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Rabbits were a medieval royal luxury in England until the Black Death

https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rabbits-medieval-royal-luxury-england.html
50•samizdis•1d ago•25 comments

Hybrid Reasoning Agents: LLM agents that think in latent space, act through text

https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18861
351•allinonai•10h ago•167 comments

William Gibson and the trademarking of cyberspace

https://colo.to/cyberspace.html
154•Eric_Gullichsen•7h ago•47 comments

There's never been a better time to go into math (by: 3blue1brown) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKrwhjOI8Nc
318•mdp2021•1d ago•377 comments

If you don't run your own LLM proxy, how do you know whats going on?

https://jrdsgl.com/if-you-dont-run-your-own-llm-proxy-how-the-fuck-do-you-even-know-whats-going-on/
123•amrrs•10h ago•82 comments

Superlite: A Faster Alternatie to Superpowers

https://contextfirst.blog/superlite-hand-an-agent-a-spec/
66•iheatuchriswogu•5h ago•29 comments

Laptop Based on 6502 CPU

https://www.maddox.pro/?p=448
101•nanochess•3d ago•37 comments

Someone behind the software

https://karrisaarinen.com/posts/someone-behind-the-software/
409•tosh•14h ago•158 comments

Verisign .com Domain Name Registry Consumer Class Action

https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/verisign-com-domain-name-registry-consumer-class-action
68•greyface-•2h ago•24 comments

Dogs seem to agree with humans that 'bouba' is round and 'kiki' is spiky

https://www.sciencealert.com/dogs-seem-to-agree-with-humans-that-bouba-is-round-and-kiki-is-spiky
199•gmays•1d ago•123 comments

RepRapMicron

https://github.com/VikOlliver/RepRapMicron/wiki
376•RobotToaster•17h ago•58 comments

Free Pascal compiler now supports dynamic packages

https://www.getlazarus.org/dynamic/
151•sysrpl•12h ago•36 comments

The DNS Museum

https://dns.museum
52•zdw•2d ago•7 comments

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash 1017 (Max)

https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v4-1-flash-1017
107•theanonymousone•2h ago•34 comments

How Postgres DELETE can actually scale

https://www.dbos.dev/blog/scaling-deletions-in-postgres
8•KraftyOne•3d ago•1 comments

Tmux and Claude Code: Sessions, Send-Keys, and the Ceiling

https://crystl.dev/guides/tmux-for-ai-agents/
4•ankitg12•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: WhatsApp MCP running free on Cloudflare

https://github.com/finereli/whatsapp-mcp
86•zoozla•9h ago•46 comments

I built a programming language that LLMs can't use

https://blog.picheta.me/post/killswitch-lang/
159•dom96•1d ago•111 comments

PalmOS Lemmings

https://github.com/ardiri/palmos-lemmings
118•memalign•13h ago•27 comments

One parser, two bugs, many routers: Exploiting Broadcom WiFi across eCos, Linux

https://quentinkaiser.be/security/2026/10/16/one-parser-two-bugs/
72•zoobab•2d ago•15 comments

Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching

https://neilmadden.blog/2026/04/24/java-sealed-classes-and-exhaustive-pattern-matching/
161•hnisjafx40•16h ago•114 comments

Flatpak – An Insecurity Nightmare

https://oro.gay/posts/flatpak-an-insecurity-nightmare/
16•jannesan•2h ago•4 comments

A new way to think about borrow checking (in reverse)

https://verdagon.dev/blog/reverse-borrow-checking
63•verdagon•19h ago•6 comments

"I'm on a war footing": Terry Tao and the crisis in math

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/math-ai-terence-tao.html
157•vinipolicena•2d ago•288 comments

Footage of the Flock search that a judge ruled was uncosntitutional

https://www.404media.co/watch-footage-of-the-flock-search-a-judge-ruled-unconstitutional/
89•anigbrowl•5h ago•33 comments

16-bit fully functional DIY magnetic core memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ1WYyO2jdY
57•oliculipolicula•4d ago•18 comments

Sanity's Edge – A voice BBS from 1994

https://sanitys-edge.shouden.us
21•indigodaddy•6h ago•1 comments

Open MicroManipulator – A sub-micrometer 3D motion control plattform

https://github.com/0x23/MicroManipulatorStepper
191•_Microft•20h ago•16 comments

Namecheap just seized and disabled all my domains

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1x8cycd/namecheap_just_seized_and_disabled_all_my_doma...
551•sashk•14h ago•286 comments

The Intel 8087 chip: floating-point addition and subtraction

https://www.righto.com/2026/10/8087-addition-subtraction-microcode.html
102•pwg•15h ago•33 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.