Image: Western Digital Western Digital is splitting into two companies: one for its flash business and another for its hard drive storage products. The company announced the change alongside its earnings results on Monday, noting that spinning off its flash business will allow Western Digital to “realize its full value.”Western Digital acquired flash memory manufacturer SanDisk for nearly $19 billion in 2016. However, as noted by The Wall Street Journal, this decision will effectively reverse the merger, allowing its flash division to operate as a standalone business. The separation is expected to take place in the second half of 2024.“Our HDD and Flash businesses are both well positioned to capitalize on the data storage industry’s significant market... Continue reading…

The Galaxy S23 and S23 Plus. | Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge Samsung’s Android 14-based One UI 6 update is leaving beta on the Galaxy S23 in Europe, users in the region are reporting. Across X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and Reddit, people are seeing the update roll out in countries including the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Portugal. While many are updating from the beta version of One UI 6, some are receiving a larger 3GB patch to update from the stable version of One UI 5.1. While the update appears to be limited to S23 users in European markets for now, Samsung’s approach in previous years suggests that a stable US release won’t be far behind. The company’s Android 13-based One UI 5 update started rolling out for European Galaxy S22 owners around October 24th last year,... Continue reading…

No setup is complete without a good quality microphone that can deliver crisp and high-quality audio, be it for your Zoom meetings or for simply chatting with your peers in Discord. But even the best microphones on the market aren't enough sometimes to make you sound good through all the background, which is why I always rely on Nvidia's Broadcast tool to ensure my audio sound crisp and clear with no background noise cluttering the audio.

Image: Amazon The second season of Amazon’s Invincible series feels plugged right into Hollywood’s current obsession with multiverses, but it’s taking notes directly from its classic comic’s source material. Continue reading…

Image: Capcom It’s incredible that Resident Evil Village plays as well as it does on the iPhone. The game is every bit as captivating as when I first played it on the PS5, and I was blown away by how well it translated to the tinier screen. But the game’s graphics aren’t the most interesting thing going on with this release — I’m much more excited for what it might be teasing for Apple gaming in the future.Let’s start by talking about Village first. I’ve only played for a little over an hour on a prerelease version of the game on an iPhone 15 Pro Max — long enough to survive the attack by the Lycans in the snowy village. One area the port doesn’t translate well is to the iPhone’s touchscreen. I tried to use the game’s touch controls, but they were... Continue reading…

The Lenovo Legion Y25g-30 is an excellent 24.5-inch gaming monitor for professional eSports players, and average casual gamers alike. It sports a crazy fast 360Hz fresh rate and has a 1ms response time. Not to forget, it also packs in a 1080p resolution. It's up there with a lot of the best monitors that we've reviewed, and now is the chance for you to have one of your own.

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge Meta is launching a paid subscription that will remove ads from Facebook and Instagram. The service is available throughout the European Union and will be offered for around €9.99 per month on the web or €12.99 / month on iOS and Android to account for additional fees for those platforms.The subscription is meant to address concerns by the European Union about Meta’s ad targeting and data collection practices. By making users choose between paying for the service to remove ad targeting or using the service for free but consenting to its data collection practices, Meta believes it will have more clearly and definitively met privacy requirements set by a collection of European data laws, including the Digital Markets Act and GDPR.Free... Continue reading…

Although many users pick up a Chromebook because of the simple browser-based experience, there's much more you can do if you're a more advanced user. You can join the Beta or Dev channel or enable Chrome Flags to try out new features before they launch. If you're a developer, you also can put your Chromebook into Developer Mode, to install applications, and get deeper access to the ChromeOS system.

Only a handful of smartphone manufacturers bundle their phones with a charger these days, forcing you to go on a hunt to find the best chargers. Thankfully, there is no shortage of chargers on the market, and they're readily available to purchase. It also helps that most modern devices — including many of the best laptops and top smartphones — support USB-PD, meaning you can use a single charger to power all your compatible devices.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge In July, Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) center released its large language model Llama 2 relatively openly and for free, a stark contrast to its biggest competitors. But in the world of open-source software, some still see the company’s openness with an asterisk.While Meta’s license makes Llama 2 free for many, it’s still a limited license that doesn’t meet all the requirements of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). As outlined in the OSI’s Open Source Definition, open source is more than just sharing some code or research. To be truly open source is to offer free redistribution, access to the source code, allow modifications, and must not be tied to a specific product. Meta’s limits include requiring a license fee for any... Continue reading…

Image: Getty General Motors became the last car company to agree to a tentative deal with the United Auto Workers, ending the nearly seven-week-long strike, Reuters reported. The news came one day after the UAW said it had reached a deal with Stellantis, parent company of Chrysler and Jeep, and several days after Ford. The strike has roiled the auto industry, costing each of the Big Three automakers hundreds of millions of dollars each week in lost production and throwing cold water on the industry’s shift to electric vehicles. Autoworkers were extending their walkout to include new GM factories, including an engine plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, when the news broke that a deal had been reached. Previously, the UAW has succeeded in getting GM to... Continue reading…

The multimillion-dollar hypercar business is booming. The world’s ultra-wealthy have dozens and dozens of different outrageously expensive, high-performance toys to choose from, like the Rimac Nevera or the Mercedes-AMG Project One. Some are so extreme, they’re not even street-legal. But what’s a tech-forward multibillionaire who’s more into anime than motorsports to do with their discretionary fund? The Tsubame Archax might be the answer. This is, quite simply, a Gundam fan’s dream made a reality: a 15-foot-tall, $3 million mecha that works just like the real thing — well, minus a few pesky details like jet boosters, laser swords, and the neural interfaces explored in many of Gundam’s various (and conflicting) timelines.Made in Japan... Continue reading…