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The Weekender: self-help secrets, website woes, and calculated climates

The Weekender: self-help secrets, website woes, and calculated climates

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The best of the week gone by

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Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Every Saturday, we'll bring you some of the best and most important reads of the past seven days, from original reports, to in-depth features, to reviews and interviews. Think of it as a collection of some of our favorite pieces that you may have missed — or that you may just want to read again. You can follow along below, or keep up to date on Flipboard.

  • Feature

    The Death Dealer

    Self-help superstar James Arthur Ray led three people to their deaths during a 2009 seminar. He was released from prison this summer after a short 18 month stint, and now he may be heading back to his old job.

  • Report

    Thanks a lot, Healthcare.gov

    After two months of work, the government has finally gotten Healthcare.gov mostly up and running after its disastrous launch. So what went wrong in the first place, and did it even ever stand a chance at success?

  • Review

    Motorola Moto G review: how good can a $179 smartphone be?

    It's no easy task to make a $179 off-contract smartphone that can hold its own against some of the best devices around. But Motorola might have done it. The Moto G is fast, stylish, and — above all else — impressively inexpensive.

  • Report

    Weather wars: who should be allowed to engineer our climate?

    Controlling the earth's climate may be a real possibility in the not too distant future, but there's no easy way to decide how we should change it — or who should get to choose what happens.

  • Gallery

    Shoot again: pinball is back in New York City

    Pinball is slowly coming back to life in New York City, and nowhere is it more evident than at the newly opened Modern Pinball. We dropped by to speak with its owners and to photograph some of its wild and colorful arcade cabinets.

  • Review

    LG G Flex review

    LG has made the tech industry's long-running promise of curved smartphones a reality with the G Flex. Now that the phone's here, all LG has to do is prove that there's a good reason for it to be making it.

  • Interview

    Cicero’s Twitter: Tom Standage on the forgotten history of social media

    In his new book, Tom Standage argues that social media has actually been around for centuries, and that Facebook and Google are just its latest incarnations. We spoke with him about how social media has evolved, what its future is, and whether it could ever be regulated.

  • Report

    If an ayatollah tweets in Iran, who hears it?

    Iranian leaders have started taking to social media to communicate their agendas, but with Facebook and Twitter blocked inside the country, what's the point? It may have to do as much with talking to the West as it does with speaking to their own country.

  • Review

    HP Chromebook 14 review

    It's hard to look away from HP's bright and colorful new Chromebooks. The Chromebook 14 doesn't slouch on performance or style, but a few things might still hold it back from being the perfect Chrome OS machine.

  • Report

    You have too many chat apps. Can Layer connect them?

    One instant messaging standard used to connect all of the biggest chat apps, but that golden age is long gone. Now Jeremie Miller, the man behind that standard, wants to begin a new one designed with the mobile era in mind.