Technologies

Borderlands 4: Getting the Perfect Roll On Your Favorite Gun Might Be a Lot Harder

Between the new weapon parts generation system and decreased legendary drop chances, you better strap in for a grind.

The Borderlands State of Play stream made one thing abundantly clear: The next entry in the looter shooter series is redoubling its commitment to having more guns than ever before.

While Borderlands 3 had more than one billion guns for players to tote around the galaxy, Gearbox Software is making a fundamental change to the weapon parts system to allow the generation of even more weapons in Borderlands 4.

In previous games, weapons were only able to be generated with parts from a single fictional weapons manufacturer. This meant players could learn what weapons they enjoyed using based on certain trademark traits from different manufacturers.

For example, Vladof weapons were fully-automatic bullet hoses, Hyperion weapons became more accurate with continued fire and Torgue weapons fired explosive rounds. Each manufacturer had quirks and players knew more-or-less what weapon they were farming for, even if a particular drop didn’t have the perfect parts for the most desirable stats.

The State of Play revealed new weapon manufacturers, including Order weapons that charge up railgun-like shotgun blasts, fully automatic Ripper weapons that fire speedy flak rounds and reliable Daedalus weapons that allow you to swap ammo types on the go.

Now, randomly generated weapons can have parts from multiple different manufacturers. You might loot a weapon that has a Hyperion grip, a Tediore magazine and a Vladof barrel, allowing you to rip through enemies with increasing accuracy until you throw the gun away with an explosive flourish. It sounds very cool on paper, but in practice, it could make Borderlands 4’s endgame much harder.

Taking on Borderlands’ biggest challenges — especially raid bosses — has always been a challenge for the most dedicated players who spent time getting the best possible rolls on their loot. This meant farming the same enemies until they dropped the right weapon with the right weapon parts and perks to get the job done.

In Borderlands 4, a massive pool of weapon parts from other manufacturers is going to make it way harder to generate the drop you’re looking for. Legendary gun drop rates are already getting nerfed from the previous game — which means farming the right parts on a specific legendary weapon necessary for your build will be harder than ever before.

Borderlands 4 could potentially have the most interesting buildcrafting in the series, what with how many moving parts there are in the player arsenal. But it remains to be seen if strong builds will be easily accessible to everyone, or if the new loot mechanics will ensure that the strongest weapons only land in the laps of the most insanely dedicated (or luckiest) Borderlands 4 players.

Looting might be the biggest draw for Borderlands fans, but other big changes are coming in the next game, too.

Borderlands 4 is moving the series toward movement shooter territory, as every playable vault hunter will be able to dash, double jump, glide and grapple across the terrain. Certain areas also have ziplines that will let you shoot into the air to get a better view of the world, before you spawn the new Digirunner vehicle (which looks like a hybrid between Destiny’s Sparrow hoverbikes and Halo’s Ghost) to speed toward your destination.

The game will be fully crossplay-enabled at launch, which pairs well with the new co-op quality of life features. Your campaign difficulty and generated loot will be completely instanced from your friends, which means no one will have to fight over the world settings.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll no longer have to reload an area to fight a boss again. Borderlands 4 boss arenas will contain a lever that respawns the encounter, so you can leap right back into the action without a mandatory trip to the main menu.

This is the perfect time to implement the feature, because between the weapon parts changes and the legendary loot drop nerfs, it’s safe to assume you’ll be fighting bosses over and over if you’re chasing a specific weapon roll in Gearbox’s next big looter shooter.

Technologies

Microsoft’s Nadella says AI needs an ‘emergency brake’ that humans control

Nadella joined other tech moguls and researchers in calling for stronger safeguards and, in some cases, for the pacing of frontier development.

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Technologies

Kremlin Confirms Putin Transmitted Iran’s War Resolution Plan to Trump

The Kremlin says Putin relayed Iran’s proposal for ending the war to Trump, while Trump announced a Russian diesel supply deal that drew sharp criticism from Zelenskyy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin communicated Tehran’s perspective on a potential conclusion to the conflict in Iran to U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Russian state media reports on Saturday.

This disclosure follows Trump’s Friday statement that Russia will provide diesel to global markets amid soaring energy prices driven by the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Russia’s Interfax news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that Putin conveyed the message to Trump “in agreement with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian,” per a Google translation.

Additional Russian media accounts indicate Putin spoke with Trump by phone after meeting Pezeshkian on the margins of a summit in Turkmenistan.

Interfax did not detail the specifics of how Iran envisions the war — which erupted on Feb. 28 with U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets — reaching an end.

The White House did not immediately respond to Verum’s emailed request to confirm the reported conversation between Putin and Trump.

Russia supply deal

Trump announced Friday that Russia will deliver more than 4 million tons of diesel to the global market under an arrangement he said he agreed with Putin during a phone call.

Russia will immediately supply over 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons immediately after, Trump posted on Truth Social. Moscow will then provide another 3 million tons of diesel contingent on the condition of Russia’s refineries, Trump added.

The Treasury Department temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel through April 2027 under a general license issued Friday.

Iran has intensified attacks on oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz, with vessels coming under fire almost daily as Tehran attempts to choke off a rebound in crude exports.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard official stated Wednesday that Iran will block all “illicit routes” through Hormuz, according to the Fars News Agency, an outlet considered close to the Guard.

The surge in tanker attacks coincides with crude oil exports from the Middle East rebounding in September to prewar levels, largely because the U.S. military escorted ships through Hormuz along Oman’s coast.

An interim agreement signed in June between the U.S. and Iran to pause hostilities to allow for negotiations quickly collapsed.

‘Gifts to Putin’

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy immediately denounced Trump’s diesel deal with Putin. Ukraine’s leader warned that easing sanctions without a commitment from Russia to de-escalate the war will only prolong it.

“Gifts to Putin will not bring peace or any benefit to the civilized world,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post. “Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy. Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

Diesel prices have surged worldwide as Ukraine has pounded Russian refineries, forcing Moscow to ban diesel exports to global markets. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East, further constraining fuel supplies.

Trump faces mounting political pressure to lower fuel prices ahead of the November midterm elections. Republicans confront competitive races in conservative strongholds like Iowa, where farmers feel the pinch of high diesel prices.

Technologies

AI is Changing How Lawyers Work — and Putting the Billable Hour Under Pressure

AI is reshaping the legal industry by reducing the time needed for routine tasks, challenging the traditional billable hour model, and changing how lawyers learn and practice.

Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, and it’s putting one of the profession’s oldest conventions — the billable hour — under the microscope. That’s according to legal software company Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026.

It found that among firms using AI, almost 80% said they can handle more work without increasing resources, while over 70% said it cut costs by absorbing administrative work once done by support staff.

As a result, AI is challenging some of the assumptions on which the legal profession was built, forcing firms to reevaluate how their lawyers spend their time, how they charge for it and how new lawyers learn the ropes. You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 secondsNick Rowles-DaviesLexolent Some of the U.K.’s biggest firms are already putting this into practice.

A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop artificial intelligence agents for tasks, including reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, which it says can complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, has rolled out Harvey across all practice areas this year, including for regulatory research and document analysis.

Billable hour pressure The billable hour is central to the business model of many law firms, but when AI significantly reduces the time lawyers spend sifting through and drafting documents, the economics are no longer so straightforward. “You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of legal finance fund Lexolent, based in London and Dubai, told CNBC.

About one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets, according to Clio’s report. Globally, senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years, according to a Deloitte survey.

Routine work is the most exposed, Rowles-Davies said. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process.” But complex legal work still requires human judgment, he added, particularly when interpreting AI output and determining the right strategy for a client.

Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting betterJoshua LenonClio

AI and workloads

Whether AI efficiencies ultimately make lawyers’ working lives better may depend on what firms do with the time they get back. Clio’s report found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, but only 32% want to, while 22% work weekends compared with 11% who would choose to.

Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, believes some lawyers are already seeing the benefits. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” Lenon told CNBC, as AI becomes more commonplace.

“People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”