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A 3rd World Embedded Engineer Responds to "RISC-V They Should Have Known Better"

https://rvembedded.com/blog_post/12/
317•Narishma•6h ago•166 comments

Claude: System Prompts

https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/release-notes/system-prompts
498•tosh•10h ago•212 comments

SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX

https://pikuma.com/blog/programming-intel-pentium-mmx-simd
55•ibobev•3d ago•21 comments

A quick look at zero-knowledge proofs

https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/zkp/
23•evakhoury•2d ago•1 comments

Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter

https://wiki.lowtechlab.org/wiki/Filtre_%C3%A0_eau_c%C3%A9ramique/en
67•Bluestein•5d ago•20 comments

Models Are Getting Dumber on Purpose

https://w4g1.dev/blog/models-are-getting-dumber-on-purpose
223•hruvhwe•4h ago•132 comments

Protobuf has LSP support. You're welcome

https://buf.build/blog/protobuf-lsp
97•theanonymousone•4h ago•69 comments

The AI Credit Resale Economy

https://vectoral.com/blog/who-are-the-token-brokers
212•mlenhard•9h ago•82 comments

Anthropic's 'Watermark' Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of Writing

https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/anthropics_watermark_text_adulteration_in_claude_is_a_perversi...
96•ropbear•1h ago•77 comments

MathCode, Mathematical Coding Agent

https://math-ai-org.github.io/mathcode/
49•homarp•5h ago•15 comments

Nvidia dramatically reduces amount of OpenAI infra financing it may guarantee

https://www.reuters.com/business/nvidia-scales-back-250-billion-openai-data-center-guarantee-wsj-...
68•root-parent•2h ago•8 comments

Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-16/stripe-nears-deal-to-buy-ai-firm-openrouter-fo...
117•zacharyozer•3h ago•86 comments

Anton Chekhov played at love most of his life

https://commonreader.wustl.edu/winning-and-losing-at-the-great-game-of-intimacy/
55•lermontov•1d ago•10 comments

Clamiga: Common Lisp for the Amiga

https://nnamgreb.de/blog/Clamiga+-+Common+Lisp+for+the+Amiga
75•emptybits•3d ago•7 comments

Plastic mechanical computer from 1963: The Digi-Comp 1 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y8bGBE71yw
43•tobr•1d ago•10 comments

The Case Against Formal Verification, 50 Years Later

https://ivan-gavran.github.io/0-social-processes-paper
71•ghuntley•3h ago•61 comments

Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/block-ads-firefox-ios
503•pentagrama•10h ago•207 comments

Tell HN: Cloudflare silently injects its analytics when you switch nameservers

237•stagas•5h ago•57 comments

St Lucie Nuclear Reactor Unit 1 manually shutdown, 3 control rods drop into core

https://www.wptv.com/news/treasure-coast/region-st-lucie-county/saint-lucie-nuclear-power-plant-u...
146•toomuchtodo•8h ago•106 comments

2,085 Tests, and None of Them Opens the Front Door

https://i.brandanthonymcdonald.com/what-my-tests-do-not-cover
3•aweful•3d ago•6 comments

Stop Turning every purchase into a tip request

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/america-needs-stop-turning-every-purchase-uncomfortable-tip-request
46•gist•2h ago•39 comments

Asus Bike Booster

https://www.asus.com/accessories/bike-booster/asus-oxiis/oxiis-intelligent-bike-booster/
603•wiradikusuma•4d ago•424 comments

A True Telnet BBS on a Casio Calculator

https://ei3lh.eu/2026/08/16/a-true-telnet-bbs-on-a-casio-calculator/
82•austinallegro•11h ago•9 comments

Before Rightmove, there was the Cosmorama

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/before-rightmove-there-was-the-cosmorama-londons-forgotten-p...
23•brod_ie•5d ago•3 comments

A SAT Attack on Tarski's High School Algebra Problem

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08421
80•matt_d•4d ago•32 comments

NIH is ending a key grant for budding clinical researchers

https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-ending-key-grant-budding-clinical-researchers
128•brandonb•7h ago•65 comments

Tasklet (YC P26) Is Hiring a Head of Design Engineering

https://tasklet.ai/careers/head-of-design-engineering
1•mayop100•10h ago

Archie G. Norcross' Maine Forest Fire Maps (1918–22)

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/maine-forest-fire-maps/
24•samclemens•4d ago•3 comments

Chestnut – eGPU dock with open-source firmware

https://hwbusters.com/news/comma-ai-egpu-dock-runs-open-source-firmware-249-bare-799-with-an-rx-9...
129•txrx0000•3d ago•36 comments

Asynchronous I/O in DuckDB: Work, Thread, Work

https://duckdb.org/2026/07/31/asynchronous-io
268•pdet•6d ago•29 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.