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The Weekender: crafting cases, protecting prescriptions, and cleaning up amid a crisis

The Weekender: crafting cases, protecting prescriptions, and cleaning up amid a crisis

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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.

  • Report

    These are the carpenters turning wood into gold

    Miniot makes some of the best and most beautiful wooden iPhone and iPad cases around, but its goal isn't to get rich off of it. It's a family business — based right in their house — and we swung by to see how they bring work, life, and a passion for crafting all together.

  • Feature

    Meet the godfather of wearables

    The modern wearable was born in Alex Pentland's MIT laboratory, despite the skepticism of the university officials he had to convince for funding in the first place. Now, Pentland is working on one of the most insightful wearables out there: one that can determine if someone is bluffing, or if a couple is getting along.

  • Report

    Tumblr declares war on the internet's identity crisis

    The internet's ugly, messy past has been cleaned up and replaced with simple and tidy profiles, but Tumblr founder David Karp doesn't entirely think that's a good thing. With a big update to Tumblr's mobile apps this week, Karp is trying to bring back the personalization of the early web.

  • Report

    How to steal $80 million in prescription drugs

    Thieves used to be able to make big money by stealing prescription drugs and selling them back to wholesalers, but new laws and security tools have been making it increasingly hard to get away with these huge heists.

  • Report

    What does the crisis in Ukraine mean for the world's worst nuclear disaster?

    Ukraine has been working to clean up Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, since the disaster 28 years ago. But there's been setback after setback, and the ongoing turmoil could only make things worse for a cleanup already expected to take as long as another century.

  • Report

    The beautiful blueprints for Fujifilm's camera of the future

    Over the past few years, Fujifilm's been gathering a following of photographers eager for digital cameras that look a bit more like those that shoot film: small, light, and covered in manual controls. We caught up with its designers to see how Fujifilm rethought the SLR's design for its impressive new X-T1.

  • Report

    Hug it out: can art and tech ever be friends?

    A conference in New York this week brought seven artists and seven technologists together, placing them into pairs to see what they could create in just 24 hours. We checked in with one pair throughout the day to see how they managed to find common ground across their often disparate fields.

  • Report

    Gun control: the NRA wants to take America's smart guns away

    Smart guns could have been here years ago, but a New Jersey law that was meant to encourage them has inadvertently given firearm advocates a way to hold them back. With the tech already available, what will it take to actually bring smart guns to market?

  • Report

    Researchers want to keep the elderly safe with radar

    In-home radar systems could be used as a high-tech way to keep seniors safe from falls, without closely monitoring them on camera. Researchers at Villanova University are working on the tech, but teaching it to recognize what a fallen person looks like isn't as easy as it may sound.

  • Report

    Health at 200mph: how supercars will make you fitter and stronger

    McLaren may be best known for its work on super-fast cars, but it's been applying the data it gathers from them in interesting ways. Now, McLaren is looking to take the tech it use to make cars better and apply it to humans — and that tech that could just end up in your next wearable.