Gloomberb
278 points - today at 1:52 PM
SourceI really wish people would mention their stack when they have these curl install scripts. I'd rather use a real package manager, but I'm not totally against installing a compiled binary this way. I am, 100%, not going to install some Java/Type-script nightmare like this though. How is it resolving the dependencies? Is it installing some version of node, bun... on my machine? How's that working with other versions I have installed?
Related: please don't write command line tools in non-compiled languages! Don't make the runtime your user's problem.
I don't know man, seems like a cool project and is open source. I guess he could have just sat on it and used for himself exclusively. It's auditable and totally fine for an open source project and nobody is forced to use it. It's free to use under the MIT license, what else can you really ask for.
The source is prominently linked: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb
> please don't write command line tools in non-compiled languages!
Around 40% of Linux CLI tools are written in interpreted languages.
The standard Linux CLI tools are installed by a package manager, which has addressed the issues raised upthread. Installs via curl | bash don’t automatically benefit from that.
> The source is prominently linked: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb
This is how I found out it's a javascript project and didn't install it. I only even bothered to do that because I actually wanted to try it. I'm just saying it would be awesome to have that right there next to the curl command.
> Around 40% of Linux CLI tools are written in interpreted languages.
And I prefer not to use those. Everything I said for Javascript holds for Python, Perl, Ruby... as well.
rtaylorgarlock
today at 4:52 PM
Let those be the 40% we prefer less :)
Revealing stack does not validate the framework, but we appreciate some foss sauce 'round these parts.
I know where you're coming from. I've been worried about all the supply chain attacks on npm too. And I'm far from a security expert. However, if you're okay with installing binary packages via `curl somesite.com | sh` I don't think you are in a better position with regards to security.
Security is just one of my concerns. I'm actually more worried about borking my system because it's doing some out of band stuff with various javascript pieces that already exist on my system (not by my choice!).
And in the GitHub release page they include compiled binaries anyway... Why would you advertise `curl | bash` as a way to install if there's a binary available?!
Download it, put it wherever you like (probably `~/.local/bin/`) and you're good to use it.
Sometimes I truly wonder...
Convenience. That's usually the answer.
Agree. If you really want to know what's used here: probably uses bun single-file executables[0] so shouldn't clash with anything else on your system.
[0] https://bun.com/docs/bundler/executables
mistercheph
today at 4:52 PM
lmao curling and exec'ing a vibe coded script running in a vibe-coded runtime, what could possibly go wrong!
otabdeveloper4
today at 5:15 PM
Don't worry about it, it was code reviewed by Claude.
talentedcoin
today at 5:16 PM
I really wish this was not the top comment on HN. It’s a cool project! Maybe try it??! Or just be silent!
I agree with you that the author of this project is catching a stray bullet, but I also have to agree with GP that `curl | bash` got way too out of hand.
I don't know where that came from but it should definitely disappear.
At least the developer includes the binaries for all platforms in the GitHub release page.
enquirewithin
today at 5:30 PM
You can have any opinion, so long as it’s mine.
talentedcoin
today at 5:39 PM
Why should anyone care about your opinion if you are adding no value to the conversation?
How is it "adding no value"?
It's not crazy to prefer a package manager package to a curl|bash YOLO. OP is stating that preference, which various people have agreed with. If you posted "I love curl|bash install method - please do more of this" that is also fine. Either way it's a signal for both the author and anyone considering shipping this type of software, that their audience may have a certain preference.
I know it's kind of a nitpick, but is there really no value at all in "your install is just curl | bash and that seems insecure and risky"
I would want to know that about any project before I try and evaluate it personally.
tealmoonx
today at 5:27 PM
You install some JavaScript nightmare the moment you land on the page!
The only reason to wrap JS in a downloadable executable is deploy it elsewhere like iOS or desktop - I might add: In Trojan horse fashion where the user believes it’s a native app until you accidentally hit your Refresh hot key and you go “Noooooo JavaScript not again!”
You can neva eva escape tha scrip
Embrace
Why do you keep making new [something]moonx accounts?
turquoisemoonx
today at 5:46 PM
I’m the real one. He’s an imposter. Get him dang!
purplemist
today at 5:40 PM
Why do you have an account named slater?
yellowcloudx
today at 5:41 PM
Get a life slater
crimsonmoonx
today at 5:54 PM
[dead]
Useful on its own merits.
Everybody who's distracted by the name and can't get past it, there's a thread developing here somewhere, where they're comparing it to Bloomberg.
100% agree. It's a fun name, but it ends up begging the comparison. The look and feel of it was an instant download for me. It's actually exactly what I want and even tried / failed to build on my own for years. I'll be supporting this project.
nancyminusone
today at 5:43 PM
the name makes it seem like it only delivers bad news
ditch the name
explain where you got the data from
else this will just be bit of Bloomberg meme
brendoelfrendo
today at 4:03 PM
Yeah, I think a few of the widgets here are neat and useful. It's not a Bloomberg replacement, but it might be a good replacement for a few tabs? You could get the info elsewhere, but I like this presentation more.
Edit: Ah, they're offering a pro subscription. While I appreciate that cloud services aren't free, I'm not sure that I'm willing to pay to replace a few browser tabs. Not for me, but maybe for someone!
There's many competitors these days, one that Shkreli always seems to use in his streams is https://godelterminal.com (Not open source though).
eudamoniac
today at 5:19 PM
He created that company I believe. I interviewed at Godel long ago and would probably have received an offer but he was convicted during the interview process and they paused hiring.
Ah you are right, it's mentioned on the career page. I thought he might be an advisor there.
Yeah... people aren't paying Bloomberg $31,980 per year for a TUI. They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
ryukoposting
today at 3:29 PM
Asked a dear friend in the finance industry what he thought about Bloomberg. He's the type of guy who uses these systems daily. Mostly paraphrasing:
1) Bloomberg was lightyears ahead of anything else in the pre-internet days, so there's a lot of UI familiarity.
2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"
3) Bloomberg is the biggest and best aggregator
This is fascinating to be because I always assumed latency was the key. After all, the only Bloomberg terminal I've ever seen in person was hooked up to its own dedicated fiber drop. It seems like the chat and sheer breadth of data are the differentiators.
_fat_santa
today at 4:53 PM
I've heard the same thing about Bloomberg's chat many years ago. Since everyone you're chatting to also has to fork over ~$30k/yr to use it, there's the implicit assumption that you're talking to a serious person.
mattnewton
today at 3:54 PM
TIL Bloomberg terminal is the original iMessage blue bubbles network
pizzalife
today at 3:55 PM
It's funny to think some of the world's largest trades are being done in something that resembles a game's tradechat. (WTS bonds)
lq9AJ8yrfs
today at 4:17 PM
For a long time fixed income trading took place over AOL Instant Messenger and later Yahoo chat rooms.
I am not making this up.
There were custom frontends that would enrich things like cusips.
globular-toast
today at 4:07 PM
I find it a bit less funny. There is this perception that what finance people do is super important and grown up but following a brief stint in the industry I realised it literally is just a game. We used to trade bits of stationery and trading cards for fun at school. They never stopped. The only difference is people who never consented to any of this are paying for it all, especially when it all goes wrong.
allthetime
today at 4:26 PM
That should have been obvious from the mere fact that the bottom rungs are almost completely populated by silver-spooned nepo-babies.
linkregister
today at 4:36 PM
Why would a trader need your consent to make a trade with somebody else?
grigri907
today at 4:53 PM
I assumed they were referring to market crashes caused by irresponsible levels of risks and deceptive practices like we saw in 2008, and/or government-funded bailouts
why should we have financial regulation at all, is that what you're getting at?
FromOmelas
today at 5:33 PM
often they're trading things with externalities
sheeshkebab
today at 4:55 PM
It’s pretty bad except that any other way is even worse.
I find it interesting that nobody from the finance community is directly speaking about their experience in this thread.
What's the equivalent of hacker news for financial folk?
RattlesnakeJake
today at 5:20 PM
Apparently it's the Bloomberg chat
Bloomberg is big enough that different aspects of the system are going to be absolutely key for substantial subsets of its customers.
Hence quips like: "Most customers only use 10% of your features, but every customer uses a different 10%."
Ptuh, call me back when Bloomberg implements spacebar heating!
steveBK123
today at 3:55 PM
Yes its a multi-decade long-tail of thousands and thousands of use cases all used in different combinations by different users.
NoboruWataya
today at 4:39 PM
It's really only a specific subset of traders that need close to zero latency. Many other finance professionals deal on larger timescales so it's not that big a deal. I am more "finance-adjacent" so I don't use Bloomberg personally but have worked on plenty of deals where "time sensitive" means "it has to get done this week. Oh wait, the bank hasn't finished its KYC checks yet. Okay, it definitely has to get done next week. Unless the KYC checks are still ongoing, in which case, for sure gotta get it done by the end of the month".
dist-epoch
today at 4:51 PM
Bloomberg Terminal is for humans. It takes about 10 clicks to do a stock BUY. your average retail stock trading platform is much quicker, many have 1 click trading.
The dedicated fiber drop was most likely for reliability, not for latency.
There is a marketplace on Bloomberg where you can buy and sell interesting stuff you don’t really find anywhere else. Some of it stored in freeports and delivered to your freeport, etc. top tier escorts, etc.
tecleandor
today at 4:52 PM
In freeports? So you mean like art?
Bluescreenbuddy
today at 6:04 PM
You're paying for direct lines to these firms. It's a big chat/social media platform. Combined with the data and news and you got yourself a hell of a platform
traceroute66
today at 3:45 PM
> They're paying for the data source
Yup.
If you want fixed-income data, Bloomberg is the only shop on the street data-wise.
If you want other financial data, Bloomberg's fixed entry-point pricing tends to make more sense in terms of bang for buck than its competitors modular price sheets.
People saying Bloomberg is just about the chat are simply embarrassing themselves.
Look at the price sheets of Eikon, Factset, CapIQ etc. There is no such thing as a cheap "Bloomberg killer".
Quality data is expensive. So are the leased-lines it arrives at Bloomberg on. So is the data wrangling architecture.
It's a bit ironic that in a country with free markets, so much of the data that is relevant to modern finance is proprietary and quite expensive.
The exchange/marketplace is the oldest business in the world. How absurd that in 2026 seats on exchanges cost millions and the entities that control exchanges are mechanisms of gatekeeping rather than quality control -- the cronyism shown to SpaceX reveals just how corrupt it's become.
ovrnightr
today at 5:30 PM
Bloomberg is also a channel for other data providers. You can access your gas pipeline flow data and index prices, which you buy from SP Global, via Bloomberg, for example. It brings data sources into one place.
dpmartinez
today at 4:32 PM
This is what is wrong with the world today.
seanclayton
today at 5:00 PM
They're too busy dealing with their fake life problems to think about their impact on the world.
To be fair, I don't see anywhere on this page where they try to suggest that this is competitive with a Bloomberg terminal.
Seriously. I see a cool product that someone built and is sharing with the community, and the top comment is basically a criticism that it's not a $31k terminal.
dpmartinez
today at 4:29 PM
It is almost like they want to be ripped off, the massive amount of gatekeeping is bizzare.
Financial information should be free for everyone.
nancyminusone
today at 5:23 PM
The very fact that it isn't is what makes it so valuable.
intrasight
today at 4:55 PM
Yesterday's data is much cheaper and often free ;)
It is, after its value has been exploited.
The name
Inspired by and competing with are different things
pverheggen
today at 4:54 PM
Well yes, but a lot of people immediately jump to conclusions based on name alone, it's human nature. Definitely something to consider when you're picking a name for a project.
An example that comes to mind is JSON5. People have a visceral reaction to the name, it sounds like it's trying to be HTML4.01 -> 5 but for JSON. In reality, it has its uses but doesn't supersede JSON whatsoever. The name itself has given it a bad rap though.
If you pick a name like "Gloomberb" the most obvious interpretation is that it's a Bloomberg alternative.
jimmydddd
today at 3:13 PM
Financial companies are cutting down on the amount associates can bill the firm for a $30 dinner, and the time before they can have the firm pay for a $30 car ride home. They definitely wouldn't pay for Bloomberg if it could be easily replaced.
Bloomberg terminal is only $133/day (assuming 240 work days per year). So, while $32k/yr seems expensive at first glance, given the total annual cost of an analyst or trader, it's not huge. Of course, they'd rather not spend the $32k/yr if they could avoid it, if bloomberg can give you an edge on just one or two trades a year, you come out ahead. So...
toomuchtodo
today at 4:38 PM
I bet its cheaper than tokens for software development with higher ROI.
forshaper
today at 4:49 PM
I can say companies with less than 20 mil arr pay around $150k a year for saas and others (sometimes the same) also pay 50k a year for a niche agent harness.
adjejmxbdjdn
today at 4:24 PM
Skipping a dinner is not losing you much money.
Making a bad trade or missing a good one due to delaying data or bad data can pay for several years worth of bloombergs for everyone in your firm in one moment.
jpfromlondon
today at 3:53 PM
Nobody ever got fired for choosing Bloomberg, even if there was a viable alternative there is no way anyone is pioneering the switch.
mushufasa
today at 2:54 PM
Correct. Also, Bloomberg has messaging for traders that is actually an important network effect in certain domains.
hmokiguess
today at 3:08 PM
Can you elaborate on the network effect piece? Curious about that
It's really useful to have a chat app that is gatekept behind a 20k/year+ subscription. It's a particularly useful signal if someone is offering you a million+ dollar asset for sale.
hmokiguess
today at 3:36 PM
I get that, was more curious if you knew how much that is used for signaling and the traffic there. I sort of expected these communities to exist in other sources (like regular SMS / Slack / private back channels etc).
brendoelfrendo
today at 3:47 PM
I'm going to copy-paste one of the comments from ryukoposting higher up in the thread because I think it's relevant here:
> 2) Bloomberg's chat is important because, as a hedge fund or investment bank, the chat is how you buy and sell bonds. You agree to the trade in the chat, then tell the back office folks to execute the trade. Direct quote: "I'd wager 90% of the ~400 trillion in annual bond trading value happens over Bloomberg DM"
You may discuss trades via SMS or Slack; maybe you're important enough that you have a broker, and you send them your idea. But the broker at the investment bank is probably handling those trades via Blomberg terminal. That's the network effect: all the bankers are in Bloomberg chat, and it is therefore the easiest place to find who owns an asset and negotiate a trade.
hmokiguess
today at 4:23 PM
Thank you, that was the piece I wasn't aware of! Appreciate the reposting.
Same effect as a country club. You know a lot about the person you’re talking to just based on their presence.
hmokiguess
today at 3:37 PM
That's a cool way of putting it, thank you!
quickthrowman
today at 4:45 PM
Some assets are traded OTC aka “in a chat window”.
Good thing they're not asking $31,980 per year for it then?
weinzierl
today at 4:58 PM
Also, and in addition, the value of the Bloomberg Terminal is not the UI, it is the consistency. You don't pay for an accelerator and a break pedal, you pay for the 100% guarantee to find them in the place >100k people have been trained to find them.
Can't you just use a bunch of agents to extract financial statements from company websites the moment they are published? OK, no insider info but you can still do quick agentic fundamental analysis and decide which companies are interesting.
> They're paying for the data source... and I don't think you have Bloomberg's connections.
We keep seeing hundreds of Bloomberg competitors mimicking the interface and they always forget that the chat (with the connections), data and the newsroom are the reasons why Bloomberg's network effect is close to impossible to break.
Using the Bloomberg Terminal is taught very early at colleges for any finance professional, which is how they get them as well.
notpushkin
today at 3:14 PM
I think it is more oriented towards retail investors (if anybody) than professional users. In theory it could compete with TradingView?
(I’d especially love to see some federated social feature built in!)
hmokiguess
today at 3:09 PM
Is it still though? I have a few finance friends and they all seem to be on TradingView these days
quickthrowman
today at 4:46 PM
Are they trading bonds, equities, credit default swaps, options,
, etc in large dollar amounts? “Finance” is pretty broad, Bloomberg is for traders and I-bankers afaict.
dist-epoch
today at 4:53 PM
Many people pay the Bloomberg Terminal subscription ONLY for the chat. They don't use anything else from it.
minimaltom
today at 4:46 PM
I mean look at the name... this seems more like a fun quip than a product. I'm over here basking in the glow of dem vibes.
handwarmers
today at 3:21 PM
does the author claim to be a bloomberg clone?
Some of us are just here for the æsthetics! Plus I already have the SEA100 "Centerboard" with chrome accents, and this will help complete the look.
actually a lot of data is not included in the standard bloomberg license and you have to pay extra (mostly passing through to the data vendors) to get access to it.
There is not a single reason for Bloomberg’s dominance but the one feature that keeps people on it is the chat.
sakimonkey
today at 2:55 PM
it's a GUI and a TUI, pay attention to the screenshots
passivegains
today at 3:05 PM
Does the GUI have Bloomberg's data source?
grahammccain
today at 4:13 PM
I don't think the finance field needs a better bloomberg, I think the whole interface and everything needs to be rethought. Part of the moat is the data, and data access. But I think we need to completely reimagine the terminal interface and interactions with the introduction of AI. The finance industry probably will be slow to adapt, but I genuinely think someone could completely disrupt 99% of the wall street businesses with an original idea.
springtimesun
today at 4:22 PM
My observation is that finance and banking and corporate functions high enough up the ladder operate more like a clubhouse than cutthroat businesses. You’d think all you need to do is make a better interface, but if you’re not part of the club, you’re not doing the business (or even getting shot at it).
nancyminusone
today at 5:26 PM
A large amount of the value is that you aren't allowed in.
methodical
today at 4:19 PM
Bloomberg's moat is the messaging service within it, not it's aggregation of data
People repeat this rhetoric all the time, but I promise you, finance professionals can and do easily migrate to other messaging platforms such as ICE chat. This isn't a moat for BBG
Evidence for this being that BlackBerry Messenger and even AOL Instant Messenger had various amounts of traction during the lifetime of Instant Bloomberg.
hmokiguess
today at 2:31 PM
this looks neat, what's the data source and latency?
crossthestreams
today at 2:47 PM
Looks like Yahoo and the SEC for filings: https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb/tree/cd82b5c61a8d0eb0d...
ComputerPerson
today at 3:43 PM
Which is not great for history, right? Seems like a real detractor.
You pretty much need $30/m subscriptions for historical data. Not that it couldn't be worked into this.
tolugenius
today at 2:36 PM
Was just about to ask on data sourcing, I imagine yfinance is used but can't really tell for anything else (like for prediction markets or news data).
Interesting project, the view looks like gpui based interface, but source code say that it is web based interface written on typescript
An aside - do tools like this (or what it's modeling, the Bloomberg Terminal) really offer that much benefit to finance folks?
elictronic
today at 3:17 PM
Here's an article. Basically if your trading stocks no. If you are trading different instruments or want interaction with the money folks (connections) yes.
https://financetracked.com/bloomberg-terminal
From it:
"Bonds and Fixed Income: It provides the best data for interest rates and debt markets.
Global Economics: It easily connects data from different countries, such as currency rates and government debt.
The Chat Room: The messaging system is the industry standard. If you want to talk to the biggest players in the market, you often need to be on Bloomberg."
Depends a bit how you're trading stocks - bbg is still an extremely attractive data provider so I'd not dismiss them out of hand.
elictronic
today at 5:48 PM
There are alternatives that cost much less than 30k per year for just stocks. They need to prove their value proposition for that more generalized use case.
My dismissal is their problem to solve.
Bloomberg Terminal costs ~$24K per user per year, so the fact that people are paying for it implies it offers at least that much value. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, most of that value lies in the data sources.
sigmonsays
today at 3:54 PM
This post / OP really needs to say if it's AI SLOP or not and to what extent. This looks like AI slop.
Any "TUI" you've seen in the past few years is 100% vide-coded slop.
dpmartinez
today at 4:52 PM
Curious what you consider those that aren't 100% 'slop', aside from the common ones.
Because I'm starting to see the word 'slop' as a synonym for:
"This person may or may not have used AI to build software and I don't like it"
What I pressume is the text for "Gloomberg" in the Hero header looks very fucked up
https://imgur.com/a/ssiKckF
Hopefully it's not intentional
How much intent can you ascribe to any of this?
Yeah, looks totally broken on my machine too.
Looks fine on my end (Firefox).
what platform is that? looks fine on mine
MS Edge, which is Chromium (Blink?) Based
How well do you think their terminal works if they couldn't even spend the time to clean up their vibe coded website?
dpmartinez
today at 3:05 PM
> How well do you think their terminal works if they couldn't even spend the time to clean up their vibe coded website?
Your website is literally down.
https://i.postimg.cc/YCdkwZZq/image.png
And I don't think their website is that bad.
> And I don't think their website is that bad.
The download button doesn't even work properly.
Clicking download in the top right gives me a .dmg, the other download button in the hero gives me the .exe, the one in the footer gives me a .dmg
Docs give me a 404, blog is empty
dpmartinez
today at 3:29 PM
> The download button doesn't even work properly. Clicking download in the top right gives me a .dmg, the other download button in the hero gives me the .exe, the one in the footer gives me a .dmg
I mean, it works for me?
The site is clearly not ready and maybe they didn't expect people to find it, but that doesn't mean the site is bad.
It is just a work in progress.
I'm not even interested in the site anyway the software and the source interests me more.
https://github.com/gloom-sh/gloomberb
> I mean, it works for me?
Doesn't invalidate my experience.
> and maybe they didn't expect people to find it
What do you mean? It's linked on the Github repo.
> but that doesn't mean the site is bad.
I think a site that doesn't work properly is a bad one. That's just my opinion.
dpmartinez
today at 4:03 PM
> What do you mean? It's linked on the Github repo...I think a site that doesn't work properly is a bad one. That's just my opinion.
I mean isn't this the point of open source?
You can fork the repo and fix the problem instead of complaining?
echoangle
today at 5:32 PM
You can still give constructive criticism of an open source project though, right?
dpmartinez
today at 5:40 PM
Never said you can't.
You can fix it though or open an issue.
So, volunteer time for free for someone else?
>I mean isn't this the point of open source?
Only if you just found what open source is.
In actuality, successful open source projects recruit developers by providing value to them. If there's a failure before you even install the product, there's 0 reason for someone to start contributing right away, why not start their own project at that point? Contributing 1 to something that has 0 value is a donation in exchange for nothing, not how Open Source usually works.
dpmartinez
today at 5:46 PM
> So, volunteer time for free for someone else?
Yes.
You know the project is OSS, you found the problem, you can fix it or open and issue instead of complaining to me about it.
Problem solved.
That benefits everyone rather than forking a project and starting all over again and wasting effort.
I cannot reproduce the problem, so I can't fix it.
But since you're complaining about it and you have the right skills, you can!
Exactly, our time is limited, so if we are to evaluate a product, we will take any excuse possible to veto a vendor.
If you fail at a webpage in 2026, you have no chance at doing anything complex or innovative.
mistercheph
today at 4:54 PM
total slop, who cares?
When I see new software now, my first thought is an LLM wrote it and it makes me not want to use it. I also assume there are bugs and it’s not particularly feature-rich.
MyHonestOpinon
today at 4:13 PM
It is becoming very hard not to use an LLM. I have been working on a project all this year. I started doing everything by hand, and I am using LLMs a little bit more every day.
I suppose we want to use projects that were crafted with care, whether or not LLMs were used. But it is not easy to figure that out. It reminds me. 30 years ago, before code formatters were popular, you could tell good code just by looking at how carefully formatted it was.
and you think Bloomberg engineers dont use AI heavily?
janlukacs
today at 4:14 PM
same and for some reason people are downvoting. why would we use vibecoded stuff with sensitive information?
What’s sensitive about displaying public information in pretty graphs?
RetroTechie
today at 2:58 PM
gloom.sh/docs - 404: This page could not be found.