Zoho's Sridhar Vembu cautions against purely profit-driven economic models

Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has raised concerns about the dangers of a society that prioritizes profit above all else, warning it could lead to dystopian outcomes. He argued that modern economics must account for preserving essential elements of human life, including nature and culture. Vembu also stressed that technology should serve as a means to strengthen society rather than purely drive financial returns. In his view, businesses carry a broader responsibility that goes well beyond generating profit.

Iceland rules out resuming European Union membership negotiations

Iceland has decided against reopening talks on joining the European Union, rejecting a potential revival of its stalled accession process. The country had previously applied for EU membership but suspended negotiations in 2015 without completing the process. Icelandic authorities have now signaled they do not intend to restart formal discussions with the bloc. The decision reflects Iceland's continued preference to remain outside the EU, despite its close ties with Europe through the European Economic Area.

How to Build an Autonomous Multi-Tool AI Agent on Google Cloud with Vertex AI

Developers can now build autonomous multi-tool AI agents on Google Cloud using Vertex AI, Python, and Streamlit, moving beyond simple chatbots toward dynamic, decision-making systems. The architecture follows a three-tier design comprising a user interaction layer, an orchestration layer powered by Gemini models, and a tool execution layer connected to Firestore, BigQuery, and external REST APIs. Gemini models act as the reasoning engine, evaluating user prompts and selecting the appropriate tools to fetch real-time grounded responses. The frontend is built with Streamlit and deployed on Cloud Run, while function declarations define the tools the agent can invoke during a conversation. The solution is designed for low latency, modularity, and strict session isolation, and can be deployed directly via the Google Cloud CLI.

India’s beauty market eyes a $42 billion glow-up

Mohan Bhagwat References 1996 Charkhi Dadri Mid-Air Collision That Killed 349

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently referenced the 1996 Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision, one of the deadliest aviation disasters in history. The tragedy occurred when two passenger aircraft collided over Charkhi Dadri in Haryana, India. The crash resulted in the deaths of all 349 people on board both planes. The incident remains one of the worst mid-air collisions ever recorded in aviation history.

Nepal-Tibet Floods Kill 750, Over 3,000 Missing as Rescue Operations Continue

Severe flooding across Nepal and Tibet has killed at least 750 people and left more than 3,000 others missing. Around 20,000 rescue personnel have been deployed, though rising river levels and damaged infrastructure are hampering relief efforts. Hundreds of people are believed to be trapped inside hydropower tunnels, requiring specialized assistance from international teams. India and China are providing critical support, including forensic experts and emergency relief supplies. Authorities have warned of further flooding, as many communities remain cut off due to widespread infrastructure damage.

How a Four-Stage CI/CD Pipeline Keeps Small Projects Simple and Maintainable

A developer on DEV Community argues that most small to medium projects suffer from over-engineered CI/CD pipelines that become harder to maintain than the applications they serve. The proposed solution is a straightforward four-stage pipeline covering testing, building, pushing, and deploying, demonstrated using GitHub Actions for a Node.js app on a VPS. Key design principles include linear flow, fail-fast behavior, SHA-tagged Docker images for traceability, and idempotent deployments to ensure safety on repeated runs. Rollbacks are simplified by re-deploying a previously tagged image, with an optional manual workflow dispatch job included for that purpose. The author notes this approach addresses roughly 80% of real-world needs before more complex setups involving multiple environments become necessary.

Punjabi Influencer Manjeet Kaur Found Burned; Autopsy Reveals 7-Week Pregnancy

Social media influencer Manjeet Kaur was abducted and fatally attacked in Morinda, Punjab, after being missing for 54 days. She was found tied to a tree and set on fire. A post-mortem examination revealed she was approximately seven weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Her mother has filed a police complaint naming two individuals as suspects in the case. Authorities are currently conducting a search operation to locate and arrest the accused.

Developer warns hand-typed Go structs silently break when database schema changes

A developer migrating a Java/Spring backend to Go discovered a critical type mismatch after a database column was altered eight days after the Go struct was manually mapped. A migration changed the 'value' column in an asset table from 'int NOT NULL' to 'decimal(19,2) NULL', but the hand-written Go struct still used int64 with no pointer, making it unable to represent NULL. The application failed silently, with no loud errors to flag the inconsistency. The developer responded by building a code generator, SQL DAL Maker, that reads live database metadata via JDBC and auto-generates model and DAO layers, eliminating the struct-versus-schema gap. The broader warning issued is that any project using hand-typed models against a non-frozen schema is likely carrying this silent bug already.

Developer builds productivity app that hides streaks and removes failure markers

A solo developer has launched SecretCoach, a to-do and coaching app deliberately designed to eliminate streak counters, completion percentages, and red incomplete markers that typically punish missed days. The project was inspired by the psychological pattern known as all-or-nothing thinking, where missing a single day often leads users to abandon their goals entirely. Instead of highlighting gaps, the app greets returning users with a celebration and its AI coach is explicitly barred from asking why someone was absent. The app's evening summary tells users what they accomplished rather than showing a ratio of tasks completed, and overdue items are framed as open invitations rather than unpaid debts. Built first in Korean and launched in English this week, the app runs on React 19, Firebase, and Gemini AI, and requires no sign-up to try.

DDA Releases FAQ Guide on Master Plan Delhi 2047, Effective August 2026

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has published a set of frequently asked questions to help the public understand the Master Plan Delhi 2047. The plan is set to take effect from August 20, 2026, replacing the existing master plan. It covers key regulations around land use, construction, and redevelopment across different zones of the city. The plan also addresses land pooling policies and transit-oriented development approaches. Citizens can share their feedback through a dedicated online portal.

RunCoder App Brings C/C++ Coding Workspace to Android Phones

A developer has launched RunCoder, an Android app designed to provide a functional coding environment directly on smartphones. The app supports C and C++ programming languages and includes features such as syntax highlighting, multi-file project management, starter templates, and integrated output. It targets developers who need to write or debug code while away from their laptops, rather than aiming to replace full desktop IDEs like VS Code or Android Studio. RunCoder is now available for download on the Google Play Store. The developer is actively seeking user feedback to guide future improvements and feature additions.

Study Finds Same AI Model Debating Itself Outperforms Mixed-Model Pairs

A field test of the open-source AdversarialDebate framework produced a counterintuitive result: a homogeneous GPT-plus-GPT pairing scored higher and made more concessions per debate than heterogeneous pairings like GPT-plus-Gemini and Gemini-plus-Mistral. The GPT-plus-GPT pair achieved an average score of 0.688 with a 57% verdict rate, significantly outperforming GPT-plus-Gemini, which scored only 0.357 with a 4% verdict rate. The findings suggest that model diversity alone does not guarantee better critical reasoning in multi-agent AI debate systems. A subsequent v0.2.1 update further refined the thesis, indicating that the presence or absence of the Mistral model — not diversity versus homogeneity — was the more decisive factor. The project is publicly available on GitHub and PyPI under the name adversarial-debate.

Developer firm releases open standard for AI-agent-readable documentation

Software company IWA Soft has published an open standard for writing documentation designed specifically for AI agents rather than human readers, after noticing agents occasionally hallucinated incorrect details when working with their conventional docs. The team began shipping a companion file called documentation.ai.md alongside each product release, written in dense, self-sufficient English covering exact commands, configuration variables, API examples, and architecture details. Unlike llms.txt, which serves as a site-level content index, the new format is a per-product, per-release operational reference intended to give agents everything they need in a single file. The standard explicitly avoids marketing language and requires honest disclosure of a feature's maturity or limitations. The specification has been published on GitHub and a detailed write-up is available on the company's blog.

HDFC Bank may shortlist deputy MD for its top job

Crypto trading bot silently recycled stale price data for over an hour undetected

A solo developer's AI-managed crypto trading bot repeatedly fetched the same outdated price data for over an hour due to a missing parameter in its broker API call. Without an explicit start time, the API returned a fixed daily window instead of the most recent price bars, yet never raised an error or altered the response format. The bot continued logging fresh timestamps and decisions every five minutes, making its activity log appear entirely normal. The issue was only discovered when the developer noticed price values were identical to three decimal places across consecutive log entries during an unrelated review. The incident highlights a critical blind spot in process monitoring: confirming that output is arriving on schedule is not the same as confirming that the underlying work is meaningfully changing.

Beyond Courses: Why Building, Contributing, and Connecting Expand Career Success

A perspective piece from DEV Community argues that developers who only consume learning content miss out on compounding career opportunities. The author contrasts passive learners with those who build projects, join hackathons, contribute to open source, and network with other builders. Hackathons are highlighted as particularly valuable for developing real-world skills like rapid prototyping, teamwork, and shipping under pressure. Open source contributions are presented as visible, verifiable proof of ability that goes beyond resume claims. The core argument is that success becomes harder to miss when developers deliberately expand the number of ways an opportunity can find them.

AI-Written Tests Passed While Hiding a Penny-Off Bug in Every UK Invoice

A developer building a .NET invoicing library with AI coding assistant Claude discovered that 202 passing tests failed to catch a rounding error that would have misstated every UK invoice containing three items priced at £3.99. The bug stemmed from the library's rounding helper being tested in isolation, while the invoice calculator itself was never verified to actually call that helper. Manual mutation testing — deliberately breaking code to see which tests fail — exposed the gap, revealing that swapping the correct half-up rounding for .NET's default banker's rounding caused only five failures, none involving real invoice scenarios. Further probing found similar blind spots in discount calculations and a culture-formatting test that used round numbers, making it unable to detect the very formatting trap it was designed to catch. The episode illustrates a key risk with AI-generated test suites: when the same system writes both the code and its tests, passing results may only confirm internal consistency rather than correctness.

Developer builds browser-only tools to stop free converters from uploading your files

A developer grew frustrated that popular free online file converters silently upload sensitive documents to unknown third-party servers during routine tasks like merging PDFs. Noting that modern browsers can handle file conversion, PDF editing, and screen recording entirely in-memory using APIs like pdf-lib, File API, and MediaRecorder, they rebuilt these tools to process everything locally without any server requests. The approach eliminates upload wait times, file-size restrictions, and the need for an internet connection once the page has loaded. Users can independently verify no data is transmitted by watching the browser's Network tab remain empty during file processing. The developer has published the tools for free at cyzorcreations.com/tools, arguing that client-side processing should be the default for any task that does not genuinely require a server.

Google Apps Script Gets Linux Sandbox Power via Gemini Managed Agents

Developers have outlined an architecture that connects Google Apps Script (GAS) with Gemini Managed Agents, which provision remote Linux sandboxes equipped with bash execution and full package management. GAS is a widely used automation tool for Google Workspace but is constrained by a restricted serverless runtime that lacks OS-level access, native binary support, and headless browsing. The new integration gives GAS access to a dedicated Linux container with 4 vCPUs, 16 GB RAM, Python 3.12, and Node.js 22, enabling workloads previously impossible within the platform. To avoid bottlenecks such as GAS's 50 MB response limit and Gemini's token-per-minute quota, generated files are streamed directly from the sandbox to Google Drive using the ggsrun CLI tool, bypassing API payload restrictions. The approach is designed to deliver high-throughput cloud automation without the token overhead or payload truncation issues associated with returning large binary data through the Gemini API.