If you've ever upgraded your laptop or desktop, there's a pretty good chance you have some old drives lying around. The good news is that those drives don't have to go to waste and can be repurposed for use in other devices or as portable storage. We love the latter option, because popping an SSD into an enclosure leads to having a thumb drive that's completely overkill.

Collector’s editions are meant to celebrate a game’s launch, giving players something tangible to remember it by. While most contain art books, steel cases, or statues, some publishers go all out, creating premium packages worth hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars. Here’s a look at some of the priciest game editions ever made and what made them so special.

Most of us use multiple cloud storage services. Between Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, NextCloud, Amazon B2, and even FTP and WebDAV, there are numerous options available, and I utilize most of them for various purposes. But as it stands, unless you install apps for each of these services, or configure them in dedicated apps, the only way you can access files in Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive is by navigating to individual websites. Suffice it to say that there's a lot of friction involved, and the process is extremely cumbersome.

There’s a sore loser in this popularity contest. Elon Musk says that his artificial intelligence company xAI “will take immediate legal action” against Apple for allegedly manipulating its App Store rankings to the advantage of rival AI apps. In a series of X posts on Monday night, Musk suggested that Apple was “playing politics” by not placing either X or xAI’s Grok chatbot in the App Store’s list of recommended iOS apps, and that he had no choice but to file a lawsuit.“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk said. “Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?,” the xAI CEO asked Apple in another post, which is now pinned to his profile.Musk provided no evidence for his claims, and it’s unclear if he has made good on his threats and filed the lawsuit yet. The Verge has reached out to xAI, Apple, and OpenAI for comment.At the time of writing, ChatGPT is listed as Apple’s top free iPhone app in the US, with Grok ranked as the sixth. China’s DeepSeek AI briefly managed to take the top App Store position from ChatGPT in January, however, disproving Musk’s claim that it would be impossible for other AI apps to do so.Accusations of meddling from Musk are ironic, given allegations about alterations made to X after he acquired the company in 2022, then known as Twitter. A research study in 2024 suggested that X’s algorithm was manipulated to boost posts from Musk’s account. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to Musk’s posts by sharing a Platformer report from 2023 that similarly found Musk had a system built to promote his X posts to the entire platform’s userbase. In June, the “maximally truth-seeking” Grok chatbot was also found to be consulting Musk’s opinion before providing answers to controversial questions around topics like Israel and Palestine, US immigration, and abortion.This isn’t the first time that Musk has beefed with Apple and OpenAI. Musk was an early founder at OpenAI, and previously targeted the AI startup via lawsuits and a unanimously rejected $97.4 billion buyout offer after taking issue with its pivot to being a profit-driven business. Following OpenAI’s partnership with Apple to integrate ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs last year, Musk threatened to ban Apple devices at his companies if OpenAI’s tech was fused with Apple’s OS.

Epic Games has announced that it’s bringing Fortnite back to iOS in Australia, after the country’s federal court ruled that Apple and Google’s app marketplaces are anticompetitive. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X that Fortnite will be made available on iPhones via the Epic Games Store “at a date to be determined,” while the company navigates the complexities of Australia’s antitrust ruling.Epic sued Google in Australia in March 2021, after suing Apple in November 2020. A single court is handling both cases in parallel, even though they weren’t filed at the same time. On Tuesday, federal judge Jonathan Beach found that Apple and Google misused their app marketplace dominance and in-app purchase commission fees of up to 30 percent to reduce competition, the Australian Financial Review reports. However, Beach rejected Epic’s claims that the tech giants had broken consumer law or engaged in “unconscionable conduct” — meaning particularly harsh, unfair, or oppressive behavior that goes against societal norms. We are still awaiting further details from Beach’s final judgment, which is more than 2,000 pages long and won’t be released publicly.The Epic Games Store and Fortnite will come to iOS in Australia! An Australian court just found that Apple and Google abuse their control over app distribution and in-app payments to limit competition. There are 2,000+ pages of findings that we’ll need to dig into to fully…— Epic Games Newsroom (@EpicNewsroom) August 12, 2025“We welcome the court’s rejection of Epic’s demands that we distribute app stores from within the Google Play store, and Epic’s attacks on other critical security protections that users rely on,” Google spokesperson Dan Jackson said in a statement to The Verge. “However, we disagree with the court’s characterization of our billing policies and practices, as well as its findings regarding some of our historical partnerships, which were all shaped in a fiercely competitive mobile landscape on behalf of users and developers,” Jackson said. “We will review the full decision when we receive it and assess our next steps.”In a statement to Australia’s ABC News, an unnamed Apple spokesperson said that the company welcomes the court’s rejection of some of Epic’s claims, but that it disagrees with other aspects of the ruling. “Apple faces fierce competition in every market where we operate,” the spokesperson said. “We continuously invest and innovate to make the App Store the safest place for users to get apps and a great business opportunity for developers in Australia and around the world.”Epic originally sued Apple and Google in the United States on August 13th, 2020, in two separate cases which went before two separate judges, with dramatically different results in each case. Epic largely lost its fight against Apple after attempting to take the fight all the way to the US Supreme Court, but Apple may lose a large degree of control over its App Store anyhow because it failed to comply with the district court’s order.After removing Fortnite from the App Store in 2020 amid its feud with Epic, Apple later brought the game back to its iPhone app marketplace in May. Fortnite also returned to iPhones in the EU last year, but only via the Epic Games Store for iOS.Meanwhile in the US version of the Google trial, Epic has continually won: in late 2023, a jury unanimously decided that Google turned its Play Store and Play Billing system into an illegal monopoly, and a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just affirmed that decision at the end of July.That decision could blow up Google’s control over its app store within weeks or months, unless Google gets the Ninth Circuit to grant a stay while it appeals to the US Supreme Court or grants a full en banc review of the three-judge panel’s decision. Google is arguing that the Apple decision should be relevant to the Google decision, but so far US courts disagree.

I hear you — 50 degrees Fahrenheit sounds like a lot. And it is, but it's a difference in PC temperatures that doesn't seem like that much. 50 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to 10 degrees Celsius, which might not seem like a massive temperature drop when you're looking at it in HWInfo or whatever monitoring program you use. But, a few simple tweaks can drop your PC temperature by that much.

On Monday, Ford introduced an innovative new manufacturing process that it says will help make its EVs more sustainable, more desirable, and more importantly, more affordable. The timing couldn't have been worse. EV tax credits were set to expire at the end of September. President Trump's trade war was tilting the balance in favor of China's EVs. And automakers are beginning to delay and even cancel some planned models. Ford seems to realize its timing is unfortunate. Throughout their announcement, the company's top executives kept hammering one salient point: this was going to be really hard, success was far from guaranteed, and in fac …Read the full story at The Verge.

The Xbox Game Pass has always been a somewhat strange entity in the gaming market. It's amazing for gamers; for a monthly fee, they can tuck into as many games in the library as they want with no limits on gameplay time. And if they're willing to use Xbox Cloud Gaming, they don't even need to care about storage space, either.

There's nothing quite as awe-inspiring and terrifying as an eldritch formula in Excel. You're not sure what it does, and you're not sure how it works; all you know is that when you punch a number in, you get a number out, and you just have to sort of trust the system that it's doing everything correctly. This goes double if you were the one who made it.

Taylor Swift at NFL Game. Taylor Swift leaned into her love for symbolism with the announcement of her dozenth album, titled The Life of a Showgirl. TS12 was introduced in a teaser — already viewed over 65 million times — for the next episode of the New Heights podcast airing Wednesday, hosted by boyfriend Travis Kelce and his big brother Jason. Tay extracted the $29.99 album from a briefcase but the artwork was blurred out ahead of tomorrow’s reveal. It’s already up for “pre pre-order” in a variety of formats over at taylorswift.com.The New Heights podcast consistently ranks in the top 10 on Spotify and Apple charts and this will certainly give viewership a bump. It’s the kind of masterful brand crossover that reportedly elevated NFL viewership and merch sales. Sometimes love is also, but sometimes it’s also good for business. View this post on Instagram A post shared by New Heights (@newheightshow)

Microsoft is starting to roll out lightweight taskbar apps for Microsoft 365 users on Windows 11. These taskbar apps will automatically launch at startup and provide quick access to contacts, file search, and calendar straight from the Windows taskbar.The Microsoft 365 companion apps, as Microsoft calls them, are starting to roll out to business users of Microsoft 365 this month. The People companion provides a browsable org chart, as well as the ability to look up anyone in your company. You can also quickly start a Teams message or call with a contact, or email them directly.The File Search companion is designed for quick access to Microsoft 365 files from the Windows 11 taskbar. You can search by file name, author, or other keywords to find files across OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Outlook. There’s also an option to preview a file before you open it, and plenty of filtering and sharing options.The Calendar app is a quick view of a Microsoft 365 calendar from the taskbar, where you can see upcoming events, search for appointments, or join meetings.All three apps have been in beta in recent months, after Microsoft originally announced them at its Ignite conference last year. They are now heading to all business users of Microsoft 365 as part of a general availability release this month. The apps will be automatically installed as long as Microsoft 365 apps are installed on a Windows 11 system. IT admins can prevent the automatic install of these Microsoft 365 companion apps, and end users can stop them from automatically launching at startup.

Rockstar Games is adding Nvidia’s DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation support to Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced today. Nvidia is also releasing a new Game Ready driver today that will improve Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced performance, as well as support the enhanced version of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II that’s available today.The DLSS 4 upgrade to GTA V complements the game’s existing ray tracing capabilities, by allowing RTX 50-series owners to enable Multi Frame Generation and generate additional frames to make the motion of gameplay look smoother.Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Enhanced also has DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, as well as a new Dark Rot game mode that debuts with this enhanced version.You can download Nvidia’s new 580.97 Game Ready driver direct from Nvidia’s website.