Stardew Valley, Mario & Luigi i inne spokojne gry na spokojny weekend

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 60, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re fresh here, welcome, it’s quite a few gaming stuff this week, and besides you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been… doomscrolling about the election, if I’m honest. But let’s not talk about that. I’ve besides been reading about shipwrecks and in-flight magazines and baseball bat influencers, making a bunch of lists in Listy, dusting off my Bluesky account as Threads becomes increasingly worse, logging a amazing number of hours in VR with Batman: Arkham Shadow, playing with tasks and notes in the Craft beta, seeing if I can replace Gmail with Thunderbird for Android, and trying really, truly hard to convince myself I don’t request a fresh Mac Mini.

I besides have for you a couple of fresh games to play this weekend, any fun stuff to watch, a nifty fresh way for Mac users to take notes, and more. And I have any ideas for everyone looking for a place to put all their articles, newsletters, and another online stuff.

Oh, housekeeping note: Installer’s off next week. We have any planning meetings going on, and also, honestly, this is 1 of the driest times of the year erstwhile it comes to fresh stuff. I’ll be back with a large issue in 2 weeks ahead of Thanksgiving, and then we have any fun plans through the remainder of the year.

All right, it’s quite a few games this week. Which feels right. Let’s go.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you comfort watching this week? What have you been playing / reading / downloading / baking that everyone else should know about, too? Tell me everything: [email protected]. And if you know individual else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

• Mario & Luigi: Brothership. It feels like we get a fun fresh Mario game like all 2 weeks these days. And I’m not complaining! I’m into the teamwork-y vibe of this 1 — and the amount of pure unadulterated exploring it asks you to do.
• Game Changers. The first 2 episodes of this fresh Discovery series tell the communicative of 2 of my favourite things in gaming: Nintendo and Madden. There are besides episodes coming about Call of Duty, Scrabble, and another iconic games. The nostalgia is through the roof with this one.
• Raycast Notes. Raycast has become 1 of my most-used Mac apps: it’s a launcher, a clipboard manager, a window reorder-er, and a million another things. Its built-in notes app just got a large upgrade — it’s as simple as beginning a text file but much more powerful.
• Guild Builds. The striking New York Times tech workers created a beautiful fun set of games you can play alternatively of Wordle this week. Match Strike is hilarious and fun, as is Scabby’s Fair Contract Builder. Who knew you could build a good game that’s besides a sick burn against your boss?
• Heretic. I’ve been excited for this movie always since I read Andrew Webster’s review, which confirmed that Hugh Grant can be as terrifying as he is charming. Plus, a bad guy you can describe as “a theological debate bro?” I’m in.
• The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This CPU is power-hungry and expensive, but Tom Warren called it the best gaming CPU on the market, and that is no tiny feat. If you’re building a gaming PC this vacation season, this is where to start.
• Stardew Valley 1.6.9. I have heard from a lot of folks who retreated into Stardew Valley this week as a reprieve from the real world. The newest update adds fresh items, the ability to retrieve things you’ve dropped in water, and lots of another useful and delightful changes.
• Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson. Look, I’m not arrogant of the fact that I’m fascinated by next week’s Tyson / Paul fight. Is it even a real fight? Is it all a bit? Who knows! But leave it to Netflix to milk it for all its worth; I bet you $10 this series will be more fun and dramatic than the fight itself.
• Here. By most accounts, this movie is bad. But manager Robert Zemeckis did any fascinating and AI-forward work to de-age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in order to make the movie work, and I’ve enjoyed the way all 3 have talked about the process. This feels like a movie we’ll remember in the communicative of AI filmmaking.
• Google Vids. The pitch for Vids — “what if making a video were as easy as making a Google Doc?” — is simply a truly clever one. And now, months after Google first announced the app, you can give it a whirl. Send me all the weird stuff you make!

Last week, quite a few you reached out saying you were bummed to see that Omnivore, a truly large app for reading articles, newsletters, and another stuff, was shutting down. I was bummed, too! I’ve recommended Omnivore to quite a few people and truly liked the app. (PSA, by the way: if you’re inactive utilizing Omnivore, you only have a fewer more weeks to get your stuff out.)

Now, a bunch of us are stuck trying to figure out where to go. So I asked you all to share what you request most in an app like this — and lots of you did! Thanks, as always, to everyone who reached out with thoughts and recommendations. I think I have a beautiful good sense of what we’re all looking for, so let me effort and urge a fewer things.

• If all you request is simply a place to save articles and read them later, you have lots of options. Readwise Reader is the most powerful (and the only 1 that besides does RSS and newsletters), but it’s besides $8 a month. Matter is simply a beautiful app but is mostly Apple-only. Instapaper is simply a large option and works across fundamentally all platforms — it’s most likely the 1 I’d urge to most people. Pocket is solid, too, but I just don’t like the interface.
• If you want something a small more open and versatile, I’d go with an RSS tool. I usage Feedbin, which I love. Feedly and NewsBlur are besides good for this kind of thing. All 3 give you an email address you can usage to subscribe to newsletters and a way to manually save a page to your reader.
• If you’re trying to build more of a database of stuff that you can search through later, I’d start with a bookmarking tool. Raindrop is my go-to, but if you’re an Apple user, there’s besides GoodLinks and Anybox and Plinky. You can besides usage an app like Obsidian, with its web clipper, to turn webpages into text files.
• If you want something that will truly last forever, the best decision is to host something yourself. A fewer of you recommended apps like Wallabag, Linkwarden, and Linkding, and if you’re willing to do the work, this is the most durable option by far. There are any folks working on ways to self-host Omnivore, too, so keep an eye on that.

The best answer for most people, I think, is to usage an RSS reader like Feedbin to compile all your incoming stuff and then a read-later app like Instapaper to go through your reading list. Readwise Reader is the closest thing I’ve found to Omnivore’s all-in-one capability, and it’s definitely the 1 I’d urge to people looking for a one-to-one replacement, but you’ll pay beautiful handsomely for it. possibly Omnivore was besides good to be actual this full time.

I’ve been listening to Brian McCullough talk for a really long time. I think I first encountered his work on the Internet past Podcast, which is like a treasure trove of early Silicon Valley stories. He besides hosts the Techmeme Ride Home podcast, which is an awesome way to get regular tech news. And more recently, I’ve been listening to his newest show, RAD! 80s90s History. (I might even be on that show in a fewer weeks… stay tuned.) And in addition to all that, McCullough is simply a general partner at the Ride Home Fund, investing in tech companies. Busy guy, that Brian.

I asked Brian to share his homescreen to see if we might learn how he manages it all. Here it is, plus any info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: An iPhone 16 Pro. For the first time in my life of utilizing iPhones, I have a case on it, due to the fact that my boy dropped my erstwhile 1 twice and shattered the front and back glass. I wouldn’t have upgraded this year but for that. So, lesson learned. Kids.

The wallpaper: The wallpaper is simply a image I took any night on possible Park West years ago. The lockscreen is evidently an old iPod interface, my favourite version of the iPod. I bought it from any collection of wallpapers about a year ago. Can’t remember where from, though.

The apps: Phone, Fantastical, Apple Maps, Settings, Slack, Microsoft Word, Shopify, Citi Bike, Audible, Microsoft OneNote, Carrot Weather, Amazon, Jersey Mike’s, Wallet, Tovala, Threads, X, York, Claude, Messages, Overcast, Safari, Superhuman.

I’m reasonably basic with the apps, as you can see. Apps to get news from, like Threads and Twitter. Slack for work. Superhuman for email.

I’ve totally moved over to Claude in the last fewer months thanks to Alex Kantrowitz evangelizing it to me constantly. So much so that I’ve canceled my OpenAI subscription. Tovala is simply a smart oven / meal plan company that I’ve been utilizing religiously since the pandemic. fundamentally my lunch all single day is simply a Tovala meal. Jersey Mike’s yet came to Park Slope and so that’s besides a meal go-to. I usage Citi Bike erstwhile or twice a day.

The app that says “York” is interesting. That’s my subway halt for my office in Dumbo. This random dude made this thing that you can get at Nextstop.nyc. Basically, it gives you real-time train times for whatever subway stops you usage all the time, and then you put an icon for that on your phone. IT. IS. AMAZING. It is insane that, 20 years into my surviving in NYC, it took this long for individual to do this right. “I’m about to leave the office, erstwhile is the next train? Should I leave now or wait 5 minutes?” Amazing.

I besides asked Brian to share a fewer things he’s into right now. Here’s what he sent back:

• My kids and I are playing tons of Tiny Glade. “Relaxing” game that can besides be super complex and sophisticated if you put in the time. It’s like Minecraft in that way, but with a kind of romanticist feel.
• The book I’m obsessed with right now is Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming. I’ve read Rick’s another books about the US Army in planet War II, but he has a fresh series about the American Army in the Revolutionary War. It’s amazing and detailed like all of Rick’s books, but full of stuff I didn’t know. Like, the conflict of Lexington and Concord: oh, Paul Revere, the British go and effort to shut down a weapons depot and the minutemen take potshots at them? Oh no. WAY more bloody than that. Like hundreds of people died on both sides. Savage fighting. Very interesting stuff. I’m almost to the conflict of Brooklyn and can’t wait.
• I rewatched Miller’s Crossing a fewer nights ago, and god damn if that movie isn’t the most underrated and underseen of the full Coen filmography.
• I’m looking forward to the next book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, which is coming next month: Wind and Truth. Even though the erstwhile book in the series was beautiful boring.

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 any of our favorites here all week. For even more large recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“Superfan. A beautiful app to keep tabs on ongoing sports events and matches.” – Karan

“I’ve been utilizing this little-known news app called Adarga Panoptic. Has this interesting take on the news where it’s provided through the lens of a person’s position alternatively than just headlines. Content is simply a bit limited, but with any added customization options, this could be a truly cool way to see the news differently.” – Alen

“Scribe Notes. It’s like Whisper Memos but has more features. kind of like Cleft but cheaper. I’ve been utilizing it for a fewer weeks now and I love it. Helps me get my scrambled thoughts and to-dos out of my head and into a place where I can make sense of them all.” – David

“Check out the Mobapad M6 HD for the Nintendo Switch! It’s a Joy-Con alternate that has ergonomic grips, Hall effect joysticks, and gyro and HD rumble. It fundamentally has all feature of the Joy-Cons, but they’re actually comfy to hold. The buttons are a small clicky, and the travel case is almost as bulky as my Steam Deck, but it’s definitely the most comfortable and feature-packed Joy-Con alternate I’ve found. I picked 1 up on a fresh journey to Hong Kong, and it completely changed my control playing experience.” – Kevin

“I’ve been keeping an eye on an app called Openvibe. It’s able to aggregate your Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon (and Nostr, too, if you’re into that kind of thing) feeds into a single feed you can scroll. The home feed algorithm is hit or miss, but the trending feed is great, especially due to the fact that it’s not something Mastodon or Bluesky have natively. Also, it lets you cross-post to all 4 networks for free!” – Drake

“Winter is looming, so I got myself a Zwift Ride smart bike for days erstwhile moving outside just isn’t a large idea. large hardware. The app feels older than it is, but the gamification kinda works. More fun than staring at the wall!” – Robert

“With *gestures around wildly* going on, I’m pouring little of my time into social media and more into a individual blog utilizing a large service called Pika. It’s dead simple to set up and I love how barebones it is.” – Kaleb

“Started collecting sports cards, primarily NFL. It’s not something I’ve thought about since I was 14, but it has been a fun distraction. These are 2 large YouTube channels to get into: Market Movers and Sports Card Investor. And getting in on “breaks” on Whatnot, where you buy into a live box opening, is any fun entertainment.” – Travis

“I’ve been reading Richard II, which feels of a part with the moment, and due to which I discovered how much more complicated sideloading a Gutenberg ebook to a Kindle is than it should be. The right format wasn’t the 1 labeled for Kindles!” – Jeanne

“I’ve been playing quite a few Maestro lately on my Quest 2. It’s specified an amazing and immersive experience. If you always wanted to feel like an orchestra conductor, this is as close as you can get (unless you’re an actual orchestra conductor, in which case, congrats, specified a cool job!).” – Gonzalo

So I have this Apple Watch. It’s fine, I like it, whatever, but I’d alternatively wear another watch. So I went down a YouTube rabbit hole: can you turn an Apple Watch into a standalone, pocketable device that works even erstwhile it’s not on your wrist? Turns out, you can! There are quite a few good ideas out there, but I’m fundamentally just following the ideas in this video from Jose Briones. (I’m besides intrigued by the TinyPod, but that 1 doesn’t seem to be very good.) I’m turning my Watch into fundamentally a teeny-tiny iPod and backup communications device that I carry around like a pocket watch. It’s silly, but it’s fun. And it works!