Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 85, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, sorry in advance that this week is a tiny bit politics-y, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

I also have for you a very funny new movie about tech CEOs, a new place to WhatsApp, a great new accessory for your phone, a helpful crypto politics explainer, and much more. Short week this week, but still lots going on. Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you reading / playing / watching / listening to / shopping for / doing with a Raspberry Pi this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here. And if you haven’t subscribed, you should! You’ll get every issue for free, a day early, in your inbox.)

isn’t technically new to The Verge, he’s just newly back at The Verge. In addition to being a commerce editor on our team, he also wrote one of the deepest dives into webcams you’ll ever find, plays a lot of games, has more thoughts about monitors than any reasonable person should, and is extremely my kind of person.

Since he’s now so very back, I asked Cam to share his homescreen with us, as I always try to do with new people here. Here it is, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

Pixel 9 Pro.

It’s an “Emoji Workshop” creation, which is a feature that’s built into Android 14 and more recent updates. It mashes together emoji into the patterns and colors of your choosing. I picked this one because I like sushi, and I love melon / coral color tones.

Google Keep, Settings, Clock, Phone, Chrome, Pocket Casts, Messages, Spotify.

I haven’t downloaded a new app in ages. What’s shown on my homescreen has been there, unmoved, for longer than I can remember. I have digital light switches, a to-do list with the great (but paid) widget, a simple widget to show me how much I moved today, and a couple Google Photos widgets of my lovely wife and son. I could probably function just fine if every app shuffled its location on my homescreen, except for the bottom row. That’s set in stone, never to be fiddled with.

I also asked Cameron to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he 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.

“ This Netflix original South Korean reality show locks 14 contestants in a windowless living space that’s part mansion, part prison, part room escape, and challenges them to eliminate each other in a series of complicated tabletop games. (If this sounds familiar, it’s a spiritual successor to the beloved series from the mid-2010s.)” — Travis

“If you’re a fan of , I’m happy to report that the latest season of is finally good, and a reasonable substitute for that show once you’ve finished it.” — Christopher

“I switched to a Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel Watch 3 from an iPhone and Apple Watch about 6 months ago and found , an open source alternative to that does need a Mac but doesn’t need that Mac to remain on, You just need a one-time hardware identifier from it, then it gives you full iMessage, Find My, FaceTime, and iCloud shared albums on Android and Windows using an email address. So long as you can get your contacts to iMessage your email instead of your number, it works great.” — Tim

“Playing for the last time before Mario Kart World arrives next week and takes over my life!” — Ravi

“With Pocket being killed off I’ve started using my RSS reader — which is — instead as a suitable replacement. I only switched over to Pocket after Omnivore shut down.” — James

“I just got a for my birthday and love it. The lack of front lighting is the biggest downfall. It is also only on Android 12 so I cannot load a corporate profile. It feels good to write on just, almost as good as my cheaper fountain pen and paper. It is helping me organize multiple notebooks and scraps of paper.” — Sean

“Giving a bit of a go, and for a lightweight weekly planner it’s beautiful. I also currently use for project management of personal tasks and when I was doing my Master’s. I really like the Gantt view to map out long term personal and study projects. (I also got a student discount for Motion, but it’s still expensive.)” — Astrid

“Might I suggest Elle Griffin’s work at ? How she’s thinking through speculative futures and a cooperative media system is fascinating.” — Zach

One of the reasons I like making this newsletter with all of you is that it’s a weekly reminder that, hey, actually, there’s a lot of awesome people doing awesome stuff out there on the internet. I spend a lot of my time talking to people who say AI is going to change everything, and we’re all going to just AI ourselves into oblivion and be thrilled about it — a theory I increasingly think is both wrong and horrifying.

And then this week I read a blog post from the great Dan Sinker, who called this moment “the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.” You should read the whole thing, but here’s a bit I really loved:

I don’t think this describes everything and everyone, and neither does Sinker, but I do think it’s more true than it should be. And I increasingly think our job, maybe our method of rebellion, is to be people who care, who have taste, who like and share and look for good things, who read and watch and look at those things on purpose instead of just staring slackjawed at whatever slop is placed between the ads they hope we won’t really notice. I think there are a lot of fascinating ways that AI can be useful, but we can’t let it train us to accept slop just because it’s there.

Sorry, this got more existential than I anticipated. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to try and point Installer even more at the stuff that matters, made by people who care. I hope you’ll hold me to that.

See you next week!