frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Whatever became of holography? (2011)

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/whatever-became-of-holography
85•cainxinth•3h ago•34 comments

Total Annihilation, rebuilt for modern computers

https://nanolathe.gg
395•jttnr•9h ago•167 comments

Fingerprints are the new cookies

https://royfish.dev/fingerprints-are-the-new-cookies
134•royfish•4h ago•53 comments

Cartographers of North Korea (2019)

https://cartographers-nk.wonyoung.so/
201•edent•7h ago•38 comments

The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening

https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/2109361546505966046
283•albertzeyer•6h ago•463 comments

Tattoos you can turn on and off

https://www.livescience.com/technology/cool-chemistry-trick-allows-new-tattoos-to-turn-on-and-off
18•MortyDev•6h ago•4 comments

Illustration Beyond Proof

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/11/illustration-beyond-proof/
40•smilelamp•3h ago•0 comments

Google is illegaly cutting forest to build data centers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/06/google-datacentres-finland-temporary-halt-envi...
205•heyimada•4h ago•42 comments

Vectorized CLZ and CTZ

https://purplesyringa.moe/blog/vectorized-clz-and-ctz/
17•zX41ZdbW•23h ago•2 comments

Terence Tao: Math 2.0 [pdf]

https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/slides/math-2-0-caltech-2026.pdf
336•Anon84•14h ago•387 comments

Local Indexing to reduce tool calling and token usage

https://tedhaley.ca/pensieve/
36•TedHaley•3h ago•3 comments

Calculus with Julia

https://jverzani.github.io/CalculusWithJuliaNotes.jl/
9•subset•1d ago•1 comments

Recursive self-improvement through collective intelligence

https://pub.sakana.ai/mass/
77•hardmaru•4h ago•40 comments

Passkeys are a trap

https://nonfunctional.substack.com/p/passkeys-are-a-trap-do-not-use-them
341•laurex•5h ago•194 comments

Programmable pigments: Photochromic nanoparticle inks for rewritable tattoos

https://www.cell.com/matter-light/fulltext/S3117-5848(26)00119-5
31•Bluestein•17h ago•2 comments

So, You’d Like To Sell Your Print Issues Of The Onion?

https://theonion.com/archivehunt/
266•mooreds•7h ago•36 comments

Chapter 1 of "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger (1972)

https://www.ways-of-seeing.com/ch1
82•rafael859•8h ago•13 comments

NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effect

https://www.nyc.gov/main/click-to-cancel
380•gregsadetsky•9h ago•190 comments

Doory – Open-Source Canva

https://github.com/shaongitbd/doory
11•acley•2h ago•0 comments

I guess I'm using WebP now?

https://anderegg.ca/2026/10/08/i-guess-im-using-webp-now
86•Brajeshwar•2d ago•88 comments

500B tokens later: Letting AI agents decompile a first-person shooter

https://momo5502.com/posts/2026-10-09-game-decompilation/
177•davikr•1d ago•124 comments

The tilde in your PATH may not be your HOME

https://disconnect3d.pl//2026/10/02/dont-put-tilde-in-your-path/
222•arusekk•15h ago•144 comments

Safe SIMD in Rust, even on the inside

https://shnatsel.github.io/safe-simd-in-rust-even-on-the-inside/
47•ravenical•1d ago•2 comments

HashiCorp archives the Boundary open source repo

https://github.com/hashicorp/boundary
48•vmatsiiako•3h ago•10 comments

apsw: Another Python SQLite Wrapper

https://github.com/rogerbinns/apsw
73•tosh•10h ago•15 comments

A Remote Employee Refused 160 Webcam Photos a Day. Her Employer Fired Her

https://www.inc.com/chloe-rosenberg/a-remote-employee-refused-160-webcam-photos-a-day-her-employe...
174•bhrlady•6h ago•131 comments

FlowCE: Calculus on your TI-84 Plus CE

https://tommyb3ll.github.io/FlowCE/
35•jgx0•1d ago•17 comments

How I reverse engineered a commercial spatial audio effect

http://epestr.com/blog/reverse-engineering-a-commercial-spatial-audio-effect/
108•epestr•11h ago•34 comments

Show HN: BetterWispr – Free, open-source dictation for Mac

https://betterwispr.com/
166•kartik017•15h ago•95 comments

ClickHouse C – Talk to ClickHouse using its native binary protocol

https://github.com/ClickHouse/clickhouse-c
9•saisrirampur•4h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Extending a Language – Writing Powerful Macros in Scheme

https://mnieper.github.io/scheme-macros/README.html
92•textread•1y ago

Comments

neilv•1y ago
A few formatting changes might make this advanced example easier to understand:

    (define-syntax trace-let
      (syntax-rules ()
        [(trace-let name ([var expr] ...) body1 ... body2)
         (let f ([depth 0] [var expr] ...)
           (define name
             (lambda (var ...)
               (f (+ depth 1) var ...)))
           (indent depth)
           (display "(")
           (display 'name)
           (begin
             (display " ")
             (display var))
           ...
           (display ")")
           (newline)
           (call-with-values
               (lambda ()
                 body1 ... body2)
             (lambda val*
               (indent depth)
               (fold-left
                (lambda (sep val)
                  (display sep)
                  (display val)
                  " ")
                "" val*)
               (newline)
               (apply values val*))))]))
The biggest one is to make the rule template pattern variables all-uppercase. I also made a few other tweaks, including using indentation a little more, and naming the named-`let` variable as "loop" (I usually name it `loop` or prefix the name with `loop-` if there's more than one):

    (define-syntax trace-let
      (syntax-rules ()
        ((trace-let NAME ((VAR EXPR) ...) BODY1 ... BODY2)
         (let loop ((depth 0)
                    (VAR   EXPR) ...)
           (define NAME
             (lambda (VAR ...)
               (loop (+ depth 1) VAR ...)))
           (indent depth)
           (display "(")
           (display (quote NAME))
           (begin (display " ")
                  (display VAR)) ...
           (display ")")
           (newline)
           (call-with-values (lambda ()
                               BODY1 ... BODY2)
             (lambda val*
               (indent depth)
               (fold-left (lambda (sep val)
                            (display sep)
                            (display val)
                            " ")
                          ""
                          val*)
               (newline)
               (apply values val*)))))))
Incidentally, all-uppercase Scheme pattern variables is one of the all-time best uses of all-uppercase in any language. Second only to all-uppercase for the C preprocessor, where a preprocessor macro can introduce almost arbitrary text. Using all-uppercase for constants in some language that has constants, however, is an abomination.

(My suspicion of why Java did all-caps is that they were developing a language for embedded systems developers who were currently using C and C++, and they wanted to make it superficially look similar, even though it was an entirely different language. And then, ironically, the language ended up being used mostly by the analogue of a very different developer of the time: corporate internal information systems developers, who, as a field, didn't use anything like C. It's too late to save Java, but to all other language and API developers, please stop the insanity of all-caps constants, enum values, etc. It's not the most important thing that needs to jump out from the code above all other things.)

Y_Y•1y ago
FWIW, all-caps makes this look much worse to me. I understand that people like things like Hungarian notation, arrows over vector names, and shouting Common Lisp symbols. I understand the argument that it can make reading easier. I just can't appreciate that benefit, and it seems to me an ugly hack which obscures the abstract and general symbolic manipulation going on.

This is all highly subjective of course, de gustibus non disputandem.

neilv•1y ago
You mean aesthetically, in that interspersed all-caps makes the code visually less soothingly sensual?

I can sympathize, but let me make a non-aesthetic argument...

In large blocks of code, with all-caps, you can see at a glance where all the template substitutions are happening, and also instantly know as you're reading code what are variables and what are template substitutions?

I'm asking because one of my realizations in recent years is that not everyone reads or sees code the same way.

For example, maybe some people are stronger "visual" and some people are stronger "verbal".

For another example of a different in how people perceive and think, some people can visualize an object in their mind almost as if they're looking at it, but other people can only know and describe what it looks like without bringing a visual of it into their head.

With the benefit of the all-caps, I can glance at this and immediately see much of the structure of the template. Without all-caps, I'd have to work harder to find all the pattern variables, and the structure would be obscured.

For a bit kludgy practical matter, as I'm quickly looking at pieces of code in a template, with all-caps, I can look at a fragment of code in isolation and know what are and aren't pattern variables. Without that, I have to go read the top of the template clause (and read through any syntactic scopes of `let-syntax`) and get that in my head, until I get to the fragment of code I originally wanted to look at.

IDE support can make this unnecessary, with a hypothetical great IDE, with familiar syntax coloring. But still, if there is one thing that all-caps should be reserved for, it's something like this.

With all-caps, your code can be sensual, and the jolting all-caps bits are look out, potentially arbitrary code gets pasted into here.

mnemenaut•1y ago
https://github.com/rogerturner/scheme-macros/blob/main/examp... shows stepwise development of a trace-let [the `(example: (fn arg) => result)` forms are tests - see check-examples library]
Y_Y
•
1y ago
Since you asked, my objection is both aesthetic and semantic, though I was really referring to the semantic part above.

I think you've hit the nail on the head with this visual vs. verbal distinction.

I can add a few clarifying details. I don't use IDEs as much as basic text editors maybe with highlighting, and I try not to rely on any fancy features. It does worry me that the allcaps use you describe is (afaik) not known to the editor or interpreter, so if you make a mistake or the symbol gets out of sync with its meaning (re: pattern variables) you may have a false signal. Finally I'll say that in the end I can't suggest a good way to treat these special variables, and so maybe I don't get it, or tastes like mine would be better served by a different formalism for macros.