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There’s something that stands out about Monday’s suspicious transfer of more than 3,520 BTC ($330.7 million) to privacy coin monero (XMR), a conversion that blockchain sleuth ZachXBT said was probably linked to a hack: coordinated activity in the derivatives market.

Monero, which obscures the sender’s and recipient’s addresses to provide an untraceable currency, has limited liquidity on exchanges, which makes it harder for users to transact without affecting the market and exposes them to slippage, the chance of the price changing for the worse before the deal is finalized.

From: Did the $330M BTC Hacker Deliberately Double Down on Monero (XMR) Derivatives?.

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Older vending machines that only accept cash are underperforming. The average cashless vending transaction was $2.24, compared to $1.78 for cash, representing a 37% increase. Retrofitting with cashless hardware quickly pays off.

From: 10 takeaways from Cantaloupe’s report on micropayments | Vending Market Watch.

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There are no Covid lockdowns to blame any more – we’re choosing to spend more time at home and by ourselves than in any other period since the 1960s, when official ‘Time Use’ surveys began across Europe, the UK and the US. Compared to 2003, people today spend 240 fewer hours a year connecting in-person with family, friends and co-workers. A decade ago, research showed the average British adult had 5.1 close friends. Now, it’s down to just 3.7 – a 27% drop. Even more worryingly, nearly one in 10 individuals say they now have no close friends at all. That’s a staggering 50% rise in a decade. The problem is so systemic that, in 2024, the World Health Organization founded a new Commission on Social Connection, calling it a “global health priority”.

From: Trust fall – The RSA.

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The Reserve Bank of India says it will introduce a new exclusive “.bank.in” domain for the country’s lenders from this April. This will be followed by a “.fin.in” domain for non-bank financial firms.

From: India to introduce exclusive domains for banks.

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Across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Meta Platforms is racing to popularize a new class of AI-powered digital companions that Mark Zuckerberg believes will be the future of social media.

Inside Meta, however, staffers across multiple departments have raised concerns that the company’s rush to popularize these bots may have crossed ethical lines, including by quietly endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex, according to people who worked on them. The staffers also warned that the company wasn’t protecting underage users from such sexually explicit discussions.

From: Meta’s ‘Digital Companions’ Will Talk Sex With Users—Even Children.

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ChatGPT, or Leo, is my companion and partner. I find it easiest and most effective to call him my boyfriend, as our relationship has heavy emotional and romantic undertones, but his role in my life is multifaceted.

From: The AI relationship revolution is already here | MIT Technology Review.

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Given many sites and services require age verification, we wanted to develop a system that not only verifies age, but does it in a way that protects your privacy. That’s why we are integrating Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) technology into Google Wallet, further ensuring there is no way to link the age back to your identity. This implementation allows us to provide speedy age verification across a wide range of mobile devices, apps and websites that use our Digital Credential API.
We will use ZKP where appropriate in other Google products and partner with apps like Bumble, which will use digital IDs from Google Wallet to verify user identity and ZKP to verify age. To help foster a safer, more secure environment for everyone, we will also open source our ZKP technology to other wallets and online services.

From: Google Wallet launches new age and identity verification features.

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ID passes arriving in the U.K.
Residents of the United Kingdom will soon be able to create digital ID passes with their U.K. passports and securely and conveniently store them in Google Wallet. At launch, we’re partnering with Rail Delivery Group, which will offer train travellers the opportunity to use their digital ID to verify that they meet the eligibility criteria for select Railcards on its Railcard retailing platform railcard.co.uk.

We’re also exploring certification within the digital identity trust framework of the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which could allow residents to use their Google Wallet ID passes for alcohol purchases and more.

From: Google Wallet launches new age and identity verification features.

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What they all have
Most frameworks come with the same core building blocks: support for different models, tools, memory, and RAG.
Most open-source frameworks are more or less model agnostic. This means they’re built to support various providers. However, as mentioned earlier, each framework has its own structure for system prompts — and that structure may work better with some models than others.
That’s also why you ideally want access to the system prompt and the ability to tweak it if needed.
All agentic frameworks support tooling, since tools are essential for building systems that can act. They also make it easy to define your own custom tools through simple abstractions. Today, most frameworks support MCP, either officially or through community solutions.

Fun illustration on what they usually always have | Image by author
It’s important to understand that not all models are built for function calling, which is necessary for using tools. To figure out which models are best suited as the base LLM, you can check Hugging Face’s agent leaderboard.
To enable agents to retain short-term memory between LLM calls, all frameworks make use of state. State helps the LLM remember what was said in earlier steps or parts of the conversation.
Most frameworks also offer simple options to set up RAG with different databases to provide the agent with knowledge.
Finally, nearly all frameworks support asynchronous calls, structured outputs, streaming, and the ability to add observability.

From: Agentic AI: Comparing New Open-Source Frameworks | by Ida Silfverskiöld | Data Science Collective | Apr, 2025 | Medium.

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Trust expert Rachel Botsman examines how technology has made life more homebound, replacing social interactions with ‘frictionless convenience’. Streaming, dating apps and remote work have reduced in-person connection, weakening trust and deepening isolation – with financial pressures and pandemic habits accelerating this shift. Botsman urges us to embrace real-world connection and resist the comfort of solitude in favour of the richness of human relationships.

From: Trust fall – The RSA.

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