SD-WAN Wins Most 2026 Network Decisions, But MPLS Still Holds Niche Value

The long-running debate between MPLS and SD-WAN has largely settled in favour of SD-WAN for most organisations by 2026, as business traffic has shifted from private data centres to cloud and SaaS platforms. MPLS was built to deliver private, predictable connections to a central data centre, but that value diminishes when most traffic is destined for the public internet anyway. SD-WAN reduces costs by intelligently combining cheaper internet links and routes cloud-bound traffic more directly, improving performance for the majority of use cases. However, MPLS retains a genuine edge for latency-sensitive, mission-critical workloads such as real-time financial transactions, voice, and industrial control systems where guaranteed performance is non-negotiable. Most real-world deployments in 2026 are therefore hybrid, using SD-WAN for general and cloud traffic while retaining MPLS selectively where its dedicated reliability still justifies the premium.

Billionaires Like O'Leary and Buffett Stay Rich by Embracing Frugal Habits

Billionaire investor Kevin O'Leary says he continues to shop at Walmart for household essentials, citing his belief that seeking value for money matters regardless of one's wealth. O'Leary joins a broader pattern of ultra-wealthy individuals who maintain notably frugal lifestyles. Legendary investors Warren Buffett and IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad were both well known for their modest spending habits throughout their lives. Younger billionaire Lucy Guo similarly embraces the FIRE movement and actively looks for discounts. Analysts suggest such money-conscious mindsets may have played a role in helping these individuals accumulate their fortunes in the first place.

Cisco Enterprise Networking: Real Strengths, Real Tradeoffs Explained

Cisco dominates enterprise networking by offering an integrated ecosystem of routers, switches, firewalls, and software-defined tools designed to work seamlessly together. The core advantage of this approach is reduced integration risk, since a single coherent platform eliminates compatibility gaps that arise when mixing components from multiple vendors. However, the tradeoffs are significant: deep reliance on one vendor creates costly lock-in, and Cisco's enterprise hardware carries premium pricing compared to alternatives. The company has also shifted toward zero-trust security architecture and software-defined WAN, reflecting the broader industry move away from perimeter-based network models. Understanding these engineering realities — both the benefits and the costs — is essential for organizations deciding whether Cisco's ecosystem fits their long-term network strategy.

Bengaluru Court Rebukes Police for Action Against Man Who Opposed Kunal Kamra Show

A court in Bengaluru has criticised the city police over their handling of a man named Mohan Gowda, who had formally opposed a planned comedy show by Kunal Kamra. Gowda had submitted a representation to the Whitefield Police expressing his objection to the proposed performance in the Whitefield area. The controversy arose after the comedy show was announced, prompting Gowda to approach authorities through official channels. The court took exception to the police's response or action against Gowda following his representation against the event.

Linus Torvalds Backs AI Coding Tools, Signaling a Shift for Open Source

On July 14, 2026, Linux creator Linus Torvalds stated on the kernel mailing list that Linux is 'not one of those anti-AI projects' and called AI 'a clearly useful tool,' lending significant credibility to AI-assisted development. The comment came amid a thread debating whether LLM-based tooling should be used to help kernel maintainers. A software developer writing on DEV Community had already noted a personal inflection point in December 2025, when working with Claude Opus 4.5 shifted their workflow toward reviewing and directing AI agents rather than manually implementing every detail. The author argues that while AI-generated code can still be buggy, insecure, or poorly structured, the falling cost of generating and evaluating candidates makes the overall process genuinely productive. Torvalds' endorsement is seen as a project-level signal that goes beyond individual experience, marking a broader acceptance of AI tools in serious open-source engineering.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Urges Tech Industry to Act Fast on AI Cyber Threats

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has issued an urgent warning about the growing cybersecurity risks posed by artificial intelligence. He emphasized that the window of time available to address these threats is rapidly narrowing. Altman called for a coordinated, industry-wide response rather than isolated efforts by individual companies. He stressed that collaboration across the technology sector is essential to building effective cyber defenses against AI-driven threats.

Autistici/Inventati 2002 Manifesto Resurfaces on Hacker News

The 2002 founding manifesto of Autistici/Inventati, an Italian activist collective providing privacy-focused internet services, has resurfaced in a Hacker News discussion. The document outlines the group's identity, values, and goals around digital rights and free communication. Originally published over two decades ago, the manifesto reflects early internet-era concerns about surveillance, censorship, and corporate control of online spaces. The post received modest engagement on Hacker News, drawing limited but notable community attention.

TCS staff get variable; there's reason to be unhappy

Steel demand outruns capacity, prices rebound

Developer Builds Free Attendance Calculator Web App for KL University Students

A developer has created a free web app called KL Attendance Calculator to help KL University students manage their attendance data. The tool offers three key features: an LTPS Weighted Calculator, a Bunk Planner, and an Attendance Recovery estimator. Built using Next.js App Router with server-side rendering, the app is mobile-friendly and supports both the Vaddeswaram and Hyderabad campuses. It is hosted on Vercel and addresses a gap in the university's official portal, which displays attendance percentages but lacks planning utilities. The developer has shared the project as a side project and plans to open-source the code once it reaches the top search ranking.

'Suddhikaran another name for untouchability': Rahul targets BJP, RSS

A Practical Introduction to x86_64 Assembly Language for Binary Analysis

A technical primer on x86_64 assembly language covers the architecture's 16 general-purpose 64-bit registers, each divisible into 32-bit, 16-bit, and 8-bit sub-registers for flexible data manipulation. Special registers such as RIP and RFLAGS control program flow and track arithmetic status flags, while SIMD registers like XMM and YMM handle floating-point and vector operations. The guide explains how the x86_64 stack operates on a LIFO basis, growing downward in memory as the stack pointer RSP adjusts with each push or pop. Key instructions including MOV, LEA, MOVZX, MOVSX, and conditional moves are introduced with examples to illustrate their roles in data transfer and arithmetic. The article is framed as foundational preparation for studying crackmes and reverse engineering binaries.

Nepal faces $4–5 billion rebuild cost after floods kill over 600

Nepal's finance minister has estimated that reconstruction following recent catastrophic floods will cost between four and five billion dollars, roughly a tenth of the country's economy. The floods killed more than 600 people and left thousands more missing. Critical infrastructure including towns, bridges, roads, and hydropower stations suffered severe damage. Search and rescue operations are ongoing, though bad weather has hampered progress. India has stepped in with significant relief assistance for the affected areas.

Bihar marksheets to drop ‘fail’ for Class 10, 12

agent-harness-defense v0.2.0 adds dual-lattice IFC to block LLM privilege escalation

Open-source library agent-harness-defense has released version 0.2.0, introducing a dual-lattice information-flow control engine designed to prevent instruction-privilege escalation in LLM coding agents. The tool acts as an admission layer, evaluating a declared action plan before any change is applied, rather than monitoring a live agent at runtime. Its decision core tracks two independent axes — confidentiality and integrity — so that any action depending on untrusted data sources, such as repository text or tool output, is automatically denied. The release includes an independently reproduced audit that uncovered and fixed a real defect from v0.1, where source labels were incorrectly assigned, allowing escalation to go undetected. Developers note a significant usability gap: the library requires callers to supply an explicit plan of agent actions, and no integration examples for frameworks like LangChain currently exist.

Prompt Fix, Not Code, Rescued an AI Debate Engine from Fake Disagreements

A developer building AdversarialDebate, an open-source multi-agent debate engine, discovered that despite solid architecture, the system was producing hollow debates where AI models simply acknowledged objections without genuinely engaging. The root cause was a poorly designed prompt that left models a low-effort escape route, resulting in an 89% 'theater rate' and near-zero concessions in early tests. A single prompt rewrite eliminated the problem, dropping theater rates to 0.2% across 411 full-corpus debates and generating over 8,800 genuine concessions. Version 0.2.1, released on August 28, 2026, further hardened the pipeline by adding row-count invariant assertions at five pipeline seams to prevent silent data loss. The update also introduced the first-ever recall measurements for the tool, reporting a 1.7–3.4% missed-issue rate, alongside 55 new unit tests.

Developer simulates LAN attack on his own Mac and uncovers flaw in his security app

A developer used a ThinkPad running Arch Linux to simulate a rogue IoT device attacking his MacBook over a shared home network, with no special privileges or malware involved. An initial port scan revealed that while most ports were filtered, two development servers and macOS ControlCenter ports were still visible to the network. The experiment also exposed common developer mistakes such as binding services to 0.0.0.0 and leaving Redis or Docker ports unauthenticated on a LAN. During ARP spoofing tests, the developer discovered a gap in RoamSwitch, his own network-defense app, which relaxes firewall rules on trusted home networks, leaving ARP and open-port threats unblocked. The findings prompted him to decouple detection logic from protection levels in RoamSwitch, so monitoring runs continuously regardless of network trust status.

Social Engineering Remains the Most Overlooked Gap in Cybersecurity

Security expert Serguey Shinder argues that technical defenses like firewalls and patches do little to stop attackers who manipulate employees into granting access voluntarily. Most real-world intrusions begin not with sophisticated exploits but with convincing emails impersonating colleagues, vendors, or IT staff. Shinder warns that organizations often undermine their own security culture by discouraging the friction that comes with verifying suspicious requests. He emphasizes that employees who report mistakes quickly are far more valuable than those who stay silent out of fear of blame. While technical measures like multi-factor authentication remain essential, building a workforce that feels safe being skeptical is the most effective defense against social engineering.

Satya Nadella calls empathy the hardest yet most vital skill for leaders

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has identified empathy as the most challenging and essential skill for effective leadership. He argues that empathy enables leaders to build stronger connections with their teams and better understand customer needs. Nadella's personal life, particularly his experience raising his son Zain, has deeply influenced this leadership philosophy. He also credits cricket and team sports with teaching him broader lessons that apply to both professional and personal contexts.

SSRF Vulnerability Found in AI SDK's OAuth Metadata Discovery Flow

A security researcher discovered a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in a popular AI SDK used to handle authentication for MCP servers, which allow AI applications to connect to external tools and data sources. The flaw existed in the SDK's OAuth metadata discovery process, where a developer-supplied server URL is fetched without any validation. While the codebase included a URL-validation function applied to credential submission endpoints, it was never called during the metadata discovery chain. A proof-of-concept test confirmed the SDK would connect to internal addresses, including 127.0.0.1, without restriction. The gap highlights how partial security controls can leave critical code paths exposed, especially in fast-moving AI tooling development.