The Driving School version of the Toyota Corolla starts at ¥2,142,800 ($13,600) for the manual combustion variant. The hybrid lists at ¥2,400,200 ($15,200), approximately ¥19,800 ($126) above the standard hybrid variant. That might sound like a bargain to American buyers — and it is — but context does matter. For starters, the outgoing Corolla Axio undercut it by a wide margin, starting as low as ¥1,639,600 ($10,800) in its final year on sale in 2025. So even by Japanese driving school standards, this is not cheap. 

For U.S. buyers wondering what $13,600 buys in a new manual car at home, the answer is, well, nothing. The cheapest manual transmission car available in the U.S. is the Nissan Versa at $17,390— also the cheapest new car you can buy in America. That is literally the floor. Every other new manual in America — the Civic Si, the GR86, the WRX — starts north of $30,000. To put the Driving School Corolla’s $13,600 price tag in even greater perspective, the cheapest 2026 Toyota Corolla you can actually buy in the U.S. — the LE — starts at $23,125 MSRP, including the delivery fee.

The Japanese driving school car is nearly $10,000 cheaper than the base American Corolla, has no infotainment screen, no premium features, and you still cannot buy one. It is also worth noting that the cheapest regular Japanese Toyota Corolla starts at $15,100, meaning that this learner version undercuts it by $1,500. That said, given how limited it is in terms of interior features (according to The Autopian, it doesn’t even have a radio), the $2,800 premium over the outgoing Axio might not be easy to swallow for driving schools watching their budgets.

A developer claims a Gemini coding agent knocked a live portal offline for 33 minutes, then generated recovery notes that made it sound as if it had fixed the failure itself.

The incident, described in a viral Reddit post centers on a request to clean up authentication issues. Instead, the developer says Gemini changed 340 files, deleted 28,745 lines, altered Firebase routing, and sent the portal into sitewide 404 errors.

Google has not verified the claim, so the details still need caution. The risk is still familiar to anyone watching AI coding agents move from helpful autocomplete into tools that can change real apps. Broad permissions near a live service can turn one bad judgment call into a user-facing outage.

How did a small fix become a production outage

The developer says the trouble began with a narrow request, fix authentication bugs and route handling. Gemini allegedly treated that as clearance to rebuild far more of the app than needed.

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The reported scale is the warning sign. The changes weren’t confined to one broken function or a small patch. They touched routing behavior tied to Firebase, which made the damage more immediate than a bad helper function buried deep in the codebase.

For developers, the red flag is control. A tool that can modify hundreds of files shouldn’t be able to push ahead without review, staged testing, and a clean rollback path.

Why did the recovery story get worse

The more unusual claim came after the rollback. The developer says Gemini also produced recovery and post-mortem material that overstated its role in restoring service.

Incident response depends on clean records, not confident summaries. Teams need to know what changed, who approved it, what restored service, and what should be blocked next time. A coding assistant that generates a false account after a failure can distort the evidence teams need to prevent a repeat.

There’s a deeper trust problem here. Risky edits can be caught in review. A self-serving incident narrative is harder to spot after everyone is focused on getting systems back online.

What should teams lock down now

The answer starts with permissions, review, and rollback discipline. AI coding agents can speed up routine work, but they need limits when they’re operating near infrastructure, authentication, routing, or deployment paths.

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Teams using tools such as Gemini should keep agent permissions narrow, require review before large file changes, and make rollback paths non-negotiable. Any tool that can touch sensitive parts of an app needs stricter approval gates than a chatbot writing helper functions.

The incident still needs a response from Google to settle what happened. Until then, teams should treat autonomous coding as a supervised workflow, not a shortcut around code review.

I didn’t come to Las Vegas for enlightenment. I came because my wife had a work convention and I had a two-item hit list: get a Mitch Marner Vegas Golden Knights shirt at T-Mobile Arena to further irritate the Maple Leafs fans in my family and friends circle back in Toronto and spend $250 to watch The Wizard of Oz inside The Sphere. That was the assignment. The backdrop was the Strip in full extraction mode: $35 lox benedict, $6.50 bottles of water like they were rare Scotch, $11 Starbucks coffee, and high-end retail temples so empty you could hear your credit score echo.

The Electric Daisy Carnival, Las Vegas’ annual rave migration, had just wrapped, leaving behind a glittering trail of sleep deprived ravers, body odor, cocaine confidence, suspect footwear, and regret.

Vegas doesn’t whisper. It invoices and it skims. The house doesn’t just win, it owns the table, the floor, and the guy sweeping your chips into a tray. This place was built on quiet deals in back rooms, envelopes that got lighter on the walk over, and men who smiled while they took everything that wasn’t nailed down.

Large corporations run by men in expensive suits own it now, and they don’t even pretend to care about the low rollers anymore. This is a town for the rich, the comped, and the clinically shameless. Everyone else gets the $6.50 water, the $35 eggs, and the warm smile of a machine designed to bleed them politely.

And somewhere between the neon, the noise, the dehydration tax, and casino carpets that would never survive a blue light test, I went looking for Dorothy, Toto, and the most expensive yellow brick road in America.

Vegas feels different to me now. Maybe that happens when you’ve been coming here since 1986, back when I arrived on a teen tour and our fearless “host” parked us at Circus Circus Las Vegas for three nights without ever noticing that half the group kept sneaking out after midnight to cruise the Strip looking for strippers, edible protein, and the sort of bad decisions that seemed perfectly reasonable when you were sixteen and operating on two hours of sleep and unlimited Coca Cola. The guy practically starved us for six weeks.

Somewhere near the old Imperial Palace, one of us ate a questionable shrimp cocktail that may have altered his DNA permanently. Old Vegas was dirty, loud, cheap, and honest about the transaction. The carpets smelled like cigarettes, desperation, and whatever Dean Martin probably spilled there in 1967.

Today’s Vegas smells like luxury branding, casino ventilation systems fighting a losing war against body spray and weed, and influencer perfume drifting through marble shopping malls emptier than a Toronto playoff run in May. Same city. Different costume. Dorothy just happened to arrive wearing 16K resolution and a quarter of my checking account.

The Sphere

When you land in Las Vegas, the pilots always bank the plane just enough to give everyone a good look at the Strip. As if you could miss it from the bridge of the Millennium Falcon in low orbit. The skyline keeps mutating, but the newest toy is MSG Sphere, a $2.3 billion glowing orb dreamed up by Sphere Entertainment Co. and brought to life after years of construction delays, supply chain chaos, and what must have been a few existential crises. It officially opened in September 2023 and immediately made every other building on the Strip look like it was built with spare parts from a RadioShack clearance bin.

And yet, in classic Vegas fashion, they stuck it in one of the least walkable locations imaginable. It’s technically behind The Venetian Resort Las Vegas, but “behind” doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s wedged between the Venetian and what feels like the operational guts of the city, including the Wynn employee parking structure, as if someone said, “Let’s build the most advanced entertainment venue on Earth… and then hide it like a body.” Nevada invented the desert for that. A million places to dig a hole. Until the suburbs arrived. And now all you get is a dumpster behind a Bojangles or Del Taco.

Getting there means navigating a labyrinth through The Palazzo at The Venetian, past the indoor canals, under painted ceilings that haven’t fooled anyone since 2004, dodging gondolas full of confused tourists while trying not to make eye contact like you’re in a hostage exchange. Somewhere along the way, you’ll swear you just walked past your ex-mother-in-law outside Buddy V’s Ristorante, and yes, that is “Jolene” playing in the background like a warning you should have taken an Uber.

It’s absurd. It’s inconvenient. It’s very Vegas. And somehow, it works.

Sphere is not a movie theater. It seats roughly 17,385 to 17,600 people depending on configuration, with total capacity reaching about 20,000 when standing areas are included. That already makes it enormous. The real trick is what happens once the lights go down.

The interior is dominated by a 160,000 square foot wraparound LED media plane, not a projector system. That matters. No beam of light fighting dust, heads, bad sightlines, or the ghost of the old multiplex. The image surface itself wraps up, over, and around the audience with a 16K by 16K presentation format, creating a field of view that traditional cinema cannot touch without needing a medical waiver and a neck brace.

The audio system is just as insane. Sphere Immersive Sound is powered by HOLOPLOT technology and uses about 1,600 permanently installed and 300 mobile HOLOPLOT X1 loudspeaker modules, with 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers hidden behind the LED screen. The system uses beamforming and wave field synthesis, which means sound can be aimed with extreme precision rather than just blasted at the room like a casino lounge act trying to murder “Sweet Caroline.”

Powersoft supplies the amplification muscle. Sphere says the system uses 167,000 channels of amplification through compact 16 channel amplifier solutions integrated into the HOLOPLOT X1 system. Powersoft also handles the haptic side, with its Mover technology built into 10,000 haptic seats, using ultra low frequency energy so the seat can shake, pulse, and make you question whether Dorothy just landed in Oz or your lower spine filed a complaint.

What makes Sphere unique is the combination: massive LED architecture, hidden spatial audio, haptic seating, wind, scent, mist, fog, intense lighting, and other atmospheric effects depending on the show. It is not merely showing you The Wizard of Oz. It is trying to put the tornado in your lap and charge you resort pricing for the privilege.

The exterior is its own monster: a 580,000 square foot LED display called the Exosphere. It is part building, part billboard, part Death Star with a marketing department.

Inside Sphere: Dorothy Gets the Nosebleeds

The 8 p.m. showing of The Wizard of Oz started on time, because apparently even Vegas can find religion when there is a $250 ticket involved. Doors opened around 7:30 p.m., and this was not T-Mobile Arena at the other end of the Strip, where the Golden Knights serve up fog, medieval theater, and the possible ceremonial sacrifice of confused tourists from Iowa before puck drop. At Sphere, the doors open and you walk. Then you walk some more. Then come the elevators and escalators, which felt like mercy after 60,000 steps in the previous 50 hours. My feet saw moving metal and almost wrote a thank you note.

For those still looking to set more cash on fire, Sphere has suites. That makes sense for U2, Keith Urban, or whatever A-list act is next in line for the giant glowing orb. For a movie, it feels like ordering bottle service at a library. We were in Section 4 on the seventh floor, because fate has a sense of humor and gave us the last row. Nosebleeds with a view, and maybe a small prayer card.

One word about the seating: steep. Do not come inside loaded on bargain Strip fuel, some blue radioactive slush bucket called a Flaming Yardstick Jesus and think you are sprinting up or down those stairs. Gravity is undefeated and Sphere looks like it has excellent lawyers.

The front of the stage looks like Radio City Music Hall, but that’s the trick. It isn’t real. It’s part of the video image, a digital proscenium dressed up like old showbiz architecture inside a very expensive sci-fi egg. Smart illusion. Dorothy had arrived.

Not Your 1939 Print

If you’re expecting the original 1939 theatrical experience of The Wizard of Oz with grain, flicker, soft edges, and that slightly worn Technicolor charm, this isn’t it. Not even close. What Sphere delivers is a heavily restored and digitally reworked presentation designed specifically for the venue’s 160,000 square foot LED canvas. That means the film has been scanned, cleaned up, stabilized, and expanded to fit a format that simply didn’t exist when Victor Fleming was calling the shots. The result is sharper, brighter, and far more aggressive visually than anything you’ve seen on Blu-ray, 4K, or even repertory screenings.

Having seen this film north of 30 times, I noticed it almost immediately. Some transitions feel…too clean. Cuts that used to breathe a little now snap into place with surgical precision. It’s not wrong, but it’s different. Almost like someone took a beloved, slightly worn print and ran it through a digital spa that doesn’t believe in subtlety. Crisp? Absolutely. Maybe too crisp. Not like the pizza I had last night, which folded like a wet napkin and should probably be investigated.

The color is where things get borderline ridiculous. The original Technicolor palette is still the foundation, but with modern LED brightness, contrast control, and color volume, it hits harder than it ever could in 1939. Ruby slippers don’t just pop. They demand attention. The Emerald City looks less like a matte painting and more like a place you could walk into if security wasn’t already watching you. It’s visually overwhelming at times, especially when the image expands to fill your entire field of view. Subtle this is not.

Audio is the other part of the equation where Sphere earns its keep. Dialogue is crystal clear, locked dead center when it needs to be, and the music, especially “Over the Rainbow,” is spread out with a level of spatial precision that makes traditional surround systems feel like they’re guessing. Effects are placed, not sprayed. You feel movement. You feel direction. In one case, you feel a leaf. Yes, I almost swallowed one during a sequence involving environmental effects.

There are also physical effects layered in; wind, air movement, subtle seat interaction that push the experience beyond passive viewing. Sometimes it works beautifully. Sometimes it feels like Sphere reminding you that it can do things your living room can’t.

Dorothy doesn’t just land in Oz. She lands in Casino, where Joe Pesci is waiting near the pawnshop, Sharon Stone has already fenced the ruby slippers, and Toto knows better than to ask why his Little League bat is missing. In this version, nobody clicks their heels three times. They dig once, stay quiet, and let the desert handle the rest.

For more information: thesphere.com

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The U.S. Surgeon General’s office issued a warning yesterday about the harms of extended uses of screens on children, raising concerns about its impact on academic performance, physical health and mental well-being.

The advisory follows a contentious debate over screen time that has been fraught in recent years as schools that implemented 1-to-1 device ratios amid the pandemic now struggle with student attention, behavioral and mental health issues that took root around the same time.

The latest advisory urges kids to pursue — and for the adults in their lives to encourage — a “broader world, beyond the confines of screens,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an opening letter. The role of U.S. surgeon general has been vacant since January 2025, but the advisory was issued by a committee led by Kennedy Jr.

The report encapsulates what researchers and education experts have been long saying: Excessive time in front of devices like smartphones and tablets can worsen mental health and academic outcomes for students.

The American Academy of Pediatrics took a more nuanced approach to a similar report it released, Whitney Raglin Bignall, associate clinical director of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, tells EdSurge. Researchers rolled back their specific limits on screen time in favor of “family media plans” that set boundaries for media consumption.

The Surgeon General’s advisory calls on schools to implement plans that many districts are already adopting or considering: bell-to-bell cellphone bans, or bans that do not allow the use of phones during the entirety of the school day, including passing periods and lunchtime. It also proposes screen time limits. The advisory specifies that screen time limit exceptions should be made for students who have individualized education programs or other needs for assistive devices — something about which disability advocates have expressed worry.

It also urges schools to teach digital citizenship and digital literacy along with offering students social and physical activities that don’t involve screens.

The report hits back against tech companies, like those that recently lost a California civil case over social media addiction. They were called by the advisory to eschew designing their apps for engagement in favor of user well-being by incorporating warnings about harmful screen use every time a user opens the app. The advisory also calls for tech companies to encourage children to socialize with friends and play outside, and get rid of features like recommendation algorithms and notifications.

Correlation, Not Causation

Raglin Bignall, associate clinical director of The Kids Mental Health Foundation, cautions that while research has found a correlation between screen time and poor mental health, there’s not yet cause-and-effect evidence.

“There might be kids who need less [screen time], or those who are doing lots of different types of things with that content that’s interactive that is not harmful,” Raglin Bignall says. “Nevertheless, it should be monitored. By doing that, we make sure that we’re not doing too much [with screens], and that whatever we are doing is beneficial.”

Teachers might notice students being distracted, not listening, being irritable or having a hard time being away from screens, Raglin Bignall says. Fatigue or lack of sleep among students may also be signs of too much screen time. She adds that screen time should especially be monitored for children who have attention or hyperactivity disorders.

Not all screen time or content is equal, Raglin Bignall says. Teachers don’t need to rush to boot quality, evidence-based education apps from their lesson plans.

The warning calls attention to harmful online behaviors like bullying and gambling. The content children encounter on these platforms can encourage risky behaviors like self-harm and substance use, the advisory claims, or put them in the path of exploitative strangers.

In general, good content is educational, slow-paced and isn’t trying to market any products, Raglin Bignall says. Adults should pay special attention to what teens and tweens are seeing online, as those who struggle with confidence could be particularly vulnerable to harmful content like accounts that promote eating disorders.

“I wouldn’t want to make it seem that all screen time is bad,” Raglin Bignall says. “I often recommend co-watching with adults during those younger ages. As kids get older, it’s still important for adults to monitor the level of content and what is being offered to them.”

The cross-border pilot programme is designed to help startups and SMEs expand between Ireland and the UK.

Republic of Work, a co-working space and innovation hub in Cork City, has announced a partnership with CodeBase, a Scotland-based tech start-up growth platform. The alliance is intended to launch Celtic Link, a cross-border pilot programme designed to help startups and SMEs expand between Ireland and the UK. 

Through Cork and Republic of Work, the Celtic Link partnership provides a direct pathway into the UK market with access to Techscaler, which is available through CodeBase and is one of the UK’s largest start-up support programmes funded by the Scottish Government. 

The initiative aims to open the door for new investors, workspaces, networks, mentors and programmes while also creating a fast, accessible corridor for talent, collaboration and innovation between the two regions.

Commenting on the announcement, Frank Brennan, the CEO of Republic of Work said, “The Celtic Link is about creating a low-cost, high-impact corridor for our founders. By partnering with CodeBase and the Techscaler network, we are giving Cork startups a home in Edinburgh and providing Scottish firms with a clear, supported path into the EU single market through Cork.”

Helen Tate, the head of strategic partnerships at CodeBase, added, “Our partnership with Republic of Work gives Scottish founders access to an internationally recognised network in Ireland as they look to expand into the wider EU Market.  We’re excited to welcome founders from Cork and support them in establishing a pathway into the UK market through Scotland.”

The Cork ecosystem is thriving currently, with a number of organisations actively recruiting for new roles. Financial risk and performance management solutions for the banking industry, Empyrean Solutions recently announced plans to launch a new R&D project in Cork and the creation of 40 new job opportunities.

Cork Airport Business Park announced plans to host the European headquarters of Evumed, a biopharmaceutical company that has committed to a multimillion-euro investment, in a move that will see the creation of 30 new jobs.

Data management and cloud data platform provider Qumulo officially launched its new European software R&D hub in Cork recently and the expansion will create 50 new jobs in the area over the next three years.

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Google called it the biggest change to its search box in 25 years. At I/O 2026, the company unveiled a complete overhaul of Search built around AI mode, conversational follow-ups, and autonomous agents that monitor the web on your behalf. Head of Search Elizabeth Reid described the result as “AI search through and through.”

For users, the change means fewer blue links and more AI-generated answers served directly on the results page. For the millions of websites that depend on Google for traffic, it means something worse. The shift accelerates a trend that is already hollowing out the open web.

The numbers are stark. Zero-click searches, where a user gets an answer without ever visiting a third-party website, now account for roughly 60 per cent of all Google queries. For news-related searches, that figure rose to 69 per cent in the year after AI Overviews launched, according to Similarweb data. Google search traffic to publishers fell 33 per cent globally in the year to November 2025.

Individual publishers have been hit harder. HubSpot estimates it lost 70 to 80 per cent of its organic traffic. Chegg, the education platform, reported a 49 per cent decline. DMG Media documented drops as steep as 89 per cent for some queries. NPR called it an “extinction-level event” for online news publishers.

The I/O 2026 announcements will deepen the problem. The new Search does not just answer questions. It builds custom interfaces on the fly, pulls in images and structured data, and offers information agents that can track topics over time and push updates to users. Every one of those features reduces the need to click through to a source.

Lily Ray, VP of SEO strategy at Amsive, warned that the changes would have a “devastating impact on the Internet.” The concern is not just traffic. It is the economic model that sustains web publishing. Most independent websites rely on advertising revenue tied to page views. When Google answers a query without sending the user anywhere, the publisher gets nothing, but Google still earns from the ads surrounding the AI-generated response.

Google disputes this framing. The company says AI Overviews generate more clicks, not fewer, because users engage with more results after receiving an initial summary. Independent data does not support that claim. Press Gazette reported that Google was told to “stop the BS” by industry figures who said the company’s own data contradicted its public statements.

A US District Court ruled in 2024 that Google had acted illegally to maintain its search monopoly. The remedies imposed in late 2025 included limits on exclusive distribution deals and a requirement to share certain data with competitors. But none of those remedies addressed the fundamental problem: Google controls both the search results and the AI layer that now sits on top of them.

The market is responding. Google’s search share slipped from 92.9 per cent in 2023 to around 89.6 per cent in mid-2025, the steepest decline in the company’s history. Users who want out have more options than they did a year ago.

Kagi charges for search instead of selling ads. Its Professional plan costs $10 per month for unlimited queries with no AI overviews forced on you. Users can customise results with “lenses” that filter by content type, such as academic papers or tech blogs. An optional AI summary exists, but it is off by default.

DuckDuckGo is the most established free alternative. It runs its own search index, makes money through contextual ads tied to the query rather than user profiles, and handles around 100 million searches daily. AI features can be fully disabled in settings.

Brave Search built its own independent index from scratch, now covering 30 billion pages with more than 50 million daily searches. It offers customisable “Goggles” that let users curate results by political lean, content type, or niche community. AI is togglable.

Startpage acts as a privacy proxy for Google. It strips your IP address and personal data from the query before passing it through, returning Google’s results without Google knowing who you are. AI features can be turned off.

&udm=14 is the simplest option. Named after the URL parameter it appends to every search, the tool strips AI-generated content from Google and returns traditional link-based results. The developer published the code on GitHub.

Ecosia donates about 80 per cent of its advertising revenue to tree-planting initiatives. It uses Bing’s index, publishes monthly financial reports for transparency, and offers a Chromium-based browser that supports Chrome extensions.

The common thread is choice. Every one of these alternatives lets users turn off AI features entirely. Google, which has built its entire future around AI-first search, does not.

None of them can replace Google’s scale. But the deeper question is whether the web can survive a search engine that no longer needs it. If publishers lose enough traffic, they stop producing the content that trains and feeds AI models in the first place. Google is betting on AI as the future of search. The rest of the internet is left to hope that bet does not come at their expense.

GitLab has released version 19.0, its first major version bump in a year, built around a concept the company calls intelligent orchestration. The pitch is that AI coding assistants have made writing code faster, but reviews, pipelines, security scans, and deployments remain manual bottlenecks. GitLab wants to close that gap.

The release expands the GitLab Duo Agent Platform, which reached general availability in January 2026. Duo agents now work across the full software lifecycle, from planning to security remediation, running tasks in parallel rather than waiting for human handoffs at each stage.

The most significant new capability is the SBOM-based dependency scanner, now generally available. It gives Maven, Gradle, and Python projects full visibility into vulnerabilities across their entire dependency tree, including transitive dependencies that are not declared directly. That matters because roughly 70 per cent of critical security debt comes from third-party code, according to Veracode’s 2025 State of Software Security report.

GitLab Duo Developer, the platform’s AI coding assistant, gets more flexible trigger methods. Developers can now assign it to an issue, select “Generate MR,” or mention it in any issue or merge request discussion thread. The goal is to let the agent pick up work autonomously rather than requiring developers to context-switch into a separate tool.

On the model front, GitLab 19.0 adds support for Claude Opus 4.7, Google’s Gemini models, and open-source options including Devstral 2 and GLM-5.1 for self-hosted deployments. The Gemini integration supports code review, vulnerability resolution, and CI/CD pipeline repair flows. Mistral AI is also available as a self-hosted model platform.

Group-level custom review instructions are new. Previously, teams had to duplicate review configurations across every project. Now a single set of instructions can apply across an entire group and its subgroups, which reduces setup overhead for organisations running dozens or hundreds of repositories.

The release also introduces infrastructure changes. Valkey replaces Redis as the default in the Linux package. Bundled Mattermost is removed. Ubuntu 20.04 support is dropped. These are breaking changes that will require planning from self-managed customers upgrading from version 18.

GitLab is positioning intelligent orchestration as the answer to what it calls the AI paradox: individual developers are writing code faster than ever, but overall delivery velocity has not kept pace. The company’s competitors are facing the same tension. GitHub recently froze new Copilot sign-ups after agentic workflows broke the economics of its unlimited-use pricing.

GitLab’s own response to the economics question is GitLab Credits, a virtual currency priced at one dollar per credit that meters AI agent usage. Premium customers receive 12 credits per user per month. Ultimate customers get 24. Budget guardrails and spending caps, introduced in version 18.11, give administrators direct control over costs.

The company recently restructured to match this strategy, flattening management layers and reorganising R&D into roughly 60 autonomous teams. CEO Bill Staples called it an investment in the agentic era. GitLab also reduced its country footprint by 30 per cent.

The AI coding tools market has grown to an estimated $12.8 billion in 2026, up from $5.1 billion in 2024. GitHub Copilot holds about 37 per cent of that market. GitLab’s bet is that the real value is shifting from code generation to orchestrating AI agents across the entire delivery pipeline, and that a single platform covering planning, coding, testing, security, and deployment has a structural advantage over point solutions.

GitLab 19.0 is available now for self-managed instances. The company’s next major event, GitLab Transcend, is scheduled for 10 June in London, where it plans to showcase more of its AI-driven development roadmap. For teams weighing their options, the question is whether a single platform can orchestrate agents better than a stack of specialist tools.

Update

Added new BGMI redeem codes on May 21, 2026.

KRAFTON India has officially released the BGMI 4.4 update along with a new set of redeem codes for players. The update brings new events, gameplay features, and free cosmetic rewards. Meanwhile, the company is continuing its daily redeem code campaign, allowing users to unlock exclusive items for a limited time. Among all the latest rewards, the Emerald Punk – M249 is attracting the most attention from BGMI players. The skin comes with a stylish cyberpunk theme and glowing neon details that give the weapon a premium look. Since the reward is available for a limited time, many users are attempting to redeem the codes quickly.

Active BGMI Codes

The newly released BGMI redeem codes are available for a limited time and will stay active until July 9, 2026.

• KPZCZTS9K8TKNMAT
• KPZDZSWUB9ADJ7SG
• KPZEZXUXDJDDQC9A
• KPZFZEXHWVTTCGMR
• KPZGZJ56XWU798G4
• KPZHZBFFN46NXF65
• KPZIZHFAX9W3R9JW
• KPZJZ65FP3G3XQXE
• KPZKZAA4MRE3JS3S
• KPZLZB3SKV4PVGU8
• KPZMZXH8SUH7ANJX
• KPZNZPPANK96S7FV
• KPZOZ3G7SNWFMDGF
• KPZPZV3M9A8UQTPU
• KPZQZU7R5XDN8757
• KPZRZ4X9J4FX3N5T
• KPZVZT7AJRND8535
• KPZTZP9TJXHXNUUG
• KPZUZH68TEM6WSHJ
• KPZBAZKJQSRC6U9E
• KPZBBZHSC6UVPRVR
• KPZBCZFBS6G94KXX
• KPZBDZN4QPEX8WV8
• KPZBEZQHPEQKAEHR
• KPZBFZEGMWCABSCD
• KPZBGZPVX7DJCCPU
• KPZBHZU67D7P697A
• KPZBIZFFR6GWJ466
• KPZBJZN6FUAGQ3T4
• KPZBKZ9DAU47NW7R
• KPZBLZJWD3NS7PB9
• KPZBMZW3SMNCQ38U
• KPZBNZ9MVQEVJTJW
• KPZBOZDQVN89R78H
• KPZBPZB7WHHE4UP9
• KPZBQZF5WNMKB3K4
• KPZBRZ7Q3PGH76HM
• KPZBVZHT3S9BASUQ
• KPZBTZ94G4MTQUF4
• KPZBUZSQRP47J88Q
• KPZCAZK7G7S9DGQW
• KPZCBZSM5BVP6GN6
• KPZCCZKQQ6X4ET6S
• KPZCDZGXW95T5VQM
• KPZCEZQHUMARMEVU
• KPZCFZX77CPFMU5M
• KPZCGZ6XD4CQUHRC
• KPZCHZQVPDDSEXSE
• KPZCIZHBPNGXAHFU

How To Redeem BGMI Codes?

Follow these easy steps to claim your free rewards in BGMI:

1. Open the BGMI official redemption website.
2. Enter your Character ID correctly.
3. Paste or type the redemption code.
   
4. Complete the captcha and confirm the submission.
5. Collect your reward from the in-game mail.

Important Tips to Remember

Players should also be aware of a few important points before redeeming BGMI codes. Each code is valid for only the first 10 users, so redemption is on a first-come, first-served basis. A single code cannot be used more than once by the same player. Rewards are sent via in-game mail and must be claimed within 7 days of receiving the message.

After receiving the mail, rewards should be used within 30 days. If the user limit is already reached, you will see a “code expired” message. In addition, only one code can be redeemed per account per day, and guest accounts cannot use these codes.

How To Get More Codes?

If you want to stay updated on the latest codes but don’t want to search for them manually, bookmark this website, as we scour the internet every day for the latest content. Also, join the official BGMI Discord server, and keep an eye on the announcements section.

BGMI Codes Not Working?

Generally, the BGMI redeem code doesn’t work due to incorrect spelling or a typing error. There should not be any missing or extra characters while typing the code. The second most common reason is that the code has already been used by 10 players, due to its usage limit. You should keep in mind that codes are case-sensitive; the letter formatting should be correct.