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The Weekender: making music, advancing animation, and saving species with smartphones

The Weekender: making music, advancing animation, and saving species with smartphones

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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

    How Beats conquered the world

    Love them or hate them, Beats knows exactly what it's doing when it comes to sound. By taking the same approach to producing headphones as its creators took to producing radio hits, Beats has created a huge movement in high-end headphones — and it's only getting bigger.

  • Review

    The best smartphone you can buy

    Let's keep things simple. You want a new phone, you're going to keep it for at least the next two years, and you really, really don't want to get the wrong one. Here's your solution: find your next smartphone with our first guide designed to make these decisions oh so simple.

  • Video

    Top Shelf: Good Vibrations

    Musicians have always chased after new technology to help them create their next sound, and nowadays that's happening at a faster pace than ever. We sat down with Dream Theater's Jordan Rudess and drum tech Martin Yee to hear about how recent tech is removing limits on what musicians can do.

  • Report

    Should three people be allowed to make a baby?

    There's a good chance that researchers will soon be ready to create a baby from three human parents, but whether the legal system and the public will be ready for it too remains to be seen. As human trials move closer, concerns over so-called "designer babies" are causing trouble for what could be a helpful medical procedure.

  • Report

    Your phone can finally do something really great: help endangered animals

    Amateur naturalists have been a critical resource on everything from leaves to animals for much of history, and now a slew of apps are starting to make reporting information on your favorite species easier — and more useful — than ever.

  • Report

    Uncharted vs. Master Chief: Sony and Microsoft square off at E3 2014

    This week was the biggest one of the year for video games, and that meant watching Sony and Microsoft duke it out as they fight to prove whose new console is the best for gamers. Here's our rundown of how the battle went — and who came out on top.

  • Report

    Nintendo is exciting again

    The Wii U has done nothing but struggle since it launched in 2012, and Nintendo's games haven't been working their normal magic to help. But that's about to change. Nintendo's newest slate of games is ambitious, creative, and — at long last — exciting again.

  • Review

    Samsung Gear 2 review

    Samsung's trying to get out ahead of the coming smartwatch frenzy with the Gear 2, an update to the Galaxy Gear that makes it a whole lot nicer to look at and even a bit better to use. But there are still big issues, and those might not be worth overlooking given what's coming around the corner.

  • Review

    Samsung Chromebook 2 review

    Chromebooks have gotten really great over the past couple years, but they still aren't perfect. Samsung's the latest to try to perfect one, and it's including a 1080p display to make working on its Chromebook 2 look crisp and beautiful. Unfortunately, everything else about the Chromebook 2 might just be a bit too plain.

  • Report

    The amazing animation software behind 'How To Train Your Dragon 2'

    How To Train Your Dragon 2 is DreamWorks' best looking film to date, and a big reason for that is the completely remade software that let its animators work more like traditional filmmakers. We went behind the scenes with DreamWorks to see just how its new software is changing how it makes movies.

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