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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 135, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, crank the AC, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been reading about cold plunges and Colson Whitehead and the food truck mafia, finally getting to the theater to see Obsession, watching The Agency because it’s apparently everyone’s favorite underrated show, nodding sadly to Adam Conover’s video about the death of sitcoms, making a lot of noises during the Dune: Part Three trailer, testing Atlas as a visual journal, giggling endlessly at the new InfoWars, and slowly perfecting the art of making s’mores on the grill.
I also have for you a cheap toolkit worth keeping around, a pair of earbuds you might want to try, a delightful new spin on toys for adults, and more.
And don’t forget to tell me about your reading setup! I’ve been loving all your cool Kindle hacks, fun book-shopping tricks, and the many ways to get stuff off the internet and onto your reading device. Tell me more! I want to hear it all! More to come on that next week. For now, let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / playing / listening to / buying on Blu-ray 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.)
- The iFixit Megalodon Driver Kit. My last year has been filled with small and large home repairs, and I really should have gotten a kit like this. It’s not a full-on gadget repair set (though iFixit has a good one of those, too), more of a just-right set of bits, adapters, and drivers for all the small fixes life requires. This and a Hoto screwdriver are basically my toolkit going forward.
- The Nothing Earbuds 3A. Nothing’s wireless earbuds have generally been among the best you can get for $99. I’m also very intrigued by the new Audio Snapshot feature, which records a snippet of whatever you’re listening to — for me, it’ll be mostly podcast moments I want to remember — and syncs it to your phone. Nifty! And really nice to have on the buds themselves.
- Ugmonk’s Analog Card Variety Pack. I know there are a lot of Analog fans in the Installerverse, and all the new card types look great for some pen-and-paper productivity. The more I lean into just using a card a day to keep myself organized, the more I like it.
- GPT-Live. AI Voice Modes have always struck me as a good demo and a weird product. I don’t think aimless chatbot chat is a good thing, and the bots never worked that well anyway. By all accounts, this is a huge improvement, much more useful and much less trying to be your best friend. Still too much active listening for my taste, though.
- “Apple USB-C Earpods Review: Better Than You Think.” I have been shouting for years, to anyone who will listen, that everyone should have a pair or six of Apple’s $20 wired earbuds. They sound good, the mic is great — they’re just a fabulous pair of backup headphones. But don’t just believe me! Believe this great Adam Talks Tech video, with lots of good testing.
- Blooms by Play-Doh. You can just imagine the meeting at Hasbro. “Adults love Legos, right? They’ll totally love Play-Doh, too!” I have a three-year-old who loves the stuff, and I gotta tell you: The logic tracks. I don’t know that I would have started with flower arrangements? But there’s something fun here.
- Claude reflection. My colleague Hayden Field called it “Claude Wrapped,” and that’s about right. This is probably mostly a business-analytics tool (where did all those tokens go??), but if these AI tools are going to be part of our lives, a Screen Time-style report on how and how much we’re using them is also probably a good idea.
- The Man Will Burn. Weirdly, I think understanding Burning Man is actually crucial to understanding this moment in technology, culture, and the world. This four-part series was made by people who love Burning Man, which definitely colors the doc — but at least the first episode shows the place off pretty well.
- Knockoff. A browser extension that attempts to sort the nonsense Amazon brands from the actual brands and help you get to the best version of a product more quickly. An incredible referendum on the state of Amazon that this is even necessary, but… it’s extremely necessary. Goodbye, accidental purchases from brands called SKPVENT.
Ian Bogost is one of my favorite writers on tech, because he always seems to be asking the right question: Is any of this new technology good for us as people? I’ve come back many times to his love letter to landlines, his explanation for why email sucks, and many others.
Ian has a book out this week called The Small Stuff: How to Lead a More Gratifying Life, which answers the same question in a much broader and frankly much more bizarre way. His argument is that we’ve completely lost touch with the world around us, both figuratively and literally, and that we need to find ways to get it back. To explain any more would make me sound like your high friend talking about their own hand, but that’s kind of the fun of it. (If you want to hear that, I had Ian on The Vergecast this week, and it was great. And sort of trippy.)
I asked Ian to share his homescreen with us this week, but let him pick which device he wanted to share. I wasn’t sure what he’d pick as his digital home, but I sure didn’t expect Homebridge! I love it, though. Here it is, plus some info on what he uses and why:
The device: This is the plugin page — sort of like the apps page — for my home’s Homebridge installation. Homebridge is server software that makes smart-home devices that don’t work natively with Apple’s home-automation app appear and operate in the Apple Home app. It’s a pretty nerdy thing, and it requires running an always-on server, so it’s not for everyone. But it is, apparently, for me.
The wallpaper: You probably thought the answer was “what wallpaper?” but no, even server software that nobody sees allows personalization. Mine is running the Orange theme in Dark mode. (Other options include Purple and Deep Purple. I suppose I should also admit that Orange is the default.)
The apps: So much going on here. Bond allows me to control ceiling fans from Apple Home. Pico allows me to reprogram Lutron Pico wall switch remotes to do anything I want — such as controlling ceiling fans or opening garage doors and gates.
Speaking of which, Garage Door Shelly1 connects a Shelly relay that I soldered to a non-code-cycling, oldschool gate remote, which opens the gate at the end of the alley behind my house, which means I can press a button in Carplay and open it, my garage door, and unlock my house. UniFi Protect makes my Ubiquiti security cameras appear in Home — and also helps my doorbell work (long story). No cloud — I store all my camera footage locally on a 24TB RAID in my basement. Having all that supposed surveillance actually makes my house seem more boring and less interesting — a topic I wrote about for The Atlantic a few years ago.
I also asked Ian to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:
- The r/oddlysatisfying subreddit.
- Asking ChatGPT for help with home repairs.
- Backgammon (just a tabletop set, with a hard enameled surface that makes the dice dance and spin in a gratifying way).
- Power over Ethernet (POE) splitters.
- Mad Men, the best narrative television show ever made, which I rewatched for the second time this summer.
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.
“Re-reading Neuromancer following Apple TV’s latest teaser. The Verge is totally right on Apple TV crushing sci-fi shows.” — Austin
“Playing the new puzzle game 4 x 3.” — Rohit
“Really loving Myke Hurley’s podcasts, hard to pick just one, but his Designed in California Kickstarter with Jason Snell on the history of Apple just completed with $300K raised. Pretty cool!” — Rowan
“I spent a few hours setting up a new Brother printer for my mom. It’s like the opposite of enshittification. Reasonable prices and it just prints. It shouldn’t be a breath of fresh air, but it is.” — Ben
“Reading the so-far excellent but bittersweet Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, before Taika Waititi’s movie version comes out in October.” — Gatherer Hunter
“I took my Sony Aibo ERS210 out of my mom’s attic to bring back to the US. But it didn’t fit in my luggage… So I will need to come up with another plan.” — Bart
“This video about the development of Western musical scales and notation was not only fascinating, but the production value was off the charts. Highly recommended even if you don’t know a ton of music theory!” — Arden
“The new The Ghost in the Shell anime on Amazon Prime is fantastic, true to the manga and done by the same studio that did Dan Da Dan! Only one episode out so far but I’m already psyched.” — Ryan
“‘The Story Behind Star Wars Galaxies’ Notorious Jedi Problem.’ Best interview / video I’ve watched on YouTube in a while. It’s a fascinating story of developing software for millions of users. Specifically the central role psychology plays, and whether the best interests of users can ever be reconciled with the incentives of corporations.” — JStaal
The sad product news of the week is that TV Time, which a lot of people use to find and track their favorite shows, is shutting down. And you only have until July 15th (next Wednesday) to get your data out. The better news: Basically every other app in this category has since built a TV Time importer! You can import your data into a service like JustWatch, or use an Installerverse favorite media tracker like Trakt, Sofa, or Sequel, all of which have importers. Make sure you do this all ASAP, because losing years of tracking data would really suck. Here’s hoping this is the last of these apps to disappear for a long time to come.
