Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is a fun mix of categories. Horse people and board-game players, you both get a category. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do not pass Go.

Green group hint: Think Vogue.

Blue group hint: Straight lines.

Purple group hint: Neigh!

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Monopoly squares.

Green group: Components of a fashion show.

Blue group: Commonly striped things.

Purple group: Ending in horse gaits.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is Monopoly squares. The four answers are Boardwalk, Income Tax, Short Line and Water Works.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is components of a fashion show. The four answers are catwalk, collection, designer and model.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is commonly striped things. The four answers are barber pole, billiard ball, credit card and crosswalk.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ending in horse gaits. The four answers are decanter (canter), envelope (lope), firewalk (walk) and foxtrot (trot).

Toughest Connections puzzles

We’ve made a note of some of the toughest Connections puzzles so far. Maybe they’ll help you see patterns in future puzzles.

#5: Included “things you can set,” such as mood, record, table and volleyball.

#4: Included “one in a dozen,” such as egg, juror, month and rose.

#3: Included “streets on screen,” such as Elm, Fear, Jump and Sesame.

#2: Included “power ___” such as nap, plant, Ranger and trip.

#1: Included “things that can run,” such as candidate, faucet, mascara and nose.

Cloudflare’s engineering headcount surged 45 percent in the weeks after the company cut 1,100 jobs in May, according to BNP Paribas data drawn from LinkedIn profiles. The finding, first reported by Business Insider, shows Cloudflare’s engineering staff grew from 1,308 to 1,894 even as its total workforce shrank by a fifth. CEO Matthew Prince confirmed the trend and offered a framework for understanding it: every company, he said, is made up of builders, sellers, and measurers, and AI is eliminating the third group.

Prince told Business Insider that the distinction is straightforward. Builders make the product, sellers bring in the revenue, and measurers track, report, and coordinate the work of the first two groups. The roles being cut at Cloudflare, and across the tech industry, fall overwhelmingly into the measurer category: middle managers, operations staff, finance analysts, and marketing coordinators whose work AI agents can now approximate.

“If you think about what AI is most effective at, it’s looking at data sets and summarizing them,” Prince said. He added that if his engineers become more productive with AI, he would hire more of them, not fewer. The logic is that AI amplifies the output of people who build and sell but replaces those whose primary function is oversight and reporting.

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The BNP Paribas analysis, which Business Insider says Prince reviewed and confirmed, could not be independently verified outside that report. LinkedIn profile data captures job title changes and may not perfectly reflect internal headcount. But the direction is consistent with Prince’s stated strategy: Cloudflare cut broadly and then invested heavily in the function it considers most valuable.

The pattern is not unique to Cloudflare. TrueUp, a platform that tracks tech hiring, reports that open technology roles are up 14 percent in 2026 compared with a year ago, with hardware engineering positions surging 52 percent. The gains are concentrated in technical and product roles, while openings in operations, human resources, and general management have declined.

Companies are hiring more people who build things and fewer people who manage the people who build things. GitLab followed a similar playbook in May, cutting seven percent of its workforce and stripping out up to three layers of management while reorganising its engineering division into 60 autonomous teams. CEO Bill Staples called it preparation for the “agentic era,” and the companies that have cut most aggressively are not shrinking their engineering capacity but concentrating it.

Prince’s framework carries an implicit warning for anyone whose job description centres on coordination, reporting, or process management. He was blunt about the trajectory, telling Business Insider that “a lot of the support roles are not going to be the roles that drive companies going forward.” If your work can be described as measuring what other people produce, the category you occupy is the one AI targets first.

The broader labour market data complicates the picture slightly. Tech CEOs have recently shifted from warning about AI job losses to insisting AI will create jobs, a pivot that coincides with approaching IPOs for companies including OpenAI and Anthropic. Prince’s framework sits somewhere between the two narratives: he is not claiming AI creates jobs across the board, but that it creates engineering jobs specifically, at the expense of everyone else.

Whether the builders-sellers-measurers model holds beyond Cloudflare is an open question. Not every measurer role is dispensable, and not every company can absorb a 45 percent engineering expansion while cutting a fifth of its overall workforce. The framework also assumes that AI tools are reliable enough to replace human judgment in oversight functions, an assumption that remains contested even among AI researchers.

What is not contested is the direction of hiring. Cloudflare’s Q1 2026 revenue grew 34 percent year over year to $640 million, and the company added a record number of enterprise customers even as it shed 1,100 roles. The restructuring was not driven by financial weakness but by a bet that the work those people did can now be done by software, and that the savings are better spent on engineers who write more of it.

Prince’s taxonomy gives a name to a shift that dozens of companies are executing simultaneously but rarely describe this clearly. The question for the tens of thousands of workers displaced across the tech sector this year is whether “measurer” is a temporary label applied to roles that will eventually return, or a permanent verdict on an entire category of work.

Automaker Polestar will not be allowed to sell its 2027 models and beyond in the US after the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security banned those sales over concerns about Chinese-made connected technology. And the company has no plans to return.

The crux of the issue is Polestar’s ownership by Volvo and Volvo’s own parent company, China-based Geely.

The Swedish manufacturer of electric vehicles, which became a distinct brand in 2017, revealed the ban in an SEC filing, which it paired with a press release this week announcing that it’s shifting manufacturing to Europe.

It said in the release that it will continue to sell existing stock of its Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 vehicles in the US and to support customers through its service network. 

A representative for Polestar told CNET in an email that, because of the Commerce Department’s decision, the company has no plans to sell new cars in the US from model year 2027 onward, including the planned Polestar 7.

The company has marketed the Polestar 7 as a premium compact SUV. It’s due out in 2028.

This decision isn’t surprising: A 2024 letter from Polestar (PDF) to the Bureau of Industry and Security foreshadowed what would eventually happen. It said at the time that the agency’s prohibitions could eventually lead the company to stop selling vehicles in the US, even ones it manufactures in South Carolina.

The US ban has not been posted on the Commerce Department’s website or social media, but it’s in line with the agency’s directive to police technology from China that the government considers a potential security threat. This month, the department issued a $36 million penalty against Bosch for exporting sensors and auto software to Huawei. 

In May, however, the Bureau of Industry and Security granted Volvo special authorization to sell its vehicles in the US after the auto company said it discussed its connected technology with the department. 

A representative of the Bureau of Industry and Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

US agencies aren’t just looking at the auto industry. The Federal Communications Commission has targeted consumer products including routers and drones that have technology made in China.

Considering EVs in the US

Polestar is not one of the top 10 EV manufacturers, lagging behind larger companies including Tesla, BYD and Volkswagen. 

Electric vehicles only account for about 6.5 percent of the US auto market, according to industry watcher Edmunds. In the US, EVs are typically priced higher, and federal rebates to purchase these types of vehicles have been phased out. 

With gas prices high this summer, consumers may be giving EVs another look, but concerns remain about pricing and range. 

Some automakers are trying to boost the appeal of electric vehicles through lower-cost models. Slate is taking preorders for a basic, modular EV truck that costs $24,950 before delivery fees. Other EV models, such as the Chevrolet Bolt, can be found for about $30,000.

Something happened this morning which will have been unnoticed by many, but which for a certain breed of radio enthusiast marks the end of an era. The BBC stopped broadcasting Radio 4 on their 198 kHz Long Wave frequency, ending over a century of transmission in the band. For now the transmitter carries a recorded message telling listeners that the service has ended, but it’s expected that this will soon be turned off.

American readers may be unfamiliar with Long Wave as it’s a band not allocated in their region. Covering 153 to 279 kHz, it’s a relic from the earliest days of high-power broadcasting in the 1920s, used because of the enormous distances that could be covered with its lower frequencies. The main long wave transmitter for the BBC is at Droitwich, and its demise comes because there are no more spares for its high-power transmitter tubes. It joins many Medium Wave, or AM, as it is commonly known, stations in leaving the airwaves, as increased interference from switch mode electronics and the availability of higher quality alternatives took away their listeners. It’s fair to say that there will be few whose lives are inconvenienced by the switch-off in 2026, but it’s worth taking a moment to remember.

The first BBC Long Wave transmissions in the mid-1920s were on a 1600 metre wavelength, or 187.5 kHz. A series of international agreements saw them move to 193 kHz, and then 200 KHz or 1500 metres in 1934. They stayed on that frequency until another shift down 2 KHz to 198 kHz in 1988. They were atomic-controlled, and thus usable as a frequency standard. The programming started with station names redolent of their era, first the BBC National Service, then the Light Programme you’ll see on the dial in the header image, and finally the more modern-sounding Radio 4. A famous BBC programme tied to Long Wave is the Shipping Forecast, a weather bulletin for deep-sea fishermen which became cult listening on land and now features on FM and digital services too, and there’s even a probably-apocryphal tale that British nuclear submarine captains would once use its presence or absence to judge whether nuclear war had occurred.

In an Oxfordshire farmhouse not far short of fifty years ago, a young child who would later become a Hackaday writer heard a radio show like nothing before, which made an impression that continues to this day. The show was one of the earliest airings of the original Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy radio series, through a 1970s ITT radio tuned to BBC Radio 4 on (then) 200 kHz Long Wave. So long, Droitwich, and thanks for all the fish.

Last year, hackers attacked car giant Jaguar Land Rover (JPL), one of the U.K.’s biggest employers. The hack halted production for months and made a dent in the country’s economy. The damage was so severe that the U.K. government decided to bail out the company with a £1.5 billion (around $2 billion) payment, and estimates say the hack cost the British economy $2.5 billion. 

For months, there was only speculation about who did it. Now, citing people close to the investigation, The New York Times reports that the hackers behind the breach were Russian, although it’s still unclear if they were working directly for Vladimir Putin’s government, were just criminals, or something in between, like criminals operating with the government’s tacit approval. 

Microsoft was tracking the Russian hacking group and alerted JLR to the information about the hacker’s identities, the Times reports. However, sources also said that the FBI, Britain’s National Crime Agency and National Cyber Security Centre, Google’s Mandiant unit, and Palo Alto Networks all worked on the investigation. 

In what is a rare, but not an unprecedented occurrence in the world of cybersecurity, it turned out that the Russian hacking group was not the only one that breached some JPL networks. A Jordanian hacker who went by Rey had also broken in, according to the Times.

If you have ever wanted to buy Plex’s lifetime pass to keep streaming your movie collection to your iPhone, get it now before the price rockets up to a ludicrous $749.99 on July 1.

Price rises are a regular occurrence for most online services, and that even includes self-hosted streaming platforms. However, for a particular segment of Plex users, one extremely expensive jump in price is on the horizon.

Back in May, Plex warned that it will be raising the price of its Lifetime Plex Pass, which gives users all of the benefits of the normal annual or monthly Plex Pass, but without a subscription. That price rise is set to take place on July 1 at 12:01 a.m. UTC.

As for the amount the price will go up by, it’s not a small amount. Instead of the current $249.99 pricing, it will be going up to an eye-watering $749.99.

Get Plex Pass now

In justifying the price, Plex admitted that it had previously considered removing the Lifetime Plex Pass altogether. While recurring subscriptions sustain long-term development, the lifetime pass does not, and becomes less useful to Plex as time goes on.

The new price, according to Plex, “reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we’re committed to building and maintaining for years to come.”

Does this affect me?

The price change is something that really only matters to a small section of Plex’s user base. Those who don’t feel like paying the monthly or annual fee and believe they can get years of use out of Plex.

There are no changes to the monthly $6.99 or annual $69.99 subscriptions. It’s only affecting the lifetime version.

The current $250 price may seem hefty for a user to pay, but that’s the equivalent of three and a half years of the annual subscription in terms of cost. Or just under three years of paying the monthly plan.

By contrast, the $750 price change works out to be the same cost as just over ten years of the annual subscription.

Existing Lifetime Plex Plan users won’t have to pay anything extra, as they already have the plan. There won’t be any change of service either, as planned future changes affect all paid plans equally.

Consider your options

Current monthly and annual subscribers who are happy to continue paying the fee can carry on without worry. For those who were tempted but didn’t pull the trigger on the Lifetime Plex Plan previously, they have an incentive to get it now.

A 200% price increase is certainly a good incentive for fence-sitters to pay up.

That said, the market has changed, and maybe those users wanting to save a bit of money could consider a completely different option. One that was free, if you’re not afraid of a little work.

Rival app Jellyfin is free to set up and use in mostly the same way as Plex. Where Plex succeeds is in having a massive community and product support, whereas you’ve got more research to do with Jellyfin.

There’s also the alternative content sources Plex offers, but that’s a minor thing compared to the main functionality.

That said, it’s not that difficult to get up and running with Jellyfin. It has many of the same features as Plex, including fetching relevant metadata for your collection, as well as apps for many devices you would want to stream to in the first place.

Ultimately, this is a good opportunity for everyone to take stock in their setups, and to really work out what they want from their home streaming server.

You could “save” money by paying for the lifetime Plex upgrade now instead of suffering later. But you could also save by switching to Jellyfin and avoiding subscriptions altogether.

Croatia face another test of nerve as they take on a miserly Ghana side in the final round of Group L fixtures at the FIFA World Cup 2026 – and you can watch the game from anywhere for free.

After reaching the 2018 final and the last four in 2022, the Vatreni have been a slow burner this tournament. An entertaining 4-2 defeat by England in their opening game was followed by a crucial 1-0 win over Panama, in which inspirational captain Luka Modric won his 200th senior international cap. The game in Philadelphia is effectively a play-off to see who qualifies in second place from Group L – assuming England beat Panama in the other fixture – and who will be relying on progressing as one of the best third-place teams. Manager Zlatko Dalic will be confident, his side having come through plenty of high-stakes games in the past decade.

These are the best-sounding open earbuds, with clear audio and instrumental detail. The rollable build offers a secure fit with minimal discomfort, but it may take a few tries to attach them correctly. Battery life lasts about seven and a half hours, and they have an IPX4 rating, meaning they’re resistant to splashes and light rain. Lastly, they’re equipped with some of Bose’s advanced features, including multipoint pairing, Bose Spatial Audio, and push-button controls for playback, calling, and volume adjustments. —Boutayna Chokrane

Our favorite Bluetooth speaker is on sale for Prime Day. Our reviewers say the JBL Flip 7 the perfect balance of portable design and sound quality, with surprisingly full sound in its compact package. The Flip 7 is plenty durable for the outdoors with a drop-tested design and water resistance, and it also supports Auracast to sync with other new JBL models. —Nena Farrell

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Easily the smartest indoor security camera currently available, Google’s third-generation Nest Cam indoor kicks the resolution up to 2K at 30 fps, with HDR and night vision. There’s also two-way audio, enforced two-factor authentication, and accurate detection to alert you about people, animals, or vehicles. The Google Home Premium subscription is pricey at $10 per month ($100/year) for 30 days of event video history and familiar face alerts, but it covers all your Nest devices. —Simon Hill

Apple’s long-rumoured OLED iPad mini may finally be moving closer to launch. And we couldn’t be happier.

According to ETNews (via MacRumors), Samsung Display has reportedly started mass production of OLED panels for Apple’s first OLED iPad mini. This means the upgrade is looking more than just an early rumour.

The current iPad Mini 7 still uses LCD tech, so a move to OLED would be a major screen upgrade for Apple’s smallest tablet. OLED should bring deeper blacks, higher contrast, and better power efficiency, which could make the iPad mini much better for watching videos, reading, and gaming. All the best tablets use OLED tech.