This week's Installer explores the world of epic games, the rise of Bluesky, and the best ways to manage your online life. We'll delve into Civilization VII, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, and the best apps for consuming content at your own pace. Plus, we'll discuss the importance of digital privacy, the latest developments in AI, and a new smart home thriller that's sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 70, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, go Chiefs I guess, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.
) This week, I’ve been reading about kicking sugar and NBA trades and the rise of Zyn, watching most of Parks and Recreation while I try to fight off a flu, traipsing through the Video Game History Foundation Library, buying a few of these delightful Paper Apps notebooks, rewatching Waiting for Guffman after randomly stumbling upon it on YouTube, and snacking on BonBon candy I bought on TikTok. Again. I also have for you a couple of new games guaranteed to eat up the rest of your year, a couple of new apps for reading the web, a cool new way to consume Bluesky, a creepy smart home thriller, and much more. And I have a question for you: what’s your music setup? I want to know whether you use Spotify or Apple or Tidal, but also if you have an app you love for managing your record collection, or just an upcycled old iPod, or 600 Bluetooth speakers all rigged together for parties. What’s your favorite part of your setup? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours. All right, lots to get to this week, and we gotta get through it before Super Bowl parties start. Let’s dive in. (As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be reading / watching / playing / building / retail therapy-ing with this week? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.) The Drop * Civilization VII. It’s still technically only in early access, but by most accounts, this game lives up to the series’ truly epic, practically unparalleled depth and history. I’ve always avoided these games for fear they’d take over my life — but maybe it’s time. * Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Big week for outrageously huge, deliberate, thousands-of-hours games! Warhorse’s new epic seems to be a now-rare, kind of slow, truly open world — which I suspect might be the exact kind of escape people need right now. You know, for Reasons. * “Avoiding Outrage Fatigue while Staying Informed.” A really good Scientific American podcast about a topic that feels, uh, very relevant right now. It’s important to understand what’s happening! But we all need some help to manage it all. * ChatGPT deep research. The new thing in LLMs is models that can take their time, work through a problem, and come to much better and more useful answers. I’ve only played with deep research a little, but it’s impressive — and even experts are saying it gets most things right. * Tapestry. I’m kinda done with algorithms, and I think timeline apps like this one, and Reeder, and Feeeed, are going to be a big deal. Put your favorite blogs, creators, podcasts, Bluesky follows, and everything else in one place — Apple devices only, alas — and consume it all at your speed. * Tana. Tana’s been in beta for a while and has developed into one of the most powerful and power user-friendly productivity apps out there. It’s like an even nerdier Notion — and there’s a lot about it I really like. * The Z-Suite. Tubi Originals! Are apparently a thing! I’m sort of shocked how fun I found the pilot about a bunch of rowdy youths who take charge at an ad agency. Definitely one to watch after the Super Bowl (also on Tubi!) ends this weekend. * “Deep Dive into LLMs like ChatGPT.” Maybe the best “how does AI actually work” primer I’ve ever seen. It is long — three and a half hours! — but it is both really understandable and really deep, which is hard to pull off. Watch it, and take notes. * Instapaper 9.1. Instapaper is the OG read-later app and continues to get better. The newest update does a particularly nice job of managing paywalls and logins, which makes the whole process of saving stuff feel much more seamless. (So far, it’s only for iOS, but I assume it’s coming to Android soon.) * Bluescreen for Bluesky. A nifty iOS app that re-skins Bluesky as a TikTok-like video player and actually works really well. The Bluesky videos are not as good as the TikTok videos, but it’s a really cool concept. * Cassandra. More high-tech thrillers! This one, on Netflix, is about a smart home assistant gone batty. It’s both extremely creepy and also filled with tech I wish existed in my own house. Just less… murder-y? Screen share Last week, in a fit of confusion about all things TikTok and RedNote and DeepSeek and China and everything, I called up Cooper Quintin and asked him to make sense of the world for me. Cooper is a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and spends his time researching digital privacy issues while also helping activists and other at-risk people better manage their online lives. Cooper talked me through how to think about threat models online, from China and at home, for The Vergecast this week
TECHNOLOGY GAMING SOCIAL MEDIA AI PRODUCTIVITY PRIVACY SMART HOME
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