Your car might just become the new smart home hub for your house. Samsung has expanded SmartThings integration, enabling drivers to control their smart home devices directly from their car’s infotainment system. It’s called Car-to-Home.
Building on the earlier Home-to-Car capability that allowed users to monitor their cars from inside the house, the Car-to-Home feature flips the functionality so you can control your smart home appliances, such as air conditioners, lighting systems, and other smart switches, from your car’s dashboard.
Samsung
What can the Car-to-Home feature do?
The practical scope of the feature is broader than it might sound, as it is compatible with devices such as air conditioners, air purifiers, robot vacuums, lights, and cameras. Connecting is straightforward — drivers scan a QR code displayed on their car’s infotainment screen and link their vehicle to their SmartThings account.
Apart from manual control (flipping the switches), the Car-to-Home feature unlocks location-aware automation that genuinely changes how your home responds to your day. You can set routines so that the SmartThings network turns on the required appliances as you park your car in the garage.
I can see people using the feature to pre-cool their rooms or run air purifiers before they arrive home after a tiring day at the office. On the contrary, the feature should also shut everything down (automatically), as you get in the car and leave the driveway. There’s a dedicated Away Mode for handling lights when you’re away.
For now, the feature is available on select Hyundai and Kia cars, specifically those that feature the connected car Navigation Cockpit (ccNC) introduced after November 2022 in Korea. However, both Samsung and Hyundai aim to expand the feature to their customers throughout the world in due course.
Eligible models include the Grandeur, Santa Fe, Ioniq 5, K5, Sorento, and EV9. Samsung also plans to extend the feature to Genesis vehicles equipped with the ccIC27 infotainment system.
As and when the feature becomes available to a wider audience, it could drive a behavioral shift in which cars become central nodes in someone’s smart home ecosystem, linking mobility and domestic technology in ways that were, until recently, purely speculative.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Walking into Mexico City’s sprawling central Zocalo is a dizzying experience. At one end of the plaza, the capital’s cathedral, with its soaring spires, slumps in one direction. An attached church, known as the Metropolitan Sanctuary, tilts in the other. The nearby National Palace also seems off-kilter. The teetering of many of the capital’s historic buildings is the most visible sign of a phenomenon that has been ongoing for more than a century: Mexico City is sinking at an alarming rate. Now, the metropolis’s descent is being tracked in real time thanks to one of the most powerful radar systems ever launched into space. Known as Nisar, the satellite can detect minute changes in Earth’s surface, even through thick vegetation or cloud cover. “Nisar takes radar imaging observations of Earth to the next level,” said Marin Govorcin, a scientist at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory. “Nisar will see any change big or small that happens on Earth from week to week. No other imaging mission can claim this.”
Though not the first time that Mexico City’s sinking has been observed from space, the Nisar mission has provided a greater sense of how far the sinking spreads and how it changes across different types of land than any other space-based sensor. It has also been able to penetrate areas on the outskirts of the city that were previously challenging to study because of the complex terrain. The implications of the imagery extend far beyond the Mexican capital. “This study of Mexico City speaks to the realm of possibilities that will open up thanks to the Nisar system,” said Dario Solano-Rojas, an engineer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam). “And not just for sinking cities but also for studying volcanoes, for studying the deformation associated with earthquakes, for studying landslides.” According to Nasa, the technology is also capable of monitoring the climate crisis, glacier sliding, agricultural productivity, soil moisture, forestry, coastal flooding and more. The Nisar system found that some parts of the city are dropping by more than 2cm a month. “First documented in 1925, the city’s sinking is a result of centuries of exploitation of the groundwater,” the report says. “Because Mexico City and its surrounds were built on an ancient lake bed, the soil beneath the city is extremely soft. When water is pumped out of the aquifer below, this clay-like earth compacts, resulting in a city that is quietly sinking.”
The crisis is also self-reinforcing: as the city sinks, aging pipes crack and leak, causing Mexico City to lose an estimated 40% of its water, even as drought and climate change make supplies more fragile.
Federal prosecutors arrested three men accused of carrying out the robbery.
Federal prosecutors say three men pulled off a violent hijacking of an Apple delivery truck outside a New York shopping center and escaped with more than a million dollars worth of iPhones, MacBooks, and other products.
The armed January robbery reportedly netted more than $1.2 million worth of stolen Apple products, including iPhone, MacBooks, iPads, Apple Watch, and accessories. Authorities described the robbery as a coordinated operation where suspects forced delivery workers into a truck at gunpoint before relocating the cargo to another vehicle.
The suspects were identified as Alan Christhofer Cedeno-Ferrer, Michael Mejia-Nunez, and Ennait Alexis Sirett-Padilla. Delivery workers unloading Apple merchandise outside the shopping center in Manhasset were intercepted by masked men armed with handguns.
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A black Honda Accord pulled up beside the truck, and the men approached the victims before forcing them to a nearby location. One worker was restrained with zip ties in the back of the truck during the robbery.
Another worker was forced into the driver’s seat and ordered to drive less than half a mile to a secluded parking area behind an office building. The suspects later confined both workers inside the cargo area while they transferred Apple products into a second vehicle.
Prosecutors describe a coordinated cargo theft operation
The robbery operation used a second truck staged for the merchandise transfer. Surveillance footage allegedly showed a Home Depot box truck following the hijacked Apple delivery vehicle to a nearby secondary location.
The suspects aligned the rear cargo compartments so they could quickly move Apple products between the trucks out of public view.
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Once the transfer was complete, the suspects shut the cargo doors with the victims still inside and fled the scene. One worker later managed to free himself and call 911.
The defendants later pleaded not guilty in federal court. They were ordered held without bail pending trial.
Apple shipments remain attractive targets for organized theft rings
ABC Newsfirst reported the arrests and details of the alleged Apple delivery truck hijacking.
A single shipment headed to a busy Apple Store can contain hundreds of devices ready for immediate sale. Organized theft crews increasingly target consumer electronics shipments before products ever reach retail stores.
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Investigators said the suspects used a second truck to move the stolen Apple products.
Apple products have repeatedly been tied to large product heists because they carry high resale value in relatively compact packages.
Even with protections such as Activation Lock and device management systems, stolen Apple hardware can still retain value through unauthorized resale channels and parts harvesting operations.
The suspects also appeared to minimize visibility near the shopping center itself by relocating the truck to a quieter secondary site before transferring merchandise into another enclosed vehicle.
Chaos erupted at schools and colleges throughout the US on Thursday as a cyberattack disrupted online learning platform Canvas just as students were due to take final exams.
Canvas parent company Instructure said that as of Friday morning, the platform was back online. Instructure said it temporarily took Canvas offline on Thursday after identifying unauthorized activity in its network. The threat actor was the same one responsible for a data breach that Instructure disclosed a week ago. Data accessed included user names, email addresses, student ID numbers, and messages exchanged on the platform. The company said it has no indication that passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers, or financial information were involved.
Schools and colleges scramble
A ransomware group known as ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach on its dark web site. It claimed the data it took came from 275 million people associated with 8,800 schools.
As students were trying to prepare for and take final exams Thursday, Canvas login pages displayed a ransom demand. It said Instructure had rebuffed the group’s earlier demands and encouraged individual schools to negotiate directly with them. The note and the outage sent schools and colleges scrambling. The University of Illinois reportedly postponed all final exams and assignments scheduled for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth rescheduled or extended due dates for exams. The University of California system directed all its campuses to linkword.
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Canvas isn’t the only learning platform to be struck by a cyberattack. Last year, PowerSchool, a firm that provides cloud-based software to 60 million students from 16,000 K–12 schools worldwide, disclosed a breach that exposed years’ worth of sensitive data, including names, addresses, and disciplinary records.
ShinyHunters has operated for years as a loose collective. In 2024, it made off with a trove of credentials and other data from cloud storage provider Snowflake and used it in follow-on breaches of Snowflake customers, including TicketMaster.
Liverpool will look to seal its place in next season’s UEFA Champions League on Saturday as it hosts a Chelsea team that is now in serious danger of missing out on European football next term.
Arne Slot’s men saw their recent run of three straight wins upended by a 3-2 defeat to Man United at Old Trafford. That match saw the Reds mount an encouraging second-half comeback. Slot will be keen to build on that performance with a win here set to confirm a top-five finish for the hosts. Chelsea, meanwhile, is limping over the line.
While Calum McFarlane oversaw an FA Cup semifinal win over Leeds last month, the interim boss has so far been unable to get the Blues back to winning ways in the English Premier League. Last weekend, they were defeated 3-1 at home by relegation-threatened Forest. That extended the Blues’ losing streak to five matches, and left the west Londoners three points behind seventh-placed Brentford.
Liverpool takes on Chelsea on Saturday, May 9, at Anfield, with kickoff set for 12:30 p.m. BST. That makes it a 7:30 a.m. ET or 4:30 a.m. PT start in the US and Canada, and a 9:30 a.m. AEST kickoff in Australia.
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Cody Gakpo’s second-half strike wasn’t enough to prevent Liverpool crashing to a 3-2 defeat away at Manchester United last Sunday.
Robbie Jay Barratt/AMA/Getty Images
How to watch Liverpool vs. Chelsea in the US without cable
Saturday’s clash at Anfield will be broadcast on NBC Sports Network and streaming service Peacock. To catch the game live on Peacock, you’ll need a Peacock Premium or Premium Plus subscription. NBC Sports Network is available on platforms like YouTube TV.
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Peacock offers two Premium plans, and after recent price increases, the ad-supported Premium plan costs $11 a month and the ad-free Premium Plus plan costs $17 a month.
How to watch the Premier League 2025-26 with a VPN
If you’re traveling abroad and want to keep up with Premier League action while away from home, a VPN can help enhance your privacy and security when streaming.
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It encrypts your traffic and prevents your internet service provider from throttling your speeds. Additionally, it can be helpful when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks while traveling, providing an extra layer of protection for your devices and logins. VPNs are legal in many countries, including the US and Canada, and can be used for legitimate purposes such as improving online privacy and security.
However, some streaming services may have policies restricting VPN use to access region-specific content. If you’re considering a VPN for streaming, check the platform’s terms of service to ensure compliance.
If you choose to use a VPN, follow the provider’s installation instructions to ensure you’re connected securely and in compliance with applicable laws and service agreements. Some streaming platforms may block access when a VPN is detected, so verifying if your streaming subscription allows VPN use is crucial.
Price $78 for two yearsLatest Tests No DNS leaks detected, 18% speed loss in 2025 testsJurisdiction British Virgin IslandsNetwork 3,000 plus servers in 105 countries
ExpressVPN is our current best VPN pick for people who want a reliable and safe VPN, and it works on a variety of devices. It’s normally $120 a year for its most popular plan (Advanced), but if you sign up for an annual subscription for $90, you’ll get three months free. That’s the equivalent of $6 a month.
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Note that ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
73% off with 2yr plan (+4 free months). Now only $3.49/month
Livestream Liverpool vs. Chelsea in the UK
This Saturday lunchtime clash is exclusive to TNT Sports and will be shown on its TNT Sports 1 channel.
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TNT Sports
You can access TNT Sports via Sky Q, Virgin Media and EE TV as part of a TV package.
Alternatively, TNT Sports has a new streaming home with the launch of HBO Max in the UK. It costs £31 either way and comes in a package that includes Discovery Plus’ library of documentary content.
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A bundle including HBO Max’s entertainment plan alongside TNT Sports currently costs £31 per month.
Livestream Liverpool vs. Chelsea in Canada
If you want to livestream EPL games in Canada this season, you’ll need to subscribe to Fubo. The service has exclusive rights to the Premier League and is broadcasting all 380 matches live.
Fubo
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Fubo is the go-to destination for Canadians looking to watch the EPL, with exclusive streaming rights to every match. It currently costs CA$27 for the first month, then CA$31.50 per month from then on.
Livestream Liverpool vs. Chelsea in Australia
Livestreaming rights for the EPL are now with Stan Sport, which is showing all 380 matches live, including this game.
Stan
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Stan Sport will set you back AU$20 a month (on top of a Stan subscription, which starts at AU$12). It’s also worth noting that the streaming service is currently offering a seven-day free trial.
A subscription will also give you access to Premier League, Champions League and Europa League action, as well as international rugby and Formula E.
Data is an asset for every business today. With the evolution and large-scale adoption of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the global data science industry is projected to reach $470.92 billion by 2030, with a 26% CAGR from 2024 to 2030. This triggers a big-time need for data scientists. But to become one, you need knowledge and a skillset, as data analytics requires expertise in tools and techniques to make the best of it. And the data certification course can be a great start for this. Here, I will take you through the top online data science certifications for 2026. We will also discuss the scope of growth in the domain and how to select the right course.
What is a Data Science Certification?
The very first thing that you need to know is that certification & certificates are different from each other, though they sound similar, yet they hold different values and criteria for validation. A certificate is proof of completion of a program or training, whereas a certification proves the industry-level expertise and practical knowledge.
A data science certification is a credential that proves your capability to apply data science skills, such as analysis, machine learning, and modeling, to make a better world. This requires exams or assessments by a globally recognized organization or institution.
Can you become a data scientist with a certification?
Are you in doubt whether a certification will get you a job or not in the data science field? The answer is that if you are just looking to enhance your resume by adding extra knowledge, then only a certificate will not necessarily provide you with the desired job. You need skills and industry-level practical expertise that are often acquired by completing a certification programme.
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Traditionally, entering a field required a bachelor’s degree and a complete knowledge of the industry. But the AI boom has built a connection between different tech domains and opened new pathways and new career opportunities. It has made career upscale & career switch way more efficient yet competitive. Therefore, certifications are helpful if you are from a technical background but need specialization in a particular field to land a job.
Data scientists need to have an understanding of statistical analysis, computing, machine learning, data analysis, visualization, and programming skills. Also, the hiring chances increase when you are familiar with the tools and libraries that data scientists use.
Tips to choose the right data science certification courses online.
Goals and Skills: First, define what you want from the course, is it skills, expert guidance, networking opportunities, or just some theoretical insights? You must make sure that your career plans align with the course you are opting for.
Cost: How costly is it? Is it offering me value at this point in my career?
Qualifications: What are the eligibility criteria for the course? If I do not qualify currently, what more do I need to do, and is doing the course worth it at this point?
Time and Mode: What is the duration of the programme? Will it be workable with my current schedule? Is the course online or offline, or do they have practicals in person during the course?
Review: What do people have to say about the course? Check the online rating and feedback, discussions about the provider on public platforms such as Reddit or Quora.
Job Opportunities: Check whether they offer a data science course with placement assistance or networking opportunities to get a job. Do they have a strong alumni network?
Top Data Science Certifications Online 2026
Here is a list of globally recognized courses in the field of data science.
1. DASCA’s Data Scientist Certification
Source: Rome Business School
DASCA refers to the Data Science Council of America, and it offers courses across fields of data. As for data science, they have a Senior Data Scientist Course & a Principal Data Scientist. Both of these are great data science certifications for working professionals who already have a firm grounding in the respective field and wish to upskill.
These certifications will offer you skills like planning, designing, and managing large-scale data systems of modeling, data mining & research.
Demonstration of advanced skills by certified professionals across analytical operations, developing business cases, and working with teams across global organizations.
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It is ranked and recommended by top educational and industry leaders, including Indeed, edureka, World Data Science & AI Initiative, Datamation, and more.
Some key benefits include:
Global recognition and industry demand
Continuously evolving and research-backed knowledge for both existing and emerging data science careers
Cross-platform efficiency and adaptability
Strong network and collaboration opportunities
Enhanced credibility and thought leadership
2. Microsoft Certified Azure Data Scientist Associate
Source: ProjectPro
This certification can be a great step towards excellence in data science. It is an intermediate-level course with a renewal every 12 months. You need to have certain qualifications for applying to this course, which are subject matter expertise in the application and implementation of data science and machine learning to run ML workloads on Azure, ML Flow, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Services, including Azure AI Search.
You can find various resources on the official website to prepare for the examination. Including all the advantages of learning from this course, you’ll also be earning a token for deploying an ML or any data science model. That model can be used as a Service by businesses, cloud consultants, and developers, too.
3. IBM Data Science Professional Certificate
Source: Cursin
This course does not demand any prior computer science or programming experience. It will offer you the job-ready skills and practical experience needed to kickstart your career in data science and machine learning.
You will learn Python programming, SQL for database querying, data manipulation with Pandas and Numpy, data visualization using Matplotlib and Seaborn, and ML with Scikit-learn. You will actively work with data science tools like Jupyter Notebooks, RStudio, and IBM WatsonX. Use GitHub for version control and accessing data sources with APIs. Labs, coursework projects, and a capstone project will gain you valuable experience.
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Also, this course gives unlimited access to all of its 10 courses at different price and duration packages.
4. AWS Certified Machine Learning – Speciality
Source: Towards AI
The certificate credentials will badge you with the capability to architect ML/deep learning workloads, optimize model training, and implement production-ready ML systems. You will be specialized in building and deploying ML solutions in the AWS Cloud. It is an advanced-level course with a renewal period of 3 years.
You can test your skills in data engineering, exploratory data analysis, feature engineering, model training, tuning, and deployment on services like Amazon SageMaker, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda. Artificial intelligence practices and model interpretability will also be taught.
5. Professional Certificate in Data Science (Harvard)
This is one of the best data science certifications for beginners offered by Harvard University via edX, which will teach you the basics of data mining, visualization, probability, statistical concepts, and machine learning. You will also understand the fundamentals of R programming. It is a self-paced learning ideal for people who want to progress at their own speed. It is a 9-skills course with topics varying from linear regression to data visualization in R.
6. Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate
Source: YouTube
This course will provide you with in-demand skills and AI training from Google experts, with learning at your own pace without a degree or prior experience. The course has a flexible schedule of 6 months at 10 hours a week. It is a beginner-level course.
You will gain an immersive understanding of how and what junior or associate data analyst do in their everyday job. Analytical skills, including data cleaning, analysis, and visualization, and tools like spreadsheets, SQL, Python, and Tableau, will be taught. You will also learn to present the data findings on dashboards, presentations, and commonly used visualization platforms.
Salary after Data Science Certification
Employment in the field of data science is projected to grow 34 % from 2024 to 2034, which is faster than average for all occupations. And as per insights from Indeed, the average base salary of a data scientist in the U.S. is $129,141 per annum. And some of the highest-paying cities for the job are San Francisco, Livermore, Seattle, Palo Alto, and more.
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Conclusion
Data science is more of an emerging domain of the tech field, but a booming industry; the average market growth is higher compared to other occupations. If you are interested in dealing with numbers that are assets to big corporations and thinking about how to become a data scientist without a degree, I have got you. You can achieve this by leveraging data science certifications. In this writing, I have mentioned several affordable data science certification courses in 2026, from beginner level to advanced level. Each of which will give you expertise about different verticals of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and analytical tools used by tech giants.
Who can apply for data science certification courses?
Students, freshers, and professionals all apply for these courses. Generally, there is no requirement for prior experience or a degree, though different courses have their own qualifications and criteria.
Do I need to know how to code before applying for a data science certification?
Not necessarily always. Some courses, such as the IMB Data Science professional Certificate, start from the basics. And advanced courses like Microsoft Azure Certified Data Science Associate demand the knowledge of application and implementation of data science and machine learning for workloads in Azure.
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What is the duration of courses?
It can vary from 3 to 6 months, based on your course structure and learning pace.
How much can I earn after doing a data science certification?
It completely depends on factors like your experience and skills, region, and market demands. But certifications and projects can always offer you an edge over the competition.
This weekend’s movie recommendations on Peacock are a bit of a wild mix, and that’s exactly the point. Bugonia will make you laugh at things you shouldn’t, Promising Young Woman will make you seethe at things you recognize, and The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil will make you root for someone you probably shouldn’t.
Three very different films, but they all share one thing: nobody in them is playing by the rules, and that’s what makes each one of these underrated movies worth your time.
If you’ve ever gone down a conspiracy rabbit hole at 2am and thought, “What if I’m actually onto something?” Bugonia is the movie for you. This delightfully unhinged dark comedy follows Teddy, a paranoid beekeeper who is utterly convinced that Michelle Fuller, a powerful biotech CEO, is actually an alien from the Andromeda galaxy sent to destroy humanity. So naturally, he kidnaps her.
What follows is a claustrophobic, darkly funny battle of wills between Jesse Plemons at his most unsettlingly committed and Emma Stone with her cool, menacing presence. The film is a sharp satire of conspiracy culture, corporate greed, and the seductive comfort of believing someone else is responsible for the world’s mess. I really like how the movie uses camera angles to keep you constantly questioning who the real monster in the room is.
Sometimes the best thrillers are built on the most ridiculous premises, and this Korean crime film pulls it off with total swagger. After a serial killer makes the catastrophically bad decision of attacking mob boss Jang Dong-su and leaving him for dead on a rainy road, Jang teams up with a scrappy detective to hunt the killer down, each for very different reasons.
Ma Dong-seok, who you might know from Train to Busan, is an absolute force of nature here, carrying scenes through sheer physical presence and a surprising streak of dry humor. The film is fast, slick, and genuinely fun, with some brawls that are choreographed just well enough to feel brutal without being ridiculous. I really like how the movie never tries to make its heroes noble. They’re both morally questionable, and the film is completely fine with that.
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You can watch The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil on Peacock.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Genre: dark comedy, thriller
IMDB ratings – 7.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes (critics) – 90%
This one still lingers long after the credits roll. Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, a 30-year-old medical school dropout who spends her nights at bars pretending to be blackout drunk, waiting to see which “nice guys” show their true colors.
It sounds like a thriller setup, but writer-director Emerald Fennell turns it into something far more layered, mixing dark comedy, romance, and a simmering rage that builds quietly until it boils over.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and it earns every bit of that. I really like how Fennell uses pastel colors and upbeat pop music to make the discomfort hit even harder.
It’s not just gas prices skyrocketing. Frontier-model pricing keeps climbing too
It’s getting more expensive to use the latest models. OpenAI last month bumped the version number of its GPT model family to 5.5, and per-token prices rose too, in some cases doubling compared to its predecessor.
For 1 million tokens, GPT-5.5 is priced at $5 (input), $0.50 (cached input), and $30 (output). Its predecessor GPT-5.4 charges $2.50 (input), $0.25 (cached input), and $15 (output) per 1 million tokens.
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The AI biz claims that the cost increase is offset to some extent by token processing efficiency – delivering better results using fewer tokens.
“While GPT‑5.5 is priced higher than GPT‑5.4, it is both more intelligent and much more token efficient,” the company said during the rollout.
But the cost is still going up, more than efficiency improvements are reducing costs. According to an analysis conducted by OpenRouter, GPT-5.5 is anywhere from 50 percent more expensive to nearly twice as expensive, depending on prompt length.
“Our analysis shows that GPT-5.5 actual costs increased 49 percent to 92 percent,” OpenRouter said. “Longer prompts, over 10k tokens, saw costs offset by shorter completions. Shorter prompts, under 10k, experience a higher cost increase where completions did not get shorter.”
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That range – 49 percent to 92 percent – factors in the model’s token efficiency improvements, which are more relevant for longer prompts. According to OpenRouter’s measurements, GPT-5.5 generates between 19 percent and 34 percent fewer completion tokens for longer prompts (10,000 tokens and up).
If reports of OpenAI’s projected $14 billion loss in 2026 prove accurate, costs will have to rise much more to balance its insistent spending. But this is a problem also faced by rival Anthropic, set to lose a reported $11 billion in 2026.
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 arrived without a visible list price change amid claims about an improved tokenizer. The result, according to OpenRouter, is potential savings for shorter prompts but larger bills for longer ones.
“Our study of real Opus 4.7 usage shows that actual costs increased 12–27 percent for prompts above 2K tokens when cache absorption is taken into account,” the biz said. “Short prompts under 2K were the exception, where significantly shorter completions offset the tokenizer overhead entirely.”
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Expect further price increases for premium models. ®
Cloudflare previously announced plans to hire more than 1,000 interns to ‘ramp up’ AI use.
Cloudflare is cutting 20pc of its workforce after AI usage at the company grew 600pc in the last three months. The company said that it is cutting more than 1,100 employees, and expects restructuring costs to range up to $150m.
Shares at Cloudflare fell by more than 16pc in after-hours trading despite the company announcing a stronger than expected quarter, with first-quarter revenue growing 34pc year-on-year to nearly $640m. It expects second-quarter revenue to hit between $664m and $665m.
“We have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era”, an email sent to employees read.
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“Today’s actions are not a cost-cutting exercise or an assessment of individuals’ performance – they are about Cloudflare defining how a world-class, high-growth company operates and creates value in the agentic AI era.”
In its earnings release yesterday (7 May), Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said: “AI is driving a fundamental re-platforming of the internet and a paradigm shift in how software is created and consumed – it’s shaping up to be the biggest tailwind we’ve ever seen in Cloudflare’s history.”
Cloudflare has offices in a number of European countries, including the UK. When queried on country-specific layoffs, the company redirected SiliconRepublic.com to the official announcement on its website.
Company leaders, who were previously apprehensive of linking layoffs to AI, have recently begun embracing the shift in work culture, with Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong noting AI is “changing how we work” and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg commenting that projects that previously required larger teams now only need “a single, very talented person”.
Block’s co-founder, head and chair Jack Dorsey, meanwhile, said earlier this year that a “majority of companies” will reach similar conclusions around smaller teams and make similar structural changes “within the next year”.
Cloudflare, however, is also tapping a younger, more AI-literate workforce, with plans to take on 1,111 interns by the end of 2026. The interns are expected to “ramp up the creative and widespread application of AI with a fresh approach”, the company wrote in a blog last September.
The company – which claims to interface with around 20pc of the web – had a turbulent final quarter last year with two major outages affecting websites across the globe. Sites and platforms such as Zoom, LinkedIn, Shopify, Canva, Substack and Coinbase, as well as X and OpenAI, were reportedly affected in the disruptions.
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Updated, 8 May, 10.41am: The article has been updated with a response from Cloudflare.
Is it me, or did PC gaming used to move faster? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a graphics card could feel outdated within a year, and major platform jumps arrived so often that upgrading became part of the hobby. Today, things are different. Read Entire Article Source link
Barespace Capital’s new system gives salon owners direct access to growth funding through the platform they already use.
Start-up Barespace, an Irish AI-powered OS provider for the hair and beauty sector, has launched Barespace Capital, an embedded finance platform enabling salons to access funding within already utilised platforms.
Barespace and Barespace Capital aim to follow a shift towards embedded finance across vertical SaaS platforms. According to Barespace, the hair and beauty sectors often deal with traditional lenders who struggle with risk assessment and variable cash flow, as standard finance systems often rely on documentation and processes designed for other types of business.
Established in Dublin in 2022 by co-founders Conor Moules and Glenn McGoldrick, Barespace works with more than 300 salons across Ireland, the UK, France and Spain, and recently secured significant seed funding of €2.9m to support further expansion.
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The platform stated that Barespace Capital “represents the latest step in the company’s evolution from a booking platform into an AI-powered operating system for the beauty industry”. So far, the company has raised €4.68m in funding.
Commenting on the announcement, CEO Moules said: “Salons run on tight margins and unpredictable cash flow. Traditional banks don’t understand the business and most salon owners either go without or jump through hoops for a loan that can take months to approve.
“Barespace Capital changes that. Because we already live inside the salon, managing bookings, product inventory, staff and payments, we have a real-time picture of the business that no bank ever sees. When you can see the talent and the traction in real time, backing them is not a risk. It’s obvious.”
In March of this year, Sifted released its annual list of the 100 fastest-growing Irish and UK start-ups; Barespace made an appearance, coming in at 56th position as the highest ranking seed start-up on the list. Other high-profile Irish entries included Dublin’s Kota, which placed in the top 10, and Protex AI, which ranked 21st.
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