Security
UPDATED: Sorry, kids, everything’s back up so get to work on your new assignment – An essay on the ethics of paying ransoms, because it looks like that’s what happened here
Ed-tech giant Instructure confirmed two rounds of unauthorized activity affecting its online learning platform Canvas within two weeks as data-theft-and-extortion crew ShinyHunters threatened to leak data it claims belongs to more than 275 million students, teachers, and staff tied to nearly 9,000 schools worldwide.
In a security incident update, Instructure apologized for the disruption when Canvas went offline last Thursday, leaving thousands of colleges, universities, and K-12 schools without access to course materials, grades, and due dates during final exams and Advanced Placement testing for many.
As of Saturday, the parent company claimed, “Canvas is fully back online and available for use.”
And it finally broke its silence on Monday about what happened, admitting not one but two intrusions after criminals exploited a security vulnerability in its Free-for-Teacher learning system, and saying the data thieves stole information including usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information, and messages.
“Core learning data (course content, submissions, credentials) was not compromised,” the Monday disclosure said. “We’re still validating all findings, but we want to be clear about what we understand was and wasn’t affected.”
On April 29, the online education firm “detected unauthorized activity in Canvas,” immediately revoked the intruder’s access, and initiated a probe into the breach, according to Instructure’s notice posted on its website.
On May 7, the company “identified additional unauthorized activity tied to the same incident.” ShinyHunters defaced about 330 Canvas school login portals, also exploiting the same Free-for-Teacher vulnerability, and that caused the ed-tech firm to take Canvas offline and “into maintenance mode to contain the activity.”
ShinyHunters claims it stole 3.65 TB of data, including about 275 million records from about 8,800 schools including Harvard, Columbia, Rutgers, Georgetown, and Stanford universities. After moving the pay-or-leak deadline multiple times, ShinyHunters set a final deadline of end-of-day May 12 for individual institutions to contact them directly to negotiate payment – or the group will publish the full dataset.
In response, Instructure said it temporarily shut down its Free-for-Teacher accounts. It also revoked privileged credentials and access tokens tied to compromised systems, rotated internal keys, restricted token creation pathways, and added monitoring across all platforms.
The education platform hired CrowdStrike to assist with its forensic analysis and incident response, and said it also notified the FBI – which published its own alert on social media – and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
This is Instructure’s second breach in less than a year. ShinyHunters claimed to have breached Instructure’s Salesforce environment in September 2025, and while Instructure didn’t name the crew in its latest disclosure, it did address the intrusion. “The prior Salesforce-related incident and this Canvas security incident are distinct events involving different systems and circumstances,” the company said. ®
UPDATED AT 01:10 UTC MAY 12 Instructure At 10:21 UTC on May 11, Instructure updated its incident report to state “All Canvas environments are available.”
The company also admitted it “reached an agreement with the unauthorized actor involved in this incident” and secured stolen data.“
“We received digital confirmation of data destruction (shred logs),” the company said, adding “We have been informed that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident, publicly or otherwise.”
Further: “This agreement covers all impacted Instructure customers, and there is no need for individual customers to attempt to engage with the unauthorized actor.”
The statement makes it hard not to conclude that Instructure took the controversial decision to pay a ransom.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cyber criminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the statement adds.
There is no honor among thieves.
Wise began trading on Nasdaq under ticker WSE after moving its primary listing from London. The fintech processed 243 billion dollars in cross-border volume last year and is applying for a US banking charter and Federal Reserve master account as London’s stock market continues to lose its biggest tech companies.
TL;DR
Wise began trading on Nasdaq on Monday under the ticker WSE. Shares opened at 15.96 dollars. The London-founded fintech, which went public on the London Stock Exchange in July 2021 via a direct listing that valued it at 11 billion dollars, has moved its primary listing to New York while keeping a secondary listing in London. Nearly 91 per cent of class A shareholders voted in favour of the move. The company will now report in US dollars under US GAAP. It is not just changing exchanges. It is changing countries.
The Nasdaq listing is the most visible part of a broader American migration. Wise has applied for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with the proposed entity, Wise National Trust, based in Austin, Texas. If approved, the company intends to seek a master account at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which would let Wise clear and settle US dollar payments directly through the Fed’s rails, including FedNow. A fintech that began by making international bank transfers cheaper is rebuilding itself as an American financial institution.
For the fiscal year ended 31 March 2026, Wise processed 243 billion dollars in cross-border volume, an increase of 31 per cent year over year. Net revenue was 2.5 billion dollars, up 19 per cent. Transaction revenue grew 22 per cent to 1.9 billion dollars, split between 1.3 billion in cross-border revenue and 600 million in card and other revenue. Card revenue grew 34 per cent, the fastest-growing segment.
Active customers reached 18.9 million, up 21 per cent. Customer holdings in Wise accounts climbed 40 per cent to 39 billion dollars. Seventy-five per cent of payments are now delivered instantly, up from 65 per cent a year ago. The company guided its income before tax margin toward the top of its 13 to 16 per cent target range, including the costs of the Nasdaq listing itself. Wise saved its customers more than 3.3 billion dollars in fees during the year, a figure the company uses to illustrate the pricing gap between its service and traditional bank transfers.
The market capitalisation is approximately 14 billion dollars. That is a premium to its 2021 direct listing price but below the levels implied by comparable US-listed fintechs. The move to Nasdaq is, in part, a bet that American investors will pay more for a company growing revenue at 19 per cent, processing a quarter of a trillion dollars annually, and expanding into banking.
CEO and co-founder Kristo Kaarmann was blunt about why Wise left London. “We have current shareholders who would like to own more, but they can’t, because there is not enough trading volume for them in our shares,” he said.
Major investors including Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Baillie Gifford had shown interest since the 2021 listing but were constrained by London’s liquidity. The US has the world’s deepest and most liquid capital markets. London does not.
The national trust bank charter application, filed in June 2025, is the more consequential move. A charter gives Wise a single federal regulator and federal legitimacy.
A Fed master account would give it direct access to the payment rails through which money actually moves in the American financial system, eliminating the need to route transactions through intermediary banks. Fed Governor Chris Waller has said publicly that he is exploring a streamlined account structure for newly chartered entities, but no formal framework exists. The charter is not guaranteed. The master account is even less so.
If both are approved, Wise would become one of the few fintechs with direct Fed access, a position that would fundamentally alter its cost structure for US dollar transactions and position it as a competitor not just to other fintechs but to the correspondent banking network that currently intermediates cross-border payments. The Austin hub is not a regional office. It is the foundation of a US banking operation.
Tech companies have been snubbing the London Stock Exchange for years, but the pace has accelerated. Arm opted for a New York IPO in 2023. CRH, the building materials group, delisted from London entirely after switching its primary listing to New York. Flutter moved its primary listing to New York in 2024 and is now considering dropping London altogether. Darktrace left the London market after a 4.3 billion pound sale to Thoma Bravo. Just Eat quit for Amsterdam. Tui moved to Frankfurt. Ashtead and Indivior are gone or going.
More than 100 billion dollars in market capitalisation has migrated away from the LSE in the past five years. The pattern is consistent: companies list in London, grow, discover that London cannot provide the liquidity, analyst coverage, or valuation multiples they need, and leave. Wise is the latest. It will not be the last. Revolut, valued at 75 billion dollars after a 2025 secondary share sale, has confirmed that its IPO will be on Nasdaq, targeting a valuation of 150 to 200 billion dollars. Klarna listed on the NYSE last year.
McKinsey has warned that Europe’s software sector is at a critical inflection point, with the continent producing more than 280 software companies generating over 100 million euros in annual recurring revenue but struggling to retain them as public companies. The talent, the capital, and the customers are in the United States. The companies follow.
Monzo quit the US to focus on Europe ahead of a London IPO, a decision that suggests not every fintech concludes the American market is worth the cost of entry. Monzo’s board calculated that European expansion offered better unit economics than competing in a US market where customer acquisition costs are higher and regulatory complexity is deeper. The company is preparing to list in London, not New York, betting that a home-market focus is what investors will reward.
Wise is making the opposite bet. Its US business is its largest growth opportunity. The American cross-border payments market is the biggest in the world by volume. A banking charter and Fed access would give Wise structural advantages that no amount of London liquidity could replicate. The question is whether the regulatory path is as clear as the commercial one. Eleven companies filed for or received OCC national trust bank charter approvals in 83 days earlier this year, a wave that includes Circle and Ripple alongside Wise. The Fed’s master account process is slower, more discretionary, and less predictable.
The argument that European startups need their own Nasdaq has been made for years. It has not happened. Instead, the companies that would anchor such an exchange keep leaving for the real one. Wise is now a Nasdaq-listed, Austin-headquartered, US GAAP-reporting company that happens to have been founded in London by two Estonians who were frustrated by the cost of sending money between the UK and Estonia.
The company processes a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. It has 18.9 million active customers. It is applying for a US banking charter. Its co-founder told investors that London could not provide enough liquidity for the shareholders who wanted to buy more. The Nasdaq listing is not the story. The banking charter is not the story. The story is that London built a fintech ecosystem, celebrated it, and is now watching it leave, one listing at a time, for markets that can price it properly.
A Georgia data center developed by QTS used nearly 30 million gallons of water through two unaccounted-for connections before residents complained about low water pressure and the county utility discovered the issue. “All told, the developer, Quality Technology Services, owed nearly $150,000 for using more than 29 million gallons of unaccounted-for water,” reports Politico. “That is equivalent to 44 Olympic-size swimming pools and far exceeds the peak limit agreed to during the data center planning process.” From the report: The details were revealed in a May 15, 2025 letter from the Fayette County water system to Quality Technology Services, which outlined the retroactive charge of $147,474. The letter did not specify how many months the unpaid bill covered, but when asked about it Wednesday, Vanessa Tigert, the Fayette County water system director, said it was likely about four months. A QTS spokesperson said the timeframe was 9-15 months. Once the data center was notified, it paid all retroactive charges, a QTS spokesperson said in an email, noting the unmetered water consumption occurred while the county converted its system to smart meters.
The Fayette County water system confirmed the data center’s meters are now fully integrated and tracked. Tigert, the water system director, blamed the issue on a procedural mix-up. “Fayette County is a suburb, it’s mostly residential, and we don’t have much commercial meters in our system anyway,” she said. “And so we didn’t realize our connection point wasn’t working.” The incident became public last week when a county resident obtained the 2025 letter to QTS through a public records request and posted it on Facebook, prompting outrage from residents concerned about the data center’s water consumption. […]
Tigert, who sent the 2025 letter to QTS, said the utility didn’t know about the water hookups because the connection process “got mixed up” as the county transitioned to a cloud-based system while also trying to accommodate an industrial customer. Tigert also said her staff is small and at capacity. “Just like any water system, we don’t have enough staff. We can’t keep staff,” she said. “I’ve got one person that’s doing inspections and plan review, and so he’s spread pretty thin.” She said it’s possible her staff did know about hookups but that she hadn’t been able to locate the inspection report. “I may have hit ‘send’ too soon,” she said about the 2025 letter to QTS. While the utility charged the data center a higher construction rate for the unapproved water consumption, Tigert confirmed the utility did not penalize or fine the data center.
For what it’s worth, the Blackstone-owned company says its data centers use a closed-loop cooling system that does not consume water for cooling. The reason for last year’s high water use, according to QTS, was the temporary construction work such as concrete, dust control, and site preparation.
Once the campus is fully operational, it should only use a small amount of water for things like bathrooms and kitchens. But that point could still be years away, as construction and expansion in Fayetteville may continue for another three to five years.
General Motors has laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees — in a deliberate skills swap: clearing out workers whose expertise no longer fits and making room for some with AI-focused backgrounds.
GM confirmed to TechCrunch that it had conducted layoffs; they were first reported by Bloomberg News.
In an emailed statement, the automaker framed the layoffs as a means to prepare it for the future, without providing specifics. “GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” the company said.
These layoffs are not all permanent headcount reductions. A person familiar with the layoffs told TechCrunch that the company is still hiring people for roles in its IT department, but for different skills. The most sought-after capabilities are AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, and agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows. In practical terms, GM is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up — designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines — not just use AI as a productivity tool.
GM has laid off white-collar employees in several departments over the past 18 months, as it focuses its resources on high-priority initiatives, including AI. In August 2024, for example, the company cut about 1,000 software workers.
The software workforce has undergone significant change since Sterling Anderson — co-founder of the autonomous trucking startup Aurora and a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry — was hired in May 2025 as chief product officer. Last November, three top executives left the company’s software team as Anderson pushed to consolidate GM’s disparate technology businesses into one organization: Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management; Dave Richardson, senior vice president of software and services engineering; and Barak Turovsky, a former VP at Cisco who spent just nine months as GM’s chief AI officer.
GM has since moved to fill the gap with new AI-focused hires. It hired Behrad Toghi, who previously worked at Apple, in October as AI lead. The company also brought on Rashed Haq as its vice president of autonomous vehicles. Haq spent five years at Cruise — the self-driving vehicle company acquired and later shuttered by GM — as its head of AI and robotics.
For the industry, GM’s restructuring is a signal of what enterprise AI adoption actually looks like in practice — not just adding AI tools on top of existing teams, but deliberately rebuilding the workforce from the ground up. The specific capabilities it’s hiring for — agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows — point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading.
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GitLab announced a restructuring that will flatten management, cut its country footprint by 30 per cent, and reorganise R&D into 60 autonomous teams. CEO Bill Staples called it an investment in the “agentic era,” not a cost cut, but the scope of job losses will not be known until 2 June earnings.
TL;DR
GitLab is cutting jobs to invest in AI agents. The company announced on Monday that it will flatten management layers, reorganise its research and development teams into roughly 60 smaller autonomous units, reduce its country footprint by approximately 30 per cent, and use AI agents to automate internal reviews, approvals, and handoffs. CEO Bill Staples said the restructuring is “not an AI optimization or cost cutting exercise” and that the company intends to “reinvest the vast majority of savings back into the business to accelerate our unique opportunity in the agentic era.”
The stock fell more than eight per cent in after-hours trading. GitLab reaffirmed its guidance for the first quarter and full fiscal year 2027. Staples does not yet know how many roles the process will eliminate. The scope and financial impact will be disclosed on 2 June, when the company reports quarterly earnings.
The framing is now familiar. A software company announces layoffs. It says the cuts are about investment, not austerity. It promises to redirect savings into AI. The stock drops anyway. The question, as it is every time, is whether the restructuring represents a genuine strategic pivot or whether AI has become the vocabulary companies use to describe cost cuts they would be making regardless.
GitLab makes a DevSecOps platform that manages the entire software development lifecycle, from planning and coding through testing, security scanning, and deployment. The company went public on Nasdaq in October 2021 at 77 dollars per share, closed its first day of trading at 103.89 dollars, and reached an all-time high of 137 dollars the following month. It now trades at approximately 25 dollars. The market capitalisation has fallen from roughly 15 billion dollars at its peak to 4.1 billion.
For fiscal year 2026, which ended in January, GitLab reported 955 million dollars in revenue, up 26 per cent year over year. Annual recurring revenue surpassed one billion dollars. Free cash flow was 220 million dollars, up more than 80 per cent. The company authorised a 400 million dollar share buyback. Fiscal year 2027 revenue guidance is 1.099 to 1.118 billion dollars, implying 15 to 17 per cent growth. The deceleration from 26 per cent to 16 per cent is the context for the restructuring.
GitLab operates as one of the world’s largest all-remote companies, with approximately 2,500 employees across more than 65 countries. The 30 per cent reduction in country footprint will consolidate that presence. Staples, who became CEO in December 2024 after co-founder Sid Sijbrandij stepped down for health reasons, previously ran New Relic and held executive roles at Microsoft Azure and Adobe Experience Cloud, where he oversaw three billion dollars in annual revenue.
GitLab’s AI strategy centres on Duo, an agent platform that adds usage-based pricing alongside traditional per-seat subscriptions. The company introduced GitLab Credits, a virtual currency priced at one dollar per credit, to meter AI agent usage. Premium tier customers receive 12 credits per user per month. Ultimate tier customers receive 24. Automated code reviews cost 25 cents each, a flat rate that GitLab says undercuts competitors charging 15 to 25 dollars per review using token-based models.
The shift from pure per-seat pricing to a hybrid model that includes usage-based AI credits is an acknowledgment that the economics of developer tools are changing. When an AI agent can review code, set up pipelines, and remediate security vulnerabilities autonomously, the value of the platform shifts from enabling human collaboration to orchestrating machine workflows. The seat is no longer the natural unit of value. The task is.
GitHub froze new Copilot sign-ups after agentic AI broke the economics of its unlimited-use pricing. Agent-driven coding sessions run for hours, spawn parallel threads, and generate token volumes that dwarf traditional autocomplete interactions. The cost structures built for lightweight AI assistance no longer hold. GitHub’s response, pausing new individual subscriptions and tightening usage caps, signals that the era of unlimited AI coding assistance at fixed prices is ending. GitLab’s credit-based model is an attempt to get ahead of the same problem.
The AI coding tools market reached an estimated 12.8 billion dollars in 2026, up from 5.1 billion in 2024. GitHub Copilot holds approximately 37 per cent market share. Cursor has become the most widely adopted AI coding tool among individual developers. Amazon Q Developer, Google Gemini Code Assist, and JetBrains’ Junie agent are all competing for enterprise adoption.
GitLab’s position is different from most of these competitors. It is not primarily an AI coding assistant. It is a platform that manages the entire development lifecycle, and it is adding AI capabilities across that lifecycle rather than building a standalone AI product. The risk is that the platform becomes the substrate on top of which AI agents operate, essential but invisible, while the agent layer captures the margin. The opportunity is that enterprises want a single platform that governs the full workflow, including the AI agents running inside it, and GitLab is one of the few companies positioned to offer that.
Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs in March, approximately 10 per cent of its workforce, framed as an adaptation to the AI era. One month later, Atlassian launched AI visual tools and partner agents in Confluence. The pattern is identical to GitLab’s: cut staff, announce AI investment, ship AI features. The developer tools sector is restructuring around a thesis that fewer humans and more agents will produce better software faster. Whether that thesis is correct is an empirical question that the companies are answering with headcount reductions before the evidence is in.
Meta and Microsoft announced 23,000 combined job reductions in the same week, with the same underlying logic: the companies are not cutting because they cannot afford their workforces but because they have decided to redirect that capital to AI infrastructure. Meta’s 135 billion dollar AI spending programme and Microsoft’s first-ever buyout offers represent the extreme end of a spectrum on which GitLab’s restructuring sits. The common thread is companies converting payroll into AI capital expenditure.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called the practice of using AI as justification for cuts made for other reasons “AI washing.” Fewer than one per cent of 2025 job losses could be directly attributed to artificial intelligence, he said in February. The label matters because it determines whether investors should treat AI-justified restructurings as forward-looking investments or backward-looking cost cuts dressed in new language.
The human cost of tech layoffs is not captured in restructuring charges. The tech industry has shed more than 95,000 jobs across 247 layoff events in 2026, an average of 882 per day. GitLab’s contribution to that number will not be known until June. Staples wrote that “in some cases AI can augment and accelerate what team members have been doing, in other places we need to expand certain roles to go faster.” The sentence contains both a euphemism for job elimination and a promise of job creation. The ratio between the two is the number that matters, and it has not been disclosed.
The argument that AI is not coming for your job but for your justification captures the dynamic playing out at GitLab and across the industry. The company is not replacing developers with AI agents. It is restructuring the organisation around a world in which AI agents handle an increasing share of the development workflow, and the humans who remain are expected to be more productive, faster, and focused on the work that agents cannot yet do.
GitLab’s revenue is growing at 16 per cent. Its free cash flow is 220 million dollars. It is not in distress. It is a profitable, growing company that has decided its current structure is built for an era that is ending. The company that pioneered all-remote work, that built a platform on the assumption that geographically distributed human developers need tools to collaborate, is now rebuilding around the assumption that many of those developers will be replaced by agents that do not need collaboration tools at all. The restructuring will be detailed on 2 June. The thesis, that the agentic era demands fewer people and more credits, is already priced in.
You normally think of fiber optic as something used in network cables. However, scientists employ dedicated fibers to detect earthquakes. In simple terms, they fire a laser down the fiber and watch reflections caused by imperfections. When vibrations hit the cable, it changes the defects, which show up in the return pattern. However, with the right techniques, those vibrations could just as easily be from people speaking near the cable.
If you are alarmed, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the technique seems to be limited to coils of fiber that are not buried, and you have to be within about 5 meters of the fiber. The bad news is that there is plenty of dark cable all over the place. Besides, if researchers can do this successfully, you would imagine three-letter agencies around the world could do it even better.
There have been several recent papers about the same topic. Of course, you can also read laser bounces from windows. Noisy keyboards can also give you away.
Title image from [Compare Fibre] via Unsplash.
Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? There’s a fun little twist involving how many times a certain letter is used. (The 1-Down clue explains it further.) Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.
Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword
Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.
The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for May 12, 2026.
1A clue: German for “Mrs.”
Answer: FRAU
5A clue: Small stall at a mall
Answer: KIOSK
6A clue: Bring to mind
Answer: EVOKE
7A clue: Surprised exclamations upon seeing mice
Answer: EEKS
8A clue: Dramatic end to a World Cup game, for short
Answer: PKS
1D clue: Race that equates to 3.1 miles … or a hint to one letter’s frequent appearance in this grid?
Answer: FIVEK
2D clue: Chess “castles”
Answer: ROOKS
3D clue: Poses a question to
Answer: ASKS
4D clue: Hawaiian stringed instrument, informally
Answer: UKE
5D clue: Not go bad
Answer: KEEP
Swedish digital audio specialist Dirac is continuing the expansion of its Dirac Live Active Room Treatment (ART) platform with support for the Monoprice Monolith HTP-1 home theater processor. With this update, ART—designed to coordinate multiple speakers and subwoofers to reduce room-induced distortion and timing errors—moves further into the enthusiast AV processor segment, delivering tighter bass integration, improved clarity, and more precise spatial performance in real-world rooms.
More importantly, this signals where the category is heading. Advanced room optimization is no longer a boutique feature reserved for ultra-high-end systems from brands like Trinnov Audio and StormAudio. With Monoprice and Dirac joining that short list, expectations are shifting: buyers shopping for serious AV processors and increasingly high-end AV receivers—now assume this level of room correction and system-wide control is part of the package, not a luxury add-on.
Introduced in 2023, Dirac Live Active Room Treatment uses a system’s existing speakers and subwoofers as a coordinated acoustic control network. Rather than treating each channel in isolation, ART actively manages low-frequency resonances and time-domain interactions across the room, reducing modal ringing and reflections while preserving phase coherence and spatial accuracy.
“Dirac Live ART is redefining what’s possible in home theater sound correction,” said Fredric Tapper, Vice President and Head of Business Development at Dirac. “By bringing this technology to the Monolith HTP-1, we’re empowering more users to experience a level of realism, control, and immersion that previously required professionally treated rooms or highly complex systems.”
Powered by Dirac’s patented MIMO (Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output) processing, Dirac Live Active Room Treatment allows all speakers and subwoofers in a system to operate as a coordinated whole rather than as independent channels. By controlling low-frequency energy, managing decay times, and addressing time-domain interactions across the room, ART delivers smoother bass response and more consistent tonal balance across a wider listening area—results that traditionally require extensive physical room treatment.
“Our collaboration with Dirac reflects a shared commitment to advancing home theater performance,” said Hobie Sechrest, Business Unit Manager for the Monolith Series at Monoprice. “By bringing Dirac Live Active Room Treatment to the Monolith HTP-1, we’re giving customers access to professional-grade acoustic control in their own homes. This collaboration marks an important step in making studio-grade performance more accessible to serious enthusiasts around the world.”
Dirac Live Active Room Treatment builds on the company’s established Dirac Live Room Correction, which optimizes both magnitude and phase response to address limitations inherent to traditional EQ approaches, and Dirac Live Bass Control, which uses machine-learning–based processing to co-optimize speakers and subwoofers for more consistent low-frequency performance across the listening area. Together, Dirac Live ART, Dirac Live Room Correction, and Dirac Live Bass Control form Dirac’s most advanced home theater optimization platform to date.
As an AV preamp/processor, the Monoprice Monolith HTP-1 is designed to serve as the control and signal-routing center of a dedicated home theater system, handling source selection, audio and video processing, and delivering line-level outputs to external amplification.
It’s rare to see 6+ year old products get enhancements, but this update seems squarely aimed at existing owners running multi-subwoofer, multi-channel systems who want measurably better bass control, tighter decay, and more consistent performance across the listening area without resorting to extensive physical room treatment. Although the HPT-1 is still available today, Dirac functionality is not included in the purchase price, and requires a licensing fee. Dirac ART + Bass Control licenses run $598 $549 when bundled, or $299 individually.
Casual users may balk at the added cost, but for serious home theater builders chasing precision and repeatability, this is exactly the kind of upgrade that justifies the expense.
The Monolith HTP-1 AV Preamp/Processor (Product Number: 37887) is available for $3,999 at Monoprice.com.
Owners of the HTP-1 can add Dirac Live ART for $299 by purchasing a license, but you’ll also need Dirac Live Bass Control when used with one or more subwoofers, which costs another $299. Currently the combo is available for $549 if purchased together.
The Apple Savings account is meant to be accessed via Apple Wallet on iPhone, but Apple has created a limited web portal for downloading statements and tax information.
There are various reasons why you might need to manage your Apple Savings account from a device that isn’t an iPhone or iPad. That’s especially true if you’ve left the Apple ecosystem.
Until recently, that has been basically impossible since everything Apple Savings was handled on Apple devices. There is now a very limited Apple Savings portal that can be accessed via the web.
Apple Card holders can go to the web portal that has existed since 2020: card.apple.com. After logging in, the “Savings” option will be visible in the sidebar.
The only things you can do from this tab are view your current balance, your interest information, and account documents. You cannot add or withdraw money from this website.
The tax documents and statements available here are the same ones available in the Apple Wallet app on iPhone or Settings app on iPad. Those that no longer have an Apple Savings account or an iPhone can get these details on the new web portal.
The portal is useful because the only other option previously would have been contacting Apple Support and requesting the documents. However, many users might find this solution lackluster.
I personally like and prefer managing everything in Apple Wallet. That said, some would at least like the option of a fully-functional website that can perform all the same functions as the app.
Apple clearly wants its users to stick with the app on iPhone where it has more control. There’s at least one obvious reason for this — phishing.
If there’s a website with a login page, it is easily spoofed. Bank logins are one of the most targeted, and having a website and a login at all opens you up to abuse.
Apple Wallet is an app on iPhone that has all of the protections of the device, like the Secure Element and biometrics. There’s no login, nor any way for phishing emails to get ahold of account data.
Users can manage Apple Card on the website, but from a different perspective. There is no way to manipulate the Apple Card website to get money to an external account.
While I’m sure Apple would have preferred not to have the website at all, there are likely laws against it. At the least, if someone wants to break into your Apple Card page, all they can do is pay your bill and view your payment history.
DevOps
Code hosting biz is trimming its global footprint and flattening its management layer
GitLab has opened the voluntary separation window and hopes an unspecified number of employees will exit the busniess to help it become “the trusted enterprise platform for software creation in the AI era.”
According to CEO Bill Staples, the company’s effort to trim its workforce differs from other AI-related layoffs.
“This restructure process is not like others you may be seeing in the news,” wrote Staples in a blog post. “Of course AI is changing the way we work and is part of our transformation plan, but this is not an AI optimization or cost cutting exercise.”
What is it then? Well, according to Staples, GitLab plans to use most of the money it saves by sacking staff to invest in its business.
We note that the five fundamental architectural bets at the heart of this business reorientation – agent-specific APIs; reworked CI/CD; a data model for surfacing context; governance; and support for human-owned, agent-assisted, and autonomous workloads – sound like infrastructure investments, the very thing other companies fuel with vacated payroll obligations.
But GitLab isn’t (so far as we can tell) returning freed funds to investors, initiating a stock buyback, larding executive bonuses, or launching an ill-advised metaverse venture that will consume $80 billion over five years. So maybe that’s the difference to which Staples alluded.
The other difference Staples cited is his company’s plan to have managers chat with employees about staying or going.
“Starting today, managers across the company are entering deeper conversations with leadership about how the restructuring principles land inside their teams,” he said. “Those conversations will inform the decision of impacted roles.”
There’s no word on the rubric for these retention-or-departure chats. Presumably employees deemed insufficiently enthused about the new direction will be encouraged to exit through the voluntary separation window. Absent that cooperation, defenestration at the hands of managers will likely follow.
While Staples has not provided target for the number of desired layoffs – details will be revealed during the company’s Q1 FY2027 financial report on June 2nd – he did set a territory footprint goal. “We’re reevaluating our operational footprint, and are planning to reduce the number of countries by up to 30 percent where we have small teams,” he said.
GitLab currently operates in 60 countries. That’s a lot of different corporate entities to run, tax laws to master, and offices to rent.
The code biz did not immediately respond to a request to clarify how “small teams” is defined. Nor does it disclose its headcount in recent annual reports. According to analytics biz Unify, GitLab has about 1,800 employees, of whom almost 1,500 work outside the US.
Another goal of the layoff plan is to reduce GitLab’s organizational layers. “We’re flattening our organization because eight layers is too deep for a company our size and management layers are slowing us down,” said Staples.
GitLab is betting heavily on its Duo Agent Platform (DAP), which entered general availability in January.
As recently as its 2025 annual report [PDF], GitLab talked up the possibility of continued hiring. “We intend to grow our international revenue by strategically increasing our investments in international sales and marketing operations, including headcount in the EMEA and APAC regions,” the biz said during a more optimistic time.
Now, not so much. Beyond other challenges like soft government business, one reason for the AI remake appears to be the company’s decision to raise prices back in 2023.
In March, during GitLab’s Q4 FY2026 [PDF] conference call for investors, Staples admitted that price-sensitive organizations didn’t much appreciate having to pay more.
“Our 50 percent Premium price increase a few years ago also coincided with rising AI code experimentation and flattish SaaS budgets,” he said.
“Simultaneously, our upmarket shift reduced technical resources at the lower end of the market. Together, these have slowed Premium growth, particularly among price-sensitive customers which we estimate at roughly 20 percent of our ARR, including the SMB weakness that we have been discussing recently.” ®
The new Bluesound PULSE FLEX P130 is the 2025 version of Bluesound’s compact BluOS wireless speaker, replacing the long running PULSE FLEX 2i. Compact wireless speakers are no longer background noise for kitchens, bedrooms, home offices, cottages, second homes, and the one shelf in the living room that somehow becomes everyone’s audio system. People buy a lot of these things, and the category has gotten a lot more serious than it used to be.
The new Bluesound PULSE FLEX arrives at $379 with BluOS streaming, hi-res and lossless audio support, Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, USB-C audio, and the ability to work as a standalone speaker, part of a multi-room system, or as wireless surround channels with compatible Bluesound home theater products. That puts it directly in the path of the Sonos Era 100, WiiM Sound, and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker, which starts at $299 and rises to $349 depending on finish. We previewed the Bose last week, and our full review lands on May 15 when the embargo lifts. So yes, this fight is getting crowded. Good.
Bluesound also has something Sonos and WiiM cannot copy overnight: the Lenbrook ecosystem behind it. NAD Electronics, PSB Speakers, and BluOS give the PULSE FLEX a stronger hi-fi foundation than most compact wireless speakers chasing the same shelf space. That matters because this is not a throwaway category anymore. Build quality is improving. Sonic performance is improving. Connectivity is improving. And consumers are no longer just looking for a small speaker that makes noise while they burn toast.
The real question is whether the new PULSE FLEX actually lives up to the name. At $379, does Bluesound’s compact BluOS speaker play hard in the corners against Sonos, WiiM, and Bose, or does it merely have a pulse?
The PULSE FLEX has the kind of compact footprint that makes sense on a desk, nightstand, bookshelf, kitchen counter, or side table without announcing itself like a piece of networking gear from 2009. The rounded edges and cleaner cabinet design are a step in the right direction, and the finish options give Bluesound some needed visual flexibility.
Bluesound sent me the White Pebble Grey version, which is probably the safest choice for most homes. It is neutral enough to disappear into a lot of rooms without looking sterile, and that matters when these speakers end up in public spaces where spouses, partners, kids, guests, and people with actual taste get a vote.
The PULSE FLEX 2025 works as a standalone mono speaker, which is how many buyers will likely use it: on a desk, nightstand, bookshelf, kitchen counter, or in a home office. Add a second unit and it can run as a stereo pair, or serve as rear surrounds with compatible Bluesound home theater products.
At 5.15 x 7.73 x 4.37 inches and 3.55 pounds, it is compact enough to fit into real rooms without becoming the room. Bluesound includes 120V and 230V AC power cords, a Toslink mini adapter, safety and warranty documentation, and a quick setup guide. Not glamorous, but useful.
The top panel includes physical controls for play/pause, volume up/down, and track forward/back. There are also three preset buttons that can be assigned in the BluOS app to favorite radio stations, playlists, podcasts, or other commonly used sources. It is a small but useful touch, especially if the speaker ends up in a kitchen, office, or bedroom where reaching for the phone every time gets old fast.
Unlike the WiiM Sound, the PULSE FLEX does not include a touchscreen or display. Bluesound clearly expects you to control the speaker through the BluOS Controller app on your phone, tablet, or computer, with the top panel buttons handling basic playback and presets. That is not necessarily a problem, but it does make the PULSE FLEX feel more like a serious BluOS endpoint than a smart speaker trying to run the room from its own front panel.
The PULSE FLEX is also available in White, Tan and Black Charcoal, with interchangeable fabric grilles in tonal weaves for those who want the speaker to blend in rather than become the room’s main character. Bluesound also offers the WM100 Wall Mount for cleaner wall installations and the FS230 Adjustable Stand for floor placement, which makes sense if you are using a pair as surrounds or trying to keep them off furniture already losing the war against charging cables.
The Bluesound PULSE FLEX is built around a Smart DSP amplifier delivering 50 watts total system power, split between a 4-inch woofer and 0.75-inch tweeter. That makes it a compact mono wireless speaker, not a stereo miracle box pretending physics had the day off. Add a second unit and you can create a proper stereo pair, or use two as rear surrounds with compatible Bluesound home theater products.
The new FLEX supports hi-res audio up to 24-bit/192 kHz, along with FLAC, MQA, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MPEG-4 SLS, MP3, AAC, WMA, WMA-L, OGG, and OPUS. It also supports DSD256, which gives it a stronger file support story than a lot of compact wireless speakers in this category. MQA and DSD “support” require a more detailed explanation, so let’s break down what those formats actually mean on the PULSE FLEX.
DSD256 is not something most people will stream from TIDAL, Qobuz, Spotify, AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, or their phone. That is not how this works. On the PULSE FLEX, DSD support is mainly for people who already own downloaded high resolution music files and keep them on a USB drive, NAS, or computer-based music library.
Bluesound lists the USB Type-A port as being for external storage in Local Server Mode, which means you can connect a compatible USB drive with music files directly to the speaker. BluOS can also index music stored on a NAS or computer, making those files available through the BluOS Controller app. That is where DSD256 support actually matters.
The USB-C port is listed as a PC input, but Bluesound’s available information does not clearly state that it supports DSD256 playback from a computer over USB-C. Until Bluesound confirms that, it is safer not to make that claim or expect it to work. We will update if that question ever gets answered.
For most buyers, the more important formats and services will be FLAC, ALAC, WAV, Qobuz Connect, TIDAL Connect, Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth aptX HD, and Roon Ready.
MQA is more complicated. Lenbrook acquired MQA’s assets in 2023 and later created Lenbrook Media Group to commercialize BluOS, MQA, and SCL6 across the hi-res audio chain. But TIDAL officially removed MQA from its apps and integrations on July 24, 2024, replacing MQA content with FLAC where available.
For 99% of users, neither format will ever be part of the buying decision. But there is always one guy with a NAS, six versions of Kind of Blue, and the emotional stability of a Leafs fan in overtime, so we might as well be thorough.
Connectivity is solid for a speaker this size. The PULSE FLEX includes Wi-Fi 5 dual band, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD, a 3.5mm optical/analog combo input, USB Type-A for external storage in Local Server Mode, and USB-C for PC input. It also offers IR learning, three onboard preset buttons, physical playback controls, and integration support for Crestron, Control4, RTI, Nice, URC, and Lutron.
The one spec that feels a step behind is Wi-Fi 5. It should be fine for most users, especially with hi-res streaming and BluOS multiroom playback, but plenty of homes have already moved to Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7. At $379, Wi-Fi 6 would have been a welcome update.
That said, the PULSE FLEX offers more than the basics. It has useful wired and wireless options, practical control features, and enough integration support to work beyond a simple desktop or bedroom setup.
The BluOS Controller app remains one of Bluesound’s strongest advantages. It is detailed, mature, and gives users access to EQ adjustment, input level control, stereo pairing, multi-room setup, presets, music services, and system management without making the process feel like a firmware negotiation.
That matters. BluOS has had almost a decade of real world development, updates, and use across Bluesound, NAD, and other Lenbrook products. It is one of the better multiroom platforms out there, especially for listeners who care about hi-res audio, local libraries, and more serious system integration.
There are limits. EQ adjustment is fairly basic, and the PULSE FLEX does not offer room correction, which is something WiiM includes with the WiiM Sound. Voice control is available through Amazon Alexa Skills, but you will need the patience to set that up properly. Nobody said the smart home was actually smart.
I also ran the PULSE FLEX with multiple iPhones. The iPhone 14 and iPhone 17 worked without issue, but the older iPhone 11 was less consistent with BluOS. That tracks with my own experience using earlier PULSE FLEX models and other Bluesound speakers over the years: BluOS is very good, but not completely free of quirks, especially with older phones.
I came into the new PULSE FLEX with some preconceptions, mostly because I have owned and used other Bluesound speakers in the lineup. That prior experience led me to expect a somewhat bold presentation, which is not automatically a bad thing. But it can be.
Bold can work very well outside on the deck while eating char dogs with the kids and watching the dog get the zoomies across the lawn like he just stole something from a federal evidence locker.
At 5 a.m., it can be a different story.
I am a very early riser because sleep and I have a complicated arrangement, and some of my listening happens in the kitchen while I am making a pot of rooibos tea and staring into the backyard. That is usually when the fox and deer are sizing each other up like two extras in a Kurosawa film, while Tyrion the Westie scratches at the windowsill, furious that I will not let him outside to start a war he has absolutely no chance of winning.
That kind of listening tells you something useful about a compact wireless speaker. It is not just about how loud it can play, or whether it can sound impressive for 90 seconds in a demo. It is whether the tonal balance still works when the house is quiet, nobody else is awake, and you need music that has presence without behaving like it drank three espressos.
Right out of the box, after the mildly annoying LED light show that tells you whether the speaker is pairing, connecting, updating, or silently judging your Wi-Fi, it was obvious that the new PULSE FLEX does not sound like the older models.
The older Bluesound speakers I have owned leaned more bold and bass forward, with a presentation that could feel somewhat V-shaped. That is not what I heard here. The new PULSE FLEX sounds cleaner, more open, and more balanced through the midrange and treble. The tradeoff is that the lowest bass does not hit with the same weight. The sub bass has not left the building, but it definitely took the morning off.
That showed up across Nick Cave, The Orb, deadmau5, and Talking Heads. The presentation felt more spacious and better sorted, with less bass bloom getting in the way, but also less physical impact than I expected based on earlier Bluesound models.
Think less Vladdy Jr. sending one into the upper deck, and more Ernie Clement sneaking one just over the wall in left. It still counts. It just does not make the pitcher stare into the middle distance and reconsider his decision to leave Toledo.
Another positive change is that the new PULSE FLEX sounds more spacious than previous models I have used. That matters because this is still a mono speaker, and Bluesound, unlike Bose, did not send a stereo pair for evaluation. So no, it is not going to overwhelm a room with a huge wall of sound or create the kind of left/right separation you get from two properly placed speakers. Physics remains undefeated, even in Jersey.
What it does manage rather well is a sense of openness and placement within reasonable limits. The PULSE FLEX does a better job than I expected keeping vocals, percussion, and electronic textures from stacking up in one congested lump. Imaging from a single mono speaker is always going to come with an asterisk, but this version feels less boxed in than earlier Bluesound compact models. That is a meaningful improvement.
Another positive change is pacing. With less low end thickness, the PULSE FLEX sounds quicker, cleaner, and more open. There is more detail, better organization, and a little extra snap on rhythm driven tracks. It gives up some bass weight, but gains speed and clarity.
I am slightly limited in what I can say about the new Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker until my review publishes on May 15 under embargo, but there are too many similarities here to ignore.
Where the PULSE FLEX has the immediate advantage is software. BluOS gives Bluesound easy access to multiple streaming platforms, local libraries, multiroom playback, and system control from one app. The Bose app is more focused on setup, configuration, and system management. That is not a criticism, but it is a different approach.
The Bluesound also supports Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, and Qobuz Connect natively. Bose supports Spotify Connect, while TIDAL and Qobuz playback run through Apple AirPlay or Google Cast. For listeners already using Qobuz or TIDAL every day, that matters. Fewer steps. Less friction. Fewer reasons to mutter at your phone like it owes you money.
The real difference is how each speaker handles control and streaming access. Bluesound puts more of the music experience inside BluOS, especially for Qobuz Connect, TIDAL Connect, Spotify Connect, local libraries, and multiroom playback. That is a major advantage if you already use BluOS or want one app to manage everything.
But there is a counterargument. Some users do not want to live inside another control app, even a good one. They would rather open their preferred streaming app and cast directly from there. Bose leans more in that direction with Spotify Connect, Apple AirPlay, and Google Cast handling broader streaming access, while the Bose app focuses more on setup and system control.
So the PULSE FLEX has the stronger platform for serious BluOS users and local library playback. Bose may feel more natural for listeners who prefer to stay inside the apps they already use. Pick your poison: one deeper ecosystem, or fewer reasons to open another app before coffee.
The Bluesound PULSE FLEX P130 is not trying to be the loudest compact wireless speaker in the room, and that is probably a good thing. Compared to older PULSE FLEX models, the new version sounds cleaner, more open, and better paced, with improved detail and less of the bass heavy thickness that defined some previous Bluesound compact speakers. The tradeoff is impact. If you want deeper bass and more room filling weight from one small speaker, this is not the obvious first pick.
What makes the PULSE FLEX unique is the combination of BluOS, strong file support, native Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect, Qobuz Connect, AirPlay 2, Bluetooth aptX HD, Roon Ready, real wired inputs, and the ability to work as a standalone speaker, stereo pair, multiroom endpoint, or surround channel with compatible Bluesound home theater products. That is a lot of flexibility in a speaker this small. It also helps that the build quality and finish options finally feel more appropriate for public rooms, not just a shelf in the basement next to the router.
What is missing? Room correction, deeper EQ control, Wi-Fi 6, a touchscreen or display, and true stereo playback from a single unit. The WiiM Sound has a stronger feature story in some of those areas, and the Bose Lifestyle Ultra Speaker offers a different kind of integration for users already inside that ecosystem. Bluesound’s answer is BluOS, and for the right listener, that still matters.
The PULSE FLEX is best for someone who wants a compact wireless speaker for a desk, nightstand, bookshelf, kitchen, home office, cottage, or second home, but does not want to give up real streaming flexibility or local library support. It is also a smart buy for existing Bluesound, NAD, or BluOS users who want to expand into another room without starting over. Just know what you are buying: this is a refined compact BluOS speaker with better clarity and pacing, not a tiny subwoofer with fabric on it.
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