I talked to you a while back about needing to do an asynchronous call from my geofence trigger. Back then, i had everything in a broadcastreceiver that was triggered.

You explained to me that any process i kick off might get killed. So i created a Service, had the broadcastreceiver call my service.
In my service, i have OnStartcommand return START_NOT_STICKY, and call "stopSelf" when the process is done.

This has worked fine and would still do, if not for the "targetsdkversion 26" requirement.

Now, i got the dreaded "Background execution not allowed: receiving Intent", and my geofences were suddenly not triggered.

I read up, and apparently had to change to an IntentService, so now that is triggered instead, and it seems to be called.

However, and here is my question - i still have the need for background execution in the geofence trigger. 

Can i continue to kick off my background service as i did in the broadcastreceiver, only now from the intentservice?

Intent intent = new Intent(session, GeofenceIntentService.class);
            PendingIntent proximityIntent = PendingIntent.getService(session.getApplicationContext(), 0, intent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);

/**
     * Prior to notifying about something, we should always greate a group first, so that notifications of a similar kind will be grouped together on 6.0 and up
     *
     * @return Notification the group notification.
     */
    private static Notification createNotificationGroup(Context context){
        Log.d(TAG, "createNotifdicationGroup!");
        NotificationCompat.Builder groupBuilder = new NotificationCompat.Builder(context).setSmallIcon(R.drawable.notification)
            .setGroupSummary(true).setGroup(NotificationTypeEnum.DEFAULT.getName()).setAutoCancel(true);
        groupBuilder.setContentTitle((context.getString(R.string.notification_group_title_default))).setContentText("");

        //this intent is so that the app is opened even if the group summary is pressed
        Intent groupIntent = new Intent(context, NubaMainTabActivity.class);
        PendingIntent pendingGroupIntent = PendingIntent.getActivity(context, NotificationTypeEnum.DEFAULT.val, groupIntent, PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT);
        groupBuilder.setContentIntent(pendingGroupIntent);
...

* In logcat, I sometimes see a dollar sign and number following a fragment name. E.g., Repository$2.  What does this mean? That the class is an inner class? A 2nd, 3rd, instance of the class? I could only find a couple discussions about this on Google.

* In an app architecture where your View observes LiveData in your ViewModel, and your ViewModel "observes" a repository with a switchMap transformation, how and why does this get around the restriction on ViewModels not observing LiveData? What happens differently under the hood that makes this OK, but a regular observer not OK?

* In a MVVM app with repository, should the repository generally not know the ViewModel? I'm using this pattern in my app, which is why I am using switchMap the way I just described. I could avoid using switchMap if the repository knows the ViewModel - not sure which way is best - any comments?

* When a LiveData observer is registered, it is tied to the specific object that the reference variable "points" to at the time, right? Meaning, if the reference variable later changes, your observer stays tied to the original object? 

* Either your book or the official Android docs says something like, "what make
...