Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 139, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, barbecue sauce, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I’ve been reading about Johnny Knoxville and Google Zero and the history of the bicycle,
Cloudflare is the latest company to join the race to build a new web browser. But instead of pitching a Chrome alternative to consumers, the internet infrastructure provider launched Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted browser designed specifically for AI agents. AI software is evolving from chatbots that answer questions to agents that can complete tasks on users’
TikTok is laying off 250 employees and closing its Nashville office, which housed some members of TikTok’s content-moderation team. The news was first reported by The New York Times. Zanna Crowley, a spokesperson for the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, confirmed the news, saying that the shuttering was to “streamline our operations and better align our
Google announced on Thursday that Google Maps’ “Ask Maps” feature is gaining a slew of new agentic capabilities, including the ability to order food, book hotels, and find event tickets. The tech giant is also bringing Personal Intelligence to Ask Maps, allowing the AI tool to personalize its responses by drawing on information from a
Nikita Bier has stepped down as head of product at X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, after a little more than a year in the role. Bier wrote Wednesday that he thinks it’s “time to pass the torch and demote myself to my natural state: a poster,” adding that he’ll continue to advise the company.
Update August 5, 12.10 am PT: Wispr Flow has officially launched its notetaker for Mac. The notetaker, similar to the one of Granola’s, uses system audio to transcribe a meeting without joining one. It also cleans up transcripts, creates action items, and lets users query across meeting history with the help of AI. Users can
