Blog

Long-form articles about web encoding, hashing, JSON, and the small details that trip people up. Written by the team behind Utilo.

May 27, 2026·5 min read
Argon2 vs bcrypt vs scrypt: picking a password hash in 2026
A practical comparison of the three modern password-hashing functions, with sensible cost parameters and where each one falls short.
May 27, 2026·6 min read
PDF metadata: what your file is telling people
Authors, software versions, edit history, hidden text, embedded files. Everything a PDF reveals beyond the visible content — and how to clean it before sending.
June 3, 2026·5 min read
Base64 explained: why your data sometimes grows by 33%
What Base64 actually does, why it exists, when to use it, and the small mistakes that bloat your payloads or corrupt your data.
May 19, 2026·5 min read
CSV is harder than you think: quotes, BOMs, newlines, locales
A guided tour of the parts of CSV that aren't actually standardized — and the ones that quietly destroy data exports.
May 19, 2026·8 min read
PDF accessibility: tags, reading order, OCR, and the screen-reader gap
Most PDFs are inaccessible by default. A practical guide to what tagged PDFs are, why scans fail screen readers, and how to send PDFs that work for everyone.
June 2, 2026·4 min read
MD5 vs SHA-256: when each one is fine, and when it isn't
MD5 is broken — but not for every job. A practical guide to picking a hash function, including why password hashing needs neither.
June 4, 2026·7 min read
PDFs explained: what's actually inside the format
The Portable Document Format is half PostScript, half ZIP archive, all stubborn. A guided tour of objects, streams, fonts, and why every PDF feels different.
May 30, 2026·6 min read
How PDF compression actually works (and why some PDFs barely shrink)
Why your 2-page scan is 8 MB and your 200-page report is 200 KB. The honest reasons PDFs compress unpredictably — and the tricks that actually move the needle.
May 30, 2026·5 min read
URL encoding vs HTML encoding vs Base64: which one when
Three encodings that look similar, solve different problems, and break in different ways when you reach for the wrong one. A practical guide.
May 23, 2026·6 min read
When to send a PDF vs a link, an image, or just text
PDFs are great at some things and terrible at others. A practical guide to picking the right format for sharing — with sensible defaults for the cases you'll meet most.
May 23, 2026·5 min read
Regex anchors and lookarounds in plain English
The five anchors and four lookarounds, demystified with practical examples — and the one mistake almost everyone makes with ^ and $.
June 1, 2026·4 min read
Ten JSON pitfalls that bite you in production
JSON looks simple. Then a number rounds, a date drops a timezone, or a duplicate key silently overwrites your data. A working list of the traps.
May 15, 2026·5 min read
PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF: picking an image format in 2026
What each format is good at, what it isn't, and the file-size differences that actually matter for page load.