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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 142, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, how is it almost September already, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been remembering Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen, absorbing…
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on falling robots and the US-China AI race, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started I’ve admitted my fondness for…
I recently dug out my CDs and started reripping them all. I’ve found a few forgotten gems in there, but few hit harder for me than the beautifully concise Professor Murder Rides the Subway EP. There was a period of time in the mid-aughts in NYC where it seemed like every indie band wanted you…
I used to be an avid hiker and would try to go backpacking a few times a year. I always dreamed of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, but life kind of got in the way. (Turns out jobs, wives, and children aren’t thrilled with the idea of you disappearing for three months.) But I’ve been longing…
Alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos was arrested by ICE on Thursday, and today the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to Reuters and the Washington Post that he had been deported to the UK. Yiannopoulos came to the US legally in 2019, but overstayed his visa. After he failed to appear in court for an immigration hearing,…
Sony Music and Warner Chappell have filed suit against Anthropic in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking damages for “tens of thousands” copyrighted works. The companies are asking for up to $150,000 per work, plus up to $25,000 for each instance when identifiable copyright data was stripped. In total, the…
BYOK is a no-frills, single-purpose gadget that 90 percent of people will find absolutely frivolous. But for those who spend a significant chunk of their lives putting words to virtual paper, there is an obvious allure. Personally, I think it’s at its best when you just stick to the bare minimum, focusing on pure text…
Joseph Fink is the cocreator and cowriter of Welcome to Night Vale, arguably the most important fiction podcast ever. He’s also the creator of the noir podcast Unlicensed and Alice Isn’t Dead, which takes some of the conspiratorial cosmic horror of Night Vale and turns it into fodder for a more serious series about relationships,…
What do you want from a flip phone when it’s closed? A simple interface, perhaps notifications and a widget or two, for handling the basics? Or a fully fledged Android experience shrunk down for the Flip form factor? For years, Samsung has insisted on the former, even as some fans – and Razr rival Motorola…
As audio-focused generative tools and platforms have gotten more sophisticated, the internet has become increasingly filled with AI-generated music whose melodies and vocals are algorithmically derived from the work of human artists. While some of the people pumping out this kind of content immediately own up to using AI, others have denied using the technology…
