We should be open to revisiting whole beacon/execution client separation thing.
Running two daemons and getting them to talk to each other is far more difficult than running one daemon.
Our goal is to make the self-sovereign way of using ethereum have good UX. In many cases…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 15, 2026
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Prime Video India and HRX Films have unveiled “Mess,” a comedy feature that brings together the streaming service and the Roshan family’s production banner for the second time, after the previously announced thriller series “Storm.”
Rajesh A. Krishnan directs from an adapted screenplay he developed with writer Kapil Sawant, based on an original script by American writer Paul Soter. Hrithik Roshan and Eshaan Roshan produce under HRX Films – a division of FilmKraft Productions – alongside Krishnan’s Soda Films Lab.
The film follows a gang of robbers who break into the home of a man with OCD, only to find themselves fighting for their own survival over the course of a single night.
Krishnan built his reputation directing some of India’s best-known television commercials before moving into long-form work. His feature credits include the 2019 heist comedy “Lootcase,” which he co-wrote, co-produced and directed, and the 2024 release “Crew.” His earlier series work includes “Tripling” Season 1 in 2016.
“A key marker of a good story is if it takes you by surprise and keeps you entertained throughout,” said Nikhil Madhok, director and head of Originals, Prime Video India. “The movie has a refreshingly original premise and a unique set of delightful characters. Hrithik and Eshaan, through HRX Films, bring a strong creative instinct and a genuine passion for storytelling, and after ‘Storm,’ we are delighted to deepen our partnership further with this film. Rajesh A. Krishnan is brilliant in this genre and ‘Mess’ has all the makings of a film that we believe will be loved by audiences in India and across the world.”
HRX Films was founded by Hrithik Roshan in 2019, drawing on a filmmaking lineage that stretches back through Rakesh Roshan’s FilmKraft Productions and J. Om Prakash’s FilmYug. Eshaan Roshan serves as the company’s CEO.
“‘Storm’ marked the start of something special with Prime Video, and ‘Mess’ feels like a natural next step for us at HRX Films,” said Hrithik Roshan. “Our partnership with Prime Video has allowed us to explore bold, innovative storytelling, and this project embodies that spirit perfectly. Rajesh brings a distinctive voice both as a producer and director, with a rare ability to blend comedy with compelling narratives. His creative vision for ‘Mess’ has been extraordinary from the start.”
“Developing ‘Mess’ alongside Kapil has been a truly rewarding experience,” Krishnan added. “The world of this film is a thrilling amalgamation of comedy and chaos, and unusual enough to keep one at the edge of their seats. Hrithik and Eshaan have brought their expertise and conviction to the film, and together, we have a dream cast to work with.”
The film is set to begin production imminently, with casting and further details to be announced.
Amongst growing conversation on conglomeration, the shifting landscape of global media and restrained freedom of speech, the leading documentary festival CPH:DOX chose “Media Sovereignty: Rethink, Envision, Redefine” as the theme for its second-ever CPH:SUMMIT. This year’s event gathers politicians, innovators, researchers and documentary professionals to discuss the future of the audiovisual industry, focusing specifically on the state of information, technology and shifting notions of truth. In the opening keynote, president of public broadcaster Arte France Bruno Patino provided a bleak yet piercingly precise evaluation of the industry today.
During the Summit’s welcome speeches, Doc Society’s Beadie Finzi presented the audience with a report generated by AI bot Claude predicting what the industry would look like in 2030. The result was ghastly: public broadcasters would become “a shadow” of what they once were to evolve into “merely commissioning entities”; documentary would be split between costly prestige and cheap creator-led, with no in-between; and the information environment would become flooded, with “tiny audiences who care” clustering “tightly around a tiny number of deeply trusted brands.”
Most worryingly, the “real loss by 2030” would be that of “shared commons.” Finzi’s AI-generated report warned that, in just four years, the idea that a society could have a common information experience would be “largely gone” and rebuilding it “will take longer than losing it did.”
Patino was then invited on stage to directly respond to Claude’s predictions. As a seasoned journalist, writer, media analyst and a close observer of recent developments in AI, the exec offered a sharp insight into how rapidly developing technology is contributing to the crumbling of our understanding of media. Below, you will find the keynote speech’s main points:
Pull behavior replaced by push era
Patino says that, for a long time, citizens went “directly to the media,” which he called a “pull behavior.” People online would actively seek information, accessing online newspapers and trusted sources in search of whatever was going on in the world. With the advance of social media and algorithm-based platforms, the exec said we have now entered a “push era.” “People wait for content to reach them, not the other way around. This is a major change.”
Power and saturation
In that push landscape, what has evolved is a scenario in which there are two main industry dynamics: saturation and power. “The very notion of scale is changing,” said Patino. “Global players are gaining weight and [becoming] more powerful than ever. Just look at the recent acquisition of Warner Brothers by Paramount in the United States. Everybody is competing to become the global interface and control the relationship with saturation.” Thanks to AI, the expert said that our content production is now “nearly limitless.” “Content can be produced faster, cheaper and in greater quantities than ever before.”
“These two dynamics could have similar consequences,” he went on. “First, the industrial standardization of content due to the power increase. Second, the technological standardization of content due to less diversity. And that leads us to the paradox of our industry: We’re producing more content than ever before, but diversity is shrinking at the end of the day.”
Getty Images
Fragmentation as our primary relationship to reality
Patino alerted audiences to how three crucial ideas in our understanding of modern culture are now threatened: “First, the idea that culture is the source of both individual and collective emancipation. Second, the idea that fact-based information shared with the widest audience contributes to the democratic [process]. And third, the idea that public broadcasting is a form of collective solidarity.”
He said that the third transformation is “not only about our industry” but the “very world we’re living in, in which the legitimacy of the European social and cultural model fought for after World War II is being questioned.” To Patino, the worst case scenario is “a world in which AI determines the citizen’s place in society, deciding the information, the culture and the entertainment [they] have access to. In such a world, fragmentation becomes our primary relationship to reality.”
The relationship economy
That risk of fragmentation did not come from nowhere, added the exec. It’s the direct consequence of the “broader history of the digital revolution.” Patino outlined three ages since the revolution, with the Age of Access coming first with the advent of the internet, then the Age of Propagation, which started in 2007 and introduced notions such as “algorithm, viral, visibility, social media,” and “the rise of the attention economy.”
With the introduction of AI, we have now entered the Age of Implication. “An era where everything becomes blurred between human and machine, authentic and synthetic, reality and fiction.” “The age of social media changed the place of truth,” continued the expert. “Media no longer speak directly to citizens; they speak to an agent who then speaks to citizens. The risk is that these agents become the primary mediator of our relationship to society, to information, to culture, to entertainment.”
This, Patino said, is what he calls the Relationship Economy. “There’s a growing risk of invisibility for diverse voices or narratives about the real world, either because those narratives will never be proposed to audiences or because they will be drowned in the age of content.”
David Borenstein accepts the Documentary Feature award for “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” onstage during the 98th Oscars at Dolby Theatre on March 15. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
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Coalition: the future of Europe
The Relationship Economy creates “a major consequence for our professions,” said Patino. “There is a growing risk of invisibility for diverse voices and for narratives about the real world, either because those narratives will never be proposed to audiences or because they will be drowned in the flood of content. For us in Europe, this created a whole challenge.”
“The first challenge is discoverability: How can our content be found in the age of AI when AI is controlled by U.S.-based giants? The second challenge is production itself. Our very logic of production is increasingly tied to U.S.-based platforms. Europe cannot produce acts of comparable power in these fields.”
The question, Patino said, is simple: Is there another logic besides sheer power? “Faced with the power of these platforms, Europe must rely on the strengths of coalitions.” “This is, overall, a political choice. Europe remains the most effective geopolitical, social and cultural framework for rethinking identities, narratives and spaces.”
Speaking on that, Patino said he believes Arte can become “the missing name in the European broadcasting system.” The exec brought up how Arte federates a network of 14 public broadcasters, has programs available in seven languages, and maintains strong ties with the creative ecosystem across Europe. Giving his speech the day after the Oscars, Patino brought up Arte’s hand in two big winners: “Mr Nobody Against Putin” and “Sentimental Value.”
“Our ambition is not to build a mega structure, not even to create a European Netflix,” he added. “Our goal is much simpler: to give real substance to the European network. An alternative built on curiosity, discovery and openness.”
There are many E Ink tablets out there, but most of them are basically digital notebooks. They are great for reading and handwriting notes, but not so great for doing all of that regular tablet stuff like checking emails and doomscrolling. Boox, however, has released a number of E Ink tablets that can access the Google Play Store, opening up users to the wide world of traditional smartphone apps.
The company’s latest product is a refresh of the Go 10.3 tablet, called the Go 10.3 Lumi. This introduces plenty of new features and, as the name suggests, one is a front light. The tablet has been designed for both natural sunlight and low-light environments. The previous model was great, but it turns into a useless paperweight without access to ambient light.
Boox
Despite the front-facing light, the Go 10.3 Lumi is still lighter than its predecessor, at 12.8 ounces. It’s also on the thinner side, with a 4.8mm profile.
The basic specs are similar to the Go tablet, with an octa-core processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It runs on Android 15, which is a massive improvement for both security and access to apps. The previous iteration ran on Android 12, and Google stopped officially supporting that OS last year. That means no more critical security updates.
In addition to beefed up security, Boox promises the upgrade to Android 15 offers users improved memory management, better multitasking and smoother UI interactions. E Ink devices can be sluggish so I’m all for anything that speeds things up.
It integrates with external keyboards and boasts integrated speakers, which will certainly come in handy when navigating apps downloaded from the Play Store. Despite the screen technology, this is an Android tablet. It should be able to run just about any app available.
However, the E Ink technology will likely run into hiccups with video-based apps and games. It’s just not made for that. This could be a great little gadget for emails and text-based social media, but not for something like TikTok. It should be able to handle non-animated games just fine, like crossword puzzles and stuff like that.
Boox says the tablet gets “substantial battery life” and has been “optimized for extended usage cycles.” The company hasn’t announced detailed battery specs, but did say people “can work all day without looming battery anxiety.” E Ink devices tend to last a good while, so I’m not worried about that.
The Boox Go 10.3 Lumi is available to order right now and costs $450. If you want to save a few bucks and have no interest in a front light, there’s a stripped down version that also runs Android 15 but costs $420.
Authorities in Argentina have ordered a nationwide block on the prediction market platform Polymarket following a ruling by Buenos Aires Judge Susana Parada on March 16, reporting from Clarín indicates.
Argentina’s ENACOM, which oversees telecoms, broadcasting, internet, radio, and postal services, is tasked with implementing the national measure through ISPs and app stores, preventing access to the platform on both Android and iOS.
The decision follows Polymarket’s accurate prediction of February inflation data ahead of INDEC’s publication, which has drawn scrutiny from authorities and journalists.
Data analysis highlighted small but unusually timed wagers from accounts that normally trade minimal amounts, raising suspicions of insider activity.
According to Clarín, complaints from LOTBA (Buenos Aires City’s lottery authority) and CASCBA (the national gambling industry association), supported by investigations by FEJA (the city’s gambling prosecutor) and CIJ (the technical investigative branch of the Public Prosecutor’s Office), found that the platform operated as an unauthorized online betting system.
The court highlighted that Polymarket allowed easy account creation, accepted crypto assets and credit cards, and lacked age verification, increasing risks for minors.
While some praise the move as protecting users, critics warn it may limit access to global prediction tools, making Argentina the second Latin American country to impose a full ban.
Colombia became the first country in Latin America to ban Polymarket after its gambling regulator, Coljuegos, declared the platform illegal to operate without a license in September 2025 and instructed ISPs to block access.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
The volatility created in global energy markets by the war with Iran in the Middle East could complicate the Fed’s interest rate cut plans. Rising oil and natural gas prices, creating new pressure on inflation, have significantly weakened expectations for an interest rate cut.
Economists expect the Fed to keep its policy interest rate unchanged at its March 18 meeting. However, many analysts had previously predicted a first rate cut in June. The war with Iran, however, has rapidly increased energy prices, leading to a reassessment of these predictions. According to Wall Street analysts, the increase in energy costs could lead to price increases in many areas, including transportation, food, and utilities.
This situation presents a difficult balance for the Fed. On the one hand, the central bank is trying to bring inflation down to its target level of 2% annually, while on the other hand, it has to support a labor market that is showing signs of slowing. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, one of the inflation indicators most closely watched by the Fed, which was released on March 13, showed that prices continued to rise in January. It is noteworthy that this increase occurred before the full impact of the Iran war was felt in energy markets.
According to CME FedWatch data, which is based on futures markets, there is a 99% probability that the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged at 3.5%–3.75% at its March 18 meeting. The same tool calculates a 95% probability that the Fed will not change rates at its April 30 meeting, and a 77% probability at its June meeting. A month ago, these probabilities were 70% and 31%, respectively.
Due to rising energy prices, some economists believe the Fed may not cut interest rates at all this year. EY-Parthenon Chief Economist Gregory Daco stated that they have revised their baseline scenario due to rising inflation expectations, now forecasting only a single 25 basis point rate cut in 2026, likely in December. According to Daco, the possibility of the Fed not cutting rates at all in 2026 cannot be entirely ruled out.
Some analysts go even further, suggesting that the Fed might even raise interest rates in 2026 to control inflation. Sonu Varghese, Chief Macro Strategist at Carson Group, stated that current conditions are already challenging for the Fed, and that if inflationary pressures increase, the central bank might begin discussing rate hikes later in the year instead of cutting them.
Another problem facing the Fed is the weakening labor market. In February, employers in the U.S. laid off 92,000 people, a development considered unexpected by economists. PNC economist Gus Faucher noted that the labor market has been gradually weakening in recent years and that inflation continues to run higher than the Fed would like.
According to Faucher, the fundamental dilemma for the Fed is this: cutting interest rates to support the labor market could accelerate inflation again, while keeping interest rates stable could lead to further weakness in the labor market.
On the other hand, the future leadership of the Fed is also a subject of debate. Gregory Daco stated that if Kevin Warsh is confirmed as Fed chairman, he will need to demonstrate that his monetary policy views are based on economic rather than political grounds.
*This is not investment advice.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who’ll admit to looking up their partner’s exes on social media and those who are lying. Basic, Chelsea Devantez’s expansion of her own 2020 short, builds itself around this embarrassing but universal truth. Following a brokenhearted woman whose obsession with her ex’s ex comes to a head one lemon-drop-fueled night, the comedy serves tragically relatable laughs all the way into some genuine (if hardly groundbreaking) wisdom.
In Ingrid Goes West fashion, our early introduction to Gloria (Ashley Park) is of her lying in the dark, furiously scrolling through Instagram posts by the impeccably dressed Kailynn (Leighton Meester), apparently a model-pretty influencer clad in flashy dresses or tiny bikinis. Emphasis on furiously: Gloria’s internal monologue swings between imagining Kailynn’s perspective in the most mocking tone she can muster and bitterly picking her apart for being vain, vapid and, above all, basic.
Basic
The Bottom Line
Hardly basic.
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Spotlight)
Cast: Ashley Park, Leighton Meester, Taylor John Smith, Nelson Franklin, Kandy Muse, Ashley Nicole Black, Kenzie Elizabeth
Director-screenwriter: Chelsea Devantez
1 hour 28 minutes
Kailynn is the ex-girlfriend of Nick (Taylor John Smith), who’s none too thrilled when he wakes in the middle of the night to find his current girlfriend fixating on his old one. When Gloria refuses to let it go, Nick kicks her to the curb. One 6 a.m. pit stop for vodka and Totino’s pizza rolls later (“Don’t witness me,” she mutters to the cashier), Gloria’s back at her own place, sobbing into pints of melted ice cream.
The first act of Basic is a whirlwind, not dissimilar to the experience of anxiously flicking through a TikTok FYP in search of answers to questions you can’t quite articulate. Devantez hops between Gloria’s narration of Kailynn’s feed, flashbacks to Gloria’s childhood, flashbacks to her happier days with Nick, Gloria’s imagined flashbacks of Kailynn’s relationship with Nick, and Gloria’s actual present-day reality so rapidly that past, present, reality and fiction blur into one another. If the frenzied tone is fitting for Gloria’s mental state, it’s also exhausting to watch.
But just when Basic threatens to feel like too much, it makes an intriguing pivot. Certain that Kailynn has been sleeping with Nick, Gloria pounds back some liquor and puts on her hottest going-out top to confront the homewrecker in person. But the Kailynn she finds hosting trivia at a local bar isn’t what she, and we, have come to expect.
The real Kailynn is not some pampered influencer but a struggling comedian (and a pretty funny one, to Gloria’s great annoyance). She’s also something of a girl’s girl — enough, at least, to volunteer to take a very sloshed Gloria home because “There’s a special place in hell for women who let drunk women go home alone” and, she quips, she’s destined for the hell reserved for women who watch daddy porn.
After a thrilling detour into Kailynn’s own perspective (“The best revenge isn’t living well. It’s this,” she gloats when she sees how jealous Gloria is), Basic mellows into something like an odd-couple buddy comedy, as the route back to Gloria’s winds through drag night at a cocktail bar, grilled cheese sandwiches at an all-night hole in the wall, and an impromptu skateboarding lesson and photoshoot.
Is it a bit of a cliché that each woman eventually realizes the other is more complicated than she’d assumed from scouring Yelp reviews and Venmo histories? Sure. Is it predictable that they come to see they have more in common than not, including a self-sabotaging fear of romantic betrayal and an appreciation for the soothing power of Zoloft? Probably. Is it anything all that revolutionary to conclude, as Basic eventually does, that one’s dating history is not to be repudiated but embraced as part of what makes a person who they are? Nah.
But does Basic ever stop being a blast? Also no. It’s simply fun to hang with Kailynn and Gloria as they bicker about which one of them is the real bitch and, relatedly, whether “bitch” is an offensively outdated term or a coolly outdated one. Or to watch Gloria, whom Kailynn correctly diagnoses as having few friends, blossom as she’s brought into Kailynn’s tight-knit circle (including Ashley Nicole Black, Kandy Muse and Kenzie Elizabeth). Theirs is the kind of evening that comes only rarely but that you treasure when it does, when stepping out of your ordinary life helps you see it from a fresher, clearer perspective.
Basic‘s two leading ladies do much to sell the unexpected delight. As seen in films like Joy Ride, Park has a knack for making the most over-the-top comedy feel grounded in something believable. Her performance of Gloria’s paranoia and post-break-up blues might go hilariously big — she never whispers when she can shout or weeps prettily when she can sob noisily — but there’s real vulnerability coursing underneath. And Meester is perfectly cast as both the shallow dream girl of Gloria’s imagination and the earthier, wryer, sadder woman she turns out to be.
The pair are great fun to watch together, and certainly share more interesting chemistry with each other than either does with Nick, who, as played by Smith, is exactly the handsome blank slate he needs to be and not much more. At times, I found myself wishing the film might borrow a page from Ariana Grande’s “Break Up With Your Girlfriend” video, and ditch the dude entirely in favor of their feisty feminine chemistry.
I don’t think it’s any big spoiler to say it doesn’t. But as Basic is here to remind us, these moments of human connection matter — even when they don’t always lead to some big romantic happily ever after.
Zendaya is finally addressing those wedding rumors that her longtime stylist, Law Roach, ignited earlier this month.
The Emmy-winning actress stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday night to promote her and Robert Pattinson’s upcoming film, The Drama. However, she couldn’t avoid the elephant in the room.
While she didn’t exactly confirm whether she and Tom Holland had already gotten married, when host Jimmy Kimmel asked if she had seen all the recent headlines, Zendaya quipped, “Really? I haven’t seen any of them.”
The host also brought up the viral fake AI photos of her and Holland’s wedding that have been circulating on social media in recent weeks.
“Many people have been fooled by them,” the Euphoria star confessed in response. “While I was just out and about in real life, people were like, ‘Oh my God, your wedding photos are gorgeous,’ and I was like, ‘Babe, they’re AI. They’re not real.’”
Zendaya also confirmed that “many people” close to her also thought the AI photos were real, and were actually mad because they thought they didn’t get an invite to her and Holland’s wedding.
Earlier this month, Roach made headlines when he said during an interview with Access Hollywood at the 2026 Actor Awards that the famous couple’s wedding already happened.
“The wedding has already happened. You missed it,” he said at the time. When asked, “Is that true?” Roach confirmed, “It’s very true,” with a laugh.
Reports about the longtime couple getting engaged first surfaced in January 2025, after Zendaya attended the Golden Globes last year, wearing a diamond sparkler on her ring finger. TMZ later confirmed via sources that the pair were engaged.
At the time, TMZ reported that the proposal was also low-key and private, and happened at some point between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays in 2024.
Zendaya and Holland’s love story reportedly began while playing Peter Parker and MJ, respectively, in the Spider-Man franchise. They starred in three films together — Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) and Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) — and will also appear in the upcoming Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
They’re also both starring in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which hits theaters on July 17.
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.