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So you want to parse a PDF?

Suppose you have an appetite for tilting at windmills. Let's say you love pain. Well then why not write a PDF parser today? The ideal world: how the specification should work Conceptually parsing a PDF is fairly simple: First, locate the version header comment at the start of the file Next you need to locate the pointer to the cross-reference Then you can find all object offsets Finally you locate and build the trailer dictionary which points to the catalog dicitionary Introduction to PDF

Tokens are getting more expensive

note: i’m kinda tired of the “levered beta” metaphor, i have one more topic i want to cover on this topic related to cognition, and then i’ll go back to my normal writing imagine you start a company knowing that consumers won't pay more than $20/month. fine, you think, classic vc playbook - charge at cost, sacrifice margins for growth. you've done the math on cac, ltv, all that. but here's where it gets interesting: you've seen the a16z chart showing llm costs dropping 10x every year. so you t

Topics: 10x 20 models month time

HBO Max Lost Two More Cartoon Network Classics This Week

The current regime at Warner Bros. Discovery—soon to separate into Warner Bros. and Discovery in the near future—has never really liked its animated history. After licensing out old Cartoon Network hits and their sequel shows to different platforms, the company still have a few more shows to kick out of HBO Max. In this case, it’s Courage the Cowardly Dog and What’s New, Scooby-Doo that are now no longer on the service. Per Deadline, the two youth-aimed horror shows left the service on July 31

These Behind-the-Scenes Emails From Tesla Meekly Begging the State of California to Allow Its Horrible Robotaxis Are Unintentionally Hilarious

Email exchanges between Tesla and California regulators obtained by Politico reveal a comical discrepancy between what Elon Musk is saying his Robotaxi services can do publicly, and what the automaker is actually telling authorities behind closed doors. This week, Tesla launched a ride-hailing service in San Francisco, in what is being framed as an expansion of its Robotaxi efforts that started as an invite-only program in Austin, Texas last month, where it immediately began charging customers

The Ski Rental Problem

Ski Rental Problem The ski rental problem is a classic example problem in online algorithms. It feels like a small but interesting problem that can be explained relatively easily while some clever tricks can be applied to it. In this article, I took these lecture notes by Debmalya Panigrahi and Hangjie Ji and tried to rewrite them in a way that is easier to understand (at least for me). Formulation You are going skiing in the mountains but you are unsure about the weather reports and don't k

We Tested Dozens of Phones and These Have the Best Cameras

Phone makers promise varying lengths of long-term software and security support ranging from just one year to as many as seven. These updates not only ensure you get many of the latest features but also keep your phone secure. Phone cameras have gotten better over the past five years. Don’t be fooled by how many cameras a phone has ot the number of megapixels; more is not necessarily better. Phones are large in general with the smallest ones having a 6.1-inch screen and large models topping ou

A Bytecode VM for Arithmetic: The Parser

In this series of posts, we write a bytecode compiler and a virtual machine for arithmetic in Haskell. We explore the following topics: In this series of posts, we write a bytecode compiler and a virtual machine for arithmetic in Haskell. We explore the following topics: Parsing arithmetic expressions to Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs). Compiling AST s to bytecode. s to bytecode. Interpreting AST s. s. Efficiently executing bytecode in a virtual machine (VM). Disassembling bytecode and decomp

Topics: bsc expr fails input let

LangExtract: Python library for extracting structured data from language models

LangExtract Table of Contents Introduction LangExtract is a Python library that uses LLMs to extract structured information from unstructured text documents based on user-defined instructions. It processes materials such as clinical notes or reports, identifying and organizing key details while ensuring the extracted data corresponds to the source text. Why LangExtract? Precise Source Grounding: Maps every extraction to its exact location in the source text, enabling visual highlighting for

The 45 Best Shows on Netflix Right Now (August 2025)

Streaming services are known for having award-worthy series but also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on Netflix is updated weekly to help you know which series you should move to the top of your queue. They aren’t all surefire winners—we love a good less-than-obvious gem—but they’re all worth your time, trust us. Feel like you’ve already watched everything on this list that you want to see? Try our guide to the best movies on Netflix for more options. And if you’ve already comple

We Must Admit That This Video of Two Small Robots Punching Each Other With Boxing Gloves Is Pretty Awesome

These days, robots with varying degrees of impressiveness can manage all kinds of tasks. But two diminutive humanoids seen boxing with outsize gloves at the recent World AI Conference in Shanghai may take the cake. In a video posted to X, AI security researcher Helen Toner — who was, it should be noted, a driving force behind the ultimately failed coup against CEO Sam Altman back in November 2023 — showed off the boxing ring prowess of two short-statured robots from the Chinese company Unitree.

NASA's latest mission to the ISS features a bacterial experiment

Scientists are sending several strains of disease-causing bacteria to the International Space Station as part of the Crew-11 mission. This experiment isn't the plot to some cheesy horror film, but a scientific investigation from the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and the US-based company Space Tango with the goal of better understanding how bacteria spread and behave under extreme conditions. The experiment includes E. coli, along with bacteria that cause diseases like typhoid fever and the infe

A dive into open chat protocols

A dive into open chat protocols I’m between projects right now, so as is my idiom I’m going to take some random topic that has caught me on a manic swing in my little bipolar life, and dive deeper into it for a few days. One of the low-key topics in the back of my mind is that “the world needs an open chat protocol that doesn’t suck”, and something made me start thinking seriously about XMPP again for the first time in a decade. I used XMPP myself a fair amount in its little Golden Age of the e

Double-slit experiment holds up when stripped to its quantum essentials

MIT physicists have performed an idealized version of one of the most famous experiments in quantum physics. Their findings demonstrate, with atomic-level precision, the dual yet evasive nature of light. They also happen to confirm that Albert Einstein was wrong about this particular quantum scenario. The experiment in question is the double-slit experiment, which was first performed in 1801 by the British scholar Thomas Young to show how light behaves as a wave. Today, with the formulation of

PixiEditor 2.0 – A FOSS universal 2D graphics editor

What is PixiEditor? Up until today, PixiEditor was known as a pixel-art editor. Version 2.0 is much more than that. It’s a Universal 2D Editor - a brand new category. It’s not yet another Photoshop alternative. We take the word “Universal” much more seriously. We built an extremely configurable raster/vector render pipeline, which you can adjust for any workflow you can think of. Our goal is to build a free and open source editor that can handle all of 2D graphics Raster Vector, Animations

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ and ‘Expedition 33’ Are Having a Moment

Have you watched KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix or played Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? Chances are the answer is ‘yes,’ and if not, you’ve certainly heard of them: both were released earlier this year to fairly glowing reviews (if not outright critical acclaim) and performed very well commercially. The latter, a turn-based RPG from newcomer Sandfall Interactive, will likely pick up some awards at year’s end, while Netflix is planning to go all in on KPop. Along with talks of sequels and an ever-

July Steam Survey: RTX 5000 surge, new top GPU, 4 in 10 participants using AMD CPUs

What just happened? Here's a clear indication that the supply and pricing problems which have plagued Nvidia's RTX 5000 series are easing: the cards experienced a large uptick in user share in the latest Steam survey. However, there's still no sign of AMD's 9000-series in the main GPU chart, where the RX 7600 XT has only just appeared. Elsewhere, we've got a new most-popular card among participants, and AMD processors have passed a milestone. Starting with the main GPU chart, July's results sho

Topics: amd chart gpu main rtx

I want Gemini to be my DJ in YouTube Music

Stephen Headrick / Android Authority Imagine having your very own DJ in your pocket, ready to mix your favorite songs at a moment’s notice. No, not your dad’s 3-5 second crossfade, but instead a completely customized mix that makes the two songs you’re transitioning between meld together like they were designed that way by the artists themselves. That’s the idea behind Apple Music’s upcoming AI-powered AutoMix feature, which is coming with this fall’s iOS 26 release. As a former Spotify user a

I bought Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra 2025 - here's why I have buyer's remorse

Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra ZDNET's key takeaways The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra is on sale for $650 in four color options. Its display is vibrant and large, the battery lasts through a couple of days, and LTE is provided at no extra cost. It comes in a single 47mm size, gesture support is limited, and external sensor connections are not supported. $649.99 at Amazon Last year's Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra was my favorite Google WearOS smartwatch, so when I saw the 2025 Watch Ultra with its new

The /o in Ruby regex stands for "oh the humanity "

Your code using the /o modifier Source: wikipedia Hi there! Do you like Regex? Do you like performance? Do you like creating confounding bugs for yourself rooted in the mechanics of the Ruby VM itself? If you said yes to all of the above, have I got a feature for you! But first, let’s start with a story. The cliffs of insanity I was recently reviewing some code, and part of the functionality was about matching. A class took an array of strings, and you could call a method to see if an input

Topics: code end regex ruby run

Why Exercise Is a Miracle Drug

Welcome back to The Sunday Morning Post, this newsletter’s weekly rundown of the most interesting and important stuff I’m seeing in science, technology, economics, and beyond. Comments are open. Leave tips, papers, studies, tweets, posts, questions, and graphs in the comments, if you think they’ll serve for future editions. We’re Never Going to Invent a Drug That’s Better Than Exercise Euan Ashley has claimed that exercise is the “single most potent medical invention” ever—more broadly effecti

7 ways Google could make a Pixel Flip the best flip phone foldable out there

C. Scott Brown / Android Authority Google is preparing to launch the Pixel 10 Pro Fold this month, marking the company’s third foray into the foldable phone space. What if you want a pocket-friendly Pixel foldable, though? Unfortunately, Google hasn’t launched a Pixel Flip, and we don’t expect one any time soon. That means Samsung and Motorola are the only globally available options if you want a foldable flip phone. That’s a real shame, because I can think of several ways that Google could ma

I put the Galaxy Ring to the test - and it's better than my Apple Watch in one critical area

Samsung Galaxy Ring ZDNET's key takeaways The Samsung Galaxy Ring is a smart ring that excels at wellness tracking, especially for delivering actionable insights to help you improve areas of your health that could use some attention. People interested in digital health tracking will appreciate the Galaxy Ring's minimalism, comfort, long battery life, and minimal notifications. At $399, the Galaxy Ring is more expensive than some of its competitors, but it does not require a $5.99-per-month sub

The tradeoff between human and AI context

AI coding is a skill. You have to decide how much context to put in your brain vs the AI. You can waste your time thinking about the wrong problem because you failed to delegate. Or you can give yourself a headache when the AI coder doesn’t get it. I think about it in terms of spectrum of human to AI context. At the highest levels, we, humans, own all the context. We operate here when our specific value-add matters. We also work here in the many cases AI coders aren’t that smart yet. At the low

Ethersync: Peer-to-peer collaborative editing of local text files

🍃 Ethersync Multiplayer mode for your text editor! Ethersync enables real-time collaborative editing of local text files. You can use it for pair programming or note-taking, for example. It's the missing real-time complement to Git! Features 👥 Edit files at the same time, across different text editors 📍 See your peers' cursors and selections 🗃️ Work on entire projects, the way you're used to 🔒 Encrypted peer-to-peer connections, no need for a server ✒️ Local-first: You always have full a

With Trump’s cutbacks, crew heads for ISS unsure of when they’ll come back

The next four-person team to live and work aboard the International Space Station departed from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, taking aim at the massive orbiting research complex for a planned stay of six to eight months. Spacecraft commander Zena Cardman leads the mission, designated Crew-11, that lifted off from Florida's Space Coast at 11:43 am EDT (15:43 UTC) on Friday. Sitting to her right inside SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule was veteran NASA astronaut Mike Finc

Amazon eyes ads and upcharges for Alexa Plus

is a senior reviewer focused on smart home and connected tech, with over twenty years of experience. She has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News. In the week’s least surprising news, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy revealed that the company is exploring ways to bring ads to Alexa Plus, its new generative-AI-powered voice assistant. During a conference call following the company’s second-quarter earnings report, Jassy said that “there will be opportunities, as people are enga

Topics: ads alexa amazon new plus

The Films and Shows You Should Be Streaming in August 2025

A new era of streaming selections is here. For the past several years, our monthly column, the Nerd’s Watch, has been the place to find out all the best genre titles coming to the biggest streaming services. It wasn’t a complete list. We just posted the titles we think you’d care about, but it was still long, and frankly, it was hard to pick out the best of the best. Anaconda (August 1 on Netflix) Months before the new remake with Jack Black and Paul Rudd, revisit the iconic camp classic with

When Flatpak's Sandbox Cracks

Introduction Flatpak promises a secure runtime for Linux applications through container-like isolation, relying on bubblewrap namespaces, syscall filtering, and portal interfaces. In theory, each app should operate inside a strong sandbox, disconnected from the host system. But in reality, experience shows gaps, tiny cracks through which apps may escape with serious consequences. The Sandbox Promise… and the Reality Flatpak applications begin life in a highly-restricted environment: no networ

I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

July 30, 2025 , Nicholas Khami I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself For over a year, I was bugged by a search quirk on Mintlify that caused race conditions and wonky search results. Here’s the fun irony: I was the founder of Trieve, the company that powered search for their 30,000+ documentation sites, yet their debounced search queries weren’t being aborted as you typed. Check out this delightful chaos: I had brought this up in our shared Slack before when I was just a