muse900

I lived in London for several years.

I've met people that were very open about scamming the system.

I once knew a person, that went to London 17 years ago from another Country. He managed to get a not fit for work benefit and housing. His later then 'wife', they never got married but have a child together and live together, got some illness. Never met her, he was saying that was a genuine illness and not like his and she can't work.

So that person that I mentioned above, owned a car and a motorbike. Not sure if those items were under his name or not. He also worked at a car mechanic shop for money under the table.

In the 4 years I knew him, he was never caught, nor anyone went to his supposed house to check if he is there or what he is doing.

That guy was literally skimming the system for money without any control. At some point he and his 'wife' found out about another scam that they could run, if she gets evicted by her landlord (both of them were getting housing benefits, but they were presenting that they were staying at 2 different properties while he was staying at her house) she could somehow get a free house. So they decided to bring a dog home so that the landlord sends them out. They got send out. She was put into a b&b with her daughter for a few months, while he was staying at the other house the benefits was paying for and then I've no idea if the scam worked or not.

To be very and completely honest, I did look into how I can report that guy, just because I didn't find it fair, that I am paying taxes and there are people like this person on the article that really need the money, and you get those people that just scam the system. All I got from googling how to report someone, was that the reporting system sucks so much that the HMRC won't really do much about it.

That sort story is just there to show you whats wrong with the system in general.

Something else I want to add is that I think the biggest pro I got from living in big cities, is that I have the mentality and hunger to make the best out of myself. Having a house, family, being able to travel etc. Obviously working remotely and getting a proper salary contributes to all that.

People here, especially 20-30 have the mentality that there is no future and there is nothing to fight for in life. Due to this atrocious crisis and all that comes with it, they have it as a fact that they won't be able to buy a house, they won't be able to travel and generally they let themselvs without trying to improve their situation. My wife tends to have those questions from time to time, like what am I doing here, am I progressing career wise, are there things to do, and after talking to her for a bit showing her a brighter side to what life has to offer she comes back to normal.

Definitely.

Been away for 10 years and lived a bit in New York and the rest of the time in London, changed me a lot.

Now that I am back, I am having trouble communicating with people around me, as they can't believe nor understand some experience am sharing with them.

My funniest moment so far is an Expo I went to in Athens which is supposed to be the top Expo for balkans, and they had a smart room for the hotels of the future. The narrator that was running the whole story went and picked up an alexa echo, putting it right infront of his mouth, giving a command like 'alexa night mode'. I couldn't believe in my eyes. I do happen to use alexa and have it all around my house, so that came out as a shock to me as to what they believe as groundbreaking tech here.

On other fields I'd say workplaces, while I work remotely, I can definitely see my wife and close circle on how unprofessional they are with their jobs. Also discrimination is another thing here, people advertise for jobs only for women or jobs only for men and specific ages which is definitely discriminatory.

As an example, if I ever start my own company here, I am going to run it by the book and I'll definitely use a model closer to London or even Scandi countries, I'd never discriminate against anyone etc.

So yes if I imagine myself never having moved away, I'd definitely be a completely different person right now. (Don't get me wrong, there are still nice people here, and some parts of the lifestyle are way better compared to big cities)

I can reflect to that. As a person that lived over 10 years abroad, coming back to Greece and Crete has been difficult. I can see myself and some foreigners that resided here after their pension came in, doing things that we wouldn't do e.g in the UK. (I can see changing in the way I drive, interact etc and that has been paved by the surroundings, given the fact that I got my licence in the UK and have been driving for 10 years there, without any prior driving in Greece. Now that I am back I can see how I've changed the way I drive and its mainly cause of the other drivers, you have to adapt. Driving is just an example to show that even people that ain't willing to change their mentality based on their surroundings, do change in order to accomodate.)

My only explanation to this would be that they would choose whatever was close and easier to get to. Don't forget that travelling was way different back then.

I've heard stories of fleeing to Mani, Sicily and Egypt.

I guess each family, or person was choosing the easiest place to get to by his own means.

Now why they stayed there and didn't e.g move up to Genova, I have no idea. Maybe some people did, some others didn't.

On your second point, I feel like organised crime in the US is and I'd say in the world to an extend is made up by groups that tend to be foreign to that Country. If you take it by todays standards and leave out the Italians in Organised crime that have the means both political and economical to do what they do, you have other groups like the Albenians that tend to influence things using pure muscle even nowadays. Here in Europe the Albenian mafia seems to have a very powerful crew, most of its power doesn't come by political factors nor economical, but by manpower and muscle (e.g members of the albenian mafia won't care if they will be jailed, they are just going to act). Same applies to some other groups e.g form Afghanistan that run drugs etc. My opinion on that is that they tend to be tougher due to having participated in wars. Imagine an Afghan boy that lived through his whole family teared apart and seen death in a war, smuggling his way in London and instead of Europe helping him get on his feet, there is a group of his own people that offer him a few bucks in order to go do something illegal. Btw this has nothing to do with Afghans, its just an example, I have nothing against them.

Where I grew up (Crete), I kept on listening to stories by elders about how their grandfathers and family members left the place due to vendettas between families and all went over to Sicily.

Judging by the mentality of people around me, even those days I'd say they pay too much into respect, and disrespecting someones honour by any means could lead into the start of a vendetta. Bear in mind we are now in 2018 and those things are still happening.

My sort explanation is that obviously people that resided in Sicily, Southern Crete etc were not afraid to use force to defend their honour, and make a living. Later on people that left Sicily and went to e.g New York were a bit toughed up by living in a place that vendetta was a very common phenomenon and while they saw an opportunity where they could force fear into the other racial groups in new york, they took it.

The OP is the actual guy behind wakatime.

Yep its all about memes and 'news' (fake news, dailymail stuff).

I found something interesting on my FB feed. I haven't liked any meme or news pages etc. So I'd get mostly what my friends liked from their liked pages.

Recently I liked an online newspaper. For the past 2 months 4 out of 7 posts are from this newspaper.

It feels like FB knows its a newspaper and its just serving me news, to get me more addicted to it...

Welcome to the era of the living Meme.

On top of that about the sleeping issue that the guy above is having: I grew up out of a town.

The fresh air and the much less polluted environment will allow you to sleep like a baby.

In reality while I was living at the middle of nowhere, I never had any issues sleeping. And i think the too worm/ too cold thing is just an excuse to yourself. There are other things in your mind, like stress etc that won't allow you to sleep well.

When I moved to London, I had quite a lot of trouble sleeping here and there, as I am having more stress etc.

Hopefully everything will be over in less than a month when I am moving back to the middle of nowhere and the new job I got is much less stressful etc.

Sorry but I think its wrong to compare Gitlab to Google, even Etsy tbh.

Its obvious that Google can offer high salaries. Same with Etsy, while its nowhere near Googles level, I feel like Gitlab's cashflow is nowhere near Etsy's cashflow either.

I checked for London and I can say that Gitlab seems to be giving out a low to average salary at best. Which is not bad considering that you can be working remotely from your home etc etc, and get maybe more shares in a startup like Gitlab.

But ye all and all I feel the OP is a bit right that since they got a better funding they should be looking at accumulating their salaries to go up for their devs that have been getting bellow market rates.

We are discussing about the framework itself and not go as a language.

The framework is a nice idea, and will definitely help into diversifying some of the mobile frontend stuff.

On the other hand you can't compare RN to this framework.

As the person you commented on, facebook has been using RN on its main products like instagram, so it has proven that the framework can be placed on production ready apps with a massive userbase.

Google, facebook etc are not services anymore. They are necessities to everyday life. They should have been regulated already to the point where they'd turn non-profit. (Like wikipedia)

We are not talking about businesses anymore, we are talking about necessities in life that have the monopoly to do whatever they want and change people's lives around.

Btw I am using duckduckgo, its results are quite good compared to what it was 2 years go. I don't miss google and its 2-5 ad's per search. Thing is I don't see duckduckgo overcoming google at any point, as for the normal everyday person google is just a searchgod and thats it. An everyday normal guy can't understand the implications to his privacy by google,fb etc getting data off him/her. So he/she won't change to something else, until is forced to.

Don't forget that Uber takes a 20% cut. Black cabs don't have to rely on that at all.

Its up to the government to make the process of getting a licences cab less expensive, and open cabs on having whatever car with X amount of years limited... the monopoly of the company that makes those black cabs and sells them for 150k is absurd.

Public transport in London is ok, not good not bad. Depending...

Buses in London are awful imho, unless you want to go 2 stops. If you want to go more than that then you have to put up with nausea and how slow they are in general getting from A to B.

Underground, its ok for most parts unless its summer... No aircon is a big issue.

Trains... well thats where it gets annoying. I am very biased as I use Southern (the worst train company if you dont know them) which they are totally unreliable.

Thats where uber comes on. As I live in South East london, its either I get an uber on a night out which will take me home with a fair price, or get on a bus spending an average 40 mins more than uber etc. (Not a good experience)

All and all I think TFL's decision sucks, cause its biased on the blackmailing by black cabs. If black cabs want more work etc, they should go out and ask so their faires are lower so people prefer them... Uber takes me £12 to get home, and a black cab is £40 ... I mean seriously what you expect of me to pay the overpriced black cab? I literally don't care that they are buying cars from a specific company and those cars cost a lot etc and their licence takes years to get out etc I don't care. Go out and demonstrate against all that so you can change your job around and become competitive on your prices, don't expect to just drive everyone else out of business. Also I do know cabbies that are millionaires! I hope uber wins this case, I use uber etc, I don't like their policies about drivers and how they treat others etc but well at least it fits my purpose of going around.

./rant over

it depends, on my app I don't use Stripe so can't speak for its sdk, but I do use FB. At start I was using react-native-fbsdk but found that it was very limited and when I submitted a PR and went through the NDA procedure with facebook etc, then they delayed putting my PR which was fixing an issue out. I decided it would be easier for myself to bridge facebook's sdk, and so I did which was helpful as I've added quite more features to it which the react-native-fbsdk isn't providing.

That said it always depends on your usage and if it fits your purpose, but I wouldn't rely on 3rd party devs to solve my issues.

Imho, I think you got it wrong here.

I don't think you are supposed to make a production RN app out of the bat, by just using 3rd party dependencies.

RN isn't wordpress where someone can employ you and say I want this and that and then you go off install 50 plugins and thats it, your project is completed.

If you are installing a lot of RN 3rd party dependencies for a production environment then you are doing it wrong.

The best thing RN has to offer is being able to write React for parts and write Native code for heavy tasks.

You do need to go down and write your own components natively, sure if someone has done it before and its well maintained and you tested it and works for you then fine use that library, if not then don't install it but make your own.

For js components only components, then again if its very well maintained then use it, but nothing stops you for making the component that works for you.

RN is a bit less work than writing a Native app, but not too far apart. It's not meant to be for webviews and for people that just want to make a complex production app using 3rd party dependencies in very little time. Its meant for dev teams that JS is their main language but do have someone that has an understanding of native code.

I was a vast user of Booking.com (as I travel a lot).

My advice: go to booking.com, find the hotel you want to stay at. Search their phone number or email, contact the hotel directly and you'll get a much better price (15% is booking.com fee).

Downside to this is if you are not booking standard 5 star hotels etc that are meant to have some level of professionalism etc, you might end up getting treated worse just because smaller hotels etc do care a lot about their booking.com rating so they tend to treat booking.com customers better than others (my wife owns 3 hotels, 2 of them happen to be of a smaller size and in reality when they have a booking from booking.com they tend to do anything to please them as opposed to bookings directly from their website).

On top of that my question to the OP would be, why do they need to search around for libraries that are older than RN. In a team of 10 you can most likely create your own ones, or fork already made libraries and upgrade them to fit your purpose. One of the greatest things with RN so far for my team has been that we can actually write native components and bridge them. Yes RN is changing quite fast in general and most libraries out there might not fit your exact purpose, but I find it quite easy to integrate what I need in our app. (Team of 3, been on production for 8 months, its pretty alright so far)

Yes but thats a very small example of the market.

When we are looking at the generic market, nowadays people go to a store, look at something and then go on their phone to see if they'll find it cheaper anywhere else, as local stores tend to overprice stuff to make up their marginal costs.

prostitution is probably the oldest profession.

I'll agree with you. I strongly believe instagram is taking over snaptchat. All of my friends switched to instagram from snaptchat. Some of them will still post on both instagram and snaptchat but it feels like they keep posting on snaptchat until their last set of contacts move from snaptchat to instagram itself.

I do believe that the people working for snaptchat are trying their best, and they are innovative etc, its just seems that instagram itself has become the new hip and its seriously competing with snaptchat.

The steps, I am a privacy junkie myself and I want to have location services off most of the time, apart from when am gonna use uber or gmaps. Even for me that I'd go the extra mile to turn it off, it just puts me off that you have to go through so many steps to do it.

Personally I can't trust apple for a specific reason... On iOS they've made it quite difficult to turn location services off unless you jailbreak the device itself. You have to go into settings -> privace -> locations -> on - off -> are you sure you want to do it? -> yes ....

I mean when a company does that, it makes it pretty clear that they do want to monitor your location, making it annoying for you to turn it on and off.

It's trivial to the people around him, and in my own eyes he is way more successful than demis, you or me will ever be. Because success isn't valued in money, achievements, fame, discoveries. If you do believe that success is only measured in those above, then am sorry about the life you have chosen to live.

'It makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds are wasted on trivial pursuits and how we can better engage them on major problems of our increasingly complex world.'

How can you objectify the term 'wasting' (their lives)?

I mean to you the only people that their lives are worth something are scientists?

If you aren't a scientist you have wasted your life?

I think that people that enjoy trivial persuit or chess or whatever it is, haven't wasted anything by doing what they love.

If the only thing you see in life is 'the evolution of science' then I feel sorry for you. There are far better things in life than that. But again each to their own goal, you might enjoy being a scientist and discovering something new, other people might just enjoy living by the beach and have nothing to do with tech. Noone is wasting his/her life.

Also another point, people that can't AI or be good at maths etc doesn't mean they can't have a great mind!

I think there is always the factor of other apps and e.g google maps making prices easily available for comparison etc.

If Uber increases from $7.51 to $7.96 you might not see the difference in your head, but then if for example lyft is offering $7.80 for the same ride, whats more likely for you to choose?

I think they'd be very careful with increasing prices and wait their competitors to increase prices first so they can follow up, or else they might run themselvs out of business.

Thank you.

You are an inspiration, and I do agree, quality of life doesn't come with millions of $.

As we speak am in a 6 months transition, while leaving London and a good salary, to go back to my home-country and reside by the beach. Will be a tough one but certainly worth it! Glad to see that some people like you have achieved it!

No redundancy system in place, sounds like they have an awful tech stack for a company of that size.

I found this video a few days ago on reddit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWxm-bxgP9g

One thing that I found intriguing as an engineer is that Ertogan's bodyguards etc are trying to shout louder than the protesters.

At first I thought ok thats natural, 2 parties have a disagreement and then each tries to be louder.

The sound from Ertogan's trained personnel thought isn't exactly an argument. You'll hear through the whole video the sound : 'EEEEEEEEEE' coming up from his bodyguards which is definitely not argument, just a way to mask protesters voice.

So to conclude my point, is that Ertogan has trained soldiers trying to shout louder than the protesters so he won't hear anything bad about him. Pretty much the same he is doing to his country by blocking wikipedia etc.

I can only think of one other person that would do such a thing, Kim.