Recommended from Around the Web (Week ending August 29, 2015)

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

August 27, 2015

Digital Surveillance ‘Worse than Orwell’, Says New UN Privacy Chief
The UN’s new privacy chief says a Geneva Convention-style international treaty is needed to protect rights against digital surveillance.
—Tom Simonite, San Francisco bureau chief

Should Cops Be Allowed to Take Control of Self-Driving Cars?
How much power should law enforcement have over self-driving cars?
—Tom Simonite

The Pope and the Planet
In the New York Review of Books, author and activist Bill McKibben writes movingly about Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change. “Pope Francis, in a moment of great crisis, speaks … to who we could be individually and more importantly as a species. As the data suggest, this may be the only option we have left.”
—Richard Martin, senior editor, energy

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The Terrible Teens
The science behind why teenagers are so difficult.
—Megan Barnett, deputy editor

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t
An interesting take on the disruption that digital distribution has unleashed on the creative industry.
—Will Knight, senior editor, AI

Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site
Analyzing IP addresses and activity patterns suggests that “the world of Ashley Madison was … like a science fictional future where every woman on Earth is dead, and some Dilbert-like engineer has replaced them with badly-designed robots.”
—Linda Lowenthal, copy chief

Who’s Doing the Talking on Twitter?
Twitter’s stalled growth may be the beginning of the end of the dream that the Internet could provide the “global town square.”
—Nanette Byrnes, senior editor, Business Reports

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