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

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

July 2, 2015

The Higher Life
Is a phone app really the path to spiritual enlightenment?
—Linda Lowenthal, copy chief

Why I Walked Out of Facial Recognition Negotiations
A privacy advocate contends that industry lobbyists are blocking rules restraining companies’ use of facial recognition to track customers, even if the companies themselves might be willing to comply.
—Linda Lowenthal

How a Conservative Billionaire Is Moving Heaven and Earth to Become the Biggest Alternative Energy Giant in the Country
Will there be a market for all the power Phil Anschutz plans to produce on the world’s largest wind farm?
—Nanette Byrnes, Senior Editor, Business Reports

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The End of Advertising as We Know It
The impact of DVRs and the Internet is causing brand advertising of the Mad Men variety to become so much less effective that it may eventually disappear, says the author of a new book on the media business.
—Tom Simonite, San Francisco bureau chief

You’re Making This Island Disappear
An immersive and informative multimedia feature about the cost of climate change for the Marshall Islands – and what it may portend for the rest of us.
—Kyanna Sutton, senior Web producer

Addiction Is Not a Disease: A Neuroscientist Argues That It’s Time to Change Our Minds on the Roots of Substance Abuse
Why this psychologist and former addict says we’re looking at addiction through the wrong lens.
—Kyanna Sutton

Wildlife Forensics Lab Uses Tech to Sniff, Identify Illegal Wood
A lab in southern Oregon figured out that it could use a mass spectrometer to spot illegally harvested wood.
—Anna Nowogrodzki, editorial intern

The Underfunded, Disorganized Plan to Save Earth from the Next Giant Asteroid
Lasers? A nuclear bomb? What will we do if an asteroid is headed toward Earth?
—Anna Nowogrodzki

Inside the Hack of the Century
How Sony Pictures fell victim to the most spectacular cyber-attack in corporate history.
—Will Knight, senior editor, AI

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