Volunteers Clear Over Two Tonnes of Waste, Including Medical Debris, Near Bengaluru's Turahalli Forest

MP-based activist Bittu Tabahi participated in a clean-up drive near Turahalli forest in Bengaluru for the first time. He and other volunteers were shocked to discover poultry waste, domestic garbage, dog carcasses, and medical waste dumped at the forest's edge. The team collectively removed more than two tonnes of waste during the drive. Environmentalist AN Yellappa Reddy noted that the area once served as an important water catchment zone. The initiative was organized to spotlight growing environmental pollution and encourage greater civic responsibility among residents.

OpenAI Uses AI to Block Unsafe Code Merges, but Blind Spot Risk Remains

OpenAI has deployed a dedicated AI code-review model that automatically blocks pull requests flagged as security risks, with no human override allowed. Thibault Sottiaux, engineering lead for the Codex team, described the system on The Pragmatic Engineer podcast, claiming the model performs at a superhuman level in detecting logic errors and vulnerabilities. Beyond security, the same AI handles regression detection, dependency updates, and large-scale refactoring tasks that would otherwise take engineering teams months. However, critics point out a structural blind spot: if AI writes the code and AI reviews it, both systems may share identical failure modes. A vulnerability missed by the writing model could pass the review model undetected, creating a false sense of security that may be more dangerous than having no automated review at all.

Recursive CTEs Explained: The SQL Feature That Handles Unlimited Hierarchy Levels

Recursive Common Table Expressions (CTEs) solve a longstanding SQL limitation: traversing hierarchical data of unknown depth, such as org charts, category trees, or folder structures. A recursive CTE consists of two parts joined by UNION ALL — an anchor member that defines the starting row and a recursive member that repeatedly joins back to the CTE's own output until no new rows are returned. The technique works in PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL 8.0 or later, but is unsupported in older MySQL versions. Developers should use UNION ALL rather than UNION to avoid costly deduplication, and must guard against cyclic data — where relationships loop back on themselves — by tracking visited IDs or capping recursion depth. While powerful, recursive CTEs recompute the full traversal on every query, so alternative design patterns may be preferable for very large or frequently queried hierarchies.

OpenProfile.md 0.2 lets users answer dating profile questions once, own the data

OpenProfile.md, an open Markdown standard served from a user's own domain, has released version 0.2 with a new Match section designed to eliminate repetitive data entry across dating platforms. The update allows users to fill in personal attributes — such as age, gender, orientation, height, and relationship preferences — a single time in a file they fully control. Any dating platform can then read the file directly, removing the need to re-enter the same information on Hinge, Bumble, or similar services. The specification includes a strict rule requiring a valid Born field confirming the user is 18 or older before a profile can appear in any matching context, and platforms are prohibited from inferring sensitive fields like orientation or ethnicity from external sources. Version 0.2 is published under CC BY 4.0 at logicsrc.com/docs/openprofile and is intended to be hosted at a well-known URL on the user's own domain.

Browser Tool Converts GLB to STL for 3D Printing Without Uploading Files

Developer Casey Marlin has built STL Mesh, a browser-based tool that converts GLB files — the standard export format from AI 3D generators like Meshy and Tripo — into STL files compatible with 3D printing slicers. Unlike most online converters, the tool processes files entirely on the client side using a Web Worker powered by three.js, meaning no data is sent to external servers. The converter handles GLB parsing, transform baking, and binary STL encoding, and also supports other format pairs including OBJ, FBX, SVG, and STL conversions. A key feature is a bounding box preview that helps users catch a common unit mismatch, since glTF files use meters while slicers interpret STL units as millimeters. The tool is freely available at stlmesh.com and requires no software installation.

How to Structure a Freelance Web Portfolio for Clarity and Usability

A well-organized freelance portfolio should immediately answer three questions for visitors: what the designer does, what work they can show, and how to contact them. İzmir-based freelance web designer Ben Can Taşkın outlines a simple content plan for presenting web design services clearly, recommending that the primary service be stated upfront while secondary offerings appear in subsections. Each project card should include the project name, its scope, and a link — without unsupported claims like unverified conversion rates or traffic figures. The article also emphasizes using proper HTML heading structure for content hierarchy rather than visual styling alone, and ensuring the layout works with real content on small screens. For multilingual portfolios, separate language sections with naturally translated text are advised over cramming multiple languages into a single heading.

Modi-Xi talks put India-China thaw to the test

Babar Azam urges Pakistan to reflect after 3-0 Test series whitewash by England

Pakistan captain Babar Azam has called for honest self-assessment after his side suffered a 3-0 Test series defeat against England. Babar stressed the need to reassess the squad composition and identify the strongest possible playing eleven. Despite the overall result, the final Test offered some positives, particularly through the batting contributions of debutant Razaullah. The series loss has pushed Pakistan to the bottom of the World Test Championship standings.

Why padel players are landing at physiotherapy

Developer Builds Open-Source Tool to Protect BTS Fans from Ticket Scams

A developer and BTS fan has released 'sevensignal,' an open-source set of agent skills designed to help fans identify fraudulent ticket sellers and stay updated on official BTS news. The tool's ticket-safety checker flags any seller not explicitly named in a current BigHit or Weverse notice as 'unverified' rather than 'safe,' covering 41 known scam patterns including fake Weverse Shop clones, KakaoTalk fraud, and lookalike domains. A companion feature, official-news, summarizes BTS updates from public sources without requiring users to share their Weverse credentials. The project is MIT-licensed, entirely fan-made, and has no affiliation with HYBE, BigHit, or Weverse. It is publicly available on GitHub and open to community contributions, including new scam patterns and translations.

Oscar-Winning Producer Jeremy Thomas Dies at 77 After 50-Year Career

Veteran British film producer Jeremy Thomas has passed away at the age of 77 at his home. Thomas was widely celebrated for his work on landmark films, most notably The Last Emperor, which brought him major Academy recognition. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he accumulated nine Oscar wins, cementing his status as one of cinema's most accomplished producers. His death has prompted an outpouring of tributes from colleagues and collaborators across the film industry. Thomas leaves behind a legacy widely regarded as deeply influential to generations of filmmakers.

Developer builds AI 'skeptic' agent that found four major flaws in his own design doc

A developer building a SaaS product created a custom AI sub-agent explicitly programmed to refute rather than approve documents, and barred it from offering any positive closing remarks. When he turned the agent on his own finished design document, it surfaced four major issues he had overlooked. The flaws included a self-contradicting rule about blocking outbound communication, a legally unconfirmed claim written in conclusive language, a completion condition referencing an undefined ledger, and a circular dependency between project phases. The developer noted that standard AI review prompts tend to produce overly validating responses, while inverting the success condition — making the agent's goal to disprove rather than approve — forced more rigorous scrutiny. He concluded that authors are poorly placed to review their own work, and that an adversarially framed AI reviewer can surface blind spots that conventional review misses.

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How social media changed the way we discover poetry

Why Subscription Platforms Should Lock Exchange Rates at Checkout, Not at Charge Time

Subscription platforms billing in multiple currencies face a hidden risk when exchange rates are resolved at charge time rather than when the customer agreed to a price. The gap between checkout and settlement can cause the amount a customer is billed to differ from what they were quoted, creating unmanaged foreign exchange exposure across thousands of renewals. At scale, this variance distorts revenue reports and cannot be dismissed as a rounding error. Customers who notice unexplained price shifts between billing cycles are more likely to raise disputes or cancel their subscriptions. The proposed fix is straightforward: snapshot the exchange rate at the moment of customer agreement and apply that locked rate consistently through to settlement.

Google Earth Engine Opens Decades of Satellite Data to Anyone Who Can Code

Google Earth Engine is a free cloud-based platform that allows researchers, developers, and analysts to process over 50 petabytes of satellite imagery dating back to the 1970s without downloading data locally. The tool draws on datasets including Landsat, Sentinel, and MODIS imagery, alongside climate records, elevation maps, and nighttime light data. Users can query how a specific location has changed over any time period by writing code through a web interface or via Python integration. Common applications include tracking deforestation, monitoring urban expansion, assessing drought impacts, and evaluating disaster damage by comparing before-and-after images. As of 2026, Google has introduced usage tiers for free users to manage computing resources, though the platform remains largely free for non-commercial purposes.

BRICS Summit 2026: New Delhi Declaration Supports Return of Cultural Antiquities

The BRICS Summit 2026 was held over two days in New Delhi, bringing together member nations under the theme of strengthening cooperation to promote fair competition. A key focus of the summit was advancing sustainable energy transitions, particularly in renewable energy markets. Leaders adopted the New Delhi Declaration, which notably backed the repatriation of antiquities to their countries of origin. The declaration reflects the bloc's broader agenda of addressing both economic and cultural equity among nations.

Automattic's Harper Offers Fast, Private Grammar Checking Built in Rust

Harper is a new open-source grammar checking tool developed by Automattic and built using the Rust programming language. It is designed to analyze documents in milliseconds while consuming less than one-fiftieth of the memory used by LanguageTool. Unlike cloud-based alternatives, Harper runs entirely locally, ensuring user data is never sent to external servers. The tool supports WebAssembly, enabling it to run across multiple platforms, and can be installed via extension stores for browsers, Visual Studio Code, and Obsidian. Full documentation is available at writewithharper.com for users on other platforms.

From different faiths, they went to court to marry. He was assaulted, arrested – and now acquitted

How to Self-Host Obsidian LiveSync Using CouchDB on a VPS

A developer has documented a self-hosted sync solution for Obsidian notes using the LiveSync plugin and a CouchDB backend. The setup involves provisioning a low-cost VPS on MagaluCloud running Debian 13, then installing Docker to host a CouchDB instance via Docker Compose. The LiveSync plugin connects Obsidian clients to the self-hosted CouchDB server, enabling real-time note synchronization across devices. Key configuration steps include setting up CORS rules, enforcing authenticated access, and allocating sufficient storage for large sync batches. The guide is intended as a personal reference and a practical resource for others seeking an affordable, privacy-conscious alternative to Obsidian's official sync service.