Hi friends! welcome to Installer Issue 68, Your Best Guide edge-The best thing in the world. (If you're new here, welcome and hope you're staying warm and sane, you can also check in at Installer Home page. )

This week I read Kieran Culkin and Insomnia and Beautiful Startup Products for Sale on eBayfinally saw it wild robot, Watching and thinking about my shopping habits Build a big American brand, add a bunch Baseus retractable line Go to my travel kit and play browser-based Atari games trap!, test new spark calendar for Android and attempts to replicate the delicious look of Babish breakfast sandwich.

I also bring you the biggest new phones in the Android world, the GPU every gamer wants, impossible tests of AI tools, smart Google alternatives, and more. It's honestly been a pretty quiet week for new stuff, given both the post-CES doldrums and the utter political chaos. But we still have a lot of good stuff to talk about! let's do it.

(As always, the best part Installer It's your ideas and techniques. What are you watching/reading/cooking/downloading/building with LEGO bricks/tying to your wrist this week? What should others be as passionate about as you are? Tell me all about it: installer@theverge.com. If you know others you might like Installertell them to subscribe here. )

• Samsung Galaxy S25. The S25 Edge is definitely Samsung's most interesting phone this year, and the Ultra is probably the best one, but honestly, the entire lineup is a bit boring this time around? However, I do appreciate that Samsung is offering a high-end, reasonably sized, and full-featured flagship smartphone for $800. I suspect this is the Android phone most people will choose this year.
• Star Trek: Episode 31. Reviews for the new Paramount+ movie are, well, all over the place. people still have strong feelings star trekwho knows? ! But I love Michelle Yeoh, and frankly, I'm excited to have an excuse to return to that universe for the first time in a while. Also: Please watch more of the two-hour movie and less of the ten-hour limited series.
• humanity's final exam. It's a very interesting, thought-provoking, and difficult test that a group of researchers believe represents the final frontier of artificial intelligence. (All models currently fail.) I learned a lot just by studying these problems.
• Confusion Assistant. Frankly, I've never found Perplexity's actual search results to be that good, but this company real Good at creating products that are fun to use. This new Android app is a step toward more task-performing artificial intelligence — kind of like OpenAI’s new app operator Features, but not the $200 per month price.
• Android 16 public beta. There's not a lot of groundbreaking new stuff this year, but the live event-style lock screen notifications are cool. If you have a foldable phone, you'll love forcing app resizing. I'm also curious about the night mode camera upgrade.
• night agent Season 2. I loved the first season of this show, which (like a lot of Netflix shows) was maybe an episode or two too long, but was still entertaining. Season 2 sounds like it will be just as interesting and fast-moving.
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090. $2,000 is steep GPUs are pricey, but Nvidia's latest beast seems clearly to be the best thing about 4K gaming. (Technically, it won't ship until next week, but if you want one of these, I have a feeling you'll need to get in early.)
• "Why streaming is destroying the typical sports fan". It's both an economic study of sports rights and a cultural history of how sports became so important on television in the first place. The Jenga tower cable harness analogy is so good I'm pissed I never thought of it.
• Bravely reranked. Brave is one of the better non-Google search engines, and this is a no-brainer: you can sort ascending and descending the domains you want to see in the results. A little tweaking goes a long way too.

every once in a while, Mike McCoo I hopped on Google Meet and complained to each other about the future. Mike is the CEO of Flipboard and has been a technology executive since the Netscape days. He is both a realist and a downright optimist about the future of technology. What everyone is talking about most recently is surfa new feed reader app for Flipboard.

I think surfing or something like that is the future. (There are also new ones Reed and Project Tapestrythey have similar ideas - but Surf is the most ambitious one I've seen. ) It is social, but it is not controlled by any one company; it is personalized, but only in the following ways: you choose. It's still early days for all of this stuff, but every time X changes or TikTok disappears, it's clear we need something very different.

Oh, I have interesting news: if you Sign up to surf Use the code "installer", You can skip the waiting list and try the app. Right now you need a Mastodon account to get in (signing up is easy), but Mike says Bluesky support is coming soon too.

Anyway! I asked Mike to share his home screen and give us a look at some of his favorites right now. Here's his home screen, along with some information about the apps he uses and why:

Telephone: iPhone 16 Pro Max.

wallpaper: I switch between Apple Earth and photos of my family. Changing wallpapers on iOS is easy and fun. Earth wallpaper dynamic throughout the day. I love that it reminds me that I am just a tiny speck in space and time.

app: Apple Maps, Gaia GPS, Windy, Sky Guide, Spotify, Google Calendar, Safari, Leica Fotos, Apple Photos, Pixelfed, Flipboard, Threads, Ivory (Mastodon client), Bluesky, Surf Beta.

If there's a takeaway here, it's that I'm a social networking nerd, and I'm hopelessly addicted to news and social media.

My saving grace is that I did manage to get out quite a bit. I recently switched to Apple Maps (I love the demo while driving) and I use Gaia Trails when I'm hiking or mountain biking. windy is the best weather app (I purchased a premium subscription for sailing). That being said, I think my radar Best at answering this question: "Is it going to rain? How long will it take? I use sky guide The number is staggering. Discovering and tracking planets and space stations is especially fun with my kids.

The lower right quadrant has my most used apps because I can easily access them with one hand. Of these, Apple Notes is where I spend the most time by far. This is where I do all my thinking, planning, and writing for work and life. I know there are more powerful alternatives, but Notes is very simple and effective.

For social media, I use a mix of Mastodon (from ivory), Bluesky and Threads, these are the three main applications on the social network. I like the new one too pixel feed app. Not only is it built on ActivityPub, but it's just like Instagram before. I stopped posting on Instagram a few years ago because it was too noisy. So excited to start sharing photos again.

I also asked Mike to share some of the things he's currently interested in on Surf. This is what he sent back:

• NBA theme By David Rushing: Live commentary from fans on Threads and Bluesky during games. There are lots of great videos and podcasts between games.
• film feed By David Imel: Beautiful photos from a curated list of cinematographers. It's like Instagram for movie buffs.
• Guardian of the Federation Universe By Tim Chambers: My go-to source for connecting with people developing on social networks.
• skytok: Trending videos on Bluesky and videos tagged #SkyTok. Also available directly in the blue sky as a custom feed.

What's this Installer Community has entered this week. I also want to know what you are doing now! e-mail installer@theverge.com 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 and This article about blue sky.

"Nothing published a very interesting video About how design on iOS and Android affects your state of mind differently and how different cultures approach design in general. Super fun stuff. ” — Zhang Taiao

"UFO 50! A truly incredible collection of 50 new retro-style indie games, built around a fictional gaming company from the 1980s. That's all I've been playing, I've only played about 15 games so far. ” — Jelly

"Watching unparalleledthe new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league, airing on TNT/TruTV/Max! It's so fun to watch the best basketball players play in a larger space and in a different format than traditional basketball. ” — Renata

"I have a Is it the A30? Installed this week spruce (custom firmware) and now I'm playing with Pokémon Yellow Legacy Because I need some nostalgic comfort food to deal with everything going on right now. ” — Bix

"Just finished Kevin can fuck himself on Netflix. I think it's a few years old, but man, it's awesome. I love the storytelling style they used, it was filmed whenever Kevin was around Everything is in the familystyle sitcom, and the rest of the time is shot like a black comedy. ” — JK

"It took a lot of time graze Build feeds for BlueSky! They've really done some great work for the community and made setting up a custom feed super fast, fun, and accessible to just about anyone, techie or not. ” — Kerha

"I like the color too. It's been out for a while, but it's beautiful, addictive, and a great way to distract me from the broken world around me. ” — Brad

"Last week's silo The season finale was incredible and I started too wool (the first book in the series) was a really fun read. The pace of this book is so fast and crazy - the story only happens 40% of the way through (edited)! ! ” — Andy

"I played a lot Dragon Sweeperlike Minesweeper Crossover with dungeon crawler. It was tricky at first, but it's gross. ” — Sophie

"This playlist Old School Weather Channel Songs My brother sent me my soundtrack for the past few days. Just sit back and let the nostalgia of getting the weather forecast on basic cable wash over you. ” — Mike

A few weeks ago at CES, I was chatting with a new friend on the show floor when he casually mentioned "that thing Douglas Adams wrote about the Internet." I looked back at him stupidly. "You know, Hitchhiking Guide Guy? Yeah, no, got it. Internet what?

As it turns out, in 1999, Adams wrote an article titled "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet" and Wow 26 years later, does it still hold up as a way for us to think about the world we live in now? Here is just one quote:

"Another problem with the web is that it's still 'technology,' and 'technology,' as computer scientist Bran Ferren Memorable definition, 'something that doesn't work yet' We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we didn't figure out how many legs a chair should have. How high should it be that they often "fall apart" when we try to use them? Soon computers will be as trivial and rich as chairs (and in a few decades, like a piece of paper or a grain of sand) and we won't be. Be aware of these things.”

I think about this article almost every day now. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe we should take comfort in that.