Tootfinder

Disney closes its deal with Comcast to buy out NBCUniversal's 33% stake in Hulu, paying an additional $439M, after agreeing in 2023 to pay $8.61B (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Disney to Pay Comcast an Additional $439 Million for Hulu Stake as Streaming Saga Comes to an End
The Bob Iger-run entertainment giant agreed to buy the 33 percent stake in Hulu in 2023; after an extended appraisal process, the deal is finally set to close.

@… This is so cool. 😊
We live close to Lake Zürich and often, when it’s raining, the mallards will come to visit us, because they know we’ll throw bird food over the balcony.
At this time of year, because they’re nesting, a male will fly up, stake out the area, and wait for their mate. When their mate comes too, the male will start hollering until we no…

I know folks here dump on WAPO but my wife likes this columnist, Anne Lamott, and this column is pretty good. I hope the guest link works.
“The one thing liberals need to address before the June parade
Putting Biden’s head on a stake is not helpful.”
Opinion by Anne Lamott
https://wapo.st/4jqeQLP…

The one thing liberals need to address before the June parade
Putting Biden’s head on a stake is not helpful.

The Cost of Restaking vs. Proof-of-Stake
Akaki Mamageishvili, Benny Sudakov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24440 https://arxiv.org/pdf/25…

The Cost of Restaking vs. Proof-of-Stake
We compare the efficiency of restaking and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocols in terms of stake requirements. First, we consider the sufficient condition for the restaking graph to be secure. We show that the condition implies that it is always possible to transform such a restaking graph into secure PoS protocols. Next, we derive two main results, giving upper and lower bounds on required extra stakes that one needs to add to validators of the secure restaking graph to be able to transform it into…

My colleague had a question about rational functions that needed a little algebra to answer, leading me to update my supplemental course notes on abstract algebra (where I've used the Beachy/Blair textbook). A main goal of the notes is to stake out my position on the notation for rngs vs. rings.
https://use…

This should really be called "tax the rich more and the poor less" More money for a wealthy person won't mean they drink more coffee or eat more pub meals.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-21/can-aust…

Can Australia still afford the pub, our coffee addiction or Friday night takeaway?
From our coffee addiction to a weekend pub tradition, some of the simple pleasures many Australians have taken for granted now feel like luxuries. But if patrons can no longer afford to visit the pubs and cafes we love, there may be something bigger at stake.

Verifiable Weighted Secret Sharing
Kareem Shehata, Han Fangqi, Sri AravindaKrishnan Thyagarajan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24289 https://

Verifiable Weighted Secret Sharing
Traditionally, threshold secret sharing (TSS) schemes assume all parties have equal weight, yet emerging systems like blockchains reveal disparities in party trustworthiness, such as stake or reputation. Weighted Secret Sharing (WSS) addresses this by assigning varying weights to parties, ensuring security even if adversaries control parties with total weight at most a threshold $t$. Current WSS schemes assume honest dealers, resulting in security from only honest-but-curious behaviour but not …

A great piece of analysis with lots of suggestions for what to do in response to the Trump administration's efforts to destroy U.S. research infrastructure. I appreciate the inclusion of the work to #DefendResearch against #censorship.