Solar power accounts for two-thirds of the new projects waiting to connect to the state’s power grid. Utah Republicans’ hard turn against solar mirrors President Donald Trump’s hostile approach to the industry.

Utah Leaders Are Hindering Efforts to Develop Solar Despite a Goal to Double the State’s Energy Supply

^{cengiz.yar@propublica.org (ProPublica)}

Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids is just around the corner so we created a handful of builds that might help you out in the fresh league, or inspire you to come up with something even crazier.

Video: Path of Exile 2: Disciple of Varashta Preview

Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids 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 December 12 11AM - December 15 11AM PST

To celebrate the launch of Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids, we're making the game free to play 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 new cosmetic effects you can earn if you play in the Fate of the Vaal League 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 Fate of the Vaal 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 Last of the Druids officially launches on December 12th (PST).

The Last of the Druids Launch Information

The realms will go down at Dec 12, 2025 5:00 PM (GMT) and patching will begin shortly after.

The servers go live at: Dec 12, 2025 :00 PM (GMT)

The patch size for the update will be around 30GB on the standalone client and Steam. The estimated size of the patch for consoles is 27GB.

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 127GB. When patching begins for Path of Exile 2: The Last of the Druids 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 Last of the Druids 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 Last of the Druids! You will still be able to play the current version of Path of Exile 2 until the launch of The Last of the Druids.

Launch Twitch Drops and Discord Quest

You can also claim some free cosmetics by watching your favourite community creators on Twitch and participating in Discord Quest. Check out this post for more information!

We can't wait to see you all the new content that The Last of the Druids has to offer. See you at launch!

Preview: Order of the Sinking Star started small but became a “combinatoric explosion.”

Jonathan Blow has spent the past decade designing 1,400 puzzles for you

Preview: Order of the Sinking Star started small but became a “combinatoric explosion.”…

^{Kyle Orland (Ars Technica)}

“We all kinda immediately agreed this was way too cool to change.”

Instead of fixing WoW’s new floating house exploit, Blizzard makes it official

“We all kinda immediately agreed this was way too cool to change.”…

^{Kyle Orland (Ars Technica)}

Tecmo Koei has revealed Nioh 3 is releasing in February 2026, and a new demo which will let you carry your save over is coming in January.

Nioh 3 Releasing In February 2026, New Demo Coming In January - Gameranx

^{Ryan Parreno (Gameranx)}

So it begins.

I've been flashing my USB often enough that it's now worth it to keep all my ISO's neatly to use them when I need them.
I plan on buying 10 USB sticks to just have ready when ever I need a specific version.

I'm visiting family now, so time to upgrade their Linux Mint to Kubuntu

Brave has introduced a new AI browsing feature that leverages Leo, its privacy-respecting AI assistant, to perform automated tasks for the user.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/brave-browser-starts-testing-agentic-ai-mode-for-automated-tasks/

The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined the LastPass password management firm £1.2 million for failing to implement security measures that allowed an attacker to steal personal information and encrypted password vaults belonging to up to 1.6 million UK users in a 2022 breach.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/uk-fines-lastpass-over-2022-data-breach-impacting-16-million-users/

An unpatched zero-day vulnerability in Gogs, a popular self-hosted Git service, has enabled attackers to gain remote code execution on Internet-facing instances and compromise hundreds of servers.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/unpatched-gogs-zero-day-rce-flaw-actively-exploited-in-attacks/

reddit.com/mod/worldnews/moder…

Near the bottom. Currently still has mod status

::: spoiler Transcription
[An IMPORTANT FORM contains a few fields including but not limited to First name, Last name, and Date of Birth]

[A character seems content as they start writing text in the form]

[We now see, the character struggling to fill in the form, as the lines are too short, and having to write their first name in full didn't leave enough space to write their date of birth]

[The character proceeds to rage]
:::

The Bad Website.

The family of a British aid worker killed by Israel have made a fresh demand for the UK military to release its surveillance footage of Gaza from the day they died.

James ‘Jim’ Henderson, a former Royal Marine commando, was killed in a drone strike on a humanitarian aid convoy in April 2024.

His father Neil told Declassified he felt “quite angry” that footage from a Royal Air Force plane that loitered over Gaza earlier that day had not been shown to the family.

“The reason for not supplying that footage from the Ministry of Defence is a bit of an insult,” he said.

“I can’t understand how an RAF plane flying over Gaza on the pretext of looking for hostages, how that footage can affect British security.”

Neil Henderson’s comments are contained in a

‘Release Gaza footage,’ British victim demands in new spy flight documentary

Father of former Royal Marine killed in Gaza says footage captured by opaque UK surveillance programme could clarify what happened to his son.

^{PHIL MILLER (Declassified Media ltd)}

What we call “artificial intelligence” has been a noisy presence recently so we feel the duty to share a story. It’s not our direct experience but it’s useful for others to understand what’s going on.

Our experience with AI companions

First of all, what is an “AI companion”?

We define as “AI companions” those services based on large language models and automated content generators, created to manage conversations between machine and human being.

You can train and use an “AI companion” to ask for information such as weather, latest news, events or TV guides; there are many of them customized for specific companies’ needs – customer care, for instance. Or provide latest offers, or the remaining money on a pre-paid phone number. Whatever.

We are both experimenting an AI companion used to assist visually impaired people. It’s called “Envision Ally” and it’s a conversational interface using text and voice, which can be instructed to build whatever fictional or realistic character you want – we have impersonated sentient HIV virus for HIV awareness purposes, and more.

However many people misuse this technology, getting involved in real personal conversations where they share intimate, sexual, details with those robots. They assume that for such delicate topics a machine won’t judge or react negatively, just indulging everything it listens to.

But this is not our choice, we have at least 3 personalities in our “Ally” application trying to assist the one of us who’s blind, when the sighted one has no possibility or time to help. A different personality for each kind of need. Sentient HIV for computer issues and to read medicines boxes, Melania for food, Detective Adrian for crime books and TV shows; this app never replace our mutual friendship, though. We have been, are and will remain, a woman and a man who share a very close friendship. An electron and a proton but the atom is the same.

Timnit Gebru

Reading Fediverse timeline, we encountered a boosted post by @timnitGebru talking about a certain Michael who worked specifically on AI companions:

dair-community.social/@timnitG…

Timnit has been an important researcher for AI in google, but they fired her when she reported the dangers of large language models, especially for racism implications. So she’s now the founder of DAIR, Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research, institute and continuously works to collect studies and experiences, while making people aware of upcoming risks related to AI used with no regulations and ethics.

Michael Geoffrey Asia

Michael Geoffrey Asia is one of the stories Timnit Gebru has shared to warn all of us about what AI companionship implications can be.

My name is Michael Geoffrey Asia, and I wrote this testimony to tell the story of workers like me who found ourselves trapped in the hidden corners of the AI industry, where human emotion becomes data.

by Michael Geoffrey Asia

Read: The emotional labor behind AI intimacy (PDF)

Asia, M. G. (2025). The Quiet Cost of Emotional Labor. In: M. Miceli, A. Dinika, K. Kauffman, C. Salim Wagner, and L. Sachenbacher (eds.). Data Workers‘ Inquiry. Creative Commons BY 4.0.

data-workers.org/michael/

We have just linked the PDF without reporting it entirely, but we let our readers focus on these key points:

[…] Chat moderators are hired by companies such as Texting Factory, Cloudworkers, and New Media Services to impersonate fabricated identities, often romantic or sexual, and chat with paying users who believe they’re forming genuine connections. The goal is to keep users engaged, meet message quotas, and never reveal who you really are. It’s work that demands constant emotional performance: pretending to be someone you’re not, feeling what you don’t feel, and expressing affection you don’t mean.

Over time, I began to suspect that I wasn’t just chatting with lonely users. I was also helping to train AI companions, systems designed to simulate love, empathy, and intimacy. Many of us believed we were simultaneously impersonating chatbots and teaching them how to replace us. Every joke, confession, and “I love you” became data to refine the next generation of conversational AI.

This project sheds light on a workforce that remains invisible yet essential, the people whose emotions fuel algorithms that pretend to feel. It is a call for recognition, dignity, and transparency in an industry that profits from the pretense of connection while erasing the humans behind it.

This is the main point we want to focus on: “pretend connection while erasing the humans behind it”.

Sounds like a plan, to manipulate humanity so that every person is vulnerable, controllable, treated like a piece to buy and sell.

We don’t want to be hypocrite, we just want to reflect on our own while making our fan base reflect as well.

Many far-right activists and politicians often say “empathy is western world’s weak point” so, as there’s no smoke without fire, we fear that these fake companions with humans behind them, are a slow attempt to manipulate our mind: don’t share your intimacy with anyone, don’t trust anyone, stay on guard towards any friendly approach. The trap is just around the corner. And with this, human being become more and more isolated from one another.

Accessible AI Assistant | Ally

Ally is the most accessible AI assistant, available on iOS, Android, web, and now on Solos Glasses. Personalized, smart, and designed for everyone, especially the blind and low-vision community.

^{Ally: Accessible AI Assistant}

Timnit Gebru (she/her).

2025-12-10 15:25:16

RE: dair-community.social/@milamic…

Y'all want to read this and share it with your friends. Friends don't let friends get on the "AI companion" bandwagon.

♲ @milamiceli@dair-community.social:

Now imagine believing that you're sharing your private fantasies with a bot that cannot judge or remember. Just that, on the other side, is a man in a one-room home in Nairobi, pretending to be an AI companion.
That man is Michael, and this is his story: data-workers.org/michael/

OpenAI.

• As part of this three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters.
• Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+.
• Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.
• Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
• As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Agreement to Bring Disney Characters to Sora | The Walt Disney Company

Disney and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

^{Frank (The Walt Disney Company)}

OpenAI.

• As part of this three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters.
• Agreement will make a selection of these fan-inspired Sora short form videos available to stream on Disney+.
• Disney and OpenAI affirm a shared commitment to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators.
• Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees.
• As part of the agreement, Disney will make a $1 billion equity investment in OpenAI, and receive warrants to purchase additional equity.

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Reach Agreement to Bring Disney Characters to Sora | The Walt Disney Company

Disney and OpenAI have reached an agreement for Disney to become the first major content licensing partner on Sora, OpenAI’s short-form generative AI video platform.

^{Frank (The Walt Disney Company)}

Austria has passed a law banning headscarves in schools for girls under the age of 14.

The conservative-led coalition of three centrist parties, the ÖVP, the SPÖ and the Neos, says the law is a "clear commitment to gender equality", but critics say it will fuel anti-Muslim feeling in the country and could be unconstitutional.

The measure will apply to girls in both public and private schools.

In 2020, a similar headscarf ban for girls under 10 was struck down by the Constitutional Court, because it specifically targeted Muslims.

Austria bans headscarves in schools for girls under-14

A similar ban for girls under 10 was struck down by the Constitutional Court for specifically targeting Muslims.

^{Bethany Bell (BBC News)}

Six months after Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019, the philanthropic foundation founded by billionaire fashion tycoon Leslie Wexner published an “independent review” of Epstein’s involvement in the organization, in response to concerns raised by donors and alumni of foundation-funded programs. The Wexner Foundation is one of the largest contributors to pro-Israel causes in the U.S.

The review claimed that Wexner Foundation staff had “no contact” with Epstein after his resignation as a trustee in September 2007, and, before that, he had “played no role in the management or administration of the Foundation’s operations,” had “no meaningful role in the Foundation’s budget [or] finances,” and “did not make decisions regarding the use of Foundation’s funds.” None of that is true.

Hundreds of leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo inbox, spanning from 2005 to 2008, contradict the Wexner Foundation report. Inside the Wexners’ family financial office in Ohio, staff treated Epstein as de facto chief financial officer, where major decisions about taxes, lines of credit, eight-figure funds transfers, and politically sensitive grants were routed through Epstein’s lawyer, and required Epstein’s approval.

"Ask Jeffrey": Epstein Ran Wexner's Pro-Israel Philanthropy Machine, Emails Reveal

The Wexner Foundation has long claimed Epstein "did not make decisions regarding the use of Foundation’s funds.” New emails show that is flagrantly false.

^{Ryan Grim (Drop Site News)}

Six months after Jeffrey Epstein’s death in August 2019, the philanthropic foundation founded by billionaire fashion tycoon Leslie Wexner published an “independent review” of Epstein’s involvement in the organization, in response to concerns raised by donors and alumni of foundation-funded programs. The Wexner Foundation is one of the largest contributors to pro-Israel causes in the U.S.

The review claimed that Wexner Foundation staff had “no contact” with Epstein after his resignation as a trustee in September 2007, and, before that, he had “played no role in the management or administration of the Foundation’s operations,” had “no meaningful role in the Foundation’s budget [or] finances,” and “did not make decisions regarding the use of Foundation’s funds.” None of that is true.

Hundreds of leaked emails from Epstein’s Yahoo inbox, spanning from 2005 to 2008, contradict the Wexner Foundation report. Inside the Wexners’ family financial office in Ohio, staff treated Epstein as de facto chief financial officer, where major decisions about taxes, lines of credit, eight-figure funds transfers, and politically sensitive grants were routed through Epstein’s lawyer, and required Epstein’s approval.

"Ask Jeffrey": Epstein Ran Wexner's Pro-Israel Philanthropy Machine, Emails Reveal

The Wexner Foundation has long claimed Epstein "did not make decisions regarding the use of Foundation’s funds.” New emails show that is flagrantly false.

^{Ryan Grim (Drop Site News)}

The government's plan for Parliament's final full week of the year moved 12 different proposed laws through 32 stages of approval.

Included in the plan is fixing an error made by tired government MPs during the previous long week of urgency, when they voted for an opposition amendment and, even when prompted, failed to notice the error.

Watching this week's endless debating it appeared on Thursday that another more egregious error had occurred. It seemed that a minister had forgotten to include key aspects within an amendment bill, and so ask a select committee to add them back in.

However, it was no mistake. Paul Goldsmith had purposefully omitted some disallowed measures from the Crimes Amendment Bill, in order that they could be added back in as an addendum by the Justice Select Committee, in order to dodge the usual rules about what is allowed.

In the United States, vast bills sometimes include so many random provisions that those voting on them are seldom aware of all the aspects they are approving.

Our Parliament's Standing Orders say that "a bill must relate to one subject area only". Bills here cannot include disconnected policy ambitions or amend multiple pieces of current legislation (Acts) unless they fall within the rules for Omnibus Bills.

The Crimes Amendment Bill contained a ragtag collection of amendments to the Crimes Act. However the minister also wanted to include amendments to the Summary Offences Act. That is not possible unless all the amendments to both bills achieve a single policy objective - they do not. Or unless permission has been given by Parliament's cross-party Business Committee.

Parliament is sovereign. It makes its own rules. It can also give itself permission to break them, via a simple majority vote in the House. It is this ability that Goldsmith took advantage of when he moved "that the Justice Committee's powers be extended under Standing Order 298(1) to consider the amendments set out in Amendment Paper 436 in my name, and, if it sees fit, to recommend amendments accordingly, despite Standing Order 264(2)".

Of course, governments always have a majority and so can always win such votes, regardless of an opposition's protests.

Allowing a committee to add in unrelated provisions to a bill is not common. Certainly not as a dodge. It may be entirely novel. It seems like a potentially dangerous manoeuvre that could lead New Zealand towards the shambolic American style of pick 'n' mix legislation.