Welcome, friends, to Installer No. 150, your weekly guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. This week, your humble narrator was in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee on a family vacation - delightful, and also the reason this edition is a little short. In between pretending to enjoy nature, he’s been reading about job hunting, 30 Rock, and crypto detectives; testing the DuckDuckGo browser after a bunch of you told him to add it to the list; watching the adorable new Pixar short over and over; getting caught up on VisionQuest; playing with his new Pebble Index 01 now that it finally arrived; listening to music on his rad-looking new CMF Speaker S; and eating a worrying number of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins. (It’s Halloween, after all.)
Also on the docket: new gear from Apple and Amazon, a better way to read books on your phone, a resurrected note-taking app, an absurdly expensive robovac, and much more. Because nothing says “tech journalism” like a $1,500 robot vacuum that will inevitably get stuck on a sock.
As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching, reading, listening to, playing, or giving to trick-or-treaters this week? Tell everything to installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here. (Yes, this is a newsletter, and yes, we are begging for subscribers. It’s the circle of life.)
Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com 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.
“Currently watching: VisionQuest. It’s quite good! James Spader has really stolen the show, but I am a little biased as a huge Blacklist fan.” - Spencer. (James Spader: still stealing shows, still inexplicably compelling.)
“I’m using CallMe to coordinate when my friends and I call each other. You can tap ‘I’m free for the next 15/30/60 minutes’ and your friends will get a notification. When you’re both free you can call each other (outside of the app). Makes it easy to reconnect.” - Jordan. (An app that helps you talk to people? What will they think of next - a app that helps you avoid them?)
“I’ve been spending the last few days working on my Top 10 for WXPN’s annual Top 885. This year is ‘Top 885 Songs from Movies and TV,’ and it’s especially challenging.” - Ben. (885 songs from movies and TV? That’s a lot of John Williams.)
“The one game that I play religiously is Clues By Sam, a daily logic puzzle game where speed and accuracy is the goal. Because everyone starts at the same spot, your time is your score, and it’s very fun competing with friends every day. Puzzles range from easy (~2 minutes) on Mondays to Brutal (up to ~15 minutes) on Sundays. Would 100% recommend adding it to your daily rotation.” - Adam. (Because we all need another daily puzzle to make us feel inadequate.)
“Maybe niche, but Steam Frame and trying out older 3D media on it that flopped or became obsolete. Stereoscopic 3DS games and 3D movies work better than they ever did on original hardware, on devices with a dedicated individual display for each eye.” - Mango. (Finally, a use for that 3D copy of Avatar you bought in 2010.)
“I am sooo into the Vivaldi browser now, with the look and feel, and all the customisations! 😍” - Oscar. (A browser with customizations? Burn the witch!)
“Spending some more time learning about the AT Protocol for a class project. The tech is neat. Fell down the rabbit hole of mental poker cryptography.” - James. (Mental poker: the only kind of poker where you can’t lose money, but you can lose your mind.)
“The YouTube channel Digging the Greats by Brandon Shaw is fantastic for music lovers like myself. He deeply analyzes albums and songs in long-form videos, from Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. I also recently finished two of a four-part video series: one where he only listened to music on an iPod for a month, and another where he explored the history of cassettes and mixtapes. I highly recommend checking out his channel if you love music!” - Josh. (An iPod for a month? The horror! Next he’ll try a Walkman.)
“The Dark Matter finale is this week.” - Steve. (Spoiler alert: it’s dark. And matter.)
“I used Firefox for a long time but really don’t like their stance on AI and all the junk they keep adding (VPN, for instance). So I went to Librewolf, which is a Firefox fork that strips out all of the telemetry and AI and also pre-configures a bunch of hardening. I’ve encountered no problems whatsoever with any websites or streaming content.” - Nicholas. (A browser that respects your privacy? What a concept.)
Back in the day, before I worked in the basement and actually left my house on occasion, I had a real weakness for laptop bags. Even now, I have absolutely no need for a new one, but after watching Byron Seven’s video about designing a laptop sleeve / desk organizer / backpack thing, I desperately want the one he made. Even if you don’t want the product, watch the video - it’s a cool look into product design and just a fabulously made video about a bag. (Yes, a video about a bag. It’s better than it sounds. Probably.)