Hacker News: elemeno

New comment by elemeno in "An oral history of Bank Python (2021)"

elemeno — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 22:46:31 +0000

To the best of my knowledge much of this originated with SecDB/Slang at Goldman - SecDB (securities db I believe) being the object store and slang the somewhat quirky C like language that ran with it (also the only language I’ve used professionally that let you have spaces in the variable names).

Some of the folk that built that (or worked on it) ended up at JPM and Merrill where they built the Python centric version - Alpha and Quartz respectively. Barclays Capital has/had a similar system as well I think, but it’s not one I know about offhand - they did though, memorably, have a system that was pretty much Haskell-in-Excel.

New comment by elemeno in "Agents that run while I sleep"

elemeno — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 20:05:33 +0000

It’s not an agentic pattern, it’s an approach to test driven development.

You write a failing test for the new functionality that you’re going to add (which doesn’t exist yet, so the test is red). You then write the code until the test passes (that is, goes green).

New comment by elemeno in "Anthropic AI tool sparks selloff from software to broader market"

elemeno — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:00:32 +0000

They’re one of the two big names in legal data - Thomson Reuters Westlaw and RELX LexisNexis. They’re not just search engines for law, but also hubs for information about how laws are being applied with articles from their in house lawyers (PSLs, professional support lawyers - most big law firms have them as well to perform much the same function) that summarise current case law so that lawyers don’t have to read through all the judgements themselves.

If AI tooling starts to seriously chip away at those foundations then it puts a large chunk of their business at risk.

New comment by elemeno in "Show HN: A 2mm micro-bearing ring that spins like a real fidget spinner"

elemeno — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 11:23:32 +0000

It looks like this user here - https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=spinity - has created a new account to continue spamming posts about their fidget spinner.

New comment by elemeno in "Evals in 2025: going beyond simple benchmarks to build models people can use"

elemeno — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:45:28 +0000

I’ve been building a tool to help with this - Safety Evals In-a-Box [https://github.com/elemeno/seibox]. It’s a work in progress and not quite ready for public release, but its a multi-model eval runner (primarily for safety oriented evals, but no reason why it can run other types as well!) and includes cost and latency in it reporting.

New comment by elemeno in "ReMarkable Paper Pro Move"

elemeno — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:33:25 +0000

I had a similar problem with mine where the clock was out and preventing it from syncing or updating.

The solution i was told (and which worked for me) was to plug it into a computer for a while - I assume that some time syncing must happen in the background when it’s connected via usb.

New comment by elemeno in "Making Explainable Minesweeper"

elemeno — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 07:16:14 +0000

If you’re interested in this you might like the game Bombe (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/) - a game about defining rules to let the computer solve various minesweeper (and more advanced variants) puzzles.

It’s a bit mind bending as you’re never actually solving the puzzles yourself, but creating sets of rules to solves whole classes of potential minesweeper patterns. It definitely solves that pleasurable puzzle solving itch!

New comment by elemeno in "Show HN: I built the tool I wished existed for moving Stripe between countries"

elemeno — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:04:27 +0000

nit: on the front page it says "transfers everything seamless", I think you want to say "seamlessly" instead.

A map, a myth and a pre-Incan lagoon: the man who brought water back to a town

elemeno — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 16:28:20 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/13/ecuador-indigenous-map-pre-inca-myths-ancient-lagoon-water-drought-

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269953

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Hours in a Hurricane, on a Race with No Course

elemeno — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:10:19 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/magazine/adventure-race-hurricane.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43352466

Points: 19

# Comments: 5

Local Governments Got Hooked on One Company's Janky Software

elemeno — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 05:15:49 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-09-05/tyler-tech-s-odyssey-software-took-over-local-government-and-courts

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41463112

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by elemeno in "Ask HN: What are you reading Feb 2024"

elemeno — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 13:01:05 +0000

Which Lisp book is that?

Electric mountain: Power station that shows the beauty of infrastructure

elemeno — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 11:30:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/nov/02/beauty-of-infrastructure-electric-mountain-dinorwig-power-station-north-wales

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111925

Points: 91

# Comments: 62

WhatsApp Chat Proxy – A Gateway Between You and Our Servers

elemeno — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 14:38:48 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/WhatsApp/proxy

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34546511

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

In too deep: the epic, doomed journey of Europe’s first narco-submarine

elemeno — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 17:30:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/04/europe-first-narco-submarine-agustin-alvarez

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30209803

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Railway lines once connected the Middle East

elemeno — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 08:41:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2021/12/18/railway-lines-once-connected-the-middle-east

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29723068

Points: 139

# Comments: 115

New comment by elemeno in "A partially-automated medium-throughput homemade cider press with lasers"

elemeno — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 09:02:07 +0000

It's an americanism as far as I can tell - 'cider' is what would be called apple juice in the UK (or maybe just fresh pressed apple juice) and 'hard cider' is what would be called 'cider' in the UK (i.e. the alcoholic beverage).

New comment by elemeno in "Ask HN: Did anybody apply for UK Global Talent visa? How did it go?"

elemeno — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 19:09:22 +0000

Other than Netflix (that I know of) all the other FAANGs have big offices in London. Between them and the financial sector, there’s a fair number of very well paid tech jobs in London.

Lambda: The Ultimate Excel Worksheet Function

elemeno — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 08:55:10 +0000

Article URL: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ultimatae-excel-worksheet-function/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26900419

Points: 236

# Comments: 109

New comment by elemeno in "The bank effect and the big boat blocking the Suez"

elemeno — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 11:05:21 +0000

From another article on the FT it sounds like they’re talking about ballast, not that it’s taking on water. -

“ Alongside specialists dredgers that are working to remove sand and soil from around the vessel, salvage experts Smit are looking to bring in high-powered pumping equipment to remove ballast water from the front and back of the ship, BSM said.”