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Monday's Labor Day holiday shortened our week, but there was no shortage of news in the tech space. Herewith, our weekly roundup to help catch you up.

ICYMI

Over the airwaves, the week started with news of Microsoft's purchase of Nokia, and Steve Henn discussed the implications on Morning Edition and All Things Considered. NPR's Jeff Brady explored the Amish and their relationship with technology, concluding that it's complicated.

This week on All Tech, your favorite post featured I Forgot My Phone, the short film that so aptly shows our cultural obsession with our ubiquitous smartphones. A marketing data company launched a site to let you see all the income, biographic and shopping history data that marketers have about you. We wondered about the curious Craigslist market for empty iPhone and MacBook boxes. The Weekly Innovation pick was the Case Coolie, a cooler sleeve for your beers that doesn't require ice. Just in time for tailgating!

The Big Conversation

Another week, another set of revelations about government monitoring of citizens. A story jointly published by The New York Times, ProPublica and The Guardian uncovered the National Security Agency's extensive efforts to break into encrypted communication online. The stories were based on the documents released by Edward Snowden. Reuters, meanwhile, reported that the U.K. government asked The Times to destroy its Snowden material.

The Times also reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has access to a larger set of phone records than even the NSA, and German news outlet Der Spiegel reported (from the Snowden documents) that the NSA spied on Al-Jazeera.

What's Catching Our Eye

TechCrunch: Pew: 86 Percent Of U.S. Adults Make Efforts To Hide Digital Footprints Online; Fear Of Creeping Ads And Hackers Outweighs Spying

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released one of its studies this week on anonymity, privacy and security online. TechCrunch sums up some of the key privacy and security findings.

The Washington Post: Jeffrey Bezos, The Washington Post's next owner, aims for a new "golden era" at the newspaper

The Amazon founder and new owner of The Post spoke to his paper about his plans. " 'We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient,' he said. 'If you replace 'customer' with 'reader,' that approach, that point of view, can be successful at The Post, too.' "

The Wall Street Journal: Forgot Something? Tokyo Cabs Want to Make Sure You Don't

A Tokyo taxi company plans to equip its cabs with cameras to record images of the back seat before and after a passenger enters. "If a passenger leaves the car forgetting an item that wasn't there before getting in, the system sounds an alarm," The Journal says.

It sounds like something out of a sitcom; in this case, the original British television version of The Office: job seekers being compelled to dance for a chance at a sales position at a U.K. electronics retailer.

Applicant Alan Bacon, who hoped for a position at a Currys Megastore in Cardiff, was made to do "rubbish robotics in my suit in front of a group of strangers" to the French electronic duo Daft Punk's "Around the World."

Bacon was quoted by The Mirror as saying that "another middle-aged guy looked upset as he danced to a rap song."

"Everyone thought it was a joke. But they were serious," Bacon said.

The applicant said he'd spent the week before the interview researching the company "and looking forward to being able to express myself and talk about what I love doing."

Instead, it might have made more sense for him to hit the nightclubs and brush up on the latest moves.

"It was degrading, but I am desperate for work, so I just smiled and got on with it," Bacon said, adding that he told his father it was "like a scene out of The Office."

Currys Megastore issued a statement Thursday apologizing for the hiring incident:

"We are extremely disappointed that one of the management team at the store in question did not follow our official recruitment processes.

"We are extremely sorry to those interviewees impacted; all are being asked to attend another interview where they will be given a proper opportunity to demonstrate how they can contribute to our business."

From very early on in the story, we know that the explosion was no accident, and that in the years to come a conspiracy of silence would deny the truth. But the mystery is not the heart of the book. Rather, it is Alma's grief that makes this a truly memorable read. With no education and a drunken husband, Alma is left with three hungry boys to feed. She makes her way by turn as "a laundress, a cook, an all-purpose maid. She ... earned but little, always one dropped dish and a loud reprimand from complete and utter poverty. She lived scared and angry, a life full of permanent grievances, sharp animosities and cold memories for all who'd ever crossed us, any of us, ever. Alma DeGeer Dunahew, with her pinched, hostile nature, her dark obsessions and primal need for revenge."

This fury, and the telling of the story to young Alek, brings to life the glorious Ruby, a woman whose "sass and vinegar" and refusal to live a life dictated by circumstance is in sharp contrast to that of her sister. When, following the explosion, the bodies of the dead are laid out in a school gym, Alma finds that she has no way of knowing which casket holds Ruby. And so she stops at each one: "she treated every box as though her sister was inside in parts or whole and cried to the last." Undone by grief, she has a breakdown and is sent to a work farm, a sort of rural mental institution, abandoning the one son still living at home, our narrator's father, John Paul.

As Woodrell tells Alma's grief, he draws a sharp portrait of rural America in the years of the Great Depression. There is a clear sense of lives lived on the edge of destitution, and of the hardships to come. We witness Alma announcing to her sons that "there's gonna be supper" when she has managed to bring home stolen food: bones scrapped from the leftovers on the plates of her employer's children.

Meanwhile, the same employer (who is, coincidentally, Ruby's sometime lover) is credited with sparing the town's more affluent citizens the worst of the economic woes of the time through clever banking, while Alma and her kind are left to rely on each other — if they are lucky enough to have anyone to care for them.

Author Interviews

'Winter's Bone' Author Revisits A Tragedy In His Ozarks Hometown

A quick scan of Craigslist reveals a curious market for not just smartphones and computers but the empty packaging of smartphones and computers. On my local Craigslist, a MacBook Pro box — "box only," as the sales pitches read — goes for $19. A MacBook Air box will cost you $15. And a Samsung Galaxy S4 box sells for $10.

This box market seems limited to the smartphone, tablet and computer packaging, and not boxes for, say, televisions or jewelry. Sure, a lot of computer packaging can be impressive in its engineering to fit all components snugly. But $19 for a box? What's going on here? We're hoping you can tell us.