Facebook and Discord are built using React Native. Ebay is built using Flutter. These examples are easy to find on the homepages of the respective frameworks.
I agree that for the large technology companies having a team to build a native app for both platforms is worth it - you get an optimised, native feeling experience for both platforms. For smaller companies with e.g. two developers building an app as part of a larger service then the cross platform frameworks can give you a lot of bang for your buck. They're also a good starting point to get something out, and then if you wish you can begin to incrementally replace bits with native if that's beneficial.
Personally I'm also a big Flutter fan. Even leaving aside the cross platform benefits I find it a very pleasant development experience that gives very predictable results on whatever it ends up running on. I haven't yet properly used Swift UI though, which adopts a similar approach.
Minor (or major?) nitpick, but Discord on Android is a native app for performance issues encountered with React Native. On iOS, it is built with React Native.
React Native really only describes the UI aspect of the application. The backend code that is needed to access the native device API isn’t exactly the same, and accessing things like a camera aren’t straight forward across all devices. Although you can wrap these methods in interfaces and swap them out across devices, it usually takes an engineer with a good understanding of either android or iOS. This is the reason most people start with only Android, iOS, or Windows first, and the reason large companies have dedicated teams for each platform.
Facebook mobile is not built on React Native, pieces of Facebook functionality are. Facebook mobile is an entire spectrum of technologies including native and React Native.
I feel the reason here is more a strategic one than a technology one - at least these days. For products that rely heavily on mobile or mobile is the main platform then it makes sense to remove an extra party between you and your customers so new OS features or upstream bugs don't first need to be addressed by the React Native or Flutter teams. The fact that there's really only two platforms makes the decision process much easier. I tend to recommend this approach to clients too, if your business is all mobile - build a native app and pick whichever platform is dominant in your market first. If you're adding a mobile offering to an existing CRUDish product then it might make more sense to go cross-platform.
It's a little like AOL in the 1990s. A great business model, but one that won't outlast reliable internet access from service providers. Businesses like webcam studios bridge the gap until internet access catches up.
There are unsexy, short term business models for entrepreneurs.
"Netflix / Disney etc seem to have copped onto one idea that works and just release the same tv show / movie over and over again with a slight tweak as it brings the money in without any worries."
This is the golden age of streaming. There's more diversity in show types on Netflix alone than across all platforms (movies, tv, direct to video) in the 90s. Paramount is almost entirely devoted to new Star Trek properties and HBO Max releases a new movie every month. If you aren't seeing innovation in story-telling its because you are a Philistine.
for each art form you mentioned 1 or 2 competitors with practically the same content. that's what people are talking about, lack of differentiation, not lack of access. And while there is 'everything' from the past on the internet, we re talking about what is being created now. Indie gaming sounds like an interesting new cohort for diverse content, but i still think most games are interchangeable, and even look the same because they use the same game engines.
> television, theaters and newspapers
in comparison, those had not consolidated into 1 or 2 brands, there were thousands of them worldwide and that matters, because it allowed obscure sub-cultures, which are the spices that then find their way into the global soup of western culture. Subcultures need a bubble to evolve in.
The state of moviemaking today shows how dead innovation has become. Unless the film can make upwards of $100 million across international distribution, it has no chance of being distributed, much less made. Trying to tell a script for adults that employs smart dialogue, unexpected plot twists, or quirky characters is a total nonstarter. Funding for those kinds of films is kaput. Instead, CGI bloodbaths sporting childish oversexualized cartoon characters that "whup up on each other" is the drek that has dominated our silver screens for over a decade.
To clarify, while there is more "good" TV now, through a mainstream view of any platform it really does all look like the same damn crap all over the place.
All of them are European movies and have been recognized internationally. None of them are even remotely close to copying another film. You can say that you don’t like or care about these movies but there is a lot of diversity in European productions.
Pets.com and WebVan were exemplary of the dotcom bubble. They had insane valuations and a problematic business model, but investors poured money in because of hype. But both those services are legitimate, profitable through other companies today. They were just too early, maybe too hyped.
I got groceries from WebVan in the 90s. I bought books from Amazon in the 90s. I used Yahoo.com to find information in the 90s. These were services with value even if the companies didn't make it.
Crypto has provided no value other than making some people money. It has solved no problem. In more than a decade, crypto has still not found a viable use-case.
It's not usable as a currency except in the most dire circumstances and no one is working to fix this. Transactional currency has been abandoned as a goal by every major crypto project, and it doesn't make a sensible replacement for currencies in functioning economies. If the only use case is as a currency alternative for people in a failed state, it's not a compelling technology, and it's not even doing that right now.
Dotcom companies were offering services that hundreds of millions of people could use around the world. There was a bubble and many tech valuations were stupid, but people used Webvan to solve a problem. No one is using crypto for anything other than speculation on the price of crypto.
> It's not usable as a currency except in the most dire circumstances and no one is working to fix this.
I've pushed two different crypto companies I've worked for to focus more on African payment systems, supporting one of the top 10 chains to look at light wallets for just this reason and another to support PoS validators in African countries because it's a very high income for them. I also do some work with philantrophic organisations looking at using crypto. There are several billion dollar organisations involved in this space.
> If the only use case is as a currency alternative for people in a failed state
1) A currency alternative is massive! That's such an insanely awesome use case that if it's "just a small thing" to you then I'd love to know what you're working on!
2) Failing states? What a pessimistic approach. I prefer to see people getting access to financial tools that they'd otherwise not, giving people the opportunity to get out of poverty. Gates Foundation did some research on M-Pesa and access to simple financial systems had huge benefits for people.
> No one is using crypto for anything other than speculation on the price of crypto.
Maybe that's the common view but again it's not the case. If all you see is NFT shit online I get it, but you're wrong.
> Dotcom...
Yes there was a bubble but some stuff survived and look where we are now. There's no reason that this can't be similar. It's been going for a decade.
> It's not usable as a currency except in the most dire circumstances and no one is working to fix this. Transactional currency has been abandoned as a goal by every major crypto project
For someone in a another country, the current 8%+ inflation of US Dollar is far from negligible, especially when the dilution drivers such as stimulus packages are mostly only to the benefit of US Citizens. Physical bearer assets like cash or gold seem to be far worse than any digital solution in that they can be seized with physical force and are not possible to conceal. Bitcoin's advantage is further that it is digital and permissionless. So just like the US Government can't prevent drug cartels from using cash, it or any other government can't prevent anyone from using bitcoin.
What about those countries with sanctions from the US or governments that don't allow the USD to be used, such as Cuba? Do you think the majority of people in Nigeria pay their rent with a USD note or a gold coin? Yes you can get USD on the black market but it's at a much worse rate than the global exchange rate. You're going to be paying, most likely, with M-PESA or a digital currency like eNaira. But maybe you want to avoid 15.7% inflation or high fees? Hence crypto adoption growing by 1200% in the last year throughout Nigeria, and several other African countries.
> What about those countries with sanctions from the US or governments that don't allow the USD to be used, such as Cuba?
That's just plain not true: https://www.hometohavana.com/blog/currency-in-cuba: "Despite the Cuban peso being the only official currency in Cuba, there are stores that sell products like groceries, appliances, and other home goods in U.S. dollars and Euros, though they almost exclusively cater to locals."
> Do you think the majority of people in Nigeria pay their rent with a USD note or a gold coin? ... But maybe you want to avoid 15.7% inflation or high fees?
Do you think they pay their rent with Bitcoin? The point being: whatever upsides Bitcoin has, the dollar typically has it better; and whatever downsides the dollar has, Bitcoin typically has it worse. Both the dollar and gold work to avoid local-currency inflation (and have more widely recognized value and less volatility), and Bitcoin has high fees too.
You can only use USD if you're a resident in Dollar Stores. You can't use USD cards, you can't bring USD into the country, and even on the link you shared it mentions the USD black market with a 2x differing exchange rate. As a resident you can't deposit USD in banks. What you're describing is the illegal USD black market. As of last summer, Cuba has allowed cryptocurrency payments to be made and brought them into regulation. There are other countries like this too, such as Argentina.
> Do you think they pay their rent with Bitcoin?
Not bitcoin, but crypto use is growing.
> whatever upsides Bitcoin has, the dollar typically has it better
Except in countries that don't allow the USD. Or countries that the US doesn't allow to use the USD. Or countries that have black market exchanges which increase the cost of the USD. Or countries unassociated with the US. Or when the Central Bank of a country threatens to seize all USD. Or so many other reasons... Hence why the USD is not the primary form of payment in these countries and they're using mobile money.
Yes bitcoin has higher fees, but there are other cryptocurrencies and I was talking about crypto in general - not just Bitcoin. Although Bitcoin does have low tx fee layers you can use, so it's not that much of a problem.
The US also can't completely prevent people from creating counterfeit cash, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. The transparency of bitcoin is a win here, as everyone can verify that this kind of fraud is not occurring at the base layer.
> The US also can't completely prevent people from creating counterfeit cash, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar. The transparency of bitcoin is a win here, as everyone can verify that this kind of fraud is not occurring at the base layer.
Emphasis on "here." I think the one big problem with Bitcoin et. al is that (from a user perspective) they trade major regressions in important areas for small wins against other problems (often purely ideological problems).
Case in point: counterfeiting isn't a major problem in most places. Bitcoin may address it better than cash can, but that's at the cost of major regressions in privacy, economic policy, etc.
I appreciate the nuance-- I completely agree that there are tradeoffs and that no money technology is perfect in all regards. I don't think it is fair to call complete resistance against counterfeiting a small win though, it eliminates an entire category of crime. You can't only consider the total size of the problem counterfeiting currently causes (which is small), but also the expenditure and surveillance that is needed to achieve that outcome.
Usage of foreign hard currency in these countries (like Argentina) is usually heavily taxed and hard to get by. Bitcoin and other cryptos are easier to use.
Yeah! Nigeria is trying to move everyone to their own digital currency, but Statista did a survey and 32% of Nigerians were using Bitcoin for general payments. Quick look for some supporting info came up with this - https://www.reuters.com/business/crypto-trading-thrives-nige... but there's a lot more online if you look (from non-Crypto peddling sources).
Also, take a look at the current forms of payment like M-Pesa (such as https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/ImpactofMobileMon...) and you'll see a few of the problems such as high fees on remittance payments and lack of account building are solved with cryptocurrencies.
> I've worked under 40 hours a week and rarely worked overtime
That is exactly the slack in the system that makes the endeavor sustainable. There's no way to get quality software out of consistently drained engineers.
Trying to find some "balance" without hedging for the asymmetry inherent in the problem will lead you to burn out roughly half of the workforce, which has nonlinear (very superlinear) knock-on effects for the success of the remaining half.
If you burn out the top half of your workforce, the bottom half will suddenly bear twice the load and burn out that much faster.
Abolishing police means ... what? I don't understand this. How do you abolish something only to replace it with... a new copy of that something because you didn't change the rules.
Wouldn't it be better to just fire complete departments and clear them out from top to bottom? This would let you re-hire as necessary but with new rules in play. You might end up with some of the same old people but they now know the trapdoor can open.
Most of the problems with police are at the top. Not the bottom. This includes the laws they use like civil forfeiture and other silliness. That's your real target. Why aren't the abolish people going after that?
>replace it with... a new copy of that something because you didn't change the rules.
You don't abolish police -- you abolish policing. In order to do this society needs to identify and eliminate the reasons for crime in the first place--i.e., ensuring access to basic needs like food and housing, for one thing. Abolition necessarily involves a transformation of our entire society, and may take more than one generation.
Utopias tend to turn into dystopias. What if the transformers say that in order to achieve nonviolence, embryos with certain DNA markers associated with antisocial behavior need to be forcibly aborted?
As far as I can see, we have this thing called a constitution and a bill of rights. I don't know what kind of society you're proposing that would somehow remove those things. I personally would prefer to keep our human and democratic rights. Coincidentally, reducing inequality is a great way to do that.
It sounds like you have some hidden assumptions. To me, it looks like you're casting aspersions on people who advocate progressive social change. But I'm sure that's not your aim, so why not just state outright what you really think and clear up my misunderstanding.
… Which is? What, exactly, is coming to your mind?
Because it looks like you’ve drawn the conclusion that seeking to improve our society in any way is a slippery slope toward eugenics.
And I don’t see how that follows, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt to correct my misunderstanding, requesting for you to elaborate on your point.
I wish I had your optimism. My take is even a true utopia of boundless affluence and perfect childrearing will still produce the odd psychopath and plenty of people prone to crimes of passion.
From what I have heard, there is still quite a lot of domestic violence going on there, not to mention raping of female servants. And it has zilch to do with material insecurity.
Genghis Khan didn't build towers out of severed heads because he lacked gold and silver. Some people are just, sorry for saying that, sick fucks.
"The prevalence of psychopathy in the general adult population can be estimated at 4.5%." Remember: it's much more frequent in males, where that number can be 2-3x of that, can be close to 1 in 10 in males.
"prevalence of psychopathy among university students is significantly higher than among people from the general community". I'd guess increased affluence and better childrearing will result in more university students as well.
I'd go as far as to say that "boundless affluence" and "perfect childrearing" may in fact produce even more psychopaths, not less, as it is not quite a pathology many assume. Many traits are actually more adaptive vs general population.
It's probably important to point that there is further nuance. in primary(as in born that way) psychopathy the hallmark is total absence of anxiety and remorse. In secondary (upbringing, trauma, etc) psychopathy, anxiety can often be fairly high.
You might reduce some secondary cases of psychopathy with your proposed measures, but boundless affluence will also result in higher SSRI usage to prevent unwanted anxiety or stress (the rich tend to use antidepressants more, don't have the reference handy now, but its fairly obvious the rich have fewer problems with access to mental health services), and SSRIs tend to increase some psychopathic traits (charm+boldness), which perhaps can push some borderline cases into the proper psychopathic territory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202964
Just going to note since this sort of comment usually gets some really shallow replies: You can maintain law and order without having a bunch of unaccountable armed dudes roaming around doing whatever they want without any oversight, and reform clearly is not changing what we have into what we need. "Abolition" does not mean "so let's move to anarchy"
Any examples showing that’s possible? I don’t know of any society (aside from maybe some tiny islands) where you don’t have some police to maintain law and order.
It's a bit of a leap from eliminating "having a bunch of unaccountable armed dudes roaming around doing whatever they want without any oversight" to eliminating all police.
A few random ideas:
* fewer armed police, and being armed requires a higher level of experience/training/psych evaluation
* 100% public access to all police body cam footage.
* require police officers to maintain their own liability insurance, and have rates based on the a number of KPIs related to public safety and ethics
I'll note that while body cam footage and citizen recordings have helped bring visibility to police misconduct, in general they don't seem to have actually fixed anything. In some cases they increase unrest because now when a police officer is acquitted for doing something, people can look at the footage and get even more upset about it. Cops also frequently disable their cams and aren't punished for it.
Body cams might be an example of something that is good on paper but actually just distracts people from things that actually address a problem.
To be sure, what I'm suggesting would require a reworking of how those cameras are used and disclosed, and probably would require technical solutions in addition to policy ones. I'm definitely suggesting going far beyond the status quo in an attempt for transparency (pretty much "open sourcing" the camera footage)
Compared to the US, the NL seems to have far less cops. The cops are mostly just walking around or driving around.. they never pull you over, you just get a ticket in the mail. So there’s police, doing police things. But they never get involved in your day-to-day life unless you’re doing something obviously illegal. Granted, you can do a lot of things here that is illegal in the US, like prostitution, drugs, sit in the park with some beer and wine, pee in public, etc. Things are way more civil than the US was when I last visited a year ago.
A step multiple municipalities have taken in the past is to disband their entire police department and create a new one from scratch, which makes it feasible to eject large numbers of bad actors who would normally protect each other from expulsion while also setting new policies. I don't personally believe that's a complete solution, but it's a logical step and allows you to retain your existing power structures and systems without having to pass a bunch of new laws and create new roles. There are probably many police departments that would not really benefit from this step or merit it.
Another step would be to recognize that you cannot reform american police departments' roles in non-violent crime cases and offload some or all of those entirely to other agencies that don't carry guns. This doesn't fix everything, but it removes many opportunities for things to go wrong while also enabling armed police to focus on the threats that really need them.
Especially important to differentiate given that some people really do mean abolish. There's a thought that it's possible to get rid police because people will do just fine policing their own home. And along with that they think that we also don't need a judicial system because disagreements can be solved through arbitration. I feel it should be obvious to most people why that's problematic (I don't want to turn this into a massive rambling tangent in a day old thread)
Jesus fucking Christ. What would the opposition have to do for you to believe they are the bad guys? Like a coup or something?