Gregory's Serverupdated the above gist with correctly extracted tags, and included python code to extract your own, feel free to add them in the comments. since we don't know what they contain yet not adding other metadata. definitely patterned, not a hash, but idk yet.
https://twitter.com/json_dirs/status/1486289288115359747?t=QwmBvbOgh2fCkjSOZSh3Fw&s=19
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follow-up: there does not appear to be any further watermarking: taking two files with different identifying tags, stripping metadata, and relinearizing with qpdf's --deterministic-id flag yields PDFs identical with a diff, ie. no differentiating watermark (but plz check my work) It's a couple things: a) Elsevier's vendor's tool only has to be good enough to impress Elsevier b) Deterrence being more efficient than prevention |
you go to school to study "the brain" and then the next thing you know you're learning how to debug surveillance in PDF rendering to understand how publishers have so contorted the practice of science for profit. how can there be "normal science" when this is normal?