Show HN: Stampd.io - A document blockchain stamping service - <AUTHOR> http://stampd.io

<comment><USER3>
      Your document titled: hello world is about to be stampd on the blockchain.

      Please proceed with payment of EUR 1.49 through Paypal by clicking on the button below.

      After payment and the appropriate blockchain transaction transmittal, a PDF
      certificate will be sent to your email address as registered in Paypal.

It would be nice to support payment with bitcoin. Also in addition to emailing a receipt, let users download a receipt right there.

Also I'm not sure what exactly a webapp is needed for. I wouldn't use it for anything important. How do I know without looking through your client side JS that you're not sending a copy somewhere? It would be nice to write an open source app, stamp that app's hash in the block chain, and then use that stamped app to stamp other documents, all locally. Or keep the web version too as an alternative. If you want to make money off of that, provide some enterprisey tools for people to verify previously stamped documents or other value-add services not related to the core offering. I think you're losing 99% of early adopters with a fee (is that essential to pay miners or something?).

edit: It seems like I'd need a way to verify my identity as part of this hash for it to be of value. Can your certificates be forged? A verifiable and un- forgeable certificate would be valuable. Or perhaps I associate a BTC wallet id with a small amount of money in it and that's part of the overall document hash too. So when I want to prove I hashed it, I send a tiny fraction of a bitcoin from that wallet (and it could be an unpredictable fraction, to serve as a one time PIN). Making all that easy to verify for someone like an underwriter or lawyer could be a nice way for you to make money.

<comment><USER4> You aren't worried about the certificate itself being forged, all it contains is details on the block that the document was signed on and the hash of the document, you can't forge this since you still have to make a SHA256 hash of the document and verify it against the blockchain. The whole point of this transaction is the blockchain itself records the time that a specific block was mined, if the hash of the document was in that block then that means the document did in fact exist at the time.

<comment><USER3> > then that means the document did in fact exist at the time

I was thinking of a way to prove too that I certified that document, to tie it back to my identity.

<comment><USER5> you could prove that you certified the document by including your name and or signature within the document!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just paid to stamp a document and thought the process was very easy - <USER2> job!

Question: Help me understand the bitcoin financial transaction - I'm not well- versed in bitcoin. In blockchain.info I see "Total Input: 0.0002 BTC" and "Fees: 0.0002 BTC". Is my assumption correct that you had to make a minimal legitimate bitcoin transaction to appear in the ledger (.0002BTC / $0.05), then pay that same amount again as a fee, costing you roughly $0.10USD?

More simply, how much bitcoin is being transacted and who is it going to/from in order for you to create the stamp?

<comment><USER5> Thanks! Actually the transaction creates a zero unspent output (thus no transfer of sum is being carried out). Still we allow for 0.0002BTC for miner fees (which go to the miner's wallet). Miner fees plus paypal fees is the total cost for us per stamping. Of course there is also a cost for the server etc.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Not questioning the cost of your service - that's for you and the market to decide! Just trying to get a better understanding of how the bitcoin transaction works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent idea!

\- I'm not sure about E1.50 price, I think $0.99 would be easier to swallow, psychologically. I understand you have the transaction cost weighing on you, so maybe sell packs of 5 signatures for $4.95? This also gives you ability to run promotions with discounted signature packs.

\- Alternatively a monthly subscription could be interesting as well. Imagine if I'm writing a novel, I might want to keep signing different copies as I go along many times per day, but then rewrite them anyway as I'm not yet satisfied. It would be nice if you shipped a simple text editor that saves all local copies of the work as it's modified, together with persons's name and your timestamp / signature, as a proof of concept. You could be delaying or batching transactions to offset the bitcoin tx cost.

\- I liked the easy drag and drop for a picture, but sadly I have to put my signature into the picture which takes away all of the drag-drop convenience. It would be more convenient if it worked by me drag-dropping the picture and then typing in free-form text into your web site, such as "Copyright (c) DenisM aka email@example.com", and then you hashing (picture + signature), detailing the procedure in the PDF.

\- In a weird way contradicting the convenience aspect I just asked for, I would prefer to give you my hash of the document rather than document itself. I may be afraid of the content leaking before I am ready to release it myself. It's an easy fix for you - add a separate tab where instead of dropping the document I can paste in the hash myself.

Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER4> > \- I liked the easy drag and drop for a picture, but sadly I have to put my > signature into the picture which takes away all of the drag-drop > convenience. It would be more convenient if it worked by me drag-dropping > the picture and then typing in free-form text into your web site, such as > "Copyright (c) DenisM aka email@example.com", and then you hashing (picture + > signature), detailing the procedure in the PDF.

EXIF metadata is embedded in images and would be calculated in the SHA256 hash. Just add an EXIF tag including your copyright and you're done.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is correct. Nevertheless it may also be convenient for someone to sign the document after dragging it in the stampd box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> stampd.io is a web application which helps you apply a blockchain stamp on your art or creative content in general. I would be very happy to hear your comments, suggestions or any questions if you have the time to spare a look. A blockchain stamp can allow you to certify the existence of your content at a specific point in time. If your content is original it can also allow you to prove unquestionable ownership without having to rely on any third party service or authority. We are confident that this new technology can revolutionize the intellectual property rights of creative content.

The time stamping used in stampd's process is carried out in a way through which the user is able to undeniably prove the stamping in the future without relying in our service (or to anyone else's).

Any user of stampd, just by having in hand:

(a) his electronic file (the one with the original content and his signature) (b) the PDF certificate that we issue after stamping which explains all the technical details of the stamping on the blockchain.

...may prove his stamping to anyone needed in the future, simply by using the above and any of the available blockchain explorers.

We would be glad to hear your impressions or any suggestions you might have.

<comment> a-priori Is there any legal precedent that a court will accept this stamp as evidence of ownership?

<comment><USER5> As far as we know there is no legal precedent, nevertheless any IT expert wittness should be able to verify in front of a court that as things stand right now it is impossible to forge the blockchain time stamp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some FOSS projects should stamp their git master commit hash regularly to protect their ideas against future patents with proving prior art. CAs' timestamping services are far more expensive.

<comment><USER5> Could you indicate how much more expensive?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790382)

<comment><USER5> indeed this is one more excellent application of the whole idea. One difference we have is that we are using the OP_RETURN though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty cool. Though, I'm confused as to how can you prove that the hash decrypts to you document?

<comment><USER5> Thanks.. The hash is the SHA256 of the document which is a standard procedure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How do you prevent people from submitting content they don't own?

<comment><USER12> The service doesn't seem to give proof of ownership, just proof of existence at a particular point in time (ie. This document was submitted and verified at 12:13PM PST on 2/18/2015, so it must have existed at that point in time).

<comment><USER5> Ownership of content could be supported in the sense that you publicly annouce its creation first (blockchain is public) with no other previous record of it anywhere. Of course if the content is not original work then it should be traceable in the past thus it would be completely pointless to stamp it on the blockchain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You should also have an app for quickly verifying stamps.

<comment><USER5> Actually if you try to stamp the same document it directs you to the appropriate verification

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool idea, very expensive.

<comment><USER5> We decided to reduce to 0.99 euro from 1.49 euro. This should be small enough to be considered as a fair price.</comment></comment>


Why Figma Wins - <AUTHOR> https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/ <comment><USER2> We use Figma at work, and while it's a nice tool I think it's easy to fall (or maybe we just fell) into a kind of uncanny valley. The designs we get are close to realistic mockups of our actual UI, but are often not 100% there, and it's the little deviations that can be quite distracting.

Engineer: So are we changing the nav icons as part of this story, too?

Designer: Oh, no, ignore that. I didn't have our real icon set so I just grabbed some others

Engineer: This modal doesn't look like our normal modal, are we supposed to be building a new one?

Designer: Oh, no, ignore that - I'm working on a design for a new modal and I just used that here

Engineer: Ok, do you know our current modal doesn't support X, so this part of the interaction won't work?

Designer: Oh, okay, I'll go update the design I guess

Etc... sometimes makes me wish for the days of Balsamiq / sketch style designs where the idea was to not try to make it photorealistic.

Having said that I guess if you could get Figma completely in sync with your actual UI it'd be pretty nice.

EDIT: I will add that the clickable mockups seem really helpful for our Design team when they're doing user testing, which is happening before the designs get to us. But this is not unique to Figma, InVision can do it, too.

<comment><USER3> I've encountered this as well. I am a proponent of just using low fidelity shapes for mocks instead of high fidelity renderings of what it should actually look like.

If you put enough work into the design system, and implemented it well for use in code, all you should NEED is a low fidelity shape telling you where to put existing components, and how to string them together. Everyone already knows what a modal looks like, behaves like, etc. they don't need it designed for them every time it comes up. That just wastes everyone's time.

<comment><USER4> A few days ago I was searching for a cloud native, low fidelity mock up tool, and liked [https://gomockingbird.com/](https://gomockingbird.com/)

I have no affiliation with them.

<comment><USER3> I'll check it out, thanks for sharing! Looks promising from one one minute scan.

In a similar vein (also have zero affiliation) I discovered [https://whimsical.com](https://whimsical.com) today, which also has a few other promising looking tools like flow diagrams, post-its etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Figma approaches design from an engineer's perspective. They have features like auto layout [0], swapping elements in a list, scaling multiple elements at once while preserving each aspect ratio, and so on.

Can you imagine that if designers before this wanted to move an element in a list, they would have to move every single one instead of having some drag and drop swap functionality? That if they wanted to dynamically change a button size for the text inside it, like we can do easily on the web, they simply couldn't?

Basically, Figma is turning design more into something like front-end development, doing things in a design program that engineers could do normally with code. This is because the developers of Figma are themselves coders rather than designers, so they know what real ease of use should look like (ironically). This is the fundamental corporate culture shift that is the difference between Figma and others like Sketch.

Of course, you could go all the way and simply turn the design software into a web/mobile development framework, which is what software like Framer [1] does, which is literally a design software built on React, and it can spit out React code for you once you're done designing.

[0] [https://www.figma.com/blog/announcing-auto- layout/](https://www.figma.com/blog/announcing-auto-layout/)

[1] [https://www.framer.com/](https://www.framer.com/)

<comment><USER6> Framer doesn't spit out React code once you're done. Code used in prototyping is hugely different and unusable in production. And Framer makers know this and openly talk about this, they're _not_ trying to be a code generator.

<comment><USER7> Well, I've found it pretty useful to hand animation in js as-is for specific patterns (as we actually handle the specific bezier curve animation, timings, etc...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I championed the rollout of Figma at my company and what this article mentions is true: this is a tool for design, not just for designers.

We initially thought we'd need to provision the same number of licenses as we did for Sketch/InVision/Abstract. Turns out way more people started to get involved in the design process and we now have a more inclusive design practice. Content strategists, UX developers, researchers, can all participate early and often. (From a revenue perspective that's a pretty convenient thing for Figma, as each editor costs $45/mo — not only are they eating market shares from the existing pie, but they are also making that pie bigger)

<comment><USER9> This post encapsulates why Figma is winning, because there are thousands of teams doing this work dealing with the headaches of having design spread across multiple expensive tools. Figma just does it better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Figma sounds like a great tool, but it feels overhyped to me - especially in this article.

This reads like a long-winded pitch to a Figma investor more than an honest review.

I've been wanting to try it out but this article was a little bit of a turn off because it is so enthusiastic. Every tool has strengths and weaknesses so an article like this makes me wonder, what are the trade offs?

<comment><USER11> I'm a developer who has to dip into design files every now and then, so maybe my opinion isn't the most reliable. But I just don't really see a huge difference between Sketch and Figma. The major difference is that you can design online (which is admittedly a very big diff). But the UI itself doesn't really seem to set itself apart that much.

Can anyone here lay out a few major differences that I might be missing?

<comment><USER12> sketch file is an open format[0]. figma will lock you in. there is no export project feature in figma

[https://help.figma.com/hc/en- us/articles/360038006274-Files-...](https://help.figma.com/hc/en- us/articles/360038006274-Files-in-Figma#format)

that is why it is so easy to migrate into figma from sketch, and impossible to migrate away from figma into anything else...

[0] [https://github.com/sketch-hq/sketch-file- format](https://github.com/sketch-hq/sketch-file-format)

<comment><USER13> I hate to see another vendor lock in by file format like PSD to keep competitors out.

It better be fixed before they become big enough not to care.

<comment><USER12> adobe, microsoft, et al. also faked the fix and incorrectly fixed it by exporting into other formats in a broken way. locking in makes sense from a VC point of view.

from my point of view the only way to guarantee is to use software that provides open file formats and develops their features around those open formats. inkscape and sketch seem to be doing this

<comment><USER13> That's not going to work. People will take features over unknown future uncertainty. Users just have to realize the past mistakes of other companies and pressure the developers to open the format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know and use both Sketch and Figma on a decent level, and I prefer Sketch over Figma. My only complaint to it is that it doesn't have Ubuntu version (I understand why, but still).

To me, is main advantage of Sketch was how many tiny things they got right (before Sketch, I was using Fireworks), and this combined volume of tiny improvements resulted a huge advancement of user experience.

Figma, on the other hand, innovated just one thing: made design online and collaborative. All other tiny niceties are mostly copied. So I prefer to support the guys who crack their heads and innovate.

I also think that Sketch team knows about their main disadvantage, so a web editor for it looks to be in the works.

</comment><comment><USER15> While the things pointed out in the article are true, I think all of those points are actually second to the fact that their engineers are top of the tops. I first learned about Figma from this blog post featured on HN, [https://www.figma.com/blog/how-we-built-the-figma-plugin- sys...](https://www.figma.com/blog/how-we-built-the-figma-plugin-system/). I immediately thought how much I'd want to work there if I lived in the area.

The fact that a startup took so much time to build things with intention, the fact that they tried multiple, months-long paths before settling on a solution, and the technical details of their solution were so well thought out - I was incredibly impressed.

My point is you probably could have given the exact same business plan to 99 other companies, but without the engineering talent, and importantly the engineering culture, they would not have been nearly as successful.

Kudos to the whole Figma team, I'm envious of what you've built.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a comment about Figma really, but it has unfortunately become a trigger word for me. These are my observations from working with tech startup companies as a software engineer.

Software solutions will never fix problems that are caused by people.

Sketch, Figma, whatever the next design tool is. Google Docs, Quip, Notion. Trello, Pivotal Tracker, GitHub/ZenHub, Jira. I've gone through tool-switching fatigue with all of the above. Sometimes it doesn't matter much, other times it bogs us down with metawork for months as you figure out which features you gained, and more importantly, lost.

Back to design. I have seen design die the same way every time. Product misuses design resources, effectively making them contractors that hammer out one-off pieces of work. Those pieces of work get nitpicked by some vocal minority holding a lot of clout, until the end result violates the framework that the designer created.

This frustrates everyone over time.

Designers are frustrated because the systems they built are ignored.

Engineers are frustrated because they are adding new debt with every designed feature that has to rebuild parts of the world to make exceptions to systems work.

Product is frustrated because they just don't get why things are slow after they delivered a clear design to the engineers.

Let it all build up and people will start leaving your company.

So yes, use Figma if it suites your company well. If you're reaching for it because your team is frustrated, maybe consider digging into that more before you swap out yet another piece of software for all the wrong reasons.

<comment><USER16> > Designers are frustrated because the systems they built are ignored.

Designer here. My experience has been that Figma has done the opposite. It's created a lot of consistency with shared component libraries and standardized type / color styles. Also, the fact that engineers can jump into Figma and inspect CSS has been immensely helpful.

In the design world, Figma is like the equivalent of getting a robust IDE with syntax highlighting, code completion, compilation, and debugging. It's replaced multiple tools and connected people in a way that's never been possible.

<comment><USER3> In your experience, do you know if engineers implement the shared component libraries as such in the actual applications? This would be as opposed to engineers directly implementing the end result of work in Figma (Sketch, etc.) that utilizes said components. There is a big difference there, and I'm always curious to have more data points about how this actually happens at other organizations.

<comment><USER17> Anecdote: at my current org the ideal we talk about is having a component library designed in Figma by the Designers and implemented by the engineers.

In reality Design doesn't use components and most pages end up being composed of a bunch of one-off components and we waste a ton of time.

As a side effect of this, the app design isn't consistent across pages because we aren't sharing components.

<comment><USER18> Ditto, we have a quite a few designers and they mostly seem to struggle with thinking in components. They use design system like a color guide, and we keep reimplementing patterns on many pages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Our designers use Figma but the licenses are so expensive that people on the product team can't even make small changes or illustrate concepts. Additionally the UX has tons of hidden features making it hard for non experts to discover how to do simple things like export mockups.

As a result the designers have a backlog of small busy work changes instead of focusing on the key design questions. No one else has licenses to make updates or knows how to use the tool.

The product team has started using Whimsical which is easier to use and is more reasonably priced for people who only use it occasionally or need to quickly illustrate low fidelity concepts. Now we have two design tools to essentially get around UX and pricing problems.

<comment><USER20> > […] the licenses are so expensive that people on the product team can't even > make small changes or illustrate concepts

I completely agree.

I don't see the Figma files as an output that designers produce. I see it as a product on its own that people should be able to collaborate on.

I'm not going to stop a designer from sending me pull requests. In fact, for small mundane updates I'd LOVE it, since it would take this burden away from me. In fact, our inhouse designers all have GitHub accounts, so in theory they are able to.

But when I want to tweak a little thing in a Figma file, like adjust naming of the symbols, clean up icons, add more diverse examples of the content to document edge cases, or to have grounds for my next discussion with a designer or engineer, I'm not allowed to. Also quite often the thing that I want to do is not necessarily meant for designers, but for my fellow developers. Things like technical notes for implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Meh. Everybody knew that "design is not just for designers" for quite a while, Adobe made several failed attempts at "collaboration" workflows trying to solve exactly those kinds of problems. This is just post-hoc justification... and also, let's not jump ahead of ourselves, "Figma wins" is not a foregone conclusion. A few years ago it would've been "why Sketch wins".

<comment><USER22> Everyone knew cgroups and jails and sandboxes for a long time before Docker happened, still only Docker made these concepts popular for the masses.

<comment><USER21> That's what I'm saying - if Figma wins (it's still a considerable if) - it's due to great execution, not some grand insight.

I'm not dissing Figma, I'm disagreeing with the article about what makes it great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't think Figma winning is all that complicated. Designing for the web and mobile is more dynamic now. Designers are expected to show their ideas and produce interactive prototypes. No other design tool has the level of prototype control that Figma does.

Figma is very bad for illustration, but as the industry has killed off any semblance of art or technique this doesn't matter. What does matter is producing something clickable and animated.

So Figma wins because it's designed to solve the problem designers have now. Not 10 years ago like Sketch.

</comment><comment><USER24> Figma is a solid design tool for basic web/mobile apps, however I think that this post reads like a sales pitch more than an honest assessment of the product. The market for design tools is highly competitive, and the 'wins/winner take all' framework does not really apply here. Someone once remarked that every design tool is Photoshop and to a certain degree this is true. Consequently is is easy to clone/transpose the basic functionality/interactions and get teams to switch to a new product. (Think about the recent transition from Sketch to Figma). Companies like Adobe have done well by bundling a suite of complementary products to gain an edge however this is not trivial from a business perspective. Even with bundling the business is not winner take all. Figma is in many ways worse than Sketch, but collaboration is really helpful. That said, it is not that hard to spin up a competitor with React + Firebase in short order.

As much as Figma is in vogue right now, I would rather put money on Notion in the long term. Internal documentation has much higher switching costs than design tools. Notion already has excellent support for Management/Teamwork. They could easily roll out support for prototyping Mobile/Web apps and start eating into Figma's market share.

</comment><comment><USER25> Figma can be shared with a link and has no version control. Multiple designers can work in the canvass without having to worry if everyone is working form the same version. To me, these were the advantages that got us to switch from Sketch to Figma.

<comment><USER26> _Figma can be shared with a link and has no version control._

This is great for quick, informal design work, like prototyping with participants who aren't specialists.

It's a double-edged sword, though. There are good reasons that professional creative workflows often include revision control and sign-off processes attached to distributing specific revisions outside of the internal team.

<comment><USER27> Exactly this, since designs are part of requirements, if they can be changed without the knowledge of all involved parties they can become a moving goal post and source of misunderstandings

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Our design team has churned off of all prior products and now uses Figma. I've consistently been impressed by the degree to which Figma appears to be completely trouncing InVision / Sketch / others with a superlative product.

The standard trend in enterprise software is towards oligopoly, with a few strong incumbents that struggle to actually kill one another as their products converge over time. Most enterprise businesses focus primarily on sales/marketing as they grow, rather than doubling down on a product that can kill incumbents. The fact that Figma has done both is really impressive and as an enterprise product head definitely something that I admire.

</comment><comment><USER29> Coincidentally just when "Why Figma Wins" is #1 on HN, the NimConf (#2) is currently about Figma integration in Nim via Fidget:

\- [https://github.com/treeform/fidget](https://github.com/treeform/fidget)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8Yt2dqZbo&list=PLxLdEZg8DR...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB8Yt2dqZbo&list=PLxLdEZg8DRwTIEzUpfaIcBqhsj09mLWHx&index=15)

\- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585006)

</comment><comment><USER30> I invested a lot of time a few years back learning to use Sketch and did really like it however half of our office are Windows so on a recent project where I took the lead on design (I'm a software engineer but it's a small team) I decided to use Figma and I was blown away, it was much easier to use than Sketch and I had to do very little Googling on how to achieve what I wanted. I then created the animations, shared it with the head of the team who would be using it, he gave me a few bits of feedback and I then shared it with the rest of my team with no OS related problems at all.

Since I've been on furlough for the last 3 months and working on a new app for myself I jumped back over to Sketch (since I have a licence and have invested in some plugins) and I have to say I do not like it anywhere near as much as Figma, at this point I've only stuck with Sketch because of the extras I have purchased for it, once I feel got my money's worth from them I'll be over to Figma for everything.

</comment><comment><USER31> I went for a long period of time - after discovering Figma and thinking it was wonderful - of being unable to use it because I could never remember what it was called.

I remember emailing colleagues, googling for "online vector editor" etc.

To be honest I'm not sure it has sunk in even now. I just haven't needed it for a while.

<comment> frosted-flakes You must have thought it was just a figment of your imagination, eh?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Thats simple - they are cute, reasonably expensive and widely posable, opening many photography options. Their equipment is also largely unterchangeable, so the more you have, the more combinations you can get - often definitely unexpected by their authors. And lastly, they cover most of poular anime and games, so there is a good chance you can get your favorite character in a cute poseable form. :)

Oh, you didn't mean the poseable japanese action figures[0] made by the Good Smile Company ?

[0] [https://www.goodsmile.info/en/products/category/figma](https://www.goodsmile.info/en/products/category/figma)

</comment><comment><USER33> Not a Figma user but I took a quick 10 minute look the other day. I have what is probably a dumb question.

Is there any feature to export the designs into some code friendly format? I didn't see one. I only saw export to image.

Maybe that's a good thing? I certainly don't want to bog designers down into the minutia of implementation ... maybe? But it seemed like such a waste to put all the constraints into Figma and then have to manually figure out where they all are and enter them into your UI framework of choice.

I saw the code inspection feature where you can copy and paste values one at a time.

I guess I'm used to automating this stuff as much as possible. The more automation, the more the designer can tweak things to their heart's content in the actual product. Of course I've mostly done games but some games have very complex UIs and if I didn't automate then every day would be the designers asking "move that 3 pixels right", "make that 4 pixels taller", "change the color to #fe83C7" etc...

Note: I get a figma document is full of stuff not intended to make it into the final product. I've always handled that with labeling, naming conventions, etc and I've always setup some flow where the designer can press a button and see their results live in the dev product in a reasonably short amount of time so they can iterate.

Is that something common in app dev?

</comment><comment><USER34> In 1995, to create web graphics, I learned how to use Adobe Photoshop. It was the first software (along with Notepad) I learned to make websites. In 98 Macromedia Fireworks was released as the first serious tool for creating graphics for the web. I started using it in 1999. It was awesome. It had symbols (a way to use common elements across my designs). I never understood why people continued to use Photoshop which is a photo editing tool to make websites. Adobe bought Macromedia and I used Adobe Fireworks for almost 20 years, even after it was discontinued. I waited a year for Sketch to add symbols. Then I switched from Fireworks to Sketch. I loved Sketch. I was very very happy to use such a lightweight and elegant design tool ... but then Figma came along. I really didn't want to switch from my favourite design tool but last year I understood it is just too amazing to ignore. I switched from Sketch to Figma in a day and now I have a design system.

</comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone explain why adobe XD's platform isn't dominating the design tools discussion?

They keep improving it with the backing of Adobe (army of devs) and the expertise of creative cloud, along with their community design plugins and remote collab features they just added to the platform. I'm able to quickly mock up designs with ease.

<comment> open-source-ux Adobe were caught napping a little. Sketch built a big community of users with a focus on UI design. Neither Photoshop or Illustrator are optimised for these tasks.

Sketch felt nimble and lightweight compared to Adobe's apps to a lot of designers. And it reflected modern designer workflows. The chance to break out of Adobe's embrace probably appealed to many designers too. Adobe realised they had no app to address the 'experience design' process. The result was a new app: Adobe XD.

But XD came late to the game while Sketch's popularity and influence grew. The XD UI has clearly been influenced by Sketch.

The sheer size of Adobe means that XD is being used (it comes as part of Creative Cloud, but it's also free for anyone to use to encourage takeup). But XD doesn't have 'mindshare' among many designers compared to Sketch or Figma.

There is something similar playing out on the iPad. You would think that Adobe would own the digital painting space here. But they don't (at least, not yet) - it's Procreate that illustrators are flocking to use, not Adobe's Fresco which is playing catch-up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> One issue with using realistic mockups is that reviewers expect the actual product to match. Take the extreme case of Steve Jobs where he would compare Macromedia Director mockups down to the pixel with the actual products and complain if they weren't perfect.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=390ISyA- CUEC&pg=PA49&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=390ISyA- CUEC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=steve+jobs+apple+mockups+macromedia&source=bl&ots=WX8Dko2Ojm&sig=ACfU3U3sob0iFdXCwpRtOOvi5jEdffw7gw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1 -- q6t5HqAhVWoHIEHZ4BBK4Q6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=steve%20jobs%20apple%20mockups%20macromedia&f=false)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting opinions. But mostly opinions, not backed by any data. Those features that the author considers to be "winning bets", might not be winners at all. Actually some of them may be considered Figma's downsides and maybe it would grow faster having had done things differently..

It all may be down to being relatively reliable (not that common among design & prototyping tools) and keeping the right balance between adding some slightly advanced prototyping features and still keeping it overall rather simple. Obviously I don't know the truth. Just saying it might be just that, and people are happy with it _despite_ being browser based and without anybody really needing collaborative designing..

</comment><comment><USER37> Figma is a great piece of engineering, but I'm sticking with Sketch for personal use since it checks all of my boxes.

I've been watching it though, because I'm curious to see if they'll ever switch away from Electron for their desktop app. As far as I can tell, it doesn't need much from the browser other than a canvas. A lightweight standalone webassembly+canvas runtime would probably be enough to run it with some tweaks and could net significant performance/efficiency improvements (especially if said runtime leveraged Vulkan, Metal, etc). If they do that, it'll grab my attention and may kick off a new way to build cross-platform high-performance desktop apps.

<comment><USER38> Just curious to know what those boxes are that Sketch checks for you.

Right now, Sketch seems to be the prevailing product in the overall design community. But in my opinion it's only because it was the first to really get such a strong hold on its niche, and a new product will take its place at the top soon.

What turns me off to it as a person who missed its initial spread is that the vanilla Sketch experience leaves a lot to be desired. It's cool that it supports plugins to extend its functionality, but I don't like how it's expected that you just have to get a bunch of plugins to reach parity with the vanilla features of its competitors. (The Mac only support is also a negative too, but it's not that big of a deal for me.)

<comment><USER37> I don't use many plugins. I mostly just need a reasonably capable, digital- first vector canvas to work on, and Sketch does that very well.

It also helps that it's pretty easy on resources — when I first picked it up, my daily driver was a Core 2 Duo MacBook with 4GB of RAM, so back then efficiency was very important. These days I have access to much more powerful machines, but it's still nice that it can sit in the background with large projects open without impacting a browser with dozens of open tabs and mammoth apps like Xcode and Android studio.

So for now, there's just not enough to gain from investing time and effort into moving over to Figma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Everything in this article makes sense to me. But sadly, I don't know how useful it is to the aspiring founders who are trying to build a product right now. It's relatively straightforward to see Figma's success depended on these reasons but what will drive the success of the products that are getting built from scratch right now? I would love to see someone point out technical decision like "browser-first experience" but in 2020 version that's fundamentally different from what everyone else is doing but will make sense in 2025 in retrospect.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm mostly a front end dev and previously I jumped directly into code and implemented whatever I had in mind without any clear direction (which should not have been the case at all). But after hearing about Figma, I first created a mockup of what I had in mind and just straight up designed for 2-3 days till I was satisfied and then dove into code.

Needless to say, it was a game changer as it increased my productivity as I had a clear goal in mind. I'm never going to delve straight into code w/o a clear design henceforth.

</comment><comment><USER27> My main issue with Adobe XD and I believe this is an issue with Figma as well is the fact that there is no versioning on shared designs. We found ourselves in this situation with Adobe XD a few times where the designs were delivered to the developer and after part of the implementation was done the designer pushed changes which made the implementation look as if it was no longer following the approved UI. I looked at Figma as an alternative but it seems to have the same issue unless this has changed. Can anyone confirm?

<comment><USER41> I share different screens and version them.

<comment><USER27> That leaves versioning on designers side which means designer is the only one who can confirm the changes. This can lead to misunderstandings.

<comment><USER41> unclear what you mean by "designer is the only one who can confirm the changes".

hopefully, I would assume there will be additional documentation that refers to a certain version that is approved

\---

> That leaves versioning on designers side

how was versioning the designs prior to Figma? whose responsibility was it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Figma is great. The single biggest feature from figma is that it's shared/collaboration oriented by default. This is due to its online nature (compared to installable apps such as sketch, incision and xd).

Not all designers like this, but I love how figma makes work available across design teams, and how components becomes easily usable. I discovered my colleagues work by accident all the time.

Now, all this creates other problems, obviously: now designers also need to maintain interdependent assets just like software dependencies.

</comment><comment><USER43> Could any designers here explain why they use Figma instead of Invision?

I used Invision before and loved it (as a developer) for collaborating on creating mockups and putting them into reality.

Now working with a team that uses Figma and helping them create prototypes is...painful. It seems great for creating the design itself but prototyping has been way harder with it than in Invision. I'm wondering if maybe we're just unfamiliar with the right way to use that part of the tool.

<comment><USER6> InVision doesn't have any design features. It's just a prototyping tool, you need to import designs from somewhere.

Figma is a bit like Sketch+InVision combined. With the InVision part actually better than InVision.

There is also InVision Studio, which was their attempt on full-fledged prototyping tool, but it's largely abandoned now, always suffered with huge reliability and perfomance issues and never became truly usable tool. It's a pity, it looked very promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> You know why it won for me? It had a Windows version from the start, so our team (Mac/Win) could actually get work done, since most other tools are Mac only.

</comment><comment><USER45> My concerns with these cloud only solutions is that you lose control and you are locked in. See what happened to creatives in Venezuela when Adobe had to cut off access because of some trade sanctions.

If you're a freelancer I'd rather use native apps that have a perpetual license, like the Affinity apps.

If you're part of a bigger team and need collaboration features or easier hand off to engineering teams then yes I think Figma is great.

</comment><comment><USER46> All design tools lack the ability to design the most important part of an UI: state. I think Figma is an awesome tool for making good looking mockups, but as a tool for describing how the UI will actually work, it has the same flaws as all other tools for this. Storybooks are great but there is still need for endless discussions when converting fancy Figma designs to actual interactive components with state

<comment><USER47> It depends on what you call "design". User flow, interactions, states, rectangles and colors or just rectangles and colors. If first, there are a lot of other tools, maybe not so hyped so you don't see them every day. Just to name a few: Axure, Justinmind, iRise, Indigo Design. Recent version of Adobe XD is quite a powerful tool as well. With the rise of rapid application development tools we possibly can add Bubble, Retool, Outsystems and similar tools to this list too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Love Figma!

However, their enterprise licence is $45/month ($540 annually)! That is ludicrous for the functionality that the app provides.

In comparison Microsoft or Adobe software (Photoshop is $250/annum) has immense amount of technology & man month behind - Photoshop has been in development since 1990, and Microsoft Office must be in development for similar amount of period and have perhaps 5K+ employees (wild guess).

</comment><comment><USER49> I used Figma at my last gig and while some of it is really nice, I found the productivity sub-par compared to even Sketch which I don't like very much. It seems that every new generation of design tools does less than the one before and is less productive while delivering gains in areas that are at best a nice to have. I'm scratching my head in this regard.

</comment><comment><USER50> As a programmer I used to take the ability to manage my workflows as I saw fit for granted. It is amazing how much value there is in providing some level of programming capabilities to the average user. This post is essentially describing a workflow management system for designers. It's amazing Figma has unlocked so much value.

</comment><comment><USER51> Does anyone actually like using Figma? Honest question. I've use it for collaboration a few times but found it painful. I'd much rather have used Photoshop and screen sharing if given the choice. I understand that this solution doesn't scale though.

<comment><USER52> Not in a hundred years could I imagine going back to Photoshop for doing product design. Figma is a joy to use. Photoshop is a slow, clunky thing of the past in this particular field of design.

<comment><USER51> Interesting, to me Figma is dog slow, feature poor… I can't imagine why people would use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The problem that I have with Figma is that it just doesn't work at all when you don't have an internet connectivity. At least with Sketch you can keep working when you want to work outside in the park and you ran out of hot spot data.

</comment><comment><USER54> Interesting. I have a 2017 MBP, 16GB, 2.9 GHZ quad-core, and Figma feels terribly slow.

<comment><USER55> I briefly had Figma, Zoom, and Slack (three workspaces) open at once on Friday on my Mac. My computer was more or less unusable and sounded very sorry for itself; it was sort of entertaining, baffling, and sad all at the same time.

I ended up quitting Slack and asking the designer if she could show us the Figma stuff over screenshare on Zoom instead. Obviously multi-tasking is too much to expect these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Comparing pricing directly, looks like Sketch is cheaper, if company already uses Macs. But how does it compare in reality? Do developers need additional Figma licences, or can designers just share designs with them to inspect?

<comment><USER57> Pure "viewer" licenses are free on figma. You only pay per editor.

And IMHO the price delta between sketch and figma is basically a rounding error on the wage cost of your designers, so it's barely even worth thinking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> We used Figma to design our app[1] (and everything around the app), and real- time collaboration was truly invaluable as a fully remote team.

[1] [https://supernotes.app](https://supernotes.app)

</comment><comment><USER59> Figma users: can it export CSS grid? Would love to start using autogenerated HTML/CSS but don't want to go back to 'display: block' and the hacks that invariably come with it.

<comment><USER60> I think the terminal output is the figma viewer. I have a hard time seeing the point of the role and software if a front end developer has to hand translate the design to actual code or styling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> It wins because it works and it continues to release useful features.

</comment><comment><USER62> I wish Figma would add page formatting and links so that it could be used as a wiki also. Figma is on a much better track to make a good product than Notion.

<comment><USER63> Fun fact: Figma recently announced link/URL support

I totally agree and have been moving my spec work from Notion to Figma too!

<comment><USER64> At a high level, how are you spec'ing in Figma?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Figma does not seem to tie into the OS UI primitives.

What is the experience for visually-impaired users that need high contrast UIs or braille terminals?

</comment><comment><USER66> Figma didn't "fix" design collaboration, it just made it easier. If your org has poor design maturity then the tool doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER67> What's the best stack/methods to take a properly designed Figma prototype into a HTML5+CSS+maybe JS web app? (PWA)

</comment><comment><USER68> I keep thinking of the anime figure line Figma whenever someone says Figma :V

</comment><comment><USER69> I do not work on a Mac or want to. So anything that praises Figma over Sketch I upvote. You might think that it's a shallow position but when a company decides to limit their product to only one platform there is a price they have to pay.

<comment><USER6> That's because 99% of good designers are on Mac. That has never been a serious problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Also Figma is working on Windows.</comment>


Recommend any Authorize.Net reporting tools? - <AUTHOR>

I swear I saw a tool for this recently and now I can't find it through google. Basically, I need an easy-to-use graphing/reporting tool that will let our finance guy run reports on our sales in Authorize.Net. All the data's there, but AuthNet doesn't have very good report tools and I'd prefer not to have to homebrew if someone already invented the wheel there.<p>Ideas? <comment><USER2> This would help us out as well.</comment>


China Bets on Sensitive U.S. Startups, Worrying the Pentagon - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/technology/china-defense-start-ups.html <comment><USER2> It's not just a case of China investing in American tech to get their hands on 'our stuff' (actually I'm a Brit, but you take my meaning). In several of the cases discussed in the article this stuff wouldn't exist at all for the US to take advantage of either without the Chinese money. From that point of view, it's the US military taking advantage of Chinese funded research.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why are the Americans crying foul when a socialist Chinese seems to be better at Capitalism? Trade is a two ways deal.</comment>


How to snoop your competitor's site usability - <AUTHOR>

There are paid services that let you study your site's usability via click-heatmapping. But how do you see if your competitors' layouts are doing good or not? OkShr.com is a service that acts like a URL shortener to the visitor but in the back-end is able to record all the clicks. These clicks are then transmitted in real-time to another URL privately shared with the creator over email. If you see there are more clicks on BUY on your rival's site than yours, then you know it is time to make those layout changes!<p>Check out the site at http://okshr.com. It's free.  Your feedback much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Neat idea, but how do you gather any data without actively sending customers to your competitors site?

It's like people are going to know about this shortened trojan URL without the creator of the URL publicizing and promoting it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks brk

What we do is we create a copy of the page's source code onto our database and showcase this code to the visitors. This means, although the user will be able to see click-heatmaps from the site, it will not affect the competitor in any way since the functionality of the page will not change in any way.

Also, at the end of 30 days, we stop tracking and will instead redirect the page to the end URL like any URL shortener. I have a feeling that 30 days could be a bit long. If it indeed turns out true, we can reduce that, or maybe provide this as an option to the URL creator.</comment></comment>


Game of Thrones – Season 2 Trailer - <AUTHOR> http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/01/29/game-of-thrones-season-2-trailer/

<comment><USER2> I remember reading the first 4 books in college and wondering if it was even possible for a film adaptation to do them justice. As it turns out, it is possible since the first season of GoT was splendid. Many of the actors fit their character roles perfectly; they were just as I imagined while reading the novels.

Only around 2 more months until the start of the next season!

<comment><USER3> Reading the book felt like it was a screenplay, which is not surprising since the author is a screenwriter. Well described scenes, characters, events. Little ambiguity or deepness, but very colourful and fun.</comment></comment>


World's 1st Wireless Molecular Network Uses Alcohol To Send Text Messages - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173253-worlds-first-wireless-molecular-network-uses-rubbing-alcohol-to-send-text-messages

<comment><USER2> Other submissions of this story, although none have any discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6945800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6945800) (theverge.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6943036) (laptopmag.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6942179) (sciencedaily.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939145) (plosone.org)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6939133) (scienceagogo.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935903](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6935903) (arstechnica.com)</comment>


Parking Has Eaten American Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/07/parking-has-eaten-american-cities/565715/ <comment><USER2> Come on. First of all, parking in NYC and Boston is a complete nightmare. Spots are expensive and hard to find, rules and enforcement are arbitrary.

Secondly, to suggest that Jackson WY has an overabundance of parking (28 spots per resident) is offensive. In the summer, over 1 million tourists visit Jackson to see Yellowstone.

It would be like saying that Disneyworld has an overabundance of parking at 2AM on a Tuesday.

<comment><USER3> Concerning Jackson, the report (not the summary from citylab) says:

> Jackson's plentiful parking supply was underutilized. Despite its small land > area and population, millions of visitors drive through the city every year > so it is plausible that Jackson needs a lot of parking. But a Jackson- > commissioned parking occupancy study of the residential core and midtown > areas during peak tourist season in 2017 by Kimberly-Horn found, on average, > 68 percent of parking stalls were empty in the residential core, and 61 > percent were vacant in the midtown area. Occupancy peaked at 43 percent for > the residential core and 51 percent for midtown. These low occupancy rates > could suggest that parking is overpriced in Jackson, but at the time of this > study, all parking in Jackson was provided at no cost. The conclusion must > be that Jackson has an oversupply of parking.

I am unable to find the original study, cited as "Town Of Jackson Parking Garage Challenges to Success" from [http://townofjackson.com/services/police/pr/parking- garage-c...](http://townofjackson.com/services/police/pr/parking-garage- challenges-success/) .</comment></comment>


NoScript Add-On Is Updated for Firefox 57 and the New WebExtensions API - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/noscript-add-on-updated-for-firefox-57-and-the-new-webextensions-api/ <comment><AUTHOR> Summary: The Firefox 57 update removed many APIs for addons, which broke an incredible amount of add-ons, including noscript.

Noscript finished updating to the new API, it's working again now after being forcefully disabled for 1 week.</comment>


Oculus co-founder is leaving Facebook after cancellation of 'Rift 2' headset - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/oculus-co-founder-is-leaving-facebook-after-cancellation-of-rift-2-headset/ <comment> amiga-workbench This is worrying, HTC aren't exactly doing brilliantly and I'd like to see some more proper headsets, not these gimped smartphones glued to your face.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it looks like aside from HTC, VR is a race to the bottom. I guess there's just more money in crappy low-rent headsets vs high quality expensive ones.

<comment><USER3> Because for the general populace adoption of VR hinges on affordability.

<comment><USER4> I haven't tried Magic Leap yet, but Oculus, Vive and Playstation VR all deliver a weak experience. The headsets are uncomfortable, they make a lot of people sick, and they are anti-social (ie you look goofy using it and they are isolating). The headset could be $50 with an included game and I still wouldn't buy it.

I don't think VR will really take off until it gets to the sunglasses form- factor phase.

<comment><USER5> When I read comments like this I just don't believe it, I haven't seen anyone get sick since the CV1/Vive came out.

The DK2 totally had those issues and the PSVR is a sub standard experience but hey each to his own I guess.

<comment><USER6> I had a Vive. In a game running well, where the only movement was my own (i.e. walking around my room), I did not get motion sick.

However, when anything glitched (frame drops, tracking errors, etc.), I'd get sick. Even worse, any game with artificial motion (such as walking with the trackpad), would make me SUPER sick very fast. Teleporting was generally OK, but still not great.

I say this as someone that thinks VR will be a huge success, but it's definitely still early.

Unlike OP, I think gen 2 alone is going to make huge strides in making VR closer to mainstream.

<comment><USER7> I think some people are just so susceptible to motion sickness that they will never be able to enjoy it. Contrary to your experience, minutes after setting up my Vive for the first time I was comfortable floating around with true 6 DOF for my simulated character, with near zero quease.

I don't think there is any sort of "advances" that can prevent some people from being uncomfortable with "virtual" motion. It is unnatural and that's not going to change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would guess, based on the article, that PC headset sales aren't anywhere near what the division needs to stay alive. The cheaper mobile headsets are more affordable and easier to use, even if the technology isn't as advanced as what the PC headset would offer.

If Carmack leaves, then you know Occulus is fucked.

<comment><USER5> The funny thing is Carmack only works on the mobile headsets and has been for awhile. He knows that's the future.

<comment><USER9> Not really actually. Originally he started doing all that mobile stuff mostly because of Zenimax's lawsuit.

<comment><USER10> Do you have a source on that? It seems like a much better fit for his talents than the PC stuff. He's doing low level super critical performance optimization, and technical product direction.

Performance doesn't matter nearly as much on the PC side, because there's so much more headroom in the hardware, and the technical product direction can just flow out of what game companies need.

The mobile side is a true technical challenge where a person like Carmack can literally make the difference between go and no-go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Between this, the 2080's performance being 'eh', the vive pro having a very mixed reaction (mostly price), and the pimax sets running face-first into gpu limitiations, PC VR is in a bit of a slump. The best thing to buy today is almost exactly what it was a year and a half ago.

<comment><USER12> I don't think hardware is to blame. There are no killer apps that make people justify strapping a box to their face.

<comment><USER13> The facebox isn't really the problem, it's the price and the equipment. You need a highish-end PC in addition to the VR rig itself, towers for sensors/ir lights, etc. I think the Quest will probably be a game changer here, being a stand alone self-contained unit at a reasonable price point.

<comment><USER14> I guess you could include it in 'price and equipment' but for me I simply don't have space in my apartment to do any of the interesting things with VR (eg I really enjoyed SuperHot VR), and it doesn't seem much of an improvement if I'm just sitting in my chair with it. Floor space is extremely expensive in almost every big Western city at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess the lesson to learn here is "never sell your company if you want to have any controlling influence over it". So we have WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus quickly in a row. Hundreds of killed-off companies acquired by FAANG, visions lost, money made.

<comment><USER16> I know it's a useful acronym, but not quite accurate. Netflix doesn't do many [0] acquisitions [1] and isn't on the same scale as the other companies other than as a desirable tech company to work at.

[0] [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/07/netflix-inc- just-m...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/07/netflix-inc-just-made- its-first-ever-acquisition.aspx)

[1] [https://www.thestreet.com/investing/netflix-acquisition- abq-...](https://www.thestreet.com/investing/netflix-acquisition-abq- studios-14746375)

A list like Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Yahoo! is probably more accurate, even if the last has itself been acquired.

Term pedantry aside, your point is sound. Tech's incredible journey marches on.

<comment><USER17> Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all West Coast tech companies that are in the top 10 largest public companies in the world by market cap. Media should really replace Netflix with Microsoft and come up with a new acronym.

<comment><USER18> How about MAAAF.

<comment><USER19> Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Intel, and Amazon = MAFIA ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cancellation of the "Rift 2" seems like a pretty big deal, is this confirmed anywhere else?

<comment><USER21> Clarification from the author on twitter[0]: this edition of Rift 2 may have been cancelled but that does not mean Facebook is no longer making PC VR headsets.

[0][https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/status/1054436110661754880?s=1...](https://twitter.com/lucasmtny/status/1054436110661754880?s=19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Facebook denies techcrunch report regarding Rift 2:

[https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/oculus-co-founder- bren...](https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/oculus-co-founder-brendan- iribe-is-leaving-facebook-1202988298/)

<comment><USER22> _"Yes, we are planning a future version of Rift."_

That's not really a denial that Rift 2 was cancelled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It sounds like this trend is exactly what Facebook wants. They buy some software (and its people) and mold it to their specifications whether or not it costs that team its most senior management/visionaries.

The more interesting thing will be to see what happens when all of these ex- CEOs have left and how Facebook has managed to maintain all of these acquisitions without the key leaders of each division.

<comment><USER24> It's more of Thiel influence of 'build a cult' on Zuckerberg and also his inability to listen from other respectable figures for their opinions. I got that vibe from the article of the Whatsapp founders. Seems that Zuckerberg has his mind set on an idea and will shut down any other opinion. Troubling for investors, it's never good to have a monoculture or one-sided opinions and it doesn't look good to have smart people (and proven successful) jump ship at this rate.

<comment><USER25> who says its not good? worked for apple for many years.

<comment><USER26> Cults work until they don't.

<comment><USER27> I can name a few that are a couple of thousand years old and still kicking

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find this report funny because the quest is the real rift 2.

I don't buy this rumor one bit, if we saw carmack, mitchell or abrash leave then maybe I'd be worried but what does Iribe really have to his name? When I think back I see a botched launch of the original rift... that no doubt had a part in his "stepping down" as CEO towards the end of 2016...

In other words nothing to see...

<comment><USER28> I would say the something to see here is that Facebook is betting on stand- alone VR and not PC based VR going forward.

I think this is a good bet as the main reason most of my friends have not gotten into VR is the necessity for a high-end gaming PC and the associated costs of VR in general.

The Quest, while not cheap, is priced around the new norm for gaming machine which is much more palatable than the current VR cost/PC approach.

<comment><USER29> I'd say is pretty bad bet as stationary beasts are often not powerful enough for decent experience so stand-alone device is just a 100 steps back.

I wouldn't be surprised if stand-alone VR user retain is in single digits. Some people watch movies but that's pretty much where real use case ends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why are people saying "it makes more sense to make it affordable first"? When has an advanced new tech ever proliferated from the bottom-up? New tech is always unaffordable, and becomes affordable as it matures. Advancements trickle down. I fear that this move towards cheap low-barrier VR will make it unattractive for users.

<comment><USER31> ...because some people think that 6DOF HMD + Touch is the first real generation of VR, and now it's time to make THAT affordable. The other improvements to VR, at the high end, are less interesting to them. Sure, they're nice, but they essentially think 6DOF HMD + Touch is the Minimum Viable Product for VR. At least for the 80% Gaming / 20% Video market, as they said at Oculus Connect. That's what Oculus Quest is.

If Oculus Quest feels "almost as good" as an Oculus Rift in many games, I don't know why you think that'll be "unattractive for users".

Hell, I think Beat Saber alone is worth the price of admission on an Oculus Quest.

<comment><USER32> I remember when 6DOF HMD + Touch + GTX 970 was the bare minimum... and then all these new headsets stated coming out with far weaker GPUs. I wonder if anything has changed or if they have just decided to sacrifice quality for adoption.

<comment><USER33> GPU requirements were dropped because the software has gotten a lot better. Here's a presentation from OC5 that highlights some of the more recent improvements (ASW 2.0 is particularly impressive): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbLe7b2pUq0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems like a smart move from Facebook. They clearly stand to make more money from standalone VR headsets with good-enough graphics and low prices (i.e. the Quest) than from super high end wired headsets that require a $2k PC.

<comment><USER35> Sure, but if that was their strategy, they could have just developed something good enough internally or acquired someone going after that market. It's disappointing that they bought a company (arguably the most prominent) with the opposite strategy, and then didn't commit to it.

This would make more sense if they were acquiring competitors to consolidate their position, but they didn't have a position, this is how they entered the market.

It may suggest that they have gathered enough evidence to be pretty certain that the high-end VR market just isn't workable. But it doesn't seem to me like they have given it enough time or energy to know this yet.

<comment><USER34> I don't think Oculus had the opposite strategy though. Standalone 6 DoF tracking with on board processing simply wasn't an option for them in the past.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As sad as this makes me being a person that has a powerful gaming PC and would want the best VR experience, maybe for now it's more important to make VR more mainstream, and profitable so it does not die out all together.

</comment><comment><USER37> Are we back in VR winter? It feels like it hasn't caught on aside from a segment of gamers.

<comment><USER38> Nope, porn (and you would expect TV/movies to follow in their footsteps) will ensure it doesn't disappear and continues to grow, although it's possible it grows slowly.

<comment><USER39> Porn, sure. That's a place where being immersed in the scene is unique and possible desirable. Movies, though... I'm not convinced. 3D movies already suffer from having to force the viewer's attention to the appropriate part of the scene by changing the focus so undesirable locations are blurred out. How do you represent an action scene where the viewer could potentially be looking 180 degrees from where the action is taking place?

<comment><USER40> Half Life managed to do it. I imagine if you played a VR version of Half Life the story/"cut scene" parts would work even better than with a mouse and keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is John Carmack still there?

<comment><USER42> As of now, yes.

<comment><USER43> He's been really clear for multiple years now that he signed up to put a billion people in VR. I don't think high-end PC-powered, room-scale rigs have any real part in that mission. Are you suggesting he would leave?

<comment><USER44> As a VR skeptic, I think his expertise is being wasted in that space.

<comment><USER45> Perhaps, but Carmack works on things he likes and is best driven by seemingly- impossible technical tasks. It's pretty unlikely he'd be anywhere near as productive in any other space if he truly loves VR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Not sure how important this is. Is there a doubt in anyone's mind that FB got Oculus for John Carmack ?

<comment><USER47> I don't believe that at all.

If Facebook wants a rockstar dev, they can offer that one person a lot less money than it would cost to buy a company.

Facebook bought Oculus because they wanted to expand into the VR space. I imagine it had nothing to do with games, but rather the possibility of a future application platform.

In my mind, VR is not the future, but rather AR will be. In that case, Facebook wants to be the provider of ads and metadata that is laid over other people's faces and brick-and-mortar storefronts while people walk around wearing thin AR glasses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Feels more like Oracle than FAANG with some of these moves.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the biggest hindrance to VR is that Apple doesn't have the equivalent to Cardboard/Daydream. I don't know how many of you have introduced people to VR but every person I have shown VR to has enjoyed it. There is a lot of variance in the enjoyment but 1/5 really enjoys it. I think once smartphone VR gets bigger, especially when Apple does something it will funnel many more people to more expensive VR headsets.

</comment><comment><USER50> Couldn't they have compromised by having an external input on one of the models, like the 27" pre-retina iMac used to b come a monitor? I suppose that's could still be perceived as a problem of fracturing the target platform. But really that's unavoidable in any leading edge technology.

</comment><comment><USER51> Having used both types of headsets I can say that there is probably no entertainment market for tethered headsets.

</comment><comment><USER52> Can't believe there is a rift among Facebook upper management.

</comment><comment><USER53> I 'm glad people are finally quitting the VR hype. The amount of money thrown in the hopes that people would strap a horrible vomit-inducer in their skull is astonishing. What's worse, it has distracted people from incremental progress in what is "classical" metaverse and kept it behind by a few years. Example in point is Second life's pivot to VR called Sansar and its open- source twin called HighFidelity. Both are going nowhere, and the only thing that kept people from seeing their obvious flaws was the mountain of money they got thrown. Highfidelity now _pays its users_ with cryptocurrency in order to be able to stress-test their servers. The project has received 75M to burn, and is unable to retain any users after 4-5 years of trying. Its users are complaining about the lack of a decent desktop experience, yet they are stubbornly refusing to listen. On the other end, opensimulator, a poor secondlife-clone is struggling to fix its bugs with $0 funding, yet it still keeps thousands of users interested. Someone should just knock some sense into all this hype.

I guess the guys leaving oculus are smart enough to know that the party is over ... for now.

<comment><USER5> Ya know there are other people making content in VR beyond total rip offs...

No one is "quitting" VR, people sure as hell are doubting it though.

"in the hopes that people would strap a horrible vomit-inducer in their skull is astonishing."

This shit reminds me of the pc days... "why would I want to play this game, it doesn't even look real"</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there other Sales Engineers on HN? Are you also lost? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I'm an SE (sales/solutions engineer) and have been one for around 4 years now.  If you don't know, it is basically a technical sales role, a blend of being personable and knowing enough to code POCs work with APIs etc, but in my case, at least, not a full blown developer.
HN content is often pretty dev heavy, for obvious reasons, so I was curious if there are other SEs out there like myself that lurk here constantly?
Additionally, I was looking for advice.  I am 30, having a kid soon and totally lost in my career.  Do I move to straight sales?  Do I go like bootcamp route and really sharpen my programming skills?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Hey there! I can sympathize with your situation. I have an engineering degree, but have taken jobs in software testing/QA and now an application support role, but definitely lost/confused in my career. I too am debating whether I should focus on building a portfolio and studying software development or continue down a less technical route. I have recently not "taken the reigns" of my career's direction, but I definitely need to soon now in my late 20s. I know about a lot of different technologies and on a high-level, how they interact, and what they are used for, but have no concrete experience or a portfolio of side-projects to showcase any know-how.

People have often mentioned I would make a good sales/solutions engineer, since I am descent at explaining technical topics to people and have a good understanding of how different technologies fit into a bigger puzzle, but after this latest job in support, I have become frustrated dealing with client's old infrastructure, performing configuration tasks after-hours, and chasing client's IT staff to return their support inquiries. After this most recent experience, I am thinking that going down the SE route is less-optimal than as a dev/engineer for what I value in a job.

At this point, I have been trying to brush up on my skills using hackerrank.com and attempting to put together a few small projects in hopes of building a bit of a portfolio on github. I have heard mixed reviews about bootcamps and am not sure I am ready to spend ~$10k + living expenses while not working or working part-time, and hence why I am trying to "bootstrap" on my own for a while. Have you considered doing this?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you can program well, go into dev. If you would rather be a seller, I think you could make a lot more in the long run, and have more valuable life experience. I am currently trying to become a tech sales engineer right now, but not even sure if I will like it, so I a feeling lost too. All I know is I HATE dev lol

</comment><comment><USER3> wow this hit home</comment>


Show HN: Peer-to-peer for shell scripts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chr15m/dreamtime <comment><USER2> I don't understand it exactly. Maybe I'll read the source code since it is so small, but perhaps you should give a practical example of someone using your library for some end.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add a public log aggregation example, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of utox[0]. Early on names were just hashes but then came along a few nickname registration servers through which you could use a memorable name. This could benefit from something similar.

[0] [http://utox.org/](http://utox.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dreamtime uses the Bittorrent DHT. You can use any plaintext room name and it is internally converted to an infohash through which peers can find eachother.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this recruitment tactic shady? - <AUTHOR> A couple of years ago I was about to become redundant and blanket uploaded my CV onto a number of job boards, including Monster.co.uk.
I quickly found a role by applying to a company directly and set my account on a number of CV sites (including Monster) to private. This is the current state of my profile. All other profiles I have across job sites have either been removed or disabled in this way.
Fast forward 2 years and I received an email today from a recruiter with the stock "your CV out of date, I am keen to talk to you" blurb. Usually this would go straight in the bin, I get about 10 of these a week so this isn't anything new.
This email however was part of a chain, and the recruiter had accidentally (I assume) forwarded me an email from a company called Logic Melon with a header saying:
You requested the details for <MY NAME> (from Monster). The C.V. should be attached as it was downloaded. Please find the details below.
Underneath this were details of my email address, mobile phone number, current location and date the profile was last updated.
What it looks like is that a recruiter has paid a third party service to retrieve my CV it scraped from Monster in 2014 and get my contact details. Contact details that shouldn't exist in the open.
I'm already fairly prejudiced about software recruitment firms from numerous run-ins with them in the past, so my natural response is to feel this is pretty shady behavior but should I be feeling so uncomfortable about this?
I understand that placing my personal details on a job board would have resulted in everyone and their mother being able to read and save it, but I didn't really think that my CV and personal contact details would have been archived and continued to be used by recruiters long after I disabled my account. I disabled my account as an indication that I was no longer looking for work, contacting me in this way is fairly blatantly ignoring this preference. <comment><USER2> > What it looks like is that a recruiter has paid a third party service to > retrieve my CV it scraped from Monster in 2014 and get my contact details. > Contact details that shouldn't exist in the open.

In 2014 your profile was public, so your contact information _did_ exist in the open. May not be legal for a company to crawl Monster to store information though, you would have to look at Monster's terms of service (for example LinkedIn doesn't allow apps to store LinkedIn data, only to retrieve them via the API).

>I understand that placing my personal details on a job board would have resulted in everyone and their mother being able to read and save it, but I didn't really think that my CV and personal contact details would have been archived and continued to be used by recruiters long after I disabled my account.

Everything you put on the Internet is available to everybody until the end of times. Internalize that and you'll be fine :)

> I disabled my account as an indication that I was no longer looking for > work, contacting me in this way is fairly blatantly ignoring this > preference.

Recruiters don't give a damn about your preferences. Just blacklist this guy.

</comment><comment> J-dawg This is interesting, and has made me think about the recruiters that contact me.

Early in my career I thought I wanted to be a project manager, so I tailored my CV to junior project manager jobs and uploaded it to several job sites. I haven't really used job boards since then.

Now, several years later, I am regularly emailed by recruiters about senior PM / programme manager jobs. I've never understood why, since I've never indicated any interest in this type of job.

It's almost as if they have obtained an old CV and extrapolated to the type of jobs they think I would be interested now, years later.

I'm possibly being paranoid, but your story made me think!

</comment><comment><USER3> For me it's totally understandable that you dislike what the recruiter did. He (she?) was trying to sell you (with all the details you posted on the job board) as a candidate. Without your consent or even _knowledge_.

This is why we have laws about personally identifiable information in EU.

</comment><comment><USER4> Scraping and saving resumes is a common tactic. I know recruiters from Companies You've Heard Of and even their big, well known company scrapes daily.

As for selling the information later, that's a different issue (and one that I agree is not ethical).

</comment><comment><USER5> Report it.

[https://ico.org.uk/](https://ico.org.uk/)

<comment><USER6> Please do, I really dislike these shady companies. The only way to stop them is to have them reported.

On a side note when I'm contacted like this, typically from people trying to sell B2B services sometimes I amuse myself by replying "I'll talk if you tell me where you got my email". They never say. I also leave customised emails to a catch-all domain for some sites and occasionally see these data leaks but it is surprisingly rare.</comment></comment>


To Revive Wallet, Google Tries to Wrangle Unruly Partners - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/to-revive-wallet-google-tries-to-wrangle-unruly-partners-1424392928 <comment><AUTHOR> Google is in dire need for a marketing unit, that educates regular consumers about the possibilities of the applications and products Google has. Otherwise Google always ends up with low traction for a lot of its products. And sometimes these products are killed.

It seems Google wants to do consumer tech only to get money to be able to do high tech. But otherwise it has no real interest in consumer tech.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I've said that for years. Google have a serious tendency to just announce products, push them out the door and then forget they ever existed.

Then 3 years later we hear about them being closed down (due to lack of traction) and they get a whole load of bad press from all the people who actually did use it.

Any new product, even at a large company, should be thought of like a startup - in constant need of marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, May be Google is still stuck in old ways of Internet. When early adopters drove the adaption. But Internet, specially Web has become too mainstream and there is a lot of noise. So being dependent on just early adopters might not cut it. It needs to have a Growth-Hacker type mindset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> To revive Wallet, Google needs to make it usable. I'm not exactly unsaavy to the ways of a phone, but on the last phone I had with NFC there was no explanation of how to get it to work at POS (and how to set it up it all isn't very clear). Does the phone need to be awake? Do I need to run an app? I tried it once, didn't work, never touched it again. Mobile payment is something I'm just not going to put a lot of effort into.

Contrast to Apple Pay. Held the phone up, prompted for fingerprint, done.

<comment><USER4> Actually, Google Wallet works almost exactly the same as ApplePay (my spouse has an iPhone 6, I have a Moto X 2014); I've seen and used both.

Just tap the phone on the NFC device and that's it (the PIN pad at the retail may then prompt you to hit credit or debit, if you choose debit, you just enter your wallet pin again). If Google Wallet needs to be unlocked first, it will prompt you for the wallet pin.

In fairness, it used to be far more cumbersome. They fixed most of the user interface problems with the release of Android 5.0.

<comment><USER5> But unfortunately most devices don't (and can't) run Android 5.0, so they're stuck with the old, cumbersome Wallet (or, worse, tried it, gave up on it because it was a terrible experience, will never try it again).

<comment><USER6> I could've sworn it worked the same when I was running 4.whatever on my old Nexus 5 prior to the 5.0 update. From an end user perspective I haven't noticed much of a change in at least a couple of years (aside from some vendors disabling support in favor of their own tap to pay).

<comment><USER4> The difference I believe came with the ability for the app to automatically be run in the background and for control over which one was used for Tap and Pay, which given today's announcement from Google makes sense.

Maybe this was fixed in Android 4.4, but I would swear the experience changed for me sometime right at or after 4.4.

Notably, I didn't have to make sure the app was open and wallet unlocked first, whereas with Android 5.0 it "just works".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All Google/Apple articles (which used to be MSFT/Apple 20 years ago) Things are easier for Apple because they control everything in their domain. This however creates powerful enemies who are locked out and threatened. This creates a real opportunity for Google. However everything is much harder for Google to do because it doesn't control the entire ecosystem like Apple.

Rinse and repeat

<comment><USER8> In fairness, a number of partners have stated that Google is the biggest threat to their business in their 10Q's :-). But what is interesting from a game theory point of view is always do Google and Apple think the other is a threat to their business? And what does interdependencies means for things like the consumer? There is an interesting rock/paper/scissors sort of relationship with search, phone OS, app stores, applications, and market sizes. Its during periods where the interdependencies are tend to favor a single player that we see fairly large scale attacks against that entity.

<comment><USER7> 10Q's are very strange docs though as they're mostly written with lawsuit mitigation in mind. So you name nearly everyone and everything as a potential competitor just in case one of them actually does become one one day.

But you raise a good point. I think the insecurity starts with Google and Apple responds. (and I'm an Android user so no fanboi assumptions!) Google relies on a very open web to leverage all the data to optimize search to drive ad monetization. I think Apple was very happy with optimized Google services running on iPhones making the whole experience richer (they want to sell hardware not profit from search/ads) Once Google realized just what mobile would become and how big a chunk of that Apple would control they panicked at the _thought_ of being locked out. Again, due to their basic premise they're always going to be more insecure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paywall bypass

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fto- revive-wallet-google-tries-to-wrangle-unruly- partners-1424392928&ei=enbnVMvrBMHboATS1oLIDw&usg=AFQjCNEhBCuh1mhD4Y8CYL9zuagnlB1WAg&sig2=D8MN3Aj2Ib2TrrdOZkY_3A)

<comment><USER10> Just as a side note if you have already clicked the link the google trick does not work.

Or at least that was the case for me.

<comment><USER11> For paywalled articles on WSJ and elsewhere, I always just triple-click the Headline. Then right-click and use Chrome's "Search Google for" feature. It's always the first link and always lets you view it. Works every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I still remember the Google IO where I lost my ticket because Google Wallet error'ed out. The JavaScript was really amateur and just left the user sitting at a progress screen forever in the case of an error. I don't really consider it a serious API considering it can't handle load. They should just outsource to PayPal or someone who can do payments right.

</comment><comment><USER13> TL;DR: Google trying to work with banks to get some sort of deal going on. Google trying to wrangle it's phone partners like Samsung who are trying to implement their own payment platform.

WTL;DR: Apple is superior because they have complete control over their ecosystem (WSJ's opinion, not my own)

</comment><comment><USER14> Non paywall link:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fto- revive-wallet-google-tries-to-wrangle-unruly- partners-1424392928&ei=Nn3nVPKJHs3UoAT41oHYDg&usg=AFQjCNEhBCuh1mhD4Y8CYL9zuagnlB1WAg&sig2=KxUgXxAxgUlqQ6Sp9G7vwg)

</comment><comment><USER15> If the new new new (how many times has it been relaunched so far?) Google Wallet doesn't support the same kind of tokenization as Apple Pay, but instead continues to sell tracking data to merchants and banks and whatnot, then Wallet remains dead to me.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please remove this link, it is paywalled and therefore useless for most people

</comment><comment><USER17> Paywalled for me.

<comment><USER3> And then follows the "search the title on google", and so on and so on.

It's from the Wall Street Journal, of course it's paywalled. Can we just have a macro that auto-pastes the same conversation thread for each wsj.com article, and save us all a lot of typing?

<comment><USER17> >And then follows the "search the title on google", and so on and so on.

>It's from the Wall Street Journal, of course it's paywalled. Can we just have a macro that auto-pastes the same conversation thread for each wsj.com article, and save us all a lot of typing?

Is that attitude directed at me? I'm sorry if I was supposed to know that the WSJ is always paywalled.

Not that I can immediately think of any instances where I've read the WSJ recently.

If I have read it recently, it was probably using someone else's bypass that I was unaware of.

If you could make more plain exactly where you're directing that... exasperation... that'd be fantastic. As right now, it looks directed at me and frankly, I don't think it's deserved.

<comment><USER3> Just a general observation of a long and oft repeating pattern. I'm dead serious about the macro, though.

<comment><USER18> Auto replacing with the Google link that bypasses the paywall would be even better and just avoid the problem entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Text of article:

Google Inc. is reaching for its Wallet to keep pace with Apple Pay, but differences in the two companies' mobile businesses mean it won't be easy.

The Internet-search giant is trying to marshal an unruly coalition of device makers, wireless carriers, banks and payment networks to shape a new version of its Google Wallet payment service, in some cases by offering them more revenue. Google hopes to unveil the new service at its developer conference in late May, said people familiar with the matter.

Google, however, exerts less control over the smartphones that use its Android mobile operating system than Apple Inc. does over its iPhones. Smartphone makers and wireless operators offer many flavors of Android devices, with different preloaded apps. Each player has its own priorities, and changes made on behalf of one player can inconvenience the rest.

Further complicating Google's task is that some of its "partners" have plans for their own payment services. Samsung Electronics Co. , the biggest maker of Android phones by number of units, plans to unveil its own payment service next month using technology from LoopPay Inc., a payments startup Samsung acquired this week. A person familiar with the Samsung-LoopPay deal said big smartphone makers envision few benefits from cooperating with Google Wallet.

By contrast, Apple controls the iPhone's hardware and software, giving it a big advantage. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said last week that Apple Pay was only possible because of this control. "Imagine trying to do this with several different companies," Mr. Cook told an investment conference. "You'd be pulling your hair out."

Persuading Android partners and financial-service companies to support its payment service requires Google to "herd the many cats involved," wrote Tim Sloane, a payments analyst at Mercator Advisory Group, in a January research report. "It's a mess," he added in an interview.

Still, Google has to aim for success, because Apple Pay could become a draw for people to buy iPhones, instead of Android phones. Mr. Cook said last month that Apple Pay accounted for $2 of every $3 spent using contact-less payments on the largest payment networks.

Apple Pay "has changed the dynamics" of mobile payments, said Marc Freed- Finnegan, a former Google Wallet executive who is chief executive of retail- technology startup Index Inc. "If payments become a standard feature of phones, Google has to have a service on a par with Apple or better."

A Google spokeswoman declined to comment. Omid Kordestani, Google's chief business officer, told investors last month that Google is working on a "fully functional payment system" that goes "beyond just tap and pay."

Google launched Wallet in 2011, allowing owners of some Android phones to pay by tapping on retail checkout terminals equipped with a wireless technology known as near-field communication. But most large U.S. carriers refused to preload the Wallet app on their Android phones. They also blocked the service from accessing a chip that stored credit-card information, because they were working on their own payment service.

In 2010, AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. formed Isis, later renaming it Softcard. The service failed to gain much traction, and Google is now in exclusive talks to acquire it as a key component of the revived Google Wallet, people familiar with the matter have said.

The three wireless carriers are more willing to work with Google these days, because they get no revenue from Apple Pay, the people familiar with the matter say. Mr. Freed-Finnegan said that's created an incentive for Google and the carriers to cooperate. "Certainly Apple isn't working with the carriers," he said.

The three carriers and Softcard declined to comment.

In talks with the carriers, Google is offering to pay them to feature Wallet prominently on their Android phones and is dangling the promise of more revenue from advertising tied to Google searches made on the phones, according to the people familiar with the matter.

For Google, one big benefit of having a popular Wallet app would be the data it could collect on consumer purchases, which would give the company something besides website clicks to demonstrate the effectiveness of its ads. That could drive up ad prices, and carriers would share in the gains.

Banks are playing their own waiting game, to see how many carriers and device makers cooperate. Hundreds of banks are participating in Apple Pay, but most are interested in reaching Android users too. Android smartphones accounted for 47.6% of U.S. smartphone sales in December, a fraction less than Apple devices, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

Banks pay Apple a small fee for each transaction because Apple's security measures reduce their fraud-prevention costs. Apple Pay users' credit-card information is encrypted and stored on the phone, so merchants never see it.

Google is talking to banks and payment networks, including Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., hoping for a similar deal, according to people familiar with the situation.

Google's situation is more complicated. In 2013, it eliminated a requirement that payment information for Wallet be stored in hardware, because the carriers had prevented Wallet from accessing the data that way. Its alternative, a software-based approach known as Host Card Emulation, may require banks to upgrade their antifraud systems. Mr. Sloane, the Mercator analyst, said the associated costs and disruption may make banks less willing to share fees with Google.

—Daisuke Wakabayashi contributed to this article.

Write to Alistair Barr at email@example.com</comment>


Could This Astrophysicist Land a Developer Job? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hackerrank.com/could-this-astrophysicist-land-a-developer-job/ <comment><USER2> I think a lot of people forget this:

'Programming is a scientific tool'

Computer science is not really a brand new field. It's built upon decades of programming in physics, bio, etc. etc. basically most scientific fields.

I think that millennial gif is cool.

I guess this is the up side of coding interviews, where academics can avoid the "overqualified" or "irrelevant experience" or "no recent experience" problem.</comment>