Ich kann Deutsch erst am Niveau B2 sprechen.

  • 3 Posts
  • 35 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • I know PDF providers who visibly print the customer’s name or number in the header of every page, along with short copyright text. I use qpdf --stream-decompress to make the PDF into human-readable PostScript, and then Python+regex to remove each header text, which stand out a bit from other PDF elements. The script throws an error if more or fewer elements than pages have been removed but that hasn’t happened yet. Processed documents sometimes have screwed-up non-ASCII characters in the Table of Contents for some reason but I don’t have the originas anymore so IDK if it’s my fault. Still, I wouldn’t share the PDFs unless in text-only or printed form because of any other steganographic shenanigans in the file. I would absolutely torrent them if I could repurchase them under a new identity and verify that the files are identical.

    BTW, has anyone figured out how to embed Python code in PDF? The whitespace always gets reencoded as x-coordinates so copy&pasting it never preserves indentation. No, you can’t use the Ogham Space Mark (Unicode’s only non-blank character classified as a space) for indentation in Python, I tried.






  • The spines are composed of nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite, protein(collagen), and water—the same materials that scales are made of. But unlike other scales, which originate during development from the mesoderm layer of the skin or dermis, the spines appear to have evolved from specialized cells located under the surface of the skin.

    These cells are called skeletal progenitor cells, and they are also the source of other hardened body parts, like the jaws, fins, and skulls. When the skeleton of a puffer fish is inflated, the progenitor cells form spines and other bony appendages in a process known as ossification.

    The ossification process is fairly quick—it takes about 24 hours for the spines to fully develop. But when the fish is deflated, the ossification cells quickly revert to their unmodified state—and the spines come tumbling down.

    So the spikes get more bone-like when inflated?? There are also “fibers” connecting the spines that rotate the spikes outward when taut. It must be quite difficult to rebuild the skeleton for display!





  • They’ve always been strict at blocking potentially offensive text. Ever kept trying to compose a helpful, constructive YouTube comment reply that doesn’t disappear when you refresh? The AI there is really draconian. Once, someone wanted details of a rather wholesome story I had shared in a top level comment. Replying with the follow-up always failed despite no obvious trigger words. I resorted to editing the parent comment but then struggled to get a “see edit” reply through. At least 10 attempts at expressing “look at the root comment for updates” failed, eventually I managed to get a reply through with nothing but “🔝”. It got removed after I tried to edit it to a clearer expression so I just posted another “🔝” reply and hoped for the best.