Quante volte ci si chiede se un musicista ormai datato della scena artistica mondiale, con decine e decine di album pubblicati, abbia ancora qualcosa di nuovo da farci sentire? ... Leggi e ascolta...

ᗩᐯᗩIᒪᗩᗷᒪᗴ

2025-07-01 06:28:10

Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball (2012)

Quante volte ci si chiede se un musicista ormai datato della scena artistica mondiale, con decine e decine di album pubblicati, abbia ancora qualcosa di nuovo da farci sentire? E' molto probabile che, se il musicista non appartiene alla nostra sfera di preferenza, lo si liquidi subito, a volte ancor prima di ascoltarlo, con un bel “niente di nuovo”, “album inutile”, “ormai finito” ecc. ecc.; se invece è un nostro beniamino o ancor meglio apparteniamo alla sfera dei suoi fans incalliti, è molto probabile che il nostro giudizio sia “oscurato” dal classico velo affettivo che, per carità non è “pietoso”, ma senz'altro poco obbiettivo. Ecco, tutta questa premessa per arrivare a dire che, personalmente, pur appartenendo alla seconda sfera, quella dei fan incalliti e non da tempi recenti, serenamente affermo che Wrecking Ball è un buon album e il nostro sessantatreenne “The Boss” riesce a dirci ancora molto!... artesuono.blogspot.com/2014/07…

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Ascolta: album.link/i/581786624

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Home – Identità DigitaleSono su: Mastodon.uno - Pixelfed - Feddit

Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball (2012)

di Silvano Bottaro Quante volte ci si chiede se un musicista ormai datato della scena artistica mondiale, con decine e decine di album pu...

^{Silvano Bottaro (Blogger)}

Fears that DDR4 has hit the end of the road and the return of tariffs may be to blame

DRAM spot prices doubled last week

: Fears that DDR4 has hit the end of the road and the return of tariffs may be to blame

^{Simon Sharwood (The Register)}

In addition to the recently released Mjölner Warp Titan Build Showcase we wanted to take a minute to showcase a few lesser known builds!

Puffettt is an Incinerate Lich! By making use of the Blackflame Amethyst Ring and a few jewels with Increased Magnitude of Ignite and Increased Magnitude of Ailments Puffettt is able to Incinerate anything they walk near!

has combined the Occult Skill Gems Bone Cage and Bonestorm with the strengths of the Smith of Kitava! By using The Deepest Tower and Trampletoe Uniques in combination with increased damage on low life nodes on the passive tree Jorgen has created a simplistic yet destructive build!

うぉぉーくろくろのまんさぁ is playing a Support Chronomancer, while they wont be able to kill hordes of monsters themselves they will make sure their party members are nice and safe, not only by stopping time and cursing monsters with Temporal Chains and Enfeeble, they're also using the Merit of Service unique to increase their allies Block Chance!

is playing a Glacial Lance Deadeye! The neat interaction between Voltaic Mark, Cast on Freeze and Herald of Thunder provide this build with more than enough map clearing capability! They've even included Wind Serpent's Fury for even more single-target damage.

Build Showcase is a series where we look at interesting builds from the Path of Exile 2 community that have caught our attention.

This Titan was put together by DeadRabbit and uses the latest in slam technology to warp around the map, blow up screens and chunk pinnacle bosses in seconds. Check out the video below.

For more information on this build, check out DeadRabbit's video guide .

Patch 0.2.1 for Path of Exile 2 introduced several new Unique Items, including the Last Lament. This Unique Crossbow quickly caught players' attention---not just for its in-game power, but also for its distinctive visual design and unique sound. In this news post, our Senior Sound Designer Dominic dives into the process behind creating skill sound for the Last Lament.

Hi, I'm Dominic Downing, Senior Sound Designer at Grinding Gear Games. I joined the team at the start of 2020. Delirium was my first league I worked on, and I had to figure out joining the team mid-pandemic... it was a wild time! These days, I handle skill and combat audio for Path of Exile alongside another talented sound designer.

Dominic (left) and Roco (right) - Skill Sound Designers

In this post, I'll take you behind the scenes of skill audio design in Path of Exile 2, from concept to implementation.

Why Skill Audio Matters

Skills are part of the core of Path of Exile's gameplay, and sound plays a huge role in reinforcing what they do and how they feel. A well-designed skill sound can signal danger, enhance impact, or even invoke safety. For example, a player casting Detonate Dead shouldn't sound as threatening to the player as a monster with the Detonate Dead rare monster modifier; you need to feel the difference.

The Design Process

Understanding the Skill

We work closely with designers and animators to understand what a skill does, its damage type, area of effect, whether it does damage over time, offers utility, and so on. Since we use our own engine, we are easily able to work with programmers to build or improve systems for audio integration. It's a very collaborative process. Some examples: being able to tell if a grenade is in the air, rolling, or bouncing, or if a skill is going to repeat in quick succession because of another in-game mechanic, like Barrage. It's also important to test each skill in-game with a variety of character builds to ensure the audio holds up in all kinds of scenarios.

Source Material

Most of our sounds are a blend of recorded Foley (sometimes even our voices), library assets, and synthesis. For things like vocal layers, cloth movement, or rocks, we can easily jump into the sound booth to record unique elements. It's a lot of fun and a great excuse to be a bit crazy without judgment!

Synthesis is a fun and powerful way to create sounds, and I often use my Eurorack setup for this. Eurorack is a form of modular synthesis that lets you build a synth or sound from the ground up. Using white noise and creative filtering, modulated with Erica Synths' Joystick 2, I can produce movement of the sound for each skill, creating some of the windy textures you'll hear in some of the wind skills. Modules like Schlappi Engineering's 100 Grit and Make Noise's Wogglebug are perfect for creating noisy, electrical textures, great for lightning-based skills. And for tonal, bell-like sounds, ideal for elemental magic, I often turn to the Rings module from Mutable Instruments. Recording weird, unexpected sounds like these is honestly one of the best parts of the job.

Prototyping & Testing

You don't know how a sound works until it's in the game. As I mentioned earlier, we test skills early on, across different builds, areas, and support gems. Randomisation and layering help keep sounds fresh and immersive. But getting sounds into the game as soon as possible during development is key. This way, we catch issues early and avoid spending too much time polishing something that doesn't fit with gameplay. It's better to create quick drafts, test them in-game, and make small tweaks than to perfect something upfront, only to discover major changes are needed later. We also have to manage technical limits like voice count (which is the maximum amount of sounds that can play at any time) and cooldowns (which is how soon a sound can play again after already playing). For example, if a skill fires multiple projectiles with the same sounds playing simultaneously, we need to make sure the audio doesn't overload or cut out. And when you're playing in a party, we consider how skill sounds affect other players; should your skill sound just as epic to them as it does to you?

Implementation

We use FMOD, plus internal tools bespoke to Path of Exile. Over time, these tools have evolved based on direct feedback. I'll think, "man, I wish I could just do X", and our programming teams will make it a reality. It's a dream!

Clarity in the Ruckus

Combat in Path of Exile can be a ruckus, so we always ask: what's most important for the player to hear? Audio needs to guide, not overwhelm. We balance sounds through mixing, making sure everything fits together without getting too loud or quiet. We use a technique called 'ducking' to lower less important sounds, so key sounds stand out. Distance attenuation makes sounds quieter as they get farther away, helping create a sense of space. And priority systems decide which sounds get played or heard first when many happen at once, so players don't miss critical cues like danger.

Deep Dive (The Last Lament Unique Crossbow)

The Last Lament, a unique crossbow we introduced in the 0.2.1 patch for Path of Exile 2, adds melodic tonal elements to combat, which is something we normally try to very explicitly avoid. Musical sounds can easily clash with the game's music or get tiring over time. But The Last Lament is a bit of an exception. The crossbow 3D model itself resembles a musical instrument, and based on the nature of the lore behind this item, we wanted to make this one special and create room within the soundscape to support it.

Design intent

There's a haunting, gothic, and musical theme baked into the core identity of The Last Lament. Its inherent skill, Compose Requiem, fires soul-like projectiles that explode on impact, accompanied by operatic voices and subtle musical layers. The goal was to make the shots feel sorrowful and haunting, reflecting the eternal anguish within the weapon, while keeping them musical to match the weapon's identity, without compromising gameplay clarity.

Layer choices & Processing

The base shot needed to feel familiar, like the other crossbows, so it wouldn't sound weaker or stronger than it actually is. I reused some of the usual crossbow layers like real crossbow recordings, gunshot tails, and cannon transients (they've got a nice pop to them). Then I layered in ghostly whispers, short screams, resonant metallic creaks, string-like hits, and some distant musical textures. I wanted it to feel musical, but not in a cheesy music box kind of way.

Michael Collier, one of our talented composers, helped here by sourcing some harpsichord notes, with subtle organ and kannel underneath. They play in a 3/4 rhythm, and the tempo shifts slightly based on your attack speed.

For the processing side of things, I kept it pretty simple in Reaper (my choice of digital audio workstation). Saturation was great for adding grit to the impacts, and I used pitch and frequency shifting to shape the tone and weight of each layer. Frequency shifting moves all frequencies by the same amount, ignoring their harmonic relationship, while pitch shifting preserves it. Saturation also adds harmonics, which gives sounds a textured, warm and often gritty feel. EQ was used to clean things up, cut unwanted frequencies, and boost the ones I wanted more of. A stereo imaging plugin helped widen the sound and make it feel a bit more epic, and some light compression kept the overall loudness balanced. That was pretty much it.

Iteration & Feedback

One of Compose Requiem's earlier prototypes was a more note-heavy concept. We experimented with different musical approaches, but we realised the fire rate was just too fast, and gameplay is simply too chaotic for that kind of musical structure.

With the deadline creeping up, we pivoted. That's when the idea of operatic souls escaping with each shot came up, which later influenced the unique's lore too. We tried placeholder singing samples that triggered randomly. This was better, but still too much. In the end, with help from our gameplay programming team, we set up a system using a simple boolean parameter to only play a more finely crafted vocal while actively firing instead of it playing on each shot (which in the end does actually have subtle notes). That nailed it.

FMOD Implementation & Design

FMOD is the audio middleware we use to connect sound design to gameplay. It lets us control how and when sounds play, and adds variety, layering, and dynamics so things feel responsive and alive.

For Compose Requiem, the base shot and the musical notes are separate sounds. The shots have pitch and gain modulation to keep things varied and immersive, while the notes only have gain modulation since pitching the notes would throw them out of key with the music bed and vocals.

Early in development, to keep Compose Requiem's melody from feeling repetitive, I created 16 sound events in FMOD. Each event plays a unique six-note sequence forming its own melody that sits over the skill's music bed. When the crossbow fires, it triggers an event that uses a counter parameter with values from 1 to 16. Each value selects one of the 16 melodies to play in sequence. Within the event, command instruments trigger these melodies based on the counter's value. There's also a secret seventh instrument inside each melody's playlist, a multi-instrument that instantly changes the counter to a new random value (between 1 and 16, but excluding the current one). This setup keeps the music flowing smoothly and fresh by randomly switching between melodies without repeating.

Since the skill has a fixed 12-second duration, we didn't need to loop anything (a looping audio asset is an audio clip that seamlessly repeats). When it's active, the game mutes all other music except what's triggered by the crossbow. Often, skills are affected by various modifiers, and their duration can vary. This is when we would find ourselves using looping audio so it can start and stop whenever necessary.

Upon activating Compose Requiem, a visual soul-like burst with ghostly flames appears on the crossbow. I made a short activation sound to match, like the souls are trying to escape. This is followed by looping audio that lingers while the skill is active, sort of like the spirits are watching or peering through a door. At the end, it fades out with a subtle release sound. It's all handled in one FMOD event using a loop region and a transition region. When the visual effect is deleted in-game, the event starts stopping, which triggers the transition to an "end" marker where the fade-out plays.

The soul projectiles you fire are set up pretty simply. The initial shot has some soul-like layers, but I added looping audio while they're flying through the air, plus an impact explosion made up of vocal textures, debris, and various thick impacts. These have pitch and gain modulation, distance attenuation, and some Doppler on the loops.

Once everything's hooked up, I go in-game and do a mixing pass, mostly balancing loudness and tweaking how big or small things feel, as well as what is important to the player and maybe not so important to potential party members. Sometimes this means going back and editing the original assets. I make sure to test in all kinds of contexts like early-game, late-game, and stupidly juiced maps so it always feels right, no matter how you're playing. It's so important to understand the game you're working on in and out.

Deep Dive Wrap-up

Ultimately, the sound design for The Last Lament didn't need to happen, but the item itself was screaming for some special attention. The goal was to make it feel as special as possible without pulling the player out of the world. Throughout experimentation and design, we constantly focused on serving gameplay first. It doesn't matter how cool something sounds; if it gets in the way of a player winning at Path of Exile, then it's not actually that cool.

Most of my decisions are shaped by my experience playing the game. No matter how weird or musical it got, it still had to find its place in Path of Exile and, most importantly, serve the player. This is a philosophy that I see every day at Grinding Gear Games, and I'm proud to work on such an awesome game with amazing people.

Conclusion

Every sound in Path of Exile needs to have a clear purpose. If it doesn't, it just ends up as noise cluttering the experience. One big lesson I've learned is that instead of always trying to make the big sounds bigger, it's often more powerful to make the smaller sounds more subtle. That contrast is what really makes the impacts hit.

Working on Path of Exile is an honour. It's a game I've loved for years, and I still play it after work. Next time you're running a map, listen closely, there's a whole lot going on under the hood!

After taking many of our players' names, we put Viper in the ring against Ketzuli to see if she could take one more. Find out what happens in the aftermath of today's Boss VS Boss!

Let us know who you'd like to see battle it out next!

3.26.0d Patch Notes

Mercenaries League

• Lowered the damage of the following skills on Enemy Mercenaries (not when allied): Shield Crush, Intimidating Cry, Tempest Shield, Purifying Flame, Meteor, Flame Dash, Scorching Ray Totem, Reap, Corrupted Blade Vortex of the Scythe, Vaal Reap, Exsanguinate, Static Strike, Frost Blades, Vaal Burning Arrow, Burning Arrow, Absolution, Raise Spectre of Transience, all Reinforce skills.
• Fixed Mercenaries aligned with all three attributes (Str/Dex/Int) being unable to equip items with all three attribute requirements.
• Gilded Beam Width can no longer spawn on Mercenaries as a support for Unnerving Blast. It did not do anything and was mistakenly a valid option.
• Fixed a bug where the "Cross Contamination 6" Challenge was only counting Ore Deposit Encounters completed in Delirium Maps. It now also counts those completed in Delirium encounters created by Delirium Mirrors.
• Fixed a bug where completing an Abyssal Depth at level 81 or 82 would not award completion for Unreal Undertakings Challenge.
• Fixed a bug where Loreweave would not contribute towards the Peddler's Produce Challenge.
• Fixed a bug where defeating the Elder with an Active Mercenary did not complete the Paired Pinnacles Challenge.
• Updated the description for Mercenary Offering skills to clarify that they affect the minions of the Offering skills' owner, and not all allied minions.
• Improved Mercenary Inventory navigation in Controller UI.
• Fixed not being able to scroll down in the Mercenary Stats Panel in Controller UI.

Other Improvements and Fixes

• Changed the damage dealt by the Trial Horror monster variety to use standard damage scaling instead of percent life based scaling. This also applies to the spectred version of the monster.
• The Memory of Familiarity Petal Skill now converts all dropped non-unique items to be of the same type (previously unique items would be converted to the same type as well).
• Apparition Shrine Buffs from the Domination Scarab of Apparitions have had their damage increased back to where they were before, and now only apply to the buff gained by the player.
• Restored the Dancing Dervish interaction with Chains of Command unique that changed in 3.26. Instead of manifested Dervishes being considered animated only for that unique's modifiers without that being described, the item now specifies it works with animated and manifested minions.
• The following monsters have been fixed visually as spectres and have been enabled again: Despair Remnant, Pain Remnant, Twisted Recollection, Eternal Regret, Feral Memory, Screaming Loneliness, Vicious Memory
• Enabled The Bargain, The Mayor, Squandered Prosperity, Monochrome, Sambodhi's Wisdom, and the Underground Forest Divination Cards to be used on the Currency Exchange.
• Rare monsters are now limited to only display 8 modifier descriptions at most, with more (such as from the Allflame Ember of Propagation) showing as "...and X other modifiers."
• Expedition Remnants associated with a specific civilization in Logbooks now use a different minimap icon to regular Remnants.
• You can now open Dannig's "Exchange Items" screen using ctrl+alt+left click.
• Fixed a bug where Orb of Unravelling could upgrade crafted mods.
• Fixed a bug where Orb of Unravelling could be used on unidentified items.
• Fixed a bug where the 8 Modifier Corruption outcome on Originator Influenced Maps resulted in all Map Modifiers being Tier 17 Map Modifiers (rather than a mixture of Tier 16 and Tier 17).
• Fixed an issue introduced in 3.26.0 where the Shipping and Disenchant options were sometimes not visible for existing characters in Standard League, this can be fixed by using /recheck_achievements after the patch.
• Fixed a bug with The Trickster's Smile Unique Helmet where "When an Enemy Hit deals Elemental Damage to you, their Resistance to those Elements becomes zero for 4 seconds" would apply for self-inflicted damage.
• Fixed a case where a tree could appear on top of the crafting recipe in the Precinct Map.
• Fixed an issue where the Novamark Runegraft wasn't working with Blade Blast Skill variants.
• Fixed a bug where The Dark Monarch unique item could prevent you from having Totems, Traps, and Mines.
• Fixed a bug where the Temporal Chains curse effect was not correctly applying to players when using the Profane Proxy Unique Ring.
• Fixed bug where Tower of Ordeals could be obtained from a Voidborn Reliquary or Valdos Puzzle Box.
• Fixed the Totem limit from Cadigan's Authority Unique Sceptre also incorrectly applying to minions.
• Fixed the Sacred Blossom fragment not being tradable on the Currency Exchange.
• Fixed non-boss monsters in the Mastermind fight not giving drops or experience.
• Fixed a bug in Ruthless where Safehouse Trapped Stashes were not generating any items.
• Fixed cases of some Currencies failing to highlight or highlighting applicable items incorrectly when being used.
• Fixed a bug where the Voidborn Reliquary and Valdo's Puzzle Box were unable to reward Ritual-specific unique items.
• Fixed The Trialmaster being able to move and attack while the game was paused if he was encountered during an Ultimatum encounter.
• Fixed a bug where walls created by summoned map bosses in the Maven's boss fight would continue to block movement even after being removed.
• Fixed the description of Glacial Cascade to correctly state that the final spike has 100% more radius, rather than 100% more area of effect. This is purely a description change.
• Fixed a bug in Controller UI where the Annoint interface would not allow you to overwrite existing annointments.
• Fixed a bug in Controller UI where popups for socketed items would not always be displayed.
• Fixed a bug in Controller UI where the game would not always unpause after closing the Delve map interface.
• Fixed a client crash related to the Ring of the Demon Slayer microtransaction.
• Fixed 4 instance crashes.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0d Patch Notes - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

Secrets of the Atlas features three new Pinnacle Bosses which you face in order to uncover the secrets of Caeserius family. In this expansion we have also introduced the exclusive Watchers' Wrath Armour Set which you can earn by completing challenges in the league. For this news post we've gathered pieces of concept art for three new Pinnacles and the Armour Set. Check them out below:

Incarnation of Fear

Incarnation of Neglect

Incarnation of Dread

The Watcher's Wrath Armour Set

Eagon Caeserius

We'd like to provide an update on a few important things that have been happening in Path of Exile.

Server Issues

We've been very focused on improving DDoS protection for our servers. Unfortunately, some of the protective measures have blocked legitimate traffic, causing instances to unexpectedly close. We're working closely with our server providers to finish setting up protection and resolve these issues as soon as possible.

Compromised Accounts

There have recently been an increased amount of reports regarding players having their accounts compromised. We've looked into as many reports as we could, and will continue to do so, however we have found no evidence of any kind of security breach on our end. If you're not already, we strongly recommend using secure and unique passwords. If you login through Steam but previously used the Standalone client, your email and password is still a valid login method and you should ensure this password is secure and unique.

Visual Flickering

We're aware that gameplay elements and the game's UI will start to flicker in and out when gameplay gets a bit hectic. The engine team is urgently looking into this and we're hoping to have an update on this issue next week.

Thank you all for your patience as we work through these issues.

No expansion is complete without a soundtrack to set the tone, and the score for Path of Exile: Secrets of the Atlas certainly doesn't neglect this. Check out the tracks for the Secrets of the Atlas Original Soundtrack by Kamil Orman-Janowski and Michael James Collier in today's news post!

These tracks, along with the rest of the Path of Exile Extended Digital Soundtrack, are available for download with the purchase of any Supporter Pack here.

The Secrets of the Atlas Boss Kill Event for PC has now concluded! The race for the top 10 was close, and all bonus boss kills have been claimed!

Top 3 Placings - PC:

Congratulations to the top 3 racers, who will each get a Godslayer's Pride Amulet, a Divination Card design, and a Unique Item design for the newest bosses: The Incarnation of Dread, The Incarnation of Neglect and The Incarnation of Fear!

• Ben_#4007
• allexpleblord#4962
• nickexile11#5507

Top 10 Placings - PC:

Congratulations to the rest of the top 10, who will also get a Godslayer's Pride Amulet as well as a Divination Card design!

• Sarge2#0184
• Dsfarblarwaggle#7862
• Wyrm_GG#3008
• akuryo#0061
• Kunagi_JP#6612
• CARNDARAK#3163
• 김겨울#7178

Bonus Prizes - PC: The following players were the first to slay the bosses listed below, allowing them to design a Unique Item for that boss:

• First Catarina Kill: allexpleblord#4962
• First Uber Uber Elder Kill: Ben_#4007
• First Uber Shaper Kill: Ben_#4007
• First Uber Sirus Kill: Ben_#4007
• First Uber Cortex Kill: CARNDARAK#3163

As we stated during launch weekend, we will be running an additional Boss Kill Event for PC where the prize structure will be exactly the same as the first event. The postponed Console Boss Kill Event will also be run at the same time.

More info on when this will start will be provided soon, so keep your eye on the news.

Congratulations again to all winners of the first Secrets of the Atlas Boss Kill Event!

3.26.0c Hotfix 7

• Mercenary's Lot Unique Gloves can no longer appear on Mercenaries.
• Mercenary's Lot Unique Gloves are now capable of dropping as part of the global drop pool.
• Further reduced the damage of the following monsters in Memory Influenced Maps: Despair Remnant, Twisted Recollection, and the Screaming Loneliness.
• Fixed a bug where Johan could fail to offer the option to Visit Kingsmarch when another player was standing near him.
• Fixed a bug where the "Glorious Gemstones 4" Challenge was only counting quality from socketed Skill Gems. It now also counts quality from socketed Support Gems.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 7 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

Yesterday, Game Designer Octavian joined CardiaDarkhill, Jousis and Balormage to talk about his role at Grinding Gear Games. If you missed seeing it live, you can check it out in the video below.

Video: The Laboratory: Ft Octavian (GGG Game Designer), Jousis and Balormage!

We hope you enjoyed Octavian's unique insights.

3.26.0c Hotfix 6

• Temporarily lowered the damage from Apparition Shrine Buffs until a more definitive fix can be done to ensure the non-player version isn't dealing more damage than intended.
• Fixed a bug where the chance to apply additional Poison modifier on Betrayal's Sting Unique Ring was not scaling correctly with Noxious Catalysts. The client display for this will be updated in a later patch.
• Fixed the vendor search filter being cleared when rerolling Expedition vendors.
• Fixed 2 client crashes.
• Fixed an instance crash.

You will need to restart your client to receive the client changes in this hotfix.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 6 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

The Mercenaries of Trarthus edition of Kirac's Vault Pass has an exclusive cosmetic armour set as a reward from the premium track, themed around Path of Exile's first ever Pinnacle Boss - the Shaper. Check out some concept art for this set below!

For full details about the Mercenaries edition of Kirac's Vault, check out the Vault Pass page here. You can also see how it looks in-game in the video below!

3.26.0c Hotfix 5

• Fixed a bug where the Crafting Bench option "Reroll the rarity of a non-Unique item" could be used on Synthesised items.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 5 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.26.0c Hotfix 4

• Mercenaries now have the same Damage Reduction as with release when at Level 83 and 84, and higher Damage Reduction at the vast majority of levels.
• Overall we've put Mercenaries back to the position where they have equal, or better Damage Reduction at almost all levels, notably in Early-game where they are significantly more durable, especially from level 40+.

In Endgame, they had a level threshold where their Damage Reduction doubled, this caused an issue where Mercenaries within that threshold felt immortal (up to a point) whereas Mercenaries one below that threshold were dying constantly. We've smoothened this progression so that each level of Mercenary matters more, this has resulted in a few levels where they are taking more damage but not a significant amount.

This is all on top of the change to make them even more resilient to Damage over Time.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 4 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.26.0c Hotfix 3

• Allied Mercenaries now take 80% less damage from Damage over Time effects.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 3 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.26.0c Hotfix 2

• Fixed a bug introduced in 3.26.0c where the Mistress of Sacrifice Ascendancy Notable was causing existing Offering buffs on you to be removed when re-casting Offering Skills.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix 2 - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.26.0c Hotfix

• Fixed a client crash introduced in 3.26.0c that could occur during the tutorial.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Hotfix - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

3.26.0c Patch Notes

This patch contains balance changes to Mercenaries, notably adjusting the tankiness of allied Mercenaries, reducing the damage of their skills when fighting them in encounters, as well as a number of other improvements and bug fixes.

Mercenaries League

• Adjusted the inherent Damage Reduction on allied Mercenaries, so they take less damage at lower levels and more damage at higher levels. Enemy Mercenaries do not have hidden Damage Reduction with the exception of the Damage Reduction fall-off applied to unique monsters.
• Mitigation Ignore Support (and greater and lesser variants) can no longer appear on Mercenaries. Those on existing Mercenaries will be retained.
• Fixed Rain of Arrows of Saturation on Mercenaries firing far fewer arrows than intended.
• The following changes only apply to Enemy Mercenaries:
  
  • Critical Strike Multiplier Modifiers on Mercenary Equipment now apply at 50% of their value.
  • Power/Endurance/Frenzy charges on Mercenaries now use player values instead of monster values. (E.g. 50% increased Critical Strike Chance per Power Charge instead of 200%)
  • Reduced the damage of the following skills for Enemy Mercenaries: Absolution, Arc, Ball Lightning of Static, Bane, Blast Rain of Trarthus, Blight, Corrupted Blade Vortex of the Scythe, Creeping Frost Trap, Essence Drain of Wickedness, Exsanguinate, Flame Dash, Greater Flame Dash, Greater Shock Nova, Greater Soulrend, Greater Stormcall, Greater Vortex Trap, Holy Mortar, Molten Well, Reap, Shield Charge, Sigil of Power, Storm Call of Trarthus, Stormcall, Toxic Rain, Vaal Caustic Arrow, Vaal Flameblast, Vaal Molten Strike, Vaal Reap, Viper Strike, Vortex, Wrath.

  
  

Other Improvements and Fixes

• The Cardinal of Fear, The Neglected Flame, and The Deceitful God have had their life reduced by 20%.
• Raulf's reroll with high quality recruits button now costs 20,000 gold (from 24,000), to ensure it is more gold efficient for finding rank 5 workers.
• The Map Device Rucksack is now also shown on the map device used for accessing The Maven's Invitations and Memory Lines.
• Repeating the same map in a Memory Thread now penalises Item Quantity more, and cannot have Eldritch Influence.
• Disabled the following monsters as spectres as they are currently visually broken: Despair Remnant, Pain Remnant, Twisted Recollection, Eternal Regret, Feral Memory, Screaming Loneliness, Vicious Memory.
• Moved Johan in the Karui Shores to be next to Faustus near the waypoint and updated the quest description. This should make the Exploring Kingsmarch quest harder to accidentally miss.
• Unique items added to the core game in 3.26.0 (including those returning from Settlers of Kalguur) can now be selected for Voidborn Reliquary and Valdo's Puzzle Box submissions.
• Fixed a bug where the Incarnation of Dread boss fight could not be completable in certain cases during the collect roses phase.
• Fixed a bug where Incarnation of Dread's large beam could deal damage to players from behind the boss.
• Fixed a bug there the "Amount Offered" and "Total in Inventory" labels were not showing on currency item popups when holding Alt.
• Fixed the Kalandra's Touch Unique Ring not removing buffs granted by reflected modifiers when removing your other ring.
• Fixed the Refiner's Bargain Atlas Keystone not correctly applying the chance to convert items to Thaumaturgic Dust per item.
• Fixed the damage bonus from the Focused Channelling Support not applying correctly to the Storm Burst, Stormbind, and Winter Orb Skills.
• Fixed a bug where offerings from Queen's Hunger would persist after unequipping.
• Fixed bug where Toxic Tidings could not be put into the Divination Card Stash Tab.
• Fixed bug where Unset Rings could appear as a generated item for the Guff Crafting Spree.
• Fixed bug where Unique Talismans and Tinctures could appear as a generated items for the Leo Crafting Spree.
• Fixed a bug where Lost Shipments could give identical rewards.
• Fixed the Caster Mastery, for opening chests when you Cast a Spell, causing chests from Lost Shipments to be empty.
• Fixed a bug where Blight Ravaged maps were counting twice for Unreal Undertakings.
• Fixed a bug where Itemised Temples dropped when using Incursion Scarab of Timelines did not match the level of your current temple.
• Fixed a bug that could prevent players using Controllers from exiting a Heist.
• Fixed various cases where audio could play when the game was muted.
• Fixed an issue where players could be disconnected while their client is recovering from a GPU device crash.
• Fixed 3 client crashes.
• Fixed 4 instance crashes.

Patch Notes - 3.26.0c Patch Notes - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

^{Path of Exile}

A dark money group paid $80,000 to Noem’s personal company when she was governor of South Dakota. She did not include this income on her federal disclosure forms, a likely violation of ethics requirements, experts say.

Kristi Noem Secretly Took Personal Cut of Political Donations

^ProPublica

The bill would cut Medicaid by over $1 trillion and strip health insurance from nearly 12 million over the next decade.

Sanders: GOP Budget Bill Is “Most Dangerous” Legislation in Modern US History

^{Jake Johnson (Truthout)}

A source within the government tells journalist Erin Reed they believe the noncompliance is intentional.

Trump Admin Appears to Defy Court Order Allowing Gender-Affirming Passports

^{Erin Reed (Truthout)}

Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has proposed raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy in New York City.

Mamdani Says Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist: “What We Need More of Is Equality”

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

The deadly aid site protocol is called “Operation Salted Fish,” the Israeli name for the children’s game.

Archived version: archive.is/newest/truthout.org…

Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.

Israeli Forces Liken Gaza Aid Site Shootings to Game of “Red Light, Green Light”

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

New taxes on wind and solar are "truly bizarre, a self-defeating measure."

Senate version of "beautiful" bill will "kill" America's clean energy sector, experts say

^{Mother Jones}

The bill is targeted at harming the poor, and is projected to cause 50,000 excess deaths yearly.

Fetterman Moans He’s Missing Beach Trip to Vote on Bill Projected to Kill 50k

^{Sharon Zhang (Truthout)}

The government in Switzerland is informing that sensitive information from various federal offices has been impacted by a ransomware attack at the third-party organization Radix.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/switzerland-says-government-data-stolen-in-ransomware-attack/

We are ecstatic to announce that we have released the third experimental version of Pidgin 3.0!!! This is a pre alpha release with an official version number of 2.92.1. We will continue releasing in this fashion until we are ready for 3.0.0 which will be the release we consider ready for end users.

The release can be found on SourceForge and should show up on Flathub Beta shortly.

If you don't want to use the Flathub Beta method, there are build instructions in the README for building a flatpak locally or installing into a meson devenv. Both methods avoid installing directly to your OS installation which is preferred as there is no easy way to uninstall.

About

Just like Experimental 1 and 2, this is a milestone release. It is something we think other tinkerers and developers may want to start playing with, but it is not meant for end users.

Most things are not implemented, the user interface has not been polished at all, and there are so many bugs. As such we are asking that packagers please do not package this for your users yet as the potential support requests will be too much for us to handle at this time.

This release isn’t quite what we wanted as things just didn't align well this cycle, but there’s still a lot of good progress.

Looking forward, Experimental 4 is scheduled for 2025-09-30 and will have a version number of 2.93.0.

We have a bunch of tickets entered for Experimental 4, and you can keep an eye on the Burndown Chart for Experimental 4 to stay informed. As always, priorities and possibilities can and will change, so even if something is listed for this release that doesn't mean it will be in the release until it's actually completed.

Highlights

The main highlights for this release are preferences! We've finally added some much need new sections named Appearance, Privacy, and Development. There's not a whole lot in these three yet, but there's a bunch we want to drop in here in the future.

Appearance Preferences

Right now the appearance preference just lets you toggle formatting of message which affects all messages and can be easily restored. We have a number of things to add here in the future, but if there's something you'd like to see, let us know in the comments below!

Privacy Preferences

Just like appearance the privacy preferences page is meant to help you keep your personal information personal. In the future we'll be adding options for how Pidgin should identify itself when queried and a few other things.

Development Preferences

The development preferences are meant to make the development of Pidgin and plugins easier. Developer mode itself does a number of things right now including showing the Bonjour and XMPP protocols which are not yet functional. This way developers can work on them easily and end users won't get confused by something that's not implemented.

ChangeLog

In the past we've tried to filter the ChangeLog to just the bits that might be interesting, but going forward we're just going to include everything that was done for the release.

General

• Add a native file for macos on arm (RR 3956) (Gary Kramlich)
• Run scour over all of the svgs (RR 3990) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add discrete options for protocol plugins (RR 3994) (Gary Kramlich)
• Fix a typo in POTFILES.in for the privacy preferences (RR 3998) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add an in-development tag to all protocols that are still early in development (RR 4007) (Gary Kramlich)
• Update the flatpak to gnome 48 and to the matching birb version (RR 4038) (Gary Kramlich)

libpurple:

• Add GListModel versions of purple_account_manager_get_{disabled,enabled (PIDGIN-18067) (RR 3952) (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
• Remove GList versions of purple_account_manager_get_{disabled,enabled} (RR 3955) (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
• Update the convey plans (RR 3975) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add Purple.ContactInfo:external for tracking external contacts (PIDGIN-18090) (RR 3973) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add Purple.Conversation:url (PIDGIN-18091) (RR 3974) (Gary Kramlich)
• Make Purple.ProtocolConversation.join_channel_finish return a conversation (RR 3982) (Gary Kramlich)
• Move the connection-state implementation to Purple.Account (PIDGIN-17988) (RR 3964) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add a Purple.Account::connection-state-changed signal (PIDGIN-18087) (RR 3965) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add Purple.Presence.primitive-changed signal (PIDGIN-18025) (RR 3966) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add Purple.Contact.is_own_account (RR 3985) (Gary Kramlich)
• Create purple_core_new_settings (RR 4000) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add Purple.Protocol:tags and add unit tests for protocol properties (RR 4006) (Gary Kramlich)
• Update to birb 0.4 and use the testing helpers in libpurple (RR 4014) (Gary Kramlich)
• Remove some unused markup functions (RR 4029) (Gary Kramlich)

Pidgin

• Port PidginApplication to purple_account_manager_get_enabled_model (PIDGIN-18067) (RR 3952) (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
• Convert PidginAccountsDisabledMenu to the list model (PIDGIN-18067) (RR 3952) (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
• Convert PidginAccountsEnabledMenu to the list model (PIDGIN-18066) (RR 3954) (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
• Remove a dead assignment in Pidgin.ConversationMember (RR 3962) (Gary Kramlich)
• Fix Pidgin.Application.get_active_window to only return Pidgin.DisplayWindows (RR 3972) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add keybinding support to the channel join dialog (RR 3971) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add a preference for toggling whether or not to show formatting (PIDGIN-18081) (RR 3970) (Gary Kramlich)
• Start of the appearance preferences (PIDGIN-18082) (RR 3996) (Gary Kramlich)
• Remove the conversation preferences (RR 3995) (Gary Kramlich)
• Create a Privacy preference page with the send typing notification preference (PIDGIN-17450) (RR 3999) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add a Pidgin.PresenceIcon to Pidgin.ConversationMember (RR 4004) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add a Developer Settings preference pane (RR 4005) (Gary Kramlich)
• Update Pidgin.ProtocolChooser to hide in-development protocols (RR 4008) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add the operating system to the runtime information (PIDGIN-18005) (RR 4015) (Gary Kramlich)

Demo

• Use EionRobb's typical handle (RR 3967) (Gary Kramlich)
• Fix EionRobb's avatar (RR 3976) (Gary Kramlich)
• Fix some unbalanced G_BEGIN_DECLS (RR 3989) (Gary Kramlich)

IRCv3

• Fix privmsg going to the status window before registration is complete (RR 3963) (Gary Kramlich)
• Set the presence to offline when we receive a quit message (PIDGIN-18089) (RR 3969) (Gary Kramlich)
• Add support for away-notify (PIDGIN-18088) (RR 3968) (Gary Kramlich)
• Do a who after joining a channel (PIDGIN-17936) (RR 3981) (Gary Kramlich)
• Handle the WHOTOPIC and CHANNEL_URL messages (RR 3983) (Gary Kramlich)
• Check if a member is in a conversation before adding them (RR 3987) (Gary Kramlich)
• Handle formatting in server messages (RR 3991) (Gary Kramlich)
• Handle RPL_NOWAWAY and RPL_UNAWAY messages (RR 4003) (Gary Kramlich)
• Remove versioned API (RR 4030) (Gary Kramlich)

SIP

• A stubbed out SIP protocol plugin (RR 3988) (Gary Kramlich)
• Disable SIP by default and update the protocol summaries to reflect what will be built (RR 4028) (Gary Kramlich)

Thank You!

Thank you everyone for your continued support of Pidgin, it means a lot to us!

If you’re interested in contributing, you can check out our Contributing Guide to get started.

Also be sure to check out our merch store as well as our sticker store!

And if you’re feeling generous, you can learn how to donate to the project on our Donation Page.

Discuss this on our forum.

Session is pretty neat considering that it doesn’t require a cell phone number, unlike Signal messenger, which beats the purpose of anonymity.

I just purchased $20 in tokens. Perhaps one day in the future more people will start using it and nodes will start springing up all over, making the service much faster.

Has anyone else used or still uses Session? What are your thoughts? I think it has potential if more people have it a go.

https://www.jacoporanieri.com/blog/?p=42614

Can't we just ship Cruz off to Cancun permanently at this point?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has a plan for spectrum auctions that could take frequencies away from Wi-Fi and reallocate them for the exclusive use of wireless carriers. The plan would benefit AT&T, which is based in Cruz's home state, along with Verizon and T-Mobile.

Cruz's proposal revives a years-old controversy over whether the entire 6 GHz band should be devoted to Wi-Fi, which can use the large spectrum band for faster speeds than networks that rely solely on the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Congress is on the verge of passing legislation that would require spectrum to be auctioned off for full-power, commercially licensed use, and the question is where that spectrum will come from.

When the House of Representatives passed its so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill," it excluded all of the frequencies between 5.925 and 7.125 gigahertz from the planned spectrum auctions. But Cruz's version of the budget reconciliation bill, which is moving quickly toward a final vote, removed the 6 GHz band's protection from spectrum auctions. The Cruz bill is also controversial because it would penalize states that regulate artificial intelligence.

Instead of excluding the 6 GHz band from auctions, Cruz's bill would instead exclude the 7.4–8.4 GHz band used by the military. Under conditions set by the bill, it could be hard for the Commerce Department and Federal Communications Commission to fulfill the Congressional mandate without taking some spectrum away from Wi-Fi.

Senate GOP budget bill has little-noticed provision that could hurt your Wi-Fi

Cruz bill could take 6 GHz spectrum away from Wi-Fi, give it to mobile carriers.

^{Jon Brodkin (Ars Technica)}