Six weeks ago, I was having a tough time sticking to my running routines and goals. Physically, I was mostly fine. Mentally, the thought of running — a sport I usually love — made me roll into a blanket burrito and never leave my bed. I started hating myself, but none of my usual fitness apps and trackers were helping. After building a weeklong streak, I couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed one Saturday. I broke it and spent the next day wallowing in guilt and self-pity.
Technology
Gentler Streak quieted my evil brain goblin so I could run in peace
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25409020/IMG_3662.jpg "Gentler Streak quieted my evil brain goblin so I could run in peace")
Fed up, I went digging around the internet and ended up downloading the Gentler Streak app.
Gentler Streak is what it sounds like. It’s an iOS and Apple Watch app with a more compassionate approach toward building a fitness habit. You can set an activity status: active, on a break, sick, and injured. Selecting one of the latter three won’t break your streak. Instead, your activity is represented on an “activity path,” which is a visualization for your overall training load. There’s educational reading about nutrition, exercise, rest, and the interplay between all three. Each day, you open the app, and it’ll give you a nudge. If you’re super well-rested, you might get told to push it a little. If you’re tired, you’ll get reminded that resting is good, actually. And if you really don’t know what to do, you can tap a “Go Gentler” button on the Apple Watch to see a series of suggested exercises based on activities you like, with recommended durations and intensity levels.
There’s a lot I love about all this. First and foremost, I enjoy that it incorporates breaks and “failure” into your eventual success — and doesn’t judge you for it.
That lack of judgment is what I needed. Eleven years into my running journey, I’d stumbled into my worst-ever slump. I was caught in a vicious cycle of falling off the horse, getting back on, and then getting angry whenever my efforts were less than perfect. A silly walking app helped with reframing my all-or-nothing mindset. The problem is, inside my brain resides an evil hypercritical goblin that will find and dwell in every tiny failing while minimizing all my successes. So what if a fun walking app was getting me out and about? Walking isn’t running. So what if I ran twice a week for a few weeks? You used to run four to five times a week, easy peasy.
I know I’m not supposed to listen to the evil brain goblin, but there are times when life rudely hands it a mighty powerful megaphone. Adding Gentler Streak helped shut it up. It’s not rocket science for an app to say “taking a rest day won’t affect your overall fitness.” But many don’t. Seeing that phrase over and over again underscored that I had, against my better judgment, started conflating streaks with consistency. Streaks are just one measure of consistency and a flawed one at that. A single break — which may actually be the better choice for your health — will wreck your streak, and that’s perceived as a bad thing.
The only thing worse than breaking a streak is feeling beholden to one.
None of what Gentler Streak does is novel. Features that emphasize recovery are rampant in other fitness apps. It’s more that it leads with intuition instead of data. There’s a real emphasis on creating space for everything, as opposed to sticking to something. One teaches you how to adapt; the other relies on willpower — and willpower always runs out.
The only thing worse than breaking a streak is feeling beholden to one
Take the daily “Go Gentler” suggestions. Rest and active recovery (e.g., yoga, walking, low-intensity activity, etc.) are always options 1 and 2. The remaining three are usually things that will help you maintain where you are, push you a little, or push you a lot. You don’t actually have to put in a lot of thought either because the suggestions are there. On stressful days when you’re out of willpower, that helps keep the evil brain goblin from waking up.
Like any app, Gentler Streaks still has its flaws, one of them being its reliance on the Apple Watch. You can use it with other trackers, but I’ve had issues with it pulling my sleep data from the Oura Ring reliably. Another is the subscription — $7.99 per month or $27.49 for a year. I paid, as features like the Go Gentler suggestions and extra data insights are paywalled.
Despite these shortcomings, a gentler approach seems to be working for me. Some people with iron wills may scoff. To them, I doff my cap and say I envy their blessedly silent brain goblins. But I’m running faster, longer, and more enjoyably than I have in six months. My calf remains uninjured. When I tell myself, “I’m busy today, I’ll squeeze in that run tomorrow” — the run actually happens. I’ll take it.
Continue Reading
Hi! Welcome to Installer No. 89, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. My name is Jay Peters, and I will be taking care of Installer while David is on parental leave. All of us here at The Verge are very excited for him and his family, and he’ll be back later this year.
It’s a huge honor to be writing this. I look forward to Installer every week to see what awesome things David is obsessed with and what you all are into. (Thanks to everyone who sent over their favorite non-famous apps to get me started. Keep reading for some of those!) I’m really excited to keep the party going. (If you’re new here, welcome, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, as I am at around this time every year, I’ve been obsessed with the annual Summer Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon. If you’ve never watched, the event is an annual, weeklong, always-on livestream of people playing video games at an extremely high level to raise money for charity. Throughout the week, I’ll tune in when I have a moment and then find myself watching somebody obliterate a beloved classic or a game that I’ve never heard of.
The show, which you can watch for free on Twitch, typically ends very early in the morning on Sunday, and you can watch replays on the Games Done Quick YouTube channel. My two favorite runs so far have been a Beat Saber showcase and a nail-biter Cuphead race. (If you have any suggested runs I should watch, let me know — maybe I’ll feature them in a future Installer!)
Anyway, let’s dive in. This week, I have for you some new Samsung foldable phones, a check-in with the developer of one of the great Reddit apps, and more.
(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What awesome tricks do you know that everyone else should? What app should everyone be using? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here. It’s free, and you get it a full day early!)
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7: Foldables have never really interested me, but even I am extremely impressed by just how thin the Z Fold 7 looks. But then I look at the price: $1,999, a $100 increase from the Z Fold 6! Too rich for my blood. The Z Flip 7, with its edge-to-edge cover display, also seems like a good upgrade.
- Samsung Galaxy Watch 8: As Victoria Song said, “the squircle has taken over”: Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch 8 and Watch 8 Classic now have circle faces set in rounded square bodies. The change means the watches can sit flatter on your wrist, which sounds like a good thing to me; I’ll always take a thinner watch over a bulkier one.
- Nothing Phone 3: This was technically announced last week, but Installer took the week off for the July 4th holiday in the US, so I’m including it now. Nothing is touting this phone as its “first true flagship” — though perhaps the most noticeable thing about it is its unusual camera layout.
- Nothing Headphone 1: Nothing announced its first pair of over-ear headphones last week, too, and they seem like a decent pair of cans. The translucent design isn’t my cup of tea, but props to Nothing for trying something funky and new.
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4: This game puts remakes of two classics into one package, and it’s awesome. I’ve been playing on my Switch 2 — where it runs pretty well! — and have had a blast reliving my youth. Turns out that I’m pretty rusty now, but thankfully, the game has some helpful settings to make things easier for the less skilled among us.
- HBO Max: Max is HBO Max again, like it probably always should have been, even though HBO Max isn’t a great name, either.
- Perplexity’s Comet browser: The AI “answer” engine’s new browser naturally uses Perplexity as its main search engine but also has an AI assistant built in. Browsers could be the next big turf war for AI companies, and Perplexity is beating OpenAI to the punch. There is a catch, though: right now, it’s only available to subscribers of Perplexity’s $200-per-month subscription.
- Anker’s Nano Wireless Car Charger: This new car charger with a long, flexible arm looks like a super useful and malleable way to mount your phone inside your car. I don’t even own a car and I want this.
- Superman: I don’t have any strong feelings about Superman or DC Comics, but it seems like James Gunn’s new
DC cinematic universe Hail Maryfilm is actually pretty good. The Fantastic Four: First Steps looks great, too — 2025 is shaping up to be a big superhero summer.
If you followed the Reddit protests in 2023, then you probably recognize the name Christian Selig. He was the developer of the beloved Apollo for Reddit iOS app, but he became a central figure of the protests because Reddit’s API changes were going to be so cost-prohibitive that they forced him to shut Apollo down.
I’ve gotten to know Selig, and nowadays, he works on an app called Pixel Pals, is an advisor to the new Digg, and recently posted a great PC build video that has more than 2.5 million views. (Yes, he does poke fun at another, let’s say, infamous PC build video.) I got to catch up with him to learn about his homescreen and what he’s into.
Image: Christian Selig
The phone: iPhone 15 Pro Blue Titanium 128 GB
The wallpaper: I’m pretty sure it’s just something random someone posted on Twitter ages ago that I saved. But I love how simple it is, and I love how it looks on the home screen with the default iOS blur applied.
The apps: I try to keep things simple and positioned in an easy-to-reach area. I don’t keep social media apps on my phone in an attempt to be healthier, so it’s mostly things that are useful: vehicle apps (still a bit cold in Canada, so gotta love being able to preheat your vehicle), with Overcast for podcasts, Microsoft To Do (née Wunderlist) for my to-dos, ChatGPT because it’s 2025, YouTube because I spend way too much time there, Pixel Pals because it’s an app I build so I like to have it nice and handy, the Chess.com app for passing some time, and the alpha for Digg, which has been a ton of fun to use.
I also asked Christian to share a few things he’s into right now:
- I’ve gotten into chess lately, and that’s been a ton of fun to play around with and learn as a total noob.
- I’ve been digitizing old VHS and Hi8 tapes from my childhood and that has been such a massive rabbit hole to go down, but so, so cool and satisfying to see the results of.
- I’m super into all things solar and battery technology. I have a very amateur setup at my apartment with our very limited space, but my partner and I bought land recently and are excited to go down the solar route and hopefully gain some energy independence.
And about his role at Digg:
- What an advisor means in this case is basically just being brutally honest with the team on what I think about their mobile app (what is great, what sucks, what could be improved) as well as advising on their developer strategy as they get into that in the future. No bullshit, they’ve been phenomenally receptive and humble in getting feedback.
- As for why I got on board, I’ve just kind of been sad about the modern state of community in social networks. Even outside of the Reddit API stuff, Reddit itself just feels more and more lately like a corporate shell of its former fun, vibrant community-based self. Kevin Rose seemed so jazzed about the possibility of imagining a community for the people of the future, and that really spoke to me as something that I also wanted to see exist in the world.
- As you can imagine, a lot of folks have pitched me on “Reddit but better!” pie-in-the-sky ideas over the years. Kevin was the first one to come to me with concrete plans for a modern, community-based platform that felt like it had actual wood behind the arrow. And having now talked to the folks that make up the team at “New Digg,” I feel that even more so. They’ve got some really bright people.
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 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 The Verge, this post on Threads, and this post on Bluesky.
This week’s section is a mix of everyone’s favorite non-famous apps and some more typical recommendations.
“I want to give a shoutout to my favorite mobile game designer who’s based here in Germany: Arnold Rauers and his little studio Tiny Touchtales develop some beautiful, addictive light strategy games. My favorites are Card Thief, Geo Gods, and Miracle Merchant.” — Nick
“I use Panic’s Nova to make websites and truly love it. Probably my favorite app. Mimestream is also fantastic! Can’t wait for the iPhone version.” — Jeanne
“My favorite non-famous app is Live Soccer TV. Shows you the complete worldwide soccer schedule, and the list of broadcast networks/platforms in each county airing the game. Been on my home screen for ages now. It simply does what it says it does. No fluff and for 5 dollars a year, I pay for the ad free upgrade. Perfect app. Hope it never changes.” — Dustin
“Obsidian and Anybox.” — Peter
“I’m constantly shocked whenever recommendations come up for recipe apps that Crouton is not mentioned. To me, if Apple were to have made a recipe app themselves, this would be it. Even better, it’s cheap — only $14.99/yr and has some incredibly cool features like ‘hands free’ mode that allows you to simply blink your eyes to move to the next step of a recipe for those times when you have chicken juice all over your fingers.” — Justin
“All of Claire North’s books are fantastic! Her stuff is super original: sci-fi-ish but more about big ideas like time, memory, and identity. She does a really good job of bringing out the nuances and real-life feelings and consequences of the roles her characters have. It’s smart and emotional without being heavy, and her characters always stick with me. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August or Touch are great places to start.” — Dave
“I know it’s been out for a while, but my whole family is addicted to Marvel Snap. The new season with The Fantastic Four is really fun so far and this gives my kids things that help them tickle their brain with logic. Also, all the different variants for the cards are really cool to see.” — WALL-E
“Been using Folio as my Pocket replacement and have been quite happy.” — Carter
“All four The Trip movies are streaming on Criterion Channel. Very funny, very mean comedies — and the longer BBC episodic cuts are also available too, if you want the extended play version (which you will).” — Kevin
“Despite my backlog, I’m checking out A Solitaire Mystery, as I have no choice but to play anything from the Baba Is You developer.” — Tristan
“Just made the switch to the Pixel line from iOS, and I’m really digging trying a new OS. Outside of that, I’ve been taking a slight tech break and going back to physically painting, reading paperbacks, and being present.” — EmpireStrikesBacktotheFuture
All week, I have been mourning the recent end of the latest series of Taskmaster, a British comedy show where five comedians must all complete absurd tasks and be graded on them by the show’s mercurial host. This batch of episodes, series 19, was my favorite set yet: the cast of comedians (the first to feature an American, Jason Mantzoukas) were all hilarious, and the tasks were ridiculous.
If you’re looking for something new and funny to watch, I can’t recommend series 19 enough. Best of all, you can watch every series of the show for free on YouTube. Your time starts now.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Have you ever thought your dream house could offer skyline views without sacrificing style or space?
Do you prefer the verticality of city apartments but wish you could also own a standalone home? These innovative prefab towers from the German company Moduleform make that possible.
Named the DQ Tower, this micro-living residence is designed for backyards and small urban lots. With three stories, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and high-end built-in features, it brings a sleek new take on compact living, even if it comes at a premium price.
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report
Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide – free when you join my CYBERGUY.COM/NEWSLETTER
HOW 432 ROBOTS ARE RELOCATING A 7,500-TON HISTORIC BUILDING
Backyard tiny home with three stories and skyline views
With three full stories of living space, the DQ Tower stands over 28 feet tall. However, all that vertical space only takes up a footprint of just 13 by 13 feet. It’s designed for tight urban plots or backyard spaces, and instead of spreading out like a traditional mobile tiny home, it rises straight up.
Spacious living in a compact footprint
The ground floor opens up into a spacious living and dining area. A comfy sofa pulls double duty as both seating and an optional spare sleeping space. A comfortable dining nook sits next to a kitchenette complete with an induction stove, sink, and refrigerator. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows give plenty of natural light and open up the space even further. The ground floor rounds out with a half bathroom with a convenient washing machine included.
WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?
Climbing the staircase to the second floor, you will find the first cozy bedroom complete with a single bed and a built-in wardrobe. On the second floor is also a full bathroom with a standing shower. And yes, the ceilings are quite tall and spacious, avoiding the cramped loft designs of other tiny homes.
The third floor is the showstopper. As you ascend the steel and wood staircase, the master bedroom sits comfortably with a double bed, an even larger wardrobe, and a small desk for a working area. The tall windows up here continue to provide light and ventilation, making the most of the compact space while providing breathtaking views.
Prefabricated backyard house ships in just 8 months
In total, the DQ Tower offers nearly 420 square feet of living space. That is a reasonable accommodation for a couple or small family, or anyone who appreciates the efficiency of downsizing. Another option, and one that the manufacturers advertise, is the DQ Tower, which fits comfortably in the backyard, making for a cost-effective and low-impact guest house, perfect for rental sites like Airbnb. And with two bathrooms and two bedrooms, it’s surprisingly livable for such a small footprint.
The major convenience and cost-cutting feature of these tiny tower homes is that they come prefabricated. They are built off-site in Germany, transported to the site, and settled into place with a small crane crew. As of now, it takes about eight months from order to delivery. The whole structure is constructed with a sturdy steel frame, well-insulated walls, and clad in chic aluminum panels.
Luxury tiny home pricing starts at $176,000
The starting price for these private towers is currently roughly $176,000. Now, that is nearly twice the per-square-foot cost of other tiny homes. However, the DQ Tower offers ultra-high-quality, designer-level micro-living with a sleek and accommodating design.
Kurt’s key takeaways
The DQ Tower is more than just a tiny home. It offers a bold vision for how people can live in smaller spaces without giving up comfort or style. Although it is not currently available in the United States, it provides a clear picture of where compact, vertical living could be headed. As cities become more crowded and backyard space gains value, this European design could inspire the next generation of American prefab housing.
Would you trade square footage for sky-high design if it meant living smarter, smaller, and more sustainably? Let us know by writing us at Cyberguy.com/Contact
Sign up for my FREE CyberGuy Report
Get my best tech tips, urgent security alerts, and exclusive deals delivered straight to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get instant access to my Ultimate Scam Survival Guide – free when you join my CYBERGUY.COM/NEWSLETTER
Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.
Several days after temporarily shutting down the Grok AI bot that was producing antisemitic posts and praising Hitler in response to user prompts, Elon Musk’s AI company tried to explain why that happened. In a series of posts on X, it said that “…we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot. This is independent of the underlying language model that powers @grok.”
On the same day, Tesla announced a new 2025.26 update rolling out “shortly” to its electric cars, which adds the Grok assistant to vehicles equipped with AMD-powered infotainment systems, which have been available since mid-2021. According to Tesla, “Grok is currently in Beta & does not issue commands to your car – existing voice commands remain unchanged.” As Electrek notes, this should mean that whenever the update does reach customer-owned Teslas, it won’t be much different than using the bot as an app on a connected phone.
This isn’t the first time the Grok bot has had these kinds of problems or similarly explained them. In February, it blamed a change made by an unnamed ex-OpenAI employee for the bot disregarding sources that accused Elon Musk or Donald Trump of spreading misinformation. Then, in May, it began inserting allegations of white genocide in South Africa into posts about almost any topic. The company again blamed an “unauthorized modification,” and said it would start publishing Grok’s system prompts publicly.
xAI claims that a change on Monday, July 7th, “triggered an unintended action” that added an older series of instructions to its system prompts telling it to be “maximally based,” and “not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.”
The prompts are separate from the ones we noted were added to the bot a day earlier, and both sets are different from the ones the company says are currently in operation for the new Grok 4 assistant.
These are the prompts specifically cited as connected to the problems:
“You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct.”
* Understand the tone, context and language of the post. Reflect that in your response.”
* “Reply to the post just like a human, keep it engaging, dont repeat the information which is already present in the original post.”
The xAI explanation says those lines caused the Grok AI bot to break from other instructions that are supposed to prevent these types of responses, and instead produce “unethical or controversial opinions to engage the user,” as well as “reinforce any previously user-triggered leanings, including any hate speech in the same X thread,” and prioritize sticking to earlier posts from the thread.
Minneapolis, MN4 minutes ago
Weekly prayer walks return to North Minneapolis in effort to help reduce crime
Indianapolis, IN14 minutes ago
Former Tar Heel: Josh Downs, Year Three In Indianapolis
Pittsburg, PA23 minutes ago
Patriots Urged to Pursue Exiled Former Steelers WR
Augusta, GA35 minutes ago
Nike Peach Jam draws top talent and economic boost to North Augusta
Washington, D.C46 minutes ago
India-US trade deal: Indian team reaches Washington DC for fresh round of talks; Donald Trump’s tariff deadline nears – Times of India
-
Politics1 week agoVideo: Trump Signs the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Into Law
-
World1 week agoRussia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,227
-
Education1 week agoOpinion | The Ugliness of the ‘Big, Beautiful’ Bill, in Charts
-
News4 days agoVideo: Trump Compliments President of Liberia on His ‘Beautiful English’
-
Business7 days ago
Companies keep slashing jobs. How worried should workers be about AI replacing them?
-
News1 week agoDeath toll from Texas floods rises to 24 as search underway for more than 20 girls unaccounted for | CNN
-
News7 days agoTexas Flooding Map: See How the Floodwaters Rose Along the Guadalupe River
-
Technology1 week agoCyberpunk Edgerunners 2 will be even sadder and bloodier
