Obsidian, with its local-first approach, graph view, canvas, and Markdown support, initially seemed like the perfect note-taking haven. But as I started integrating it into my workflow, those shiny add-ons started losing their luster. From its basic mobile apps and a lack of toolbar to limited project management features, Obsidian left me wanting more. And while its plugin ecosystem is vast, relying on them for core functionality felt fragile. Here are the top reasons why I have started looking for Obsidian alternatives.

PC gaming has never been easier, with out-of-the-box defaults for most hardware that works well. But to get the absolute best out of our graphics cards, a few things can be tweaked even further. Whether your graphics card comes from AMD, Intel, or Nvidia, they all have an assortment of software features that can be changed to make the graphics driver work better for your needs without having to overclock your GPU. Once you've figured out which PC games to play, it's time to get those games running at their best.

A Raspberry Pi isn’t set up by default to give you the best performance possible. It’s a great computer that’s easy to use and won’t break the bank, but it’s not built for speed. If you want your Raspberry Pi to be super fast, you’ll need to do some things to make it work better.

New logo up top and old one on the bottom. | Image: Sandisk SanDisk is now SANDISK. It’s also now Sandisk. The company is announcing a fresh rebranding this week with a new logo that drops the inter-capped styling it’s generally maintained since 1995 with one that is inspired by “a single point of data” or a “pixel.”In a new video, Sandisk says its “slab serif is back and bolder” and it maintains its open “D” letter, but pairs it with a new “pixel-driven S.” The company says the letters symbolize “the collaboration and partnership required to actualize our purpose and tap into new possibilities.” As noted in a report by Fast Company, the Sandisk rebranding comes ahead of a spinoff from its parent company Western Digital planned for next year (it was originally planned for this year). Western Digital had originally acquired Sandisk back in 2016.Last year, Western Digital was embroiled in controversy surrounding the popular, pricey portable SanDisk Extreme SSD, in which publications reported that the product would wipe owners’ data erroneously. It happened to our supervising producer Vjeran Pavic, and Western Digital refused to answer our questions at the time to explain what was happening.Controversy aside, we’re big fans of “unfinished” logo styles here at The Verge, and it looks like Sandisk did alright with its rebrand. It certainly could do worse -- just look at PayPal, Kia, Paramount. or JaGUar.

Image: Honda Honda teased the reveal of the first two Honda Zero prototypes, which will be making their official debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The company also said it would have a new proprietary operating system for the global electric vehicle series to show off.Honda announced Honda Zero at CES 2024, describing it as a new “global EV series” that would be “lighter” and more space-age than the current crop of heavy, boxy electric SUVs and trucks. The three defining principles of Honda Zero were “thin,” “light,” and “wise.” And the company would use its learnings from F1 and its robotics work to introduce a new lineup of vehicles that were distinctly of the future. At the upcoming CES, Honda says it will expand on its “wise” principle by releasing more details about its new OS, automated driving technologies, and an overview of its system-on-a-chip that will support its Honda Zero vehicles. The teaser image features rear profiles of the two concept vehicles first revealed earlier this year: the Saloon and the Space-Hub. The Saloon has a sloping fastback shape with unique rectangular lights in the front and rear that resemble a vintage Black & Decker Dustbuster. The Space-Hub resembles a minivan with minimal overhangs and a rear light that has a similar look to Rivian’s electric delivery vans for Amazon.Honda says it will expand on its “wise” principleEarlier this year, Verge contributor Abigail Bassett flew out to Japan to get up close with Honda’s new global EV series. She drove a prototype CR-V equipped with Honda Zero tech and found it to be lighter and more nimble than a Honda Prologue. The new Honda Zero platform feels similar to other EV platforms on the market in terms of acceleration and handling. Because the weight is low in the floor, the prototype CR-V cornered quickly and flat as you approached the limit. The powertrain is quick and responsive, and on the short, front straight that the engineers set up for our test laps, I hit 110km (just shy of 70mph) in a relatively short distance. It will be interesting to see more production-ready versions of the Saloon and Space-Hub in the flesh, especially with all the chatter about Honda in the background (working on solid-state batteries, collaborating with Sony on the Afeela EV, potentially merging with Nissan).

Image: Intel Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs came out in October promising high performance at lower power levels, but reviews, including ours, noted surprisingly lackluster gaming performance. Tom Warren said of the Core Ultra 9 285K, “...in many titles, it provides worse performance than the 14th Gen chips it was designed to replace.”Now, the troubled chipmaker says it has been gradually releasing updates that fixed most of the issues it identified, as reported earlier by Tom’s Hardware.“At the end of the day, there were four root issues that we needed to address, and fixes for those are actually already in the field right now,” Robert Hallock, Intel’s VP and GM of client AI and technical marketing said during an interview with HotHardware. “They’ve been coming out over the last two weeks or so in drips and drabs, as update schedules allow.”One issue stemmed from a “mistimed” update that was supposed to optimize Windows’ processor power management (PPM) system for Intel’s Core Ultra 200S-series processors. (PPM adjusts the performance of a CPU based on the current power plan, such as Balanced, High Performance, Power Saver, etc). Instead of releasing the PPM update before reviewers got their hands on the processors, Intel says it scheduled the update to go out when it became widely available, which may have caused reviewers to see worse-than-expected performance. Due to the missing PPM update, Intel’s performance-boosting Application Performance Optimizer (APO) also couldn’t take effect in games, while “misconfigured” performance settings also had a negative impact on reviewers’ benchmarks. Image: Intel A fix was already applied for these issues in Windows 11 build 26100.2161. Intel also says Epic Games resolved a driver compatibility issue causing the blue screen of death when running games with Easy Anti-Cheat, such as Star Wars Outlaws.Intel is planning to release another set of performance upgrades for Arrow Lake CPUs in January, and it will “provide a comprehensive performance update” at CES. For now, Intel recommends updating Windows and applying the latest BIOS update to your motherboard if you haven’t already. Otherwise, you can wait until the “final” performance update next year.

National climate adviser Ali Zaidi speaks at the daily press briefing at the White House on January 26th, 2024, in Washington, DC. | Photo by Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images The Biden administration set ambitious new goals to slash US greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris climate accord, urging states and local governments to stay on course regardless of President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to purposefully ignore climate change.The nearly 200 countries that have joined the Paris agreement face a deadline in February to update their national climate plans. Biden’s team decided to put out its own plan before Trump steps into office, setting a new target today of cutting net emissions by 61–66 percent in 2035 compared to a 2005 baseline. It also sets a specific target of cutting methane emissions by at least 35 percent by the same date. Methane comes from livestock, landfills, and leaking oil and gas infrastructure and is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and has vowed to pull the US out of the Paris agreement. So Biden’s last-ditch effort to keep the US on track to meet global climate goals is more symbolic — seemingly designed to encourage a grassroots movement in defiance of Trump’s national agenda.“Escape velocity, an inexorable path, a place from which we will not turn back”“Across the country, we see decarbonization efforts to reduce our emissions in many ways achieving escape velocity, an inexorable path, a place from which we will not turn back,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi said in a call with reporters. It helps that new solar and onshore wind farms have become cheaper sources of electricity than coal or gas. Around 95 percent of new sources of electricity queued up to connect to US power grids is carbon-free — mostly solar and wind energy and batteries. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have also authorized hundreds of billions of dollars of funding for clean energy. Current policies put the US on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by around 40 percent by the end of the decade compared to 2005. That’s a big drop in pollution, but still shy of the initial goal Biden set upon stepping into office. Shortly after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, the US rejoined the Paris agreement (which Trump had previously pulled the US out of) and set a target of reducing emissions by 50 to 52 percent by 2030. That’s in line with the pollution cuts needed globally to meet the most ambitious target in the Paris agreement, keeping global average temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above what they were before the Industrial Revolution.Keeping that global goal alive is increasingly dubious, especially since the US is the second-biggest climate polluter after China. The planet is about 1.2 degrees warmer today than it was before humans started pumping out massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions by burning fossil fuels. All that pollution has already triggered more intense storms, wildfires, droughts, and other climate disasters. And things could get worse with Trump’s plans to dismantle environmental policies, encourage the development of more energy-hungry crypto mines and AI data centers, and increase oil and gas drilling.Even so, Trump didn’t completely kill US climate action during his first stint as president. State and cities crafted their own climate plans and local leaders created a coalition called We Are Still In after Trump moved to take the US out of the Paris agreement. Thanks in large part to their work, the US still surpassed the Obama administration’s climate goal of cutting emissions 17 percent by 2020. Biden raised the bar with his climate goals, so there’s far more work to do to keep up the pace this time around. A University of Maryland analysis from September found that local action can reduce US greenhouse gas pollution by 48–60 percent by 2035 even without federal support.

Server rigs are among the most sought-after equipment for home labs – and for good reason. Enterprise rigs not only come with more CPU cores, memory, and storage provisions, but they also feature ECC memory support, hot-swappable PSUs, and a range of other capabilities designed for complex projects.

Some Samsung fridges are getting hybrid cooling tech in 2025. | Image: Samsung Samsung just announced new hybrid cooling tech coming to its refrigerators in 2025. They’ll use a traditional compressor alongside a new Peltier module — a semiconductor device that transfers heat from one side to the other when current passes through it. This approach results in a fridge that reduces temperature variations to keep foods fresher longer while better utilizing interior space, according to Samsung.The Peltier effect is something we’ve seen harnessed by wearable personal air conditioners, microclimate chairs, and hobbyist coolers in the past. This is the first time we can recall seeing it used in a full-sized refrigerator sold by a major brand.Samsung says the Peltier module is only called into action when significant cooling is needed. This might be after loading the weekly shopping haul into the fridge or when adding hot leftovers. In these situations the Peltier module works alongside the compressor to avoid a big internal temperature spike. Otherwise, the fridge relies exclusively on the compressor for optimal cooling efficiency. Samsung says its hybrid cooling tech will be introduced into a fridge (model RM80F23VM) that can be “recognized as the most efficient of Energy Star in 2025.”Samsung’s fridges featuring the new hybrid cooling tech will be available with 900-liter capacities. The company says they have a 25-liter increase in usable internal space as a result of using a Peltier module instead of traditional heating elements. And according to Samsung, its hybrid cooling can keep foods fresher for longer, with tests showing pork lasting 1.4 times longer and salmon 1.2 times. Expect to hear more from Samsung about its hybrid cooling fridges in early January when the big CES trade show kicks off in earnest from Las Vegas.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images So far, possible answers include aliens, an international conspiracy, secret military tests, or just planes. 2024’s drone hysteria has gone on for weeks across the East Coast, and we still have far more questions than answers. The sightings may have started in New Jersey, but reports of possible drone sightings have continued to spread. The usual authorities haven’t helped much, with bland statements like “There continues to be no known threat to public safety,” failing to tamp down anxiety and interest. What we do know so far is that this is a perfect storm for clout-chasing politicians and that our phone cameras aren’t really up to the task of taking pictures of stuff flying around in the sky.Meanwhile, social media-fueled misinformation has rushed to fill the information vacuum about what people are seeing. Even if, in many cases, what they’ve seen are planes, stars, meteors, or drones sent up by drone hunters to try to find the mystery drones.We’ll keep track of the best information we can pull together right here.

Image: DJI The US Senate has passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill, and it may have major consequences for the world’s largest drone company — though not necessarily the immediate ban that China’s DJI feared. While it did not contain the full “Countering CCP Drones Act” provisions that would have quickly blocked imports of DJI products into the United States, it instead kicks off a one-year countdown until its products (and those of rival dronemaker Autel Robotics) are automatically banned. If DJI cannot convince “an appropriate national security agency” to publicly declare that its products do not “pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States,” the act instructs the FCC to add DJI’s gear to its “covered list” under the Secure and Trusted Communication Networks Act. Not only does that list keep that gear from running on US networks, it bars the FCC from authorizing their internal radios for use in the US, effectively blocking all imports.While none of that would keep US citizens from continuing to use their existing DJI gadgets, it wouldn’t just ban new DJI drones from import into the United States. Every DJI product with a radio or camera, like the Verge favorite DJI Osmo Pocket 3, would technically be banned. (The NDAA doesn’t specify just drones, but rather communications and video surveillance equipment.)The text of the bill (PDF, see page 1084-1088) should theoretically prevent DJI from exploiting the loophole of whitelabeling its drones under other brand names or licensing its technology, too, as it seemed to be doing with the Anzu Robotics Raptor and Cogito Specta. The bill explicitly tells the FCC to add “any subsidiary, affiliate, or partner” and “any entity to which the named entity has a technology sharing or licensing agreement” to the covered list, too.The bill had already passed the House of Representatives and is headed to President Biden’s desk, where it’s considered a must-sign: it would trigger a partial government shutdown if not signed, and it already passed both houses of Congress with strong bipartisan support.So it’ll really be up to the Trump administration as to whether it wants to rescue the Chinese drone company, in the year after he takes office. Trump may not need to lift a finger if he’d prefer to see fewer DJI products in the country, so the ball’s in DJI’s court. It wouldn’t be surprising if DJI tries to get face time with Trump in the near future — like TikTok, which is more imminently facing a ban.Even without the NDAA, DJI was already facing increased US scrutiny, reporting that its products had begun to see surprise import restrictions (allegedly over the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act), and making a conscious decision to ship fewer of them into the United States as a result. In October, it sued the US Department of Defense for labeling it a “Chinese Military Company”.In a blog post, DJI calls it “good news” that the NDAA doesn’t explicitly ban DJI products, but says the US government is singling out Chinese drones for scrutiny, and worries about the fact that the law doesn’t specify a government agency to actually carry out the task of determining whether it poses a risk. “This means that DJI would be prevented from launching new products in the US market through no fault of its own, but simply because no agency chose to take on the work of studying our products,” the company writes. It’s asking Congress to pick a “technically focused agency to assure the assessment is evidence-based,” and to give the company the opportunity to reply.

Cath Virginia / The Verge The European Union has published several recommendations for Apple to make iOS and iPadOS more interoperable with competitors following two separate proceedings launched in September, sparking concerns about user privacy from the iPhone maker. On Wednesday, the EU Commission submitted draft recommendations to Apple regarding changes that would make the iOS operating system more compatible with third-party devices like smartwatches, earbuds, and headsets. The Commission is also proposing measures to improve how Apple communicates with developers who make interoperability requests for iOS and iPadOS, including increased transparency around internal features and rejections. The EU’s proposed iOS interoperability measures cover interactivity features like automatic audio switching, background activity like maintaining Bluetooth and network connections, and notifications — which could address long-standing complaints from iPhone users who are unable to send quick replies from connected Garmin watches, for example. The EU also proposes several measures to improve iOS data transfer interoperability across Airdrop, Airplay, media casting, Wi-Fi sharing, and close-range file transfers, alongside device configuration measures covering proximity-triggered pairing and automatic Wi-Fi connectivity.Apple has raised concerns about the DMA’s interoperability mandates, as you’d expect. In a white paper published shortly after the EU’s announcement, Apple criticized “data-hungry companies” like Meta that have made numerous requests to access the iPhone maker’s software tools.“The security risks would be substantial and virtually impossible to mitigate”“Meta has made 15 requests (and counting) for potentially far-reaching access to Apple’s technology stack that, if granted as sought, would reduce the protections around personal data that our users have come to expect from their devices,” Apple said in the paper. “If Apple is forced to allow access to sensitive technologies that it has no ability to protect, the security risks would be substantial and virtually impossible to mitigate.”Apple doesn’t specify which of the EU’s DMA proposals it takes issue with, generalizing them in their entirety as a risk to user privacy. Meta has hit back about being targeted in Apple’s complaint and says the iPhone maker is being anticompetitive.“What Apple is actually saying is they don’t believe in interoperability,” an unnamed Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg. “Every time Apple is called out for its anticompetitive behavior, they defend themselves on privacy grounds that have no basis in reality.”The Commission is requesting feedback from companies seeking interoperability with Apple by January 9th, 2025. The interoperability recommendations proposed by the EU Commission are subject to change depending on submitted feedback. The final, legally-binding measures applying to Apple are expected to be finalized before March 2025. If Apple doesn’t comply then the EU may launch a formal investigation next year, and could be liable for fines up to 10 percent of its global annual sales.