Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending April 4, 2015)

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

MIT TR Editorsarchive page

April 2, 2015

Living with a Computer
“When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen.” An Atlantic article from 1982 surfaced online this week.
—Tom Simonite, San Francisco bureau chief

Germanwings Flight 4U9525: What’s It Like to Listen to a Black Box Recording?
Air crash investigators who listen to black box recordings have a doubly challenging job. As they try to figure out the cause of a crash, they hear people in their final moments alive.
—Tom Simonite

Re: Our Relationship
Interesting story about what you can discover when you analyze your relationship statistically (in this case, through e-mails sent back and forth between a boyfriend and girlfriend).
—Rachel Metz, senior editor, mobile

Carbon Capture
Jonathan Franzen on environmental pessimism in the era of climate change.
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor

The Meme as Meme
Why things go viral–and why it matters.
—Will Knight, news and analysis editor

U.S. Gives Threatened Status to Northern Long-Eared Bat
Virtual viruses and hacks are an important concern, but there’s another aspect of life being affected by literal viruses.
—J. Juniper Friedman, associate Web producer