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Denmark Data Breach Exposes 8.8M People's Personal Data

https://www.cpr.dk/cpr-nyt/nyhedsarkiv/2026/okt/omfattende-uautoriseret-adgang-til-borgeres-cpr-o...
73•clan•1h ago•31 comments

Huawei and Qualcomm Announce Broad Patent License Agreement

https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2026/10/qualcomm-broad-patent-agreement
56•0xedb•2h ago•32 comments

Run Qwen 3.8 Flash Next (125B) on consumer hardware (RTX 4090) at 100T/s

https://github.com/Niko1221/Strata
805•snehesht•21h ago•356 comments

In the wake of Tippett Studios’ closure, a digital archive appears online

https://filmstories.co.uk/news/tippett-studios-in-the-wake-of-its-closure-a-digital-archive-of-an...
137•rdmuser•12h ago•17 comments

A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE

https://wieslawsoltes.github.io/VB6/
239•wiso•15h ago•74 comments

We ported the original Doom to SQL

https://cedardb.com/blog/sqldoom/
111•Vaslo•1d ago•14 comments

Gods in the Classroom: Religion and Education in First Millennium BCE Babylonia

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/iraq/article/gods-in-the-classroom-religion-and-education...
35•pseudolus•3d ago•9 comments

Infidel goes wild

https://blog.zarfhome.com/2026/10/infidel-goes-wild
137•tobr•1d ago•21 comments

The Tao of Backup

http://www.taobackup.com/index.html
140•vntok•2d ago•49 comments

Replacement of petroleum based products with plant-based materials (2025)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eng2.70108
66•thelastgallon•4h ago•26 comments

First Implantable Cochlear Implant Launches

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fully-implantable-cochlear-implant
6•rbanffy•3d ago•1 comments

Turn off Apple Intelligence on macOS 27 and get its disk space back

https://github.com/omlahore/RemoveMacAI
572•privacyisntdead•14h ago•396 comments

Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died

874•paveworld•1d ago•188 comments

Decision models like Jev don't beat LLM-as-a-judge or traditional classifiers

https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2026/10/02/benchmarking-ai-decision-models-against-traditi...
62•tomncooper•2d ago•15 comments

Girl, 12, fatally shot in US during 'dispute over parking space'

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwr5y48p89vvo
3•e2e4•7m ago•1 comments

Demystifying Tufte's data-ink ratio

https://tuftesrazor.scienceux.org/
48•s4074433•2d ago•18 comments

Powerless F1 drivers frustrated by Bahrain F1 software glitch

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/horrible-totally-unacceptable-powerless-f1-drivers-frustrated-...
200•llm_nerd•8h ago•168 comments

Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

https://www.1011now.com/2026/09/30/more-questions-than-answers-about-lincolns-google-data-center-...
395•sensanaty•14h ago•516 comments

Automating my 35mm film scanning pipeline

https://shannadige.com/blog/darkroom/
78•shannadige•1d ago•57 comments

'Neanderthals Among Us' review

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/neanderthals-among-us-peter-sahlins-review
75•pepys•1d ago•76 comments

What is going on with ceiling fans

https://mcmansionhell.com/post/829127919552151552/what-is-going-on-with-ceiling-fans
310•colinprince•4d ago•266 comments

Watson Jr. memo about CDC 6600 (1963)

https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/supercomputers/10/33/62
44•mooreds•1d ago•23 comments

Show HN: Glashütte Trash Clock – A 30-minute pendulum clock made from trash

https://niklasroy.com/gtc/
199•r0r0•3d ago•29 comments

Self-hosted HTTP tunnels with SSH and Nginx

https://vincent.bernat.ch/en/blog/2026-http-over-ssh
139•renehsz•11h ago•32 comments

Bill Draper has died

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/william-draper-dead.html
121•bookofjoe•21h ago•38 comments

How to scale intent, quality, and artistry with AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvFTMtw4Jk
86•simonjgreen•1d ago•31 comments

Lace and Labor: Lessons from the actual Luddites

https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/lace-and-labor
17•surprisetalk•4d ago•1 comments

Interview with Chicken Scheme Maintainer Sjamaan/Peter Bex

https://alexalejandre.com/interviews/peter-bex/
41•veqq•2d ago•11 comments

Blindsight (Watts Novel)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)
90•mooreds•17h ago•98 comments

Sales of sub-€25,000 electric car models set to rise sevenfold

https://www.transportenvironment.org/articles/wave-of-affordable-electric-cars-is-boosting-consum...
52•geox•2h ago•77 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.