‘Party of jokers’, BJP attacks Congress; it hits back: ‘Rahul Gandhi standing with students’

R&AW anniversary in spotlight, how its first chief built spy agency from shadows

‘Guardian of heart’: Cardiologist credited with introducing 2D Echo test in India dies at 84

Harish Salve, Abhishek Manu Singhvi weigh in on Tata boardroom battle

Developer Proposes 50/10 Work-Rest Cycles to Replace Pomodoro for Deep Coding

A software developer argues that the popular Pomodoro technique's 25-minute work blocks are too short for deep coding, as engineers need more time to load complex mental models into working memory. He advocates for a '50/10 Protocol' — 50 minutes of uninterrupted coding followed by a 10-minute structural break — which he claims better supports reaching a flow state. The approach, which he calls 'Silent Runtime,' also emphasizes a distraction-free environment, including closed tabs, Do Not Disturb mode, and no phone nearby. An additional element of the protocol involves listening to ambient techno music at 80 BPM, which the author says conditions the brain over time to enter focus mode on cue. He has built a three-hour session around three consecutive 50/10 cycles and shares the full protocol through his YouTube channel.

When AI Does Everything: The Risk of Humanity Forgetting How to Think

A growing concern among technologists is not that AI will rebel or malfunction, but that it may work so well humans gradually lose the ability to understand or rebuild the systems they rely on. The essay draws a parallel to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, where the written knowledge survived intact but the human tradition needed to interpret it vanished. Modern technological progress has always relied on layered abstraction, with each generation building on prior knowledge without mastering every underlying detail. The critical difference with AI is that it may begin absorbing entire layers of human expertise, leaving no people inside those layers to teach or transfer that knowledge. This raises the prospect of a civilization that remains technically functional as long as its AI systems operate, but lacks the human understanding needed to recover if those systems ever fail.

Semantic Versioning Explained: What MAJOR, MINOR, and PATCH Numbers Mean

Semantic Versioning, or SemVer, is a widely adopted convention that formats software version numbers as MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, with each position carrying a distinct meaning. The MAJOR number increments for breaking changes, MINOR for backward-compatible new features, and PATCH for backward-compatible bug fixes. This structure lets developers instantly gauge the risk of applying an update without reading full release notes. A common implementation pitfall involves comparing version strings lexicographically, which causes "1.10.0" to incorrectly rank lower than "1.9.0". The correct approach is to split each version string on dots, convert segments to integers, and compare the resulting numeric tuples.

How WebRTC Handles Real-Time Media at Scale: Signaling, NAT and Architecture

WebRTC is an open browser standard that enables peer-to-peer audio, video, and data exchange without plugins, using three core JavaScript APIs: RTCPeerConnection, MediaStream, and RTCDataChannel. The specification deliberately omits signaling — the mechanism by which peers discover and describe themselves to each other — leaving developers to implement it typically via WebSockets or HTTP long polling using SDP-formatted messages. Once peers exchange descriptions, ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment) handles NAT traversal by gathering reachable network addresses through STUN and TURN servers and testing them until a working path is found. For multi-party calls, architects must choose between a peer-to-peer mesh, a Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU), or a Multipoint Conferencing Unit (MCU), each offering different tradeoffs in bandwidth, processing load, and scalability. The article explores how signaling servers can be built to operate under load and examines browser support, security, and reliability considerations for production WebRTC deployments.

Misconfigured CI Workflow Silently Blocked a GitHub Pull Request from Merging

A developer working on Pull Request #48 found the merge button permanently grayed out despite all status checks appearing green and CI passing. The root cause turned out to be a GitHub Actions workflow that ran the required lint-python check only when the target branch was 'main', while the PR targeted 'develop', leaving the check perpetually in an 'expected/pending' state. Branch protection rules still required that check to pass, creating an impossible condition that blocked the merge without any visible error. Removing the restrictive conditional from the workflow file allowed lint-python to run against both branches, and the PR merged successfully within minutes. The incident highlighted how configuration drift between branch protection policies and workflow conditions can produce misleading green signals while silently halting progress.

JFrog Artifactory Auth Bypass CVE-2026-82329 Exploited Within Days of Disclosure

A critical authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-82329, CVSS 9.8) in self-hosted JFrog Artifactory was patched on August 28, 2026, with fixes available across three maintenance branches. By September 1, threat intelligence firm watchTowr detected active exploitation in honeypot environments, where attackers were creating administrator tokens and mapping access credentials. CISA added the flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on September 2, giving federal agencies until September 5 to remediate. The vulnerability affected default installations rather than misconfigured ones, as an empty join key was part of the shipped software, broadening the at-risk population significantly. Security experts warn that patching alone is insufficient, since attackers may have already established persistent access through malicious plugins or rogue tokens that survive an upgrade.

Developer Releases PataOS, a Debian-Based Linux Distro Built for Engineers and CAD Work

A CAD designer and Python developer has released Linux PataOS, a custom Linux distribution built on Debian 13 and tailored for mechanical engineering and software development workflows. The distro uses the KDE Plasma desktop for its balance of performance and customizability, and comes pre-configured with tools for CAD, CAM, Python, C++, Rust, and scientific computing via GNU Octave. PataOS was developed out of frustration with mainstream distributions that the creator found insufficiently optimized for heavy engineering tasks. The project has been shared with the open-source community, with a public ISO available for download and testing. The creator is seeking feedback from CAD designers, developers, and Linux enthusiasts.

ByteDance and Tsinghua Release DAPO, an Open-Source Reinforcement Learning System

ByteDance Seed and Tsinghua AIR have jointly released DAPO, an open-source reinforcement learning system. The project has been made publicly available on GitHub, allowing developers and researchers to access and build upon the work. DAPO represents a collaboration between a major tech company and a leading academic institution in China. The release signals growing interest in open-sourcing advanced RL infrastructure for the broader AI research community.

New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert dies at 45 after cancer battle

Chad Gilbert, lead guitarist of pop-punk band New Found Glory, has died at the age of 45. He passed away peacefully in his sleep with family members by his side. Gilbert had been fighting serious health issues, including brain tumors and cancer, for some time. As a guitarist and songwriter, he played a defining role in shaping New Found Glory's musical identity. He is being remembered by fans and peers as both a legendary musician and a devoted family man.

How to Publish an Unlisted iOS App on the App Store: A Developer Guide

Apple's App Store Connect offers an 'Unlisted App' distribution method that allows developers to publish iOS apps accessible only via a private link, keeping them hidden from the general public. This option suits businesses, universities, and private communities that need App Store-hosted apps without a public listing. To publish an unlisted app, developers must upload their app via Xcode, set the distribution method to 'Private' in App Store Connect's Pricing and Availability settings, and submit a separate Unlisted App Request Form to Apple. Once both the app review and the unlisted request are approved, a unique private URL is generated within App Store Connect and can be shared exclusively with intended users. Unlisted distribution combines the security and infrastructure of the App Store with controlled, restricted access.

Indonesia quietly frees jailed teacher convicted of sexual abuse ahead of schedule

A teacher in Indonesia who was convicted of sexual abuse has been secretly released from prison before completing his full sentence, an investigation by the BBC has found. Undercover footage obtained by the BBC confirmed that the individual had been freed after serving less than half of his prison term. The early release was not publicly announced, raising serious concerns about transparency in the Indonesian justice system. The BBC's findings have drawn attention to how cases involving convicted sex offenders are handled by authorities in the country.

Silent CI tool flaw: empty file sets falsely reported as passing checks

A software team discovered that one of their pre-commit checking tools was returning a PASS verdict even when it had scanned zero files, making a genuinely clean tree indistinguishable from one the tool had never actually read. The root cause was that running git ls-files inside a git archive export — which lacks a .git directory — caused the command to silently walk up to a parent repository, finding nothing and exiting without error. To fix the ambiguity, the team introduced a third verdict state, NOT RUN, which is triggered when the scanned file set is empty and includes the working directory and command used so reviewers can understand why no files were read. The team also uncovered a related issue where piping tool output through tail -6 silently dropped a key data line, causing recorded metrics in commit messages to reflect stale figures rather than the actual state of the codebase. Both fixes were verified to leave existing valid outputs byte-identical, and each tool's self-test suite was expanded to explicitly cover the empty-set scenario.

Developer Builds Real-Time Spending Guard Using Flask, MongoDB Atlas, and Failover Architecture

A developer has built Spendwise, a personal finance application designed to evaluate transactions in real-time rather than passively logging past expenses like conventional budgeting apps. The system uses a Python-Flask backend, MongoDB Atlas cloud database, and an in-memory RAM failover layer to ensure near-zero downtime and sub-100-millisecond response times. Spendwise operates on three core rules: approving purchases within budget limits, tapping an emergency buffer when limits are slightly exceeded, and automatically rolling over unused funds at the start of new budget cycles. To work around cloud hosting restrictions on standard SMTP ports, the app routes email reports through a cascading chain of HTTPS-based email gateways including Mailjet, SendGrid, and Brevo. The project is openly available on GitHub, with a live deployment hosted on Render Cloud.

How to Deploy to a Private AWS EC2 Instance Using GitHub Actions, SSM, and OIDC

A software developer has documented building a fully automated CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions to deploy a multi-container Docker Compose application hosted on a private AWS EC2 instance with no public IP address. Because the server sits behind an Application Load Balancer in a private subnet, traditional SSH-based deployment methods were not viable, ruling out stored SSH keys or a bastion host. The solution combined AWS IAM OIDC for keyless, short-lived authentication with GitHub Actions, and AWS Systems Manager (SSM) to remotely execute commands on the unreachable server. The pipeline automatically builds, tests, and containerizes code on every push to the main branch, then orchestrates the full four-service Docker Compose stack — including PostgreSQL, a backend, a frontend, and Nginx — respecting health-check dependencies to prevent startup failures. Infrastructure was provisioned and managed using Terraform, which had already partially configured the required IAM and SSM resources.

How 216 passing tests missed four critical bugs in an encrypted messenger app

A developer building an end-to-end encrypted messenger discovered four serious bugs only after testing against a live deployment, despite having 216 passing unit, integration, and end-to-end tests. The first bug caused offline-held messages to be dropped because the server delivered them before the client had finished loading its decryption keys from asynchronous browser storage. A second flaw meant the server deleted held messages upon socket arrival rather than after successful decryption and display, permanently destroying data on both sides. A third issue caused all messages — even those delivered to online users — to be stored server-side indefinitely, since the deletion logic only triggered for messages confirmed out of offline storage. The bugs collectively highlight that test environments completing I/O instantly, and imprecise definitions of 'received' versus 'handled', can mask critical race conditions and data-loss scenarios invisible until production.

Developer fixes false duplicate flags in WordPress plugin caused by WPML language copies

A WordPress developer discovered a critical flaw while testing duplicate image detection in Filikod, a free alt text audit plugin, on a client site with 3,099 images across three languages. The tool incorrectly flagged translation copies created by multilingual plugins like WPML, Polylang, and Bogo as duplicate images, since each creates a separate attachment per language pointing to the same file. Deleting such flagged attachments risked breaking translated pages by removing their associated images. The fix involved mapping all language-linked attachments into translation sets so the tool treats each set as a single image rather than multiple duplicates. The same logic was applied to the alt text audit, which had been incorrectly penalising sites for identical alt text across language variants of the same image.