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What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260909-00/?p=112683
114•soheilpro•3h ago•48 comments

DeepSeek v4.1 Flash

https://twitter.com/deepseek_ai/status/2097930608790167907
484•Liwink•5h ago•261 comments

Stockfish 19

https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2026/stockfish-19/
84•atiedebee•2d ago•47 comments

iPhone Duo

https://www.apple.com/iphone-duo/
1241•thecosmicfrog•17h ago•2180 comments

Show HN: The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021

https://honestlyranked.com/guides/streaming-price-increases/
102•honestlyranked•1h ago•109 comments

Show HN: What if the speed of light was 5 km/h?

https://rivendell.dmitrybrant.com/relativity/
401•dmitrybrant•10h ago•160 comments

Shopify acquires Tailwind

https://tailwindcss.com/blog/tailwind-is-joining-shopify
1056•EdwinHoksberg•22h ago•407 comments

What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks

https://tautology.town/2026/06/01/card-networks.html
561•evakhoury•1d ago•342 comments

Larger Pacific Striped Octopus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larger_Pacific_striped_octopus
79•olalonde•1d ago•42 comments

Object storage is all you need

https://www.tigrisdata.com/blog/object-storage-all-need/
11•jpsaccount•1d ago•5 comments

Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening

https://www.techradar.com/health-fitness/smartwatches/thanks-to-siri-recaps-your-apple-watch-is-a...
28•geox•1h ago•16 comments

Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives

https://spectrum.ieee.org/are-self-driving-cars-safe
365•bookofjoe•18h ago•638 comments

PlayStation cancels Kojima's PHYSINT, Xbox steps in

https://twitter.com/hideo_kojima_en/status/2097877506401681753
38•HatchedLake721•1h ago•9 comments

Show HN: Art – draw one stroke, let symmetry complete it

https://mrdee.in/mandala/
21•cyb0rg0•4d ago•8 comments

Samsung Debuts zHBM Prototype, Stacking Memory Directly on AI Accelerators

https://www.thelec.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=12835
31•peter_d_sherman•3d ago•4 comments

No Man's Sky Cosmos

https://www.nomanssky.com/cosmos-update/
411•Limb•20h ago•409 comments

GPT-6 Astra, looped transformers, and hidden reasoning

https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/gpt-6-astra-looped-transformers-and
454•ModelForge•21h ago•146 comments

AirPods 5

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-introduces-airpods-5-with-best-in-class-open-ear-act...
470•awad•18h ago•399 comments

iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-debuts-iphone-18-pro-and-iphone-18-pro-max/
374•meetpateltech•18h ago•418 comments

Automattic's board forces CEO Matt Mullenweg into leave of absence

https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/automattics-board-forces-ceo-matt-mullenweg-into-leave-of-absence/
327•LeoPanthera•12h ago•215 comments

All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117244102901892965
205•yurivish•8h ago•152 comments

Aardman (Wallace and Gromit) Is Selling Its Original Movie Puppets

https://gizmodo.com/aardman-is-selling-its-original-movie-puppets-this-month-2000807968
59•Gaishan•3d ago•11 comments

Show HN: Compute polynomials twice as fast

https://thomasahle.com/fast-polynomials/
100•thomasahle•1d ago•34 comments

Desert Ant Labs: local, fast models that run on device

https://desertant.com/blog/introducing-desert-ant-labs/
459•willwhitedc•1d ago•97 comments

Training a 3.8B LLM to 0.384 CORE for $998

https://hugovergnes.github.io/little-lm-3-8b/
92•Anon84•10h ago•14 comments

Qwen 3.8 follows GPT-5.5 Pro reasoning prefills

https://gist.github.com/wsxiaoys/e0286dc6bb624ff5fdf49e7f4c528ba3
222•wsxiaoys•18h ago•86 comments

I think I hate the internet

https://strategictree.bearblog.dev/i-think-i-hate-the-internet/
96•saikatsg•5h ago•76 comments

Open Source Durable Objects for Postgres

https://solidobjects.dev/blog/introducing-solidobjects
31•cardmagic•1d ago•10 comments

Factoring RSA 260

https://cognition.com/blog/factoring-rsa-260
109•samyok•15h ago•12 comments

Apple Watch Series 12

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/introducing-apple-watch-series-12-with-the-all-new-health-...
262•Lealen•18h ago•331 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.