Do not try to print this PDF
February 1, 2024 1:33 PM Subscribe
Alex Chan: I was browsing social media this morning, and I saw a claim I’ve seen go past a few times now – that there’s a maximum size for a PDF document: 381 km × 381 km... Eventually I ended up with a PDF that Preview claimed is larger than the entire universe – approximately 37 trillion light years square. [via BoingBoing][
Here's the PDF
HackerNews post
Obligatory Borges:
Here's the PDF
HackerNews post
Obligatory Borges:
. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
—Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658
"Admittedly it’s mostly empty space, but so is the universe."
Perfection.
posted by mhoye at 2:12 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]
Perfection.
posted by mhoye at 2:12 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]
Pretty cool. I like how different PDF viewers each misinterpret the resolution in their own way.
But it's an empty document. If you really want to blow people's minds, show them a document this size with something in it for scale.
But it's an empty document. If you really want to blow people's minds, show them a document this size with something in it for scale.
“For when you are put into the Total Perspective Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here.”posted by Phssthpok at 2:13 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Wait, it's empty?
If I were him I would have put one period in there, someplace.
And maybe he did? I haven't examined the document to find out.
posted by hippybear at 2:18 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
If I were him I would have put one period in there, someplace.
And maybe he did? I haven't examined the document to find out.
posted by hippybear at 2:18 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
You'll have to scroll a while to find it.
posted by mittens at 2:19 PM on February 1 [8 favorites]
posted by mittens at 2:19 PM on February 1 [8 favorites]
I assume I could look at the raw file and see if there is a period in there anywhere. He spends quite a bit of time describing how a .pdf file is constructed at the beginning of the article.
posted by hippybear at 2:20 PM on February 1
posted by hippybear at 2:20 PM on February 1
Here's how to embed your Spy vs Spy message at the end of a JPEG.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:24 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:24 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Many years ago I was working on architectural design software. A customer reported a bug where everything in their saved floorplan was acting really weird. It turned out that they'd placed everything an enormous distance from the center (apparently because they'd imported CAD at a very large scale, then deleted it, but continued working at one of its corners) -- because the distance from the center was larger than floating point precision the position for everything in their floorplan had a couple inches of random jitter every time anything changed, visible in a live 3D rendering. It was wild.
posted by silentbicycle at 2:28 PM on February 1 [20 favorites]
posted by silentbicycle at 2:28 PM on February 1 [20 favorites]
because the distance from the center was larger than floating point precision the position for everything in their floorplan had a couple inches of random jitter every time anything changed
Interestingly, having the floating point precision centerpoint being a calculated physical spot on the map and not one that follows the player as it travels around is one of the biggest design flaws in Starfield making it such a weird experience to play. If you go too far outside of what is considered the center, it can't load the world anymore. People forced the matter within the game engine, avoiding the normal reload points that are contained in the world...
Anyway it was a video I watched about the design of that game. And suddenly that is appearing in this thread. Fascinating.
posted by hippybear at 2:34 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Interestingly, having the floating point precision centerpoint being a calculated physical spot on the map and not one that follows the player as it travels around is one of the biggest design flaws in Starfield making it such a weird experience to play. If you go too far outside of what is considered the center, it can't load the world anymore. People forced the matter within the game engine, avoiding the normal reload points that are contained in the world...
Anyway it was a video I watched about the design of that game. And suddenly that is appearing in this thread. Fascinating.
posted by hippybear at 2:34 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
I would love to see the math on how many standard sheets of paper that would take, and how far that stack of papers would reach.
posted by bgrebs at 2:36 PM on February 1
posted by bgrebs at 2:36 PM on February 1
It would be a stack of papers large enough to cover the universe. But how much is that... all stacked up???
posted by hippybear at 2:38 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 2:38 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
I just sent this to my developer that has been assigned the headache of resolving the conversion of PDFs to images, when the PDF has dimensions of 8.5x11, but the DPI gets messed up so our software thinks the image is 3ft x 4ft wide.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:45 PM on February 1
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:45 PM on February 1
A customer reported a bug where everything in their saved floorplan was acting really weird.
Ha! I ran into the same sort of thing! The file took for goddamn ever to load, despite not being a very complex plan. Turned out there was a gigantic circle, like real-world miles across, surrounding the actual technical drawing. I like to think we found it by just zooming out indefinitely, but I honestly don't recall. Someone could've parsed the file out, which probably makes more sense.
...anyway, I still have no idea how that happened in the first place, but back in the Old Days of CAD things could get really weird really fast.
posted by aramaic at 2:46 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Ha! I ran into the same sort of thing! The file took for goddamn ever to load, despite not being a very complex plan. Turned out there was a gigantic circle, like real-world miles across, surrounding the actual technical drawing. I like to think we found it by just zooming out indefinitely, but I honestly don't recall. Someone could've parsed the file out, which probably makes more sense.
...anyway, I still have no idea how that happened in the first place, but back in the Old Days of CAD things could get really weird really fast.
posted by aramaic at 2:46 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
when the PDF has dimensions of 8.5x11, but the DPI gets messed up so our software thinks the image is 3ft x 4ft wide.
I'm going to bet this might be also mentioned in the article, which says that for some systems, the default assumption is 1/72", but if the document has special instructions that set it much higher, say 300DPI, but that is ignored and the default is assumed...
This is a fascinating examination of .pdfs, really. I hand modified one or two, WAY back. like, 35 years ago?
posted by hippybear at 2:48 PM on February 1
I'm going to bet this might be also mentioned in the article, which says that for some systems, the default assumption is 1/72", but if the document has special instructions that set it much higher, say 300DPI, but that is ignored and the default is assumed...
This is a fascinating examination of .pdfs, really. I hand modified one or two, WAY back. like, 35 years ago?
posted by hippybear at 2:48 PM on February 1
1/72", but if the document has special instructions that set it much higher, say 300DPI,
That is literally it -- 8.5 x 11 @ 300dpi = 2550 x 3300 = @ divide by 72dpi = 35.41" x 45.8" = software throws a fit because the page size is out of range.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:54 PM on February 1
That is literally it -- 8.5 x 11 @ 300dpi = 2550 x 3300 = @ divide by 72dpi = 35.41" x 45.8" = software throws a fit because the page size is out of range.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:54 PM on February 1
> bgrebs: "I would love to see the math on how many standard sheets of paper that would take, and how far that stack of papers would reach."
I'll assume that this is referring to the 15 million inches squared pdf (and not the CAD drawing with the very far away center):
15,000,000 inches / 8.5 inches =~ 1,764,705.9
15,000,000 inches / 11 inches =~ 1,363,636.4
So, on (US) standard 8.5x11 sheets, you'd need around 1,764,706 x 1,363,634 = 2,406,413,101,604 sheets.
A ream (500 sheets) of 20lb printer paper is around 2 inches, so each sheet is around 0.004 inches. Stacking all of these up gives:
2,406,413,101,604 sheets x 0.004 inches/sheet = 96,256,524,064.16 inches =~ 1,519,200.2 miles =~ 6.3 times the average distance between the earth and the moon
posted by mhum at 3:02 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]
I'll assume that this is referring to the 15 million inches squared pdf (and not the CAD drawing with the very far away center):
15,000,000 inches / 8.5 inches =~ 1,764,705.9
15,000,000 inches / 11 inches =~ 1,363,636.4
So, on (US) standard 8.5x11 sheets, you'd need around 1,764,706 x 1,363,634 = 2,406,413,101,604 sheets.
A ream (500 sheets) of 20lb printer paper is around 2 inches, so each sheet is around 0.004 inches. Stacking all of these up gives:
2,406,413,101,604 sheets x 0.004 inches/sheet = 96,256,524,064.16 inches =~ 1,519,200.2 miles =~ 6.3 times the average distance between the earth and the moon
posted by mhum at 3:02 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]
PC LOAD C*37
I WAS CURIOUS and that never ends well but
So the way A-series paper works is that A4 is half the area of A3 is half the area of A2, and A0 is (almost exactly) 1 m2. There seems to be paper bigger than A0 that goes by 2A0, 3A0, 4A0...
21A0 paper is about 1km2. And the paper you would need to print this pdf is 199A0.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:08 PM on February 1 [21 favorites]
I WAS CURIOUS and that never ends well but
So the way A-series paper works is that A4 is half the area of A3 is half the area of A2, and A0 is (almost exactly) 1 m2. There seems to be paper bigger than A0 that goes by 2A0, 3A0, 4A0...
21A0 paper is about 1km2. And the paper you would need to print this pdf is 199A0.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:08 PM on February 1 [21 favorites]
mhum, GCU Sweet and Full Of Grace, I love both of you so much.
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:11 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]
A customer reported a bug where everything in their saved floorplan was acting really weird.
This happens all the time in Autodesk Revit when we’re working with civil engineering backgrounds. Revit is floating point and civil drawings usually have their origin at the nearest USGS map intersection which is miles away from most projects. Huge PITA and affects me on a daily basis.
posted by q*ben at 3:31 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
This happens all the time in Autodesk Revit when we’re working with civil engineering backgrounds. Revit is floating point and civil drawings usually have their origin at the nearest USGS map intersection which is miles away from most projects. Huge PITA and affects me on a daily basis.
posted by q*ben at 3:31 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Hey so neat to see this here. Alex (they/she) works with me at the Flickr Foundation and does all manner of cool and interesting stuff. This was fun to see go zipping around the internet.
posted by jessamyn at 4:48 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 4:48 PM on February 1 [10 favorites]
Very clever.
Now make a non-rectangular page in PDF.
I'll wait …
(NB: you can't)
posted by scruss at 4:52 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Now make a non-rectangular page in PDF.
I'll wait …
(NB: you can't)
posted by scruss at 4:52 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
because the distance from the center was larger than floating point precision the position for everything in their floorplan had a couple inches of random jitter every time anything changed
Horrifying new explanation for quantum uncertainty just dropped.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:57 PM on February 1 [8 favorites]
Horrifying new explanation for quantum uncertainty just dropped.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:57 PM on February 1 [8 favorites]
Please don’t try to print it.
Reading the article before the thread, I had two immediate thoughts:
1. How many sheets of paper would it take?
2. I bet someone in the thread has already solved that.
posted by dg at 5:58 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
Reading the article before the thread, I had two immediate thoughts:
1. How many sheets of paper would it take?
2. I bet someone in the thread has already solved that.
posted by dg at 5:58 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
Very clever.
Now make a non-rectangular page in PDF.
I'll wait …
(NB: you can't)
Technically, at this scale (~6 million light years on a side), if the universe is even a teensy bit not flat, then it wouldn't quite be a rectangle. Sadly, since we don't know exactly what the local geometry of the universe is, it's not yet possible to amend the PDF spec to ensure the rectangularity of cosmic scale documents.
posted by jedicus at 7:08 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Now make a non-rectangular page in PDF.
I'll wait …
(NB: you can't)
Technically, at this scale (~6 million light years on a side), if the universe is even a teensy bit not flat, then it wouldn't quite be a rectangle. Sadly, since we don't know exactly what the local geometry of the universe is, it's not yet possible to amend the PDF spec to ensure the rectangularity of cosmic scale documents.
posted by jedicus at 7:08 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
Is the Universe a Euclidian space is of course the logical place for this conversation to go next.
posted by hippybear at 7:14 PM on February 1
posted by hippybear at 7:14 PM on February 1
Let’s see the CUPS error this kicks out.
posted by dr_dank at 7:47 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
posted by dr_dank at 7:47 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]
Take it on a USB to Kinkos Fedex Office and give it a whirl!
posted by hippybear at 7:52 PM on February 1
posted by hippybear at 7:52 PM on February 1
back in the Old Days of CAD things could get really weird really fast
Old Days.... If only.
If you zoom to extents in AutoCAD and can't see the drawing anymore you might have some fun coming.
Anyway I am trying to live in Archicad currently and what a piece of shit that mostly gets the job done that is. It's hack on workaround on "that bug has existed for twenty years but won't be fixed, no one knows why" and is just a thoroughly unpleasant program but it mostly gets the job done so people keep using it so here I am. I'm not bitter. No, actually I am totally bitter, I'm owning it. Fucking turd of a thing.
posted by deadwax at 8:23 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]
Old Days.... If only.
If you zoom to extents in AutoCAD and can't see the drawing anymore you might have some fun coming.
Anyway I am trying to live in Archicad currently and what a piece of shit that mostly gets the job done that is. It's hack on workaround on "that bug has existed for twenty years but won't be fixed, no one knows why" and is just a thoroughly unpleasant program but it mostly gets the job done so people keep using it so here I am. I'm not bitter. No, actually I am totally bitter, I'm owning it. Fucking turd of a thing.
posted by deadwax at 8:23 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]
I think there's a German compound word for that but I can't quit out of my hanging pdf viewer to look it up :-/
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:58 PM on February 1
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:58 PM on February 1
I had some concerns about the impact of printing this on the universe as a whole but it seems like it would actually be OK.
If printed on standard 20 pound bond paper, the resulting sheet would have a mass of approximately 9.2e+45kg.
On the one hand, since the total mass of the observable universe is estimated to be roughly 10e+53kg, we're talking a tiny fraction of a percent here. That makes it unlikely that the printed PDF will counteract the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse in a Big Crunch. We could even upgrade to a fancier resume grade paper here. Printing on 32 pound bond paper instead would increase the total weight to 1.47e+46kg, barely an order of magnitude more. So that's good.
On the other hand flattening out this paper will be tricky at best, much less folding it for, say, putting it into the mail. And that's before considering the topology of the universe at this scale. You'll have to somehow snake it through the voids between galaxies. Those things would just end up burning ugly holes into the whole thing all over. So you'd need a lot of people coordinating with each other to lift it a few hundred thousand light years here, drop it a similar distance over there, make sure parts of it don't wiggle, bulge or sag and touch hot stuff when you move it around.
It's unclear how much it would cost mail this thing. My best but very rough estimate is that USPS would charge around $3.25e+45 based on weight.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:20 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
If printed on standard 20 pound bond paper, the resulting sheet would have a mass of approximately 9.2e+45kg.
On the one hand, since the total mass of the observable universe is estimated to be roughly 10e+53kg, we're talking a tiny fraction of a percent here. That makes it unlikely that the printed PDF will counteract the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse in a Big Crunch. We could even upgrade to a fancier resume grade paper here. Printing on 32 pound bond paper instead would increase the total weight to 1.47e+46kg, barely an order of magnitude more. So that's good.
On the other hand flattening out this paper will be tricky at best, much less folding it for, say, putting it into the mail. And that's before considering the topology of the universe at this scale. You'll have to somehow snake it through the voids between galaxies. Those things would just end up burning ugly holes into the whole thing all over. So you'd need a lot of people coordinating with each other to lift it a few hundred thousand light years here, drop it a similar distance over there, make sure parts of it don't wiggle, bulge or sag and touch hot stuff when you move it around.
It's unclear how much it would cost mail this thing. My best but very rough estimate is that USPS would charge around $3.25e+45 based on weight.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:20 PM on February 1 [2 favorites]
it's an empty document.
It isn't. There's a red square in there.
posted by flabdablet at 12:07 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
It isn't. There's a red square in there.
posted by flabdablet at 12:07 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
Here's the whole PDF as text, with the coding that defines the red square object boldfaced:
%PDF-1.6 1 0 obj << /Length 54 >> stream 1 0 0 RG 5 w 100 100 m 200 100 l 200 200 l 100 200 l s endstream endobj 3 0 obj << /Type /Pages /Kids [2 0 R ] /Count 1 >> endobj 4 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Pages 3 0 R >> endobj 2 0 obj << /Type /Page /Parent 3 0 R /MediaBox [0 0 1000000000000000000000000000000000 1000000000000000000000000000000000] /Contents [1 0 R ] >> endobj xref 0 4 0000000000 65535 f 0000000010 00000 n 0000000230 00000 n 0000000116 00000 n 0000000178 00000 n trailer << /Size 4 /Root 4 0 R >> startxref 387 %%EOFposted by flabdablet at 12:18 AM on February 2 [5 favorites]
But it's an empty document.
My God, it's full of fnords.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:20 AM on February 2 [7 favorites]
My God, it's full of fnords.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:20 AM on February 2 [7 favorites]
This is going to be Mark Danielewski's new novel
posted by crocomancer at 2:07 AM on February 2 [6 favorites]
posted by crocomancer at 2:07 AM on February 2 [6 favorites]
Very Big Jest
posted by flabdablet at 2:09 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 2:09 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
This is going to be Mark Danielewski's new novel
I reiterate that we need a superlike to award, like once a month or once a year or similar. This would get my current one.
posted by hearthpig at 4:28 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
I reiterate that we need a superlike to award, like once a month or once a year or similar. This would get my current one.
posted by hearthpig at 4:28 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
I can see someone ignoring the "don't try to print this" and then complaining when their Windows install dies because there is no more space on the hard drive for rendering the PDF to print.
I have no faith in users with just a little bit of technical knowledge.
posted by mephron at 6:26 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
I have no faith in users with just a little bit of technical knowledge.
posted by mephron at 6:26 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
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posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:41 PM on February 1 [13 favorites]