SocialAI is a social network where everyone but you is a bot.

Hello friends! Welcome to The fixer Number 53 Your Guide to the Best and edge– The best things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I’m so glad you found us, and you can also read all the old versions at The fixer Home.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Beyonce and Rosanna Pansino and Bowen Yangpour my life back into Todoist, Watch the end The Grand Tour, catch up My brother, my brother and I Rings, see if pixel recorder The app can replace my trusty voice recorder, and go To my home screen to see if that helps me meditate more. (So far… no.)

I also have a new pair of AR glasses, a new Batman adaptation on HBO, a great new book about the end of Twitter, a funny twist on social media, and more. Lots of great new TV shows this week! Let’s get to it.

(As always, the best part of The fixer Here are your thoughts and tips. What are you passionate about right now? What should everyone read/play/watch/buy/download/build with LEGO bricks right now? Tell me all about it: Installer@theverge.comAnd if you know someone else who might enjoy it, The fixerSend it to them and let them know. Subscribe here.)

• SocialAI. The reaction to this iOS “social network” where you can post and thousands of smart bots instantly reply to you has been pretty hilarious. Some people loved it, some hated it, and half of them seemed to think it was a joke. It’s not a joke, it’s actually a really thoughtful way to deal with LLM students. It’s also disturbingly similar to being on real social media these days. And maybe even better.
• Character Limits: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter. An excellent addition to the canon of books about Musk’s takeover of the social network we once knew and his complete overhaul. There’s a lot of great new detail here about the chaos that accompanied the transformation into X Company too – it’s a really fun read.
• Simple snapchat. I would like to tell you to buy the new Snap. glassesBut it’s ridiculous and also not available for ordinary people to buy. But you will to be able to get New Snapchat DesignIt’s a cleaner, easier-to-use app than it has been in recent years. I’m not sure it’ll attract many new users, but Snapchat is still one of the best messaging apps out there.
• Bose QuietComfort HeadphonesThe AirPods 4 have gotten all the spotlight this week, but I’ve been a fan of Bose’s earbuds for a while — they sound great, have great battery life, and I love them. New wake up word “Hey Headphones” In the new model. At $179, these devices are a strong alternative to Apple.
• Omni Ring. It sounds like the reader who reads this time travel movie starring Ayo Edebiri and Mary-Louise Parker will be disappointed, but the movie has some good, thoughtful stuff and a lot of fun. I’ll be enjoying this as soon as I can.
• The Penguin. “HBO’s gritty Batman show” is all I need to be a fan of The Penguin. So far, the reviews have been a bit mixed—I’ve seen “best show ever” and “kind of average,” with many people comparing it unfavorably to The Sopranos. Personally, I can’t wait.
• Tripsy 3.0. I’ll be traveling a lot this fall, so I went back to find a good place to put all my confirmation numbers, flight details, and expenses. Tripit is good, but Tripsy seems a lot better. I also like the map view, which is a surprisingly useful way to plan my day.
• Agatha all the time. WandaVision is the only Marvel show I would recommend to people who don’t care about Marvel because the whole thing was so unusually well-organized and clever. This spinoff seems Innovative and brilliant in equal measure.More Kathryn Hahn is always a good thing.
• UFO 50. In 2024, a group of developers decided to create a collection of games that looked like they were straight out of the 80s. Given all this, what they created is a historical document about gaming, but it’s also a collection of fun, old-fashioned games. It’s a really cool idea.
• “You may have seen the pictures from last week of acquired The podcast hosts interview Zuckerberg at the Chase Center in San Francisco. The 90-minute episode was… awkward at times but also really revealing at times. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Zuckerberg talk about his history as a CEO like this before.

Alex Goldmandistinguished broadcaster and former co-host of the best tech podcast ever. Reply to allhas a new offer! It’s called overly fixedBasically, Alex’s mission is to solve people’s problems of all kinds. The first two episodes are silly and deep, and this show is going to be great.

I asked Alex to share his home screen with us when he launched his new show, because if there’s one thing I know about Alex, it’s that he’s a man of many interests and obsessions. (I’ve always enjoyed him posting songs he wrote in his attic, for example.) I wondered what his phone would say about what he was doing right now.

Here’s Alex’s home screen, along with some information about which apps he uses and why:

Background: A picture of my kids enjoying the beach.

Applications: Camera, Weather, Settings, Notes, App Store, FaceTime, Amazon, Proton Mail, Find My, Overcast, Patreon, Koala, Messages, Google Voice, Gmail, Safari.

I know my home screen is a mess, but I’ve long since given up on trying to organize it. I’ve reached a state of stagnant confusion where I know where everything is, and it’s been a long time since I downloaded a new, much-needed app.

Everything I need is on the front page: from games to workout tools, apps for watching TV and playing music, social media platforms, etc. My favorite apps are Notes (every morning, I make a bulleted list of things I need to get done), Voice Memos (it’s so convenient if you have a good idea or tune that pops into your head to go ahead and record it before it disappears for too long) and Threes. Threes It’s a game where you try to match blocks of the same number on a playing field without running out of space, and I haven’t made any real progress in the past three or four years, but I still play it four times a day. Just out of nervous habit. Then Overcast is the podcasting app. Everything else pales in comparison.

I also asked Alex to share some of the things he’s currently loving. Here’s what he sent:

• pinball mapI love pinball. But loving pinball means you’re a pinball fan and you prefer some games over others. For me, the pinball games that Midway/Williams produced in the mid-90s were a renaissance, so I’m constantly trying to find copies of Attack From Mars, Medieval Madness, Twilight Zone, Monster Bash, Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Bride of Pinbot. Luckily, the pinball map helps me locate them.
• KoalaKoala is a very powerful sampling app. You can record sounds directly from your phone, upload sounds, or extract audio directly from a video. The app has almost all the functionality of the classic Roland SP-404 sampler, except it costs $500, whereas Koala costs about $5.
• LXR-02 by Erica SynthsA cheap handheld drum machine that you can load sounds into or make sounds with. I’m a fan of playing little beats on public transport.
• Beware of the blog at WFMU. A blog for a nonprofit New York City radio station that closed nearly a decade ago but is filled with fascinating obscure recordings, comics, and weird cultural stories. It’s perhaps best known for being the only place you can find the story of how Paul Simon stole a bunch of songs on Graceland From Los Lobos.

Here’s what it is The fixer The community is interested this week. I want to know what else you are interested in now! Email Installer@theverge.com Or send me a message on Signal — @davidpierce.11 ​​— with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here each week. For more great recommendations, check out the responses to This post is on topics.

“It’s funny that you mentioned Short Film YouTube three days after I discovered a channel that is a treasure trove of horror movies. The channel is called produced by a film professor at the University of New Orleans named Paul Catalanotto. His most famous videos are: , and “Which is also more relatable than other videos on the channel.” — Drake

“Held It’s the best historical novel I’ve ever read in my entire life. Anyone looking forward to it? game of thrones “But in real life (somewhat) anyone who is also a fan of Tolkien’s references to the ancient languages ​​of Britain/Anglo-Saxon/Saxon/Old Norse will adore it.” — Christopher

“Sandwitch Caravan “It’s a great, comfortable game. It’s on everything and it’s really cool.” — Ian

I played with LM notebook From Google. “One fun and useful use case is taking research papers and creating podcasts. I used to read a bunch of complex machine learning papers as an engineering student, so I would turn them into podcasts and listen to them on the go. The TTS app is definitely interesting.” — Kruti

In the latest newsletter, someone recommended YouTube channel but neglected to mention its best content: It is a social deduction game produced by the Pandemonium Institute for seven to twenty players (!!). Think Like wolf or mafia“But it’s more fun. There’s endless content on YouTube that I can’t stop watching, and I love hosting big parties for it.” — Greg

With Today in Tabs discontinued, Caitlin Dewey’s newsletter will be Links I will contact you via Gchat if we are friends “It has become the most trusted, organized reading list ever. (And don’t miss its excellent ten-year retrospective of G*mergate, too.)” — Kevin

After years of loyalty to Things 3I bit the bullet and moved on. Todoist“Natural language input is a big factor, but I also get tired of the long lists in Things — Todoist’s Kanban breaks things down nicely. However, I miss the UI in Things.” — Scott

“It was great to follow along with Rocket jump On their Patreon while they write, plan, and produce their indie comedy! They really dig into everything from location planning to studio demos.” – Josh

I can’t stop playing Astro Bot“It feels like a love letter to 30 years of PlayStation, and as a lifelong PlayStation fan, every level puts a smile on my face.” — Nick

On Wednesday, I was at the Made on YouTube event in New York City (myself and about 200 other awesome and super fun creators in attendance), where CEO Neil Mohan and a bunch of other executives rolled out some new features. But forget the new features — the highlight of the event was the singer/songwriter/creator D4VDwho talked about the AI ​​project and then gave a live performance of his very popular song, ““It was amazing, and I’ve been reading about it and watching his videos ever since. Here’s great GQ interview With so much detail about his story, Here is his TikTokand .

To be fair, D4vd is already pretty popular, so I might be the last to discover it. But I figured I’d share this news with you in case you need it. I’m a huge fan.