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Image: Ubisoft A few months after it first launched, Star Wars Outlaws is getting some major updates. First up is the game’s first batch of downloadable content, which adds a new storyline involving Lando Calrissian and what appears to be a very dangerous game of Sabacc. The new expansion is called Wild Card and will be followed by a second DLC update next spring called A Pirate’s Fortune. Perhaps more significant, today, Outlaws is also getting a major update to address some of the game’s technical and design issues. Ubisoft describes it as the game’s “biggest patch yet.” Most notable, it seems, is that the stealth sections — a major point of frustration for many players — have been toned down. Ubisoft says that the update includes “updates to... Continue reading…

Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge Yesterday Android Headlines reported that Google had canceled its development of the Pixel Tablet 3 — even before announcing a second-gen model. Well, today Android Authority is saying that it’s in fact the second-generation Pixel Tablet that has been canned, meaning that the device released last year will apparently be a one-off and that Google is bailing on the tablet category for the second time in a little over five years. At best, we’re in for a long pause until the next one. If true, the news would suggest that sales of the Pixel Tablet have been so poor that Google has decided further investment in a follow-up just isn’t worth it. As recently as last week, there were rumors of new features and a keyboard accessory for the... Continue reading…

Image: The Verge Steam is building support for season passes into its platform and setting up rules to help protect buyers from buying ones with unclear promises. Steam published new guidelines urging developers to “think about whether there’s a customer benefit” for purchasing season passes, as reported by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik. Season passes have really picked up in popularity and are used mainly in free-to-play or other multiplayer video games that promise digital updates like special costumes and weapons for a fee. As part of Steam’s new rules for season passes, developers must share a list of items with descriptions customers can expect to receive with the pass. If a DLC drop gets delayed, Steam will let developers reschedule it up to 3... Continue reading…

The Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL have never been cheaper than they are today. | Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge Google’s Black Friday sale has kicked off with sizable discounts on Pixel phones, wearables, earbuds, tablets, smart home gear, and more. You’ll notice the base 128GB Pixel 9 is down to $649 ($150 off) at Google and Best Buy, for example. But some colors of the flagship Tensor G4 smartphone are actually even cheaper in Amazon’s Black Friday sale right now, with its porcelain and peony pink models going for $548.98 there. That’s beating the all-time low by a significant margin of about $49. The Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL — which have larger screens, bigger batteries, more cameras, and more RAM compared to the Pixel 9 — are also $150 off at Google, starting at $849 and $949 for their base 128GB configuration. Again, you’d probably... Continue reading…

It has widely been accepted that climate (in the form of the Late Little Ice Age or LLIA and the Justinianic Plague were the primary culprits of empirical change, causing a massive dwindling of the population, driving Rome to its knees in the 6th century AD. But a new study has refuted this claim and argues that, in fact, there was likely a spike in population size around the second half of the 6th century AD, and thus the plague and climate change had limited impact. Adapting to Survive: How Byzantium Survived the Arab Invasions Virtually Visit a Byzantine Church Built for a Mysterious Martyr Primary Movers of Change: Not Climate and Disease This new study, published in the journal Klio by researchers Haggai Olshanetsky, from the University of Warsaw, and Lev Cosijns, from the University of Oxford carefully analyses available archaeological evidence, data from settlements, shipwrecks, and trade patterns in the Mediterranean. Read moreSection: NewsHistory & ArchaeologyHistoryImportant EventsRead Later 

Conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk and his group Turning Point USA have launched a grassroots effort to get President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks secured.

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler will step down on Jan. 20 when President-elect Donald Trump's administration takes over, the agency said Thursday, ending an ambitious tenure that saw him clash with Wall Street and the crypto industry.