The fashion clock for large phones (phablets) is at its mid point. I was still curious though, and spent a bit of time researching the smallest, and most repairable Android phones on the market today. The results? Two devices that clock in at 7.5 cm (3 inches).

• Palm Phone (2018)
• Jelly Star (2023)

A quick wrapper script for normalized git commit dates. Commit dates and timezones are normalized or truncated to the day. This is useful for avoiding rebasing and/or not having to think about system or git date/time settings when on another device or in another timezone. If precise timestamps matter, then it is easily disabled.

#!/bin/sh -eu

GIT=$(which git --all | grep --invert-match "local/bin" | head --lines 1)
GIT_COMMITTER_DATE="$(date --utc --date '0' '+%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y %z')"

export GIT_COMMITTER_DATE

[ "${1:-}" = "commit" ] && export DATE=1 && $GIT "$@" --date="$GIT_COMMITTER_DATE"

[ "${DATE:-}" = 1 ] && exit

$GIT "$@"

Tracking git metadata never crossed my mind (git privacy). My understanding was that metadata can’t be sole ground truths anyway. Known real–world contributors increase trust/triangulation.

Reality is not always in sync with metadata, for example; rebasing repositories as 1 commit, using different names/emails, travelling (without updating tz) or working inside time drifted virtual machines.

I’d imagine that simpler anonymization involves anonymous contributors sharing the same metadata. In short, the deniable we are one, we are many, we are legion cloak.

Fake news is like an endless simulation of the boy who cried wolf. That fable (boys and wolves) is kind of crafty too. You can’t depend on the boy to always be wrong. Why?

Because, if he rings the false alarm bell long enough, then no one will be prepared for when the big bad wolf actually appears.

My brain was picked apart the other day. Virtual scrolling is, in a handwavy sense, pagination with (semi) automatic navigation. Touché.

Infinite scrolling is unusual. Most implementations are “almost infinite” to avoid excessive DOM length (memory).

• Infinite scrolling: Limits content to an arbitrarily large amount to avoid exhausting memory.

• Virtual scrolling: Unload everything except the visible viewport + a top and bottom offset. Pad the rest.

Virtual scrolling is infinite, but breaks auxiliary actions ( CTRL + F ) because what’s on the screen is the content.

document.addEventListener("scroll", function() {
  console.log(document.querySelectorAll('*').length)
});

The most popular library appears to be https://infinite-scroll.com.

It’s amazing how trends in modern mainstream web development have seemingly inverted. One such example (an old bookmark) while following tech more closely in school;

Therefore by purposefully giving the user a blank page, we are giving him information that the app is still loading. The user knows that the app will be functional when he sees boxes and buttons.

The truth was it didn’t matter, at least, not so much as “position independent code”, kind of. Tech appears to do a ten year amnesiac/discovery routine. Web components arrived around that time too.

In UNIX everything is a file. A file is a file and a directory is a special kind of file…

Remember deep linking? That is, if you’ve ever done computing/science history. Deep linking was a nefarious act and for ultra brief periods (in some places) making a link (like this) was link stealing.

Basically, homepage links were a–ok, but deep links were bad, really bad, because customers skipped the front and arrived at the exact (product) page. Businesses died overnight (the hypo theory).

Deep linking is smartphone marketing lingo now and very much desired. My hunch is that something analogous to taking a screen shot will be the modern equivalent of that unworkable controversy.

Hopefully no one else cuts their plants in half. Experts only… but seriously, in an epistemological sense; many popular topics today are just like talking about the nature of trees.

The universe’s resiliency allows for contradictory stuff to be practical, or at least appear generalizable on the long–tail and convincingly so. Bananas are indeed fascinating.