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The Weekender: finding fingerprints, securing servers, and cleaning contaminated lands

The Weekender: finding fingerprints, securing servers, and cleaning contaminated lands

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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. 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.

  • Report

    Retrovolution: mining the past to make the future

    Classic designs are beloved for a reason, and now more than ever companies have been trying to meld their iconic styles with the latest tech. Here's how designers at Mini, Lenovo, Nikon, and more are moving forward while keeping an eye to the past.

  • Feature

    Fugazi's sound and fury, now on demand

    More than 800 of Fugazi's intense hardcore shows were recorded tape, and now, over a decade after the band's last one, they're working to turn those unorganized, analog recordings into a digital catalog available to fans.

  • Report

    Red-handed: can we make fingerprints better at catching criminals?

    Fingerprints are still among the most important evidence that lawyers can show in court, and researchers are beginning to make them a whole lot more valuable too. Soon, your fingerprints could reveal much more about you, even whether you smoke or take drugs.

  • Review

    'Kinect Sports Rivals' review: get your head in the game

    Sports games are the best way to show off what a console's motion controls are capable of, and that's exactly what Microsoft wants to do for the Xbox One with Kinect Sports Rivals. Playing its various sports games can be surprisingly fun — but they also show just how far motion controls have to go.

  • Report

    Inbox hero: inside Mailbox's master plan to make email suck less

    In addition to Android and Mac apps, Mailbox is introducing a big new feature that'll have it automatically managing your inbox based on when you like to read different types of emails. We spoke with company co-founder Gentry Underwood to find out how it came to be and just where Mailbox sees email going.

  • Report

    Can you still be a stranger when everyone is wearing Google Glass?

    Instant facial recognition could be a boon for security and even for facilitating social interactions, but it also leaves a lot to worry about. Not everyone wants their face to give access to their social profiles or life details, and lawmakers are still trying to figure out how far it should be allowed to go.

  • Report

    America's nuclear legacy casts a toxic shadow on Navajo lands

    For decades, Navajo lands have been tainted with toxic soil and water from the once widespread mining of uranium in the region. Now the US government has taken the first big step to determining who's responsible for the damage, but with many old firms now out of business, there's still a lot of ground left uncovered.

  • Review

    Dell Chromebook 11 review

    It's hard to make a good Chromebook. All at once, it has to be inexpensive and still feel solid, run quick, and last all day on a single charge. A few manufacturers have come close, but it might just be Dell that's managed to pull it all off.

  • Report

    How do you fix two-thirds of the web in secret?

    After discovering an enormous security vulnerability that affected around two-thirds of the web earlier this week, researchers had to determine how best to protect major data sources without tipping off hackers. In the end, Facebook and a few others were safe, but others big names like Amazon were left scrambling.

  • Report

    Free-to-play games don't have to suck

    Free-to-play games have earned a bad reputation for the manipulative tactics many use to make players pay up. But now some publishers big and small are beginning to rework what it means to be free-to-play: the biggest change? They're actually fun.

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