Month: November 2026

ARC Raiders could add permanent PvE: Embark CEO says both camps matter

After Embark Studios ran its October 13 to 20, 2026 matchmaking toggle test, CEO Patrick Söderlund said ARC Raiders could end up with a permanent PvE option. ARC Raiders is Embark’s extraction shooter, and Söderlund said the team now has to “listen and cater for both camps.” He also said Embark could “just frankly add PvE” without much technical trouble.

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This still isn’t a formal announcement. But after that October 13 to 20, 2026 test produced 30 million PvE matches in a week, with PvE making up 50% of all matches, according to Embark, it’s easy to see why the studio sounds more open to it.

Embark says 37% of players prefer friendly co-op. It also says 51% want a dedicated PvE mode, and even 40% of PvP players would rather have fewer hostile encounters. So if you play ARC Raiders for the co-op side of it, this is one to watch.

Embark hasn’t changed its mind about PvP, though. The studio still believes PvP is what gives ARC Raiders its edge, and it says a permanent split would have knock-on effects for matchmaking, progression, loot balance, and the economy. During the test, Embark says it already had to adjust loot values because PvE was safer than PvPvE.

You can play ARC Raiders now following its October 30, 2025 launch, and with 6 billion rounds played and 14.8 billion ARC enemies destroyed, according to Embark, the studio is clearly rethinking a game that originally started as PvE before Embark executive producer Aleksander Grøndal’s team reshaped it into the current PvPvE format.

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Google Flights: 3 tricks to save on 2026 holiday flights

If you’re booking 2026 holiday travel, Google Flights is useful on both the web and mobile. Its forecast puts Thanksgiving fares at $402, up 31%, and Christmas at $452, up 23%. International fares are rising too, about 33% for Thanksgiving, and 16% for Christmas, as fuel costs climb and airlines cut capacity.

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When you’re searching, open the monthly calendar first. Cheaper dates show up in green, and shifting your trip by even a day can help. Thanksgiving flights that leave on Thursday or return on Sunday usually cost more than midweek options.

It also helps to switch from Best departing flights to Cheapest. That’s where you may find budget carriers, longer itineraries, self-transfers, or lower prices from other booking sites. Google says flying on the holiday itself, or on other less popular days, can save 10% to 20%, including about $250 in some Thanksgiving markets or around 20% at Christmas if you skip the peak Sunday trip home.

If you’re using Google Flights for holiday trips, book early. Google recommends booking Thanksgiving by mid-October and Christmas by Halloween, while watching for the usual low points, about 34 days out for Thanksgiving and 56 days out for Christmas. Turn on price tracking, and keep in mind that many non-basic-economy tickets can be rebooked if the price drops. The old Tuesday-booking myth matters less than dynamic pricing, though Google also has a limited price guarantee on some U.S. departures.

You can use Google Flights on the web and mobile.

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YouTube tests Tamba: standalone social app appears in Android code

YouTube for Android version 21.44.534 contains what look like references to Tamba, a new social app under a codename and tied to YouTube. Based on the code strings and visual assets in YouTube for Android 21.44.534, Tamba seems to be its own YouTube-connected product, not just another feature tucked into the main app. The pieces point to followers, follow requests, private profiles, direct messages, group chats, inbox controls, onboarding, photo and video sharing, voice replies, stickers, and even Shorts playback inside chats. If that’s where this is going, it gives people one more reason to stay inside YouTube.

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The timing tracks. Shorts reportedly now clears 2 billion monthly users and 200 billion daily views, but the reported interaction rate still trails TikTok, 0.30% against 2.60%. Inside YouTube for Android 21.44.534, the Tamba branding also has its own logo and 38 custom icons. Then there’s a separate “sandbox” package, which makes it look like the project is still in testing and could still be pulled back into YouTube instead of launching on its own.

If you use YouTube often, this one’s worth watching. Google still hasn’t made any official announcement, given a launch window, outlined a rollout plan, shared monetization details, or answered the obvious privacy questions. One of the bigger ones is whether your social graph could start taking shape from your Google account before you finish signing up. Community posts, along with the return of direct messages in some markets, already hint at the direction Google seems to be heading.

For now, these references only show up in YouTube for Android 21.44.534, and Google hasn’t made Tamba public.

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Cabinet of Curiosities is still Netflix’s best Lovecraftian horror series

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities arrived on Netflix in October 2022 as an eight-episode anthology, and it still stands as one of TV’s sharpest versions of Lovecraft-style cosmic horror. Del Toro created it and executive produced it, and the rollout had its own little bit of ceremony: a four-night event, with two episodes dropping each day. The show doesn’t lean on jump scares much. It goes after something heavier, building dread through occult mystery, moral rot, monsters, gothic imagery, and those huge unknowable forces that make people feel small.

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Two episodes, “Pickman’s Model” and “The Dreams in the Witch House,” pull straight from H. P. Lovecraft. Others, especially “The Viewing” and “Lot 36,” work in the same territory without being direct adaptations, drawing on forbidden knowledge, cult iconography, tentacled horror, and the mental toll of running into something the mind can’t really process. The series also sidesteps some of Lovecraft’s hardest material to adapt, including his ambiguity, racism, and xenophobia, using modern casting and shifts in emphasis instead of taking them on as directly as Lovecraft Country did.

If you’re after well-reviewed horror with a strong director’s stamp on it, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is an easy one to pick up. The practical effects help, the production design won an Emmy, and the show’s reputation kept growing in the post-The Walking Dead horror-TV space. Even so, Netflix still hadn’t confirmed a second season by late 2023, despite del Toro saying he wanted to make more.

You can stream Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix.

Pokémon’s Charizard ring is out now: $44.99 anniversary merch

Per the official Pokémon Center listing, Pokémon’s Evolve to Charizard Ring is out now at $44.99, giving the franchise one more Charizard collectible as it builds toward the 30th anniversary in 2026.

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The ring comes with a medical-grade silicone band etched with Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard artwork. It’s sold in adult sizes, though size 13 has already sold out on the official Pokémon Center store.

Enso has a couple of other Pokémon rings up as well: a $44.99 Gengar ring and a $129.99 double-banded Mewtwo version, based on Enso’s own product listings. The Charizard ring also fits neatly into the larger Gen 1 nostalgia run. Charizard keeps showing up at the front of the anniversary merch line, from Adidas sneakers and a Sean Wotherspoon plush to the September 16 30th Celebration TCG set, McDonald’s Happy Meals, Re-Ment’s Shower Splash figure, and a China-only 3D version of Mitsuhiro Arita’s Base Set art, all of it laid out across official Pokémon and partner announcements. That’s happening even though The Pokémon Company hasn’t given Charizard a redesign in the games or the anime.

If you’re collecting anniversary merch, this feels like an easy pickup, especially with Pokémon also rolling out Adidas apparel, FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch and Switch 2, a November 30 countdown, and a 30th Celebration card set that includes classic reprints, an updated foil Base Set Charizard, and a guaranteed foil in every pack, alongside mascots like Pikachu, Gengar, and Eevee, based on official anniversary announcements.

It’s available now through the official Pokémon Center.

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The Expanse: Prime Video rescued it after Syfy canceled season 3

The Expanse, adapted from James S. A. Corey’s novels, was dropped by Syfy after season 3. Amazon Prime Video picked it up after that, gave it three more seasons, and the series finally wrapped in 2022.

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Syfy’s decision had more to do with the business arrangement than with the show’s quality. Reports said the network only had first-run U.S. linear rights, so there wasn’t much streaming upside for a series that cost a lot to make and leaned heavily on visual effects. Season 1 pulled in roughly 700,000 viewers and a 0.22 rating among adults 18 to 49, which was respectable, but not enough to justify that kind of expense.

The effort to save The Expanse turned into one of the biggest fan campaigns of the streaming era. #SaveTheExpanse topped 100,000 signatures, fans paid for a plane banner over Amazon Studios, George R.R. Martin, Wil Wheaton, and Patton Oswalt all backed it, and then Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced the renewal. Amazon reportedly came in with a bigger budget, more flexible episode lengths, fewer restrictions, and then saw U.S. demand jump 34% after season 4.

If you like grounded sci-fi, The Expanse is absolutely worth a look. It gives you strong physics, serious politics between Earth, Mars, and the Belt, and a better stretch once it gets past some early pacing issues, budget pressure, and compressed material from the books. The six seasons cover the first six novels, while the final three books are still there for any future adaptation.

You can watch the full six-season run of The Expanse on Prime Video.

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Google adds a Gemini off switch for K-12 schools: but turning it off also blocks Search

Google has changed the default settings for K-12 school accounts. Starting in early 2027, Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Gemini in Classroom will be switched off by default for student accounts.

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School admins will have to turn those tools on themselves if they want students to use them. But there’s a catch: if you keep Google’s generative AI tools blocked, those students also lose access to Google Search. Google says Search and its newer features are now tied together closely enough that it can’t separate them for school accounts, so students will get a notice saying Google Search isn’t available through the school account.

That gives schools more fine-grained control than they had before, and it’s a noticeable change from August, when Google set Gemini to turn on by default in Google Classroom for a user base that, by Google’s count, includes tens of millions of Chromebook users and about 150 million students and teachers. If a school does choose to opt in, Google says both Google Search and Google Classroom will pick up Guided Learning features that work more like a tutor. The pitch there is pretty clear: answer the complaints about cheating, overreliance, and weaker critical-thinking skills.

If you handle Google accounts for a school district, keep an eye on this. Districts such as New York City and Los Angeles have already put limits on Gemini and similar tools, and critics including Lina Khan, Randi Weingarten, and Fairplay say tying Google Search to Gemini starts to look a lot like bundling. The rollout affects Google accounts for K-12 schools starting in early 2027.

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Need for Speed: Underground 2 launches in browsers: fan project revives online multiplayer

Underground 2 Revived just landed for Chrome and Firefox. It’s a browser-playable version of Need for Speed: Underground 2, and online multiplayer is back with it. Developer th0mk says this isn’t running through a standard emulator. Underground 2 Revived is built on TalhaMudo’s NFSU2Recomp, which takes the PC game’s x86 code, converts it to C, and then compiles that into WebAssembly. The package includes widescreen support, free roam, online races, frame rates up to 120 fps, WebGPU graphics, Web Audio, and support for keyboards, gamepads, racing wheels, and touch controls.

If you’ve been looking for a reason to head back to Bayview, this is a pretty good one. When this was written, Underground 2 Revived showed around 5,000 players online, with roughly 2,000 of them in free roam and about 400 sitting in races or lobbies. You can see up to 32 nearby racers at once, and th0mk says the custom server can handle as many as 6,000 players inside one virtual LAN. He also says the whole project started for a simple reason: he wanted to play with his brother again.

Google Chrome Download

You can boot up Underground 2 Revived from the public site in Chrome or Firefox, though GitHub makes clear that you’re expected to bring your own copy of the game, since the project doesn’t ship with the original code or assets. Reports say the site pulls down about 2 GB of game data. The EA copyright side of this is still unresolved.

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macOS 27.3 beta 1 now brings proper Markdown previews to Quick Look

Apple has updated macOS 27.3 beta 1 so Quick Look now renders Markdown natively. In Finder, .md files finally preview as formatted documents instead of showing raw syntax.

Until now, pressing the Space bar on a Markdown file gave you plain text full of hashtags, asterisks, and list markup. In macOS 27.3 beta 1, Quick Look displays headings, lists links, and the rest of the formatting directly.

If you write, code, or spend time managing Markdown notes, README files, documentation, blog drafts, or instruction files, this makes day-to-day browsing a lot easier. You can scan files faster, check structure at a glance, and avoid bouncing out to an editor or browser just to confirm that something looks right.

For people who use Markdown all the time, macOS 27.3 beta 1 is an easy update to justify. It saves small bits of time over and over across the day, and it lines up with Apple’s broader Markdown push in Notes and in newer Apple developer tools that use SKILL.md files.

This also cuts into the need for utilities like QLMarkdown or Peekdown. Those apps still have a place if you want extras like custom themes, richer code highlighting, or diagram rendering, but for basic previewing, macOS now handles the job on its own.

You can get it in Apple’s macOS 27.3 beta 1 for Mac.

Rockstar’s spoiler takedown warning resurfaces ahead of GTA 6

As Grand Theft Auto VI gets closer, an older Rockstar Games copyright policy is making the rounds again. The language on the company’s support page is pretty direct about spoilers: some uploads that give away major story beats can be taken down.

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Rockstar says gameplay videos, machinima, and commentary-heavy Let’s Plays are usually fine to upload. Where it draws the line is more specific than that. Ending videos , edited cutscene compilations, story dialogue, other big reveals, and standalone cinematics can all be removed. Based on Rockstar’s own wording, cutscenes are on safer ground when they’re included as part of a larger gameplay video, not uploaded on their own.

This isn’t some brand-new GTA 6 rule. The support page was last updated in January 2025, and the policy applies across Rockstar’s catalog. It just hits differently now, because once the game is out you’re almost guaranteed to see launch-week story clips all over social feeds, YouTube, and livestreams. At the same time, some players are already planning spoiler blackouts, and forums are getting stricter about spoiler tags.

If you stream GTA 6 or post about it a lot, go read the policy before you upload anything. Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar have a long history with DMCA s tied to leaks and unauthorized distribution. That reportedly includes 2026 subpoenas involving Discord and X after major leaks. The policy still doesn’t spell out when spoilers stop being a problem, and facts, summaries, criticism, and commentary are usually treated differently from straight copyrighted footage. So not every spoiler post carries the same level of risk, something Grand Theft Auto V ending videos already showed.

The full wording is on Rockstar Games’ support page if you want to check it before posting.

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