Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer<\/em> No. 53, your guide to the best and Verge<\/em>-iest stuff in the world. (If you\u2019re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer<\/em> homepage<\/a>.)\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This week, I\u2019ve been reading about Beyonc\u00e9<\/strong><\/a> and Rosanna Pansino<\/strong><\/a> and Bowen Yang<\/strong><\/a>, pouring my life back into Todoist<\/strong><\/a>, <\/strong>watching the end of The Grand Tour<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, <\/em>catching up on some My Brother, My Brother and Me<\/strong><\/em><\/a> <\/em>episodes, seeing if the Pixel Recorder<\/strong><\/a> app can replace my trusty voice recorder, and moving Headspace<\/strong><\/a> to my homescreen to see if it helps me meditate more. (So far\u2026 no.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also have for you a truly wild new pair of AR glasses, a Batman-adjacent show on HBO, a great new book about the end of Twitter, a funny twist on social networks, and much more. Lotta good new TV this week! Let\u2019s do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n (As always, the best part of Installer<\/em> is your ideas and tips. What are you super into right now? What should everyone else be reading \/ playing \/ watching \/ buying \/ downloading \/ building out of Legos right now? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com<\/a>. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer<\/em>, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alex Goldman<\/strong><\/a>, the excellent podcaster and former cohost of best-tech-pod-ever Reply All<\/em>, has a new show! It\u2019s called Hyperfixed<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, and basically, Alex\u2019s job is to fix people\u2019s problems of all kinds. The first two episodes are silly and deep, and this show is going to be great.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I asked Alex to share his homescreen with us as his new show launches because if there\u2019s one thing I know about Alex, it\u2019s that he\u2019s a person of many interests and obsessions. (I always enjoyed him posting about songs he made in his attic, just to name one example.) I was curious what his phone would say about what he\u2019s up to right now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s Alex\u2019s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The wallpaper: <\/strong>A picture of my kids being cool on the beach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The apps: <\/strong>Camera, Weather, Settings, Notes, App Store, FaceTime, Amazon, Proton Mail, Find My, Overcast, Patreon, Koala, Messages, Google Voice, Gmail, Safari.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I know my homescreen is a mess, but I have long since given up on trying to organize it. It has reached an uneasy stasis in which I know where everything is, and it\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve downloaded an absolutely essential new app.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Everything I need is on the front page: from games to exercise stuff, apps for watching TV and playing music, social media platforms, and so on. My go-to apps are Notes (every morning, I make a bulleted list of things I need to get done), Voice Memos (it\u2019s super convenient if you\u2019re thinking of an idea or a good melody pops into your head to just go ahead and record it before it\u2019s long gone) and Threes<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. Threes<\/em> is a game where you try and combine blocks of the same number on a playing field without running out of space, and I have truly not gotten further in the past three or four years, but I still play it like four times a day. Just out of nervous habit. And then Overcast is the podcast app. Everything else is lame in comparison.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I also asked Alex to share a few things he\u2019s into right now. Here\u2019s what he sent back:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s what the <\/em>Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you\u2019re into right now as well! Email <\/em>installer@theverge.com<\/em><\/a> or message me on Signal \u2014\u00a0@davidpierce.11 \u2014 with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we\u2019ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to <\/em>this post on Threads<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cFunny timing that you\u2019d mention Short Film YouTube three days after I discovered a channel that\u2019s a horror treasure trove. The channel is called Vintage Eight<\/strong><\/a>, which is by a film professor from the University of New Orleans by the name of Paul Catalanotto. His most popular videos are The Tangi Virus<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, The Oracle Project<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, and The Human Trial<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, which are also conveniently more interconnected than other videos on the channel.\u201d \u2014 Drake<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHild<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is the best historical fiction I\u2019ve ever read in my whole life. Anyone jonesing for Game of Thrones<\/em> but IRL (ish) who is also a fan of Tolkien\u2019s references to ancient languages of Britain \/ Anglos \/ Saxons \/ old Norse will love it.\u201d \u2014 Christopher<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cCaravan SandWitch<\/strong><\/em><\/a> is a wonderful cozy game. It\u2019s on everything and is just lovely.\u201d \u2014 Iain<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPlayed around with NotebookLM<\/strong><\/a> from Google. One fun but helpful use case is to take research papers and generate podcasts. I\u2019ve been reading a bunch of complex ML papers as an engineering student, so I convert them into podcasts and listen on my commute. Certainly interesting TTS application.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Kruti<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn the most recent newsletters, someone recommended the No Rolls Barred<\/strong><\/a> YouTube channel but neglected to mention their best content: <\/strong><\/em>Blood on the Clocktower<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. It\u2019s a social deduction game by The Pandemonium Institute for 7\u201320 (!!) players. Think like Werewolf<\/em> or Mafia<\/em>, but more fun. There\u2019s endless content on YouTube that I can\u2019t stop watching, and I love hosting big parties for it.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Greg<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWith Today in Tabs on hiatus, Caitlin Dewey\u2019s newsletter Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends<\/strong><\/em><\/a> has become the most dependable curated reading list around. (Also don\u2019t miss her excellent 10-year retrospective of G*mergate.)\u201d \u2014\u00a0Kevin<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAfter years of loyalty to Things 3<\/strong><\/a>, I bit the bullet and moved over to Todoist<\/strong><\/a>. Natural language input is a big factor, but also fed up with long lists in Things \u2014 kanban in Todoist breaks things up nicely. I do miss the UI of Things though.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Scott<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been great following along with RocketJump<\/strong><\/a> on their Patreon as they write, plan, and produce their independent action-comedy film! They go really in-depth on everything from location planning to studio pitch decks.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Josh<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI can\u2019t stop playing Astro Bot<\/strong><\/em><\/a>. It feels like a love letter to 30 years of PlayStation, and having been a PlayStation fan my entire life, every level just puts a smile on my face.\u201d \u2014 Nick<\/p>\n<\/div>\n On Wednesday, I was at the Made on YouTube event in New York City (the crowd was made up of me and like 200 extremely cool and fun creators), where CEO Neal Mohan and a bunch of other executives rolled out some new features. But forget the new features \u2014 the absolute highlight of the event was the singer \/ songwriter \/ creator D4vd<\/strong><\/a>, who talked about an AI project and then did a live performance of his mega-popular song, \u201cHere With Me<\/strong><\/a>.\u201d It was awesome, and I\u2019ve been reading about and watching his videos ever since. Here\u2019s a great GQ <\/em>interview<\/strong><\/a> with lots of details on his story, here\u2019s his TikTok<\/strong><\/a>, and here\u2019s his YouTube channel<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nThe Drop<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Screen share<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
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Crowdsourced<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Signing off<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n