Nepal: 20 yrs of satellite images expose a reality

JPMorgan Launches $1.5T Security Initiative Amid Dimon's Defence Tech Concerns

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon expressed frustration over narratives suggesting the United States is falling behind in defence technology. In response, the bank unveiled a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative aimed at bolstering national security industries. The program extends beyond the US to include Canada, Europe, and the United Kingdom. It targets key sectors such as aerospace, defence, manufacturing, energy, and health technology. JPMorgan is committing substantial capital and workforce resources to support the initiative.

Engineer Builds Hybrid Agentic RAG System Combining FAISS and BM25 for Smarter LLM Retrieval

A developer has designed and documented an Agentic Hybrid Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architecture that merges dense semantic search via FAISS with exact keyword matching using BM25, aiming to overcome limitations of traditional static RAG pipelines. The system uses an autonomous LLM agent built on the smolagents framework, enabling dynamic decision-making about when and how to retrieve information. During development, the engineer encountered significant challenges running the model locally on CPU, including import errors, latency exceeding 213 seconds per step, and model hallucinations. These issues were resolved by switching to a cloud-hosted model, Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct, and applying dynamic score normalization with a weighted fusion parameter. The research also outlines a future roadmap for scaling the architecture toward knowledge graphs, multi-agent consensus systems, and automated valuation frameworks.

Utah mountain hides enough ice to fill about 600 Olympic swimming pools

Pakistan in the dark again as power crisis deepens

Bangladesh confirms J-10CE jet deal with China

Goldman Sachs exec cautions banks on over-reliance on AI models like OpenAI, Anthropic

A senior Goldman Sachs executive has raised concerns about the financial industry's growing dependence on AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. He warned that delegating reasoning tasks to AI systems could lead to cognitive atrophy among banking professionals. Junior employees, in particular, risk missing out on critical hands-on experience and the development of intuitive analytical skills. This over-reliance could ultimately weaken the capabilities of future financial leaders. The executive stressed that human judgment must remain at the core of high-stakes decision-making in banking.

China removes 2 top generals from top military body

How to Structure Figma Variables for Scalable UI Design Systems

Figma variables store reusable design values such as colors, spacing, and typography that can be applied consistently across components and prototypes. Organizing these variables into structured collections — including design tokens, global primitives, language, and private primitives — helps teams manage complexity as projects scale. Figma supports six variable types: color, number, string, boolean, timing, and easing, each serving a distinct design or prototyping purpose. Unlike styles, which store fixed sets of design properties, variables enable dynamic changes such as switching between light and dark modes or adapting layouts for different devices. A well-structured variable system reduces redundancy, simplifies updates, and ensures design consistency across an entire product library.

AIMIM Expels MLC Mirza Rehmath Baig Over Viral Video Controversy

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has expelled its Member of the Legislative Council, Mirza Rehmath Baig, from the party. The decision follows a viral video and related allegations that surfaced and spread on social media. The BJP has responded to the expulsion, stating that the action does not amount to justice in the matter. The controversy has drawn significant political attention, with opposition parties weighing in on the party's handling of the situation.

Study Suggests Three Unrecorded Assyrian Kings May Rewrite Ancient Chronology

New research suggests that ancient Assyrian king lists may have deliberately left out several short-lived rulers. Evidence has emerged pointing to three monarchs who briefly held power during periods of political instability. Historians believe their reigns were intentionally excluded from official records. This omission raises serious doubts about the accuracy of the traditionally accepted timeline of ancient Assyria.

Semantic vs. Prompt Caching: Finding the Cost Break-Even Point for LLM Apps

A technical analysis published on DEV Community argues that rising LLM API costs are fundamentally an architecture problem rather than a prompt engineering issue. Two main caching strategies are compared: provider-side prompt caching, which reuses repeated input prefixes at 10% of normal token cost, and semantic caching, which uses embedding similarity to skip LLM calls entirely for near-duplicate queries. The study uses a reproducible benchmark of 1,200 queries across four repetition patterns to measure where each approach becomes cost-effective. Prompt caching suits workloads with long, repeated system prompts, while semantic caching eliminates redundant calls but risks returning wrong answers on false-positive matches. The analysis concludes that neither technique touches prompt content directly, making them complementary to — not substitutes for — prompt optimization.

How to Use Dart and Flutter Built-in Formatter, Analyzer, and Linter Tools

Dart and Flutter come with built-in tools for formatting, analyzing, and auto-fixing code without any additional installation. The `dart format` command applies style formatting, while `dart analyze` scans for potential code issues; Flutter offers equivalent commands with slightly different output. Developers can use `dart fix` to automatically resolve flagged problems, though caution is advised when applying bulk auto-fixes. Since Dart and Flutter lack native support for command aliases via pubspec.yaml, a Makefile can be used to bundle recurring tasks like formatting, analysis, and testing. A Git pre-commit hook can also be configured to automatically run these checks before every commit, helping maintain code quality consistently.

‘Dalit success is attacked’: RaGa seeks Haldwani FIR

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The article could not be processed because of a Liquid syntax error in the source template. The error indicates that a 'raw' tag was never properly closed in the original markup. As a result, no readable article content was available for summarization. The piece, originally published on DEV Community, was titled 'Catch by Recovery Policy, Not Convenience'. No factual summary can be provided without access to the actual article body.

Congress Leader Blocks Kerala CM Satheesan's Convoy in Road Confrontation

A Congress leader physically blocked the convoy of Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan on a public road. The leader was part of a group from his own party who wanted Satheesan to attend their event. The incident led to a visible argument between the Congress leader and the Chief Minister. The confrontation highlights an internal party disagreement over the CM's schedule and priorities.

How Programmatic SEO Uses Automation to Scale Metadata and Sitemaps

Programmatic SEO engineering uses data and automation to generate optimized metadata, OpenGraph tags, and sitemaps at scale, eliminating manual bottlenecks. The approach is particularly valuable for solopreneurs and agencies managing large or rapidly growing content bases such as product listings or localized service pages. Modern tools like Next.js 15, Cloudflare Workers, and serverless functions enable dynamic generation of SEO-critical assets that once required dedicated teams. Without such automation, sites risk poor search visibility, weak social sharing previews, and inefficient crawling by search engines. The core architecture relies on a structured data source feeding a templating engine to produce unique, search-friendly pages programmatically.

ISRO Apprentice Learns the Gap Between Coding Knowledge and Real Engineering Work

A software apprentice at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) recounts their transition from academic programming to working on a live production codebase. On receiving their first task, they found that recognising code syntax was not the same as understanding how a large, interconnected system functioned. A mentor guided them not by answering questions directly, but by walking through the codebase and demonstrating his reasoning process in real time. Over three days of close observation, the apprentice noticed that experienced engineers think in terms of systems and data flow rather than isolated files or functions. The key lesson was that navigating an unfamiliar codebase requires asking the right questions, not memorising every line of code.

Budget Alerts Don't Stop LLM Overspending — Here's What Actually Does

A developer recounts how a clear budget alert warning of 84% usage failed to prevent a $1,900 charge against a $600 cap after an overnight batch job ran unchecked. The article draws on a 1975 psychology study to argue that depletion warnings can actually increase the perceived urgency to consume remaining resources, not conserve them. A common coding pattern — checking spend before an API call but recording usage only after — leaves ledgers perpetually outdated, especially under concurrent workloads or fast-looping AI agents. The author demonstrates how twelve parallel workers can each independently read a stale budget figure, all clear the threshold, and collectively overshoot the cap by several times. The proposed fix replaces passive balance-checking with a database-level reservation system that locks and holds funds before any API call is made, similar to how financial transactions handle concurrency.

Web NFC API lets browsers read and write NFC tags without a native app

The Web NFC API enables modern web applications to interact with physical NFC tags directly through the browser, eliminating the need for native iOS or Android apps. The API supports reading NDEF messages, writing text, URLs, and vCard contact data, as well as locking tags to read-only mode. Currently, native support is limited to Chrome for Android version 89 and above, and requires an HTTPS connection along with an NFC-capable Android device. Developers must trigger scanning via a user action and should include feature detection to confirm browser compatibility before use. The API represents a significant step toward hardware interaction on the open web without app store dependencies.