Voice AI Delivers ROI But Measuring It Remains a Major Challenge, Report Finds

A G2 report surveying 17 vendors and analyzing 1,419 verified reviews found that while 76% of voice AI users report significant operational ROI, measuring that value ranks as the third-biggest challenge in the category. Adoption has surged, with 88% of platforms reporting rapid growth over the past 12 months, yet many teams deploy these tools without analytics frameworks in place. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees form the largest user segment, suggesting voice AI spread bottom-up rather than through enterprise procurement processes with formal measurement plans. The software itself earns strong satisfaction scores — a 9.26 out of 10 recommendation rating and 93.1% of reviewers giving four stars or higher — indicating users are pleased but struggle to quantify results internally. Experts and practitioners alike recommend establishing ROI measurement criteria before deployment, not after, to avoid spending months trying to prove value that was never tracked from the start.

Temple Shop Fined Rs 7 Lakh for Selling Water Bottle Above MRP

A temple shop licensee has been ordered to pay Rs 7 lakh into the consumer welfare fund after overcharging a customer for a water bottle. The shop charged Rs 25 for a bottle marked at Rs 18, exceeding the maximum retail price. A consumer commission issued the ruling, also directing the licensee to refund and compensate the affected consumer. The case drew attention to unfair trade practices at a prominent pilgrimage site. The decision underscores regulatory efforts to enforce fair pricing and protect consumer rights.

Guide Warns AI-Assisted CRM Research Can Hide Uncertainty Behind Plausible Data

A workflow guide published on DEV Community cautions that AI-assisted company research can appear thorough while quietly becoming unreliable when unverified fields are filled with plausible but unsourced values. The guide recommends tracking four elements for every data field: the candidate value, its source, when it was observed, and a status of VERIFIED, NEEDS_CHECK, or NOT_FOUND. It emphasizes that NOT_FOUND should be treated as a legitimate outcome rather than a prompt for the model to guess, and that conflicting values should be held in a review record rather than silently overwritten. The proposed workflow separates retrieval, evaluation, and write-back steps, requiring human approval before any uncertain data is committed to a CRM. The guide also stresses distinguishing between what a system currently returns and what it could theoretically be designed to return, urging researchers to label unverified capabilities rather than treat them as confirmed facts.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode Cite Websites at Vastly Different Rates, Study Finds

A researcher posed 47 identical buying-related questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode on the same day, analyzing citations across all 141 responses. Perplexity averaged 16.7 citations per answer, Google AI Mode 3.7, and ChatGPT just 1.6, suggesting each platform behaves very differently as a traffic source for websites. The study also flagged a technical pitfall: JSON-LD structured data rendered via Next.js next/script is injected after hydration and invisible to non-JavaScript fetchers used by most AI assistants, meaning a plain script tag is necessary for reliable structured data delivery. Additionally, the researcher noted that ChatGPT's frequent Google Maps links were auto-constructed query URLs rather than verified business listings, warning against misreading hostname patterns as proof of citation. The findings suggest that optimizing content for traditional search results does not translate directly to visibility in AI assistant answers, as the two channels draw from different source types.

Technical Writers Now Own AI Chatbot Answer Quality in Docs-as-Evals Role

The role of technical writers is evolving beyond traditional documentation as AI agents now consume product docs more frequently than human users do. A technical writer at a multi-product developer platform observed that their documentation chatbot was returning incorrect links and mixing product contexts when users switched topics mid-conversation. The root cause was a long chat history being carried across product switches, causing the AI to blend unrelated content from earlier turns into new answers. This has given rise to a practice called docs-as-evals, where technical writers test documentation quality by running real user queries against the AI and evaluating whether responses stay on-topic, cite correct sources, and handle context shifts accurately. Technical writers are seen as well-suited for this role because they already track user language patterns, source-of-truth pages, and product boundaries through their existing documentation work.

Maharashtra govt aims to table UCC Bill in assembly winter session: CM Fadnavis

Independent Developer Builds Hardened Arch Linux OS, Drops Cryptographic Rootfs Protection

An independent Linux developer building a security app called RoamSwitch has begun creating a companion hardened operating system, RoamSwitch OS, to address security gaps that userland applications cannot reach. The project is based on Arch Linux and packaged as a bootable ISO, layering proven tools such as AppArmor, fapolicyd, auditd, Falco, and TPM2 rather than building components from scratch. The system is implemented as a Rust workspace with around 39 crates, each handling a specific defensive feature and running as systemd services or timer units, with modules sharing state through a unified incident timeline. The developer ruled out an immutable image-based approach similar to Fedora Silverblue or ChromeOS, citing the significantly greater engineering complexity involved. The project remains in a research and showcase phase, verified on real hardware and in QEMU but not yet recommended for production use due to the absence of third-party security audits or legal review.

Retail inflation quickens to 4.8% as food gets costlier

Hong Kong launches $28.6bn Northern Metropolis plan to build homes and tech hubs

Hong Kong is undertaking a large-scale urban development initiative called the Northern Metropolis project, with a budget of approximately HK$224 billion (US$28.6 billion). The plan involves transforming existing villages and wetlands into residential and technology-focused zones. The development is expected to accommodate around 2.5 million residents and create significant employment opportunities. The project also aims to strengthen Hong Kong's economic and infrastructural ties with mainland China.

TraceEagle Guide: How to Install Root Certificates for HTTPS Proxy Capture

TraceEagle is a proxy capture tool that requires devices and software to trust its root certificate before it can decrypt HTTPS traffic. Without this trust, users see only encrypted ciphertext instead of readable plaintext. The tool supports one-click local installation on desktop systems, QR code-based installation for mobile devices on the same LAN, and a Full Coverage mode for applications like Java, Python, and curl that maintain their own certificate stores. iOS users must complete an extra step to enable full trust after installing the profile, while Android users install it as a user or CA certificate. Users relying on proxy-free capture methods such as Specified Program Capture generally do not need to install any certificates.

Building a Pub/Sub Broker from Scratch in Elixir Using Raw Process Primitives

Part 8 of a DEV Community series on distributed systems in Elixir focuses on building a Publish/Subscribe broker without relying on GenServer, Registry, or external libraries like Phoenix.PubSub. The tutorial explains why point-to-point messaging becomes problematic at scale, citing tight spatial and temporal coupling as key architectural drawbacks. A central broker is introduced as an intermediary that maintains a topic-based routing table, allowing publishers to broadcast events without knowing which subscribers are listening. The approach uses only Elixir's raw process primitives — spawn/1, send/2, receive/1, and Process.monitor/1 — to handle fan-out broadcasting and subscriber lifecycle management. The goal is to give developers a ground-level understanding of 1-to-many communication before adopting higher-level abstractions.

China Steps Up Efforts to Keep AI Systems Under Human Control

China has been developing measures to address the risk of artificial intelligence systems operating beyond human oversight. This comes amid growing tensions between the US and China over their respective AI policies and industry practices. The two nations have been increasingly at odds on how artificial intelligence should be governed and developed. AI-related issues are expected to be a major point of discussion in upcoming bilateral talks between the two countries later this month.

Dynamic Programming Explained: Why Most Learners Start With the Wrong Approach

A tutorial series on Dev Community argues that most programmers are introduced to Dynamic Programming through memorized patterns rather than core concepts, leading to poor understanding. The author explains that DP's central idea is simple: if a smaller version of a problem has already been solved, store and reuse that answer instead of recomputing it. Before reaching for tables or arrays, learners are advised to identify three key signals — choices at each step, overlapping subproblems, and optimal substructure. The series proposes building DP knowledge from recursive thinking first, locating redundant work, and only then applying memoization or tabulation to eliminate it. This first chapter focuses entirely on the mindset and mental model, with subsequent chapters set to introduce the technical machinery progressively.

NIT Jalandhar Student Lands Rs 4.5 Lakh/Month iOS Internship at Revolut UAE

Irfan Mohammed, a student at NIT Jalandhar, has secured an iOS Developer internship at Revolut UAE reportedly worth Rs 4.5 lakh per month. His path to the role was not straightforward, involving an early university switch and a missed opportunity with Apple. Despite these setbacks, Mohammed continued developing his technical skills and actively pursued new openings. His eventual selection at Revolut was aided by an unexpected professional connection. His journey has been cited as an example of how persistence and preparation can shape a career.

Gurgaon woman biker to file FIR after hit-and-run caught on camera

A woman biker identified only as Sia was involved in a hit-and-run incident on Golf Course Road in Gurgaon. She released video footage showing her motorcycle being struck by a car whose driver fled the scene. Sia has announced her intention to file a First Information Report while choosing to keep her identity private. The registered owner of the vehicle claims the car had been lent to a friend shortly before the incident occurred. Gurgaon Police have acknowledged the case and stated they are working to identify and arrest the accused.

Roborock Qrevo 2 Review: Strong Budget Robot Vacuum With a Few Limitations

Roborock has released the Qrevo 2, a more affordable entry in its robot vacuum lineup. The device performed well in corner cleaning and home navigation during testing. However, it struggled with floor thresholds and picking up small objects. Despite these shortcomings, reviewers found it to offer solid value for its price point. Its appeal grows further when the product is available at a discounted rate.

Major AI firms push self-serving frameworks under guise of frontier regulation

Leading artificial intelligence companies are reportedly advancing regulatory proposals that critics argue are designed to entrench their own dominance rather than protect the public. The strategy, described as 'pacing the frontier,' frames industry-led guidelines as necessary for keeping up with rapid AI development. Analysts suggest the approach amounts to regulatory capture, where powerful incumbents shape rules to limit competition from smaller rivals. The report, published by The Register in September 2026, highlights growing concern that big tech is steering AI governance in its favor. The debate underscores tensions between innovation-friendly regulation and independent oversight of the AI industry.

How to Build a Practical Custom AI Agent Using M365 Agent Builder

A developer on DEV Community has outlined a straightforward approach to building a custom AI agent using Microsoft 365 Agent Builder, which requires an M365 Copilot license but incurs no per-use costs. The author emphasizes starting with a genuine use case rather than building an agent in search of a problem, warning that the latter approach consistently fails. For their own use case, they built an agent that generates single-page HTML technical reports, replacing earlier workflows involving PowerPoint and the Research agent. The agent's design covers key elements such as an instruction file, branching logic, and a context-based skill borrowed from Anthropic to enhance UI quality. The author also flags prompt injection as a security risk when reusing third-party skills, advising developers to review skill files in raw form rather than through a markdown viewer.

Texas abortion case spotlights police use of Flock cameras and AI report tools

A Texas sheriff's office used Flock's license plate camera network to track down a woman suspected of having an abortion. Officers also employed Axon's Draft One AI tool to help generate the police report for the case. The investigation involved searching for the woman's vehicle through Flock's system alongside a credit card database. The AI-generated report included a summary of discussions around the legal implications of the self-administered abortion. Public records suggest additional digital evidence was gathered during the investigation, raising broader concerns about surveillance technology in abortion-related cases.

AI war heats up: China rejects calls to curb tech, blasts 'fearmongering' Anthropic