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There was really only one tech story last week — the potentially disastrous Heartbleed bug. This week, we return to more of a panoply of tech-related news, starting with NPR stories in the ICYMI section, the broader topics in the industry in The Big Conversation and fun links you shouldn't miss in Curiosities.

ICYMI

Digital Distraction Remedies: Is a backlash beginning ... in favor of the physical world? Kids, gamers and restaurant-goers are finding ways to step away from smartphones and reconnect the old-fashioned way. Laura Sydell introduced us to Ingress, a video game that gets people to connect in person. Steve Henn's daughter reminded us that in some cases, parents are too distracted by devices and ignoring their kids. And the service industry says put those phones away and just enjoy breaking bread together, in a piece I reported on Monday.

Big Conversation

Tech Earnings: The tech bubble 2.0 questions keep swirling, and stocks started tumbling even before Google reported its numbers, which were disappointing to Wall Street despite 19 percent revenue growth. Yahoo performed relatively better in the eyes of investors, thanks to its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is poised for an IPO. More companies will be releasing numbers in the next couple of weeks, so as Time notes, it will all be interesting to watch.

Heartbleed Hacker Charged: It was a vulnerability that someone skilled could exploit, and law enforcement believe they found at least one guy who did. A 19-year-old Canadian student was arrested for allegedly exploiting the Heartbleed vulnerability to steal taxpayer data from as many as 900 Canadians. And researchers say an attacker used the bug to break into a major corporation.

Curiosities

The Verge: The Inventor of Everything

This profile introduces you to Mike Cheiky, a darkside version of Elon Musk. "He is either the world's most unheralded genius, or he's criminally insane," a former colleague says of Cheiky.

Wall Street Journal: Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto 'Unmasked'...Again?

It wasn't that long ago that Newsweek caused a tempest over its claim that a man living in LA named S. Nakamoto was the father of the digital currency. He denies it and may sue. Now, a linguistic analysis points the finger at Nick Szabo, "a well known name in cryptography circles," the Journal reports. Szabo has also denied being Nakamoto.

Engadget: 'Wearable eyes' take all the work out of having emotions

A Japanese professor has designed a high-tech version of those novelty spectables with eyes drawn on them. "The digital eyes blink when you nod or shake your head, look up when you tilt your head down and (best of all) it stays open even while you doze off ... ," the tech blog says. They're designed "to make you look friendlier and less socially awkward than you actually are."

The captain of the ferry that sank off South Korea, leaving more than 300 missing or dead, was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need. Two crew members also were taken into custody, including a mate who a prosecutor said was steering in challenging waters unfamiliar to her when the accident occurred.

Prosecutors said the ferry captain, Lee Joon-seok, 68, was arrested early Saturday along helmsman Cho Joon-ki, 55, and the ship's 25-year-old third mate. Another helmsman, Park Kyung-nam, identified the mate as Park Han-kyul.

Senior prosecutor Yang Jung-jin told reporters that the third mate was steering the ship Wednesday morning as it passed through an area with lots of islands clustered close together and fast currents. Investigators said the accident came at a point where the ship had to make a turn, and prosecutor Park Jae-eok said investigators were looking at whether the third mate ordered a turn so sharp that it caused the vessel to list.

Yang said the third mate hadn't steered in the area before because another mate usually handles those duties, but she took the wheel this time because heavy fog caused a departure delay. Yang said investigators do not know whether the ship was going faster than usual.

So far 29 bodies have been recovered since Wednesday's disaster off the southern South Korea coast. More than 270 people are still missing, and most are believed to be trapped inside the 6,852-ton vessel.

Divers fighting strong currents and rain have been unable to get inside the ferry. A civilian diver saw three bodies inside the ship Saturday but was unable to break the windows, said Kwon Yong-deok, a coast guard official. Hundreds of rescuers planned dives Saturday.

The captain apologized Saturday morning as he left the Mokpo Branch of Gwangju District Court to be jailed. "I am sorry to the people of South Korea for causing a disturbance and I bow my head in apology to the families of the victims," Lee told reporters.

"I gave instructions on the route, then briefly went to the bedroom when it (the listing) happened," he said.

The captain defended his decision to wait before ordering an evacuation.

A transcript of a ship-to-shore radio exchange shows that an official at the Jeju Vessel Traffic Services Center recommended evacuation just five minutes after the Sewol's distress call. But helmsman Oh Yong-seok told The Associated Press that it took 30 minutes for the captain to give the evacuation order as the boat listed. Several survivors told the AP that they never heard any evacuation order.

"At the time, the current was very strong, temperature of the ocean water was cold, and I thought that if people left the ferry without (proper) judgment, if they were not wearing a life jacket, and even if they were, they would drift away and face many other difficulties," Lee told reporters. "The rescue boats had not arrived yet, nor were there any civilian fishing ships or other boats nearby at that time."

Lee faces five charges including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law, and the two other crew members each face three related charges, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Yang, the senior prosecutor, said earlier that Lee was not on the bridge when the ferry Sewol was passing through the tough-to-navigate area where it sank. Yang said the law requires the captain to be on the bridge at such times to help the mate.

Yang said Lee also abandoned people in need of help and rescue, saying, "The captain escaped before the passengers." Video aired by Yonhap showed Lee among the first people to reach the shore by rescue boat.

Yang said the two crew members arrested failed to reduce speed near the islands, conducted a sharp turn and failed to carry out necessary measures to save lives.

Cho, the helmsman arrested, accepted some responsibility outside court. "There was a mistake on my part as well, but the steering (gear of the ship) was unusually turned a lot," he told reporters.

Prosecutors will have 10 days to decide whether to indict the captain and crew, but can request a 10-day extension from the court.

The Sewol had left the northwestern port of Incheon on Tuesday on an overnight journey to the holiday island of Jeju in the south with 476 people aboard, including 323 students from Danwon High School in Ansan. It capsized within hours of the crew making a distress call to the shore a little before 9 a.m. Wednesday.

With only 174 known survivors and the chances of survival becoming slimmer by the hour, it is shaping up to be one of South Korea's worst disasters, made all the more heartbreaking by the likely loss of so many young people, aged 16 or 17. The 29th confirmed fatality, a woman, was recovered late Friday, the coast guard said.

The country's last major ferry disaster was in 1993, when 292 people were killed.

Only the ferry's dark blue keel jutted out over the surface on Friday, and by that night, even that had disappeared, and rescuers set two giant beige buoys to mark the area. Navy divers attached underwater air bags to the ferry to prevent it from sinking deeper, the Defense Ministry said.

Divers have pumped air into the ship to try to sustain any survivors. Three vessels with cranes arrived at the accident site to prepare to salvage the ferry, but they will not hoist the ship before getting approval from family members of those still believed inside because the lifting could endanger any survivors, said a coast guard officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department rules.

Coast guard official Ko Myung-seok said 176 ships and 28 planes were being mobilized to search the area around the sunken ship Saturday, and that more than 650 civilian, government and military divers were to try to search the interior of the ship. The coast guard also said a thin layer of oil was visible near the area where the ferry sank; about two dozen vessels were summoned to contain the spill.

___

Klug reported from Seoul. Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report.

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race.

That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising the race issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda.

There seems to be a shift in recent days, however.

Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California, and New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both cited racism, pure and simple, among some Republicans as explanations for the House GOP's resistance to legislation to comprehensively overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder, took a slightly subtler approach. Speaking to the National Action Network, the largely African-American civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Holder suggested some Republicans had a racial animus towards the president and himself.

"The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity," Holder said.

"If you don't believe that, you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

All of this has led to accusations that Holder, Pelosi and Israel are themselves guilty of playing the race card.

The attorney general later pointedly stated that he never explicitly said race explained the political right's treatment of him or the president. Instead, he claimed his complaint was about Washington's growing incivility.

Holder, an African-American, was like his boss — the first African-American president — who has also refrained from going there.

In any event, what Holder demonstrated is that just as those on the right can use dog whistle politics to motivate their base, those on the left can also send messages that are heard a certain way by theirs.

It's a safe bet, for instance, that many African-Americans who heard or read Holder's words didn't doubt he was talking about race. And he did it without ever uttering the "r" word like Pelosi and Israel.

Is this partly about activating minority voters during a mid-term election year in which Democrats stand a good chance of losing the Senate if their voters don't go to the polls in numbers? Could be.

When Obama has been on the ballot, minority voters, especially African Americans, didn't need much more motivation than that to vote. But a mid-term election when he's not on the ballot is different.

Social scientists who have studied voters have found that voter participation rises when voters are emotionally engaged.

For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement — and is indeed racially based — could help do the trick.

The Democrats' use of voting rights strikes the same chord. Voting rights and race have been so inextricably linked in the nation's history, and in the African-American experience, that Obama can send a resonant message to many minority voters without ever explicitly mentioning race.

He did exactly that when he spoke to the same Sharpton group as Holder, a few days after the attorney general.

Obama portrayed Republican voter ID efforts as attempts to undo civil and voting rights protections enacted during the Johnson administration — protections won at the price of blood.

That those Johnson-era laws were needed to counter racist laws and practices that prevented blacks from voting, especially in the South, could go unsaid before an audience well-steeped in that racial history.

"You think about Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and Freedom Summer," Obama said. "And with those anniversaries, we have new reason to remember those who made it possible for us to be here." He mentioned three civil rights workers who became famous after they were killed registering Mississippi blacks to vote.

"James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it," Obama said. "The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power. "

People-died-so-you-can-vote is a powerful emotional appeal. Come November, we'll see if it was powerful enough.

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race.

That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising the race issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda.

There seems to be a shift in recent days, however.

Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader from California, and New York Rep. Steve Israel, who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, both cited racism, pure and simple, among some Republicans as explanations for the House GOP's resistance to legislation to comprehensively overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder, took a slightly subtler approach. Speaking to the National Action Network, the largely African-American civil rights group founded by Rev. Al Sharpton, Holder suggested some Republicans had a racial animus towards the president and himself.

"The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity," Holder said.

"If you don't believe that, you look at the way, forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?"

All of this has led to accusations that Holder, Pelosi and Israel are themselves guilty of playing the race card.

The attorney general later pointedly stated that he never explicitly said race explained the political right's treatment of him or the president. Instead, he claimed his complaint was about Washington's growing incivility.

Holder, an African-American, was like his boss — the first African-American president — who has also refrained from going there.

In any event, what Holder demonstrated is that just as those on the right can use dog whistle politics to motivate their base, those on the left can also send messages that are heard a certain way by theirs.

It's a safe bet, for instance, that many African-Americans who heard or read Holder's words didn't doubt he was talking about race. And he did it without ever uttering the "r" word like Pelosi and Israel.

Is this partly about activating minority voters during a mid-term election year in which Democrats stand a good chance of losing the Senate if their voters don't go to the polls in numbers? Could be.

When Obama has been on the ballot, minority voters, especially African Americans, didn't need much more motivation than that to vote. But a mid-term election when he's not on the ballot is different.

Social scientists who have studied voters have found that voter participation rises when voters are emotionally engaged.

For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement — and is indeed racially based — could help do the trick.

The Democrats' use of voting rights strikes the same chord. Voting rights and race have been so inextricably linked in the nation's history, and in the African-American experience, that Obama can send a resonant message to many minority voters without ever explicitly mentioning race.

He did exactly that when he spoke to the same Sharpton group as Holder, a few days after the attorney general.

Obama portrayed Republican voter ID efforts as attempts to undo civil and voting rights protections enacted during the Johnson administration — protections won at the price of blood.

That those Johnson-era laws were needed to counter racist laws and practices that prevented blacks from voting, especially in the South, could go unsaid before an audience well-steeped in that racial history.

"You think about Brown v. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and Freedom Summer," Obama said. "And with those anniversaries, we have new reason to remember those who made it possible for us to be here." He mentioned three civil rights workers who became famous after they were killed registering Mississippi blacks to vote.

"James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner believed so strongly that change was possible they were willing to lay down their lives for it," Obama said. "The least you can do is take them up on the gift that they have given you. Go out there and vote. You can make a change. You do have the power. "

People-died-so-you-can-vote is a powerful emotional appeal. Come November, we'll see if it was powerful enough.