Graal: How to use the new JVM JIT compiler in real life [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhtrRhNUHvQ <comment><USER3> The JVMCI code that Graal depends on was added to Java 9 and is inbuilt. However, all Graal and Graal-downstream projects use a custom built Java 8 release. This is also the plan for the " _foreseeable future_ " ([https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/issues/556#issuecommen...](https://github.com/oracle/truffleruby/issues/556#issuecomment-335118818))

It looks like a bureaucratic struggle of some kind - I wonder what's the behind the scenes story at Oracle.

Additionally, "mx" : the build system that Graal uses is fairly funky - <USER2> everyone including Chris (the engineer that made this video) is trying to get the team to move on

[https://twitter.com/christhalinger/status/958824900004753408...](https://twitter.com/christhalinger/status/958824900004753408?s=09)

I wish they would use Bazel or something

<comment><USER4> Graal dev here. We're testing on jdk 8,9,10 and 11. We are packing graalvm with jdk 8 atm to keep variability reasonable. Graal will be integrated into the JVM soon with project Metropolis: [http://openjdk.java.net/projects/metropolis/](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/metropolis/)

Graal is used for many more things than dynamically compiling Java. Besides others it's used for SubstrateVM (closed world AOT compilation) and Truffle languages like TruffleRuby, Graal.JS, FastR, Sulong(llvm integration) and our newest member Graal.Python.

Graal comes out of Oracle Labs. The build tool mx is short for Maxine, the spiritual predecessor of the Graal project. If you don't know mx it's quite intimidating and ugly. It's Python written by Java developers. But it does it's job coping with our not so standard building and testing requirements. No we don't run mx on Graal.Python yet, but we are working on it for full build tool metacircularity ;).

<comment><USER5> Why not Graal.py?

<comment><USER6> For me this would mean a python project (graal bindings within CPython) and not a Python implementation.

CPython Pypy Jython IronPython

I would now go with GraalPython (GrPython or GPython)

<comment><USER7> Graal.py rubbed me the wrong way, until I read your comment I couldn't put my finger on why. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Graal support tail call optimization? It has been announced for hotspot +10 years ago but still not implemented as today.

edit: [https://blogs.oracle.com/jrose/tail-calls-in-the- vm](https://blogs.oracle.com/jrose/tail-calls-in-the-vm)

<comment><USER4> When executing on Java we are dependent on hotspot to support it in the native bytecode interpreter. In truffle interpreters we made some successful experiments with tail calls emulated using exceptions. It's pretty slow in the interpreter but as soon as graal optimizes it, it just turns into a tailcall loop. Here is some more info: [http://epub.jku.at/obvulihs/content/pageview/508465](http://epub.jku.at/obvulihs/content/pageview/508465)

You may find some blog posts about truffle and tailcalls as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does Graal VM work on Windows yet? That was the main factor that held me back from using it the last time I evaluated it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Windows support will be made available on Java 10.

[https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8172670](https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8172670)

<comment><USER10> Weird I remember running Graal on Windows a couple of years ago, was Windows support dropped along the way?

<comment><USER11> Graal works on Windows since a long time, it's the AOT with Graal that works only since Java 10.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How YouTube recommendations work [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/45530.pdf <comment><USER2> There are, I believe, three main reasons why the recommendations are so poor on YouTube:

a) YouTube doesn't know anything about the content itself, can only use metadata

b) The algorithm itself is biased towards creators that post often and keep users hook the longest, which is almost always vlogers (ask any animator what they think of YouTube)

c) Many recommendations systems today create many buckets and once you watch something from one bucket (you show your intent), the algorithm will focus on that bucket only. (You can see it working extremely poorly on Amazon that tries to sell you a fridge after you just bought a fridge).

It's very hard to build a great recommendation system (look at Spotify's Discover weekly), but because this is 101 of any machine learning course, it's the primary thing that companies refuse to outsource (I build company around it, failed badly).

<comment><USER3> I've found that the YouTube recommendations do a good job of picking a "next" video to watch, but an exceptionally poor job of constructing the front page.

If I watch "Some Video (part 1)", the recommendations reliably pick "Some Video (part 2)" next, with the other parts as the other related videos and similar content further down. If I watch a random video from a particular channel, the recommendations show more videos from that channel. If I watch a video of a particular game or a reaction to a given episode of a show, the recommendations show more videos of that game or more reactions to that same episode. If I listen to music by a particular artist, the recommendations show more music by that artist.

On the other hand, the front page consistently shows me 1) old videos I've already seen, 2) collections of highly viewed content that I have no interest in _even if I 've already hit the "not interested" X on it_, and 3) popular videos by channels I already subscribe to (I don't want to know what's _popular_ , I want to know what's _new_.).

<comment><USER2> They do a semi good job with related videos. But even those go south quickly when you go through couple of them.

<comment><USER4> exactly

> If I listen to music by a particular artist, the recommendations show more > music by that artist.

I've had disappointing experiences of that, where the recommendations try to know what I'd like even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just talking about how terrible Youtube's recommendations are with my brother today and I realize this idea is naive but I think it would work better than the current machine language system:

\- Gather up all the channels that are followed by channels that I follow and/or have liked videos on. \- Recommend me videos from those channels.

I'm pretty sure in my case this would be much better results than what I currently get shown at any given time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd rather know how to turn them off.

<comment><USER3> Bookmark and visit [https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions](https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions) directly, and never visit the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very funny...I wrote an article about how someone could beat youtube's ads machine a few days ago...

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beating-youtubes-ads- machine-...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beating-youtubes-ads-machine-jay- paulynice?trk=prof-post)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are a parent, remember that YouTube results and suggestions can sometimes be rather "suggestive". All society needs some baseline of a moral code and an algorithm doesn't understand that.

Imagine if your child asked an adult neighhbor about the movie "beaches" and they responded with the same answers YouTube does. Go ahead search beaches. Or Beach, or vine.

<comment><USER9> I just tried this, and my first four results were for the Bette Midler film.

The rest are about beaches (most dangerous, weird things found on beaches, top 5 beaches in Brazil etc)

What is striking, and I've noticed this before on YouTube, is that the thumbnails all feature nearly nude women. You'd perhaps expect this to happen randomly for beach related videos, but I've noticed that if there even a fleeting bit of nudity in a film trailer or similar, it seems to end up in the thumbnail.

Does a human scan through and choose that moment, based on trying to maximise clicks? Or does an algorithm try random frames and then keep the ones that are click baitiest?

<comment><USER10> That's a human doing it. The algorithm just picks a timestamp to screenshot, and before people were allowed to choose their own thumbnails, they would put a single-frame picture at the timestamp the algorithm was expepected to use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the methods in ML and predictive modelling that are used to counter 'bucketing'. As much as it is necessary for product creators to land us in groups by behavior, i think it is also necessary to have counter techniques to eventually split those groups and create new ones, no?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is super interesting. How would I go about working with these guys, considering that they're in Palo Alto and I'm in London? I understand there's a bunch of hops you have to jump through in terms of visas, but I've never really looked into it.

<comment><USER13> These guys may be based in California but Google has a London office, and if you want to work on deep learning then Google DeepMind is the obvious place to go and they're based in London as well.

<comment><USER12> For some reason I just assumed that all the more "serious research" was done in California and completely forgot about DeepMind.

<comment><USER2> Actually a significant portion of the tech team (for instance Content ID) is based in Zurich, not in San Bruno. Check out their jobs page [0]. You don't need a friend to recommend you, but it would be great if you find somebody on a team that you are interested to join that would root for you.

[0] [https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/zurich/](https://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/zurich/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks buddy. I will have to investigate their team and work first, but then I might apply. Crazy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> YouTube keeps videos I've seen in my recommendations. For years.

</comment><comment><USER15> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426064](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12426064)

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't wait until they start pumping video frames into the image search or whatever service produces those suggestions for Allo message replies.

</comment><comment><USER17> poorly.

<comment><USER12> Why do you say that? What they recommend rarely is what I end up watching, but it's usually ballpark correct. So much of what motivates your daily YouTube viewings is externally, so there's only such much you can do. They are aware of this,

> Historical user behavior on YouTube is inherently difficult to predict due > to sparsity and a variety of unobservable external factors.</comment></comment>


Review of Condé Nast acquisitions and strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/business/media/19carr.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> I'm getting a paywall. Is this article the same one: <http://biz.yahoo.com/nytimes/080520/1194776479074.html?.v=18>

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's the same article.</comment></comment>


What Happens When Low Wage Workers Suddenly Get a Living Wage? - <AUTHOR> http://gothamist.com/2014/06/05/living_wage_casino_workers.php

<comment><USER2> IMO this Article is full of feel-good stories and not enough actual data to back up what really happens? How these people starting to put money into investments/retirements/savings? Are they spending it on frivolous things?

It sounds like they are grateful for the health insurance as they or their family had health problems, but it sounds like the article isn't examining the actual data of what happens when their wage is doubled.</comment>


Half-million TSA protest letters on their way - <AUTHOR> http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=229145

<comment><USER2> I like the idea in general, but I have reservations about the way they're trying to sell it to people.

Then again, maybe the politicos would take it more seriously if they knew that each person to send one of those was serious enough to spend $30? It's my understanding that they generally use the time & effort spent by a constituent to gauge how serious the person is and how strong the support is.</comment>


Tell HN: Interesting new startup - PackageFox - <AUTHOR> http://packagefox.com/

<comment><USER2> I wonder about the business model. This isn't win-win - the courier companies lose. It would be better for them if you didn't exist. Presumably they remain competitive by passing the savings from unclaimed losses on to their customers in their pricing. So the more successful you are, the worse it is for their margins and/or for general courier pricing; yet your income relies on their existence and the current difficulty of getting a claim through.

Will this cause you problems? Will your success cause the pain that you are solving to disappear, thus putting you out of business? Do you have arrangements with them, and permission to scrape their site / use their API on your customers' behalf?

<comment><USER3> The shipping audit industry has been around for years, we have just applied modern day technology and automation to an industry that has been all manual. The shipping industry is measured in billions of $ each year, so if we get that big we will figure something out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am a grasshopper customer and met Hauser a few years ago. That guy is the real deal. If he is involved in this, then sign me up. The grasshopper service is great and Hauser is incredible. FedEx and UPS guaranty on-time delivery but they make it nearly impossible to actually get a refund -- their guaranty is a bit of an overstatement. If PackageFox can make this process easier and do the work to recover $$, then I don't know why eeveryone wouldn't sign up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds pretty cool... not sure about the 50% cut of refunds though! Sure, it might not add up to a lot in the long run, especially if you don't have too many late packages. But at first glance, seeing that they take 50% of the money they claim they help you earn would be a INSTANT turn-off for me, regardless of how the numbers actually add up.

<comment><USER3> Very fair point, we feel like the amount is fair for the work we do and it is free money. What number would make you signup and feel good about it?

<comment><USER5> If you believe that 50% of the cut is a fair cut, you should add a little more detail about what exactly you are doing to justify this. Maybe mention how complicated the process is to handle on your own, how with many shipments you may never notice that some arrive late (and you get $0 back), and how much time you free up for the customer...

<comment><USER3> Great point, we will add more information and stats about the work. A good number might be the % of packages that are late and then rejected by FedEx for one reason or another and the work that goes into that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> David Hauser, Co-Founder of Chargify and Grasshopper is listed as one of the two founders of PackageFox. This might be super beneficial for ecommerce startups if the service works the way it is stated.</comment>


Georgia Business Launch 2007--$100k cash prize for winning startup business - <AUTHOR> http://www.tagonline.org/Events_GRA-TAG-Business-Launch.php <comment><AUTHOR> The deadline for the first entry has passed, but it's still a cool program that the local technical networking group and a state-funded technology group are doing.</comment>


Google has seven messaging apps – Here's all of them and what they do - <AUTHOR> https://www.androidauthority.com/google-messaging-apps-867843 <comment><USER2> In 2008 a professor told us (Telco engineers) that Google would kill us because we were awfully inefficient mastodontes.

I replied him that as Google will grow, they would become more and more like us. I am happy to see it finally happens. Every business organisation is complex, and as it grows it becomes less and less manageable.</comment>


The False Tale of Amazon's Industry-Conquering Juggernaut - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-false-tale-of-amazons-industry-conquering-juggernaut/ <comment><USER2> My understanding of diapers.com is different. What I read was that Amazon got in a price war with them and sold diapers at a loss until diapers.com was forced to sell because they could no longer compete. And once amazon bought them, they just shuttered them.

So that's a PERFECT example of how they could throw money at the problem and kill the competition.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure theres a direct source out there, as the former CEO of diapers does not hesitate to discuss his aim to crush amazon.

[https://collaborativegain.com/the-diaper-war-amazon-whole- fo...](https://collaborativegain.com/the-diaper-war-amazon-whole-foods/) [https://www.recode.net/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting- do...](https://www.recode.net/2017/3/29/15112314/amazon-shutting-down-diapers- com-quidsi-soap-com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This piece has a monopoly on the use of the word monopsony.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Amazon's book monopsony is valuable, but it also comes at significant reputational cost_

Does it really? Except maybe from defunct book publishers and ebook publishers that get on the wrong side of KDP's inscrutable approval process. Even DOJ sided with them in 2012.

<comment><USER6> My wife worked for a publisher that had terms dictated to it by Amazon. Since then, we have not bought through Amazon. I got the hairy eyeball for ordering a $10-book through Alibris, and had to explain that I was not aware that Amazon had purchased it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Weird article, kinda like a pick-n-choose game.

Amazon does control 50% of e-commerce. And yes it uses merchants to get there, while charging them a nice fee.

And does it really ,fairly compete with merchants, while having full control(owning the buy box and the "sold by Amazon" brand) , full visibility into their business, and much better capabilities ? Or instead of competition , they just let merchants carry the risks of the import business ?

</comment><comment><USER8> > In fact, I can't think of a single industry, other than bookselling, that > Amazon has entered with significant negative repercussions for the > incumbents in that industry.

uh.. aws?

<comment><USER9> That was covered later in the article:

> Amazon is great at inventing new categories, from online bookselling to > cloud-computing services to voice-commanded personal assistants.

The author is categorising AWS as a new category more-or-less created by AWS, rather than an existing category they entered and disrupted.

I'm not sure I 100% agree, but it's still a reasonable position to hold. VPS providers existed before AWS, but AWS is much more than just another VPS provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also, Amazon did not succeed in China; is second in India - is throwing $$ for last many years to be number one but victory is nowhere in sight.

Amazon is utlimately collection of good, mediocre and bad PMs, Devs, Designers.

<comment><USER11> Um. They've overtaken flipkart in market share and revenue

<comment><USER10> Source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That reads like a paid PR piece.

<comment><USER13> For whom? And to what end? What are they even selling?

<comment><USER12> PR, public relations. Not selling anything but promoting the image of Amazon.

Netflix aren't the incumbent in TV so claiming they aren't really damaging Netflix seems to be intentionally missing the point. Amazon are having a similar, but slightly lesser effect, to Netflix by dint of their somewhat smaller streaming market share. Not to forget they bought out Lovefilm, imdb, and probably a bunch of others I forgot.

<comment><USER13> Trying to convince people not to be afraid of Amazon? Because the general thrust of the article is "Amazon is big, but they're not very good at anything but books"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazon isn't all that special. The rest of corporate America just fucked up.

Fast delivery and low overhead is frankly something any webshop could have delivered but the dinosaurs were set in their ways.</comment>


EmailOracle (YC W10) Tracks Your Emails and Confirms They've Been Opened - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5660823/emailoracle-tracks-your-emails-and-confirms-theyve-been-opened

<comment><USER2> Gonna have a pretty high false negative rate though, right? Virtually all modern email programs and webmail systems block images by default (unless the sender has been marked as "safe" or sometimes if they've been added to your address book).

You might as well steal some of the (very clever) tricks used here: <http://litmus.com/email-analytics> to track whether the messages was forwarded and the time spent reading. They don't work all the time, but it's a pretty neat piece of code.

<comment> mike-cardwell You'd think that wouldn't you. I found ways to track this stuff even when remote images are disabled in Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Android Mail, Mail on iOS, Outlook, tonnes of webmail apps:

<https://secure.grepular.com/Apple_Mail_Privacy_Hole>

<https://secure.grepular.com/iOS4_iPhone_Email_Privacy_Leak>

[https://secure.grepular.com/DNS_Prefetch_Exposure_on_Thunder...](https://secure.grepular.com/DNS_Prefetch_Exposure_on_Thunderbird_and_Webmail)

I created a web application which crafts an email with lots of tests and sends it your address. When you open it, it tries to "call back" to my server and the web page shows you the results. If you see anything on there before hitting "Load Images" your client has a problem. You can access the app here:

<https://secure.grepular.com/email_privacy_tester/>

<comment><USER3> Thunderbird 3.1.4 doesn't trigger anything. All yellow stars.

<comment> mike-cardwell Thunderbird 3.1.0 used to trigger the dns prefetch test, but yeah it's fine now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I usually consider emails with some kind of read-receipt requests or (even worse) tracking images (which fortunately gets blocked in any decent email client) at least very rude.

<comment><USER5> What EmailOracle does is to enable prosumers with the ability to deal with outgoing email overload. We are a business tool and we have studies that show that this is a feature that is well-received and well-intentioned in enterprise communication.

This is also evidenced in how MS Outlook provides read-receipts for their emails, and Blackberry messages that also automatically do read-tracking.

Makers of a kitchen knives cannot really prevent customers from using the tool for nefarious purposes. We do our best to preserve the privacy of recipients and allow opting out as well.

<comment><USER6> This is a hot button issue in the sense that it "spies" on the foreign email reader without their permission. Many spammers use this same technique to verify if an email address is valid or not (e.g. checking if keyed-URL images loaded).

A few responses from people who don't like this idea might include:

\- Blocking the service

\- Auto-opening and auto-reading "every" email that comes into their inbox (no way to tell which one was/wasn't read)

\- Being extra-careful, reading emails selectively (e.g. don't read anything after 4pm otherwise you might get stuck doing overtime)

As you might tell, I'm personally not a fan of this. But if I were a lawyer, or boss, or part of law enforcement, I might like this idea. The current implementation of "email receipts" is very broken, especially in the corporate world.

The thing is, if a company or employee ever gets burned by this, they'll block it. Most everyone I've worked with turns email receipts off in Outlook for this reason.

Don't take my cynicism to heart though. Nobody has tried this idea in this way (that I'm aware of). It's very interesting. You never know how it'll pan out unless you try. Plus this is just the opinion of some dude on the internet; not a very good indicator if it'll succeed or not. ;)

Best of luck to you and your team! :)

<comment><USER7> Alternatively, power users can just go back to mutt: <http://www.mutt.org/>

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the service relies on the broken misfeature of many modern email clients that diverge from the original RFCs for mail by treating HTML as something they can process. A client that only handles plain text email (with attachments as something separate to hand off to an external program) is safe from this kind of abuse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Somebody please write a blocker for this. Do we need something special, or can we just add some rules to AdBlock Plus to work around these antisocials?

Good job funding this garbage, PG.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry you feel this way. You can opt-out of emails sent to you from free EmailOracle accounts. Maybe we should add to our website the ability to automatically opt-out of all future tracking?

<comment><USER9> A pre-emptive opt-out could work, but how exactly would you implement it?

Do I have to give you all my email addresses that I want to opt-out with?

Do I have to get an "optout" cookie so that the server with the tracking pixels and whatnot knows not to track me?

I think I'd rather block this at the email client level. This way I don't have to trust anyone's optout procedures, as well as being protected from any nefarious trackers that don't care about things such as opting-out.

<comment><USER5> Yes, users are free to still continue whatever means they have used in the past to opt-out, including at the client level. We don't (and can't) prevent any of that.

<comment><USER9> Of course you can't prevent it, however one of your application's goals is to work around email client filters that would block traditional tracking methods. Just to be clear, I have no problem with what you are doing.

I would like to know if blocking images is enough to not be tracked. Do email clients have sufficient image blocking or do they let through images specified in CSS (or similar) through?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone wanted to burn their relationship with me, spying on what most would consider to be unwatched activity, involving something as specific and interpersonal as email, would be a pretty good way.

It's just... creepy.

If you have a legal need to make sure I've received something, use registered post.

<comment><USER11> Spying on people is rude, but you do know that there are at least 4 intelligence agencies from various countries between you and your recipient right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't most email clients (both web and desktop based) block images loading by default to specifically stop this kind of tracking ?

I recall spammers using precisely this technique with early html supporting email clients in the late '90s to validate email accounts.

<comment><USER13> Anyone who is concerned about security and tracking will leave images blocked by default, but most average people will turn image blocking off so that they can see the pictures in whatever trashy chain email is making the rounds.

The don't realize that this allows spammers to track whether or not the email address is live, they just think that it saves them from having to click "Show All Images".

</comment></comment><comment> anon-e-moose As others have pointed out, Gmail and other mail clients are designed to specifically block this kind of thing.

How is an apparently viable business based on such a non-platform?

<comment><USER5> Open-rate tracking is only one of the features we are providing with EmailOracle, and we see many other business opportunities in this space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading this was very surprising for me, because I'd always assumed this kind of thing was impossible.

After going over the comments here, there is apparently a (well known) trick of adding images to email, then tracking hits for that image on your server, thus giving you "email analytics". Apparently this is one of the reasons that most email programs block images by default. In fact, I've long wondered _why_ images are blocked by default, and only now found out.

Always amazes me how many things I have yet to learn!

</comment><comment><USER15> What a terrible name for the company. When I first read the title I thought "Email Oracle? Why would would I do that?". Not to mention Oracle will probably make claims to it.

</comment><comment><USER16> All I see when I read about this tool is the forthcoming lawsuit from Oracle.

<comment><USER17> I think that is why they have kept it. It will give them insanely high publicity. Moreover, I think they might be able to keep it too. It's not like Oracle sued Matrix team for having an Oracle. :)

Also, to the people who are saying images are not displayed in most of the email clients, browsers, don't forget smartphones where there is no option of blocking images.

<comment><USER18> Gmail on my smartphone (running Froyo) doesn't load images. In fact it has a "Show pictures" button which I must explicitly press to load images.

<comment> mike-cardwell Android 1.6 on my G1 loads the following content _before_ I click "Show Pictures":

iframes

inline css style tags with an @import option.

external css style tags

object embed tags

It also honours meta refresh tags and opens the standard web browser entire automatically just by viewing the email.

Can you please test Froyo using my app at <https://secure.grepular.com/email_privacy_tester/>

I'd be interested to know if all of these flaws still exist in newer versions of Android...

<comment><USER18> Just submitted to test. Should I get an email?

<comment> mike-cardwell You should, unless your spam filter blocks it...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a diehard mutt user, I wish them the best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems almost identical to this company (from a previous YC round, I think):

<https://etacts.com/>

I really like the idea of an "expect followup with in N days" feature for GMail. It's interesting that GMail's dominance as a client for heavy email users has accidentally enabled a market of add-ons delivered as browser extensions.

</comment><comment><USER21> It appears that one of the features this site offers is the ability to find e-mails you've sent that need followup because they haven't been responded to. I'd love to have that feature built into Gmail (and it seems like something very doable). Does anyone have a search/filter setup that allows you to find these "need to followup" e-mails?

<comment><AUTHOR> EmailOracle does build this feature right into Gmail :)

It adds a link in the left panel of Gmail (under "Contacts") that lets you open up a new pane (just like the "Tasks" pane) that contains all of your emails needing follow-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A visually attractive site and sounds like a great plugin!

But quickly looking through the site...who are you? DNS records show private whois...GoDaddy's Domain By Proxy service. I'm logging in by giving my Gmail or GoogleApp credentials but is this through OpenID? Is there a terms of service before I do this? If you were a known entity I'm sure I would be quite a bit more forgiving.

Also, I saw a previous comment here by Tim about no visible pricing info by Tim...why should I have to login just to see what is required for an upgrade?

I'm interested but too many reasons for hesitation has me clicking away...

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd rather have a "successful delivery response". It's enough to know that the email was delivered to a device you are responsible for. Tracking who's opening it and when seems a little creepy, also you'll have false positives if the email is blind forwarded.

Having worked with attorney's. "I didn't get the email" is common. I'd like just to have a list of the response codes from their server to prove that they accepted delivery.

</comment><comment><USER24> The website mentions nothing of pricing. That's a little off-putting because it either suggests to me there is a hidden charge or they are doing something nefarious with access to my email account (like reading my email to send me targeted spam or something like that).

<comment><USER25> Once you sign up you can find an upgrade page: [http://img.skitch.com/20101011-jgpkhbquapptemp64ggajwhuxx.pn...](http://img.skitch.com/20101011-jgpkhbquapptemp64ggajwhuxx.png)

<comment><USER5> Thanks Greg! Yes, we have the pricing table shown once you login.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Forwarded this to our network guys for blocking at the source, cheers.

</comment><comment><USER27> I recall a similar service a few years back which went a step further and encoded the text into an image, which allowed the sender to revoke the entire message at a later time.

Google is not finding anything; maybe it's gone now.

<comment><USER28> I think there are a few. BigString was the most popular I heard about.

<comment><USER29> > Until now, you've been the person with the least control over your emails > because, after you send them, they can be stored and scanned in more places > than you can imagine. Do you want anyone to permanently store your messages? > Do you want your words to possibly live in infamy without your knowledge?

Um, isn't that kind of an accepted risk when giving someone something? This whole thing sounds very fishy to me, actually.

How does it work? Their about page is very very vague, and uses some double- talk to make your message seem incredibly secure (specifically, the hard-to- print FAQ entry: <http://www.bigstring.com/info/faqs/answers/printed.php>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> wow, well at least you know who your customers are NOT. don't let it discourage you.

i, for one, am looking forward to incorporating this into my workflow.

</comment><comment><USER31> This could be really useful for e-commerce apps that deliver critical information via email, e.g., product keys or download links.

</comment><comment><USER32> That service working without the recipient changing his settings is by definition a security hole in the email app.</comment>


WeWork considers IPO valuation of as low as $10B - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wework-ipo-valuation-exclusive/exclusive-wework-considers-ipo-valuation-of-as-low-as-10-billion-sources-idUSKCN1VY1PB <comment><USER3> Matt Levine as usual called how this would play out. He said we work would start dropping the weird voting/control privileges ("corporate governance concessions") that founders have enjoyed on recent "tech" IPOs. He also said investors wouldn't care much and this latest news confirms that.

His conclusion: "But now WeWork seems to be facing the traditional tradeoff: Stay private, keep control, but lose access to billions of dollars of funding, or go public, raise unlimited money, and have to act normal. If it does either of those things, that will mark a sort of end of an era. At the height of the unicorn boom, big tech companies could stay private without giving up the benefits of being public, or they could go public without taking on the burdens of being public. Now they might have to make hard choices again."

<comment><USER4> "that will mark a sort of end of an era. At the height of the unicorn boom, big tech companies could"

Except WeWork isn't a tech company.

<comment><USER5> They have successfully marketed themselves as one and apart from a relatively small group, the common denominator perceives them as such.

<comment><USER4> According to wikipedia "WeWork investors as of 2014 included J.P. Morgan Chase & Co, T. Rowe Price Associates, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs Group, the Harvard Corp., Benchmark, and Mortimer Zuckerman, former CEO of Boston Properties"

They basically convinced a bunch of non-tech investors that they're a tech company.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure the banks invested just to get a shot at collecting fees for ipo work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems to be in line with Aswath Damodaran's valuation estimate.

"From my perspective, this seems like an optimistic story, where WeWork generates pre-tax operating income of 10.07 billion on revenues of $80.5 billion in 2029, generating a 26.61% return on capital on intermediate capital investments. Allowing for a starting cost of capital of about 8%, the resulting value for the operating assets is about $29.5 billion, but before you decide to put all your money in WeWork, there are two barriers to overcome:

Possibility of failure: The debt load that WeWork carries makes its susceptible to economic downturns and shocks in the real estate market, and the cost of capital, a going concern measure of risk, is incapable of capturing the risk of failure embedded in the business model. I will assume a 20% chance of failure in my valuation, and if it does occur, that the firm will have to sell its holdings for 60% of fair value.

Debt load: As I noted in the last section, the company has accumulated a debt load, including lease commitments, of $23.8 billion.

Adjusting for these, the resulting value of equity is $13.75 billion, and with my preliminary assessment of shares outstanding, translates into a value per share of about $26/share."

Highly recommended read for those that haven't already: [http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2019/09/runaway-story- or...](http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2019/09/runaway-story-or-meltdown- in-motion.html)

<comment><USER8> Note that Aswath is detailing a best-case scenario for WeWork here, where they're somehow making $80.5B revenue in 2029. That's... a bit of a stretch, seeing as they'd have to 26x their current 2019 revenue. Are they going to buy out every building in Manhattan? So we can say the fair pricing is somewhere between $0 and Aswath's $13B.

Personally, I feel that no matter what price WeWork IPOs at, it's going to pancake pretty hard. There's a good business in there somewhere (AWS for real- estate), but it's saddled under so much crap, debt, and hot air.

<comment><USER9> > There's a good business in there somewhere (AWS for real-estate)

Is there? I keep looking at the WeWork thing as a complete outside, someone who's never had to deal with that sector, and it's just not clear to me what is actually different/innovative about what they do.

<comment><USER8> Leasing office space in a place like NY traditionally required at least a one year lease, often longer. WeWork has at least popularized the notion of extremely flexible month-to-month contracts for fully managed facilities in historically expensive markets, which is very attractive to virtually all companies (now is that a sustainable business remains to be seen, but at least the demand is there). Not just small companies and startups, but companies of all sizes like the flexible opex that can be scaled on short notice. WeWork's S1 shows that a big chunk of the customer base and growing is in fact large companies. E.g. Microsoft in New York has their entire sales organization scattered across WeWork properties. That kind of thing is where WeWork appears to be doubling down on according to their S1, not really the freelancer hot- desk market.

Companies also generally don't like to deal with anything that is not core to their business. Already previously most functions were outsourced (cleaning, maintenance, stocking the fridge etc.) but increasingly companies don't even want to deal with the hassle of sourcing a supplier. Or getting Internet. Or insurance. WeWork makes all of that a non-issue. So does Regus Spaces product, but it has to be at least acknowledged that it's a direct reaction to WeWork.

I think the future will look something like this, and why it can be likened to AWS for physical space (WeWork doesn't go this far yet, today requiring e.g. physically visiting the space before leasing which is honestly a pain-in-the- ass speaking as someone looking to place multiple people all over the US, just let me input my credit card already):

\- Startup company in the Bay Area logs in online and clicks to reserve a 1x Private Office in NYC, for the two new hires starting there next week. No tour, no calls, no interaction with anyone at WeWork. WeWork is already a "known quantity" (kind of like McDonald's), no need for any of that process.

\- Microsoft manager in Redmond does absolutely nothing workplace related as his new hire just shows up at WeWork Houston, as the company already has a direct expensing agreement. His cost center is just billed X for the month automatically.

<comment><USER10> AWS-for-office-space is apt, considering EC2 instances/other VPS are paid per- hour(/minute) but AWS owns the computers for the duration.

As been pointed out elsewhere though, WeWork, owes money to landlords, even if that WeWork space is empty. AWS doesn't have the same contracts with their computers. Or do they? It's entirely possible AWS buys their server farms on credit rather than all upfront. AWS, of course, is a different beast, having the backing of Amazon.com.

Thus the more useful debate, rather than rehash the "is it a tech company" argument yet again, is what _is_ a reasonable valuation for WeWork? Enterprise Value for IWG is 9.8B; so a 10B valuation for WeWork is not totally ridiculous.

There's a risk that everyone will just work from home during a recession. During that same recession though, we'll also want to move our company's website from AWS to a desktop computer I have in my garage that I leave on all the time, to save money.

<comment><USER11> Moving a website from AWS to a desktop at home isn't apt to save money, as your power bill will increase by $20 to $50 a month.

Transitioning to shared hosting in the single digit cost per year category is more likely, no need to pay a premium to serve HTML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even $10 billion feels too high. I wonder what they were thinking when they filed the S-1. That after reading that document, we'd all be inspired by the vision and clearly see the ~$40 billion valuation, and see opportunity for growth on top of that, such that the public would want to invest as it grew beyond 40? The trust in this company and its leadership is gone, and it will be difficult to correct. Perhaps the quarterly announcements will save them in a year, if it's shown to be a profitable business.

<comment><USER13> Regus, which I recall correctly is valued at around 4.5b USD, so WeWork should be less than that, but not proportionally so, given their much better branding.

<comment><USER14> WeWork has virtually the same number of desks as IWG/Regus, so it's unclear why their valuation should be lower.

<comment><USER15> regus makes money instead of burning it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow! How did they come up with this valuation? I assumed the bankers that were part of this deal would have based their valuation on something solid. But this is an 80% discount in a span of 6 weeks. Something is seriously not right with this company. It seems like its build on a house of cards.

<comment><USER17> Quote from Matt Levine:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-09/we- mig...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-09/we-might-not-be- working)

Well, I just got through saying that there's not really any reward for being pessimistic and right about valuation when you are pitching an IPO. Your optimistic competitors will get the mandate, and then spend some time walking the company back

...

On the other hand it is a repeat game and there are occasionally penalties for getting it wrong:

...

it will be rough for Morgan Stanley if winning the biggest IPO prize [Uber] of the unicorn era loses it the biggest IPO prize of all time [Saudi Aramco]

<comment><USER18> > Saudi Aramco

Complete aside, but the ~second largest oil producing country is selling part of its state-owned oil company. Yes, they're trying to diversify so they're not just a petrostate, but this should be a red flag for the oil industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "As low as" Isn't it still tons higher than a fair market evaluation compared to other rental companies? I mean I get that they "own the word We" and branded themselves a tech company. But when you strip away those jokes, they are just a b2b rental company that's bleeding money month after month.

I feel like the real news is that rather than drop the IPO in the face of severe disillusion they(SoftBank) are actually trying to recoup some of their losses while cutting the company down, rather than comfortably pursuing the valuation that they previously seemed to push as being a reasonable possibility.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how history will look back on Reid Hoffman's book, "Blitzscaling". The premise seems bit ridiculous now in light of recent problems at WeWork and Uber.

<comment><USER21> I haven't read the book, but WeWork doesn't seem to fit the principles of Blitzscaling. They haven't been able to dominate their market (office space) in the same way that Google owns search or Airbnb owns home rentals. A quick search for "Reid Hoffman WeWork" returns no relevant results other than him investing in a possible competitor:

[https://media.thinknum.com/articles/how-liquidspace-is- under...](https://media.thinknum.com/articles/how-liquidspace-is-undermining- everything-wework-is-setting-out-to-do/)

<comment><USER22> > They haven't been able to dominate their market (office space) in the same > way that Google owns search or Airbnb owns home rentals.

I disagree. First of all, WeWork's market isn't really 'office space', it's short-term, flexible, furnished office space, and in the sense of "market domination" I think WeWork is very similar to AirBnB in that regard. That is, while they both have strong competitors who predate them (e.g. Expedia/VRBO and Booking.com both have huge short-term rental businesses), they both certainly lead in the "mindshare" of their particular markets.

The main difference is just that the economics of AirBnB's model (they neither own nor lease any real estate for rent) is much more profitable than WeWork's.

<comment><USER23> Airbnb owns the peer to peer market rental. WeWork isn't even close to the size of regus. Airbnb can expand by dropping money into marketing. We work needs to do huge outlays to buy/lease buildings and also drop money into marketing to grow.

<comment><USER10> _> WeWork isn't even close to the size of Regus._

They both manage ~45 million sq feet of office space. Regus isn't chasing tech IPO valuations as they went public in 2000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think a big perception issue in the general public that the money people are chafing against after doing their homework is that WeWork isn't a tech company.

Economically they're more like a b&m retailer, where the shelf space being leased is for workers, not mannequins and clothes.

Their reach to individual pockets is orders of magnitude smaller. Big clients can abandon them as a supplier in a few weeks time to setup a new office.

WeWork does not have the long term emotional buy-in potential like an Apple or Facebook. It's a business to business business. Not going to hook a billion individual users on their gadgets and services.

There's a non-zero chance the property market implodes, and shifts to remote workers seem very likely to expand. Still need phones and software. Not downtown offices with cucumber water.

<comment><USER25> It's true there's a non-zero chance the property market implodes, but the shift to remote workers is exactly what WeWork is counting on. Many (even most) people chafe at working in their living space 100% of the time, and squatting in coffee shops and the like also has its limits. People generally need a work place that is separate from their living place, even if their work place is not the same work place as the rest of their company. Throw in the need for quiet places, conference rooms, whiteboards, etc, and before you know it...

<comment><USER26> This an an extremely unsexy long-term market that provides very solid returns in exchange for lots of work. That is why management companies have very low valuation even compared to REITs. It is a market where you hire Jamel and Jose who have been building supers for twenty years and who know what's on sale today in the Home Depo and what kind of light bulbs should be hoarded rather than Jack who will order stuff on Amazon because Jack will overpay by 220% by buying that stuff for just-in-time on Amazon and over a period of 10 years those mistakes are going to be a $100k difference in opex per location.

A company that gives an engineer budget to deck out his desk is fundamentally incompatible with a slow and steady way of making money in real estate management.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is getting comical. They keep intentionally leaking lower and lower numbers trying to gauge any level of interest.

I feel like a scammer on the corner is getting increasingly desperate shouting lower numbers at me as I walk away. "No how about just $5 then and I'll read your palm!"

People used to have shame. This is so weird.

</comment><comment><USER28> The Unicorns wander out of the enchanted forest, and turn out to be just horses with a stick stuck to their head.

Theres been much hand wringing about the sky high valuations, and its not really surprise when push comes to shove, those valuations don't play out. How a $65 billion potential valuation (or $47bn 'actual') becomes a $10bn float will be a write up I look forward to though.

<comment><USER29> A couple of bad companies don't characterize an entire market.

Have you forgotten about the successes already? Slack, Zoom, Pinterest, PagerDuty, Okta, Cloudflare, Twilio, Shopify, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Roku, Elastic, etc etc.

They all IPO'd this decade and are enormously successful and have justified their valuations.

This is a Softbank-specific problem. Not a problem with all companies.

<comment><USER28> I'm not saying they're bad companies, just that they've been blown up to mythical proportions, Unicorns don't exist, their tears won't cure all ailments, they don't fart rainbows, and Wework is probably more reasonably valued as a property company, not a tech company.

Facebook fell after it's IPO by quite a lot btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is anyone informed about the consequences of such a down-round? I haven't kept an eye on their incoming investments, but you'd think there might be some unhappy investors there with various clauses in their terms?

This has probably been the most criticised IPO I've heard of in recent times. Interesting that the market is actually not allowing them to sail right through on their own terms, it's as if all the ridicule actually makes people think about whether to buy it.

<comment><USER31> I've been trying understand this too. If you have a liquidation preference on your preferred shares that says you get your money out before others, does that just go away in an IPO? If it applies, how? Because it's not like there's a buyer who is putting up the entire market cap in cash.

But if it goes away, that's kind of an amazing loss of value for those holders. Do they have to agree to the IPO? (Maybe usually they do, but here Adam has super voting rights?)

<comment><USER32> Lots of people rambling their opinions here, but agree with this thread that having some actual information on what the consequences of such a down round would be, given the liquidity preference in their venture rounds.

Crunchbase says $12.8bn of prior investment.

Wouldn't that mean with a 1x liquidation pref that all the employees (including the CEO) would get wiped out?

<comment><USER32> [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wework/funding_round...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wework/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As WeWork has raised $12.8 billion [1], that would be quite a devastating repricing. I would think they would just remain private at that price, but maybe they need the cash and no private investors will give it to them.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wework/funding_round...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/wework/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list#section- funding-rounds)

<comment><USER28> I think they have $6bn in loans lined up contingent on selling $3bn worth of shares.

So pulling out would put a hole in their expansion strategy. It may also be that they would be unable to get such an offer for $6bn again, bearing in mind the now much lower valuation. But then the vision fund has deep pockets, as do its investors so who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This feels like death by IPO. They've signaled that both the public and private market aren't interested. Now they have to choose to stay private and keep control, or go public and raise 80% less than initially planned, while giving away control. The best move (in hindsight) would have been not to try to IPO.

Have there been other examples of companies getting gutted by their IPO efforts?

(Another interpretation would be that they are a real estate company trying to pass for a tech company and everyone called their bluff).

</comment><comment><USER35> This is much different from $47 billion. They know that we've caught on to the sham, and now the investors just want liquidity so they can dump this mess onto others. They're hoping some will see this as a bargain so they can still get an exit.

Don't trust this.

</comment><comment><USER36> WeWork has close to 300K members and they've been growing massively. I'm not sure how much they charge on average but lets assume it is at least around 300 dollars per month; probably more.

So, that should generate up to 100M per month and well over a billion a year. They're reported revenues are actually closer to 2 billion. So, obviously they either make way more per user or I missed something here. Either way, this is apparently generating quite nice revenue.

They have cost of course but it does not sound like a horrible business. They charge a premium to their users and from what I've seen in various locations in Berlin and SFO, they tend to cram in a lot of people in their locations and maximize the usage of the spaces they lease. So, I'd say it's safe to say that each We Work location ought to be profitable with some nice margins.

From what I understand the reason they are burning cash is simply rapid growth. They are investing every penny they can get in more locations. Based on all of this. A valuation of 10B for a company that seems on track to grow to billions in profit per year sounds on the low side to me. Also, with that kind of revenue, they should increasingly be able to fund growth from their own revenues.

Long term threats to WeWork's business exist of course. Fundamentally they don't have a lot of tech or intellectual property protecting them from competitors. Most of their competitive advantage simply comes from their scale and presumably optimized operations and access to capital.

I'd say it's similar to the hotel business which is also dominated by big chains of hotels. So, long term you'd expect more competition to emerge and a race to the bottom in terms of prices and operational cost. E.g. the Hilton group owns hundreds of hotels world wide with probably tens of thousands of beds and seems roughly comparable to wework in terms of number of buildings and revenue. The only difference is of course that they've been around for very long whereas WeWork has existed less than a decade. Fundamentally, if they mature a bit there's no good reason why they should not be massively profitable even if they get a bit of competition; which they currently only have from much smaller companies.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just to get a sense of IPO pricing incentives:

Who benefits when an IPO like this is underpriced? And who benefits when an IPO is overpriced?

Is there anyone incentivized to price an IPO accurately?

<comment><USER38> Insiders cashing out is more important than anything apparently

<comment><USER37> Insiders can't cash out until after the lock up period, after which the price should have stabilized to whatever the market think it's worth, right? (So the IPO price isn't as important as the price the market settled on a few months later, by that logic)

Or is that thinking too simplistic?

<comment><USER39> Unfortunately, yes.

Softbank has taken out loans secured with Uber stock during the lock up period.

If the value of Uber tanks, Softbank retains the money, and the bank takes the stock. Softbank has effectively sold their stock ahead of time, removing any downside risk.

On the flip side, if Uber stock goes up, Softbank can sell their Uber stock (post-lockup) at a profit, pay back the loan, and enjoy all the upside reward.

I'm reasonably sure I've read reports that they've taken out secured loans on their Wework stock too. Effectively sold the downside risk before IPO.

Also, depending on what category of investor you are, you have liquidation preferences. You may be the one providing the stock that's being sold _at_ IPO.

<comment><USER40> In the We Co. case at least, selling the stock at a $10B valuation won't do SoftBank much good when they've plowed $9B into the company.

It'll be interesting if they indeed have taken out these loans against We stock. And especially how much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I think WeWork is still a bit ahead of its time. Some see its value as culture, others see it as real estate. The ways we live and work are changing, but changing any culture takes time. I still feel that We Work is creating the future, but that value is still based on change that's inherently slower than we'd like.

<comment><USER42> > Some see its value as culture, others see it as real estate.

Can you point me to more information on the "culture" point of view? I have trouble seeing what kind of culture we work has, let alone how a culture can be monetized. But what's special about its "culture", any way? Real estate is at least valuable; for a while, I wondered if it would turn into the world's weirdest REIT. What future is it creating?

<comment><USER43> According to their S-1 [1]

 _We are a community company committed to maximum global impact. Our mission is to elevate the world's consciousness. We have built a worldwide platform that supports growth, shared experiences and true success.

[...]

We start by looking at space differently: as a place to bring people together, build community and enhance productivity. Philosophically, we believe in bringing comfort and happiness to the workplace

[...]

Nine years ago, we had a mission to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living. We believed that if we created a community that helped people live life with purpose, we could have a meaningful impact on the world.

[...]

Each of our spaces is designed to make our members feel welcome and at home, and to encourage a sense of belonging. We believe that individuals are more productive when they are able to express their full and authentic selves, so we aspire to be as inclusive as possible._

As a grumpy cynic personally I don't really go for that stuff, but they've put it in the prospectus so presumably they think other people do.

[1] [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519220499/d781982ds1.htm)

<comment><USER42> That sounds more like a continuation of the trend toward turning prospectuses into marketing materials. "Looking" and "believing" don't translate into concrete action. All this is marketing-speak, and I don't think any of it contributes real value.

<comment><USER43> You might very well think that, and it sounds like you won't be investing. But presumably people who believe "culture" is what makes WeWork a good investment are used to investing in intangible things.

<comment><USER8> Don't go confusing the kool-aid drinking employees of WeWork with the people investing in WeWork. The 80% haircut on the IPO pricing (to date) is the institutional investor's saying "no thanks" to exactly that type of feel-good BS being spouted in the S1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So they can claim to overshoot their target? The investors will be very pleased.

OTOH this reeks of desperation to "go public", and drop the hot potato on clueless investors while they 're still clueless and the market is still hot. Sounds sinister tbh

</comment><comment><USER45> This is basically a Dutch auction as IPO at this point.

<comment><USER46> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIPO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenIPO) "OpenIPO is a modified Dutch auction" "number of companies public including Morningstar, Interactive Brokers Group, Overstock.com, Ravenswood Winery, Clean Energy Fuels, Boston Beer Company"

WeWork is experiencing this type of auction but strangely in the media instead of in communications between actual investors

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I know this has been covered before, but WeWork isn't really a tech company. They're a real estate company. They buy buildings and then rent space. And they certainly don't scale the same way tech companies do.

<comment><USER48> This trope is going to die soon (as its discussed on twitter and HN like weekly now).

"Tech company" is an operating model, not an industry/market. "We" is a real estate leasing/operating company heavily enabled by tech.

<comment><USER49> The distinguishing feature of a tech company is a marginal cost of servicing an additional customer approaching 0. Spending insane amounts of money carelessly and calling yourself a tech company doesn't make you one.

<comment><USER50> There has to be a better definition than this, that's true for any company with great economy of scale.

<comment><USER51> Im a big fan of this article defining what is and isnt a tech company: [https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech- company/](https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I can't believe we might lose the free beer on tap after this, it's an outrage.

</comment><comment><USER53> Still too much for what it is. Shady real estate play with a shady CEO. Why are we even pretending this is tech?

</comment><comment><USER54> To me, WeWork seems like one of those businesses whose success might be based on a novel but easily-duplicated idea.

After they blaze the trail of providing a different approach to office space, is there a lot to stop competitors from doing the same thing?

Maybe there are more, but I only see two advantages they have over competitors: name recognition and economies of scale. And since leasing space is a large expense for tenants, it's natural for people to shop around a bit, making it a natural area for competition (and driving down margins).

WeWork's web site uses the word "revolutionary". Once the revolution has finished happening, what reason is there to believe that WeWork is going to own it? Obviously WeWork has a head start, but is there anything they've done that others can't do?

</comment><comment><USER55> So why does everyone so interested in WeWork's IPO evaluation? Non trying to be sassy just genuinely curious why articles like seems are so regularly posted.

<comment><USER56> To some extent Uber is like watching a Unicorn car accident, you can't look away.

It also is a good example of these dirty Unicorns that are not unlike Uber where folks for quite a while wonder "How can you be profitable and operate like that?" and we're all amazed the market keeps rewarding them ... and it seems like we're to the point where the market might not reward them.

<comment><USER57> Wile E. Coyote has run off the edge of the cliff and yet his legs are still going and he isn't falling. But at some point he will stop, look down, look at the camera, and then fall a long, long way.

We're just waiting for the look down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> if $10B is real, that might be the end of Vision Fund II.

<comment><USER59> Add in Brandless, Wag, and Doordash and a couple others... hard to see how giving Nuro $1b for self-driving delivery robots will return 40% annualized.

Can anybody point to significant investments ($1b+) in their portfolio that will return 5x-10x?

<comment><USER60> Sometimes i wonder if the whole Vision Fund is actually a CIA plot to bankrupt certain Middle East oil states.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> And now Softbank is going to buy at least 25% of the shares issued in the IPO. Either they're true believers in the valuation (i.e., that $10-15B is a steal) or this is a last ditch attempt to salvage the IPO.

</comment><comment><USER56> With all the bad karma / news out there at this point, what are the odds that they can get any significant money publicly ... and maybe privately now that so much dirty laundry is out there?

</comment><comment> brown9-2 They were previously hoping to raise $10B from the IPO, how much are they hoping to raise now?

</comment><comment><USER62> One economic downturn and WeWork is history.

I wouldn't touch this one with a 10-foot pole.

<comment><USER63> if it goes public, short it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Um... is Masayoshi Son reeling now that Softbank invested at a ~40B valuation?

</comment><comment><USER65> What should really be the shocking thing is that somehow, 10 billion is considered "low".

I don't live in SV, and I'm just a software engineer making under 6 figures, but living comfortably all the same. I am ignorant about this "high finance" stuff - and honestly, I'm probably better for it; less stress and all. Not saying others shouldn't do it if that's what they like, just that I don't think it's for me.

Still - it seems ridiculous to me that a company self-valued at 10 billion, that there is something wrong with that? Maybe it's that I don't understand the financial history of historical tech companies, but it "feels" to me that such companies had no where near such value?

Part of the problem is that I can't think of such historical companies that were similar to WeWork or other "gig-style" companies - that were contemporary with, say, 1960s Fairchild or IBM? Those companies, and other similar companies of that era and into the 1980s (like Sun and SGI and Motorola and Intel, etc) - they were probably valued pretty highly (had they done such thing as an IPO - I don't think that was an available thing then, though - <USER2> they probably did have investors, and "ground-up" growth).

But they actually created products - physical things you could touch - as well as software (depending on the company); they weren't just using or repurposing existing tech on a large scale to solve a problem via a form of contract labor. Maybe a better model that would have been contemporary to those companies would be larger-scale construction contractors of the era? Were they ever valued in a similar manner?

To me - in my ignorance - it just seems like all of this exists to make a quick (overvalued) dollar and get out. I don't expect WeWork (or Lyft, Uber, etc) to be around in 20 years. We'll just continue to have this "churn" of companies, no loyalty or building of a base of customers that last ages and are almost "passed down" through generations.

Think about a company like IBM - arguably, it dates back to the late 19th century, but even discounting that, it is a computing and software company that is close to 100 years old; will any of today's "well known" tech companies be able to weather the years like IBM has (albeit with ups and downs, and with scandals and such)?

I can see Apple doing it - maybe. Perhaps Microsoft and probably Google. Amazon? I guess it could become akin to Sears or Montgomery Wards. Of course, no one probably thought of those older brands as having the staying power that they've shown, either - and there were plenty that one would have thought should have stayed around that didn't, and others that did that have imploded (ahem - Sears and Montgomery Wards - for instance).

I don't know if I am making my point clear enough - other than to say that it feels like these "companies" only exist - or were created - as "get rich schemes" for their creators and owners - not because those involved are really in it to make a "real difference" in the world (whether that would be a good or bad thing is debatable).

I guess I miss seeing purpose and organic growth, and a valuation in line with that, and heads or owners of such companies in it for a reason other than "getting rich and getting out".

</comment><comment><USER66> > 10 B$

> low

</comment><comment><USER67> I know the feeling around WeWork's IPO is to poo all over it, but let's take a step back and remember that all valuations at this point at just reports. It was _reported_ that WeWork was going after 20B-30B, now it's _reported_ they're going after 10B. When articles cite "sources" I'm pretty skeptical. Like all other IPOs, the bankers are going to price the stock based on what they think the market will buy. There's always intangibles that are difficult to evaluate, and maybe WeWork's IPO has more of those intangibles than usual, but I don't think we're outside of the realm of normalcy. Well, maybe we are in a massive tech bubble. I guess time will tell.

<comment><USER68> Those reports are used to gauge the public opinion. You "leak" that the valuation is going to be $XYZ and then watch the public comments, news reports et al to estimate how willing will the public be to buy in at this price.

<comment><USER12> Do you do a follow-up Twitter sentiment analysis, or do you really only care about the banker's commentary? Anyone on here, or CNBC, or Cramer's show is just the peanut gallery. We aren't the market makers.</comment></comment></comment>


Clerky vs. Stripe Atlas - Incorporation Services - <AUTHOR> I would like to know from your perspective, which service you understand is more convenient when choosing to incorporate a company in the United States (I am a Latino citizen).
Clerky vs Stripe Atlas.
Stripe Atlas Package https://stripe.com/en-es/atlas
Lifetime Clerky Package https://www.clerky.com/pricing
Bearing in mind that Stripe Atlas advantage for me is that they can open the bank account themselves directly with the SVB but Clerky gives me management tools (including the post-incorporation that they have included in the package, Fundraising, Hiring and Maintenance) although this does not give me A bank account that I understand for me is mandatory.
The question arises because I am currently incorporated in Delaware thanks to Stripe Atlas but I have not tried Clerky and it has options that Stripe Atlas really lacks and I want to know what you think about it.
Thank you. <comment><AUTHOR> Then now comes another provider called Gust (gust.com) that offer different products that are equally attractive.

This has a product called Gust Launch ([https://gust.com/launch/start](https://gust.com/launch/start)) which has features like Clerky including a financial board of the company so it sounds interesting but the cost is $300 dollars annually (there is includes the incorporation, post, etc), Clerky is a single payment of $800 dollars and Stripe Atlas $500.

</comment><comment><USER2> I haven't but I will incorporate using Atlas. Prominent reason is that I trust Stripe to do right by the users.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am interested in opinions on this also- I am in the exact same situation, although I am in LA and I have not yet incorporated yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Curious about the Latino citizen part. Do they offer different services or experiences as a result?

<comment><AUTHOR> What I mean promptly with this is that Clerky does not allow you to open a bank account but recommends some and for this you must have a presence in the United States and in the case of Stripe Atlas to open an LLC you must be an American citizen (although in my case it is for a C-Corp).

<comment><USER5> Hey, I'm one of the founders of Clerky - we actually recently added an integration with Mercury, that allows people anywhere to open a bank account. There's more info here: [https://help.clerky.com/article/2647-bank-account- integratio...](https://help.clerky.com/article/2647-bank-account-integration)

<comment><USER6> I'm also about to pick between Clerky & Stripe Atlas. I'm scheduled to talking to someone at Stripe soon. Anyone I can speak to at Clerky. I'm a foreign citizen but in the US at the moment. firstname.lastname@example.com incase you can connect me to someone at your company.

<comment><USER5> Of course, feel free to reach out to firstname.lastname@example.com with any questions you have!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


John Carmack: Why Was Doom Developed on a NeXT? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-was-Doom-developed-on-a-NeXT?share=1 <comment><USER2> Well yes the comment about spending 10 or 15K on a computer wasn't that big of deal was certainly true.

A sun Sparc in 1995 with awesome specs would cost you vastly more... and by awesome specs we are talking

"256 megabytes of RAM, a 4 gigabyte hard disk, and 20-inch monitor. It costs $59,995."

</comment><comment><USER3> John Carmack has a tendency to pop up and actually comment whenever he or Doom are mentioned somewhere. Another example:

[http://kotaku.com/thanks-a-few-comments-in-some-ways-i- still...](http://kotaku.com/thanks-a-few-comments-in-some-ways-i-still-think- the-454293019)</comment>


Baby born with HIV cured - <AUTHOR> http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20130303/NEWS01/130303013

<comment><USER2> Currently on front page with much discussion and links to other sources:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5315521>

<comment><AUTHOR> Bah, thanks for the link.</comment></comment>


Google Maps Easter Egg - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com,73.0659468,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9432504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9432504)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.google.com/maps/place/33%C2%B030%2752.5%22N+73%C...](https://email@example.com,73.1275112,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0)

</comment><comment><USER4> A duplicate with the wrong title.

</comment><comment><USER5> repost</comment>


Vim Plugins You Should Know About, Part V: a.vim - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/vim-plugins-a-vim/ <comment><USER2> Another one worthy of mention is supertab, which binds tab to Ctrl-p.

I am not kidding when I say it changed my life.

<comment><USER3> Wow, this does look life changing. I've been experimenting a lot with ctrl-x in insert mode but it's a bit clunky in comparison. The link to supertab is:

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=182>

<comment><USER4> It looks like there is an updated version here: <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1643>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can also jump to the last buffer in Vim with the command :b# To view all open buffers: :ls

<comment><USER6> Or Ctrl-^

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The other Vim plugin articles on the site are also pretty good.</comment>


Facebook at Work spamblocks some SQL queries - <AUTHOR> http://blog.koehntopp.info/index.php/3122-things-you-cannot-say-on-facebook-sql-edition/ <comment> cup-of-tea When it's 2018 and you're having trouble sending plain text over the network it might be worth stepping back for a second and asking: "have we regressed?"

<comment><USER2> Chat applications have mistakenly transformed code into emojis and links for as long as I remember. That isn't new. But facebook takes it to another level by blocking your messages because it doesn't like the urls.

<comment><USER3> Funny you'd mention that, the parent's post reminded me of my experience with Discord a while ago. I was trying to paste some code and basically nothing made it through unscathed because the chat kept interpreting the text in... interesting ways.

IRC has its quirks but at least it's relatively easy to send arbitrary ASCII text.

<comment><USER4> Discord is (a subset of) markdown so you just use [`] to denote inline code and [```language-name] and [```] to denote code blocks.

<comment><USER3> I did not know that, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Automated censorship is what pisses me off the most about messenger.

I'm a old enough now to be able to privately share whatever I want to my friend. Yes Facebook, sometimes I want to purposely send a porn link to my friend!

</comment><comment><USER6> "business version of Facebook"

There's your first problem.

<comment><USER7> Who thought "business version of Facebook" was a good idea?

<comment><USER8> My employer did. And while I was very extremely sceptical at first, I had to eat my hat on this. It's actually one of the best things for facilitation of enterprise cross-department communication and awareness that I have ever experienced in the last 33 years of my working life.

<comment><USER9> Could you explain what features make it so good for your use case?

<comment><USER8> I could, but to actually understand you have to try out, because it's an experienced quality and not some a thing that is amenable to description.

Before the corp FB instance we had Wikis, Email, Mailing Lists, Jabber and an internal "Youtube" like Video Store. It all sucked.

With the FB instance, the awareness of what goes on in other parts of the company is much higher, the noise level is lower, communication is more timely and generally you feel less stressed out. Email numbers are down, mailing lists practically do not exist any more (except for machine communication such as commit messages), things organize neatly in FB groups, and you kind of automatically find the groups that are relevant to work. The Wiki hardly sees discussion any more, and is mostly documentation.

There are a lot of problems in Workplace by Facebook, mostly in the messenger product (no spatial metaphor, i.e. no rooms, only groups, being the largest). But in general it has been an amazing improvement on what we had before.

<comment><USER10> Experience couldn't be more different for us. We also use the "Faceplace" as it has become "affectionately" known.

Everyone just turns off the notifications on the freaking thing, so really important things are still sent out via email.

It's corporate/business thing, right? And yet they kept the useless alrgorithmic feed. Just yesterday I couldn't find an important management post because it was buried below random crap from a dozen or so groups, and people, and events, and...

Well, it also sends email for some (not all) notifications. The email preview contains a total of 6 words from the original text and forces you to go to the crap.

Every single post including the really important ones are five lines of text with a "see more" link. Oh, and half of those texts are created as documents/notes (which are different from regular posts), reposted to half a dozen different groups that all show up in your timeline (nothing like seeing the same text 10 times I guess).

And it continuously nags you to get their crap good-for-nothing Chat App (just look at the f*ing thing [https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8](https://grumpy.website/post/0PSSXS3k8)).

Facebook cannot even imagine that business needs of business clients are not driven by engagement numbers, or by MAUs, or by LTVs or by any metric that is relevant to Facebook.

EDIT: Rephrased some sentences

EDIT 2: Re: replies to my comments. "Oh, it's da bomb, only you need to <a list of multiple things to setup before it's even remotely useless>". Stockholm syndrome in full swing

<comment><USER11> Facebook runs on Facebook. When I was there it worked really well.

You need to use it properly though. The feed is pretty much useless. Groups are where it's at. Facebook has Company FYI groups, org-level FYI groups, Product team workspaces, etc. You tune notifications to catch the "must read" stuff and filter out the rest of the noise.

<comment><USER10> > You need to use it properly though.

"You're holding it wrong"

> <an unending list of things I have no desire to figure out or set up>

Why would I want any of that? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While it's fun to take potshots at using Facebook for work, this is also a _clbuttic_ issue in stodgy corporate environments based on crap like Lotus with overzealous "anti-virus" and anti-profanity filters

<comment><USER13> Also known as the Scunthorpe problem[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> In the late 1980s I fought simple profanity filters that wouldn't let you send the words wristwatch or Scunthorpe United. Impressive just how far we've come.

<comment><USER15> 10 years ago at school I could not search for documentation about strings or "insert" clauses (sql) because that would trigger the firewall. Fun times.

<comment><USER16> In 2017 I couldn't get a price on anything in the Cisco Select range because clicking the link triggered a WAF on the distributor's servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I quite often encoded code snippets sent on Skype with Base64 to avoid formatting until I found out eventually they support markdown syntax for preformatted text. I see it is also supported by Facebook at Work, maybe this would help here? [https://www.facebook.com/help/work/541260132750354](https://www.facebook.com/help/work/541260132750354)

<comment><USER8> ``` for quoting code does not prevent the sd.date_of_delivery problem. It still urlifies, and the DNS parser tokenises wrongly.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, I don't have access to Facebook at Work so I couldn't check it on my own.

So apart from the lack of control over URLification in normal messages that the author rightly pointed out, it seems they also have a bug in the noformat feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have seen similar issues with overly aggressive parser in Messenger for Business, but with dates instead. It tried to turn the words in the following real conversations into dates for adding appointments

* "Christmas" in "Merry Christmas, and have a nice day"

* "at 100" in "It could be that you're not viewing the image at 100% zoom"

* Four digit module codes from my university that looks like four digit military time

and so on, ignoring context or even prefix/suffix text which makes it clear the text is not a date. It would be funny if these don't keep getting in the way when random words in conversation gets turned into links.

</comment><comment><USER19>
        > run a forked codebase on isolated servers[...]

It's not forked at all, when you use the business version of Facebook you can even URL hack public Facebook URLs to share the same global IDs to your "private" instance, and you might even see public comments from public Facebook users.

It's also possible to invite public Facebook accounts to your groups in your business instance, to them they're just browsing another group on Facebook.com.

So the Facebook Business instances really aren't separated out at all more than just being the equivalent of an aggregation on private groups on facebook.com + custom domain etc.

Edit: I just tested this by taking a random post of Zuckerberg's and replacing www. in the URL with <mycompany>. and sure enough, Zuck then shows up on our "internal" Facebook, albeit with a notice saying it's a public post. You can then "share" the post and get the same behavior as on public Facebook when you share an existing group post to another group or message.

<comment><USER20> It can still be a forked codebase and do all of what you say.

What you're outlining is that it's not isolated from public Facebook infrastructure.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. My comment only shows that, but as a follow-up it's also clearly not a forked codebase. Facebook UI changes show up at the exact same time, and as a practical matter they must be syncing regularly if both access the same underlying storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why on earth would you use Messenger for anything useful?

<comment><USER22> People are happy to post business details on a FB for Work (tm). Really makes one think that Zuck was never wrong on his assertion on why people people trust him.

<comment><USER23> Introducing <FB for work or whatever tool> for internal communication and then _not_ using it for internal communication kind of defeats the point then, doesn't it?

<comment><USER22> Sure, my point was why use FB for internal communication in the first place.

There are tools specifically made for that, and they are made by companies that respect their clients (the ones that pays the bills, instead of advertisers).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For what it's worth: the expected behaviour to swap code snippets internally is to share a link to an internal version of pastebin/gist that allows comments, version control and referencing. Whether that has to be compulsive or whether casual code is fine is probably a worst contention that vim vs. emacs so I'll just leave that here.

On Workplace by Facebook: I can see how that seems counter-intuitive, but I've worked for four distinct companies who had it or moved to using it, with or without Slack and (given some hints on how to use it properly) this is the most compelling solution to a lot of internal communication issues. It's about as impactful as email or cellphone: you can't really understand how things work without. I am not considering working for a company that doesn't use it (or an improvement).

<comment><USER25> This depends on the snippet size and purpose. For collaboration on code it's likely the wrong tool. However when exchanging single statements there is no good reason to switch between tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Copying and pasting SQL (and other code) works just fine in Slack btw...

<comment><USER25> ... if you mark it as such with backticks, else emojis, link detection, username lookup, ... destroy it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I thought this was a protection against the Bobby Tables problem.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's also quite weird when it linkifies a two-letter word (non-English) because it thinks I might be referring to a week day, which has never been the case so far.

</comment><comment><USER29> On the other hand, it potentially punishes people for not putting spaces after punctuation. I say keep it like that.

</comment><comment><USER30> > On a business instance of Facebook it has literally no business to listen > in, but does.

What did he expect ?

</comment><comment><USER31> I have never heard of the business version of facebook before. Is it common anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER32> > Posted in: Hackerterrorcybercyber

:)</comment>


How to Keep Your Sanity During a Startup Launch - <AUTHOR> http://sprouter.com/blog/how-keep-sanity-during-startup-launch/

<comment><USER2> Don't expect overnight success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. A launch or redesign might get you a bit of buzz, but it fades away and then you have to work your butt off to sustain the traffic and attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How to keep your sanity during startup launches:

1) Set sane timelines 2) Don't work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. 3) Realize the world will not end if you miss an arbitrary deadline.

As an end user, If you miss your go-live date by a couple days to iron out some kinks I'm not going to head to my blog to tell the world how terrible you are. Get it right and I'll still be there with my cash in hand ready to give you a fair shake.

<comment><USER4> Exactly the conclusions I've come to after a few months at a startup!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did Reddit/hn deal with fake upvotes? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This is privileged information.</comment>


Windows RT 8.1 Update removed from Windows Store due to updating issues - <AUTHOR> http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/10/19/windows-rt-8-1-update-removed-from-windows-store-due-to-updating-issues/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing the link to my story on this. Still waiting on news of what the deal is.</comment>