frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

The MacBook Pro's OLED PWM Problem: When a 'Better' Display Becomes Worse to Use

https://macanorak.com/the-macbook-pros-oled-pwm-problem-when-a-better-display-becomes-worse-to-use/
65•MacAnorak•1h ago•36 comments

SpaceX catches the Starship to end Flight 15

https://www.spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-15
1403•ls612•17h ago•932 comments

Why did some Apollo missions carry a grenade launcher?

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37775
110•Skyfall106•5h ago•67 comments

Understanding Positional Embeddings in Modern LLMs

https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/understanding-positional-embeddings
37•vismit2000•2h ago•0 comments

Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than (2011)

https://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html
17•ksec•56m ago•2 comments

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol Status Code 483 (I'm Not a Freezer)

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-banffy-httpbis-not-a-freezer/
3•rbanffy•8m ago•1 comments

Court denies motion to dismiss DRAM price fixing case

https://litnews.ai/articles/garciaguirre-samsung-sk-hynix-micron-dram-conspiracy-suit-survives-di...
314•ybathaee•13h ago•125 comments

Lovable apps expose passport details and more than 200K private messages

https://www.crissyfield.de/research/lovable-en/
909•armcat•20h ago•344 comments

What thousands of conversations look like inside a language model

https://operator0x.com/field-notes/qwen-conversation-state-space/
39•josip208•2d ago•8 comments

A NES emulator written in Odin

https://lucypero.com/lucynes.html
14•frostbyte7•1h ago•0 comments

Chasing an audio artifact on power loss

https://subalpinecircuits.com/chasing-an-audio-artifact-on-power-loss/
14•ireflect•2d ago•1 comments

Handwritten 200-year-old dismissal notice found on roof tile

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6jdmdzv25r9o
40•nephihaha•2d ago•24 comments

Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap with His Family Business

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/15/us/politics/lutnick-pushed-to-weaken-chip-rules-that-overlap-w...
83•JumpCrisscross•2h ago•23 comments

The Telephone Changed the World

https://lithub.com/how-the-telephone-changed-the-world/
6•NaOH•15h ago•0 comments

How did Woz write the Apple 1 BASIC before building the computer?

https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/17957
256•Skyfall106•16h ago•133 comments

Disk encryption on NetBSD – achieving secrecy

https://netbsd.org/~nia/disk-encrypt/
64•jaypatelani•9h ago•14 comments

My favourite modern NES games

https://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/25-of-my-favourite-modern-nes-games/
145•jordigh•11h ago•18 comments

KDE: The documentary [video]

https://tube.kockatoo.org/w/fFinNHfanLT7aBEb2B8y4c
529•mrkn1•1d ago•121 comments

Strictly monotonic timestamps and gapless sequences in Rust

https://tsoracle.rs/
20•znano•2d ago•8 comments

A family tree of software job titles

https://zwischenzugs.com/2026/11/03/a-family-tree-of-software-job-titles/
365•umerf•20h ago•183 comments

Show HN: Carton Clock – A working pendulum clock made from empty drink cartons

https://www.niklasroy.com/carton-clock/
22•r0r0•2d ago•1 comments

Open-Source HF Communications for Remote Communities and Experimenters

https://www.ardc.net/rhizomaticas-hermes-and-mercury-expand-open-source-hf-communications-for-rem...
41•tejtm•4d ago•5 comments

Semicircle Packing

https://rorz.io/writing/semicircle-packing
57•sarreph•1d ago•5 comments

Why get an expensive Pi when I have an old phone?

https://so.long.thanks.fish/why-pi-when-i-have-an-old-phone/
590•casi•5d ago•310 comments

The Evolving Story of How Chemistry Became Biology

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-evolving-story-of-how-chemistry-became-biology-20261112/
66•pseudolus•2d ago•16 comments

PyPI's redesigned project pages with clearer security signals are now live

https://blog.pypi.org/posts/2026-11-06-ui-updates-complete/
258•rbanffy•22h ago•113 comments

Book list for streetfighting computer scientists

https://nick-black.com/dankwiki/index.php?title=Book_list_for_streetfighting_computer_scientists
70•num42•7h ago•24 comments

500 Lines or Less A 3D Modeller

https://aosabook.org/en/500L/a-3d-modeller.html
78•myth_drannon•2d ago•11 comments

Project Zero will disclose vulnerabilities 90 days after reporting

https://projectzero.google/2026/11/disclosure-policy.html
291•hacb•1d ago•165 comments

We're Asking an Appeals Court to Require a Warrant for ALPR Searches

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/11/were-asking-appeals-court-require-warrant-alpr-searches
284•nobody9999•12h ago•85 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.