Author: Vidya Saras

Strange times. I hope you are all well and continue to take care of yourselves, your families, and your communities. We’re a bit overdue on a quick update. My apologies. I’ll keep them coming at a regular clip after this one. Eth2 is looking good — Phase 0 is stable, client teams are crushing it, and some promising research was published for our stateless future. tl;dr v0.11.0 post-audit release Spec version v0.11.0 — Lan party — was released last week. This release represents a “post-audit” Phase 0 spec, ready for long-standing multi-client testnets. It contains limited changes to the core…

Web3 battle royale game Off The Grid will be coming to Steam in June 2025, with full cross-play available across PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.This comes after high-profile launches on Xbox, PlayStation and the Epic Games Store in October 2024 – with the blockchain game hitting the #1 spot on the Epic Games free-to-play list post-launch. Adding Steam availability will enable Off The Grid to reach a further 130 million active users on PC – and given recent updates that have seriously boosted the game’s performance, hopes are that this will serve to inject fresh players into the…

The increase in the popularity of cryptocurrencies means it’s more important to understand how to correctly document your gains and losses. Reporting crypto transactions accurately and clearly is both required by law and recommended by many advisers for investors. People in several nations, including Canada, must now declare their crypto earnings just as they would earnings from other kinds of finances. Lately, tax rules have been changed to recognize virtual currencies which authorities state are still subject to taxation. Trading, mining or receiving crypto as payment are each taxed differently. Proper classification of these actions matters a lot when creating…

Rebecca Laurence, Hugh Montgomery and Nicholas BarberThis year’s Cannes Film Festival finishes today – and from the hundreds of titles that premiered, here are the ones which are going to be big talking points all through 2025.1. Die, My LoveWith the combined star power of Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson and the arthouse credentials of acclaimed Scottish film-maker Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk about Kevin), Die, My Love was one of the most eagerly anticipated titles going into Cannes, where it sold to Mubi for $24m (£17.8m). Adapted from a 2017 novel by Ariana Harwicz, it sees…

Her skepticism is rooted in lived experience: In October 2000, a massive coal slurry spill from a mine site upstream poisoned the Coldwater Fork stream, which runs behind her house. People in Inez couldn’t drink water from the tap for months.“Those of us living downstream didn’t hear about it for a while, but the school system had to close down for about a week until they got an alternate water source,” she says.To this day, many in Inez still don’t trust the tap water.So when McCoy hears the hype about AI, she hears something else: another promise that comes with…

The annual Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas is a pivotal event for the Bitcoin ecosystem, where companies unveil breakthroughs, announce partnerships, and deliver speeches that shape the narrative of digital assets. For many, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming. Having attended several conferences and being familiar with the attending companies through my work at UTXO, I’ve highlighted key panels and expected developments for 2025, focusing on Bitcoin’s Layer 2 (L2) and BTCfi ecosystems.  The full agenda is available using this link: https://b.tc/conference/2025/agenda  Here’s a breakdown of anticipated announcements and panels, categorized by key themes: BitVM2 Announcements Since BitVM’s…

Former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer fretted on "Pod Save America" Friday’s episode that "Democrats are in a huge bit of trouble" with Latino voters.

On Dec. 21, 2022, just as peak holiday season travel was getting underway, Southwest Airlines went through a cascading series of failures in their scheduling, initially triggered by severe winter weather in the Denver area. But the problems spread through their network, and over the course of the next 10 days the crisis ended up stranding over 2 million passengers and causing losses of $750 million for the airline.How did a localized weather system end up triggering such a widespread failure? Researchers at MIT have examined this widely reported failure as an example of cases where systems that work smoothly…

A now-patched high-severity security flaw affecting Trimble Cityworks — a specialized software used by local governments in the US, utilities, and public agencies to manage their infrastructure and community services—was abused by Chinese hackers to compromise systems before a patch was available. According to a Talos intelligence report, the flaw (tracked as CVE-2025-0994) in the Geographic Information System (GIS)-based asset management tool was used by hackers in zero-day exploitation for achieving remote code execution and subsequent malware delivery. “Talos has found intrusions in enterprise networks of local governing bodies in the United States (US), beginning January 2025 when initial exploitation…

While I won’t claim an award for organization or minimalism with my nightstand… it is a carefully curated hub of tools and essentials. They support my health, improve my sleep, and set the tone for a productive day ahead. I also mentioned in my habit-stacking podcast and post that the nightstand is also a great place to put visual reminders of healthy habits since it’s the first thing I see in the morning.  Let me walk you through everything on my nightstand and explain why it’s there. 1. Quart-Sized Mason Jar With Salt First things first: hydration. On my nightstand,…