The lure behind India's shadow banks pulling billions

Jagir Kaur's Role in SGPC Polls Sets Up Punjab's 2027 Political Contest

Jagir Kaur has served as president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) three times, in 1999-2000, 2004-05 and 2020-21. She is recognised as the first woman to hold the position. The SGPC is one of India's largest elected religious bodies, and its elections are being viewed as a precursor to the 2027 Punjab state battle. The article's focus is on how these polls are shaping the political landscape ahead of that contest. Further details beyond this background were not provided in the source text.

AiRap.me turns a single photo into a lip-synced AI rap video

A developer built AiRap.me after finding that making an AI rap video required stitching together several separate tools. The platform lets users upload one photo, choose a style, and receive a finished rap video in roughly 20 to 30 seconds. The AI writes an original verse, produces the beat and vocals, and lip-syncs the face, and it supports people, pets, and cartoon or 3D characters across eight styles. Videos are delivered as watermark-free MP4s, and users are charged only when a video finishes, with free credits offered to new accounts. The developer is requesting community feedback on additional styles and the upload workflow.

Developer builds free macOS app Shoji to add a paper-like texture to screens

After reading a research paper late at night, a backend developer found that the bright, glossy look of a Mac display felt harsh during long reading sessions. Existing paper-texture apps either required payment before any trial or came bundled in larger subscriptions, which he felt was inappropriate for something users can only judge through extended use. He built Shoji, a free app named after Japanese shoji screens, which places a transparent, click-through overlay across every display to render a light paper texture. The textures are procedurally generated in code to avoid visible tiling, and they are tuned separately for light and dark modes. The project also covered technical details such as hiding the overlay from screen sharing and navigating macOS notarization.

Decoupling Frame Capture From Inference Cuts Edge Vision Latency in Python

The article addresses the problem that running object detection models such as YOLOv8 on every frame of an edge camera stream can overwhelm CPU or GPU resources. For slow-changing monitoring tasks like plant health or industrial gauges, processing each frame adds little diagnostic value. The author proposes a Python pipeline that separates frame capture from model execution using a bounded queue of size one, so the model always evaluates the latest frame and stale frames are discarded. The approach also includes a worker thread that paces inference to a target frame rate and a helper function for logging inference latency to monitor service health. The author argues that this design keeps resource usage predictable and enables local deployment without cloud round-trip delays.

How R6 Stat Trackers Calculate K/D and Win Rate, and Why Sites Can Differ

A developer breakdown explains how Rainbow Six Siege stat trackers compute core player figures such as K/D, headshot percentage and win rate. K/D is shown as the kill count when a player has zero deaths, which keeps the value sortable and avoids broken-looking displays. Win rate can use either a ranked-season denominator or a lifetime-matches denominator, which is a common reason two trackers report different numbers for the same account. The article also covers caching ranked data from an API with time windows tuned to each data type, and returning a dash rather than 0.0% when there is no sample. It uses the unofficial tracker SiegeRadar as its example, noting that the site is not affiliated with Ubisoft.

Python script pulls open EU public tenders from TED as flat JSON and CSV

The TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) portal publishes all EU public tenders above threshold values, but its expert query syntax and nested multilingual fields make it hard to use directly. A DEV Community post presents a Python script that uses an Apify actor calling the official TED Search API v3 to filter open tenders by keywords, buyer countries, CPV codes and deadlines. The actor returns flat, one-row-per-notice JSON that the script saves as a CSV, with deadlines sorted and values summed across lots. The author notes that estimated values are often missing and that CPV code prefixes are the most useful filter, and discloses that they built the actor used.

Engineers Unify Event Data at Saudi Mega-Exhibitions Using State Machines and RFID

A technical write-up describes how engineers tackle data fragmentation at large Middle East exhibitions with over 10,000 delegates, where separate ticketing, scanning, and booking tools often produce conflicting exports. For LEAP 2026, a custom VIP booking pipeline was built for HUMAIN, using a state machine that moves meetings from pending qualification to manual review to confirmation. Each state change triggers background workers that send calendar invites and automated reminders while streaming logs to a live dashboard. At the 25th WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh, RFID-based kiosk authentication and gameplay data were fed into the same central analytics system. The authors argue that merging these digital and physical data sources gives organizers a single source of truth.

Developer builds FlipRead, a Chrome extension that adds a page-turn effect to web reading

A developer created FlipRead, a free Chrome extension that lets people read web pages with a book-style page flip instead of scrolling. The write-up explains how the page curl effect works, using a screenshot of the page, a bent cylinder shape, and WebGL shaders. It also covers the challenges of paginating pages the developer does not control, along with fallback options and performance considerations. The author highlights issues encountered with Chrome permissions, including activeTab, content security policy, and inner scrolling elements. The extension is available to try online at flipread.netlify.app.

Amblyotube Uses VR Headsets to Turn Screen Time into Visual Training

A recent Lemmy discussion highlighted that people tend to respond better to replacing a habit, such as excessive scrolling, than to simply blocking it. Building on that idea, the article describes Amblyotube, a Meta Quest app from Seven Sports that makes video watching an active exercise for visual coordination and attention. The app processes the left and right eye views of the same video differently in real time, using the headset's separate eyepieces. Features include a dominant-eye shader, sharpening of human figures for the weaker eye, visual accents, and a built-in LogMAR vision check. Users must specify which eye is affected at launch, since selecting the wrong one would train the wrong eye.

Three everyday habits that can cause a sudden jump in cloud bills

The article uses a family grocery-discount analogy to explain why cloud bills can suddenly spike. A credit or subsidy can mask growing real usage, so when it runs out the bill appears to jump even though spending hasn't changed. It recommends regularly tracking actual usage separately from the final bill, since a discount can hide a widening gap. It also warns that a seemingly obvious fix, such as swapping in a pricier option to avoid a small charge, can cost more overall unless the real numbers are checked first. Finally, it flags repeated requests to external services for information already known, which wastes both money and time, and suggests caching answers after the first request.

DR Congo sentences 66 soldiers to death over alleged cowardice

A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has sentenced 66 soldiers to death for cowardice. The ruling reflects the army's broader struggle against rebel groups, a fight long undermined by disorganisation within its ranks. The soldiers were convicted of failing to stand and fight, a charge that underscores the severity with which Congolese authorities are treating battlefield desertion. The case highlights ongoing internal problems in the national military as it confronts armed insurgencies in the country's east.

Passing a sentence once does not prove lasting recall, a pronunciation app design lesson

A developer working on Vocalace, a pronunciation app, argues that a sentence score that passes should not be treated as equivalent to word mastery, since neither proves recall weeks later. Sentence practice unlocks after a word is mastered and follows its own path: a first pass, a 90-day wait, then a review pass. The author warns against a generic completion function, because a passing sentence attempt should read a word's mastery status for eligibility but must not alter that status or its review schedule. Sentence progress is stored on the vocabulary record, which keeps related fields together but risks broad updates touching unrelated data. The article includes a TypeScript example that updates only sentence progress, preserves the first-pass date during waiting, and does not restart the wait when an overdue review fails.

Mistral Small Ranks Cheapest for Amazon Review Sentiment at Near-Baseline Accuracy

In a test of 300 Amazon product reviews, Mistral Small was the lowest-cost of nine models that cleared an 88% accuracy bar. It passed 97.7% of tasks, statistically matching the GPT-6.1 Sol baseline's 98.7%, while costing about 94% less per successful task. Claude Haiku 5.5 and GPT-6 Luna were close on cost, with Haiku answering faster and Luna scoring slightly higher. The author notes that mislabeled and sarcastic reviews set a ceiling on accuracy for every model, so a pass bar below 100% is reasonable. The full test data, prompt, and re-run script are published so readers can verify the results with their own OpenRouter keys.

Archimedes screw reimagined as a single-molecule motor with conductivity gains up to 100x

According to a ScienceDaily report dated October 30, 2026, researchers shrank the ancient Archimedes screw to a single-molecule scale and built an electrically driven molecular motor that rotates in both directions. The study found that conductivity can rise by as much as 100 times depending on the direction of rotation. The work shows how a classical mechanical element can be repurposed as a nanoscale electronic component. The article also notes that structural biology labs still rely largely on 2D monitor-based tools such as PyMOL, ChimeraX, and Mol*, which make 3D spatial relationships hard to grasp. Seven Sportz's NexoPeek, a spatial-computing molecular lab for Meta Quest headsets, is presented as one attempt to close that gap.

M John Harrison Becomes First Science Fiction Author to Win the Booker Prize

British author M John Harrison has won the Booker Prize, marking the first time a science fiction writer has received the award. The honour was announced for his novel The End of Everything, according to a Guardian report dated November 2026. The prize is among the most prestigious literary awards in English-language fiction, and its recognition of a genre author is a notable shift for the category. The story gained traction on Hacker News, where it drew 22 points and four comments.

How China gets its Nvidia chips to build AI

Nvidia's 700,000% stock return faces a succession test

Nvidia, the chipmaker that has delivered an extraordinary stock return of roughly 700,000% over the decades since its founding, is now confronting a leadership succession challenge. The company's future performance will be closely tied to how effectively it transitions to new leadership. Investors are watching closely to see whether the business can maintain its momentum after the change. The article frames succession as a critical test for a company whose growth has been so dramatic.

Delhi to attempt cloud seeding on Tuesday and Wednesday to ease severe pollution

New Delhi will try cloud seeding to induce rain and tackle its severe air pollution. The effort is a joint initiative involving Delhi International Airport Ltd, the Delhi government and IIT Kanpur. A specialised aircraft operated by Kyathi Climate will carry out the operation on Tuesday and Wednesday. The attempt comes as air quality in the capital continues to deteriorate, and a fresh western disturbance is expected to bring rain to northwestern India later this week.

Supreme Court flags rising vehicle emissions as Delhi pollution concern

The Supreme Court has raised concerns over the growing contribution of vehicle emissions to air pollution in Delhi. The court's observations point to the need for stronger action on vehicular pollution in the national capital. The remarks highlight the continuing challenge of controlling air quality in the city. No further details of the article text were provided, so this summary is limited to the headline's core facts.