Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 104, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, happy belated Halloween, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about lotteries and Jennifer Lawrence and religious AI, shame-watching Finding Mr. Christmas, turning MyMind into my daily journal / commonplace book, learning a lot about Taylor Sheridan for some reason, letting James Hoffman teach me about cold brew, attempting to replace most of my laptop time with iPad Pro time, and trying my very best to not eat all our Halloween candy ahead of time. Friends, I did not succeed.
I also have for you a great new streaming app update, a couple of fun battle royales to play, a cheap new phone, tales from the robot uprising, and more. Let’s do this.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / carving out of pumpkins this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
- Channels 7.0. A big update to an Installer favorite, mostly dedicated to making Channels look much nicer on both mobile devices and the Apple TV. If you’re a big library manager, this’ll be a huge upgrade. Plus it lets you multiview all the things!
- The Outer Worlds 2. I never played the original game in this series, but have heard mostly great things about its world- and character-building, and the sequel seems to be better on all fronts. The whole series is also basically a satire of capitalism and big government, which hits… different these days.
- Bad Influencer. I am so delighted that “horrible things happen to / because of an influencer” is becoming a genre of show and movie. This Netflix miniseries is about con artists, knockoffs, crime rings, everything.
- The Nothing Phone 3a Lite. Another one for the “sucks we can’t buy this in America” files. This is a nice-looking, decently powerful phone with a big screen and a big battery. For like $300! (But only in the UK and Europe.) I love how good the low-end Android market is getting.
- Battlefield Redsec. Battle royale Battlefield. (Say that three times fast.) Play alone, play in squads, even do missions rather than just trying to survive. All the modes and customizability mean I’m almost certainly going to be awful at this game, but that’s okay.
- Fortnite Sidekicks. Big week for battle royales! I include this — a new, largely adorable set of friends you can add to your Fortnite getup — as an excuse to say I’ve been getting back into Fortnite after a couple of years away from it, and it’s the best. Right now it’s being Simpsons-ified, and it’s so much fun.
- Board. I feel like we’ve seen roughly this idea — a tabletop surface that is both a screen and a playing surface that interacts with physical pieces, so you can play all kinds of augmented board games — a bunch of times. This looks like one of the most thoughtful versions of the concept yet, though, and I’m psyched to try it out.
- “I Tried the First Humanoid Home Robot. It Got Weird.” This is, like, the video Joanna Stern was born to make — a deep dive into a company building humanoid robots (which right now are just remote-controlled robots), and what it might be like to have these in our homes. None of it works! But it’s fun to watch.
- Tor 15. Tor is a super powerful, privacy-focused browser, but it has never been the most… usable browser. The new version is cleaner and nicer looking, with vertical tabs (!) and some useful organization tricks. I’m not sure most people need something as secure as Tor as a primary browser, but I like that it looks and feels more mainstream.
I have this big, long list of TV shows and movies I want to watch. There are so many good ones, I’m so excited about them, and yet virtually every time I plop down on the couch I end up watching something I’ve already seen. I have a roster of things that I’ve seen a million times, and could watch a million more, and they are so often just irresistible. And I have to tell you: there’s a lot of Fancy Stuff I’ve never seen, and I have no regrets about watching The Office again.
I asked you all to share your favorite things to endlessly rewatch, too, and as always you delivered. But first, since a bunch of you asked, here’s what I watch over and over (turns out it’s pretty much all a very specific kind of comedy TV show):
- The Office, Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, New Girl, The Inbetweeners, How I Met Your Mother, Community, The West Wing, Sports Night, Veep, Silicon Valley, Schitt’s Creek, Middleditch & Schwartz, Superstore.
I had a few guesses about what would show up in my inboxes and social feeds about what you watch, and I was right in a few spots, but the coolest thing was the sheer breadth of rewatchable stuff out there! So let’s do this in two parts. First, here are the shows and movies that came up most often, ranked roughly in order of popularity:
Lots of good stuff! But because there was so much good stuff, and this list introduced me to so many things I like, here is, in no particular order, every single other thing that anyone recommended. I’m positive there’s something for everyone here.
- TV shows: Law & Order (and SVU), Bob’s Burgers, Peep Show, Friends, The Big Bang Theory, The Good Place, Dimension 20, Please Like Me, Pride & Prejudice, Frasier, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Family Guy, Stranger Things, How I Met Your Mother, The Golden Girls, The Legend of Korra, MASH, Alias, Derry Girls, Archer, I Think You Should Leave, Dexter, Farscape, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Schitt’s Creek, Ted Lasso, Darkwing Duck, Old Money, Three’s Company, Detectorists.
- Movies: Battleground, The Martian, any Harry Potter, The Thomas Crown Affair, Mister Roberts, Airport, any Bourne, any Lord of the Rings, The Longest Day, Midnight Madness, Almost Famous, Larry Crowne, Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Sideways, The ’Burbs, That Awkward Moment, Clue, Easy A, Margin Call, Interstellar.
- YouTube: Yacht Rock, Twin Tour, Southern Adventures, DownieLive, Jan Misali, Dominic Noble’s 50 Shades of Grey reviews, Todd in the Shadows’ Trainwreckords series, “The Winterkeeper,” Two pitbulls playing with balloons, Céline Dion’s “Pour que tu m’aimes encore,” Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk Concert, Kabin Crew, Track Star, “The Entire ‘Here Comes The Pizza’ Affair,” Oasis Performing At Knebworth in 1986, Reggie Watts’ That Works Soundcheck, One Hour of Mountain Biking.
- Podcasts: Stuff You Should Know, The Photowalk
Thank you so much to everyone who sent stuff in! I hope you get as much from this list as I did. Reading all your notes caused me to add at least two dozen new things to my list. I’ll get to all of them, eventually, I swear. It’s just that I restarted Community again and really want to finish it, you know?
When I asked Stevie Bonifield, The Verge’s newest news writer, if they’d share their homescreen with us, they offered me SIX different options: two Linux machines, two phones, and two Macs. I asked for Linux, but Stevie ended up sending me a phone screenshot, and I’m quoting, “because I shamelessly want an excuse to mention Pebble.” What I’m saying is, Stevie… belongs at The Verge.
Here’s Stevie’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps they use and why:
The phone: Right now I’m using the Nothing CMF Phone 1, which has been good considering it’s a $250 phone. The design is definitely cool. I still prefer iOS, though.
The wallpaper: Some art from Firewatch. I’ve got the orange backplate on my phone so I like to use orange wallpapers to match.
The apps: Calculator, Gmail, Google Maps, Clock, Fossify Gallery, Discord, Spotify, Settings, Phone, Messages, Firefox, Camera. Icons are from the HyperOS pack.
I don’t like having too much stuff on my homescreen, so it’s just my must-have apps: Discord, Spotify, Gmail, Google Maps, Firefox, and the basics. Everything else lives in folders so I can keep it all condensed in three total screens.
My sorting system for those folders is a bit loose, though. The Games folder sticks to its theme the most, but somehow the Kobo app and F-Droid Store ended up in my Utilities folder.
I also have some lone apps sitting around outside my folders, like the revived Pebble app. I’ve still got a while left to wait for my Pebble Time 2 to ship, so I’ve been checking out the custom watchfaces people have been sharing since the app returned to the app stores. Focus Friend also gets a rare spot outside a folder, mostly because I can’t decide whether it counts as a game, and I use it often enough I don’t want to bury it.
I also asked Stevie to share a few things they’re into right now. Here’s what they sent back:
- I’ve been doing my best to keep up with Critical Role Campaign 4 the past few weeks, which has been fantastic so far. It’s fun seeing so many of my favorite TTRPG players in the same campaign, and the GMing from Brennan Lee Mulligan is top-notch, as always.
- The Morning Show on Apple TV is on its fourth season now, and this one has been both stressful and intriguing to watch since they’re diving into the muddy waters of AI and deepfakes. I have mixed feelings about how it’s going.
- I just started The Outer Worlds 2, which I’ve been psyched to play for years now. The first game is one of my favorite RPGs ever, so I have pretty high hopes for the sequel. I’m still early in the story, but I’m liking the way the NPCs and dialogue options respond to your background traits (and your poor decisions).
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.
“I just discovered Clues by Sam — one logic puzzle per day. Love it. Make sure you read the rules below the puzzle for tips.” — Jim
“I’ve been playing a LOT lately of the card game Yomi 2, mostly in its digital version on Steam. The basic gist is that it’s a fighting game in card game form, by a designer who loves fighting games and wants more people to enjoy the mindgames of high-level play. It’s kind of a best-of-both-worlds situation where it has the hand management of a card game but the mindgames of a fighting game.” — Greg
“This video about how the finale of Severance was edited is so fascinating!” — Kaleb
“Every second year, the Guardian Australia hosts a national poll to select the bird of the year. The last iteration of this had over 320,000 votes, which is a lot for a small country like Australia! Despite being a bit niche it generates national attention with our Prime Minister even weighing in this year (he’s on team Australian Ibis, colloquially known as the Bin Chicken, if you’re curious).” — Jon
“I have also been using Kagi as my search engine. I have the search extension in Safari and I’ve been using their browser, Orion, for the past few weeks. Kagi search is built into the Orion browser, so it’s kind of a one-stop shop. Orion is built on Webkit too, so Safari stans like me feel more comfortable.” — Geoff
“Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. It’s a straight adaptation of Frankenstein that also feels like the most Del Toro a Del Toro film could be. I loved it, but that description is pretty much all the review you could possibly need.” — Iain
“The Emperor of Gladness of Ocean Vuong. It beautifully captures the messiness of life in today’s America, and yet the humanity present in all that mess.” — Jeroen
“I just started watching House of Guinness on Netflix and I would recommend it. I love my beer, maybe not the dark heavy but lager…IPA.” — Pooja
“I’ve been using Sublime for two years now, and what Sari and her team have built there is a very human take on AI and personal highlights, bookmarks and idea discovery. They recently also introduced Podcast Magic, which is an unique and easy way to bookmark podcasts on the go.” — Atmos
“Recently installed Bazzite on my gaming PC (dual-booting), and I think I’m a Linux convert now. Super easy to get up and running, and so far everything I’ve tried works right out of the box.” — Eddy
It’s one of the best sports seasons of the year — NBA starting, NFL and college football in full swing, World Series going, the NHL I’m sure is around, there’s just a lot of good sports right now! Which is fun, because you spend a few hours in front of the TV and you see who’s really leading the pack when it comes to making sports look good. And this year, it’s pretty clear that NBC’s basketball coverage is as good as it gets. I noticed it, and lots of other folks have as well.
So what did NBC do? The folks at Sports Video Group have two good stories on all the gear NBC is using, and how it upgraded its systems to bring better video to your screen. I love this stuff, and I am constantly reminded that it is vastly more complicated than it looks. Now I have something to look at during all those interminable reviews.
