Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending January 10, 2015)

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

MIT TR Editorsarchive page

January 8, 2015

Genius Idea
This, by Nick Carlson, is how you annotate a story on Rap Genius. (You let your sources annotate.)
—Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher

People Around the World Are Voluntarily Submitting to China’s Great Firewall. Why?
How the rise of Chinese messaging app WeChat in the U.S. and elsewhere expands the reach of Chinese government censors.
—Tom Simonite, San Francisco bureau chief

A Teenager’s View on Social Media
A 19-year-old college student reports on how his peers use social media: Facebook’s out, Snapchat’s in, and no one can understand Twitter.
—Tom Simonite

5,200 Days in Space
What it’s really like to live and work on the International Space Station.
—Linda Lowenthal, copy chief

The Aggressive Nazi-Bred Cows That Caused Havoc on a Modern Farm
The disturbing—and ongoing—history of the misguided effort to revive the extinct auroch.
—Linda Lowenthal

Planet Hackers
A sign that geoengineering is becoming more of a mainstream topic.
—Brian Bergstein, deputy editor

Charlie Hebdo Murders Are No Excuse for Killing Online Freedom
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, this was a nice wrap-up in Gigaom covering reactions and viewpoints regarding online censorship and surveillance.
—David Talbot, chief correspondent

Managing Conversations Online Is a Puzzle of Picking Platforms
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter—all have their place for online communication.
—J. Juniper Friedman, associate Web producer

Keep Reading

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.