Why all of your notes and recordsdata must be plain textual content

Hello, associates! Welcome to Installer No. 26, your information to one of the best and Verge-iest stuff on the earth. (In the event you’re new right here, welcome. So psyched you discovered us, and in addition you’ll be able to learn all of the previous editions on the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been taking part in with the redesigned You.com for AI analysis, attempting out the Phanpy Mastodon consumer, getting again into Zombies, Run after studying Vee Track’s nice story about Fantasy Hike, and studying the brand new “misplaced chapter” of The Martian earlier than most likely simply rereading The Martian once more.

I even have for you some non-earbud earbuds, a nerdy video about nerdy stuff, a brand new to-do listing app, a brand new factor in ChatGPT, and rather more. Let’s do it.

(As all the time, one of the best a part of Installer is your concepts and ideas. What are you doing, studying, watching, taking part in, testing, cooking, lifting, soldering, or charging proper now? What cool stuff are you into that everybody else also needs to be into? Inform me all the pieces: installer@theverge.com or +1 203-570-8663. And if you realize another person who may get pleasure from Installer, ahead it to them and inform them to subscribe right here.)

• Bose’s Extremely Open Earbuds. For some purpose, over the past 12 months or so, nearly all in-ear headphones instantly go away my ears sore and scratchy. So I’m very curious to strive these — despite the fact that at $299 they’re too costly for my tastes, the clip-on type looks like it may work.
• Bulletin. The Verge’s Parker Ortolani turned me onto this: a brand new (Apple-only) news- and RSS-reading app with plenty of AI options for summarization and stuff, but in addition only a actually pretty UI for studying information feeds. You may add premade lists, dump in any website or feed, even save stuff to learn later.
• The House Race. A extremely cool documentary about early Black astronauts, with tons of archival footage and a extremely wild Chilly Struggle subplot. As with all good house docs, ensure you watch this one on the most important display yow will discover.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s Imaginative and prescient Professional assessment. The assessment itself is, like, wonderful — I feel Zuck is true about plenty of the issues individuals truly need headsets for, and in regards to the price-to-quality steadiness being a tough one. However capturing a assessment of a competitor’s product, with your individual product, in such an informal method, is simply fascinating to me.
• The ONE factor holding this iconic classic laptop computer from working… Lately, for causes I hope to sometime have the ability to let you know about, I’ve been deep down the rabbit gap of superior previous devices. And the This Does Not Compute channel has grow to be one in every of my favourite new assets — the host is perpetually attempting to revive or resurrect some previous PC, and even this random Toshiba laptop computer left me desperately wanting one. 
• Superlist. This week’s “to-do listing app that’s so near being all the pieces I wished and possibly I’ll simply spend the entire weekend attempting it out.” It’s a teams-first product, which, meh, however that is the best-looking productiveness app I’ve seen in years.
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Extra up to date spins on old-school Mario video games for the Change! How did we get so fortunate! This one’s a platformer with a extremely enjoyable puzzle-y twist, which is precisely the type of recreation I wish to spend too many hours taking part in on the sofa.
• How AI Tech Can Give Useless Individuals a Voice. This week’s winner of the “Is that this highly effective and superior, or is that this horrifying” award is The Shotline, which is utilizing AI to recreate the voices of youngsters who have been victims of gun violence. Joanna Stern’s video is nice, and The Shotline’s voices will make you’re feeling… plenty of issues.
• DuckDuckGo. DDG simply rolled out a cool new software that permits you to sync passwords and bookmarks throughout platforms with no need an account; you simply scan a QR code so as to add a brand new machine. At this level, I’m cautious of claiming any firm is definitely an excellent privateness possibility, however DuckDuckGo is actually doing the work. 

Some time again, I obtained actually near transferring all my private docs, e mail, calendar, and recordsdata into Skiff, which was principally a privacy-focused Google Drive competitor. Stuff obtained busy, and transferring all that stuff is a giant undertaking, however it’s been on my listing for some time. Tremendous glad I didn’t get to it, although, as a result of Skiff was simply acquired by Notion and is now shutting down.

If I’ve realized one factor in my years of masking tech, it’s that nothing is assured to stay round, irrespective of how a lot you like it or how widespread it’s. Issues change, errors occur, stuff disappears. And each time it occurs, I get just a little extra non secular about one thing that Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian, likes to say: file over app.

The thought of “file over app” is to care much more about your knowledge itself than the app or platform it’s in. Like, the app you’re utilizing now? In all probability not going to be round in 50 years. Textual content recordsdata and JPGs and PDFs? Far more more likely to nonetheless be right here! So spend money on codecs that final, not apps that don’t.

What which means for me, personally, is that I attempt to flip my life into textual content recordsdata and their equivalents as usually as potential.

• I exploit an iOS and Mac app referred to as NotePlan for every day notes and job administration — the app is constructed on prime of a folder of Markdown recordsdata I can simply use anyplace else. Obsidian and Logseq are each the identical method and are each wonderful (if very completely different) apps.
• I exploit the bookmarking service Raindrop to retailer all of the hyperlinks I care about, for Installer and all the pieces else, and as soon as every week I export all my hyperlinks as a CSV file and once more as a textual content file.
• Day One is the place I hold my precise journal, and each month or so I export the entire thing to a PDF.
• Annually or so, after I’m feeling each bored and impressive, I’ll again up my whole digicam roll and Google Pictures library to an exterior laborious drive. All the opposite stuff goes into Google Drive, and onto that very same laborious drive.

I attempt to discover apps which can be made with textual content recordsdata in thoughts. Once I can’t, I attempt to discover apps with good, sturdy export techniques, and ensure I’m backing issues up usually. I’m carried out getting caught inside an app I can’t belief to be round for lengthy.

There’s much more for me to do right here, and albeit nonetheless plenty of stuff in my life that may disappear if some big-name companies delete my account or go offline altogether. (I’m nonetheless attempting to determine whether or not my e mail and calendar are issues I must be archiving…) However I now have years of journal entries, every day duties, undertaking archives, and extra in a format I’m assured I’ll have the ability to at the least open and take a look at on my neural face-puter in 2096. And it makes me really feel higher, so I figured I’d share.

Oh, and by the best way, there are so many nice textual content editors on the market. Typora might be one of the best writing app I’ve ever used. In the event you write code, you already know BBEdit and VS Code and Elegant Textual content. Nota, Ulysses, iA Author, and a bunch of others all do an excellent job of serving to you each write and manage. Residing in textual content recordsdata doesn’t imply residing in Notepad or TextEdit; you actually can have one of the best of each worlds. Textual content recordsdata ceaselessly!

Zoë Schiffer, the managing editor on the wonderful Platformer e-newsletter (and a Verge alum!), simply printed among the finest tech books I’ve learn shortly. It’s referred to as Extraordinarily Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter, and belief me, nevertheless wild you suppose the final couple of years have been at X / Twitter, the precise reality is way wilder. Zoë’s been reporting on this saga all through, and the guide’s a complete winner.

I requested Zoë to share her homescreen with us on the eve of her guide launch, as a result of one factor I’ve all the time favored about Zoë is that she is ceaselessly deeply conflicted about expertise. She studies on it, understands it deeply, makes use of it continuously, however can be perpetually attempting to get her Display Time numbers down. Since I’m deeply embarrassed by my Display Time report principally each week, I wished to see how she does it.

Right here’s Zoë’s homescreen, plus some data on the apps she makes use of and why:

The telephone: That is an iPhone 14, I imagine. The display is cracked and I exploit it completely for work. I’ve an iPhone mini with no apps besides Spotify and Google Maps that I exploit as my private telephone. The method of getting a separate work telephone (with apps) and a private telephone (with nearly nothing fascinating) has dropped my screentime to about 2.5 hours a day, to not brag.

The wallpaper: My wallpaper is a photograph of my sizzling a** husband, and my two-year-old daughter. 

The apps: Apple Calendar, Google Maps, Apple Notes, Sign, Apple Mail, Threads, ChatGPT, Spotify, Telephone, Messages.

My major homescreen has Sign, which I exploit continuously to speak with sources, and Threads, which is my major Twitter substitute. I even have ChatGPT, which I really like. I ask it about numerous well being signs and in addition to create recipes for, like, a single chocolate chip cookie.

One display over I’ve TikTok, which is my responsible pleasure, and Bluesky, which I’m attempting to make use of extra however feels just a little chaotic. I even have a being pregnant tracker as a result of (duh) I’m pregnant. Proper now the infant is the dimensions of a lime, in order that’s good. 

I additionally requested Zoë to share a couple of issues she’s into proper now. Right here’s what she stated:

• Proper now, I’m rereading Harry Potter and listening to plenty of Caroline Shaw.
• Oh you meant on the web??? Huh. Huuuuuh. I like the style e-newsletter Blackbird Spyplane. I’m a giant fan of the Moderated Content material podcast.
• I’ve seen the comic Jacqueline Novak twice IRL (the primary time, I dragged Casey Newton alongside, not realizing the whole set is about blow jobs, and I critically apprehensive I used to be going to get fired), and he or she has a brand new comedy particular on Netflix that basically will get me. 

Right here’s what the Installer group is into this week. I need to know what you’re into proper now as properly! E-mail installer@theverge.com or message +1 203-570-8663 along with your suggestions for something and all the pieces, and we’ll function a few of our favorites right here each week. 

“I’ve been taking part in the brand new Dominion card recreation app! Dominion is a deckbuilding recreation from again within the day, and it’s obtained a number of (I imagine 15) expansions to date. Earlier iterations of the sport on-line and in app kind by no means absolutely realized their potential. That is one of the best implementation of the sport to this point. There may be offline play in opposition to AI, matchmaking, and you can even do personal matches with associates by way of a Nintendo-esque buddy code system.” — Matt

“I’ve been listening to and immensely having fun with Worlds Past Quantity, an precise play narrative podcast from one of the best of us to ever do it.” — Caleb

“I obtained my Retroid Pocket 4 Professional within the mail this week after a few month of ready from China. It exceeded expectations, and I’m having a good time emulating N64, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 video games. On Saturday I had a buddy over, and we performed sofa co-op video games similar to the nice previous days utilizing a USB-C hub and a pair controllers. Extremely beneficial for an enormous nostalgia kick.” — Nicholas

“Having enjoyable taking part in previous Nintendo titles on the Miyoo Plus. Such a fantastic machine. Looks like a time machine.” — Jamie

“I’m taking part in, and overwhelmingly impressed with, Prince of Persia: The Misplaced Crown. It seems like a love letter to Castlevania and Metroid, and closely impressed by Hole Knight… but in addition innovates in some actually intelligent methods. It additionally runs extremely properly on the Change.” — Steve

“In all probability some of the used apps on my telephone is Mela, by Silvio Rizzi. It’s a thoughtfully designed recipe app designed to share with your loved ones. It has a shared household recipe library and integrations with Reminders and Calendar to make sure my fiancé and I are all the time on the identical web page. Oh, and it additionally has a built-in RSS reader for locating new recipes!” — Liam

“It’s referred to as What Occurred Final Week, and it’s a good way to maintain up with information from international locations that aren’t usually reported on in locations like Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It accommodates clear explanations and contexts on developments so it’s straightforward to learn even if in case you have by no means heard of the names within the story. I discover it actually helpful and complementary to the large Western information sources.” — Richard

“Windows95Man is Finland’s entry to Eurovision this 12 months, and it’s superb on so many layers. Watching the video on YouTube is obligatory for full appreciation.” — Sighjinks

“The brand new season of Sport Changer on Dropout began this week, and it’s a deal with as all the time!” — Noah

The largest, weirdest tech story of this weekend is coming from a barely stunning place: the ground of the NBA All-Star Sport. Have you ever seen the movies of the all-LED full-court display? Right here’s an instance of what this type of factor appears like throughout a recreation, too. It appears like a complete nightmare to play on, and I’d wager $10 we’ll by no means see this in an actual recreation with any stakes. However boy is it going to be one thing to look at. That is my type of augmented actuality.