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The Internals of PostgreSQL

https://www.interdb.jp/pg/index.html
147•ibobev•5h ago•6 comments

Jailbreaking my car's navigation system just so I can change the time

https://blog.nns.ee/2026/11/02/renault-hack/
641•xx_ns•1d ago•268 comments

Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot

https://neufangled.com/
419•nharada•10h ago•152 comments

Giant Canyon on Mars Is Still Tectonically Active Today

https://lamont.columbia.edu/news/giant-canyon-mars-still-tectonically-active-today
16•gmays•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: HackerTV – HN's most-recommended Youtube videos as 24/7 TV channels

https://hackertv.org
204•dsalzman•1d ago•41 comments

Safari introduces Adaptive Dark Mode in 27.3

https://webkit.org/blog/18541/introducing-adaptive-dark-mode/
319•paddingtone•5h ago•189 comments

Japan's Jimi 'Mundane' Halloween Costumes of 2026

https://spoon-tamago.com/japan-jimi-mundane-halloween-costumes-2026/
130•zdw•1d ago•21 comments

Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/fujifilm-to-boost-tape-production-5x-as-ai-fuels-archivin...
397•bookofjoe•1d ago•174 comments

Qwen 3.8 27B on my laptop can interpret model weights, too

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/3/qwen-can-interpret-model-weights/
511•theanonymousone•9h ago•162 comments

The Little Book of Generative AI Foundations: An Intuitive Mathematical Primer

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.29713
257•ibobev•5h ago•42 comments

Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data

https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/14370
1075•sidgarimella•9h ago•354 comments

C++26 Disapproved

https://andreasfertig.com/blog/2026/11/cpp26-dis-failed-how-does-cpp-survive/
25•thatxliner•2h ago•1 comments

Why Clip Art Was Everywhere Until It Wasn't [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLlpxE6AYM
5•surprisetalk•14h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Kairos – Open-source risk and fraud decisioning platform

https://github.com/finic-ai/kairos
66•ayanb9440•5h ago•8 comments

We're training a Figma-fluent editing model

https://www.figma.com/blog/training-a-figma-fluent-editing-model/
79•gmays•2d ago•39 comments

There is no posttraining data commons

https://openathena.ai/blog/there-is-no-posttraining-data-commons/
34•lukasschwab•12h ago•7 comments

US tech giants' hidden AI debt swells 90% to $3.2T in 6 months

https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-tech-giants-hidden-ai-debt...
291•angry_impala•5h ago•127 comments

Introduction to Programming in ATS

https://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/DOCUMENT/INT2PROGINATS/HTML/book1.html
58•ibobev•7h ago•8 comments

How I use AI (Oct 2026)

https://ben.stolovitz.com/posts/how-use-ai-oct-2026/
96•citelao•8h ago•86 comments

Could a modern chess engine on a Pentium have defeated Kasparov in 1996?

https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2026/algorithmic-improvements-chess.html
457•markusw•19h ago•222 comments

Curiosity Traps

https://www.autodidacts.io/curiosity-traps/
51•surprisetalk•1d ago•6 comments

The 'Astra can read and write weights to improve Qwen' post is misleading

https://honnibal.dev/blog/astra-read-write-misleading
916•syllogism•14h ago•192 comments

Writing seen in PHerc. 306B, for the first time in 2000 years

https://scrollprize.substack.com/p/writing-seen-in-pherc-306b-for-the
118•benbreen•1d ago•16 comments

Killing what can't be handled – putting a spaghetti demon to eternal rest

https://themaister.net/blog/2026/10/29/killing-what-cant-be-handled-putting-a-spaghetti-demon-to-...
36•ibobev•1d ago•7 comments

Union Types and Option Types (2025)

https://tibleiz.net/blog/2025-03-16-union-types-and-option-types.html
24•g0xA52A2A•1d ago•11 comments

Ashby (YC W19) Is Hiring EMs

https://www.ashbyhq.com/careers?ashby_jid=695b1ce6-c375-4fad-94ef-61b50a3fbd28&utm_source=hn
1•abhikp•10h ago

Pratt parsing is a black box

https://vinipsmaker.github.io/blog/article/pratt-parsing-is-a-black-box/
42•ibobev•7h ago•19 comments

Mac at any scale

https://namespace.so/blog/mac-at-any-scale
323•anner_•12h ago•191 comments

Antimony: CAD Software Evolved from Lisp Machines and Not Drafting Tables (2015)

https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/
106•pmkary•1d ago•60 comments

macOS 27 does not support CoreStorage volumes

https://wadetregaskis.com/macos-27-golden-gate-does-not-actually-support-corestorage-or-hfs-volumes/
118•colejohnson66•7h ago•81 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.