TIL
TIL that you can’t have a git branch called dma/test and dma/test/specifics because git stores branch refs as local files, and dma/test would create a file called test where dma/test/specifics would need test to be a directory
TIL about the HTTP QUERY method. It’s a new (RFC published June 2026) method that’s idempotent like GET, but the query is passed in the body rather than a query string. It’s a good fit for things like Opensearch (Elasticsearch) or GraphQL that sometimes have very large queries
TIL about expo-privacy-sensitive, which taps into some internal behavior of iOS’s UITextField to replace content in a view during screenshots
TIL that when camping with a trailer (or a roof tent), people will mark the locations of their tires with chalk after leveling so they can return to the same spot later and have things arrive leveled
This thanks to googling around during a camping trip
TIL that “brownfield” has a real world meaning, specifically of land previously developed and no longer in use
I only knew it as a software term, but there it typically refers to software that is still being used and worked on
TIL that you can generally find studs in drywall using just a powerful magnet. I always assumed there was a bunch more specialized stuff you needed from a battery powered stud finder. But ultimately it makes sense that you can generally find the big wood screws
TIL that the phrase “fly by the seat of your pants” originated with pilots who would fly based on the vibrations in their seat during instrument failures
TIL that the Yoruba people have the highest likelihood of producing twins in the world.
Thanks to Reddit and an episode of Blank Check that really went off the rails
TIL that Daylight Savings time was implemented in 1918 in the US (less than 100 years ago!)
This fact brought to you by me needing to deal with really old dates in datepickers and having things come back with really odd offsets
TIL that accessing or writing to a React ref during render is consider a pitfall and will result in that component being ineligible for React Compiler optimizations
TIL that most flavorings are made from ingredients wholly separate from their original flavor source. Apparently it has to do with the difference between the way we perceive taste with specific texture in things like fruits vs how we would perceive it as a flavor of another food.
This thanks to a new-ish friend of mine who works in ingredient sales
TIL what en passant is in chess. I’ve been learning to play through Duolingo, which has been really fun.
Though I remain curious how on earth people decided to add this rule
TIL that react-navigation’s useNavigate() will basically always return something, even if that something isn’t a fully baked screen navigation context. If you want to make sure you only get a screen navigation context, you have to useContext(NavigationRouteContext) or useContext(NavigationContext)
TIL that Chrome Dev tools has an option to view the accessibility tree instead of the DOM tree. This is going to help a lot as we try to work on some accessibility interactions for our web apps
TIL the difference between as jest.Mock (totally untyped) and jest.mocked(), which is an identity function at runtime, but keeps the original function signature so that it acts like a verifying double at compile time
TIL that one of the members of Phoenix was in a band with the two members of Daft Punk before either of those groups were formed
TIL about the third shot drop in pickleball. It explains a big part of why I’m so bad at pickleball.
The third shot in any pickleball point is critical. The serve return has to bounce, so it’s typically a long shot. However, if your third shot has similar power/direction, any decent player will smash it as soon as it crosses the kitchen.
The third shot drop is about finding the right technique to place the ball where your opponent can’t smash it, and you can begin your rally
TIL how to use an orbital palm sander. I’m making a new top for my standing desk this weekend thanks to some project advice from ChatGPT and my sister-in-law.
It’s important, when using the sander, to keep it even across the surface with gentle pressure. If you don’t, you might end up with accidental poorly rounded edges (my desk, coincidentally, has poorly rounded edges)
TIL about Swarmia Explore metrics. I was trying to gather stats on some team stuff, and their AI tool directed me there.
The most interesting thing about it to me isn’t necessarily the feature itself, but their data storage. It’s clearly marked as a research preview feature, and they let you manually edit the JSON that builds the report at the bottom of the page (with plentiful disclaimers that the format might change).
Since they haven’t committed to a storage format, it looks like they’re currently storing “saved views” as the full JSON of the report, and when you navigate to one, the entire report is passed as a query param in the URL.
I love this idea for a test feature when you’re not sure what the eventual data storage ought to look like. Just throw it in a JSON blob, and don’t bother codifying anything beyond storing JSON. Things will break as the schema evolves, but you get ultimate flexibility in the meantime while you’re working out the inner details of the feature.
TIL that the Samsung S8’s (released 2017) maximum supported Android version is 9, which is EOL and stopped receiving even security updates from Google in 2022. The strange thing is that it appears that some people are still getting software updates from Samsung, and ultimately because it runs a custom Samsung Android build, there’s no easy way for owners to get on a more modern version even though the hardware is more than sufficient to support it.
I learned all this because apparently we still have a decent number of S8 users who were very disappointed when we dropped support for Android 9. (It was temporary. We added it back)