FlyPPTTimer v1.17.0 Brings Slide-Aware Timing Controls to PowerPoint on Windows

FlyPPTTimer v1.17.0 is a Windows presentation timer designed to work alongside Microsoft PowerPoint and WPS Presentation, offering context beyond a standard stopwatch. The tool tracks total elapsed time, current slide position, and how long each slide has been displayed, helping speakers manage pacing in real time. It supports countdown, count-up, and unlimited timing modes, along with advance reminders and overtime alerts. Users can save reusable timing configurations called scenarios, tailored to different presentation types such as thesis defenses, lectures, or pitches. The app also includes a local browser-based remote so speakers can control the timer from a phone without a dedicated app, and supports multi-display layouts for speaker and stage monitors simultaneously.

DARPA's 2009 Cyborg Moth Program Implanted Electronics During Metamorphosis

In 2009, DARPA-funded researchers published a study on implanting flexible microelectrodes into tobacco hawkmoths during their pupal stage, allowing the insects to develop around the electronics naturally. The program, part of DARPA's Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems initiative, achieved a 98% success rate across more than 100 implantations. By inserting probes roughly seven days before emergence, 90% of moths developed into fully functioning adults with intact wings. The implanted electrodes could both record muscle activity and stimulate flight muscles, enabling researchers to steer a moth's direction mid-flight. The key innovation, dubbed Early Metamorphosis Insertion Technology, used the insect's own developmental process to integrate the electronics rather than forcing implants into a fully formed organism.

Why HR Policy Documents Need a Separate, Compliance-Aware Localization Pipeline

Standard internationalization tools designed for UI strings and app copy are poorly suited for translating HR and legal policy documents in multinational organizations. Legal terms like 'disability' or 'affirmative action' carry jurisdiction-specific meanings, and treating regional language variants such as pt-BR and pt-PT as interchangeable fallbacks poses real compliance risks. Engineers managing content pipelines are advised to separate policy documents from product UI copy, assigning each locale its own legal review workflow states distinct from translation status. Headless CMS platforms can store per-locale metadata including linked legislation references, enabling automated re-review triggers when relevant laws change. Machine translation services should also be explicitly blocked from auto-publishing sensitive policy content within CI/CD pipelines.

Jaishankar holds India-France-UAE trilateral meet

How to manage AI image generation quotas when timeouts obscure job outcomes

Developer Retro Prompt's portrait project highlights a nuanced challenge in AI image quota management: a timed-out browser request does not confirm whether the provider actually failed to generate an image. The implementation, built on a Cloudflare Worker and SQLite-backed D1 database, tracks each generation attempt with a status of pending, successful, or failed, reserving quota capacity before the provider call begins. A critical bug was identified where explicit provider failures were mistakenly treated as timeouts, leaving slots permanently reserved and locking users out of their daily allowance. The fix ensures terminal failure statuses are handled separately from genuine timeouts, updating the attempt record and freeing the reserved slot only when failure is confirmed. Uncertain outcomes such as network timeouts are intentionally kept pending until the next daily window to prevent retries from triggering additional paid generation jobs.

Telangana Court Seizes Irrigation Office Assets in Decades-Old Canal Dispute

A court in Telangana has ordered the seizure of assets from a government irrigation office in connection with a long-standing legal dispute. The case dates back to 1983 and involves a disagreement over canal construction works. The court directed the removal of equipment from the concerned irrigation office as part of its order. The decades-old dispute has now resulted in direct action against state government property.

GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6 Astra, and Claude Opus 5.5 Tested Building Apps From Scratch

A developer tested three AI models — GPT-6 Astra, GPT-6 Sol, and Claude Opus 5.5 — by tasking each with building three distinct web apps from a minimal React, TypeScript, and Vite setup, with no prototypes or design systems provided. The apps included a delivery exception desk, a concert event guide called NIGHT LOOP, and a warehouse inspection tool for a small Android terminal. Claude Opus 5.5 consistently prioritised actionable, task-critical information upfront — such as grouping delivery cases by urgency and surfacing concert schedule conflicts — while Astra and Sol tended to lead with introductory or decorative content. On visual design, Astra stood out for the concert guide with cohesive illustrated performer cards, whereas Opus and Sol leaned on more generic gradient aesthetics. The findings suggest that, without a prototype to follow, the models differ meaningfully in how they interpret what a user needs to see first.

Live Updates: Congress, TMC react to Express investigation on Election Commission

12 of 23 Detained at Dhaka Mosque Arrested Over Suspected Extremist Ties

Bangladeshi authorities arrested 12 individuals out of 23 people detained from a mosque in Dhaka on suspicion of extremist links. The detainees were taken to a nearby police station following their apprehension. Law enforcement officials subjected the suspects to interrogation as part of the investigation. Forensic analysis was also conducted on the mobile phones seized from the detainees to gather further evidence.

Trump's Planned Drone Port Would Duplicate Existing Secret Service Facility Nearby

The Trump administration has announced plans to establish a drone port at a ballroom location. However, a functioning drone port already exists just a few hundred feet away from the proposed site. The existing facility is operated by the US Secret Service, not the military. The proximity of the two sites raises questions about the necessity and planning behind the new drone port proposal.

Punjab Consumer Commission Orders Ed-Tech Firm to Refund Rs 84,960 Over Fake Placement Promise

A district consumer commission in Punjab has directed Eduinx Education Services to refund Rs 84,960 to an MBA graduate after the company failed to honour its '100% guaranteed placement' claim. The complainant, Harish Malhotra, approached the commission seeking compensation for the unmet assurance. The commission found that Eduinx's placement guarantee amounted to an unfair trade practice. The ruling serves as a reminder that ed-tech firms can be held legally accountable for misleading promises made to students.

China's US Ambassador Flags Red Lines Before Planned Trump-Xi Summit

China's ambassador to the United States has issued a warning about Beijing's red lines as a potential meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping draws closer. The caution comes amid ongoing tensions between the two nations spanning issues including trade disputes and the status of Taiwan. Both sides appear to be seeking ways to bring greater stability to a relationship strained by multiple overlapping disagreements. The ambassador's remarks signal that Beijing intends to firmly defend its core interests during any high-level diplomatic engagement.

Adani's duty-free shops not beyond domestic laws

Iran Dismisses Trump's Annihilation Threat as Sign of US Weakness

Iranian military authorities have responded to Donald Trump's remarks about annihilating the Islamic Republic, characterizing them as a sign of American desperation. Officials argued that the repeated threats reflect exhaustion within the US military rather than strength or resolve. Iran also accused the United States of being responsible for regional instability in West Asia through its military presence. The response frames Trump's aggressive rhetoric as evidence of difficulties the US faces in its standoff with Iran.

Nagpur Woman Dies by Suicide During 23-Minute Live Video Call With Boyfriend

A woman in Nagpur died by suicide on the night of September 19 after initiating a video call with her boyfriend. Before taking the drastic step, she informed him during the call that she intended to end her life. The video call remained connected for approximately 23 minutes. Authorities are investigating the circumstances that led to the incident.

How OTA Updates Let React Native Developers Skip App Store Delays

Over-The-Air (OTA) updates allow React Native developers to push JavaScript and asset changes directly to users without submitting a new build to the App Store or Google Play. The approach is particularly useful for fixing bugs, updating UI elements, adjusting business logic, and making content changes quickly. When an update is published, the installed app checks for a compatible version, downloads it, and applies it — significantly cutting the time between a fix and its delivery to users. Expo-based projects can leverage EAS Update to manage this process through a structured, command-line-driven workflow. However, OTA updates have clear limitations and cannot replace full native releases when changes to native code are required.

Big Tech Firms Dominate GitHub AI Trending as Skill-Based Repos Surge

During the week of September 23, 2026, GitHub's AI trending charts were notably dominated by repositories from major tech companies including Tencent, Alibaba, and Cloudflare. The top-gaining project, cloudflare/security-audit-skill, accumulated 15,381 new stars in a single week after Cloudflare open-sourced the skill that underpins its internal vulnerability-hunting system. Three of the eight highlighted projects originated from Tencent, signaling a broader shift where large corporations are releasing internal workflows as reusable AI skills for public use. The security audit skill operates across six phases and enforces a key principle: the agent that discovers a vulnerability must never be the same one that verifies it, reducing self-confirmation bias. Observers note the week marks a clear trend away from solo developer tools toward enterprise-grade, skill-layer AI components being made openly available.

Stripe webhook returned 200 but showed wrong subscription status due to field misread

A developer running a small subscription SaaS built on Next.js, Drizzle, and Postgres discovered a silent bug after canceling their own subscription in production. Despite Stripe correctly marking the subscription as canceled and both webhook deliveries returning HTTP 200 with no errors, the customer-facing dashboard continued to display 'Renews' instead of 'Cancels'. The developer's webhook handler was already re-fetching live subscription data from Stripe on every event, ruling out the initial theory of a race condition caused by out-of-order webhook delivery. Investigation revealed the root cause was a misread of Stripe's cancel_at_period_end field, which remained false even after cancellation under certain conditions. The incident prompted the developer to establish stricter habits around reading and validating fields from third-party payment provider APIs.

'SIR decision unanimous': EC plays down report of internal disagreement over roll revision

Stripe, Merchant of Record, or IAP: How to Choose the Right Payments Stack

Developers building monetized apps face three core payment options: a processor like Stripe, a Merchant of Record (MOR) such as Paddle or Lemon Squeezy, or app store billing via Apple and Google. The most critical factor is not fees but legal seller identity, which determines who handles taxes, chargebacks, and refunds. Stripe offers the lowest fees (~3%) and full control but places all tax compliance and dispute management on the developer. MOR services take a higher cut (~5% plus fees) but absorb global tax obligations and chargebacks entirely. For native mobile apps selling digital features, in-app purchases are a platform requirement, not a choice, making a complementary web checkout a practical cost-saving strategy.