Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 33, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, so psyched you found us, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I’ve been writing about the end of Google Podcasts and the rise of AI gadgets, watching Girls5eva and rewatching Middleditch and Schwartz, reading about the ubiquity of AllTrails and Danny McBride’s comedy compound, listening to Ezra Klein’s podcasts about AI, seeing if 5K Runner can finally make me like running, and playing altogether too much Retro Goal.
I also have for you a lot of people’s smart thoughts on AI, a bunch of new AI tools in web browsers, a fun new newsletter about good stuff on the internet, a big rant on delivery apps, and much more. Let’s go.
Oh wait before we do! I’m going to be at the Chicago Humanities Festival next weekend, on stage talking about creativity and AI with the co-founders of Wonder Dynamics: Nikola Todorovic and Tye Sheridan. (You might know Tye better as an actor, including as Wade Watts in Ready Player One. I have questions about that too.) Come hang with us next Saturday if you’re around! Okay now let’s get into it.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you excited about right now? What are you watching or reading or playing that everyone else should be, too? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here.)
The Drop
- Opera’s local AI. I know, I know, every browser is doing AI stuff, and I keep bringing it up. But Opera’s doing something new and clever: it’s letting you download various open-source AI models to your computer, so you can do AI stuff in the browser but also fully locally. I dig it.
- “I Made a Graph of Wikipedia… This Is What I Found.” This video broke my brain in the best possible way. It’s just a narrator and a lot of graphs, but it shows how Wikipedia really works — the most-linked-to articles, the central topics of the platform, the funny dead ends. Wikipedia just keeps getting more awesome.
- Brave Leo. Another browser AI thing! Brave’s Mixtral-based chatbot, Leo, is also trying to do AI in a privacy-preserving way, and I am always here for that. Leo’s now out on iOS, a couple of months after it landed on Android, which means you can use Leo anywhere you use Brave. It’s built into the browser in a really close, helpful way, too.
- “Jon Stewart On The False Promises of AI.” As succinct an argument against AI as you’re ever going to hear. And it’s not even really against AI, just against the hype cycle and the way it’s talked about versus the way it’s used. Also, Stewart’s interview with Lina Khan on antitrust and AI is fascinating — and full of good streaming drama.
- Last Week Tonight on food delivery apps. Recommending both Jon Stewart and John Oliver: novel, right? Really breaking new ground over here. But this one is too good not to share, and not just because it prominently features The Verge. Delivery apps really don’t work for anyone involved, and Oliver nails the problem perfectly. And angrily.
- Retro. I’m skeptical of this and every other would-be “Instagram but it’s your real friends again!” app. But I do like Retro’s latest feature, Journals, which brings a collaborative album-making system to the app. I kinda just do this in Google Photos, but it’s a smart add for any app like this.