study that claims to have found that men’s and women’s brains are wired differently.”
—Kyanna Sutton, senior Web prod