Since Google Glass made its debut in 2012, there&#x27;s been a fair amount of hype around augmented reality and related tech coming into its own in industry, presumably enhancing worker productivity and capabilities.But I&#x27;ve heard and seen so little use in any industries. I would have thought at a minimum that having access to hands-free information retrieval (e.g. blueprints, instructions, notes, etc), video chat and calls for point-of-view sharing, etc would be quite useful for a number of industries. There do seem to be interesting pilot trials involving Hololens in US defense (IVAS) as well as healthcare telemonitoring in Serbia.Do you know of any relevant examples or use cases, or are you a user yourself? What do you think are the hurdles - actual usefulness, display quality, cost, something else?

Ask HN: Anyone using augmented reality, VR, glasses, helmets etc. in industry?

I noticed so many iPhone users are dealing with the same storage nightmare. Here&#x27;s a common scenario that sounds familiar to a lot of people:The widespread problem: iPhone storage fills up crazy fast, not everyone has a Mac, many don&#x27;t want to pay monthly for iCloud storage, and home NAS setups aren&#x27;t realistic for most users. The manual approach of creating folders and selecting photos one by one is tedious, and keeping up with new photos becomes overwhelmingSo I built an app called BackiGo that addresses this exact pain point - it allows direct backup of Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives, no Mac needed.What makes it useful:Backs up your Live Photos with all the motion intactCan restore Live Photos back to your iPhone camera rollSuper easy to backup new photosYou can browse and view all your saved Live Photos directly from the external drive without having to restore them firstYou can test it out with up to 500 photos &amp; videos backup before deciding if it works for your needs

I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives

Visa Account Updater is a service by which if you change your credit card number, or even close and open a new credit card account, Visa can give a merchant your new credit card details for subscription services without ever asking your permissionI ran into an issue where I had some subscriptions that were very difficult to cancel, so I decided to just cancel that credit card number. I called Wells Fargo, told them to give me a new credit card number, which they did and I moved on with my life.Next month, a bunch of the same charges. I call them back, they tell me about Visa Account Updater. I am extremely taken back that this is even possible. I told them I didn&#x27;t want to be a part of that program, they told me that Visa handles this and not them. I call Visa and they tell me they don&#x27;t handle this and that Wells Fargo does.I call back Wells Fargo, they tell me they have no idea how to opt out of it. The lady asks her manager, the manager also doesn&#x27;t know. She spends some time searching their documentation, nothing in the docs. She tells me the sure fire way is to close the account entirely and create a new account with a new card. I&#x27;m deeply annoyed but go ahead and do this.Next month, guess what? A bunch of the same charges again, on a fresh account I haven&#x27;t even activated the credit card for. I call Wells Fargo back, they talk more about Visa Account Updater but have no way of turning it off or rectifying the situation.I&#x27;m now on hold for the last two hours as they try to figure out what to do about this. I can&#x27;t believe this is even legal, its the most insane business practice I&#x27;ve ever seen. I get that this may be handy in some situations but its clearly a scam designed to perpetuate charging subscriptions to credit cards.Hope this helps the next person.

The scam that is Visa Account Updater

What is still the single biggest headache when you translate with GPT, DeepL or Google?If you use DeepL – what would you need to finally pay for GPT translation?Which features are still missing in current classical or LLM based translators.How do you prefer pricing: SaaS, per-token, seats, or a flat plan?Context: I’m exploring a side-project and don’t want to build the wrong thing. Not looking for promotion—just war-stories and must-have features (LLM model selection? scanned-PDF OCR? bilingual output? segment-level edits? glossary? missing format support?).

Ask HN: If you translate with LLMs, GT or DeepL–what features are missing?

After the google+ fiasco I thought Google had learned their lesson about ramming new products down people&#x27;s throats whether they like them or not, but with Gemini it seems like this lesson has been forgotten.I usually am a pretty happy user of Google&#x27;s products but they have really ruined the experience for me (and on top of that they are charging extra for the privilege of ruining the experience). Is there a way to completely and permanently get rid of Gemini in such a way that my normal workflow isn&#x27;t continuously interrupted by Google pushing their bug-ridden and unnecessary AI contraption? If not, I will probably have to get rid of Google entirely, which will be a massive piece of work but I&#x27;m really done with having my train of thought interrupted 30 or more times per day by popups or &#x27;helpful&#x27; suggestions that only serve to illustrate how incredibly immature the AI field still is.What we have done so far:- disabled AI suggestions where ever such options were given
- removed the App components to the point that normal device functionality is not impeded
- searched online to see if there is still more that we can doIronically just typing this query into google still gives me an AI overview (despite these being disabled) which contains a whole raft of nonsense advise.If it takes a browser (Firefox) extension to do the job I&#x27;m game. I only want to see the word &#x27;Gemini&#x27; when it relates to Alan Parsons records or to Zodiac signs.Any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Ask HN: How to get rid of Gemini?

Just a note of warning from personal experience.Companies don’t really need non-competes anymore. Some companies take an extremely broad interpretation of IP confidentiality, where they consider doing any work in the industry during your lifetime an inevitable confidentiality violation. They argue it would be impossible for you to work elsewhere in this industry during your entire career without violating confidentiality with the technical and business instincts you bring to that domain. It doesn’t require conscious violation on your part (they argue).So beware and read your employment agreement carefully.More here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.promarket.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;08&#x2F;confidentiality-agreements-can-act-like-noncompetes&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.promarket.org&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;08&#x2F;confidentiality-agreeme...</a>And this is the insane legal doctrine behind this<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inevitable_disclosure" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Inevitable_disclosure</a>

Tell HN: Beware confidentiality agreements that act as lifetime non competes

Hey folks — I&#x27;m looking to hand off a project I&#x27;ve been working on: Eyeball, a clean and minimal bookmarking app for iOS that uses AI to help users save, organize, and understand their links.Website: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eyeball.wtf&#x2F;
App: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;eyeball-ai-bookmarks-notes&#x2F;id6670705634The app is live on the App Store, has several hundred users.Selling because my founding engineer took a full-time role and I don’t have the bandwidth to grow it solo. Would love to see it in the hands of someone who wants to take it further. Thinking a simple profit-share if it ever generates revenue?If you’re into calm productivity tools, AI&#x2F;notes, or second-brain apps, this could be a fun one to take on.If you’re interested, drop your contact details and I&#x27;ll reach out.

Ask HN: Anyone interested in taking over my indie app?

Hi all, my Meta developer account was suddenly restricted without warning, and there’s no way to appeal or reach support. I believe this may have been triggered by a location (read, IP address) change: I’m a student-entrepreneur who recently moved from China to Kenya for school holidays.I’m building a WhatsApp-based accounting tool for African small businesses, and this restriction is blocking critical operations. I’ve come across others facing the same issue, with no review option or clear reason:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;WhatsappBusinessAPI&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1kvolvn&#x2F;facebook_developer_account_restricted_no_review&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;WhatsappBusinessAPI&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1kvolv...</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1h1c79w&#x2F;developer_account_suspended_no_warning_no&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;facebook&#x2F;comments&#x2F;1h1c79w&#x2F;developer...</a>Some of the people in these posts were able to contact Meta support, but it seems like Meta has disabled direct support chats.Thanks in advance.

Tell HN: Meta developer account suspended

I will be 40 in another 6 months time. It almost feels like more than 50% life is gone. While there are some wins, some notorious, it&#x27;s mostly struggle and negativity in my life.

Ask HN: Anyone got advice for someone like me nearing 40s?

telnet:&#x2F;&#x2F;issue3.anewsession.com

A literary magazine accessible only via telnet

I have noticed my own decline in terms of attention spans, and (in)ability to read long-form text online or offline. This leaves me with a disaatsifaction and I would like to rebuild a good habit cycle.Curious to know if any of you went through the same and managed to recover from this rot. What worked for you, and any thoughts and learnings you might want to share.

Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn

For context I am employed as a SWE and I find my job generally enjoyable but I also feel like I’m not learning any new skills and maybe falling behind the industry. I’m not in a position to look for a new job at the moment but I want to do a little something each day to stay sharp.What is currently worth focusing on for general longevity in this field?

Ask HN: How do you keep your SWE skills sharp outside of work?

I&#x27;m trying to figure out the right and effective way to use Claude Code.
So far, my experience hasn&#x27;t matched what many in the community seem to rave about.Often, it either generates convoluted implementations when simpler ones clearly exist, or it produces code that&#x27;s riddled with bugs — despite confidently claiming it&#x27;s correct.
I&#x27;m wondering if I&#x27;m just not using it properly.Here&#x27;s my current workflow:- I first talk to Gemini to gradually clarify and refine my requirements and design.- I ask Gemini to summarize everything. Then I review and revise that summary.- I paste the final version into Claude Code, use plan mode, and ask it to generate an implementation plan.- I review the plan, make adjustments, and then let Claude Code execute it.- Long wait…- Review Claude’s output and clean up the mess.For refactors and bugfixes, I usually write some tests in advance. But for new features, I often don’t.It often feels like opening a loot box — 50% of the time it does a decent job, the other 50% is pretty bad.
I really want to understand how to use it properly to achieve the kind of magical experience people describe.Also, I’m on the Pro plan, and I rarely hit the rate limit — mainly because there’s a lot of prep work and post-processing I need to do manually.
I’m curious about those who do hit rate limits quickly: are you running lots of tasks in parallel?
Machines can easily parallelize, sure — but I don’t know how to make myself work in parallel like that.

Ask HN: How Do You Actually Use Claude Code Effectively?

I&#x27;ve recently become interested in Spanish guitar, particularly the Gypsy and flamenco styles, but I don&#x27;t know how to get started. Are there any beginner textbooks or videos available? I previously bought a book that started with scale exercises, which I found very tedious, and ended up giving up. Thank you very much.

Ask HN: How do you learn Spanish guitar?

I just released [`sdtn`](https:&#x2F;&#x2F;crates.io&#x2F;crates&#x2F;sdtn), an open-source implementation of Delay&#x2F;Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) based on RFC 9171.It aims to provide a minimal, practical DTN node capable of:
- Bundle transmission over TCP (CLA)
- CBOR-encoded bundles
- ACK-based delivery confirmation
- Expiration and cleanup of bundles
- CLI-based control and debuggingThe goal is to extend this foundation to support BLE, LoRa, and dynamic routing for environments with intermittent connectivity—such as space, remote areas, or disaster recovery scenarios.GitHub: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Ray-Gee&#x2F;spacearth-dtn 
Docs: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.rs&#x2F;sdtnFeedback and discussion are very welcome!

DTN in Rust

Hey everyone! I know this forum is &#x27;notorious&#x27; for having more experienced and skilled coders but if I figured this might be relevant for some of you:
Coding The Future is a program where we match people who are passionate about computer science to teach students interested in learning. If this sounds like an opportunity that you&#x27;d like to participate in please fill out this form so we can best match you with a tutee. Tutoring sessions will be 30 minutes weekly virtually.All tutoring is done for free, so if you are interested in becoming a tutor you will get community service. We provide tutors with the resources to be an effective teacher, and regularly check in with our tutors and tutees to make sure the process is going smoothly.Please note that dedicated tutors may be offered leadership roles, and if you are interested in taking on more leadership within the program, for example becoming a local director of programming or curriculum developer, please let us know.You can also mail me directly if you want to help is any other way, like funding or leadership.Email: yusuf.amin2307@gmail.com Our website: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codingthefuture24.github.io&#x2F;

Free Virtual CS Classes and Tutoring

An old friend of mine teaches programming and is building out a teaching language to try and make sure students don&#x27;t cheat on intro lessons.https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;itstheraj&#x2F;PhraseLang?tab=License-1-ov-fileThey put a license in saying that basically AI cannot index this code but I think this is kinda silly and a waste of time. They told me they want to see if they can make &quot;MIT license but no AI&quot; a thing and they hope more open source projects hop on the train.I do see that if an AI was trained with this in the set it probably obliterates the educational value maybe. I can understand the motivation but uh....I don&#x27;t think this would work tho and I want to convince them they are going a little over board LOL - what do y&#x27;all think? Is it possible to make an &quot;MIT License but no AI?&quot; and have it be a thing?

Is "MIT Software License but No AI" Possible?

I&#x27;ve been thinking modern programming feels increasingly shaped by ecosystem fashion. Frameworks change yearly, build tools get swapped like phone wallpapers, and even language choices feel driven more by vibe than need.My concern is are we optimizing for what’s &quot;new and exciting&quot; rather than what’s appropriate and sustainable?What are some signals that we’re solving tooling problems instead of real ones?
Have we trained a generation of devs to chase abstractions instead of understanding fundamentals?Curious what others think, is this a natural evolution of software... or are we just collectively procrastinating with better toys?

Are we overfitting our code to trends instead of problems?

The idea is that, while chatting with an AI, you could temporarily enter social mode.In social mode, the AI learns from what you say and may tell other humans about it while chatting with them.So in this sense, the AI provides a form of indirect communication between humans.Do you think such a &quot;social mode&quot; in AI chats could replace social media?

Ask HN: Could a "social mode" in AI chats replace social media?

I&#x27;m working on something new and I need to test it with real problems - the kind that keep you stuck for weeks or months. (basically stumbled on this framework, solving my own problems and want to see who else it could be useful for &#x2F; what people would pay). 
Really just looking for a conversation.
Here&#x27;s what I&#x27;m looking for: complex situations where you&#x27;ve tried multiple approaches but nothing quite clicks. Business strategy paralysis, relationship dynamics you can&#x27;t figure out, career transitions that feel impossible, creative blocks, or any problem where you know there&#x27;s a solution but can&#x27;t see it.
Not selling anything - just testing whether this approach actually works for problems other than my own.

Ask HN: How much would you pay to solve the largest problem you face?

Is anyone hesitant nowadays to release their code as open source because they don&#x27;t want it to be stolen to train LLMs?I am wondering if my hesitancy is rational or not.

Ask HN: Are you hesitant to open source your project because LLMs may steal it?

Ask HN: What is the maximum indoor temperature beyond which you can't work?

I&#x27;m exploring building a simple agent-based app and came across OpenAI&#x27;s Agent SDK: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openai.github.io&#x2F;openai-agents-js&#x2F; . From what I understand, it wraps a lot of functionality — like the agent loop, function calling, and integration with the OpenAI MCP server — which could potentially save me a lot of work compared to using the plain OpenAI SDK.However, I&#x27;m wondering:Is the Agent SDK too abstracted or hard to debug?Has anyone actually used it in a real production app yet?Would I be better off just implementing the logic myself on top of the plain OpenAI SDK for more control and transparency?Appreciate any insights.

Ask HN: Anyone using OpenAI's Agent SDK in production?

First of all, let me start by saying that I love uv and have changed all my Python projects to use it. It simplifies dependency management in a transparent and easy-to-use way.However, after reading this thread (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44357411), I began to wonder - who is this company &#x27;Astral&#x27; behind all this?https:&#x2F;&#x2F;astral.sh&#x2F;aboutI read their about, and it sounds great and I&#x27;m all for it. But they are still a company, and I presume they want to make money somehow. Otherwise they&#x27;ll stop being a company, and I don&#x27;t want that to happen because I really like uv.But I also want to know if there is some plan to eventually get money out of me, an innocent uv-user. Is it a mistake to become too reliant on uv&#x2F;Astral? Or can I hope the relationship will be more like GitHub&#x27;s (pretty happy overall, it&#x27;s an industry standard, I toss a few bucks their way for various services, although it is becoming less usable...)

Ask HN: How is a company like Astral viable, financially?

Was thinking of doing a deep dive into Retool, but unsure if it&#x27;s the best option.I&#x27;m already familiar with Hubspot and Salesforce and how to do things using both clicks and code.Would like to learn something that is so tied to a CRM with expensive licences.

Ask HN: Which low-code app creator should I learn how to master?

Ask HN: What is your main measure in life?

Hi HN,I&#x27;ve been working on a vector search engine called QSS (Quantized Similarity Search). It&#x27;s written in C and explores the idea of aggressively quantizing embedding vectors to 1-bit per dimension. It uses XOR + popcount for fast approximate search, followed by re-ranking using cosine similarity on the original vectors.The main goal is to see how far you can push quantization without sacrificing too much search quality—while gaining significantly in memory usage and speed.How it works
Embeddings are quantized to 1 bit per dimension (e.g. 300D → 300 bits → ~40 bytes).Search is done using bitwise XOR and popcount (Hamming distance).A shortlist is re-ranked using cosine similarity on the original (float) embeddings.Supports GloVe, Word2Vec, and fastText formats.Goals
Analyze the trade-offs between quantization and search accuracy.Measure potential speed and memory gains.Explore how this approach scales with larger datasets.Preliminary tests
I’ve only run a few small-scale tests so far, but the early signs are encouraging:For some queries (e.g. &quot;hello&quot;, &quot;italy&quot;), the top 30 results matched the full-precision cosine search.On Word2Vec embeddings, the quantized pipeline was up to 18× faster than the standard cosine similarity loop.These results are anecdotal for now—I’m sharing the project early to get feedback before going deeper into benchmarks.Other notes
Word lookup is linear and unoptimized for now—focus is on the similarity search logic.Testing has been done single-threaded on a 2018 iMac (3.6 GHz Intel i3).If you&#x27;re interested in vector search, quantization, or just low-level performance tricks, I&#x27;d love your thoughts:Do you think this kind of aggressive quantization could work at scale?Are there other fast approximate search techniques you&#x27;d recommend exploring?Repo is here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;buddyspencer&#x2F;QSSThanks for reading!

Ask HN: Feedback on "QSS" – A Quantized Vector Search Engine in C

Recently we had an opening in our organization, the amount of very well crafted CVs we received it&#x27;s crazy, they are really good.Which imposes a challenge in itself, since we have to filter 100s of CVs for a role somehow.Then in the interviews, it&#x27;s clear that the person doesn&#x27;t know how to go deep on the topics.The conversation feels very unnatural, and very &quot;buzzword driven&quot;.In fact I am convinced that some of them are straight out reading from some AI prompt that &quot;prepared&quot; them for the interview.I know hiring has always been difficult for both sides, but probably with AI&#x27;s help the signal:noise ratio seems way out of the whack.What have people been doing ?

Ask HN: Tips for hiring? It has been difficult

Alan Turing's birthday today – born 1912 in London

Founder here currently building a product to address a problem 
I’ve seen repeatedly in modern teams.We use Slack to talk. Notion to document. Jira or Asana to plan. 
But every time a decision is made in chat, someone has to manually copy, summarize, or “translate” it into another system. 
Context gets lost. Work slows down.I&#x27;m starting to wonder: is it the tools themselves, or the gaps between them, that hurt our productivity the most?
I’m not here to pitch anything, just trying to learn from your workflows.&quot;How do you and your team deal with this?&quot;
&quot;Is switching between apps a real friction point for you?&quot;
&quot;Have you found any habits or tools that reduce this friction?&quot;Would love to hear from you.