Hi friends! welcome to Installer Issue 53, Your Best Guide edge-The best thing in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, we’re glad you found us, and you can also Installer front page.
This week I read beyonce and Rosanna Pansino and Yang Bowenbreathe my life back into Todoist, looking at the end grand tour, catch up on some my brother, my brother and me episodes to see if pixel recorder App can replace my trusty voice recorder and be mobile headspace Go to my home screen and see if it helps me meditate more. (So far…no.)
I also have a really wild new pair of AR glasses for you, a Batman-adjacent show for HBO, a fantastic new book about the end of Twitter, a fun twist on the social network, and more. Lots of good new TV this week! let’s do it.
(As always, the best part Installer It’s your ideas and techniques. What is your favorite thing right now? What should others be reading/playing/watching/buying/downloading/building with LEGO right now? Tell me all about it: [email protected]. If you know others you might like Installerforward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.
fall
- social artificial intelligence. It’s interesting how people react to this “social network” for iOS, where you can post a message and a thousand artificial intelligence bots will respond instantly. Some people love it, some hate it, and half seem to think it’s a joke. This is not a joke, it is actually a thoughtful consideration of how to interact with an LL.M. This also feels strikingly similar to what is happening on real social networks today. Maybe better.
- Character limit: How Elon Musk is destroying Twitter. This is an excellent addition to the canon of books about Musk taking over and revolutionizing the social network we once knew. There’s also lots of wonderful new details here about the chaos of being X – a really good read.
- simple snapshot. I’d love to tell you to buy the new Snap product Glassesbut they’re ridiculous and not available to the average person. but you will Get Snapchat’s new design, which is simpler and more approachable than the app in recent years. I’m not sure it will win many new users, but Snapchat is still one of the best messaging apps out there.
- Bose QuietComfort earplugs. The AirPods 4 are having a blast this week, but I’ve been a fan of Bose earbuds for a long time — they sound great, the battery is great, and I love the new “Hey Headphones” wake word on the new models. At $179, it’s a solid alternative to Apple.
- Omnidirectional circulation. The interpretation of this time-travel movie starring Ayo Edebiri and Mary-Louise Parker seems to be frustrating for those who insist on continuity, but there are some Good, well thought out stuff, and a lot of fun too. I’ll have that fun as soon as I can.
- Penguin. Just tell me “HBO’s gritty Batman show” and I’ll be all over Penguin. Reviews so far have been a bit mixed – I’ve seen “Best Show Ever” and “Kind of Boring”, and a lot of people are comparing it to The Sopranos. Personally, I can’t wait.
- Psychedelic 3.0. I’m traveling a lot this fall, so I started looking again for a good place to store all my confirmation numbers, flight details, and expenses. Tripit is good, but Tripsy looks better. I also like the map view, which is a very useful way to plan your day.
- Agatha has always. “WandaVision” is the only Marvel show I recommend to people who don’t care about Marvel because the show’s structure is so unusual and clever. This spin-off sounds just as creative and just as cool. More Kathryn Hahn is always a good thing.
- UFO 50. In 2024, a group of developers decided to make a batch of games that looked like they were from the 1980s. All in all, what they’ve produced is a historical document of gaming, but also just a bunch of really fun retro-style games. Such a cool concept.
- “Interview with Mark Zuckerberg“. You may have seen last week’s photos obtained The podcast host interviews Zack at the Chase Center in San Francisco. The resulting 90-minute episode… was a little awkward in places, but also really thought-provoking in places. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Zuckerberg talk about his experience as a CEO like this before.
Screen sharing
Alex Goldmangreat podcaster and former co-host of the best tech podcasts Reply allthere is a new drama! it’s known super fixedbasically, Alex’s job is to solve people’s problems. The first two episodes are both silly and profound, and this show is going to be great.
I asked Alex to share his home screen with us when his new show launches, because if there’s one thing I know about Alex, it’s that he’s a man with many interests and obsessions. (I always love it when he posts about songs he writes in his attic, just to give you one example.) I’m curious as to what his phone will tell you about what he’s doing right now.
Here’s Alex’s home screen, along with some information about the apps he uses and why:
wallpaper: Photos of my kids playing at the beach.
app: Camera, Weather, Settings, Notes, App Store, FaceTime, Amazon, Proton Mail, Find Me, Cloudy, Patreon, Koala, Messages, Google Voice, Gmail, Safari.
I know my home screen is a mess, but I’ve long given up on trying to tidy it up. It’s reached an uncomfortable stasis where I know where everything is, and it’s been a while since I downloaded an absolutely necessary new app.
Everything I need is on the front page: from games to workout supplies, apps for watching TV and playing music, social media platforms and more. My go-to apps are Notes (every morning I make a bulleted list of things that need to be done), Voice Memos (if you’re thinking about an idea or a nice melody pops into your head, it’s Very convenient) ahead of time and record it before it disappears) and threesome. threesome is a game where you try to combine the same number of tiles on the playing field without running out of space, and I’ve really made no further progress over the past three or four years, but I still play it four times a day. Just out of nervous habit. Overcast is a podcast app. Everything else looks lame in comparison.
I also asked Alex to share some things that interest him right now. This is what he sent back:
- pinball game map. I love pinball. But loving pinball means you’re a snob and you like some games more than others. For me, the Midway/Williams pinball games of the mid-90s were a renaissance, so I kept trying to find Attack From Mars, Medieval Madness, Twilight Zone, Monster Bash, Creature from the Copies of “Black Lagoon” and “Bride of Pinbot”. Luckily, Marble Maps helped me find them.
- koala. Koala is a very powerful sampler application. You can record sounds directly from your phone, or load sounds, or extract sounds directly from videos. It has almost all the features of the classic Roland SP-404 sampler, but costs $500, compared to about $5 for the Koala.
- LXR-02 by Erica Synths. An inexpensive handheld drum machine that you can load sounds onto or use to make sounds. I’m a dabbler in mass transit.
- WFMU Note Blog. The blog of a New York City nonprofit radio station that was shut down about a decade ago but is filled with wonderfully obscure recordings, comics, and bizarre cultural stories. Best known for probably being the only place you can find the story of how Paul Simon allegedly stole a bunch of songs graceland From Los Lobos.
Crowdsourcing
What’s this Installer Community has entered this week. I also want to know what you are doing now! e-mail [email protected] Or drop me a line on Signal — @davidpierce.11— with your suggestions for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For more exciting recommendations, please check the replies This article is in the thread.
“It’s interesting that you mentioned YouTube clips three days after I discovered a horror treasure trove channel called retro eightThis is the work of Paul Catalanotto, a film professor at the University of New Orleans. His most popular videos are Tange virus, Oracle Projectand human trialsthey are also more easily related to each other than other videos on the channel. —Drake
“Hilde The best historical novel I have ever read in my life. anyone desires game of Thrones But real life(ish) was also a fan of Tolkien’s British/Anglo/Saxon/Old Norse ancient language references and he would have loved it. — Christopher
“Caravan Sand Witch It is a wonderful and comfortable game. It’s everywhere and so cute. — Ian
“Have played NotebookLM From Google. An interesting but useful use case is taking research papers and producing podcasts. As an engineering student, I’ve been reading a lot of complex machine learning papers, so I turned them into podcasts and listened to them during my commute. Interesting TTS app of course. — Krutty
“In a recent newsletter, someone recommended No volume prohibited The YouTube channel neglected to mention their best content: Blood stains on the bell tower. This is a social deduction game for 7-20 (!!) players from The Pandemium Institute. imagine werewolf or mafiabut more interesting. There’s endless content on YouTube that I can’t stop watching, and I love throwing huge parties just for it. — Greg
“As Today in Tabs goes off the air, Caitlin Dewey’s newsletter If we were friends I would chat with you has become the most reliable curated reading list. (And don’t miss her fantastic G*mergate 10-year retrospective.)” — Kevin
“After years of loyalty Thing 3I bit the bullet and moved to Todoist. Natural language input is a big factor, but also tired of long lists of things – the boards in Todoist break things down really well. I do miss the UI of IoT though. — Scott
“It’s great to follow us rocket jump Follow their Patreon as they write, curate, and produce indie action comedy films! They were very in-depth on everything from site planning to studio promotional materials. — Josh
“I can’t stop playing astronomy robot. This feels like a love letter to 30 years of PlayStation, I’ve been a PlayStation fan my whole life and every level puts a smile on my face. — Nick
Log out
On Wednesday, I attended the Made on YouTube event in New York City (the crowd consisted of me and 200 really cool and interesting creators), where CEO Neal Mohan and a few other executives unveiled some new features. But forget about new features—the absolute highlight of the event is the singer/songwriter/creator d4vdhe talked about an artificial intelligence project and then performed a live performance of his super-popular song, “stay with me“. It was so great that I’ve been reading and watching his videos ever since. This is a great Q interview There are many details about his story, This is his TikTokand This is his YouTube channel.
To be fair, D4vd was already quite popular, so maybe I was the last one to discover him. But I thought I’d share just in case. I’m a huge fan of it.
