FreeModel.dev Lets Developers Use Claude Code and OpenAI Codex via Free API Credits

FreeModel.dev is a third-party API provider that allows developers to use official AI coding tools — including Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex CLI — by redirecting the tools to its own API endpoint instead of the official one. New users can obtain free API credits by signing up and verifying their account via phone or Telegram, with referral-based signups reportedly yielding $10 in credits for both parties. Setup involves installing the official CLI tools via npm, generating an API key from the FreeModel dashboard, and updating local configuration files to point to FreeModel's base URLs. The service claims compatibility with VS Code extensions and custom applications in addition to the command-line tools. Developers are advised to treat their API keys securely and ensure Node.js version 18 or higher is installed before proceeding.

Uddhav Thackeray calls BJP 'Babur Janata Party' over Ram Mandir donation row

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray launched a sharp attack on the BJP over alleged financial irregularities linked to Ram Mandir donations. He accused the party of exploiting religious sentiments to consolidate political power, coining the derogatory term 'Babur Janata Party' to mock the BJP. Thackeray also alleged that the BJP is deliberately attempting to weaken his faction of Shiv Sena. He questioned the sincerity behind the BJP's long-held promise of building the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

Why Production AI Agent Teams Are Adopting a Four-Layer Infrastructure Stack

As AI agent deployments grow more complex, engineering teams are converging on a four-layer infrastructure model comprising models, harnesses, runtimes, and a control plane. Early agent setups relied on just three components — a model, an orchestration framework, and a hosting environment — which sufficed for simple, single-model workflows. Modern production agents, however, are multi-runtime, stateful, tool-heavy, and subject to governance requirements that three layers cannot cleanly address. The emerging fourth layer, the control plane, sits above all runtimes and manages cross-runtime session persistence, unified access controls, cost tracking, and audit logging. Popular frameworks like LangChain and LangGraph handle individual agent logic well but cannot coordinate agents running across different runtimes, making a dedicated control plane increasingly necessary for teams operating at scale.

Dev Builds Smarter AI Incident Response Tool Using Memory and Runtime Optimization

A developer building an AI-powered Incident Response Assistant identified two core production challenges: lack of persistent memory and poor runtime efficiency. To address memory limitations, the team integrated Hindsight, a dedicated memory layer that stores and retrieves relevant incident data such as root causes, past fixes, and infrastructure details across sessions. Unlike a language model, Hindsight does not generate responses but helps the AI recall prior incidents and apply earlier solutions to similar new problems. A second technology, Cascadeflow, was introduced to improve how the system manages decisions and tasks at runtime. Together, these tools transformed the assistant from a stateless chatbot into a context-aware system capable of learning from experience over time.

Rain havoc: Railway bridge collapses in Assam, flash floods in Arunachal

Uddhav demands disqualification of six rebel MPs, calls defections BJP conspiracy

Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray has demanded that six rebel MPs be disqualified, describing their defection as part of a broader political conspiracy he termed 'Operation Devendra'. Thackeray addressed a formal appeal to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, urging him to uphold the rule of law in the matter. He alleged that the BJP is actively working to undermine its own leaders through such moves. Currently touring the constituencies of the rebel MPs, Thackeray argued that voters in those areas had cast their ballots against the 'Modi wave' rather than in support of the defectors.

Study Finds Five Repeatable Pricing Biases in Polymarket Sports Prediction Markets

An independent analyst examined 847 resolved sports markets on Polymarket between January 2023 and February 2024, covering tennis, NFL, NBA, soccer, and golf. The research identified five consistent biases: overweighting recent performance, overestimating favorites, undervaluing injury recovery, missing roster volatility, and mispricing large-field tournaments. In tennis alone, players who had recently won a tournament were priced 8.2 percentage points higher on average than Elo-based models justified. The analyst cross-referenced Polymarket odds against closing lines from over 15 traditional sportsbooks to isolate where crowd-sourced probabilities diverged from professional oddsmakers. The findings challenge the widely held view that prediction markets reliably reflect the 'wisdom of crowds,' suggesting the gaps between market prices and actual outcomes follow structured, exploitable patterns.

How Idempotency Keys Stop Social Media Automation From Double-Posting

Scheduled social media posts can accidentally publish twice when a network timeout causes a retry before the original request completes, a problem that can embarrass brands and damage agency credibility. This failure stems from an ambiguous timeout state in distributed systems, where the client cannot tell whether a request succeeded, failed, or never arrived. Idempotency keys solve this by assigning a unique identifier to each request, allowing servers to recognize retries and return the original result without re-executing the action. When APIs like X's posting endpoints do not natively support idempotency keys, developers must implement client-side deduplication by durably recording the intent to post before any request is sent. HelperX, which manages scheduled posts across hundreds of accounts, uses this approach to ensure every social action takes effect exactly once regardless of network conditions.

Researchers Build Programmable Probabilistic Computer with One Million P-Bits

Scientists have developed a programmable probabilistic computer featuring one million p-bits, a significant milestone in the field of probabilistic computing. P-bits are probabilistic binary units that fluctuate between 0 and 1, unlike classical bits which hold fixed states. This architecture is designed to tackle optimization and sampling problems that are difficult for conventional computers. The research, published on arXiv, represents a notable scale-up in hardware capable of running probabilistic algorithms. Such advances could have implications for fields like machine learning, cryptography, and combinatorial optimization.

Wait for monsoon may be over in 5-6 days: IMD

Kafka Partitioning Strategies Engineers Must Plan Early to Avoid Costly Failures

Kafka partitions define the unit of parallelism and ordering in event streaming systems, yet many engineers overlook partitioning decisions until production problems emerge. The partition count sets a hard ceiling on consumer parallelism, meaning idle consumers and processing bottlenecks can result from under-provisioned topics. Key-based partitioning, which uses a hashed key to route events to a consistent partition, is the recommended default when event ordering for a specific entity matters. However, poorly chosen keys with low cardinality — such as country code or status — can create hot partitions where one consumer is overwhelmed while others sit idle. Keyless round-robin partitioning offers even distribution and higher throughput but sacrifices ordering guarantees, making it suitable only for workloads like logs or metrics where sequence is irrelevant.

14 Dead After Aramco Helicopter Crashes in Saudi Arabia

A helicopter belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco crashed, killing all 14 people on board. The incident occurred in Saudi Arabia, though the exact location and timing have not been specified in available reports. Aramco, one of the world's largest energy companies, confirmed ownership of the aircraft. Authorities have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the crash.

Developer Builds AI Exam Prep App in 8 Months After Frustration with Rote Study Methods

A computer science student built ExamIntelligence, an AI-powered exam preparation app, after growing frustrated with exams that reward pattern recognition over genuine learning. The project began as a rushed, vibe-coded prototype using the Gemini API and Streamlit just days before his preliminary exams. After prelims, he discovered the AI-generated codebase was riddled with errors, prompting a full rebuild from scratch in Neovim with a more disciplined, architecture-first approach. He developed a hybrid AI pipeline, benchmarking multiple PDF parsers and testing local language models before settling on a multimodal solution to handle complex documents. The app, now live at examintelligence.app, aims to parse past papers and mark schemes to help students study more efficiently and free up time for deeper, curiosity-driven learning.

Developer Builds Self-Healing OS Kernel That Uses a Local LLM to Recompile Itself

A developer has completed a 12-part project to build V.E.L.O.C.I.T.Y.-OS, a bare-metal operating system designed to run entirely within a CPU's L3 cache. The final phase introduces a self-healing loop in which a Ring 0 telemetry system monitors JIT execution speeds using the CPU's Time Stamp Counter. When performance degrades beyond a set threshold, the kernel feeds the affected module's abstract syntax tree and performance logs to a locally running Qwen-Coder-0.5B language model. The model then generates optimized code candidates, sandboxes them for safety, and hot-swaps them into memory without restarting the system. The project also includes a Biosphere P2P registry and a Boot-to-NDA LLM Terminal handover, completing the autonomous self-optimization pipeline.

Mandhana-Rodrigues run-out mix-up sparks on-field tension in T20 World Cup clash

Tensions briefly surfaced between Indian teammates Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues during India's Women's T20 World Cup match against Australia. A running mix-up between the two resulted in Mandhana being run out, prompting an exchange of angry glances on the field. Mandhana later downplayed the incident, indicating no lasting friction between the close friends. Despite the setback, captain Harmanpreet Kaur delivered a commanding knock of 56 runs off just 27 balls. Her innings helped India post a competitive total of 170 for 4 against Australia.

Researcher Explores How to Honestly Evaluate the Quality of Academic Papers

A blog post published on sina.bio raises the question of how researchers can objectively assess whether their academic work is genuinely flawed. The piece encourages authors to critically examine their papers rather than dismissing peer rejection as unfair. It addresses the common tendency among researchers to conflate personal effort with objective paper quality. The post gained modest traction on Hacker News, accumulating 6 points and one comment.

Vaughan attributes Stokes' sudden retirement to rift with ECB management

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has suggested that a breakdown in trust between Ben Stokes and the England and Wales Cricket Board played a central role in his retirement decision. Vaughan believes the timing of the announcement was not coincidental, pointing to an underlying fallout with ECB management. The comments came in response to Stokes' sudden and unexpected retirement from a format of the game. Vaughan indicated that a lack of confidence in the board's leadership was a key factor driving the decision. The remarks have drawn attention to tensions within England cricket's administrative structure.

Arunachal tribe claims PLA built roads and camps on Indian land in Upper Subansiri

The Nah tribal community of Arunachal Pradesh has raised alarm over alleged Chinese PLA encroachments in the Upper Subansiri district. The Nah Welfare Society claims that significant portions of their ancestral grazing and hunting lands have been occupied over the past six years. The group has identified five specific locations near Taksing where military camps and roads are allegedly constructed on Indian territory. The local MLA has called for official verification of the claims, citing their national security implications.

Iran warns ships against bypassing Hormuz route

Modi Urges Fair Climate Action, Highlights Island Nations' Vulnerability

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the National Assembly of Seychelles on Sunday, emphasizing the disproportionate impact of climate change on the Global South. He specifically highlighted the acute vulnerability of island nations to the effects of climate change. Modi called for climate action to be guided by the principles of fairness, responsibility, and equity. His remarks were delivered during what marks a significant diplomatic engagement between India and Seychelles.