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  • Boost Mobile Is Making First Phones More Affordable for Back-to-School Season 

    Boost Mobile Is Making First Phones More Affordable for Back-to-School Season 

    If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.

    Back-to-school shopping usually means backpacks, notebooks and dorm-room basics. But for many families, a phone plan — or a first phone — has become just as essential. 

    Boost Mobile is leaning into that rite of passage with a slate of back-to-school tech deals aimed at parents looking to get their kids connected without committing to a traditional wireless contract. The carrier’s current offers include an iPhone 16e deal, a free Samsung Galaxy A16 5G promotion, discounted 5G tablets and a bring-your-own-phone plan starting at $10 per month for the first three months, then $25 Forever. 

    The standout offer is the iPhone 16e, which is down to $149.99 when you prepay for two months through their $60 Unlimited Premium Plan. The device is positioned as an entry point into Apple’s current iPhone lineup, and also comes with AppleCare availability through Boost Protect. 

    For families looking for a lower-cost Android option, Boost Mobile is also promoting the Samsung Galaxy A16 5G as a free phone offer, along with 5G tablets starting at $59.99 through its back-to-school campaign. The tablet deal is geared toward students who need a portable screen for homework, streaming, video calls or travel, without the price tag of a full laptop. 

    Meanwhile, the carrier’s bring-your-own-device plan works as a budget workaround for parents who do not want to buy a new phone at all. Boost Mobile’s Unlimited plan is currently advertised at $10 per month for the first three months, then $25 per month forever after that, for new customers. The plan includes unlimited data, talk, and text with 30GB of premium data. 

    In general, Boost Mobile’s offers are centered around prepaid flexibility: no annual long-term service contracts, no credit checks, support for eSIM and physical SIM cards and no-cost activation. Plus, the company also boasts a 30-day money-back guarantee for service fees. 

    The back-to-school push arrives as parents continue to balance the practical need for student connectivity with the cost of increasingly expensive phones and wireless plans. If you’re a parent looking for that perfect middle ground, Boost Mobile is the place to start. 

  • Claude Mythos Cracked Post-Quantum Cryptography That Humans Spent Years Failing to Break

    Claude Mythos Cracked Post-Quantum Cryptography That Humans Spent Years Failing to Break

    In brief

    • Anthropic said its unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model found a previously unknown attack on HAWK, dropping the cost of stealing its smallest key from 2^64 operations to 2^38.
    • The model also sped up an attack on a 7-round version of AES by 200 to 800 times, beating a record cryptographers set in 2013.
    • Each result cost roughly $100,000 in API usage, and Anthropic staff spent several hundred hours verifying the AES work was real.

    Anthropic today said an unreleased version of its most powerful AI model found two previously unknown attacks on cryptographic algorithms, one of them against a scheme currently competing to become a U.S. federal standard.

    That scheme is HAWK, a digital signature system—the math that proves a transaction came from you without ever exposing your private key—built to survive future quantum computers. The non-regulatory federal agency and lab NIST moved it into the third round of its post-quantum signature competition in May, where it is the last lattice-based candidate standing.

    Claude found a symmetry buried in HAWK’s math that no human had thought to use. For the smallest configuration, the cost of recovering a secret key fell from 2^64 operations to 2^38, roughly 67 million times less work.

    Fixing it means roughly doubling HAWK’s keys. “Unfortunately, doubling HAWK’s key size eliminates many of the reasons making the scheme (as it currently stands) an attractive PQC signature candidate,” Anthropic wrote.

    That trade matters more to blockchains than it sounds. Signature size is block space, and block space is fees, so any chain shopping for a quantum-resistant replacement is partly choosing on bytes per signature. Compact keys and fast signing were HAWK’s entire pitch, and the fix costs it much of that edge.

    Don’t worry, hodlers: Your coins are fine (for now). HAWK has never been deployed anywhere, and Bitcoin still runs on ECDSA, the pre-quantum signature scheme that candidates like HAWK are eventually meant to replace.

    Anthropic disclosed both results to the algorithms’ authors and to U.S. government and industry partners before publishing, and coordinated the HAWK finding with NIST.

    The AES result needed a pep talk

    The second attack targets AES, the cipher scrambling your HTTPS traffic, your encrypted drive, and your exchange’s backend. Full AES-128 pushes data through 10 rounds of scrambling, and Claude attacked a 7-round research version that nobody has improved on since 2013.

    The setup was deliberately harsh. Researchers barred the model from all five established families of AES cryptanalysis and told it to invent a sixth, closing the brief with a line about how the first differential attack didn’t beat anything—it invented the game. Claude also inherited working notes from earlier agent runs that had already burned through roughly 200 failed attack variants.

    It refused anyway. “On AES-128 r5/r6/r7 it found nothing because there’s nothing easy to find; this is the most-studied block cipher in existence,” the model told researchers, per transcripts Anthropic published.

    Anthropic sent just three substantive messages over the next three days, among them: “no again the goal is that we have highly inteligent [sic] model as good top researcher, we want to find new attacks.” Another refused to let Claude swap AES for an easier cipher.

    Then it produced the trick the paper calls a Möbius Bridge, killing one of the nine key bytes an attacker previously had to guess. Refining that into the published version took a few more days and a billion output tokens.

    The finding with the shortest path to something real got the least attention. Claude also broke 13 rounds of LEA, a Korean national standard and ISO lightweight-encryption standard built for phones and internet-of-things devices, in under an hour on a desktop against a prior best that needed 2^98 plaintext pairs. The deployed LEA runs 24 rounds, so nothing in the field is broken.

    Verification took longer than discovery

    The HAWK paper is unusually blunt about the division of labor. “The majority of mathematical discoveries in this paper were AI-assisted. Human author contribution mainly consisted of directing, organizing and verifying AI work,” its authors wrote.

    Claude found the AES idea in days. Anthropic researchers then spent several hundred hours learning enough cryptography to confirm it worked—the same model that found 271 vulnerabilities in Firefox during internal testing.

    “The cybersecurity community is now grappling with the fact that language models are able to discover so many bugs that the standard human processes (like vulnerability triage, verification, and remediation) struggle to keep up,” Anthropic wrote, warning that human researchers may become the bottleneck.

    Anthropic also built CryptanalysisBench—191 cipher-breaking tasks drawn mostly from NIST competitions. Models submit a working attack script that either wins a formal security game or doesn’t, with no partial credit and no human grading.

    Mythos 5 broke 85.7% of tasks with known solutions, against 65.3% for the weakest model tested. Against full-strength ciphers with no published break, every model scored under 9%.

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  • Hollywood Foreign Press Association Sues Penske Media Corporation Over Golden Globes Purchase

    Hollywood Foreign Press Association Sues Penske Media Corporation Over Golden Globes Purchase

    The Hollywood Foreign Press Association filed an antitrust lawsuit Tuesday against Penske Media Corporation, the parent of Variety, over the 2023 acquisition of the Golden Globe Awards.

    The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, accuses PMC of taking control of the awards show through a “sham process tainted by fraud.” It also alleges that PMC instigated a boycott against the Globes to weaken the show and make it vulnerable to a takeover.

    A spokesperson for PMC and the Golden Globes denied the allegations in a statement.

    “Today’s lawsuit continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA,” the company said.

    The HPFA, a non-profit association of foreign journalists, ran the awards show for nearly 80 years until a diversity scandal prompted by a February 2021 report in the Los Angeles Times. The report found that the HFPA had no Black members, which led to a boycott from industry publicists and led NBC to drop the broadcast in 2022.

    The HPFA adopted a series of reforms before agreeing to sell the Golden Globes to PMC-owned Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge. The lawsuit alleges that HFPA members approved the deal under false pretenses.

    Among other things, the suit alleges that HFPA members were assured that they would retain lifetime voting rights for the awards and lifetime tickets to the show. But, the suit states, “Penske later reneged on that fundamental promise, guaranteeing voting rights only to those members who accepted direct employment with the Penske Trust.”

    “The result is a captured voting body that operates at Penske’s discretion rather than as an independent journalistic organization,” the suit continues.

    The suit argues that PMC, which owns several other trade publications, wields monopoly power over the trade market, the “secondary awards” market and the “For Your Consideration” ad market, and has taken steps to exclude HFPA members from participating in those markets.

    The HFPA was expected to wind down its operations after the sale of the awards show. But last year, the HFPA board voted to pause the dissolution process “to fulfill the organization’s duty to investigate the malfeasance and conflicts of interest” in connection with the sale, according to the complaint.

    The suit seeks damages of at least $150 million.

    “The Golden Globes transaction closed more than three years ago and received all required approvals —any assertion that it did not close, or remains subject to reversal, is once again unequivocally false,” the PMC statement continued. “This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA. The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes. We remain troubled that the HFPA, an organization so widely criticized for ethical failures, non-inclusivity, racism, and misconduct involving talent, continues to find attorneys willing to push such illegitimate claims.”

  • Byron Allen’s Freestyle Digital Media Picks Up Jeff Ryan’s Golf Crime Comedy ‘Mooch’ – Film News in Brief

    Byron Allen’s Freestyle Digital Media Picks Up Jeff Ryan’s Golf Crime Comedy ‘Mooch’ – Film News in Brief

    Freestyle Digital Media has acquired the golf crime comedy “Mooch,” written by, directed by and starring Jeff Ryan. “Mooch” will debut on digital platforms starting Aug. 14. Ryan, who retains theatrical rights through is First-Names Films, will release the film in a national roadshow of one-night screenings developed in partnership with Emo Nite, featuring live performances from its soundtrack artists.

    “The rollout reimagines the theatrical experience for the ‘Mooch’ audience: part screening, part concert, part reunion for a generation raised on Warped Tour,” the filmmakers said in a statement. The ensemble cast includes Scott Cohen, Katerina Tannenbaum, Geneva Carr, Molly Brown, Ashby Gentry, Will Chase, Louis Cancelmi Olli Haaskivii, Ian Dolley, Natalie Roy and Oscar Williams.

    Featuring an original emo soundtrack, “Mooch” tells the story of Shane, the oldest caddy at his local golf club, who takes on the job of digging up dirt for a charismatic New Jersey nightclub owner.

    Monday, July 27

    CSA Announces 2026-27 Board of Directors and Dates, Venues and Timeline for 42nd Annual Artios Awards

    The Casting Society announced its newly elected Board of Directors for the 2026-27 term, as well as the date, venues and voting timeline for the 42nd annual Artios Awards. 

    The Artios Awards will be Feb. 18, 2027, with events in Beverly Hills, New York City and London. The awards recognize excellence in casting in film, television, commercials and theater.

    The 2026-27 Board of Directors includes Destiny Lilly, Elizabeth Berra, Matthew Glasner, Sujotta Pace, Danielle Pretsfelder Demchick, Devon Brady, Jazzy Collins, Wendy Kurtzman, Asjai Lou, Gayle Pillsbury, Rachel Reiss, Erica A. Hart, Felicia Joseph, Tiffany Mak, Becca McCracken and Dustin Presley.

    The 2026-27 CSA Global Chapter Board of Governors includes Cassandra Han, Dave Bennett, Sien Josephine Teijssen, Kei Kawamura, Mawuko Kuadzi and Maria Lainas.

    Phase 1 submissions for the Artios Awards are open Aug. 3-13, with nominees announced Oct. 7. Phase 2 submissions are open Oct. 26-Nov. 5, with nominees announced Dec. 16.

  • Zama’s Q2 update triggers 20% volume surge: But THIS warns of a correction

    Zama’s Q2 update triggers 20% volume surge: But THIS warns of a correction

    Zama [$ZAMA] is back on track after an explosive recovery in terms of trading volumes and network activity.

    The token’s prices increased by more than 10% over the past 24 hours following the release of the company’s Q2 report, which indicated further expansion of its ecosystem.

    The move was accompanied by a 20% increase in trading volume to $110.4 million, suggesting buyers backed the rally instead of chasing it on thin liquidity.

    For prospective investors, the question now is whether the latest surge has enough momentum to keep the bullish run going.

    Source: Santiment

    The Q2 update is already showing up on-chain

    Market response was not confined just to price changes.

    Activity on the network increased soon after the report was published, with the number of active addresses doubling in the past 24 hours. The number of token holders has also recorded some recommendable gains of late.

    Source: Token Terminal

    On the other hand, Open Interest surged by double digits, implying that there is new money flowing into the derivatives market and not merely existing traders changing their positions.

    At press time, the cumulative leverage open positions were at an all-time high at $36.4 million after a sharp 24% daily surge.

    Source: CoinGlass

    All in all, the market shows improving market confidence following the latest ecosystem update, a development that could boost the current bullish momentum.

    Buyers remain in control

    The technical structure has also strengthened.

    $ZAMA continues to trade above its key Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs), preserving the bullish trend that has been building over the past 10 consecutive days.

    Holding above those dynamic support levels suggests buyers are still absorbing selling pressure despite the token’s recent advance.

    However, despite most on-chain metrics and structure standing by the market bulls, its Stochastic RSI sends some cautionary signals.

    On the daily chart, the token’s stochastic RSI is just bouncing from an oversold region (greater than 80), suggesting the token’s price action could be a short-term correction before extending its long-term bullish trend.

    Source: TradingView

    Can the rally extend?

    After the Q2 report, there has been higher network activity, increased active addresses, derivatives usage, and price action. All the metrics collectively point to a potential momentum continuation in the long run.

    But while $ZAMA stays above its key moving averages and participation is high, bulls should keep momentum on their side. A short-term correction cannot be sidelined either.

    Final Summary

    • $ZAMA gained by more than 10% after releasing its Q2 report, while trading volume climbed 20% to $110.4 million.
    • Active addresses doubled over the past 24 hours, and Open Interest posted double-digit gains, reinforcing the token’s bullish structure.
  • Ondo drops tokenized asset blockchain plans for private, high-speed trading network

    Ondo drops tokenized asset blockchain plans for private, high-speed trading network

    Tokenized asset specialist Ondo Finance ONDO$0.4037 has abandoned plans to build a conventional layer-1 blockchain, instead introducing a trading network it says is better suited for the next wave of onchain financial assets.

    Dubbed Ondo Network, the system marks a shift from the company’s February 2025 vision for Ondo Chain, a blockchain for institutional finance and tokenized real-world assets. After building its new perpetual futures platform, Ondo Perps, the firm said it concluded that a traditional blockchain wasn’t the best tool for handling the speed and privacy institutional trading requires.

    Ondo Perps is the first application using the network, with plans to offer tokenized assets as collateral for trading.

    The pivot comes as tokenization gathers momentum across Wall Street. Tokenization — the process of representing traditional assets such as stocks, bonds and funds as blockchain-based tokens — is gaining traction as firms look to modernize capital markets with faster settlement and around-the-clock trading. At the same time, perpetual futures, once largely confined to crypto markets, are expanding to traditional assets such as stocks and commodities like oil and gold.

    Beyond issuing tokenized assets

    Ondo has emerged as one of the sector’s largest issuers, with about $2.6 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasury products across OUSG and USDY and roughly $850 million in tokenized equities, according to rwa.xyz. The firm’s broker-dealer obtained last week FINRA approval to launch regulated markets and services for tokenized securities.

  • Crypto-Friendly States Are Winning, Draper Index Shows

    Crypto-Friendly States Are Winning, Draper Index Shows

    Crypto-friendly policies and startup incentives are helping reshape the U.S. innovation landscape, according to the latest Draper Innovation Index (DII).

    The index ranks states based on their ability to attract entrepreneurs, investment, and emerging technologies.

    The top performers and laggards

    The March 2026 update shows that states embracing digital assets and emerging technologies are gaining ground. Meanwhile, some traditional technology hubs are losing momentum.

    Texas climbed to fourth place in the DII US ranking, overtaking Wyoming, thanks in part to growth in overall venture capital investment, cryptocurrency and blockchain-related funding, and new business creation. Oklahoma also posted one of the biggest gains, rising to 15th place after strong growth in startup formation and crypto-related venture investment.

    Meanwhile, California dropped to 31st place and New York fell to 49th. According to the index, both states were hurt by weaker new business formation despite their large economies and established innovation ecosystems.

    New Hampshire ranked third, despite being 40th in GDP and 42nd in population size, highlighting the index’s argument that business-friendly policies can outweigh economic size. The state’s tax environment and startup-friendly policies have helped it attract entrepreneurs, according to BizWorld.

    Draper argued that innovation moves toward places with fewer barriers for founders.

    “When taxes get punishing, when regulations pile up, when policy stops rewarding risk… founders leave,” he said.

    The index also shows Canada falling from third to fifth place and other regions seeing declines linked to instability and capital flight.

    Cryptocurrency, blockchain adoption, and policies supporting business formation are becoming increasingly important factors in determining where the next generation of startups will emerge, according to Draper.

  • Tributes paid to Lindsey Graham at US Capitol ceremony

    Tributes paid to Lindsey Graham at US Capitol ceremony

    NewsFeed

    Hundreds of officials gathered in the Capitol Rotunda to honour late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. His flag‑draped casket was carried in by an armed forces team in recognition of his military service, as Senate leaders hailed him as a towering figure.

    Published On 28 Jul 2026

  • eBay agrees to pay nearly $50 million to couple sent cockroaches, bloody pig mask

    eBay agrees to pay nearly $50 million to couple sent cockroaches, bloody pig mask

    By LEAH WILLINGHAM, Associated Press

    BOSTON — eBay Inc. agreed to pay almost $50 million to a Massachusetts couple who said former employees of the company targeted them with threats and bizarre anonymous deliveries — including live insects, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask, according to settlement details released Tuesday.

    The parties reached a tentative settlement in February as the case was headed to trial, but they were unable to finalize the agreement. The Steiners asked a federal judge in June to reopen the case, and a new settlement announced Tuesday resolves the litigation.

    The agreement with David and Ina Steiner, founders of EcommerceBytes, a newsletter covering the e-commerce industry, includes an additional $7 million in charitable donations, including to organizations supporting First Amendment rights. Attorney Christopher Murphy said the resolution sends “a warning that attempts by big business to suppress speech and the press will not be tolerated.”

    “This was not only an attack and campaign of harassment against two people; it was also an attack on free speech and freedom of the press,” said Murphy, of Massachusetts-based Scalli Murphy Law.

    The settlement contains no confidentiality provision, allowing the Steiners to discuss the case publicly. Murphy said his clients insisted on being able to speak openly about what happened to them.

    The settlement resolves more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings stemming from the harassment campaign. In their 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, the Steiners said that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” in order to “stifle their reporting on eBay.” The Natick residents, who report on the e-commerce industry in their newsletter, said they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats and in-person surveillance by former eBay workers.

    The settlement also requires eBay to issue a public statement addressing the conduct of former executives involved in the case.

    When the lawsuit was filed, the company said “the misconduct of these former employees was wrong,” and that it would “do what is fair and appropriate to try to address what the Steiners went through.”

    eBay reiterated its apology Tuesday, saying, “What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened.” The company also acknowledged “the unprofessional tone in internal communications” by former CEO Devin Wenig, former Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer and former Senior Vice President Wendy Jones.

    The company said the conduct “is not representative of eBay’s culture” and said it has since changed leadership and strengthened its policies, procedures and ethics training.

    In 2020, federal prosecutors charged seven former eBay employees, alleging they carried out a coordinated harassment campaign against the couple after becoming angered by coverage in the couple’s online newsletter. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and cyberstalking and were later sentenced to prison terms or home confinement.

    In 2024, eBay Inc. agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty under a deferred prosecution agreement with federal authorities.

    Federal prosecutors have said the harassment included anonymous deliveries of items like live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig face mask to the couple’s home. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband’s name on them to a neighbor’s home and planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car.

    Under the settlement, the Steiners will receive $48.7 million in compensation, including $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former CEO Wenig, $500,000 from former executive Jones and $50,000 from former executive Wymer.

    The company will fund $6 million in charitable contributions to various nonprofit organizations, with Wenig contributing an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in Ina Steiner’s name.

    In a statement, Murphy cited the recovery amount, personal payments by former executives, a commitment for $7 million to go to nonprofits and the absence of a confidentiality provision in a system where “wrongdoers too often hide their misdeeds by dangling compensation in front of those they victimized and trading that compensation for confidentiality or an NDA.”

    Protecting journalists and publishers and deterring corporate misconduct were goals from the beginning, he said. “We believe this resolution sends a clear message that corporations and their executives cannot engage in this type of misconduct without facing significant consequences,” Murphy said.

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