Mission: Impossible and Fortnite just both made huge comebacks | The Verge
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 84, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about and and , moving all my journals to , trying out , catching up on , wishing desperately that was a real show, watching a lot of with my toddler, testing the headphones, dusting off my skills, and enjoying this into the first Star Wars movie.
I also have for you a new blockbuster movie, an old-new blockbuster mobile game, a new season of one of my all-time favorite shows, a cheap set-top box worth a look, and much more. Shockingly busy week! Let’s dig in.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you playing / reading / listening to / watching / plugging into things / poking with a stick this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here. Subscribers get every issue in their inbox, for free, a day before it hits the website.)
In all the time I’ve been covering and paying attention to tech, there have been very few companies as bizarre and intriguing as OpenAI. The company is doing impressive, culture-shaking work, but it also seems to have an endless supply of weird internal drama and a total inability to figure out, like, what in the world it’s doing.
has been covering the company longer than almost anybody, and she has firsthand knowledge of a lot of OpenAI’s twists and turns. This week, she published a terrific book, called , which is about the company’s history and its future. But the book is more than that, too. It’s a really good look at what AI is doing to us as people, to our societies and our planets, and to the brains of the people building what they hope will make them rich or gods — or both.
I’ve been a fan of Karen’s work for a long time, so I asked her to share her homescreen with us. I figured she’d either have, like, 30 AI apps or none at all, and I wanted to know. Here’s her homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:
iPhone XR.
It’s usually a photo of me and my husband laughing hysterically at an inside joke at our wedding. But you’ll just have to imagine it because we’re really big on privacy. Enjoy this orange gradient instead. Orange is the color of creativity, of fire, of the sunrise and sunset, of beginnings and transition.
Messages, Google Calendar, Photos, Camera, Clock, Apple Notes, Contacts, Settings, FaceTime, Calculator, Weather, Reminders, App Store, Gmail, Proton Mail, Phone, Brave.
I have a very boring homescreen! I try not to use too many apps. When I set up a phone, the first thing I do is delete as many of the default apps as possible. But probably the two notable apps to call out: a couple years ago, I switched completely to the browser, which is the lion icon at the bottom right of the screen. It’s based on Chrome, so you can keep all your plug-ins, but it blocks sites from tracking you to serve you targeted ads. It’s a simple way to not give up so much of your data and preserve your privacy. Highly recommended.
The second: under my Audio folder, I have a guitar-tuning app, , for the rare moments I fiddle with my guitar at home. Music was a big part of my childhood, but I haven’t made nearly enough time for it as an adult. I keep the app on my homescreen as an aspiration to pick it back up more seriously.
I also asked Karen to share a few things that she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now, as well! Email [email protected] or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.
“YouTube has recently radicalized me to digital minimalism and decentralized tech. What started as deleting ALL social media from my iPhone and relegating the apps to my iPad is now firmly in the realm of buying old iPods from eBay and repairing them with modern parts. I have some replacement parts on the way from and with what I know now I should soon have a functional 6th gen iPod Classic that I can install on. I also picked up the with the hopes of installing the USB-C mod in the near future.” — Nicholas
“I know it was in last week’s Installer but I got the and they’re incredible. The ‘background listening’ feature is such a clever spin on spatial audio, it really does sound like it’s coming from a distance!” — Jamie
“What if you could add any plain old QR Code/barcode card to your Apple Wallet? Lucky for you, the greatest minds of our time have come together to solve this inconvenience. Try and get as blown away as I was when it just worked (also the level of customization and the price are great!).” — Teo
“I’ve REALLY enjoyed the series by Alastair Reynolds. For lovers of hard sci-fi space operas this is for you. Engaging, dark, wild ideas and concepts, plenty of real and imagined science and physics all weaved into interesting stories.” — Tyler
“I’ve personally managed to seriously build my meditation practice in the last two years using both and . I especially enjoy the meditations by teacher Jeff Warren, who strikes the right balance with his light and playful tone.” — Jeroen
“I’ve had the lamp since 2019 and it’s still going strong! Love the interaction, twisting it and flipping it to control the light, and I even helped sell two (unsponsored) to an old roommate when he moved to his own place.” — SingYu
“Setup is (90%) finished! Rocking a , , , and a $60 standing desk from Facebook Marketplace.” — Jeremy
The big Installer-y news of the week is that Mozilla is shutting down Pocket. Which, well, sucks. Pocket was a good and popular app that did good and useful things! I heard from a bunch of you who are now looking for a place to go post-Pocket. I only really have three recommendations:
I suppose I should give an honorable mention, because you can host it yourself, but it’s a much more involved project. If I were just moving over from Pocket and just wanted a nice place to read without a long list of other feature requests, I’d start with Instapaper. But all three are solid options, and they all make it pretty painless to import your old articles. Or just delete them all, start over, and feel the rare freedom of an almost-empty reading list. It’s pretty nice.
See you next week!