Most places in the US require businesses to "make up" the delta between minimum wage and what the employee receives through wage+tips. Seattle just codified this more clearly by having a "minimum wage" and a separate (higher) "minimum compensation". So while wait staff have a minimum compensation of $15/hr, that number is inclusive of tips they receive. Their minimum wage (what the business has to pay regardless of tip) is lower at $12/hr.
People may have considered no longer tipping because of the publicity behind the new-to-them-but-not-actually-new concept of minimum compensation but it's effectively the same system at a higher number.
100% of phone calls to my mobile device are robo calls. I get around 5 per day and (because of this) I never answer the phone. I actually tried to uninstall the dialer app but it seems to be fairly well-integrated into Android.
The humans in my life call via voip(ish) apps (Messenger and Facetime mostly).
Part of my monthly cell service cost is ostensibly for the line. Which I don't use and would prefer not to have all.
Benevolent: "(of an organization) serving a charitable rather than a profit-making purpose."
That's not how this word works. We can use another one.
I hasten to add, again, that I'm attributing nothing pejorative. I'm glad Epic have done this. It's great marketing that may be helpful to lots of people.
"As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4."
This is marketing for their game engine. They don't have to do it, sure. But SaaS companies don't have to provide free blogs, webinars and e-books either but we don't pretend they are benevolent for doing so.
Don't get me wrong. I think more art assets available in the game dev community is a good thing. I think more free stuff from one company (Epic in this case) will beget more free stuff from their competitors (Unity mainly). I'm just pointing out that this isn't free for the sake of being benevolent. It's free for the sake of capturing market share.
I had a friend in college — let's call him Sam — with whom I paired on most CS projects. It was useful to find a partner who was as studious as yourself to avoid having to deal with anyone else's potential BS and end up doing all the work yourself. Sam seemed like a completely normal guy where normal is… we share some of the same interests.
Sam wasn't from money, worked hard on assignments, we shot pool and worked on projects together. I knew Sam was "into" poker but I didn't understand the extent. I was "into" lots of things too.
We're hanging out one day and Sam tells me the "funny story" that happened last week where his parents and girlfriend staged an intervention to demand that he stop playing online poker after he had gone on tilt and lost $200k in a single night.
I about lost my marbles.
He then goes on to explain that while he had agreed to quit playing online poker because he valued his relationships, he was of the opinion that an intervention was a bit much since he was still up over $600k and wasn't on tilt so much as trying out higher stakes tables in an effort to make money more quickly than on the low stakes tables he had already found success grinding.
> Goal is a finance tech app, although I probably just need a pretty front end…
Sounds like an interesting, ambitious project, I wish you the best :).
For building a finance app, you're completely right to build just a pretty front end. Since you can't trust the client, most everything of substance is going to be done on the backend.
> write to database
You want to send messages to a backend which are validated for sanity and safety then written to a database. What you're after is very likely a simple http client. Documentation is here: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/network.html
> Usernames/passwords
You want an authentication screen that submits to a backend for validation. The backend creates a session which can be managed in a myriad of different ways. Making decisions about exactly how this works is context dependent. You can manage credentialing, tokens, authentication and authorization, someone else can manage it for you, you may oAuth with a platform that you're building on top of etc.
> Accept payments
If people are paying you for a product or service, Stripe. If people are transferring money to you for financial services, planning or management, they will expect to be able to send ACH/wire transfers without a fee associated. I don't have a foot in this world so I don't really know what direction to point.
> its gotta look and feel good
This can be done w/ RN but (obviously) RN isn't required. If you're more comfortable with the native language of the two platforms (Java & Objective-C or Swift) it may be a more productive use of your time to go that direction.
Unsolicited start-up advice: Don't go out of your way to learn new technology while building a company. There are plenty of "hard parts". Intentionally adding to the litany of hurdles to overcome is a very bad idea.
> Any tutorials you recommend?
Given your past experience, I recommend you work through a single simple tutorial (the Facebook one will do) then start trying to build your app. No reason to solve someone else's made up problems when building your own thing will naturally present plenty of problems.
> Reflux
If you mean "Reflux", I don't know what that is and I'm pretty deep in that world. Probably unnecessary.
If you mean "Redux", it's a very popular, extremely simple state management library. I recommend you try going without it and pick it up if you think it will help later on. Redux solves a specific set of problems that most small applications don't have.
It sounds like you're new to both React Native and the JavaScript ecosystem. I can imagine this being very frustrating for someone regardless of their general programming chops. I happen to be on a React Native project at work right now. Hopefully I can provide a viewpoint that is helpful and give direct answers to some of your questions.
One thing that would be helpful to understand that's missing from the OP, what are you building?
> However, seeing the differences between react and react native, this seems overstated.
I'm actually not sure which specific differences you're referring to. Perhaps you can clarify?
> It was recommended to use javascript and react/react native so I only needed to program once.
It's possible to use RN to build an application which runs on both Android and iOS from a single code base. This is possible with a few other environments but none are (IMO) quite as good at affording for a truly native look and feel including dropping down into native code when necessary.
Building a really great app is still a grind on execution and perfecting small details is a chore. The standards of quality in the mobile app world are high which leads to average users having higher standards than they might with desktop or web applications.
> What were the other benefits?
For people who enjoy working in JavaScript, the fact that you can write native applications using mostly JS is a benefit.
Some products benefit from being able to share code between a web product and a RN application is a big boost in productivity. I've personally saved hundreds of hours leveraging this. It's not a 1:1 swap but it's close enough to lower the mental burden compared to creating something from scratch.
> I thought there was already built components/libraries I could drop in for data management.
There are lots of data management libraries for React. Most can be used in a RN app. Maybe the community resources section of the React documentation will be helpful: https://reactjs.org/community/model-management.html
I can provide specific recommendations if you can describe specific needs. Like most ecosystems deciding which tool to use in which situation is a skill which builds up with experience.
I think the reason that I feel that the authors points is the same as yours but better made is that the author's doesn't lean so heavily on hyperbole.
> I said that in modern 'western' civilisation they are explicitly disparaged.
In parts, sure. In other parts. Not at all.
Anyone who feels that disparagement of traditionally (or genetically) masculine qualities is a universal in the west spends too much time in the wrong filter bubbles. Go watch some sports ball.
Please understand that I don't think it's a bad point either. I'm not disagreeing with the point. I'm saying your can have you point and make it more charitably, carefully and accurately.
You're responding to points that the author hasn't made. Any time you're writing, you can absolutely not afford to explain to readers all of the things which you are _not_ talking about. You have to rely on a reader's ability to discern that there may well be other valid points besides the one(s) that you're writing about.
> but taking them as a chance to generalize about most boys or even a small percentage of boys seems incorrect.
This points was made in the article. The author points that that boys committing mass killing is extremely uncommon. That most are okay. That nearly all will turn out fine.
That doesn't seem to me to be the point.
> We should be concerned with school shooters, of course
That (it seems to me) is the author's point. That all of the mass killings are committed by men. And since we are concerned with school shootings, masculinity in the context of modernity is one topic worth discussing.
Yes, it's only one topic amongst many. This article isn't about those topics. It's about one of the many topics. We can discuss how the world is getting better all the time (a statement I agree with), in some other article.
I also don't think anyone was forced to switch but I could be wrong. An email requesting or encouraging some action is different from being forced to do something.
> "I'm annoyed they didn't use my wording. They did fix my bug but I'm still annoyed."
In what world would one imagine that a suggestions box was in any way different from reporting a bug? "Suggestions box" is a bug report but renamed to be understood by Joan from accounting.
I believe what we've both said accurately reflects our own experiences. I'm sorry you've experienced this. I encourage all, should they ever feel this way, to seek greener pasture as my own experience leads me to believe that this can be completely avoided.
It's completely reasonable to understand and be cautious of the these things happening, but coming to the belief that this encompasses the whole of reality is unfortunate. (maybe that's not what gp meant…)
It's important for engineers to understand that they have options. If you're being mistreated, move on — if people are claiming credit for your work* there are places that you can go where this doesn't happen. You have a skill that is in-demand and under supplied, take advantage of that fact while you can.
* This happens on a spectrum, some engineers have a skewed view about how much credit builders should receive. It takes a wide array of skills to market, build, and sell successful products. The best leaders that I've worked publicly credit "the team" for successes and themselves for failures but this can only happen when the leader in question has high trust in their board and investors.
Most places in the US require businesses to "make up" the delta between minimum wage and what the employee receives through wage+tips. Seattle just codified this more clearly by having a "minimum wage" and a separate (higher) "minimum compensation". So while wait staff have a minimum compensation of $15/hr, that number is inclusive of tips they receive. Their minimum wage (what the business has to pay regardless of tip) is lower at $12/hr.
People may have considered no longer tipping because of the publicity behind the new-to-them-but-not-actually-new concept of minimum compensation but it's effectively the same system at a higher number.