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Hello friends! Welcome to Installer No. 113, your guide to the best and edge-The most wonderful things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, please send hot cocoa to my freezing house, and you can also read all the old editions at Installer Home.)
This week I was reading about it Private garbage collectors and Vintage watches and My favorite murderto watch Running man (which wasn’t great) and Sinners (Which was To the fullest extent Great), give my Ray Ben’s meat Smart glasses are another downward spiral, through which they are driven by nostalgia The Format’s new albumsitting in the audience for the first time Star search On Netflix, finally reading Dungeon crawler Carl Because nearly 40,000 of you recommended it, spending endless hours struggling with on-board Wi-Fi. Life’s too short for airplane Wi-Fi, my friends.
A bit of a brief issue this week – it’s a short week, and it’s also been an unusually bananas week both personally and professionally. But there are too many good things to take on vacation for a week! So consider this a Lite installer. Mini installer. Updated “bug fixes and performance improvements,” if you will. But we’ve got a smartphone you need to try out, a new soundtrack to work on, some clever Hollywood insights, and more. let’s do it.
(As always, the best part of… Installer These are your thoughts and advice. What are you watching/listening to/playing/buying/reading by the fire this week? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy it InstallerSend it to them and let them know Subscribe here.)
- Todoist Rumble. This is one of my favorite things about AI online, and it just came out of beta. Simply start an audio recording and brain dump everything in your head, and Todoist does an impressively good job of turning it into projects, tasks, and deadlines. Perfect way to start the work day, if you ask me.
- Nexfone. One phone and three operating systems. This is a mid-range Android phone (which took more than a decade to make) too Comes with Linux and Windows installedso you can theoretically use it as your primary computer as well. It won’t ship for a while, and I have some questions. But I love that this phone exists.
- Mel Brooks: The 99-Year-Old Man! A star-studded two-part HBO documentary about one of the funniest and most important comedians of our time. Watch the Judd Apatow-directed series, then use it as an excuse to watch Flaming saddles and Young Frankenstein and Space balls And all the other great work by Brooks.
- Cross play. Latest New York Times Word game, the first multiplayer game! Big win for word– Couples everywhere. It’s basically Words with friends With a nicer design and fewer ads, I mean that as a very high compliment. I wish it didn’t require downloading a separate app.
- MIO: Memories in Orbit. I’ve seen some reviews that put this game side by side Silksong and Light and Darkness: Expedition 33which is high praise for indie games. In addition to being absolutely adorable, it looks both challenging and exhilarating, and I suspect this will work for a lot of people.
- Sony LinkBuds clip. I’m starting to see this style of open ear headphones everywhere, and I kind of love it. Sony’s noise-canceling technology and microphones are usually among the best you’ll find, so I’m curious to see what it can do with this new look.
- TR-49. I love a good machine discovery game (Keep talking and no one will explode It’s one of my favorite things ever), and This is great. You’ve found yourself in front of a World War II-era computer and you have to figure out how to use it. And what happens. I’ve been playing the iOS version, and it’s killing my productivity.
- “The Joe Rogan Experience #2440-Matt Damon and Ben AffleckThis is the first, and probably the last, time I will recommend it JRE Episode here, but Affleck and Damon are very smart about Hollywood, AI, money, and the future of entertainment. The viral Affleck-on-AI clip is only part of the good stuff.
- Night shift. Kurzgesagt is one of the Installerverse’s favorite things on YouTube, and their new, somewhat dark channel is already off to a strong start. I wish every video was about pirates.
Here’s what Installer community this week. I want to know what you’re up to now too! Email installer@theverge.com Or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here each week. For more great recommendations, check out the responses to This post is on topics and This post is on Bluesky.
“A friend recently introduced us Boomerang Fu. As an adorable anthropomorphic foodie, you toss bouncing pieces to precisely slice each other in rounds of local multiplayer mayhem. The last food remaining standing as the various power-ups accumulate becomes increasingly funny. Our whole family loves it.” – E
“clutch. It runs on your device and you can message using Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, or even iMessage, whichever is easiest for you to access — and it can do anything you’d expect from something like Claude Code or ChatGPT Codex. It can also connect to a range of other tools, so it can interact with almost every aspect of your digital identity. It can also rewrite its code if you ask it to, which can get into some dangerous areas if you’re not careful. -Drake
“Going for two weeks with Bazett After switching from Windows to your main gaming PC!
There are no regrets, he was strong. -Colin
“I am convinced that musicians have the best tools. Now, I spend hours and hours working Dirty Wave M8It is the most compact and powerful music making instrument. It is also made by one person. It even comes with a hex key, allowing you to repair and adjust it yourself. I think more people should know that. I also had my share of fun with OP-XY From Teenage Engineering, but it seemed too restricted in an “Apple” way, in contrast to the geeky freedom of the M8. – Yaaqoub
“Payment hex For LLM voice dictation on your device, absolutely free. Press and hold Alt, speak, and your words will appear. -Andrew
“I’m ready for a relaxing weekend playing Legacy of the Forge DLC for… Kingdom Come: Redemption 2. It’s very nice to see Henry (the main character) become a homeowner after such a difficult journey navigating the politics of medieval Bohemia. — Alex
“I’m really having fun Alma As a food tracking tool. It’s a great use of AI, as I can just casually type in what I eat and it will detect the macros. – Michael
“Currently obsessed Iron snail On YouTube. Best clothing content I’ve seen in years.” – Nishant
“I held out for a while, but I finally gave in and bought Power Wash Simulator 2. As a result, I have completely given up all real housework. – Nick
Life is busy now. I think life is busy all the time for all of us. In my endless quest to rethink my relationship with screens and technology, I’ve found that I don’t always do, read, or watch the things I want, simply because it feels like too much of an obligation. I can just look at TikTok or Instagram for five minutes, but if I were to watch a movie or read a book, it would feel like… everything.
But friends, I’ve had a clear vision: You’re actually consuming almost anything for five minutes at a time. For the past two weeks, I’ve watched a bunch of movies in 20-minute segments while my baby napped on top of me. I’ve read multiple books a few pages at a time. I’m slowly training myself to read a couple of pages instead of opening TikTok while waiting in line; I’m about to watch every James Bond movie ever, one nap at a time. I still love spending hours with a good movie or book, but life doesn’t always allow for that. Everything can be bite-sized! Bite sized all things!
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