Technology

Red Dead Redemption is so back

Published

4 months ago

December 7, 2025

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 108, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, hope your holiday shopping is going well, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

This week, I’ve been reading about Ariana Grande and pelvic floors and Josh Shapiro and Las Vegas, finishing and then immediately rewatching The Chair Company, working by the light of this extremely rad MoMA lamp, installing a bunch of Hue Dimmer Switches around my house, trying desperately to hide the giant box that came with my new Frame TV, wondering if my 12,983 minutes of Spotify time this year is a lot or a little, and getting my Christmas tree out of storage. Which took some work.

I also have for you a 15-year-old game that feels as good as new, a great new entrant in the Wrapped Wars, a couple of fun productivity tools, and much more. Year’s almost over, but the new stuff keeps coming! Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you watching / reading / listening to / playing / wrapping with a bow this week? 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.)

Red Dead Redemption. If you just off-handedly asked me my favorite modern video games, without thinking about it I’d probably say Red Dead and the Arkham Batman series. Cool to see the 2010 game come to mobile (though for Netflix subscribers only), even cooler to see it updated for modern consoles, including my beloved Switch 2. I haven’t checked in with John Martson in a while, but I’m confident this one has held up.
Fizzy. From the folks behind Hey and Basecamp, a really nifty new kanban tool that reminds me of Trello, only both more chaotic and much cleaner. It’s really fast, and my brain loves a good project-management board… plus, it’s open-source, so it might spawn some other really fun stuff.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. I know at least a few folks who have been waiting for this game to see if it completes the appeal of the Switch 2. By all accounts, it seems to be handily worth the price of admission, even if there’s some “modern games!” cruft in the mix.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. I keep hearing things about this doc, about Buckley’s life and the remarkable album he made, Grace. This will not be a joyful watch, I suspect, but for anyone who loves even just his version of “Hallelujah,” it’s worth the watch.
YouTube Recap. This is Wrapped Week, so everybody from Spotify to Google Photos is rolling out years in review. I love YouTube’s already, since it just feels the most revealing about my actual personality. It also made it clear that I watch, uh, too much YouTube.
Mirumi. This furry little robot was one of the delights of last CES, and is now finally becoming real. (Real-ish, anyway — it’s still a Kickstarter project.) It’s pretty expensive, given that it does, you know, nothing! But I mean, look at it.
Halo. The team at Matter continues to have the best-looking reading app on the planet, and their new habit tracker for iOS looks just as good. Some potentially interesting, potentially annoying AI stuff in here, but even the basic tracker stuff is just lovely to look at and use.
Routine. After more than a decade of start-and-stop development, this game turned into an unusual, engrossing, deeply fun and deeply stressful sci-fi title for PC and Xbox. One of those games I can tell I’m going to enjoy just from the vibe of the trailer.
Notion Calendar. This is such a dumb, small thing: Notion finally updated this app so you can hide the right sidebar! Now it’s all calendar and no nonsense. This was already my daily driver calendar app, but for some reason that tiny change makes me like it even more.

Here are two of the fun things about working with The Verge’s Jess Weatherbed: she has a deep knowledge of creative tools and always writes fascinating stuff about how people make art in the future, and it seems every single time we’re in a meeting together she has completely reorganized and redesigned her home office. Every time the Meet loads, Jess has some new treasure in the background.

Jess is as much an artist and designer as she is a tech reporter, and I’m also told she’s a very accomplished D&D player. I asked her to share her homescreen with us to see how all those interests smash together into a single device. I was not disappointed.

Here’s Jess’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps she uses and why:

The phone: I currently have an iPhone 14 Pro Max, but not for much longer; I’m literally waiting on my new iPhone 17 Pro Max to arrive. I was mostly enticed by the iPhone 17 Pro in a glorious orange, which, after begging Apple to remember that color exists for the past few years, felt too personal to ignore.

The wallpaper: The wallpaper itself is nothing special, just some unwatermarked stock imagery I found a while back. I like how it’s a photograph that shows some texture instead of a flat digital image, but I mostly just wanted something colorful to complement the image widgets I have.

The shots on my main screen were taken from a tokusatsu-inspired photoshoot for W Magazine’s 2023 feature “Jennifer Coolidge Will Destroy You.” I absolutely adore Coolidge and kaiju- / mecha-related media, so when I saw the shoot I became kinda obsessed?? I’m planning to get a few images blown up into hi-res posters that I can frame in my hallway. I just feel so much joy every time I look at them.

The photo on my second homescreen page is my cat, Trevor. He’s a silly 12-month-old Maine Coon who’s totally mastered the art of rage-baiting me. We have the same birthday. It was fate.

The apps: Settings, Calendar, Clock, App Store, Camera, Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, Phone, Chrome, Discord, TikTok.

I don’t think my apps are anything special. I keep the most-used selection loose on my main homescreen, and everything is tinted yellow because it matches the overall vibe and also feels easier on my eyes. I have a Spotify widget because I like having the album art of whatever I’m listening to on my screen. I’m also stuck with Facebook Messenger because my family exclusively uses it to chat; otherwise I only message friends using WhatsApp or Discord. I can’t remember the last time I actually texted someone.

The mess on my second homescreen page is actually incredibly organized for me. I have folders for all my apps, like “games and entertainment,” “shopping,” and “useful crap” for anything that doesn’t fit into other categories.

Some of my current favorite apps include Focus Friend, which is a fun gamified focus timer that helps me keep my ADHD in check, and Next Spaceflight, which tells you about upcoming rocket launches and space missions. I also love learning about what’s around me, so I use apps like Merlin Bird ID and Seek by iNaturalist to identify birds and plants, and because I live on the coast, MarineTraffic to ID passing ships. It’s like a flight tracker, but for boats!

I also asked Jess to share a few things she’s into right now. Here’s what she sent back:

I’ve been trying to cut down on my TikTok consumption, but I’ve really been enjoying two accounts lately. The first is @drinksonmemusic, who posts “Beat Battle” challenges with @southbymusic where both lads will make electronic remix tunes based on randomized, often ridiculous prompts. It’s fun, silly, and makes me feel energized.
The second account is @shef_phoenix, which is a cooking channel that mostly experiments with making small food big and big food small (though it’s nice to see that he’s been branching out into other cooking projects). The guy has been hounded into trying to make a “giant grape,” and watching that madness unfold has entertained me greatly.
Outside of TikTok, I’ve most enjoyed watching Dropout these last few months. The cast and shows are fantastically funny, and it’s something that I can reliably throw on in the background when friends come over, which eventually catches all of our attention. Worth every penny.
Comics have also recaptured my attention lately as I’ve attempted to walk back my screen time. I’ve been re-reading Cerebus the Aardvark, which I first found decades ago in my family’s attic, the Hellboy omnibus, and DC’s Absolute Universe. I’ve especially enjoyed Absolute Batman, which feels like something the old edgy teenage me would have been obsessed with.

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. For even more great recommendations, check out the replies to this post on Threads and this post on Bluesky.

“Haven’t played online multiplayer shooters since Halo 3 and COD 4 days, but Arc Raiders has turned that all around. Solo or with some friends, this game has been an obsession. Almost at 40 hours of play time and I only got it a few weeks ago. Been playing this on the Steam Deck and it runs like a dream.” — Mike

“I just got my Nomad! Super excited for a rugged portable speaker — and the promise of CarPlay in my Tesla.” — Zebulon

“Switching over more light switches to Tapo Matter switches. Have had some installed for the past six months, and appreciate that they just work when disconnected from Wi-Fi or when we have guests over.” — Tim

“The Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake LED. Amazing, and hard to get.” — Chris

“My Retroid Pocket G2 showed up today. Sean already had an article about Valve funding Fex for Android / PC emulation, and with Winlator and Gamehub, there are some amazing options for emulating steam games on handhelds. Some of them get better performance than a Steam Deck!” — Cameron

“The new Enterprise model from Lego might take the win for IP blend of the year. My geek gauge broke.” — David

“Buying a BenQ ScreenBar Pro LED light bar for my monitor was the best home office upgrade I’ve done in a long time. It just mounts on top of your monitor and your webcam mounts on top of the light bar. Very nice light for your workspace and perfect when you’re working late with kids sleeping nearby.” — Shady

“I’ve been obsessed with Vampires SMP as of late, a narrative roleplay series set within Minecraft with an insanely fun and dramatic cast. I can’t stop thinking about this show and its characters to a degree that few TV shows have managed.” — Eris

“Spreading managed democracy in Helldivers 2 is awesome.” — Ani

I’ve written a bunch here in the last few weeks about Raycast, the launcher / note-taker / AI chat / many other things app that has become a key part of my computing life. (I also had Thomas Paul Mann, the company’s CEO, on The Vergecast last weekend.) I’ve heard from a bunch of you that you want to know more about how to use Raycast. This is a good idea! Especially now that it’s on Windows, a Raycast deep dive is a good idea, and I’m on it. But in the meantime, you should check out Raycast’s YouTube channel, which is as good a set of product videos as you’ll find — some deep dives on features, some user interviews, lots of good stuff. The “101 Things You Can Do With Raycast” video is also a fabulous place to start. I find new things every time I watch it.

More to come, though. I love Raycast, I know a lot of you do too, and we’ll get in the weeds on how to make the most of it. If you have tips / favorite features, send them my way!

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

David Pierce

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Technology

A giant cell tower is going to space this weekend

Published

1 hour ago

April 17, 2026

Press Room

A giant cell tower is going to space this weekend

This weekend’s scheduled Blue Origin rocket launch is rather momentous. Success would signal an end to SpaceX’s monopoly on reusable orbital launch vehicles, and set up a three-way race to make that “No Service” indicator on your phone disappear forever.

On Sunday morning, Jeff Bezos’ massive New Glenn rocket is scheduled to launch with the first-stage booster that launched and landed on the program’s second mission last November. It’s a critical test, because cost-effective booster reuse is what’s made SpaceX’s Falcon 9 so dominate.

Amazon desperately needs a reusable rocket of its own to accelerate its Leo launches. Without one, it’s only been able to launch 241 Leo satellites, putting it well behind schedule. In that same 12-month time period, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was able to deploy over 1,500 satellites to its Starlink constellation.

Sunday’s mission will carry AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 satellite to low Earth orbit. Instead of blanketing the region with thousands of small satellites like Amazon and SpaceX, AST’s plan is to deploy fewer satellites that are much more powerful. Bluebird 7 features a massive 2,400-square-foot phased-array antenna, making it the largest commercial communications array ever deployed in low Earth orbit. It’s essentially a cell tower in space, and will be the second of the company’s “Block 2” next-generation satellites to launch.

The BlueBird 7 is designed to provide 4G and 5G broadband, at speeds exceeding 120 Mbps, to the phones we already carry. AST plans to have 45 to 60 satellites launched by the end of 2026. When AST lights up its service sometime this year, it will be in direct competition with Starlink’s direct-to-cell service, already operating with T-Mobile in the US, and Globalstar, the satellite network snapped up by Amazon that keeps iPhones and Apple Watches communicating in dead zones.

Technology

New FBI warning reveals phishing attacks hitting private chats

Published

2 hours ago

April 17, 2026

Press Room

New FBI warning reveals phishing attacks hitting private chats

Cyber expert shares tips to avoid AI phishing scams

Kurt ‘The CyberGuy’ Knutsson shares practical ways to avoid falling victim to AI-generated phishing scams and discusses a report that North Korean agents are posing as I.T. workers to funnel money into the country’s nuclear program.

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You probably think your messages are safe. After all, apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram promote strong encryption.

But a new warning from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that attackers do not need to break encryption at all.

Instead, they are going after you.

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FBI WARNS ABOUT FOREIGN APPS AND YOUR DATA

A new federal advisory says phishing campaigns tied to Russian intelligence are going after messaging app users instead of trying to break encryption. (MStudioImages/Getty Images)

What the FBI and CISA just revealed

According to the joint advisory, cyber actors tied to Russian intelligence are running large-scale phishing campaigns targeting messaging apps.

These attacks are not random. They have focused on high-value targets like government officials, military personnel and journalists. However, the tactics can easily spread to everyday users.

Here is the key takeaway: Hackers are not cracking the apps themselves. They are tricking people into giving up access.

How these messaging app attacks actually work

This is where it gets interesting and a bit unsettling. Instead of breaking encryption, attackers use phishing to gain control of individual accounts. Once inside, they can:

Read private conversations
Access contact lists
Send messages as if they were you
Launch new scams targeting your contacts

It becomes a chain reaction. One compromised account can quickly lead to many more. In some cases, attackers impersonate trusted contacts. That makes the scam feel real and urgent.

Why encryption is not enough anymore

Encryption still matters. It protects messages as they travel between devices. But here is the problem. If someone logs into your account, they see everything just like you do.

That means even the most secure app cannot protect you if your login gets compromised. This is a shift in how cyberattacks work. The weakest link is no longer the technology. It is human behavior.

AI IS NOW POWERING CYBERATTACKS, MICROSOFT WARNS

The FBI and CISA are warning that attackers are targeting users of encrypted messaging apps by tricking them into handing over account access. (BackyardProduction/Getty Images)

Who is at risk from messaging app phishing attacks

While the advisory highlights high-profile targets, the tactics are not limited to them.

If you use messaging apps for:

Personal conversations
Work communication
Sharing sensitive information

You are a potential target. Phishing works because it relies on simple mistakes. A quick tap on the wrong link is often all it takes.

What this means for you

This warning highlights a bigger trend. Cyberattacks are becoming more personal. Instead of attacking systems, hackers are targeting people directly. That makes awareness your strongest defense. The more you understand how these scams work, the harder it becomes for attackers to succeed.

Ways to stay safe from messaging app phishing attacks

You do not need to be a cybersecurity expert to protect yourself. You just need to slow things down and follow a few smart habits.

1) Be skeptical of unexpected messages

If a message feels urgent or out of place, pause. Even if it looks like it came from someone you know.

2) Never click suspicious links

Avoid links sent through messages unless you can verify them independently. Strong antivirus software can help detect suspicious behavior after a compromise. Get my picks for the best 2026 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android & iOS devices at Cyberguy.com.

3) Turn on two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds a second layer of protection even if your password gets exposed.

TECH GIANTS UNITE TO FIGHT ONLINE SCAMS

Officials say hackers can read messages, access contacts and impersonate users once they gain control of a messaging app account. (FreshSplash/Getty Images)

4) Watch for login alerts

Many apps notify you when a new device signs in. Do not ignore these warnings.

5) Verify requests in another way

If a contact asks for something unusual, call them or confirm through another channel.

6) Use a data removal service

Limit how much of your personal information is available online. Data removal services work to delete your data from broker sites, making it harder for scammers to target you with convincing phishing messages. Check out my top picks for data removal services and get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web by visiting Cyberguy.com.

7) Keep your device and apps updated

Install updates regularly. Security patches fix vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit after gaining access.

Kurt’s key takeaways

Messaging apps feel private. They feel secure. That sense of comfort is exactly what attackers are counting on. The technology is still strong. The real question is whether your habits are keeping up. So the next time a message pops up that feels slightly off, trust that instinct and take a second look.

Have you ever received a suspicious message that made you stop and question if it was real? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com.

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Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report

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For simple, real-world ways to spot scams early and stay protected, visit CyberGuy.com trusted by millions who watch CyberGuy on TV daily.
Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide free when you join.

Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on “FOX & Friends.” Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

Technology

YouTube’s mobile app finally lets you share timestamped videos

Published

13 hours ago

April 16, 2026

Press Room

YouTube’s mobile app finally lets you share timestamped videos

YouTube is making some changes that might affect how you share videos from the mobile app. From the app, you can finally share videos from a specific timestamp, which will make it easier to point someone to a part of a video you might want them to see while you’re on your phone. However, this change will replace the Clips feature that lets you make a shareable clip from a video.

You’ll still be able to watch any Clips that you’ve already made. But moving forward, “the ability to set an end time or include a custom description when sharing will no longer be available,” YouTube says. The company notes that while clipping is “important way for creators to reach new audiences,” it says that “a number of third-party tools with advanced clipping features and authorized creator programs are now available to do this across different video platforms.”

The company originally introduced the Clips feature in 2021.