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Pre-Release of Polars 2.0

https://pola.rs/posts/announcing-polars-2/
99•komape•2h ago•13 comments

The Browser's Main Thread Is Expensive

https://kciter.so/posts/the-expensive-main-thread/en/
20•kciter•1d ago•3 comments

Three schoolgirls in Kinsale pulled up a pea plant covered in warts (2016)

https://scienceblog.com/b-three-schoolgirls-in-kinsale-pulled-up-a-pea-plant-covered-in-warts-and...
37•DamonHD•2h ago•9 comments

Muse Spark 1.3

https://developer.meta.com/ai/models/muse-spark/
568•bvaldivielso•13h ago•379 comments

Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/3-8-flash-and-3-8-flash-c...
1005•bratao•17h ago•567 comments

LLMs and Self-Referentiality

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10046
38•mavdol04•1d ago•21 comments

The Computer Museum of America reclamation project

https://computer-museum.org/wp/
42•rbanffy•2d ago•12 comments

Holden's Lightning Flight

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden%27s_Lightning_flight
151•ColinWright•2d ago•33 comments

Three sites made 215,128 “best software” pages for AI. Perplexity cites them

https://trellner.com/reports/manufactured-sources-behind-ai-recommendations/
408•jakobgreenfeld•19h ago•199 comments

Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/technology/google-ad-tech-remedies.html
371•donohoe•18h ago•277 comments

Can I opt out of my input or output data being used for training?

https://help.mistral.ai/en/articles/455207-can-i-opt-out-of-my-input-or-output-data-being-used-fo...
440•teekert•20h ago•198 comments

Higher Multipoles of the Cow

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.00506
66•MrOrelliOReilly•1d ago•20 comments

Reverse Engineering Unknown File Formats with ImHex

https://werwolv.net/posts/file_format_reverse_engineering/
197•carlos-menezes•2d ago•34 comments

Fable 5.1 World Modeling

https://github.com/PhiloLabs/fable51-worlds
238•surreal_•13h ago•70 comments

Launch HN: RonanRX (YC S26) – Personalized Peptides and GLP-1s

59•lloydarmbrust•10h ago•66 comments

Show HN: OwnTime – a chess clock for your day's priorities

https://owntime.app/
76•fmos•1d ago•37 comments

Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle

https://www.science.org/content/article/world-s-biggest-dark-matter-detector-spots-single-weird-p...
292•randycupertino•19h ago•102 comments

Wendell Berry has died

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/wendell-berry-dead.html
186•Curiositry•2d ago•97 comments

Aging brains blend memories together instead of just forgetting them

https://studyfinds.com/aging-brains-blend-memories-together-instead-of-forgetting-them-study-finds/
275•mdp2021•20h ago•117 comments

Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-the-story-of-qantas-flight-32-bdaa62d...
131•gumby•14h ago•81 comments

Engineering of the fastest WebAssembly interpreters

https://wasmi-labs.github.io/blog/posts/wasmi-v2.0/
90•herobird•1d ago•8 comments

Exit the Cave

https://turtlespace.blog/p/exit-the-cave
258•akkartik•18h ago•92 comments

Async Rust vs RTOS showdown (2022)

https://tweedegolf.nl/en/blog/65/async-rust-vs-rtos-showdown/
89•kooi•14h ago•43 comments

Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542cf683b/34d561c8-cf5c-4e69-af47-3782ea...
59•Eridanus2•13h ago•33 comments

A Selection of Los Alamos Rolodex Business Cards

https://clui.org/collections/los-alamos-business-cards/selection-cards
167•1970-01-01•2d ago•46 comments

We could save petabytes of cache storage with Zstandard and Pingora

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cache-transcoding/
110•torutofu•1d ago•46 comments

Poisson Disk Sampling

https://stripeacross.com/posts/poisson-disk-sampling/
161•vismit2000•19h ago•19 comments

Nango (YC W23) is hiring across eng, product and GTM (SF and remote)

https://nango.dev/careers
1•bastienbeurier•12h ago

Reasons robotics is hard

https://secondthoughts.ai/p/14-reasons-robotics-is-hard
93•ddp26•11h ago•51 comments

WebLLM: high-performance in-browser LLM inference engine

https://github.com/mlc-ai/web-llm
115•saikatsg•19h ago•20 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.