When can you order new Apple products in India?

Private 17.83-acre Georgia island hits market for $2.5 million

Hawaii's Guinea Grass Spreads Wildfire Risk With 9,000 Seeds and 9-Foot Growth

Guinea grass, originally introduced to Hawaii in the 19th century for grazing purposes, has since become a serious ecological threat across the islands. The invasive perennial can grow up to nine feet tall and produce as many as 9,000 seeds per plant, enabling rapid and widespread proliferation. Its ability to recover quickly after fires makes it a significant contributor to wildfire risk by supplying large amounts of combustible fuel. The species serves as a cautionary example of how imported plants can cause lasting and unintended environmental damage.

Trump goes desi: First voter ID, now cash in the account

Xi Jinping to arrive Saturday for BRICS, first visit in 7 years

Satya Niketan Collapse: Legal Experts Say Disclaimer Clauses Won't Shield PG Owners

A building collapse in Delhi's Satya Niketan locality claimed seven lives and left several others injured. The incident has raised questions about whether disclaimer clauses in rent agreements can protect PG owners from legal liability. Legal experts have clarified that such clauses cannot override statutory duties or excuse negligent conduct. Victims' families may still pursue compensation provided they can establish negligence and a direct causal link. Ongoing investigations are expected to determine the extent of responsibility of both property owners and relevant authorities.

Samsung Mocks Apple's iPhone Duo Launch, Calls It 'Boring' in Social Media Jabs

Samsung Mobile US launched a series of humorous social media posts targeting Apple's latest product event. The campaign took aim at Apple's new foldable phone, with Samsung highlighting its own established foldable technology in contrast. Language-learning app Duolingo also joined the exchange, adding to the public banter. The playful rivalry transformed a standard corporate product launch into a widely watched online conversation.

Vari Ergo Electric Standing Desk Offers Compact Design at Affordable Price

The Vari Ergo is an electric standing desk reviewed by Wired ahead of 2026. The desk is noted for its compact form factor and budget-friendly pricing. It features a gently sloped surface designed to align with the user's natural posture. Assembly is described as straightforward and user-friendly. Overall, the desk is positioned as a practical option for those seeking an ergonomic workspace solution.

Cargo Ship Fire in Eastern China Causes Significant Casualties

A cargo ship caught fire in eastern China, resulting in significant casualties among those on board. Chinese President Xi Jinping has responded to the incident by calling for urgent search and rescue operations. The fire broke out on a vessel in the region, prompting an emergency response. Authorities have been mobilized to assist survivors and manage the situation. The exact cause of the fire and the full extent of casualties have not yet been confirmed.

Developer builds reproducible Erlang learning environment using Nix flakes

A developer learning Erlang has published a GitHub repository combining a Nix-based development shell with small experimental programs written during the learning process. The setup uses Nix flakes to pin the environment to a specific Nixpkgs revision, ensuring that Erlang/OTP 29.0.6 is used consistently by anyone who clones and enters the shell. The repository is structured around two components: a flake.nix configuration file and a directory of programs written while working through the book 'Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good!'. The environment is deliberately minimal, currently including only Erlang itself, with tools like Rebar3 left out until more complex projects require them. The developer notes the setup may expand over time as the scope of their Erlang experiments grows.

Why Most Customer Churn Models Fail — and What Actually Fixes Them

Most churn prediction programmes share a core flaw: they rank customers by likelihood of leaving rather than by how likely they are to respond positively to intervention. This means retention campaigns often waste resources on 'lost causes' who have already decided to leave, 'sure things' who would have stayed anyway, and 'sleeping dogs' who are actually pushed to cancel by being contacted. Experts recommend uplift modelling, which estimates the change in churn probability caused by an intervention, requiring randomised treatment data to measure true responsiveness. Involuntary churn from failed payments should also be separated out before model training, as it corrupts results and is better addressed through payment-retry logic and pre-expiry reminders. Additionally, data leakage from outcome-encoded features is a common reason churn models show inflated validation scores that do not hold up in production.

Karnataka Hurdler Krishik Dropped from Asian Games Squad Despite Meeting Qualifier Thrice

Karnataka hurdler Krishik M has been left out of India's Asian Games athletics squad despite clearing the qualifying standard three times. The Athletics Federation of India cited his third-place finish at the recent Inter-State meet as grounds for his exclusion. Critics have raised concerns over inconsistent selection criteria, noting that other athletes were treated more leniently. Krishik, however, remains determined to compete in future events and continue meeting qualification benchmarks.

Per-seat AI coding tools waste idle capacity while heavy users hit limits early

Companies paying for per-seat AI coding subscriptions routinely lose unused capacity each week because allowances expire rather than roll over, while some engineers exhaust their allocation by mid-week. Usage is highly uneven across roles — engineers deep in migrations may max out for weeks, while those in meetings or non-coding roles barely touch their seats. The practical fix, according to the analysis, is redistributing work items to colleagues with spare capacity rather than sharing credentials or buying additional seats, both of which create new problems. This approach requires tasks to be clearly documented so they can be handed off, which the author notes is a prerequisite for good AI-assisted workflows in general. Any gains from this method should be counted as throughput improvements rather than cost savings, since money is only truly saved if the alternative would have been purchasing more seats.

Hidden Markov Model strategy doubles Sharpe ratio and cuts drawdown by 65%

A developer built a real-time market risk scoring system using a Gaussian Hidden Markov Model (GaussianHMM) trained on five years of data from five assets, including SPY, gold, and bonds. The model identifies three hidden market regimes — Bull, Neutral, and Bear — without manual labeling, using the Baum-Welch algorithm to learn transition patterns from returns and volatility. Based on the detected regime, the strategy dynamically adjusts portfolio exposure, going fully invested in bull markets and defensive during bear phases. Backtesting results showed a Sharpe ratio of 2.12 versus 1.11 for a buy-and-hold approach, while maximum drawdown shrank from -21.9% to -7.5%. The author argues that HMMs offer an honest way to capture regime shifts that traders sense intuitively, without overfitting to exact price predictions.

How Data Validation Catches Silent Web Scraping Failures Before They Spread

Web scrapers can return a successful HTTP status while delivering corrupted or mismatched data, making failures invisible until downstream systems are affected. A developer guide published on DEV Community recommends defining a strict data contract — including field types, required values, and accepted ranges — before scraping at scale. Using Python's Pydantic library, developers can validate each scraped record at ingestion and automatically route invalid rows to a re-scrape queue with a logged reason, rather than storing nulls silently. The guide advises running checks at three stages: before scraping to clean URL inputs, during scraping to validate extracted fields, and after scraping to monitor aggregate anomalies like sudden spikes in missing prices. Such aggregate signals often indicate a site template change, a proxy serving a bot-check page, or an unexpected regional layout rather than isolated one-off errors.

Pydantic flags three distinct JSON errors in AI model outputs over two days

A content pipeline built by NeuraGrowth, a solo digital-products studio, encountered three separate JSON validation failures across two consecutive days in August 2026. Two errors involved truncated output — one cutting off mid-value and another mid-string — while a third contained a trailing comma. Pydantic reported all three as a single json_invalid error type, with the column number and error subtype serving as the only distinguishing details. In each case, the affected topic was kept in the pipeline plan, with a note that a second failure on the same topic would help identify whether the issue lies with the topic itself or the gateway. The root cause of why any of the three outputs arrived malformed was not recorded.

SQLite 3.53 patches stale expression index bug but only fixes rows on write

SQLite 3.53.0, released in April 2026, introduced a self-healing mechanism to address a long-standing issue where expression indexes could return wrong query results without any error or warning. The problem occurs when a custom SQL function's output changes after an index is built, causing stored index entries to no longer match what the expression would compute today. A developer reproduced the flaw by registering a scalar function, building an index, then reopening the database with a modified version of the function — resulting in two different rows returned for the same query depending on whether the index or a full scan was used. On SQLite versions before 3.53, writing to affected rows triggered an SQLITE_CORRUPT error even though the underlying data was intact. The new self-healing fix in 3.53 repairs index entries only for rows that are written to, meaning stale entries for unmodified rows can still serve incorrect read results.

How to Run Dart on Alpine Linux: Methods, Workarounds, and Limitations

Running Dart on Alpine Linux is non-trivial since the language lacks native Alpine support and relies on Google-provided binaries built for Debian-based systems. Three main approaches exist: using the official Dart Docker image, leveraging version managers like asdf or mise, or manually downloading and installing Google's binaries with the gcompat compatibility layer. While the binaries can execute basic Dart programs on Alpine, they produce linking errors due to missing symbols such as __cxa_thread_atexit_impl, which are absent in Alpine's musl-based environment. Compiling Dart from source on Alpine remains unfinished due to heavy Google toolchain dependencies that generate numerous build errors. For Flutter and Android SDK containerization, existing Docker images are either outdated, unmaintained, or prohibitively large, leaving no fully satisfactory solution currently available.

Italian CS Teacher Builds Free Open-Source School Register to End Vendor Lock-In

An Italian computer science teacher has developed il_registro, a free and open-source electronic class register, to challenge the dominance of costly proprietary software in Italian public schools. Italian law requires all schools to use a certified digital platform for attendance, grades, and communications, a market currently controlled by a handful of private vendors funded by taxpayer money. The developer built the full-stack, self-hostable system using Go, Vue 3, Kotlin, and Swift, incorporating features such as real-time notifications, digital signatures compliant with eIDAS, and integrations with national identity systems like SPID and CIE. The platform also includes accessibility tools meeting WCAG 2.2 AA standards, native mobile apps for students, parents, teachers, and administrative staff, and supports 11 languages. A live demo with sample accounts for all school roles is publicly available, and the project aims to give public institutions transparent, verifiable, and high-performance tools free from commercial lock-in.

iPhone 18 Pro gains variable aperture and expanded manual camera controls

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max feature a new variable aperture system in their main cameras, allowing users to shoot at four aperture settings ranging from f/1.48 to f/4. The mechanical iris lets more or less light reach the sensor depending on shooting conditions. Alongside the aperture control, Apple has introduced additional manual options including adjustable shutter speed, manual white balance, and manual focus. Users can also let the camera handle aperture selection automatically. Together, these additions represent a significant expansion of manual camera controls for the iPhone lineup.