Fog of flood: Nepal’s disaster raises a Himalayan question for China

Martin County protects 2,000 acres through conservation sales tax

Sony WH-1000XM5 Headphones Drop to $198 at Amazon and Best Buy

Sony is offering a Labor Day discount on its WH-1000XM5 over-ear headphones, cutting the price to $198 at both Amazon and Best Buy. This marks a $50 reduction from the typical selling price of around $250, matching the low seen during Prime Day 2026 in late June. Unlike that earlier deal, no Amazon Prime membership is required to access the discount. Originally priced at $399.99 when launched in 2022, the XM5 remain competitive despite the newer XM6 model released in 2025. The sale is part of Sony's week-long Labor Day promotional event.

Met Museum cancels John Galliano exhibition amid antisemitism backlash

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has cancelled a planned exhibition featuring British fashion designer John Galliano. The decision came after significant public backlash directed at the institution. Critics objected to the museum honouring Galliano, who was convicted in 2011 for making antisemitic remarks. The controversy reignited debate over whether cultural institutions should platform figures with histories of hate speech.

Why Good Research Creates More Questions Than It Answers

A product developer writing on DEV Community shares how their understanding of research fundamentally shifted while building a data-driven product. Initially assuming that gathering data would straightforwardly lead to final answers, they found that each answer typically surfaced a deeper, more precise question. Drawing a parallel to software debugging, the author argues that real investigation is iterative — answers refine the question rather than conclude the inquiry. They also note that having access to more data does not automatically translate into clarity or actionable direction. The key insight is that reframing a question mid-investigation is a sign of progress, not failure.

Kalshi Bans George Santos for Life, Fines Him Over $71,000

Former US Representative George Santos has received a lifetime ban from Kalshi, marking the prediction market platform's first-ever such penalty. The ban was accompanied by a fine exceeding $71,000 levied against Santos. The sanctions stem from allegations that Santos attempted to manipulate Kalshi's prediction market. Kalshi's decision represents a significant enforcement action by the platform against a high-profile user.

ONGC to enter oil trading, build strategic reserves

Why did Messi retire from international football?

Manipur’s 8 Naga MLAs write to Shah, seek ‘bold action’ to check attacks on community members

Rs 1 crore-plus withdrawn from Bihar school accounts: Teacher suspended, probe ordered

How Engineers Partitioned a Billion-Row Logistics Table in Production

A backend engineering team at a nationwide logistics platform faced severe database performance issues after their core tracking events table surpassed one billion rows, rendering traditional indexing ineffective. The table logged every parcel scan and status change, growing continuously as tens of thousands of orders were processed daily. The team implemented range-based table partitioning in PostgreSQL, splitting data into monthly partitions keyed on a timestamp column to enable partition pruning — allowing the database to skip irrelevant date ranges entirely. A critical constraint they encountered was that the partition key must be included in the primary key, which broke ORM assumptions and complicated foreign key relationships. The engineers emphasized that the real trigger for partitioning should be access pattern alignment, not table size alone — nearly all their queries were already scoped to specific date ranges, making the approach a natural fit.

How a Logistics Platform Partitioned a Billion-Row Database Table in Production

A nationwide logistics platform faced severe database performance issues after its core tracking events table surpassed one billion rows, rendering traditional indexing solutions ineffective. The table recorded every parcel scan and status change, growing continuously as tens of thousands of orders were processed daily. Engineers implemented range-based table partitioning in PostgreSQL, splitting data into monthly partitions by timestamp so queries could skip irrelevant date ranges through a mechanism called partition pruning. The approach required restructuring the primary key to include the partition column, which created compatibility challenges with foreign keys and ORM frameworks that assume single-column primary keys. The key takeaway was that partitioning decisions should be driven by query access patterns rather than table size alone, and that queries must include the partition key to avoid scanning all partitions simultaneously.

How a Healthcare Platform Cut Regression Testing from 2.5 Weeks to One Day

A healthcare platform was spending two and a half weeks on each regression pass, with smoke testing alone consuming seven days. The common instinct to automate everything proved to be the wrong starting point, as automating a bloated, outdated test suite only creates a faster version of the same inefficient process. The real problem was that most time was lost not in test execution but in preparation, environment setup, queue time, failure investigation, and reporting. The team eventually reduced regression lead time to a single day while improving coverage from 50% to 90% by cutting redundant tests, tiering suites by risk level, and shifting validations to lower, faster layers like APIs instead of the UI. Automation played a role, but the bigger gains came from rethinking what to test, where to test it, and when to run each suite.

n8n Custom Node Credential Test Fails Due to Internal Loader Bug, Fix Available

Developers building custom n8n nodes have long encountered a 'No testing function found for this credential' error when clicking the Test button in the UI, even with credentialTest correctly defined. The root cause lies in n8n's LoadNodesAndCredentials.ts, where the loader checks supportedNodes but generates nodesToTestWith, meaning the credential-to-test linkage silently breaks for custom and community nodes. The bug, tracked as n8n-io/n8n#8188 and originally reported on Stack Overflow, continues to affect users on versions as recent as 1.94 despite an earlier official fix. The recommended solution is to move the test logic directly onto the credential class as an ICredentialTestRequest object, eliminating any dependency on the node-side credentialTest method. This self-contained approach works regardless of whether the node is symlinked into ~/.n8n/custom or installed as a packaged module.

Missing reportWebVitals export silently breaks LCP tracking in Next.js production

Next.js only collects Core Web Vitals such as LCP in production when the app explicitly exports a reportWebVitals function (Pages Router) or uses the useReportWebVitals hook (App Router). Without this export, no metrics are forwarded to analytics services like Vercel's dashboard or Google Analytics, leaving the data columns blank. The issue goes unnoticed in development because the dev overlay injects its own logger, masking the missing pipeline. Next.js internally checks for the export after the production bundle is built, meaning hot-module replacement in dev mode cannot reveal the problem. The fix requires adding or correcting the reportWebVitals export in pages/_app.js and rebuilding the application — there is no next.config.js flag to enable this behaviour.

AI Vulnerability Discovery May Limit Government Use of Hacking Tools

Artificial intelligence is increasingly demonstrating its ability to identify and exploit software vulnerabilities at scale. This growing capability could complicate how governments deploy hacking tools and spyware in surveillance operations. Security experts suggest that as AI lowers the barrier to finding flaws, the exclusivity governments rely on for such tools may erode. The development could also revive longstanding policy debates around mandating backdoor access to consumer devices.

Lionel Messi Announces Retirement from International Football

Football legend Lionel Messi has officially announced his retirement from international football, bringing an end to a celebrated career on the global stage. The Argentine star described the decision as both difficult and necessary, indicating that the timing felt right to him. Messi expressed heartfelt gratitude toward his supporters and emphasized the importance of giving younger players the opportunity to develop and step up. He stated that he leaves international football feeling fulfilled and with his dignity intact.

Lionel Messi Announces Retirement from International Football

Legendary Argentine footballer Lionel Messi has announced his retirement from international football. The announcement marks the end of a historic international career in which Messi led Argentina to numerous titles. Messi acknowledged the decision was a painful one, describing it as something that 'hurt' him deeply. However, he expressed acceptance, stating that he understands the time has come to step away from the international stage.

Why Threads Matter: Concurrency, Race Conditions, and Deadlocks Explained

Threads are independent execution paths within a program that allow multiple tasks to progress simultaneously instead of waiting sequentially, improving responsiveness and throughput. A Java process can run several threads in parallel, sharing resources like heap memory and static variables. However, shared memory access introduces concurrency bugs such as race conditions, where two threads reading and writing the same variable simultaneously can produce incorrect results. Java provides tools like volatile, synchronized, locks, and atomic classes to manage visibility and thread safety, though each comes with its own limitations. When two threads each hold a lock the other needs, neither can proceed, resulting in a deadlock that halts the application entirely.

Unsecured Low-Code Apps Creating Shadow IT Risks, Exposing Sensitive Data

The rapid adoption of low-code/no-code platforms like Replit, Lovable, and Vercel is enabling non-technical users to build and deploy applications without security oversight, creating a growing shadow IT problem. A recent incident highlighted the risk when a customer intake form built on Lovable was deployed directly to a live production database with no authentication or access controls, going undetected until an external audit. Two similar cases were later found, including a survey tool connected to an unencrypted shared repository and a landing page with an exposed API key in client-side code. A 2023 study found 380,000 publicly accessible apps on such platforms, with 22% containing exposed credentials or sensitive data. Experts recommend that organizations deploy external attack surface management tools, enforce security-by-design principles in low-code workflows, and provide mandatory security training for non-technical staff.