2026-01-31 00:03:12
How are you, hacker?
🪐 What’s happening in tech today, January 30, 2026?
The HackerNoon Newsletter brings the HackerNoon homepage straight to your inbox. On this day, Charles I, King of England, was executed in 1649, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist. Gandhi in 1948, and we present you with these top quality stories. From The MoSCoW Method: Key to Agile Product Management to Will Media Over Quic Replace WebRTC?, let’s dive right in.
By @linked_do [ 8 Min read ] Graphite CTO Greg Foster on AI’s dev tools upheaval, why code review matters more now, and the hard line between vibe coding and enterprise software. Read More.
By @sb2702 [ 10 Min read ] An analysis of the current state of Media over Quic and whether it might replace WebRTC. Read More.
By @srgfedorov [ 10 Min read ] Learn MoSCoW prioritization in Agile: practical guide to must-have, should-have, could-have features and how to set priorities in software development. Read More.
By @nfrankel [ 7 Min read ] In this post, we started with an UberJAR unable to rename files on remote volumes because of the current macOS security model. Read More.
🧑💻 What happened in your world this week?
It's been said that writing can help consolidate technical knowledge, establish credibility, and contribute to emerging community standards. Feeling stuck? We got you covered ⬇️⬇️⬇️
ANSWER THESE GREATEST INTERVIEW QUESTIONS OF ALL TIME
We hope you enjoy this worth of free reading material. Feel free to forward this email to a nerdy friend who'll love you for it.See you on Planet Internet! With love, The HackerNoon Team ✌️
2026-01-30 23:30:08
Hey Hackers!
\ Picture this: You just started as a writer. You find this platform that you think is the perfect fit for your articles, so you start publishing with them. But as time goes on, the problems start to show themselves: too many ads, too many paywalls, not enough audience reach. You decide to leave this platform and move on to another one; unfortunately, the same issues arise.
\ Then, after much trial and error, you find the perfect place to publish your articles. But now, you have a problem. Your catalog is split into different platforms. Sure, you can manually copy and paste them into your preferred platform, but that takes a lot of time, especially when you have a lot of them.
\ Sound familiar?
\ If you’re going through this situation right now, don’t worry. There’s a tool that quickly allows you to import all of your articles into HackerNoon, regardless of where they were published first. Here’s a quick guide on how to do so.
In the “Write” page, underneath the Chowa and Editor 3.0 options, there is the “Import Story” feature.
Clicking on it will give you two options: “Import Via Direct URL” and “Import Via RSS Feed.” Let’s go over both.
This option allows you to import a single article. After doing so, it’s time to clean it up. Here are some issues you might have to resolve after importing it:
\ Once you do that, it’s time to come up with 8 tags and a metadescription. The next and final step before submitting it for review is to answer two quick questions in the story settings.
If you’re importing from Substack, Medium, Dev.to, your own personal blog, etc., click on “Personal Site.” If you’re importing an article from a business website, click on “Business Site.” Republishing business articles does require you to create a Business Blogging Account; find out more here.
\ The next question gives you two options: Max Readership and Backlink. Here is what you need to know about both.
Max Readership
Your story gets maximum distribution with audio story conversion, newsletter distribution, and RSS feed pickups. Upon publication, HackerNoon adds “Also published here” with a backlink at the footer of the story.
\ Backlink
Your story gets basic distribution with audio story conversion, and newsletter distribution. Upon publication, HackerNoon adds “Also published here” with a canonical link at the footer of the story.
\ Choose the one that best fits your needs. Your article is ready for submission. Now, let’s take a look at the second option.
This option allows you to submit your entire RSS feed all at once into HackerNoon’s Editorial queue.
It also gives you the option of submitting future articles directly to the editorial queue. This is perfect if you have a huge number of articles that you want to transfer over.
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:::tip Want to write an original story on HackerNoon? This template can help!
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\ Okay, you know how to import stories into HackerNoon. That’s great! However, if you also want to know how to take your blogging career to the next level, we have something that can help with that.
This course is perfect for those who have a bit of experience under their belt and for those just starting their journey. It features 8 carefully crafted and curated modules, made by writers and editors with years of experience. Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect:
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:::tip Sign up for the HackerNoon Blogging Course today!
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\ That’s all for this time.
\ Until next time, Hackers!
2026-01-30 22:59:57
OptikosPrime just obliterated the primary barrier in digital optometry. The company announced today that it has successfully derived a complete eye prescription using only a standard smartphone camera. Developed under the internal platform name Argus, its vision tests bypass the need for traditional optometry hardware or specialized clinical personnel.
In short, OptikosPrime's Argus provides a prescription based on a selfie.
The global eyewear market is projected to reach $192.74 billion in 2026, according to Fortune Business Insights. Despite this massive valuation, the industry remains tethered to physical locations for accurate prescriptions, or app/laptop solutions that require complex and multi-device setup. Current online leaders such as 1-800 Contacts and Lensabl offer online prescription renewals, but these typically require a valid prescription on file.
They confirm what you already know rather than discovering what you need.
Most existing digital eye care tools function as digital yardsticks. They measure visual acuity by asking users to identify letters on a screen. While these apps indicate whether a person has blurry vision, they ultimately lead nowhere. They cannot tell a patient which lens they actually need. This creates a massive operational bottleneck for retailers and humanitarian groups. They must still rely on heavy, expensive machinery to finalize a sale or a treatment.
Argus changes the physics of the problem. It moves beyond simple vision screening to provide the specific refraction data required for corrective lenses.
"If Argus provides a super fast, accurate, and high-quality refraction for online consumers, it will be a game-changer," says Doron Kalinko, Co-founder of SmartBuyGlasses. "This is precisely what the industry needs."
The stakes are high in the humanitarian sector. The World Health Organization estimates that over 2.2 billion people worldwide live with vision impairment. For roughly 1 billion of them, the impairment is avoidable or unaddressed. Often, the obstacle is not the cost of the frames; it is the lack of a professional to advise them on which glasses to buy.
Access to clear vision should not depend on geography. "Innovations like Argus have the potential to transform how communities worldwide receive eye care,” Sumrana Yasmin, Deputy Technical Director for Eye Health at Sightsavers, said. “This breakthrough shows what is possible when innovation is guided by equity and a commitment to reaching the hardest to reach communities."
Clinical equipment works because the environment is controlled. In the wild, lighting is inconsistent, users have shaky hands, and reflections bounce off the cornea. OptikosPrime spent years wrestling these variables into submission. The tech is designed to work in under sixty seconds on a standard mobile device. This makes it viable for high-volume retail or remote village outreach, where a $20,000 phoropter or a $5,000 autorefractor is not feasible.
"Speed and simplicity are non-negotiable," Ståle Fredlund Husby, Co-founder at OptikosPrime, said. "If a solution needs several devices, careful setup, or multiple minutes per person, it simply does not work in rural outreach or online retail environments."
OptikosPrime is the first entity to publicly confirm reaching this technological milestone. While other companies have experimented with hardware attachments or complex multi-step processes, OptikosPrime is the first to claim a full prescription from a simple photo.
"Building state-of-the-art technology that moves measurements of physical phenomena from well-controlled environments and into the wild is a significant research and development challenge," Anders Kofod-Petersen, Co-founder and CEO at OptikosPrime, said. "The intellectual and technical effort to achieve this has been significant: it was a classic two steps forward and one step back process relying on rigorous science."
The company is currently preparing for its next funding round. This capital will accelerate data acquisition, clinical validation, and the regulatory navigation required to deploy Argus globally. In the interim, OptikosPrime continues to scale its first commercial product, VisionCheck, which provides mobile vision screening to the current market.
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2026-01-30 21:00:08
Telehealth addiction treatment was once seen as a stopgap, a temporary fix for a system stretched thin. Now, Workit Health is redefining what’s possible, setting benchmarks that other providers strive to match. Their model, built on privacy, clinical rigor, and real-world outcomes, has become the gold standard for virtual addiction care across the United States.
Patients no longer need to drive hours to a clinic or wait weeks for an appointment. With Workit Health, care arrives through smartphones and tablets, reaching people in rural towns, busy cities, and even inside hospital rooms. The company’s research arm, Workit Labs, publishes findings that regulators, insurers, and clinicians now use to measure success and shape policy.
Sixty-two percent of rural patients remain in treatment for 3 months, compared to 50% in other telemedicine programs. Ninety-nine percent of participants test positive for buprenorphine at every checkpoint, proving near-perfect medication adherence. These numbers are not just statistics—they represent lives saved, families reunited, and communities strengthened.
Seventy-nine percent of patients test negative for unexpected substances, yet Workit Health’s harm-reduction philosophy ensures those who do not remain engaged in care. Unlike punitive models that discharge patients for imperfect abstinence, Workit Health keeps them active and progressing, reducing the risk of relapse and overdose. Every percentage point gained in retention and adherence is a victory in a national crisis.
Worktit Health’s research appears in top-tier journals, including JAMA Network Open and the Journal of Patient Experience. Their August 2025 study on pharmacy barriers revealed that 30% of telemedicine patients cannot access buprenorphine, a systemic flaw now being addressed by policymakers. July 2025 research on virtual backgrounds and clinician attire influenced how clinics across the country design their telehealth protocols, proving that small details can impact trust and engagement.
March 2024 findings on perinatal care showed that 94% of pregnant patients remained engaged through six weeks postpartum, a rate unheard of in traditional models. Every participant tested positive for buprenorphine after delivery, demonstrating near-perfect medication adherence. These outcomes have been cited in federal guidelines and referenced in state health department training manuals.
Workit Health’s approach is not just about medication. Patients receive therapy, coaching, and peer support through a single platform, addressing root causes and co-occurring conditions. Seventy-eight percent of members beginning opioid treatment carry depression diagnoses, and eighty-one percent screen positive for anxiety. The company’s integrated care model recognizes that addiction rarely travels alone.
The founders, Robin McIntosh and Lisa McLaughlin, built Workit Health after navigating America’s fragmented addiction infrastructure themselves. Their lived knowledge shines through features that anticipate patient needs—secure messaging, evening and weekend availability, and virtual peer support groups. Each percentage-point gain in retention translates to lives salvaged from the overdose crisis, claiming more than 140 Americans daily.
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:::tip This story was distributed as a release by Jon Stojan under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program.
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2026-01-30 19:38:16
Agent Observatory is a lightweight, fail-open observability library that helps teams trace and debug AI agents in production without introducing new failure points or platform lock-in.
2026-01-30 19:17:10
Most Salesforce AI conversations start with models. That’s backward.
The work starts with deciding where AI can influence priority, routing, and outcomes. What follows determines whether anything holds up in production: signal quality, release discipline, and governance that applies to AI outputs with the same rigor as the underlying data.
Salesforce introduced Einstein GPT as generative AI for CRM, designed to deliver AI-created content across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT interactions, and positioned it as open, extensible, and trained on trusted, real-time data. That framing sets a clear expectation. AI should change workflows and remain controllable under enterprise conditions.
Einstein GPT is most useful when evaluated as workflow, because workflow is where outcomes appear.
Decision moments define priority. A score matters when it changes what gets worked next. A risk signal matters when it changes escalation, queue order, or follow-up timing.
Execution moments are where Salesforce acts. Routing, assignments, and automation via Flow or Apex live here. Generative outputs, such as summaries or drafts, belong in this layer only when inputs are bounded and access rules are enforced.
Experience moments are where results become visible. Faster resolution, fewer handoffs, and more relevant guidance depend on decision and execution layers being connected.
If that “work changes next” step is unclear, adoption will be inconsistent, and measurement will drift toward vanity metrics.
At enterprise scale, personalization is decisioning, not content selection.
Salesforce’s Personalization data model describes runtime objects that capture personalization requests, eligibility, placement, and delivery. That framing matters because it points to a system that operates continuously, not a static configuration.
A practical structure keeps this manageable: context, intent, next best experience.
Context captures what is true now. Channel, lifecycle stage, open cases, service tier, renewal windows, and consent constraints typically matter more than long attribute lists.
Intent reflects the likely goal, such as resolving an issue, renewing, upgrading, or comparing options.
Next best experience is the action tied to an outcome, such as routing to the correct queue, recommending knowledge, creating a renewal task, or surfacing guided scripting.
For this to work, decision outputs must move. Salesforce describes Data Cloud activation as presenting data in an actionable format, with both streaming and batch support. Without reliable activation, decision logic exists but workflows stay unchanged.
A useful check remains simple. What changes tomorrow if the prediction is correct.
AI increases demand for fresh, consistent signals. That pressure exposes architectural weaknesses quickly, especially fragmented identity and brittle integrations.
Multi-org architecture fits when isolation requirements are persistent, such as regulatory separation, distinct governance, or independent release cadence. The cost is increased integration complexity and operational overhead.
Long-term complexity is driven less by org count and more by a few decisions. Where the golden customer record lives. How identity is resolved across org boundaries. Where analytics run. How releases stay coordinated when dependencies exist.
AI raises the stakes because identity, consent, and data freshness become baseline requirements for prediction and personalization.
When AI depends on signals, delivery mechanics matter.
Salesforce describes Platform Events as secure, scalable messages for exchanging real-time event data between Salesforce and external systems. Change Data Capture publishes near-real-time change events for record creation, updates, and deletions to support synchronization.
These primitives support safer retries, recovery after failures, and protection against spikes. They also reduce hidden coupling by separating “what changed” from “who requested it,” which simplifies downstream decisioning.
As AI becomes embedded, releases carry more risk because more workflows depend on automation and data. Delivery discipline turns risk into routine.
Salesforce Help documentation for DevOps Center states that each pipeline stage has an associated branch in the source control repository.
This is where many programs either reduce risk over time or accumulate it. If the pipeline cannot reproduce a release from source control and promote it through environments with traceability, AI features will magnify that weakness.
Some industries multiply requirements rather than add them.
In healthcare, Salesforce maintains a HIPAA compliance category and references current BAA restrictions and HIPAA-covered services. That scope matters because compliance is shaped by service boundaries and technical controls together. Strong access control, encryption strategy, auditability, and retention discipline become core design concerns. With generative workflows in play, outputs must respect access rules the same way field-level security does.
Government environments place similar pressure on identity, policy-driven access, and traceability. Logs and audit history are part of the system’s value, not an afterthought.
Emerging technologies fit Salesforce architectures when boundaries are explicit.
Blockchain is most defensible as a verification layer. Sensitive data stays off-chain, hashes or proofs are stored, Salesforce handles workflow and user experience, and the chain provides verification.
IoT works best as signals rather than raw telemetry. Telemetry is aggregated and analyzed upstream, converted into actionable indicators, then pushed into Salesforce so service workflows can act.
These constraints keep the CRM focused on orchestration rather than high-volume processing.
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\ Security defines the boundary around everything above.
Salesforce describes Salesforce Shield as including Platform Encryption, Event Monitoring, and Field Audit Trail, mapping directly to enterprise needs for encryption, visibility, and audit history. Privacy obligations reinforce the same design discipline. Salesforce’s GDPR guidance outlines expanded rights for individuals and obligations for organizations handling personal data.
In practice, this means data discovery, consent management, retention automation, access controls, and auditability. AI increases the importance of these controls because outputs can surface information in new contexts.
A non-negotiable guardrail applies. If a user cannot access a field, an AI summary should not surface it.
AI in Salesforce works when it is treated as an operable system. Models matter, but outcomes depend on signal delivery, workflow wiring, release control, and security boundaries.
A final check keeps teams grounded. Can the workflow impact be explained clearly. Can inputs be traced and recovered during failures. Can changes be reproduced and promoted with confidence. Can outputs stay within access rules and privacy obligations.
One question ties it together. Could this run during an audit, during a peak season, and during a live incident without improvisation.
If the answer is yes, the foundation is strong enough to keep adding AI without compounding risk.
:::info This story was published under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program.
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