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bluehorserayon Ask HN: Best way to convert PDFs to other file formats?

pdftotext in python works pretty well:

  import pdftotext
  import sys
  
  with open("test.pdf", "rb") as f:
    pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f,physical=True)

  for page in pdf:
    print(page)

bluehorserayon How to make sure enough fonts are installed to display all Unicode characters?

Here's a stackoverflow link with a similar question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34732718/why-isnt-there-...

I actually don't know if there are fonts to cover every single unicode character (as in there may be characters that literally don't have a font that supports it), but I could be wrong.

I'll suggest a ridiculous hack, but it could end up being a cool little project.

You can download all of the unicode characters from the unicode website, and then write a script to iterate through them all.

This site is a pretty good resource for finding fonts that support a character: https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0041/fontsuppo...

Just switch out the second to last param (0041) in that URL with the character code, make a GET request to the page, and then scrape the html for a font. Then do some kind of a distinct() on those fonts and you might have a pretty good list (you might DOS the site though).

bluehorserayon Tell HN: Putting mirrors around my desk improved my posture

Maybe I'm wrong, but I find the discussion around "reminding" yourself to have good posture off-base. It's like saying that if you want larger biceps, you should walk around with your biceps flexed all day. I feel like the important part is strengthening your postural muscles, and then just living normally

bluehorserayon Savings for 5 Years Living Expense: Is It Enough FU Money to Quit My Job?

If you spend less than or equal to 2/3 of your current income right now you should be able to quit with 0 years living expenses covered. If you spend all of your current income right now, and your 5 years living expenses assume 0 income than you essentially have 15 years of runway. Seems fine to me if your math is right

bluehorserayon Agile soccer skills for a bipedal robot with deep reinforcement learning

I honestly think there's a huge market for a consumer grade "pet" robot. Would love to have one of these running around, then I can just turn it off when I leave

bluehorserayon Tell HN: In 7 hours, it's going to be 1679999999 past the Unix epoch

Should happen every ~115 days

bluehorserayon OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Lex Fridman Podcast [video]

14:17: "I suspect too much of the processing power is going into using the model as a database instead of using the model as a reasoning engine"

https://youtu.be/L_Guz73e6fw?t=857

bluehorserayon Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early Experiments with GPT-4

- "ftxbro"

bluehorserayon Dear @elonmusk [...] your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee

I think it's Elon's response to his "all active design projects" claim.

I'd be surprised if he led "the prioritization of [all] design projects across the company to make sure we were able to deliver with a small team" and Elon doesn't know who he is.

bluehorserayon [dead]

Are you writing meta fanfiction?

bluehorserayon Ask HN: What's a website you wish more people knew about?

https://news.ycombinator.com/ for me as well. Interested to hear other people's opinions.

bluehorserayon [dead]

I'll be honest this is pretty incoherent.

What hasn't improved over the past 15 years? All HN cares about is making new laws? Please re-write

bluehorserayon Sergey Brin: Irate Call from Steve Jobs

It would be pretty cool to have Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin fighting over you as an employee, wonder who it was.

bluehorserayon Trump’s Major Announcement Is $99 Digital Trading Cards

Truly hilarious. From the four seasons incident to NFTs, he just constantly straddles this line between incredibly sleazy and incredibly funny. I can never tell if it's a bit

https://collecttrumpcards.com/images/DT-White-Hat.webp

bluehorserayon Ask HN: If I get locked out of everything, please try to help me

Try to find a 3rd party phone repair shop. There's a decent chance they can get your old phone charging pretty quickly and cheaply if it's just your charging port being dirty / faulty.

bluehorserayon Is This End of China?

If anything I think China no longer manufacturing cheap foreign goods will strengthen them in the longterm

bluehorserayon Beginning May 3, 2023, U.S. travelers flying within US will need 'RealID'

Hmm this sees pretty prohibitive for a lot of people. Hope it gets delayed again

bluehorserayon Bring Back Vine?

I totally forgot Twitter bought Vine. This is interesting, I've always thought the US never banned TikTok partially because it's so popular. If Musk does bring Vine back and successfully competes with Tiktok, maybe the gov will help him out and ban it.

bluehorserayon Ask HN: How many are switching to Mastodon?

It's been ~6 hours since Musk closed the deal. Maybe he shadow banned your account in the afternoon

bluehorserayon [dead]

Leak it

bluehorserayon Show HN: I'm trying to guess your personality by your comments with an NLP model

Hehe "purgatorial"

bluehorserayon Nearly half of Covid patients haven’t fully recovered months later, study finds

you renegade!

bluehorserayon Ask HN: How does Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker's app Airtime stay in business?

https://www.google.com/search?q=sean+parker+net+worth

bluehorserayon Bay Area Bed Frame Grants

How did you make $80M?

bluehorserayon Nord Stream: Tie-ins and hyperbaric welding

That's actually why I looked this up in the first place. I think it's just air from what I could gather. The three sections of the pipe are laid on the seafloor like this (with the open end staying out of the water): https://www.wermac.org/nordstream/html_img66.html.

And then those three sections are welded together using an "air-tight habitat" surrounding them.

From what I've heard salt water getting into the pipe could make it really difficult to repair, and it might have to be scrapped altogether.

bluehorserayon At sufficient scale, Glo can lift every person out of extreme poverty

Is this basically a low friction way to help people in poverty to invest in an index-fund? Not a bad idea

bluehorserayon Usain Bolt, Lance Armstrong and the Duck Test

I've always wondered if his scoliosis helped him run faster:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJ9xOkvX0AIv6DV?format=jpg&name=...

bluehorserayon [dead]

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bluehorserayon The Space Force Just Unveiled Its “Official Song”

Does it not sound very similar to the soviet national anthem? Or do all anthems sound like that, I guess I haven't heard too many.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs&ab_channel=rascr...

bluehorserayon Ask HN: What is the next big thing?

They literally just need to built fortnite for VR. Then they'll be set