Raspberry Pi created an AI PC worth tinkering with

Hi friends! Welcome to installer #41, your guide to the best and Border-most important things in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I hope you like gaming gadgets and silly spy movies, and you can also read all the back issues on installer home page.)

This week I’ve been reading about difficult times at Humane It is as Suicide squad failedattending the cult dance documentary TikTok It is Furious, swapping my crappy Roku for a slightly less crappy Apple TV, listening to a bunch of WikiHole, mixing new mocktail recipes and testing the Fanpy app for all things funky.

I also have for you a new Raspberry Pi accessory, an incredibly popular movie to watch this weekend, some fun tech books, some gaming gear, and more. Let’s do it.

(As always, the best part installer are your ideas and tips. What are you doing now? What should everyone like as much as you? Tell me everything: email installer@theverge.com, share with @imdavidpierce on Threads or find me on Signal @davidpierce.11. And if you know someone who might like installertell them to sign up here.)

• The Raspberry Pi AI Kit. This is my kind of AI PC: a super-simple $70 kit that runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 and offers a surprising amount of power to perform simple processing tasks. I don’t even know what I’m going to use it for! But I’ll get one anyway.
• Hitman. A lot of very smart people said that this Netflix comedy-action-thriller movie is one of the best movies of the year. And why not? Richard Linklater directs, Glen Powell stars, is based on a stopwatch from a magazine article. I can’t wait to watch it.
• Dark Thread. This is the best premise for a book I’ve ever seen: the story of the FBI’s secretive tech startup designed to track some of the world’s most sophisticated criminals. A few places to have published excerptsand I can’t put this book down anymore.
• Building SimCity. Two books this week! You love seeing this. This is a story about SimCity, yes, but also about the history of computer simulation, with lots of photos and diagrams to go with it. One for the coffee table, for sure.
• The new Rivian R1. Same look, same funky headlight design, a whole new car underneath. Much of what Rivian is doing here is clearly just to keep costs down, but this continues to be the EV I want most.
• The Acolyte. This is a very different kind of Star Wars story, set in a very different time and place, told from a very different point of view, which I definitely think is a good thing. The reviews seem pretty mixed so far, but I’m excited to check it out.
• Sequel 2.3. A really cool update to Installerverse’s favorite media tracking app for Apple devices. The new feature is called Magic Lookup and it allows you to send a URL to the app and have it automatically parse it and put it on your lists. Perfect for saving those “20 Things Coming to Netflix This Month” you see everywhere.
• The Chromatic ModRetro. The retro gaming hardware boom we’re in right now is simply the best thing. And this, a homage to the $199 Game Boy from a team led by Palmer Luckey, seems excellent. It won’t ship until the end of the year, but it’s available for pre-orders now.
• The Asus ROG Ally X. Speaking of portable consoles! This one is much bigger, much more expensive and much more ambitious than Cromático – but it also looks very good. Maybe this will be the first Windows handheld that actually stands up to the Steam Deck?
• Comfort zone. Fun new podcast from the MacStories team, with a trick I really like: every week, the three hosts basically do “Tech Show and Tell” and then give you a tech-related challenge to complete before the next episode. (MacStories also has another new podcast, called NPCall about portable gaming.
• “How ‘Wall-E’ Reveals Our Changing Feelings About Technology.” I’m outrageously jealous of this entire series of episodes of off podcast, seeing how movies like Her It is The social network has influenced the way we think and build technology. This is the final episode of the miniseries and it’s worth listening to them all.

Well, friends, it took 41 edits, but it happened: I had someone in line for Screen Share this week and it just didn’t happen in time. So let’s do something a little different. I recently became obsessed with the Niagara Launcher for Android, which is, in theory, largely optimized for one-handed phone use, but it’s also just a better, quieter way to organize your home screen. In the last 10 days, I’ve probably redid my setup eight times. This is too much.

Niagara is so smart! It turns your apps into a customizable list, displays widgets and notifications in the right place, and lets you do an impressive amount of things without ever opening an app. This is how phones are supposed to work. (If you want to understand how it works, here it is a good complete video to attend.)

Niagara also got a big upgrade, especially if you pay the $10 per year or $30 lifetime Pro subscription. Its search is better now, it has got some cool new icons and there are some other small improvements too.

While I’m tinkering with my own home screen, I collected some Niagara settings that I like and decided to share a few. You can do so many things with this launcher!

Cool right? There are rumors and reports that we’ll be getting a bunch of new customization possibilities for iOS too, so we expect this to be a year full of chaotic home screen rearrangements. By the way, if you use Niagara or any other awesome Android launcher, I’d love to see your sick home screen settings. Send them to me. And we’ll be back to normal screen sharing next week!

Here’s what installer community is this week. I want to know what you’re doing now too! 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.

“New version of Vibescape Just released for Apple Vision Pro – new meditation environment inspired by the Oregon coast! Completely new experience with this and the Forest Ledge environment – ​​pushing the boundaries of what’s possible outside of Apple’s own environments.” – Gregory

“I have used Beep a ton on my Pixel 8 Pro and MacBook Pro. I actually installed it in early April when the acquisition announcement came out, but I really hit my stride a month ago. It is very useful to have all your messages in one app, both for work and personal use.” -Joseph

“Patrick Willems there’s a new video this week about what comes after superhero movies so I came back to his channel after a while.” -Mike

“A friend introduced me Guild Wars 2 Some months ago. As someone who likes the MMO concept but has always felt let down by the execution, I can safely say that this is one of the most underrated games ever made. A fun, free MMORPG with a healthy community and no microtransactions seemed too good to be true, but it’s not. Plus, with recent announcements about the next expansion, there are more reasons to play than ever.” –Dallin

“I heard about Microsoft Recall, which seemed tiring and tedious. So last weekend I installed Windows and installed Bazzita Linux distribution on my gaming PC and I have been playing all my Steam and Epic games this way. It’s surprisingly much better than the last time I tried Linux on the desktop. I’m sure your mileage will vary, but everything worked with about the same amount of tweaking required for Windows.” –Les

“O SDA the movies finally returning to cinemas. The extended editions – the only versions I will watch. I’m so excited to watch this with my friends, like I’m in high school again.” – Colin

“Attending Who killed WCW? in Deputy. It’s a three-part miniseries that interviews Eric Bischoff and a group of wrestlers like Kevin Nash, Konnan and Booker T about the inevitable downfall of WCW. Everyone has their own thoughts on who to point the finger at, from the Turner executives who hate wrestling to Bischoff not knowing what he’s doing to the wrestlers who only look out for themselves. Only one episode released so far, but it’s good.” -Brian

“The new programs Thousands withdrawal and Cart problems from 2nd Try debuted this week and are great and hilarious examples of modern media companies and the trend of creating their own streaming platforms. -Zach

“On the anime clock. I recommend Delicious in the dungeon. Very fun to watch, the characters’ comic timing is excellent. This anime is hilarious while keeping the stakes of the story high.” – John

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about a blog post Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta, wrote recently. He talks about his “Inbox Ten” system, which basically means not trying to end each day with anything on your plate, but just trying to find a more manageable flow of information in your life. Boz has a whole system for managing your inbox privately, which I really like – I used to be an Inbox Zero fanatic and would get stressed out when things were in there, but I like his slightly less drastic approach. And this phrase has been popping into my head all week every time I get an email: “Don’t let this sit in your inbox or be talked into doing work that you don’t think is a good use of your time.” Words to live by.