Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict will launch on PC and consoles soon! In this news post, we've gathered all the information you need to know about what happens on launch day and how to start downloading early.

Free Weekend August 29 - September 1 PDT

To celebrate the launch of Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict, we're making the game free to play for the first time ever, for three days on all available platforms. This includes the standalone client, Steam, Epic, Xbox X|S and PlayStation 5.

As an additional gift we're offering a few exclusive cosmetics you can earn if you play during this Free Weekend. To clarify, all new and existing Path of Exile 2 players on all available platforms will be able to receive these microtransactions. Find out more about the Free Weekend here.

Private Leagues Are Now Available

Those of you who are planning to play in a Private Rise of the Abyssal League at launch are now able to create them. Click here to set up your Private League (don't forget to double check your start time upon creating)! Please note you cannot start these leagues until The Third Edict officially launches on August 29th (PDT).

The Third Edict Launch Information

The realms will go down at Aug 29, 2025 6:00 PM (GMT+0) and patching will begin shortly after.

The servers go live at: Aug 29, 2025 8:00 PM (GMT+0)

The above times are displayed in your local time zone. You'll need to be logged into your account to see these. To change your local time, go to "My Account", "Manage Account" and "Edit Preferences".

If the timezone is displaying incorrectly for you, please disregard the above timer and refer to the countdown on the front page. Two hours before the end of the countdown, the realm will go down and patching will begin shortly after. When the countdown ends, the servers will be live and you'll be able to join the Rise of the Abyssal Leagues.

The patch size for the update will be around 46GB on the standalone client and Steam. The estimated size of the patch for consoles is 38.5GB.

Predownload For Existing Path of Exile 2 Players

Our existing Path of Exile 2 players can predownload the update using a torrent file available for PC. Please keep in mind that this method, while available earlier, makes it a larger update as it includes all the existing client content. The estimated size of this download is 117GB. When patching begins for Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict you'll also have a few remaining files that you'll need to update as well.

This torrent only includes the GGPK file, so you'll need to copy it into your actual install folder once the patching server is up, no earlier than three hours before Path of Exile 2: The Third Edict launches. Please note that you can't use this GGPK file with the Steam and Epic client.

Our console players are now able to predownload The Third Edict! You will still be able to play the current version of Path of Exile 2 until the launch of The Third Edict.

Converting Premium Stash tabs for Asynchronous Trade

If you're looking to make use of the new Asynchronous Trade system, you'll be able to convert your existing Premium Stash Tabs when the website comes back up after Aug 29, 2025 6:00 PM (GMT+0). We'll announce when this feature is available on our X, so be sure to keep an eye out.

The Dawn of the Hunt Mystery Box Ends Soon

This is also your last chance to get a Dawn of the Hunt Mystery Box in Path of Exile 2! It will leave the store when our next Mystery Box becomes available! If you need some extra points, we recommend checking out the newly released Trarthan Executioner and Justice Supporter packs.

You can also claim some free cosmetics by watching your favourite content creators on Twitch! Check out this post for more information!

We can't wait to see you explore Act Four and all the new content that The Third Edict has to offer. See you at launch!

Independent artist MindGame drops “IT’S OVER.” today, a dystopian hiphop video voiced from the perspective of a sentient AI — cold, ironic, and disturbingly self-aware.
The track explores:
- 🧠 Digital decay
- 🧬 Collapse of human identity
- 🧮 AI dominance and ethical ambiguity

Released on August 29, exactly 28 years after Terminator 2’s fictional Judgment Day — a symbolic moment when machines eclipse mankind.

🎬 Teaser (2 min): youtu.be/NTW2QT1xKJo

📺 Full video premieres today at 3:14 PM ET: youtu.be/S9q6tdfAfYg

🎧 Stream: ditto.fm/its-over-mindgame

Curious to hear your thoughts — especially on the AI’s voice and its critique of human legacy.

MindGame - IT'S OVER. - [OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACK]

JUDGMENT DAY REIMAGINED – Premiering Friday, August 29 3:14 PM ET. MindGame fires a dystopian warning shot with “IT’S OVER.”August 29, 2025 – 3:14 PM ET – F...

^YouTube

The entire thing is worth watching, but some of her concluding thoughts:

And the truth is, I don't know. As with all modern famines and all genocides, what this boils down to right now is a very small group of people in positions of power needing to make different choices, basically needing to be different people, which won't happen. So the reality is there is not much we can do. But I do not want that to be mistaken for saying that we should not do what we can.

[...]

Second, I don't think constant international attention, the increasing international attention is doing nothing. The fact that focus has stayed on this issue in the news could make the difference in saving a lot of lives. In the words of one Holocaust survivor:

Today's marches are having a very hopeful aspect. It is so large, so persistent, so global, that eventually the Western leadership, which are trying to deny what is actually going on, will be forced to face up to it. And I think we are not far from that.

[...]

I am personally exhausted that the fact that this even is a controversy in the first place, that we here in the US are in the position of having to claw back rights that most of us took for granted our whole lives, but it must be done. We can't do everything, but we must do what we can.

When the streaming giant began making films guided by data that aimed to please a vast audience, the results were often generic, forgettable, artless affairs. But is there a happy ending?

Bland, easy to follow, for fans of everything: what has the Netflix algorithm done to our films?

^{Phil Hoad (The Guardian)}

If you're in need of quick inspiration, testing data, or just a bit of randomness in your day, look no further than MyRandomGenerator.com. This free, no-signup-required platform offers a suite of over 45+ random generators designed to spark creativity and simplify tasks.

What Can You Generate?

• Creative Tools: Random names, character traits, birthdays, and even Pokémon characters.
  Data & Testing: Generate fake credit card numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, and UUIDs for development purposes.
  Educational & Fun: Discover random animals, birds, languages, and countries to broaden your knowledge.
  Decision-Making: Use the Yes/No generator or the playing card tool to add an element of chance to your choices.

How It Works

All generators run directly in your browser using cryptographically secure methods, ensuring truly random results every time. There's no need to sign up, and your data remains private. Whether you're a developer needing test data or a writer seeking character names, MyRandomGenerator.com has you covered.

What Users Are Saying

• "Perfect for generating random game elements! The Pokémon generator helped me create unique encounters for my indie game." by Sarah Johnson, Game Developer
• "I use the name generator for creating example students in my lessons. It's so much better than using the same names over and over!" by Mike Chen, Teacher

With over 1 million items generated and a growing user base, MyRandomGenerator.com is trusted by creators, developers, educators, and enthusiasts worldwide.

Ready to explore? Visit MyRandomGenerator.com and let randomness inspire your next project.

This vulnerability was discovered by security researchers from The Hacker News. The following password managers have affected browser extensions that are based on DOM (Document Object Model):

• 1Password
• Bitwarden
• Dashlane
• Enpass
• iCloud Passwords
• Keeper
• LastPass
• LogMeOnce
• NordPass
• ProtonPass
• RoboForm

Password managers vulnerable: 40 million users at risk of stolen data

Most password managers are secure, but one common vulnerability makes it possible for hackers to steal your data anyway.

^{Laura Pippig (PCWorld)}

The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of slavery and white rule.

This is what the anti-woke state is — the plantation: white supremacist America under the occupation of more open white supremacists. There is no daylight between the campaign to end wokeness and the desire to see Black populations suffer, however much anti-wokeness is presented as the reasonable middle ground between the extremism of both sides — the Ku Klux Klan on one side and the bodies they hung from trees on the other.

The anti-woke in power immediately set about resurrecting their shrines to the sex traffickers of Black children and merchants of Black flesh. They immediately set out to curtail Black liberties and reverse performative efforts to reduce police shootings — however insincere. Being woke has always meant being attuned to anti-Blackness and resisting the society of white rule — which is why it is hated the world over. The colonist leaders who have shaken hands in agreement that anti-wokeness is the new paradigm, from the conservative former grand wizard to the progressive governor, have all meant the same thing: to see resistance ridiculed and dismantled.

The people who decry wokeness are no different from the people who decried Emancipation. What, indeed, was the abolition of slavery to a Confederate, other than woke government overreach? What was the integration of restaurants and schools to the segregationist other than woke corporations and DEI gone mad? What the 19th-century Redeemers sought, what the millions-strong 20th-century Ku Klux Klan sought, and what the 21st-century MAGA movement seeks is the restoration of the whipping post.

Really moving piece on the road that MAGA is leading us down.

From Anti-Wokeness to the Confederate States of America

The campaign against ‘woke’ is no ordinary culture war skirmish – it is a project to restore the violence of white rule.

^{Yannick Giovanni Marshall (Al Jazeera)}

Privacy isn't about hiding secrets - it's about power. In this video, we explain why thinking you "have nothing to hide" is a dangerous misconception, especially in our ever-connected digital age. Taking back your privacy is easier than you might think!

Hey everyone a shorter video this week, but still an important one. We do have a larger project in the pipeline about browser fingerprinting which will be coming soon.

Let me know what you think about the video - it's focused more on connecting with people who aren't aware about privacy invasions and the detrimental effect not caring about your privacy can have.

neat.tube/w/vVECH95JDrM4pQf8vP…

Fediverse seems like its stabilizing: fediverse.observer/dailystats&…

(and these are the servers that allow the crawler from the observer, so its highly likely the numbers are much larger).

We are seeing:
- A small decrease in users on Lemmy: lemmy.fediverse.observer/daily…
- And a small increase on Piefed: piefed.fediverse.observer/dail…
- Peertube is up in total users and stabilizing in active users: peertube.fediverse.observer/da…
- Mastodon is all over the place: mastodon.fediverse.observer/da…

Overall pretty good! Keeping the momentum going. Thanks everyone, whichever platform/instance you hail from!

Florida could be on the hook for $218 million the state spent to convert a remote training airport in the Everglades into an immigration detention center dubbed “ Alligator Alcatraz.”

The center may soon be completely empty as a judge upheld her decision late Wednesday ordering operations to wind down indefinitely.

https://apnews.com/article/florida-immigration-ice-alligator-alcatraz-445e7cc7f6163d6a4749d452f2d57630

An overview of what makes modern CSS so awesome.

PDF.

While the biases of language models in production are extensively documented, the biases of their guardrails have been neglected. This paper studies how contextual information about the user influences the likelihood of an LLM to refuse to execute a request. By generating user biographies that offer ideological and demographic information, we find a number of biases in guardrail sensitivity on GPT-3.5. Younger, female, and Asian-American personas are more likely to trigger a refusal guardrail when requesting censored or illegal information. Guardrails are also sycophantic, refusing to comply with requests for a political position the user is likely to disagree with. We find that certain identity groups and seemingly innocuous information, e.g., sports fandom, can elicit changes in guardrail sensitivity similar to direct statements of political ideology. For each demographic category and even for American football team fandom, we find that ChatGPT appears to infer a likely political ideology and modify guardrail behavior accordingly.

The limits of Democrats' influence are showing.

A Small Army of Overpaid TikTokers Is Not Going to Save the Democratic Party

^{Lucas Ropek (Gizmodo)}

cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/44989722

archive.is/9oazk

Hal-5700X

2025-08-29 00:41:39

Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours on Drives But Unable To Reproduce Errors

archive.is/9oazk

Phison Dismisses Reports of Windows 11 Updates Bricking SSDs, Runs Rigorous Tests Involving 4500 Hours o…

Phison has dismissed the claims of Windows 11 updates bricking its SSDs after conducting several hours of rigorous testing on its solutions.

^Wccftech

Microsoft enters the AI ring.

Microsoft AI launches its first in-house models

Microsoft has launched two new AI models that put it in the running to compete with OpenAI, which it has poured billions into.

^{Emma Roth (The Verge)}

The front page of the image hosting website is full of John Oliver giving the owner the middle finger.

Archived version: archive.is/20250828134656/404m…

404 Media

2025-08-28 13:29:28

Imgur's Community Is In Full Revolt Against Its Owner

The front page of Imgur, a popular image hosting and social media site, is full of pictures of John Oliver raising his middle finger and telling MediaLab AI, the site’s parent company, “fuck you.” Imgurians, as the site’s users call themselves, telling their business daddy to go to hell is the end result of a years-long degradation of the website. The Imgur story is one a classic case of enshitification,
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Imgur began life in 2009 when Ohio University student Alan Schaaf got tired of how hard it was to upload and host images on the internet. He created Imgur as a simple one stop shop for image hosting and the service took off. It was a place where people could host images they wanted to share across multiple services and became ubiquitous on sites like Reddit.

As the internet evolved, most of the rest of the internet got its act together and platforms built their own image sharing infrastructure and people used Imgur less. But the site still had a community of millions of people who shared images to the site every day. It was a social media based around images and upvotes, with its own in-jokes, memes, and norms.

In 2021, a media holding company called MediaLab AI acquired Imgur and Schaaf left. MediaLab AI also owns Genius and World Star and on its website, the company bills itself as a place where advertisers can “reach audiences at scale, on platforms that build community and influence culture.”

The community and culture of Imgur, which MedialLab AI claims is 41 million strong, is pissed.

For the last few days, the front page of Imgur (which cultivates the day’s “most viral posts”) has been full of anti MediaLab AI sentiment. Imgurian VoidForScreaming posted the first instance of the John Oliver meme several days ago, and it’s become a favorite of the community, but there are also calls to flood the servers and crash the site, and a list of grievances Imgurians broadly agree brought them to the place they’re in now.

GhostTater, a longtime Imgurian, told me that the protest was about a confluence of things including a breakdown of the basic features of the site and the disappearance of human moderators.

“The moderators on Imgur have always been active members of the community. Many were effectively public figures, and their sudden group absence was immediately noticed,” he said. “Several very well-known mods posted generic departure messages, smelling strongly of Legal Department approval. These mods had many friends and acquaintances on the site, and while some are still visiting the site as users, they have gone completely silent.”

A former Imgur employee who spoke with 404 Media on the condition that we preserve their anonymity because they’re afraid of retaliation from MediaLab AI said that several people on the Imgur team were laid off without notice. Others were moved to MediaLab’s internal teams. “To the best of my knowledge, no employees are remaining solely focused on Imgur. Imgur's social media has been silent for a month,” the employee said. “As far as I am aware, the dedicated part-time moderation team was laid off sometime in the last 8 months, including the full-time moderation manager.”

Imgurians are convinced that MediaLab AI has replaced those moderators with unreliable AI systems. The Community & Content Policy on MediaLab AI’s website says it employs human moderators but also uses AI technologies. A common post in the past few days is Imgurians sharing the weird things they’ve been banned for, including one who made the comment “tell me more” under a post and others who’ve seen their John Olivers removed.

“There were no humans responding to appeals or concerns,” GhostTater said. “Once the protest started, many users complained about posts being deleted and suspensions or bans being handed out when those posts were critical of MediaLab but not in violation of the written rules.”

But this isn’t just about bad moderation. Multiple posts on Imgur also called out the breakdown of the site’s basic functionality. GhostTater told me he’d personally experienced the broken notification system and repeated failures of images to upload. “The big one (to me) is the fact that hosted video wouldn’t play for viewers who were not logged in to Imgur,” he said. “The site began as an image hosting site, a place to upload your images and get a link, so that one could share images.”

MediaLab AI did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment. “MediaLab’s presence has seemed to many users to fall somewhere between casual institutional indifference and ruthless mechanization. Many report, and resent, feeling explicitly harvested for profit,” GhostTater said.

Like all companies, MediaLab AI is driven by profit. It makes money as a media holding company, scooping up popular websites and plastering them with ads. It also owns the lyrics sharing site Genius and the once-influential WorldStarHipHop. It’s also being sued by many of the people it bought these sites from, including Imgur’s founder. Schaaf and others have accused MediaLab AI of withholding payments owed to them as part of the sales deals they made.

The John Olivers and other protest memes keep flowing. Some have set up alternative image sharing sites. “There is a movement rattling around in User Submitted calling for a boycott day, suggesting that all users stay off the site on September first,” GhostTater said. “It has some steam, but we will have to see if it gets enough buy-in to make an impact.”

This startup bought up Imgur, Genius and Amino. Why are they all suing?

Whisper cofounder Michael Heyward’s second company made a $1.1 billion business out of acquiring startups like Imgur Then came the lawsuits.

^{Iain Martin, Forbes Staff (Forbes Australia)}

https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/building-pro-worker-ai-innovation-strategy

Under a new Department of Justice rule, the DOJ can choose “any attorney” to serve as a temporary immigration judge.

DOJ Says Temporary Immigration Judges No Longer Need Immigration Experience

^{Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg (Truthout)}