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AI is forcing us to pay off 40 years of technical debt

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-in-cybersecurity-php2shell-vulnerability
620•pseudolus•5h ago•397 comments

Guerrilla Bike Lanes: San Francisco Makes Illicit Infrastructure Permanent (2016)

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/guerrilla-bike-lanes-san-francisco-makes-illicit-infrastru...
96•zenincognito•2h ago•25 comments

Evergreen: A Provably Safe Systems Language

https://evergreenlang.net
44•jordan_bonecut•1h ago•25 comments

Nvidia RTX Spark encrypted firmware slows inference speed to 35% on Linux

https://www.mindstudio.ai/blog/linux-nvidia-rtx-spark-laptop
426•novaRom•8h ago•192 comments

North Korean fake job interview led to $6.3B Binance heist

https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/11/03/north-korean-fake-job-interview-led-to-63b-binanc...
290•smalltech•3h ago•168 comments

An end to buggy web apps

https://replay.io/blog/an-end-to-buggy-web-apps
4•bhackett•8m ago•0 comments

AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in history

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-expects-to-outsell-intel-in-q4-for-the-first-...
102•rbanffy•1h ago•29 comments

Verification Is Not Knowledge: Science needs more than answers

https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/verification-is-not-knowledge
172•ersinesen•8h ago•99 comments

Incident with Pull Requests, Git Operations and Issues

https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/smtdswd1h2w4
198•kevcampb•7h ago•103 comments

Tell HN: Gemini trains on chat history, even for subscribers (personal accounts)

429•jameslk•7h ago•118 comments

Kimi K3.1 Pro model weights are out

https://huggingface.co/moonshotai/Kimi-K3.1-Pro
76•abrarthought•1h ago•8 comments

Letting users trust their own MCP clients, without opening a phishing hole

https://streamvessel.com/blog/mcp-trusted-redirect-uris
18•isalexlog•1h ago•2 comments

Show HN: I built a tool that prices a prebuilt PC part by part

https://pcdealcheck.com/
16•adlep•1h ago•5 comments

Adding Window Functions to a Spreadsheet

https://www.getgrist.com/blog/running-totals-you-dont-have-to-chase/
20•reedciccio•1h ago•14 comments

Show HN: Codemap – one-page interactive map of any Go repository

https://github.com/peterretief/codemap
22•peter_retief•1h ago•5 comments

Jelly Sheet

https://mrdoob.github.io/codevember-2026/01/
384•memalign•13h ago•100 comments

Debian apt security update (man-in-the-middle)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2026/msg00526.html?pow_referer=
69•SG-•2h ago•13 comments

Kitty 0.50

https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/changelog/#
291•porridgeraisin•8h ago•186 comments

Mocktastic: A Meshtastic Node on Arduino

https://github.com/Vapmuz/Mocktastic
13•kimi•3h ago•1 comments

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

https://neufangled.com/
732•nharada•1d ago•226 comments

The Internals of PostgreSQL

https://www.interdb.jp/pg/index.html
340•ibobev•19h ago•25 comments

Pierre Computer is being acquired by OpenAI

https://twitter.com/pierrecomputer/status/2117999036175188183
41•itunpredictable•1h ago•15 comments

The lost malloc()

https://napcakes.nekoweb.org/posts/malloc/
115•matt_d•9h ago•47 comments

Synaptics Appears to Use Legal Threats to Block Open-Source DisplayLink Driver

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Synaptics-Blocks-Vino-Driver
124•snvzz•5h ago•49 comments

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

https://hackertv.org
415•dsalzman•1d ago•78 comments

Giant canyon on Mars is still tectonically active

https://lamont.columbia.edu/news/giant-canyon-mars-still-tectonically-active-today
130•gmays•15h ago•30 comments

Distinct cellular and genetic differences in colorectal cancer in young patients

https://www.dana-farber.org/newsroom/news-releases/2026/study-reveals-distinct-cellular-and-genet...
113•gmays•13h ago•49 comments

Show HN: Uncracked City, detective game where you question LLM suspects that lie

https://uncracked.city
111•passkey1510•19h ago•54 comments

Japan's Jimi 'Mundane' Halloween Costumes of 2026

https://spoon-tamago.com/japan-jimi-mundane-halloween-costumes-2026/
238•zdw•2d ago•35 comments

Rosalind Franklin figured out DNA's helical structure before Watson and Crick

https://www.livescience.com/health/she-knew-she-had-something-really-important-on-her-hands-rosal...
13•gmays•1h ago•1 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.