Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending August 30, 2014)
A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.
Robots with Their Heads in the Clouds
UC Berkeley’s Ken Golden on robots, the cloud, and why Google is building a driverless car.
—Nanette Byrnes, senior editor, Business Reports
This Is Uber’s Playbook for Sabotaging Lyft
Amazing! Uber wasn’t pranking Lyft with cancelled calls; it was the shadow of a secretive driver recruiting effort.
—Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher
There’s No Hope for Amazon’s Fire Phone
Away it goes to join the great pile of Kins in the sky.
—Rachel Metz, IT editor, Web & social media
Three Things You Didn’t Know About the Arachnids That Live on Your Face
Just look at this mite that lives in our pores.
—Tom Simonite, senior editor, IT
America’s Tech Guru Steps Down—But He’s Not Done Rebooting the Government
The man who rebooted Healthcare.gov embarks on a new mission to Silicon Valley in an effort to revive federal technology infrastructure.
—Tom Simonite
Ferguson Reveals a Twitter Loop
We like to think of Twitter as an important source of breaking news from eyewitnesses. Sometimes it is. But in Ferguson, a lot of what’s being tweeted is wrong.
—David Talbot, chief correspondent
Who’s in the Office? The American Workday in One Graph
This interactive graph allows you to compare employee work days by job category.
—J. Juniper Friedman, associate Web producer