Another hectic week in the technology space wraps up just as the massive festival for interactive geeks and the marketers who love them — South By Southwest — gets under way in Austin, Texas.
If this is your first All Tech roundup, we organize it in three sections: ICYMI for some highlights from NPR's coverage this week, Big Conversations for what's buzzing across the Internet in the technology and culture space and Curiosities for oddities that piqued our interest. Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
ICYMI
#NPRWIT: This week, NPR's Tell Me More launched a celebration of women in technology, during which the field's leading ladies will showcase a day in their lives on Twitter. You can ask questions and participate in the conversation using the hashtag #NPRWIT. Melinda Gates is doing it!
Are you following @TellMeMoreNPR’s #NPRWIT conversation? Great look inside the lives of innovative women: http://t.co/vw4cFIyTrK
— Melinda Gates (@melindagates) March 4, 2014
Thanks, technology! Service industry workers should rejoice the likes of Square, an iPad-based cash register. It presents customers with a screen that suggests tip amounts, and "you physically have to hit 'no-tip' — and feel like a jerk — if you want to be stingy," Dan Bobkoff writes. In other news of how technology is changing the world, Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, explores how new car technology is slowly acclimating us to the idea of driverless cars.
And your weekly gaming fix: Resident gamer Steve Mullis reviews Banished, which sounds like SimCity with a dash of Oregon Trail (read: people die). And Weekend Edition explores the wacky world of e-sports, competitive sports gaming, which is more and more mirroring the world of physical sports.
Big Conversations
Mystery Man: The elusive mystery man who invented Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was supposedly unmasked by Newsweek as a man with the birth name Satoshi Nakamoto. After being tracked down by the media, the engineer denied any connections to the digital currency. Our Emily Siner explores why Dorian S. Nakamoto, a man living in Southern California who wound up the focus of a car chase on Thursday afternoon, may or may not be the man behind Bitcoin — and what to take away from the media coverage.
SXSW Starts: The interactive portion of the culture fest down in Austin starts this weekend, with privacy and online surveillance dominating the conversations. Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman were already scheduled to appear — and this week, the festival announced former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who still has temporary asylum in Russia, will speak to SXSW attendees by video conference on Monday.
Curiosities
British Journal of Photography: Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement
One of the world's largest stock photo agencies is making millions of its photos free to embed for noncommercial purposes. It's a controversial decision because it gives so much access at no charge, but Getty says it will have more control over how its photos are used.
New York Magazine: How to ruin your social life with dating apps
Writer Maureen O'Connor, who is on Tinder and Hinge, writes about the downside of the design of these dating apps, which allow for high-volume browsing.
Bloomberg: Commercial Drone Pilots Cheer Judge Finding Against FAA
A judge dismissed a case by the Federal Aviation Administration against a man who faced a $10,000 fine for using a drone to film a promotional video at the University of Virginia. The FAA is appealing the decision.
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