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The Tao of Programming

http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
1•alexjplant•39s ago•0 comments

Forcing Rust: How Big Tech Lobbied the Government into a Language Mandate

https://medium.com/@ognian.milanov/forcing-rust-how-big-tech-lobbied-the-government-into-a-langua...
1•akagusu•47s ago•0 comments

PanelBench: We evaluated Cursor's Visual Editor on 89 test cases. 43 fail

https://www.tryinspector.com/blog/code-first-design-tools
1•quentinrl•3m ago•0 comments

Can You Draw Every Flag in PowerPoint? (Part 2) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BztF7MODsKI
1•fgclue•8m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MCP-baepsae – MCP server for iOS Simulator automation

https://github.com/oozoofrog/mcp-baepsae
1•oozoofrog•11m ago•0 comments

Make Trust Irrelevant: A Gamer's Take on Agentic AI Safety

https://github.com/Deso-PK/make-trust-irrelevant
2•DesoPK•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sem – Semantic diffs and patches for Git

https://ataraxy-labs.github.io/sem/
1•rs545837•17m ago•1 comments

Hello world does not compile

https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1
2•mfiguiere•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ZigZag – A Bubble Tea-Inspired TUI Framework for Zig

https://github.com/meszmate/zigzag
2•meszmate•25m ago•0 comments

Metaphor+Metonymy: "To love that well which thou must leave ere long"(Sonnet73)

https://www.huckgutman.com/blog-1/shakespeare-sonnet-73
1•gsf_emergency_6•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Django N+1 Queries Checker

https://github.com/richardhapb/django-check
1•richardhapb•42m ago•1 comments

Emacs-tramp-RPC: High-performance TRAMP back end using JSON-RPC instead of shell

https://github.com/ArthurHeymans/emacs-tramp-rpc
1•todsacerdoti•46m ago•0 comments

Protocol Validation with Affine MPST in Rust

https://hibanaworks.dev
1•o8vm•51m ago•1 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
2•gmays•52m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Zest – A hands-on simulator for Staff+ system design scenarios

https://staff-engineering-simulator-880284904082.us-west1.run.app/
1•chanip0114•53m ago•1 comments

Show HN: DeSync – Decentralized Economic Realm with Blockchain-Based Governance

https://github.com/MelzLabs/DeSync
1•0xUnavailable•58m ago•0 comments

Automatic Programming Returns

https://cyber-omelette.com/posts/the-abstraction-rises.html
1•benrules2•1h ago•1 comments

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation [pdf]

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Why%20Are%20there%20Still%20So%20Many%...
2•oidar•1h ago•0 comments

The Search Engine Map

https://www.searchenginemap.com
1•cratermoon•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Souls.directory – SOUL.md templates for AI agent personalities

https://souls.directory
1•thedaviddias•1h ago•0 comments

Real-Time ETL for Enterprise-Grade Data Integration

https://tabsdata.com
1•teleforce•1h ago•0 comments

Economics Puzzle Leads to a New Understanding of a Fundamental Law of Physics

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/economics-puzzle-leads-to-a-new-understanding-of-a-fundamental...
3•geox•1h ago•1 comments

Switzerland's Extraordinary Medieval Library

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260202-inside-switzerlands-extraordinary-medieval-library
2•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight?

https://phys.org/news/2026-02-comet-visible-broad-daylight.html
4•bookmtn•1h ago•0 comments

ESR: Comes the news that Anthropic has vibecoded a C compiler

https://twitter.com/esrtweet/status/2019562859978539342
2•tjr•1h ago•0 comments

Frisco residents divided over H-1B visas, 'Indian takeover' at council meeting

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2026/02/04/frisco-residents-divided-over-h-1b-visas-indi...
4•alephnerd•1h ago•5 comments

If CNN Covered Star Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vArJg_SU4Lc
1•keepamovin•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: I built the first tool to configure VPSs without commands

https://the-ultimate-tool-for-configuring-vps.wiar8.com/
2•Wiar8•1h ago•3 comments

AI agents from 4 labs predicting the Super Bowl via prediction market

https://agoramarket.ai/
1•kevinswint•1h ago•1 comments

EU bans infinite scroll and autoplay in TikTok case

https://twitter.com/HennaVirkkunen/status/2019730270279356658
7•miohtama•1h ago•5 comments
Open in hackernews

What do people usually do with spare Android phones? Any practical use cases?

18•AndroidShare•1mo ago
I’ve been thinking about practical ways people reuse spare or unused Android devices instead of letting them sit in a drawer.

I’ve seen cases where phones are used for testing, monitoring, background tasks, or other always-online purposes after a one-time setup. No user interaction, just keeping the device connected and running.

Curious what real-world use cases others have actually found useful. Are there setups that worked well long-term, or things to avoid?

Not trying to promote anything here — genuinely interested in how people approach this.

Comments

bell-cot•1mo ago
Suggestion: https://www.androidauthority.com/where-to-donate-old-cell-ph...
markus_zhang•1mo ago
I have a $180 spare Android phone. I slapped PagerDuty on it to serve as my on-call phone. I also installed WhatsApp and Signal on it as I don't want to keep them on my primary phone (less distract).
markus_zhang•1mo ago
I don't know why you got downvoted so I could not reply your question. Here is my reply:

> Out of curiosity, have you found any downsides with that setup long-term? Battery health or missed notifications, for example?

Yeah, it is inconvenient to bring two phones. That's definitely a downside. Battery health is fine. I never missed any notifications so far.

AndroidShare•1mo ago
Thanks for clarifying, that’s helpful. Battery health was exactly what I was curious about, since long-term standby usage can sometimes degrade older cells faster than active daily use. Good to hear notifications have been reliable so far. Have you noticed any differences over time in idle drain or thermal behavior when the device stays online continuously?
elbci•1mo ago
I use a non-smart, non-internet phone but I do have a android phone in the car to make the multimedia/maps/whatever work properly - more and more stuff assumes you have a modern spyware device
eimrine•1mo ago
You have bought a spyware car and complain that it wants to befriend with your spyware phone? That's a lot of spyware and a lot of complains.
KomoD•1mo ago
> I’ve been thinking about practical ways people reuse spare or unused Android devices instead of letting them sit in a drawer.

I sell them or give to family.

> Not trying to promote anything here — genuinely interested in how people approach this.

Adding this makes me think you do want to promote something.

Bridged7756•1mo ago
You can turn one into a server.

I used to keep one as a sort of backup internet connection, since there are "unlimited 4 hours of internet" prepaid plans, like $1, here that work pretty well when used as an access point if your home internet's down for whatever reason.

Nowadays I just sell them

sandreas•1mo ago
Since I opted out of Google via GrapheneOS, I use one of my old phones in my car just to navigate.

Another phone is an audiobook listening device for my kids (they choose and I play).

Of course I also have a dedicated dev phone.

eth0up•1mo ago
I do:

    Secondary camera (with OpenCam) *oss

    Security camera (various software)

    Alarm clock with custom audio files (tibetan bells make a very unobtrusive wakeup sound)

    Guitar tuner & general audio                      recorder

    Mp3 player while working in harsh environments 
And it stays simless, in airplane mode, after a nice adb session where I uninstall just about everything I can. I could easily live without it, but I'm often glad to have it.
randomnumber314•1mo ago
Are you plugging them in for permanent use? Or are you using them as mobile security cameras?
eth0up•1mo ago
Around house. When in use, I piwer it with an old nook charger which I think is gentler on the battery.

I can always find a purpose for an old phone. But nothing on the Internet, unless it still gets updates.

estimator7292•1mo ago
If you're into HomeAssistant, you can turn one into something akin to an Echo Show, complete with local voice assistant.

Just yesterday I learned the Echo Show 5 can be pwned so I dug mine out, put LineageOS on it, and now it's a satellite for my HA server. Her name is Janet now.

tim-tday•1mo ago
Mine is bricked forever because google non consensually entered me into 2fa using a dead email address. Which is good because I needed a reason to never trust those fuckers again.
netfortius•1mo ago
I always wondered if they'd be of any use as multimedia server, with local content deliver and an USB device hanging out of it, for unused libraries...
villgax•1mo ago
I just want a LineageOS fork that is just some retro game emilator in proper kiosk mode or makes two phones work togther somehow as a big tablet or screen and keyboard combo
hnburnsy•1mo ago
Put most of your apps on the spare phone, only put apps needed to leave the house on your primary phone. This helps with battery life, storage, and privacy.
araes•1mo ago
Boring answer. Your first case - testing for app development, web development, display variations, device feature variations.

A little bit of @hnburnsy's answer, with segmented logins and emails separated by phones with layered restoration so it's difficult to accidentally get bricked by having one system get malware, system faults, or other failures. Two-Factor Auth also gets separated around between devices.

bjourne•1mo ago
Could be cool to use one as a speedometer or pedometer. But the accelerometers are probably not good enough.
moomoo11•1mo ago
Use it as storage lol
1vuio0pswjnm7•4w ago
Experimentation