The Orlando Magic and Detroit Pistons are battling in Game 3 of their 2026 NBA Playoffs first round series on NBC Sports Network and Peacock.
We’re bringing you the best of the 2026 NBA Playoffs, presented by Google, with the NBA.com live blog, featuring all of the meaningful moments, performances, observations, news, notes and highlights from Saturday’s action.
Our slate today begins with Paolo Banchero and the Orlando Magic hosting Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons (1 ET) on NBC Sports Network and Peacock, followed by Thunder-Suns (3:30 ET), Knicks-Hawks (6 ET), both on NBC and Peacock, and Nuggets-Timberwolves (9 ET) on ABC.
What we know about Saturday’s games:
Teams that earn a 2-1 lead go on to win an NBA Playoffs series 80% of the time.
With a 3-1 lead, it’s 95.6% of the time, with 13 teams recovering from such a gap in NBA history.
With a 3-0 lead, it’s been 100% — no team has ever come back to overcome that deficit, with the 2023 Boston Celtics being the last team to tie things up. The 2003 Trail Blazers, 1994 Nuggets and 1951 Knicks also forced a seventh game.
APRIL 25, 2026 / 1:55 ET
Magic step into the lead
48-44 with 4:44 to go in the first half, as the Magic earn a small advantage.
Desmond Bane (14 pts) leads all scorers so far, while Jalen Suggs (5 pts) hit this one from Fort Lauderdale.
18-all with 4:56 to go in the first, as the Pistons use a 10-2 to tie the game up.
Detroit’s shooting 57.1% from the field so far, while Orlando’s at 41.2%. Can the Magic offense hold up under the Pistons’ defensive pressure?
APRIL 25, 2026 / 12:30 ET
Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons are seeking to reclaim homecourt advantage in Game 3 of their 2026 NBA Playoffs first round series with the Orlando Magic.
All stats from Thursday’s Game 2, which the Pistons won 98-83.
Detroit (1-1):
PG Cade Cunningham (27 pts, 6 reb, 11 ast)
SG Duncan Robinson (10 pts, 3 3PM)
SF Ausar Thompson (11 pts, 8 reb, 2 stl, 1 blk)
PF Tobias Harris (16 pts, 11 reb)
C Jalen Duren (11 pts, 9 reb)
Orlando (1-1):
PG Jalen Suggs (19 pts, 6 reb, 4 ast)
SG Desmond Bane (12 pts, 4 reb, 2 ast)
SF Franz Wagner (12 pts, 7 reb)
PF Paolo Banchero (18 pts, 8 reb)
C Wendell Carter Jr. (3 pts, 2 blk)
Keep an eye on Anthony Black off the Magic bench. He was held to 5 pts on 1-of-6 shooting in Game 2, as the team was kept to 33% from the field — well below his season average of 15.0 ppg.
APRIL 25, 2026 / 12:15 ET
Saturday’s injury report
Jonathan Isaac remains out for the Magic.
Isaiah Joe is doubtful for the Thunder, while Thomas Sorber and Jalen Williams are out.
Grayson Allen and Jordan Goodwin are questionable for the Suns, while Mark Williams is out.
Jock Landale is out for the Hawks.
Aaron Gordon is questionable for the Nuggets, while Peyton Watson is out.
That famous playoff saying, “A series doesn’t begin until each team has won on the other’s floor” needs a corollary. What sage observation can similarly be applied to a best-of-seven confrontation in which one team has lost two in a row and is on the verge of falling into the pit of 3-1 victimhood?
“A series is all but over when …?” It wouldn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but there’s no denying the veracity. In NBA history, 298 teams have fallen into a 3-1 hole – 285 of them (95.6%) never climbed out.
Of those that did, climbing out sometimes took a toll. The 2020 Denver Nuggets twice faced and survived 3-1 deficits against the Utah Jazz and LA Clippers, only to fall in five games in the Western Conference Finals to the Lakers, all in the Orlando “bubble” postseason.
The 2026 Nuggets would rather not put their resilience to the test in Game 4 of their first-round series against Minnesota tonight (8:30 ET, ABC). But it might not be their call, given how the Timberwolves have dealt with them the past two meetings.
Here are three things to watch for with the cranky/feisty rivals back in Target Center.
1. Jokić dialing in at one end
When a team’s best player doesn’t excel in a playoff series, a certain calm eventually can settle in, a shoulder shrug from the “Well, what can you expect?” school that explains and eases everything. The tough part is getting to that eventually.
The Nuggets and their fans aren’t there yet with Nikola Jokić, their three-time Kia MVP and unquestioned leader. Frankly, they hope they don’t get there and that Jokić turns things around in Game 4.
What we’ve seen through three games has been some of Jokić’s biggest struggles at both ends in his personal playoff history. Defense has never been prominent in his quiver of marvelous skills, and Minnesota paint- and rim-attackers have been on a mission to remind the world. Knowing that the Denver big man has dual responsibilities there – avoiding foul trouble first, thwarting the scorer second – the Wolves have put him to the test, which he and any helpers mostly have failed.
Consider: The Nuggets have been outscored so far in the series by 11 points. But Minnesota has dominated in paint points, 174-116, making 61.3% (87 of 142) shots from so close.
Look, the Nuggets have enough of a chore dealing with their star’s breather minutes. They don’t need to add “while yanked for foul trouble” to their to-do list. Besides, they have won plenty with the big guy being an average defender.
Picking up Jokić’s slack on offense, though, is a task largely foreign to Denver. His reign as arguably the NBA’s best talent dates back to the start of this decade. So his relative struggle right now probably is best corrected by Jokić himself.
Top priority: Hit the shots Minnesota wants to give him. A 40% shooter from the arc the past two seasons, Jokić is 5-of-24 on 3-pointers in this series (that includes 2-for-10 in Game 3). He was only 5-of-16 on 2-pointers, too. And Jokić’s passing acumen suffered – with fewer assists (three) than turnovers (four) – because he wasn’t putting enough stress on the Wolves’ defense to open up teammates.
“If I make all the shots, then the defense is going to react,” Jokić said. “So I think that’s why I couldn’t get anybody involved. … I think I needed to do a bit better job scoring.”
Seems unfair to ask a player who does so much so well to do more. But the NBA postseason is all about “more.”
2. Nuggets’ role players in spotlight
Denver has another star, guard Jamal Murray, coming off his best season. He’ll be asked for more, too – mostly, playing more efficiently after shooting 35.9% through three games and 25.3% on 3-pointers to get his 25.3 ppg.
Then there are the others. Consider this: No Denver starter in Game 3 besides Jokić and Murray even managed one field goal in the first half, by the end of which their team trailed 61-39. That’s a terminal scoring imbalance.
Christian Braun finished the night with two points on free throws, period. Cam Johnson, the questionable replacement for Michael Porter Jr. from recent seasons, was 2-of-6 for six points. Spencer Jones, subbing for injured Aaron Gordon, also scored six.
And they contributed to their own meager output, according to coach David Adelman, by not doing enough other things on offense – cutting, screening – to create openings.
3. Wolves keep buying Edwards time
Sometimes the cameras catch Anthony Edwards limping. Sometimes the Wolves’ normally dynamic scorer isn’t. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter how much his sore right knee bothers him because a fleet of teammates has stepped into the breach on his behalf.
The latest was Ayo Dosunmu, the February acquisition from Chicago. He revved up Minnesota’s pace and led off the bench in Game 3 with 25 points (all 10 buckets in the paint) and nine assists. At other times, ace defender Jaden McDaniels has covered at both ends – he was in attack mode on Thursday vs. Murray while adding 20 points and 10 rebounds.
Donte DoiVincenzo is the Wolves’ whirling-and-diving dervish who provides hustle plays on top of, in Game 3, his 15 points. And center Rudy Gobert has made some voters for Kia Defensive Player of the Year look silly by leaving him off their three-spot award ballot, based on his work vs. Jokić in this series.
The good news for Minnesota is that Edwards wasn’t even on the injury list as Game 4 neared. The better his knee feels, the better he’ll probably shoot (just 39% overall and 25% on threes in the series). And the more dangerous Edwards will become, with Denver looking so newly vulnerable.
Donnie Wahlberg says he went as far as offering up a significant portion of his paycheck in an effort to film “Boston Blue” in his hometown, but the economics of television production ultimately won out.
Speaking on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy, Wahlberg detailed his push to keep the “Boston Blue” spinoff authentic to its setting. The series, a continuation of his long-running “Blue Bloods” character Danny Reagan, is set in Boston but largely filmed in Toronto due to cost considerations.
“When I got offered the job, I’m like, ‘This is a dream come true.’ I thought, I’ll do a spinoff in L.A. or Vegas or Texas, somewhere hot,” Wahlberg said during the interview. “And they were like, ‘How about Boston?’ I was like, ‘Ahhhh.’ They hooked me. And I was like, ‘Alright, let’s do it in Boston.’”
However, he said producers quickly made clear that filming there wasn’t financially viable. “And they were like, ‘But we can’t afford to shoot it in Boston, we’re gonna shoot it in Toronto.’ I was like, ‘No, no.’ So, I said, ‘Listen, I’ll give back 50% of my paycheck if we can go to Boston.’ I did,” Wahlberg continued. “And they said, ‘You can give back 100% and so can the rest of the cast, we cannot film this show in Boston.’ It’s so expensive. For the most part, we shoot in Toronto.”
Wahlberg added that even beyond cost, filming in Boston presents logistical challenges, noting that crowds and tour groups frequently disrupt shoots.
“Boston Blue” has already been renewed for a second season. Season 1 is currently streaming on Paramount+.
[This story contains spoilers for the 30-year-old Sleepers.]
Nearly 30 years later, Sleepers director Barry Levinson still believes that the discourse surrounding his star-studded drama lost the plot.
Based on Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book of the same name, Sleepers begins in the late 1960s, chronicling four teenage friends whose mischievous quest for a free hot dog goes terribly awry when they nearly kill an innocent bystander. Consequently, they’re sent to the Wilkinson Home for Boys where they endure 6 to 18 months of sexual and physical abuse by four guards.
The New York-based film then jumps to 1981. Two of the four friends — John Riley (Ron Eldard) and Tommy Marcano (Billy Crudup) — spot their former lead abuser, Sean Nokes (Kevin Bacon), in a restaurant and gun him down on the spot. Their remaining friends — Lorenzo “Shakes” Carcaterra (Jason Patric), now a low-level clerk at The New York Times, and Assistant District Attorney Michael Sullivan (Brad Pitt) — vow to exonerate the imprisoned pair and expose the corrupt institution that ruined their lives.
In today’s context, a 1996 film that brings down a dangerous ring of child predators feels ahead of its time, but at the time of its release, there was more emphasis on poking holes in Carcaterra’s claim that Sleepers is based on his own true life story. The author maintained that the core of the tale is authentic despite fictionalizing names and dates. In any event, Levinson still believes that this inquisition undermined the larger point being made about institutional abuse.
“Why does film get caught in this cycle of whether something happened or didn’t happen? It’s a story. It wasn’t the craziest, weirdest thing you’ve ever imagined,” Levinson tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Sleepers‘ brand-new 4K/Blu-ray release. “I never quite got that noise that was made at that time. It, in some ways, took away from what the piece was. It doesn’t need to be authenticated in that regard for us to pay attention.”
The other controversial aspect involved Robert De Niro’s Father Bobby and the false alibi he gave on the witness stand to help the childhood friends he mentored. A number of critics rejected the idea that a priest would ever lie, especially after putting his left hand on the Bible and swearing an oath. But one of the film’s often-overlooked details is that Father Bobby and his best friend also spent time at Wilkinson in their youth. If Bobby wasn’t a victim himself, his friend certainly was. So his reluctant commitment to perjury was not just about helping two men get away with vigilante justice; it was equally about bringing down anyone that had anything to do with covering up Wilkinson’s ongoing abuse.
“[The discourse] got caught up in whether or not a priest would ever lie on the stand. You can certainly have that, but that’s not the point of the movie. It was a much broader piece than that,” Levinson says. “It’s not a film that was trying to advocate this or that.”
Below, during a conversation with THR, Levinson also discusses the major studios’ deprioritization of mid-budget movies like Sleepers, as well as whether he sees himself making another movie.
***
Do you remember what pulled you in the direction of Sleepers after releasing two films (JimmyHollywood and Disclosure) in 1994?
[Co-founder of Propaganda Films] Steve Golin gave me the book. He wanted me to take a look at it and see if I was interested in developing it. That’s really where it began.
Geoffrey Wigdor’s Young John, Joe Perrino’s Young Shakes, Jonathan Tucker’s Young Tommy, Brad Renfro’s Young Michael in Sleepers.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Given how heavy the material is, was Sleepers a tough sell to the studio?
I don’t remember it as being that, but I can’t give you the details thinking back 30 years.
There are countless reasons why you’d hire John Williams, but was part of the idea that he’d be able to provide glimmers of hope within this dark story?
I didn’t think of it in those terms. He’s a great composer, obviously. I thought that he could do quite well with this material, and I felt it needed a touch of [Leonard] Bernstein in a way. It needed just a little hint of it in the air, thinking of New York. So I had a conversation with him, then he responded to the material, and I was thrilled. He’s really a marvel.
Did you cast the kids or the adults first?
It’s a good question because I can’t remember specifically. We most likely looked for the adult versions of the characters first, and then figured out what kids could play the young versions of them.
Brad Pitt as Assistant DA Michael Sullivan in Barry Levinson’s Sleepers
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Brad Pitt was in high-demand coming off of 12Monkeys and David Fincher’s Seven. With Fincher being a co-founder at Propaganda alongside Golin, did his involvement give you the inside track on casting Pitt?
I don’t think it was related, as I remember. But again, looking back 30 years, I can’t give you the real scoop in that regard.
Sleepers was your first of five collaborations with Robert De Niro. Did you sense pretty quickly that you’d be working together for many years to come?
To be honest, no. I was thrilled to use him, but I didn’t foresee beyond the first time we worked together. It was great, but I didn’t know what I would be doing and how that would fit into what Bob would be up to. So it was somewhat by chance that we started to connect. And then, on occasion, he would mention something just as he and his [producing partner] Jane Rosenthal did about Wag the Dog [the following year]. So it was just something that began to fall together periodically. The work that came up just made sense for Bob.
Robert De Niro as Father Bobby in Sleepers.
Sleepers was the second of four films that you and Dustin Hoffman made together. Had the two of you been looking for the perfect follow-up to Rain Man?
No, we weren’t looking. I wasn’t looking and neither was he. When I wrote the screenplay, I just thought, “Dustin would be a good choice here. I’ll see if he wants to do it.” Again, it was so long ago, but I think we had to find this window that he could work in. He might have been about to go do something else, or he was working on something else just prior to this. But I just thought that there was something for him here.
In contrast with Pitt’s stillness, I love how he’s constantly flipping pages and walking around and fidgeting in the courtroom. It was a nice touch considering the character was in the throes of an alcoholism and wanted no part of this highly orchestrated case.
Yeah, the physicality of it — as opposed to just sitting there — shows that the guy’s got some issues. How do you do that without somehow spelling it out in some grand fashion? So it’s a physicality that seemed appropriate to what we were doing.
Kevin Bacon as Nokes in Sleepers
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
The timing of Nokes’ (Kevin Bacon) killing is such an interesting choice. Most movies would’ve saved their villain’s comeuppance for last and made a meal out of it. I’m assuming you were staying faithful to Lorenzo Carcaterra’s book, but did you ever receive a note about killing a different guard first before working your way up to Nokes?
I don’t remember that, no. When I wrote it, it somehow just seemed appropriate. You could certainly do another version, but then you would have more murders in the piece, as opposed to happenstance. [John and Tommy] happened to be in the same bar where Nokes was eating. So if there had been another killing to set up the later killing [of Nokes], then you’re going to go down the road of revenge. That cycle wasn’t the point of it all.
I read some old reviews that questioned Father Bobby’s decision to lie, and they didn’t point out that he, too, had spent time at the Wilkinson Home for Boys as an adolescent. He saw firsthand how that place destroyed his best friend. So his eventual lie on the stand wasn’t just about John (Ron Eldard) and Tommy (Billy Crudup) beating a murder charge; it was about exposing this evil institution. I think that motivation got lost in some of the reviews.
Yeah, it did. They didn’t focus on the overall piece. They went into one corner and missed the overall thematic design to the whole film.
When the film came out, there were a lot of things that came to light, in general, about child abuse at some of these facilities. But [the discourse] got caught up in whether or not a priest would ever lie on the stand. You can certainly have that, but that’s not the point of the movie. It was a much broader piece than that, and you can make your own judgment on it.
Sometimes, you do a movie, and it gets caught up in a stream of things that go all over the place, and they don’t focus on what the movie is. It’s not a film that was trying to advocate this or that. It’s an overall story that you get involved in, and you can discuss the pluses and negative aspects of what took place.
The film ends with a legal disclaimer that calls into question the validity of what we watched. Do you still believe the author of the source material?
I think for the most part. But why does film get caught in this cycle of whether something happened or didn’t happen? It’s a story. It doesn’t need to say “this is a true story” at the beginning, but that was from the book. It didn’t have to have that. But to say that none of these things could ever happen? It wasn’t the craziest, weirdest thing you’ve ever imagined. So I never quite got that noise that was made at that time. It, in some ways, took away from what the piece was. You don’t have to agree with it. It’s not advocating anything other than, “This is the story that’s being told.” It doesn’t need to be authenticated in that regard for us to pay attention.
Even if it’s not literally true, there have been countless cases of institutional abuse to where it’s spiritually or emotionally true.
Right. Films get caught up in certain things, periodically, for reasons that you question, and that happened when Sleepers came out. It still did very well here. In Europe, it was huge because it didn’t get caught up in any of the controversy. I’m still not even sure why there was a real controversy.
The majority of your films including Sleepers fall in the mid-budget range that the major studios no longer make at the volume they once did. Has it been tough for you to watch your bread and butter disappear over the years?
Yeah. In general, taking me out of the mix, what’s happening right now is that there’s too much emphasis on the blockbuster, as opposed to, This [smaller] movie can make some money for us, and we can keep moving along. Instead, they’re going for the extravagant piece that costs $150 million or more, but that zone of movies around $40 million can ultimately succeed. It can also expand your audience rather than sharpening the audience to a smaller number. So my take on it is that I don’t think you can survive by just working in one area predominantly. It narrows your audience year by year. That’s a mistake.
I’m just somebody who’s trying to write and do movies. I’m not an executive who has to look at the economics of the business. But certain people I’ve spoken to haven’t been to a movie in four years because they’re not interested in the movies that do well. Therefore, they’re looking for something else. So there’s pros and cons, but I just don’t know how you survive when you start limiting your audience.
The loss of the mid-budget film has also been cited as one of the reasons why younger movie stars haven’t emerged in droves. That range used to be a launchpad or proving ground for a lot of future stars. Well-established stars like Pitt still have their place, but now the IP or the high concept is the star.
I think that’s a good argument. I mean, what’s the other reason? I’m not sure. There are television people that emerge, as opposed to in the past, but it’s true. Where’s a breakout movie star? There are not many compared to what there used to be, that’s for certain.
The movie business is also facing [streaming series] and the internet. Those are two other entertainment areas where a lot of people spend hours and hours. And they’re not paying close attention to whatever they’re watching or doing on the internet [due to cell phones]. You’re not going to get storytelling if you’re texting for hours at a time. Sometimes, you go into a restaurant, and you’ll see two people on their cell phones at the same table. They’re with each other, but they’re elsewhere at the same time. So I can’t figure out that whole behavior, and we’re looking at a breakdown of sorts.
Hollywood, in general, has a problem with all of those other devices at work, but I still think you cannot function in one [budget] area alone, which is where the emphasis is.
Do you have another movie in you?
Yeah, there’s two or three projects that I have. We’re ready to go out and see if we can make them. They’re not particularly expensive films, one is probably $20 million and the other is $15 million. I can work quickly. I made TheHumbling with Al Pacino for $2 million, and we shot it in my house. I shot another film, The Bay, for $2 million. So I have no problem working in all ways as long as I know the story that I want to tell. So we’ll see what’s going to happen. The business is going through a radical shift, and whether or not all these takeovers take place, it’s a big guessing game of what’s beneficial or not. These are the times we’re in.
There’s a notable director who insists that filmmaking is a younger man’s game. I presume you reject that notion?
Well, I don’t think age is the issue. It’s the ideas. What ideas do you want to do? Are they completely out of fashion? But if you’re basically dealing with the world we’re in, what’s the story that you want to tell? I don’t think it’s based on anything other than that.
Alicia Keys recently told The Times of London that the music industry can feel like a boys’ club, and that it is difficult for women, particularly if they are working as producers or studio engineers, to break in.
“The music world becomes a good old boy network and all the incredible women working as engineers and producers are not given an open door,” Keys says. “Women make up 2 per cent of the entire business. I’m a producer and here we are, doing a bunch of work, killing it, so it’s shocking that the number is so small. Rather than just being pissed off about that, it was time to create opportunities.”
While acknowledging some of her tracks contain feminist messages, Keys said they weren’t overtly intentional, and instead naturally arose from her own pursuit of empowerment.
“I didn’t aim to come up with feminist message songs, and most of them were written because I wasn’t feeling that strong so I had to give myself a pep talk to keep going, but it is a thread through my work,” she said.
Earlier in the interview, when asked to share advice for up-and-coming artists, Keys said she would tell them “to think about how to become the owners of their own creations.” The 17-time Grammy winner added that becoming your own advocate is key to thriving on the business side of the music industry, which is particularly difficult to navigate.
“No one tells you these things,” she said. “You deal with all these executives and lawyers who love to take their percentages and overcharge you, but they never say, ‘How can we ensure you’re here to stay?’”
Fu Peng, the new chief economist at Xinhuo Group, known for its assessments of cryptocurrency markets, shared a remarkable analysis of Bitcoin’s fundamental dynamics.
In statements made via the X platform, Fu stated that Bitcoin’s evolving structure, particularly through futures and ETFs, is increasingly resembling some models in traditional financial markets.
According to Fu Peng, the logic behind Bitcoin perpetual contracts and ETFs largely overlaps with the “carrying cost” or “overnight fee” mechanisms seen in gold and industrial commodity markets. This structure points to a model where large investors generate income through long positions while creating a stable cash flow in the market. In this context, funding fees paid by individual investors for leveraged transactions stand out as the system’s primary source of revenue.
Related NewsAnalytics Firm Paints a Bleak Picture for an Altcoin: “I Don’t Want to Spread FUD, But…”
According to the analysis, large-scale spot investors are not simply classic “long” players who take positions solely on the expectation of price increases. Instead, these investors act almost like “householders,” protecting their long-term positions and accumulating funding income through hedging strategies. In this way, large whales reduce their position costs over time, and under certain conditions, can even reach “zero cost” or “negative cost” levels.
Fu Peng argues that the common perception in the market that “large investors are shorting” is not true. According to the economist, the real role of these whales is to be “rent collectors” who regularly earn income from the market. Indeed, the premium and discount structure in CME Bitcoin futures is said to be a reflection of these cost and return dynamics.
Mythos, the new AI model from Anthropic that has sparked fear and confusion in traditional tech and finance, is also driving a massive shift in how the crypto industry thinks about security.
For years, decentralized finance has focused its defenses on smart contracts. Code is audited, vulnerabilities are cataloged, and many common exploits are well understood. But Mythos, a model designed to identify and chain together weaknesses across systems, is pushing attention beyond code and into the infrastructure that supports it.
“The bigger risks sit in infrastructure,” said Paul Vijender, head of security at Gauntlet, a risk management firm. “When I think about AI-driven threats, I’m less concerned about smart contract exploits and more focused on AI-assisted attacks against the human and infrastructure layers.”
That includes key management systems, signing services, bridges, oracle networks, and the cryptographic layers that connect them. These components are less visible than smart contracts and are often outside traditional audit scope.
In fact, this month, web infrastructure provider Vercel, which many crypto companies use, disclosed a security breach that may have exposed customer API keys, prompting crypto projects to rotate credentials and review their code. Vercel traced the intrusion to a compromised Google Workspace connection via the third-party AI tool Context.ai, which an employee used.
Mythos belongs to a new class of AI systems built to simulate adversaries. Instead of scanning for known bugs, it explores how protocols interact, testing how small weaknesses can be combined into real-world exploits. That approach has drawn attention beyond crypto. Banks like JP Morgan are increasingly treating AI-driven cyber risk as systemic and are exploring tools like Mythos for stress testing. Earlier this month, Coinbase and Binance both reportedly approached Anthropic to test Mythos.
Early findings from models like Mythos have identified weaknesses in the behind-the-scenes systems that keep crypto platforms secure, including the technology that protects keys and handles communication between systems.
“I think there are two areas where AI models are especially valuable,” Vijender said. “First, multi-step exploit chains that historically only get discovered after money is lost. Second, infrastructure-layer vulnerabilities that traditional audits never touch.”
That shift matters in a system built on composability, where DeFi protocols can connect and build on each other’s services.
DeFi protocols are designed to interconnect. They share liquidity, rely on common oracles, and interact through layers of integrations that are difficult to map in full. That interconnectedness has driven growth, but it also creates pathways for risk to spread, as seen in recent bridge exploits like the Hyperbridge attack, in which an attacker minted $1 billion worth of bridged Polkadot tokens on Ethereum by exploiting a flaw in how cross-chain messages were verified.
“Composability is what makes DeFi capital efficient and innovative,” Vijender said. “But it also means a minor vulnerability in one protocol can become a critical exploit vector with contagion potential across the ecosystem.”
Without AI, those dependencies are hard to trace. With AI, they can be mapped and exploited at scale. The result is a shift from isolated exploits to systemic failures that cascade across protocols.
Evolution of AI attacks
Still, some industry leaders see Mythos as an acceleration rather than a turning point.
At Aave Labs, founder Stani Kulechov said AI reflects the dynamics already at play in DeFi’s adversarial environment.
“Web3 is no stranger to well-funded and motivated adversaries,” he told CoinDesk. “AI models represent an evolution in the tools used to achieve exploits.”
From that perspective, DeFi is already built for machine-speed attacks. Smart contracts execute automatically, and defenses such as liquidation mechanisms and risk parameters operate without human intervention.
“DeFi operates at compute speed, so AI doesn’t introduce a new dynamic,” Kulechov said. “It intensifies an environment that has always required constant vigilance.”
Even so, Aave is seeing AI surface new categories of vulnerabilities, including issues that human auditors may have previously deprioritized.
“The Mythos paper shows that AI can uncover old bugs that were previously deprioritized,” he said.
That breadth still matters in a system where even smaller vulnerabilities can undermine trust or be combined into larger exploits.
If attackers can move faster, the question becomes whether defenses can keep pace.
For both Gauntlet and Aave, the answer lies in changing the security model itself. Audits before deployment and monitoring after were designed for human-paced threats. AI compresses that timeline.
“To defend against offensive AI, we will need to take an AI-centric approach where speed and continuous adaptation are essential,” Vijender of Gauntlet said. That includes continuous auditing, real-time simulation, and systems built with the assumption that breaches will happen.
A ‘greater way’
Aave has already integrated AI into its workflows, using it for simulations and code review alongside human auditors. “We take an AI-first approach where it adds clear value,” Kulechov of Aave Labs said. “But it complements, rather than replaces, human-led auditing.”
In that sense, AI equips both attackers and defenders.
For builders, the long-term effect may be less disruption than divergence.
“We haven’t tested Mythos yet, but we’re genuinely interested in what it and tools like it can do for protocol security,” said Hayden Adams, founder and CEO of Uniswap Labs. “AI gives builders better ways to stress test and harden systems.”
Over time, Adams expects the gap between secure and insecure protocols to widen.
“Projects that prioritize security will have greater ability to test and harden systems before launching,” he said. “Projects that don’t will be most at risk.”
That may be the real shift. Security is no longer about eliminating vulnerabilities. It is about continuously adapting to a system in which those vulnerabilities are constantly rediscovered and recombined.
Read more: Move over bitcoin and quantum risks. Anthropic’s Mythos AI could have major implications for DeFi
Defence lawyers had asked for case to be thrown out, claiming Maduro’s rights were violated following US abduction.
Published On 25 Apr 202625 Apr 2026
The United States has agreed to ease certain sanctions on Venezuela in order to allow the country’s government to cover the legal fees for ex-president Nicolas Maduro, who is on federal trial in New York City for drug trafficking charges after being abducted by US forces in January.
Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, had asked the Manhattan-based US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to toss out the case in February, arguing that a prohibition on the government in Caracas paying the legal fees constituted a violation of Maduro’s legal right to the counsel of his choice.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
In a court filing, US Department of Justice lawyers agreed to modify US sanctions so that the Venezuelan government could pay Maduro’s defence lawyer. They said the change makes the defence’s motion to throw out the case “moot”.
The pivot is the latest update in a closely watched trial that has raised a series of legal questions based on Maduro’s status as a former head of state and how he was taken into US custody.
Critics have condemned the proceedings as fundamentally illegitimate, pointing to the extraordinary US military operation to abduct Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from Venezuela. Legal experts have called the raid a blatant violation of international law.
The Trump administration has maintained that the abduction was a law enforcement operation supported by the military. It has argued that Washington does not recognise Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela following several contested elections.
Under the international law concept of “head of state immunity”, sitting world leaders are typically granted immunity from foreign national courts.
After being spirited to the US, Maduro and Flores pleaded not guilty and remain jailed in Brooklyn, New York. Maduro has rejected the US charges as a false pretext for seizing control of the South American country’s natural resources.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire for foreign companies to access Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.
During a hearing on March 26, Judge Hellerstein did not signal that he would throw out the trial, but did question whether the sanctions preventing the Venezuelan government from covering Maduro’s legal fees were a violation of constitutional rights.
All criminal defendants in the US have constitutional rights, regardless of whether or not they are US citizens.
Prosecutors, at the time, argued that the sanctions were based on national security interests and asserted that the executive branch, rather than the judiciary, oversees foreign policy.
They further argued that Maduro and Flores could use personal funds to pay for a lawyer of their choice.
“The defendant is here, Flores is here. They present no further national security threat,” said Hellerstein.
“The right that’s implicated, paramount over other rights, is the right to constitutional counsel.”
Early this month, Variety broke the news that Supriya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan on HBO’s medical drama “The Pitt,” was departing the show after the second season. Per executives, Ganesh was written off for storyline purposes, leaving fans to mourn the beloved character. With her character arc ending abruptly, much of Mohan’s story remains unfinished, including potential future plotlines in which she might find her speciality post-residency, explain her family lore, make friends at the hospital and, perhaps most importantly (depending on the fan) explore her connection with night-shift attending physician Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy).
Despite only sharing a few scenes, Mohan and Abbot (or simply Mohabbot to fans) are one of the show’s most popular “ships,” which, if you’re new to fandom lingo, is how couples are referred to. Sparking after a Season 1 encounter in which Abbot championed Mohan’s medical skills, the ship joined the legion of other “Pitt” pairings yet to set sail.
Mohabbot is one ship among many. There’s also KingDon — Mel King (Taylor Dearden) and Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), HuckleRobby (Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby and Gerran Howell’s Dennis Whitaker) and McVay (Victoria Javadi, played by Shabana Azeez and Cassie McKay, played by Fiona Dourif), to name a few. Characters are not restricted to one ship; Robby and Abbot are another popular pair. Dr. Robby and Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) from Season 1 are one of the few ships that actually have a basis in the show’s storyline, in addition to Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) and Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz). Getting overwhelmed? Us too.
Part of what makes the couplings of “The Pitt” unique is the plethora of pairings to choose from — and the fact that the show, which takes place in an understaffed and overfilled emergency room, barely features anything that might suggest romance is blossoming. Mohan and Abbott do little more than share one somewhat private conversation during a particularly tense shift (granted, he’s shirtless for it); the same can be said for KingDon, McVay and the rest (though all remain clothed, in those cases). The lack of source material hasn’t stopped fans of the show — rather, it’s made it all the more fun to analyze, speculate and imagine what might be going on outside of the singular 15-hour shift we get to see.
“It’s kind of a wish fulfillment, but it’s also a way to keep the narrative going,” explains Susan Murray, a professor of media, culture and communication at NYU. “There’s only so much narrative that you’re going to get from the show, because the season’s done. That’s it. That’s all that exists… But if you’re a fan on that level, you can continue a story by fantasizing, or projecting, or imagining.”
Shipping fictional characters is hardly a new phenomenon; it’s one of the oldest fan practices in the book, according to Paul Booth, a professor of media and pop culture at DePaul University. As for why, “the general consensus is there is no general consensus,” he explains. Yes, the fact that it’s fun to picture attractive people in a relationship plays a role, though there’s an emotional element, too — if two characters complement one another, it makes sense that fans would root for them to get together.
Camille — who runs the Instagram account @thepittdetails, and asked to be identified by only her first name — says that shipping characters makes the show easier to converse about. “It’s watercooler talk. You gotta have something to talk about, especially on a show like ‘The Pitt,’”says the co-host of the “The Pitt Crew” podcast. “I don’t know what lung sliding is! The majority of the people who watch the show have no idea what the heck is going on. What you’re paying attention to is the personal conversations happening during these scenes.”
And while there’s no way to know what TV shows will be enlisted into shipping discourse, there are two elements that are typically present in media that tends to garner dedicated fans, explains Booth. “One is a set of three-dimensional characters, so people or characters within a narrative that feel like they’re real and that feel like they could exist outside of the narrative,” he said. “The second thing is a deep narrative… there has to be some grounding in the human experience.”
In the case of “The Pitt,” both are applicable, thanks especially to the series’ devotion to creating an ensemble medical drama that is much more capital R realistic than its forerunners. Compared to hospital-set hall-of-famers like “ER” and “Grey’s Anatomy,“ “The Pitt” keeps a focus on the medicine by portraying the authentic, entirely un-glamorous life of the ER staff without wasting precious time showing the employees sleeping with one another in on-call rooms, or placing their hands inside a patient’s chest to steady a bomb that could explode at any moment.
This, paired with the show’s real-time format (each season is simply one 15-hour shift in the ER), creates a near-perfect passion-attracting storm. “There’s a sense when you’re watching ‘The Pitt’ that you are almost looking through a window at a real day,” says Booth. “Which, of course, makes it really fun to watch.” (Jules Feliciani, who runs the Instagram account @weinthepitt, points out that the format allows fans to “get to know these characters, not super personally, but almost personally enough where you can connect with them.”)
The format has its limitations, though — the most obvious for fans with an inclination to ship is the sheer inability to develop romantic relationships over the course of a season. (X users often joke they’ll have to hold out until Season 50 to get the first “Pitt” kiss.) “It would be utterly awkward and not in the spirit of the show to try to develop a romance over the course of 15 hours,” says Suzanne Scott, an associate professor in the Department of Radio, TV and Film at U. of Texas Austin. “But it also means that, by the nature of the format, there’s so much time in between seasons, narrative time for these characters, that fans could sort of color in on their own.”
Booth refers to this as “filling in the gaps,” and in the case of “The Pitt,” there’s a lot left up to the viewer’s discretion: characters’ living situations, family relationships, building friendships, etc. It’s not until the Season 2 finale that audiences get a glimpse at Langdon, Mel, Santos and new attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi outside of scrubs. Mel and Santos’ post-credits karaoke scene is the first time we’ve seen any of the characters beyond the four walls of the hospital or its immediate surroundings. Conversations are often left unfinished, thanks to the “frenetic nature of the ER,” Murray says. “A lot of things just don’t get resolved,” she says. “There’s just a lot of opening of possibilities rather than closing off of possibilities.”
Season 2 has seen the plot lean into the show’s popular pairings (which some might call “fan service,” or material intentionally added to please the audience): Langdon taking care of Mel’s sister, Mohan tending to Abbot’s wounds, Robby asking Whitaker to house-sit for him. When discussing the Mohan and Abbot scene, creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill told TVLine that he “leaned into” the romantic subtext, calling it “a flower tossed to the crowd.” Though, at a certain point, it doesn’t matter what occurs onscreen, explains Scott; “Some of the enjoyment starts to become a little bit more divorced from what’s actually going on in the show, because the fun is in the speculation.”
Fans aren’t the only ones with an opinion on the show’s pairings. While Dearden and Ball have played coy about their onscreen connection, saying they view the relationship as platonic, Hatosy, for one, is all aboard the SS Mohabbot. In an interview conducted after news of Ganesh’s exit went public, Hatosy told The Hollywood Reporter that Abbot “definitely has feelings” for his co-worker and “will miss her,” stating “she could go to Jupiter, and he’ll find her” – the type of swoonworthy remark you’d expect to hear on a Shonda Rhimes show.
“There’s a real danger of doing that,” according to Booth, who feels that actors expressing their opinions on the show’s content could possibly alienate parts of their fanbase who don’t watch the show in that way.
There’s also the fact that said fanbase is hard to pin down, and huge: Season 2 is averaging 15.4 million viewers per episode, Variety reported. While other hit shows like “Heated Rivalry” or “Grey’s Anatomy” have audiences easier to broadly categorize, demographically, “The Pitt” doesn’t fall under that umbrella; young fans make up a portion of the show’s viewership, but the hit series appeals to viewers of all ages, some of whom are totally unaware of the wider world of fandom, shipping and vigorous discourse centered around the show.
Some observers are perplexed as to why a serious adult drama is attracting the level of fan scrutiny usually reserved for genre material. “Is this your first time watching a TV show?” is a common remark on X, fueled by pieces such as a SlashFilm article titled “Many ‘The Pitt’ Fans Are Proving That Yes, It’s Possible To Be Bad At Watching A TV Show.” The inter-fandom discourse goes beyond just shipping; cast members leaving, Wyle’s comments to the press and on-screen plotlines are all subject to heated debates.
“There’s often a sort of misconception that cult television fandom needs to be orbiting around [shows] like soaps or horror or sci-fi,” says Scott. “Part of the reason fans are getting as much coverage as they’re getting at this moment in time is, in general, a sort of perceived disconnect because of that realism — like we are meant to just consume this and not speculate about it is the implication.”
But to ask a fan to simply consume something is unrealistic. Fandom, whether people like to classify themselves as members or not, has existed as long as there’s been entertainment, and extends beyond whatever TV show happens to be the current hit; athletes, sports teams, musicians, books, superheroes and more all have their avid fanbases. “Fans have long-standing reading practices,” says Scott. “And it doesn’t matter what text they’re approaching; they’re going to approach a text with those reading practices kind of in their toolkit.”
“The Pitt,” clearly, is not the singular exception to this. And that’s got to be good news for HBO.
As Scott explains: “Fans are often the loyalest, most active promotional agents a television show can have, and those are two things you need in television — particularly at this moment in history.”
A new report on the state of bitcoin mining in Latam found that the region is lagging in bitcoin mining adoption, even as it holds vast energy resources. While Paraguay holds the fourth place in global hashrate, Hashrate Index picked Brazil and Venezuela as the nations to follow.
Key Takeaways:
A 2026 Hashrate Index report highlights Latam’s mining growth, noting Paraguay holds 4.3% of global hashrate.
Brazil grew its Bitcoin hashrate by 133% YoY as miners secure lower tariffs directly from energy generators.
Future Venezuela operations can leverage its potential by capturing stranded energy via OFAC licenses.
While the global share of bitcoin mining hashrate is dominated by nations like the U.S., China, and Russia, Latam might be on the verge of becoming a larger player in this market.
According to Hashrate Index’s “The State of Bitcoin Mining in Latin America (2026)” report, while Paraguay has the fourth place of countries hosting the most bitcoin hashrate with 43 EH/s and 4.3% of the global hashrate, Brazil and Venezuela have the potential to grow and turn Latam into a Bitcoin mining superpower.
Brazil, which has increased its hashrate share by 133% year-over-year, has opened new opportunities for miners, as they can now negotiate directly with companies in the energy generation market to lock up tariffs, bypassing distributor tariffs and other surcharges.
While the report stresses that energy generation outpaces transmission, the Sul region, with its low industrial power rates, can become a bitcoin mining haven for companies seeking to enter the bitcoin mining industry.
Venezuela, on the other hand, shows an untapped potential, as it registers 5 EH/s even under the current conditions. The report states:
“What Venezuela has, and what no other country in Latin America has at the same scale, is a combination of stranded energy and an OFAC licensing framework that is already opening up the country’s energy,”
Due to deficiencies in the power grid, a large portion of the power generated cannot be transmitted to the final consumer. Bitcoin mining operations deployed near generation sources could capture it before it gets lost in transmission.
“The template for private capital entering Venezuela’s energy sector with OFAC authorization already exists. Bitcoin miners can leverage the same legal structure,” the report concluded.
