7 ms·

A PDF zine readable in any plain text editor, and it's also an MP3 [pdf]

151 points by marttt 4y ago

marttt 4y ago
For the "why PDF?", Vol 0 of the zine was discussed on HN earlier this year (413 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27880905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27880905 There's also Vol 2, which is a PDF/A document that also parses as text/gemini: http://lab6.com/2 http://lab6.com/2 The last one has interesting discussion on the future of information archiving.
95 4y ago
this is so cool
jl6 4y ago
It’s been ~18 months and nobody’s made much progress on the CTF hidden in the first issue as far as I can tell!
bawolff 4y ago
I feel like poc||gtfo already has done the pdf polygot thing to perfection...
- jl6 4y ago
  It’s true that Simpsons Did It Already, but one difference is that the PoC||GTFO files are essentially exploits of PDF readers, whereas these files are valid PDFs that comply with the spec.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    If that's true, I don't even consider a Simpsons Did It. Polyglot files exploiting common tools are far less interesting ones than those that are actually within spec. Especially if the spec wasn't designed as polyglot spec.
  - sp332 4y ago
    PoC||GTFO files render correctly in all major PDF readers, so if it isn't following the letter of the spec, it's at least adhering to a common interpretation of it.
- Ansil849 4y ago
  I don't think it's a bad thing at all to have another similar zine. For example, I miss the days when it wasn't just 2600, but we also had Blacklisted 411, THUD, etc.
  - enriquto 4y ago
    29a was glorious
lgats 4y ago
i was in a FaceTime call when i opened this in Chrome on iOS. The speakerphone became max volume and the volume slider became unresponsive. i had to open up another media player and play music to get the volume slider to work again
- drusepth 4y ago
  My Chrome also locked up for a good 10 seconds while trying to render the in-browser PDF reader on desktop. Never seen something like that before.
- jgalt212 4y ago
  I guess the other side got a good idea of the level of importance you had assigned the ongoing FaceTime call.
  - samatman 4y ago
    That's a pretty uncharitable thing to say! FaceTime is routinely used to just hang out with your family or buds, your presumption that doing other stuff is automatically rude just doesn't hold up.
    - JadeNB 4y ago
      jgalt212 didn't say that it was rude, only that doing other things during a call shows the level of importance one assigns to the call. There's not necessarily anything rude about assigning a call low importance.
      - samatman 4y ago
        That sort of observation isn't neutral, merely couched so. The amount of attention given to a FaceTime call is not a measure of importance, thus the observation is unsupported.
        JasonFruit 4y ago
userbinator 4y ago
You could probably embed a video stream the same way --- as the name implies, streaming formats are specifically designed so that it's not necessary to find the "start" or "end" of the stream, but instead sync markers with a distinctive pattern are present at regular intervals so readers can just look for those and begin decoding.
- rolph 4y ago
  im fondly recalling multipart uuencoded emails, and canned chat responses of uuencoded materials.
jgalt212 4y ago
> 250e3f7d581acff115537ba38e89ad31 is a handy random 128-bit integer that will appear in every issue of Lab 6 and can be used to search for copies. I really like this idea for uniquely identifying emails. Our shop had been messing with something similar, but had trouble bridge the gap between the lay people and the technical minded people.
- leephillips 4y ago
  Doesn’t the MessageID work?
  - jgalt212 4y ago
    Can you search on that via a Gmail or Outlook client? I did not think you could, and we were looking for shorter strings. e.g. 10 character Base58 string gets you approx 10^17 uniques.
    - leephillips 4y ago
      I don’t know, but you certainly can in real email clients such as mutt. When I want to store a reference to an email in a note, I use the MessageID. It’s already there in every message, and it’s supposed to be unique.
      - jgalt212 4y ago
        as above > bridge the gap between the lay people and the technical minded people
    - easrng 4y ago
      https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/31926/how-can-i-find-a-message-by-message-id-in-gmail#35492 https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/31926/how-can-i-...

151 points by marttt 4y ago

For the "why PDF?", Vol 0 of the zine was discussed on HN earlier this year (413 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27880905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27880905 There's also Vol 2, which is a PDF/A document that also parses as text/gemini: http://lab6.com/2 http://lab6.com/2 The last one has interesting discussion on the future of information archiving.

95 4y ago

this is so cool

jl6 4y ago

It’s been ~18 months and nobody’s made much progress on the CTF hidden in the first issue as far as I can tell!

bawolff 4y ago

I feel like poc||gtfo already has done the pdf polygot thing to perfection...

jl6 4y ago
It’s true that Simpsons Did It Already, but one difference is that the PoC||GTFO files are essentially exploits of PDF readers, whereas these files are valid PDFs that comply with the spec.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  If that's true, I don't even consider a Simpsons Did It. Polyglot files exploiting common tools are far less interesting ones than those that are actually within spec. Especially if the spec wasn't designed as polyglot spec.
- sp332 4y ago
  PoC||GTFO files render correctly in all major PDF readers, so if it isn't following the letter of the spec, it's at least adhering to a common interpretation of it.
Ansil849 4y ago
I don't think it's a bad thing at all to have another similar zine. For example, I miss the days when it wasn't just 2600, but we also had Blacklisted 411, THUD, etc.
- enriquto 4y ago
  29a was glorious

lgats 4y ago

i was in a FaceTime call when i opened this in Chrome on iOS. The speakerphone became max volume and the volume slider became unresponsive. i had to open up another media player and play music to get the volume slider to work again

drusepth 4y ago
My Chrome also locked up for a good 10 seconds while trying to render the in-browser PDF reader on desktop. Never seen something like that before.
jgalt212 4y ago
I guess the other side got a good idea of the level of importance you had assigned the ongoing FaceTime call.
- samatman 4y ago
  That's a pretty uncharitable thing to say! FaceTime is routinely used to just hang out with your family or buds, your presumption that doing other stuff is automatically rude just doesn't hold up.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    jgalt212 didn't say that it was rude, only that doing other things during a call shows the level of importance one assigns to the call. There's not necessarily anything rude about assigning a call low importance.
    - samatman 4y ago
      That sort of observation isn't neutral, merely couched so. The amount of attention given to a FaceTime call is not a measure of importance, thus the observation is unsupported.
      - JasonFruit 4y ago

userbinator 4y ago

You could probably embed a video stream the same way --- as the name implies, streaming formats are specifically designed so that it's not necessary to find the "start" or "end" of the stream, but instead sync markers with a distinctive pattern are present at regular intervals so readers can just look for those and begin decoding.

rolph 4y ago
im fondly recalling multipart uuencoded emails, and canned chat responses of uuencoded materials.

jgalt212 4y ago

> 250e3f7d581acff115537ba38e89ad31 is a handy random 128-bit integer that will appear in every issue of Lab 6 and can be used to search for copies. I really like this idea for uniquely identifying emails. Our shop had been messing with something similar, but had trouble bridge the gap between the lay people and the technical minded people.

leephillips 4y ago
Doesn’t the MessageID work?
- jgalt212 4y ago
  Can you search on that via a Gmail or Outlook client? I did not think you could, and we were looking for shorter strings. e.g. 10 character Base58 string gets you approx 10^17 uniques.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    I don’t know, but you certainly can in real email clients such as mutt. When I want to store a reference to an email in a note, I use the MessageID. It’s already there in every message, and it’s supposed to be unique.
    - jgalt212 4y ago
      as above > bridge the gap between the lay people and the technical minded people
  - easrng 4y ago
    https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/31926/how-can-i-find-a-message-by-message-id-in-gmail#35492 https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/31926/how-can-i-...