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The Weekender: a year offline, a black market online, and an app that keeps you in the present

The Weekender: a year offline, a black market online, and an app that keeps you in the present

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The best of the week gone by

By Jacob Kastrenakes, a deputy editor who oversees tech and news coverage. Since joining The Verge in 2012, he’s published 5,000+ stories and is the founding editor of the creators desk.

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Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we'll bring you important articles from the previous weeks' original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you might want to read again.

  • Review

    ‘Iron Man 3’ review: Robert Downey Jr. becomes the latest lethal weapon

    Tony Stark's first two outings were some of Marvel’s best superhero films, but now, a new director has taken the series’ reigns. The new film is something closer to an ’80s buddy flick — can Iron Man take on a new villain and a new genre?

  • Report

    Drugs, porn, and counterfeits: the market for illegal goods is booming online

    If you know where to look, you can buy just about any illicit item over the internet. Startups are launching every month to tap into the underground economy, and some sellers are making big money thanks to the anonymous currency Bitcoin.

  • Review

    BlackBerry Q10 review: revenge of the keyboard

    The all-touch BlackBerry Z10 came out earlier this year to less than stellar reviews — but the Q10’s keyboard puts the device back inside the company’s home field. Typing on the Q10 works great, but we’re left wondering if a QWERTY keyboard is useful in 2013.

  • Report

    We know who you are: the scary new technology of iris scanners

    Iris scanning is almost commonplace in certain countries: India plans to scan all of its citizens, and Mexico is beginning to roll out a program this year. Now, a new device marketed toward US law enforcement can turn an iPhone into an iris-scanning surveillance tool — and we're left how far away the tech is from creating a Minority Report-style future?

  • Interview

    How @breakingnews keeps news junkies current in a crisis

    Over 5.6 million people follow @breakingnews on Twitter to stay plugged in, and we chatted with the team’s general manager Cory Bergman. He speaks about their relationship with NBC, getting facts right in a crisis, and how they operate at such a breakneck pace.

  • Review

    Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 review: a netbook by another name

    The Yoga 11 is a little underpowered — but it’s well-designed, has an incredibly long battery life, and is relatively inexpensive. With Windows RT and a copy of Office, does the Yoga 11 make for a compelling machine?

  • Report

    Tears in rain: how Snapchat showed me the glory of data death

    Just about all of your social activity on the internet is permanent, unless you take your time to go back later and clean it up. But with a forced transience, services such as Snapchat may have nailed how human interaction really works: inside a single, present moment.

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