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  • ‘The Black Mirror Experience,’ “Immersive” Blend of “Physical Space and VR,” to Premiere in Montreal

    ‘The Black Mirror Experience,’ “Immersive” Blend of “Physical Space and VR,” to Premiere in Montreal

    Watch out, Montreal! The Black Mirror Experience is coming! Launching in May at location-based virtual reality (VR) Infinity Experiences in the Canadian city, the 60-minute “immersive experience blending physical space and VR” is based on hit drama series Black Mirror and produced by Banijay Live Studio, part of Banijay Live, in partnership with VR studio Univrse.

    Additional locations will be unveiled soon. The Black Mirror Experience accommodates groups of up to six participants ages 12-plus.

    “The all-new experience is inspired by the award-winning dark, satirical TV anthology, which explores humanity’s uneasy relationship with technology,” explained Banijay Live, part of Banijay, which recently struck a mega-merger deal with All3Media. “Blending sci-fi and social commentary, Black Mirror, a Banijay Entertainment format, which resides on Netflix, has earned 29 major awards (including nine Emmys and four BAFTAs) across seven seasons, captivating over 3.3 million global subscribers and 86 million social views.”

    Explained the company about the Black Mirror immersive experience: “With each of Black Mirror’s episodes holding a mirror up to our relationship with technology, showing how our digital choices shape society, this first-of-its-kind experience will force visitors to make these same choices. Groups are invited to the exclusive opening of Phaethon’s showroom – a tech giant about to unveil its most ambitious creation yet: LifeAgent, a robot designed to simplify your life, understand your desires, and help you become your best self. At first, everything feels seamless. Reassuring. Almost perfect. Until it doesn’t…”

    Banijay Live CEO François De Brugada

    Courtesy of Banijay

    The Black Mirror Experience is the first offering from Banijay Live Studio, a Banijay unit tasked with turning Banijay Entertainment’s intellectual property (IP) into location-based entertainment experiences. Said François de Brugada, CEO of Banijay Live: “We’re expanding Banijay Entertainment’s relationship with the screen into real-world experiences. Banijay Live Studio is making its public debut with The Black Mirror Experience, a ‘never-before-seen’ location-based VR experience that encapsulates all the cultural relevance of Black Mirror and brings fans into the story.”

    Tristan Desplechin, producer at Banijay Live Studio, said that his team’s focus is on turning IPs into experiences “that you can only live in-person,” adding: “Black Mirror is the perfect starting point – a universe that is as thought-provoking as it is cinematic. Working with Univrse, we have built something that doesn’t just extend the franchise – it redefines what location-based entertainment can be.”

    David Bardos, director and founder at Univrse, said the collaboration required technology “that has never been seen before in the location-based entertainment sector,” touting the creation of “a new standard for what this industry can achieve – technically, narratively, and experientially.”

    Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror‘s seventh season debuted on Netflix in April 2025, produced by Broke & Bones, with Brooker, Jessica Rhoades and Annabel Jones as executive producers. The show brand is represented by Banijay Rights.

  • Chainlink Labs, Anchorage Digital Back New Crypto Super PAC Ahead of Midterms

    Chainlink Labs, Anchorage Digital Back New Crypto Super PAC Ahead of Midterms

    In brief

    • The Blockchain Leadership Fund launched Monday with Anchorage Digital and Chainlink Labs as founding contributors.
    • BLF is structured as a hybrid PAC, allowing both direct candidate contributions and independent expenditures.
    • The new PAC enters a field already dominated by Fairshake, which has amassed $116 million for the 2026 midterms.

    The Blockchain Leadership Fund, a new political action committee focused on digital asset policy, launched Monday.

    The new PAC adds another player to a crypto lobbying landscape already flush with cash heading into the 2026 midterms.

    The Blockchain Leadership Fund, a hybrid PAC formed by members of The Digital Chamber, announced its launch in a press release, with Anchorage Digital and Chainlink Labs as founding contributors. Structured as a hybrid PAC, BLF can make both direct candidate contributions and independent expenditures—and says it will engage across federal, state, and local races.

    “Crypto policy is being written right now and the companies that show up and engage will help define the rules of the road; the ones that don’t will inherit them,” an Anchorage Digital spokesperson said in the release.

    The launch comes as the crypto industry’s political infrastructure has grown dramatically since Fairshake, the sector’s dominant super PAC, registered with the FEC in March 2023.

    Backed primarily by Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Ripple, Fairshake raised nearly $300 million during the 2024 election cycle and backed winning candidates in at least 90% of the congressional races where it spent $1 million or more.

    By January 2025, the PAC had already amassed $116 million for the 2026 midterm election cycle. As of last month, crypto industry political action groups had already spent some $288 million on the midterms, according to independent journalist Molly White.

    BLF’s connection to The Digital Chamber is notable. The group has been lobbying for stablecoin rewards, and in 2024 was vocal in urging Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to pick a crypto-friendly running mate.

    “The viewpoint is now: ‘Your position on crypto matters not just until November 5. Your position matters long-term,” Cody Carbone, then the lobbying group’s president (now CEO), told Decrypt in November 2024. He added that by signaling its staying power into 2026, he thought Fairshake was trying to dispel the notion that crypto’s political moment had already passed.

    It remains to be seen whether the Blockchain Leadership Fund will operate as a complement to Fairshake or carve out its own lane. The BLF didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt on the matter.

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  • Taylor Swift Releases ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ Music Video Featuring Clips of the Screen Icon

    Taylor Swift Releases ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ Music Video Featuring Clips of the Screen Icon

    Taylor Swift released a music video for “Elizabeth Taylor” Tuesday morning, putting visuals to her salute to one of the most recognizable and vibrant screen stars of the 20th century.

    In contrast to high-concept productions like her recent video for “Opalite,” Swift has not cast herself in the video for “Elizabeth Taylor,” but rather has assembled a clip job featuring a supercut of scenes from the late actress’ movies, along with bits of newsreel footage of Taylor seen in the public eye in real life. The clips include shots from films including “Cleopatra,” “Father of the Bride,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “A Place in the Sun,” “Giant,” “Suddenly, Last Summer,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Julia Misbehaves” and even the late ’60s cult favorite “Boom!”

    For now, the music video is only available on Apple Music and the premium Spotify level, as happened with the February premiere for the “Opalite” video. (A link to the video on those two services can be found here.) Having it premiere exclusively on those premium apps would seem to be a reflection of recent changes to the Billboard charts that only allow videos on paid services to count toward streaming totals. But in the case of “Opalite,” the video made it to YouTube’s free tier two days later, so the same may hold true with “Elizabeth Taylor.”

    YouTube did get a new, more generic visualizer that simply shows the cover art for the single, which is coming out as a 7-inch vinyl in April for Record Store Day. YouTube also is now streaming a “So Glamorous Cabaret” version with just piano accompaniment that was previously a part of exclusive, limited album or single variants.

    When the album “The Life of a Showgirl” came out in October, Swift revealed that she had asked permission from the estate of Taylor, who died in 2011 at age 73, to put the song out. Her remark came in response to a question about whether she asked permission from her subjects to write about them. She does “if they’re real people,” she said, “and if it’s Elizabeth Taylor, we go to their family and her estate and let them know and they were lovely about it.”

    Lyrics in the song include clear references to Taylor’s life and style, and also some more obscure Easter-egg-type reference. “I’ll cry my eyes violet” refers to the eye color that entranced hundreds of millions, while “All my white diamonds and lovers are forever” is a call-out to Taylor’s fragrance line, White Diamonds. The song also references some of Taylor’s favorite places, including Portofino, Italy and the Plaza Athanee hotel in Paris.

    On “The Elvis Duran Show,” Swift said of the song, “”In this record, there’s a song called ‘Elizabeth Taylor,’ which is sort of my emotions and my issues with fame through the lens of cosplaying the life of Elizabeth Taylor, so you kind of meld the two experiences together. She is always someone that I’ve looked up to as being this very glamorous, very beloved, but for some reason a polarizing figure, which I found myself in that place, too.”

    In a TikTok video, Swift talked about the origins of the song. “My parents sent me this clip of Elizabeth Taylor’s son saying something very flattering, that if there were one person he might compare to his mother in the modern day, in terms of persona and…the chaos around us, he said it would be me. I was so flattered by that. I just immediately started talking to Travis (Kelce) about it. I was going on and on about Elizabeth Taylor, talking about all the things about her that I loved… how she kept challenging herself late into her life. I had to get out of the car. I was like, ‘One sec, I have to get out of the car for a second,’ and I just sang this melody into my phone, got back in the car and… that’s what it’s like when it happens.”

    Swift may have been referring to a 2024 interview Taylor’s son, Christopher Wilding, did with the Guardian, in which he said, “I can’t tell you how much I admire Taylor Swift. I’m now a Swifty. [Her Instagram post] at the end of that presidential debate was so f—ing great. Huge props to her. That reminds me a little bit of the same spirit my mom had.”

    The music video’s end-title scroll includes a thank you to House of Taylor & the Elizabeth Taylor Trust, the Todd family and the Wilding family.

    “My family loves the song, and grandma would have loved it too — I wish she could have heard it,” said Quinn Tivey, Taylor’s grandson, who is a trustee of her estate, after the song first came out. “Taylor Swift not only made a beautiful homage to Elizabeth Taylor, but it feels like she is addressing her directly while invoking her legacy in a way that is dimensional, confessional, honest, and fun. It dances across the trappings of fame and the rollercoaster of falling in love and has so many heartfelt references, from the iconic perfume White Diamonds to her jewelry and, of course, her love of love.”

    “Elizabeth Taylor” marked the second time Swift referred to the actress in song. The first came in “…Ready for It?,” the lead-off track to her 2017 album “Reputation,” which included the lyrics, “”And he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor / Every love I’ve known in comparison is a failure.”

  • The Shark BlastBoss is a leaf blower that can be used indoors

    Shark just introduced a new product called the BlastBoss that’s basically a leaf blower rated for both indoor and outdoor use. This means it can actually be used to blow leaves around in the yard, but is also handy for tidying up debris in the house.

    It offers adjustable airflow up to 190 mph, making it a “versatile solution for the garage, patio, car, inside the home and beyond.” I imagine this would also make it the bane of every dog and cat in the neighborhood.

    It’s pretty light, at under 1.5 pounds, and cordless. The BlastBoss ships with several attachments, including an extension wand and precision nozzle for getting into tight spots like under appliances or between couch seams. The adjustable airflow means that the power can be dialed down for dusting and other less-intensive cleaning tasks.

    The broom attachment.

    Shark

    It also comes with an attachment called the BlastBroom, which is exactly what it sounds like. This is a broom attachment that blows out air, which can be used to “loosen, lift and clear debris in one pass.” The company says this is “ideal for patios, garages and walkways.”

    The BlastBoss is available to purchase right now and costs $150. It’s available in a bunch of different colors, which is a bit odd for a leaf blower but cool for those who like to accessorize.

    Five BlastBosses, in a row.

    Shark

    Shark has been pumping out some pretty wild products lately. There’s a personal cooling device called the ChillPill and a skin-care gadget that performs aqua peels.

  • ‘Sound of Falling,’ Berlin Winner ‘Yellow Letters’ Lead German Film Awards Nominations

    ‘Sound of Falling,’ Berlin Winner ‘Yellow Letters’ Lead German Film Awards Nominations

    Family drama Sound of Falling, directed by Mascha Schilinski, and İlker Çatak‘s Berlin Film Festival winner Yellow Letters are leading the nominations for the 2026 German Film Awards, also known as the Lolas, Germany’s equivalent of the Oscars.

    Sound of Falling received 11 noms, with Yellow Letters receiving nine. In the best director category, they will compete with Simon Verhoeven’s comedy Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke, which received a total of seven noms.

    In the best feature film category, those three movies go up against Fatih Akin and Herman Weigel’s Amrum, which got a total of six noms, Anna-Malike Eigl, Thomas Wöbke and Philipp Trauer’s 22 Lengths, which received five, and Felix von Boehm’s The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, which received seven noms.

    THR‘s review called Sound of Falling, which depicts four generations of young women inhabiting the same farmhouse in northeast Germany, “a haunting meditation on womanhood and rural strife that heralds the arrival of a bold new talent.”

    Competing at Cannes, the second feature from Mascha Schilinski (‘Dark Blue Girl’) .

    About Yellow Letters, THR‘s review said: “For his follow-up to the tense and claustrophobic German middle school drama, The Teachers’ Lounge, director Ilker Çatak has attempted something both more ambitious and more mystifying: a tale of authoritarian oppression, artistic strife and family conflict that’s set in contemporary Turkey but was shot entirely in Germany, with no attempts to hide the fact that nothing is taking place where it should.”

    Already unveiled on Tuesday as the winner of the biggest box office hit of the year was slapstick comedy Western parody Manitou’s Canoe, directed by and starring Michael “Bully” Herbig.

    The German Film Academy unveiled the nominees for the 76th edition of the German Film Awards midday Tuesday. The awards ceremony will take place in Berlin on May 29, hosted by Christian Friedel (The Zone of Interest, The White Lotus, Babylon Berlin) for the second year in a row.

    Last year, Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, the real-life thriller based on the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics that stars Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Leonie Benesch, swept the German honors.

  • Sarah Everard Abduction to Be Dramatized by ‘Philomena’ Scribe Jeff Pope for BBC

    Sarah Everard Abduction to Be Dramatized by ‘Philomena’ Scribe Jeff Pope for BBC

    Events leading up to the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard are set to be dramatized in a new two-part series for the BBC.

    “Philomena” scribe Jeff Pope is writing the factual drama, which follows the events of March 2021 when Everard was falsely arrested for breaking lockdown rules by a serving police officer who went on to rape and murder her.

    The 33-year-old marketing professional was walking home through South London when she was stopped by officer Wayne Couzens and falsely placed under arrest. He then drove her outside of London to rape and murder her before setting her body on fire and later dumping it in a lake.

    It later emerged he was a sexual offender with multiple complaints and allegations against him, which were not taken seriously by the police force. On the night of the murder he had just finished working a shift at the U.S. embassy before embarking on the premeditated and well-planned slaying.

    According to the press release the BBC series, which is currently untitled, will “examine the circumstances that allowed a sexual offender to become, and remain, a Metropolitan Police officer.”

    The series will be produced by ITV Studios company Etta Pictures, who are in contact with Everard’s family.

    “Wayne Couzens should never have been a police officer, but opportunities to deny him that privilege were missed,” said Pope. “That he was still a serving officer on the night of March 3rd 2021, after committing numerous sexual offences over a long period of time, was a tragedy waiting to happen, and the key question asked by this drama.”



    Lindsay Salt, director of drama at the BBC, said: “Drama has a unique ability to sensitively and respectfully tackle real life subjects and this series will explore the impact of this horrific crime, the misogyny and failings from within the Met Police and what lessons can be learnt. Award-winning writer Jeff Pope will treat this with the utmost care, helping to ensure that the issues that led to Sarah Everard’s murder remain in the public consciousness for years to come, whilst continuing to hold the police to account.”

    Pope exec produces alongside Saurabh Kakkar and Kirsty Cunningham for Etta Pictures and Nick Lambon for the BBC.

  • SpaceX loses contact with one of its Starlink satellites

    SpaceX has lost contact with Starlink satellite 34343 after it suffered an unspecified anomaly on March 29 while it was in orbit, the company has announced on X. The event happened while the satellite was approximately 348 miles above our planet. Since that is a relatively low altitude, SpaceX’s analysis showed that the remains of the satellite pose no risk to the International Space Station or the upcoming launch of the Artemis II mission. It also won’t affect the company’s Transporter-16 mission, which launched with small satellites from its clients on March 30.

    In its statement, SpaceX also said that it will monitor any trackable debris, indicating that the satellite is no longer in one piece. LeoLabs, an American company tracking satellites in Low Earth Orbit, said it detected a “fragment creation event” involving Starlink 34343 on March 29. It also mentioned that this event is similar to another incident that happened on December 17, 2025. SpaceX had lost Starlink satellites to events like geomagnetic storms in the past, but it doesn’t seem like these two recent incidents were caused by external factors. The company has yet to announce what led to the anomalies, but LeoLabs believes that both of them were “likely caused by an internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.”

    At the moment, the Starlink team is still working on determining the root cause of the incidents. SpaceX said that once it has come to a conclusion, the company will “rapidly implement any necessary corrective actions.”

  • Proton adds a secure video conferencing service called Meet to its toolbox

    We’ve written about the Swiss company Proton’s moves to take on Google and Microsoft with an expanding variety of privacy-focused internet services, and the company is announcing yet another new tool today. Proton Meet, as the name suggests, is a video-calling service that sounds comparable to Zoom, Microsoft Teams and, naturally, Google Meet.

    As with everything Proton does, Meet is end-to-end encrypted, but the company is taking extra steps towards security and anonymity here. You don’t need a Proton account to join a Meet call, which should help service gain traction — you can use Proton and not totally throw off everyone else who’s still using other systems. Proton says that Meet can be used anonymously and no logs are kept. The company even says that a Proton account isn’t needed to host a meeting. If you visit the Proton Meet site, you can start an anonymous call with up to four participants for free.

    Proton says that anyone with an account (even a free one) can start Meet call with up to 50 participants for up to one hour, but it is also offering a dedicated Meet Professional plan for $8 a month with fewer restrictions (though we don’t have the specifics yet).

    Meet joins the other core Proton tools including Mail, Calendar, VPN, Drive and a password manager. Drive in particular has gotten some notable upgrades recently — it offers collaborative documents and spreadsheets, just like Google. With the addition of Meet, Proton has most of the core services that Google offers covered. There’s even a little AI bot if that’s your thing.

    Proton is using this launch as an opportunity to rebrand its services, gathering them all under the new Proton Workspace (another name pulled directly from Google’s offerings). In addition to the dedicated Meet Professional plan, Proton is offering Workplace Standard for $13 per month (billed annually) or $15 a month (billed monthly). That includes the aforementioned tools and 500GB of space by default. There’s also a Premium plan ($20/month annually or $25/month billed monthly) that adds more storage, access to the Lumo chatbot, expanded Meet participant limits and a few other tidbits.

    The company says it’ll continue offering its other plans, including a Mail-only option that costs $36 a year as well as other bundles for an individual, two users or a whole family. But Proton is obviously looking to expand its business client base with Meet in addition to growing its user base (currently more than 100 million). Proton says it has about 100,000 enterprise customers, and adding a tool like Meet to its portfolio should make it easier to court companies as well as individuals.

  • Solana Price Prediction: Split Paths Toward $1,000

    Solana Price Prediction: Split Paths Toward $1,000

    Two analysts shared different Solana chart views, but both pointed to a larger upside case over time. One chart suggested Solana may be repeating an old recovery pattern, while the other showed room for a deeper correction before any move toward much higher targets.

    Solana Chart Signals Repeat Pattern as Trader Points to Another Long Term Breakout

    A weekly Solana chart shared by X user TheoTrader showed a familiar pattern that, in his view, could lead to another strong move higher. The chart, posted under the $SOL/$USDT pair on Binance, showed Solana trading near $82.70 after a long decline from earlier highs. TheoTrader wrote that the same setup “always plays out the same,” suggesting he expects Solana to recover again despite the current weakness.

    $SOL/$USDT 1W Chart: Source: TheoTrader on X

    The chart tracked Solana price action from 2021 into 2027 on a weekly timeframe. It showed earlier boom and bust cycles, including a sharp rise above $250 in 2021, a deep drop through 2022, and another major rally that pushed price close to the $300 level. On the right side of the chart, Solana sat below a descending trendline that connected lower highs across the recent downtrend.

    At the same time, the chart also showed a fresh rebound from the lower range. Several recent candles pushed upward after Solana spent weeks near the trendline support area. A projected path on the chart suggested that price could first move toward the $110 zone, then continue much higher toward roughly $170 and even near $200 if momentum builds.

    Below the main price chart, a momentum indicator appeared to shift from red bearish zones into green territory. Earlier cycles on the same indicator showed similar green turns near past market bottoms. Because of that, the trader appeared to argue that Solana may be entering another recovery phase rather than starting a new breakdown.

    Still, the chart did not confirm a breakout yet. Solana remained below its long running descending resistance line, which means the next move would need to hold above recent gains and clear that trend barrier. Until then, the setup remains a forward looking chart view rather than a confirmed trend reversal.

    Even so, the post framed the current weakness as part of a repeated market cycle. In that reading, short term fear does not change the longer pattern. Instead, the chart suggests Solana could be setting up for another strong upside phase if the historical structure continues to repeat.

    Solana Chart Maps Correction Zone Before Possible Push Toward $1,000

    A monthly Solana chart shared by X user Crypto Patel outlined a deeper correction phase before any possible move toward much higher long term targets. The chart framed the current structure as a pullback within a broader cycle and marked the $70 to $50 area as the main support and accumulation zone. Crypto Patel argued that the path to $1,000 would likely include another shakeout before a stronger expansion phase begins.

    $SOL/$USDT 1M Chart: Source: Crypto Patel on X

    The chart showed Solana moving through a distribution phase after a strong uptrend. It marked liquidity below the $60 level and suggested that a break under $70 could open the way for a drop toward the lower end of the support band. In that setup, the correction is not presented as a trend failure but as part of a broader cycle that could reset the market before the next leg higher.

    Crypto Patel also highlighted how deep pullbacks have appeared in earlier parts of Solana’s market structure. The chart included previous rebound zones and measured rallies that followed them. Based on that pattern, the analyst suggested that another washout into the marked accumulation area could clear weaker holders before a stronger recovery begins.

    At the same time, the chart kept its long term outlook bullish. It showed projected upside targets at $500 and then $1,000 after the correction phase ends. Those targets depend on Solana holding the broader cycle structure and eventually turning the support zone into a base for the next rally.

    Still, the setup remains conditional. A move below the upper support band would strengthen the bearish case in the short term and increase the chance of a sweep through lower liquidity levels. Until the chart confirms a reversal from that zone, the outlook remains focused on a correction first and a larger breakout only later.

  • Kingdom of Bhutan signals dumping more Bitcoin

    Kingdom of Bhutan signals dumping more Bitcoin

    The Royal Government of Bhutan has transferred another batch of Bitcoin ($BTC), signaling possible selling as the asset continues to witness capital outflows.

    On-chain analytics show the move involved roughly 375 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $25.19 million at the time of the transfer. The amount was moved to an intermediary wallet previously linked to outflows toward Galaxy Digital, according to on-chain data retrieved from Arkham on March 31.

    Bhutan Kingdom Bitcoin transactions. Source: Arkham

    This latest activity adds to a wave of large transfers throughout March. Earlier, the government moved 973 Bitcoin worth about $72 million over two days, followed by 519.7 Bitcoin valued at $36.75 million to external wallets, including those linked to trading firms.

    Another 123.7 Bitcoin transfer worth $8.5 million on March 27 underscores the accelerated pace.

    Overall, these transactions have pushed total 2026 outflows above $152 million, with net sales estimated at around $120 million after accounting for some inflows.

    Bhutan Bitcoin holdings

    As of press time, the kingdom’s Bitcoin holdings stood at approximately $714.08 million, equivalent to 10,769 $BTC, representing about 0.051% of the total supply of Bitcoin.

    The valuation reflects a 25% decline over the past three months, highlighting the impact of recent market movements on the kingdom’s digital asset reserves.

    Bhutan began mining Bitcoin in 2019 using surplus hydropower, turning excess clean energy into a strategic reserve managed by Druk Holding and Investments that, at one point, contributed nearly 40% of GDP.

    By late 2025, it had built one of the world’s largest sovereign Bitcoin holdings, viewed as a long-term store of value.

    However, after pledging up to 10,000 $BTC for the Gelephu Mindfulness City project, 2026 has marked a shift toward steady, measured sales, typically $5 to $10 million per batch, to limit market impact.

    Many of these transfers have been routed through established trading counterparties, including Singapore-based QCP Capital, in what analysts describe as orderly over-the-counter arrangements.

    The proceeds are understood to support national infrastructure projects, civil servant salaries, and broader development goals tied to Gelephu Mindfulness City.