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The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

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Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#31

Post by 6510 »

Inventors are a different animal. One doesn't start with a reasonable theory but one works from the other end, one quite unreasonably starts with what would be wonderful to have. One doesn't test a theory but one ponders how the seemingly impossible might be accomplished which is a problem that can be broken down into more reasonable things until it's impossible component is defined properly so that one may make an often futile attempt to ask the question differently. With few exceptions there are no results. Those not skilled in the art consider that part cheating. This is logical because their line of reasoning seeks to further validate that what they already know, it thus involves an effort to prove something can't be done, or at least not by someone like that, or at least not by that person, or at least not by that method etc etc

The cheating in this context would be to study the thing the file represents rather than the representation.

A dumb example would be to make a 10 hour movie from a single image that doesn't move. There is no reason for the file to be larger than the original jpg.

> I can not only get Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. I can get Citizen Kane in colour!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI5qy9Zoh_0

To argue that this was not the method Sloot used is missing the point. The question is: How to do it, not how to imitate someone else.

In his demo Sloot was playing 16 full movies simultaneously on a 1995 laptop at any speed. A high end computer had 32 MB memory, 133 MHz cpu, PCI video cards had 4 MB ram, 66 MHz, 560 MB HDD

If it was not what he said it was why didn't he just sell what he had? Without the extraordinary claims the demo already requires cartoon physics. He drives the truck into the match box, making an U turn inside doesn't at all seem necessary???

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#32

Post by 6510 »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

could just count in stead of pi, the offset would be the same number as the value at the offset.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#33

Post by Fuzzwah »

bsza wrote: post #29
qingcharles wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this a lot over the years. What you're asking is, can we accurately emulate our own universe inside our own universe at greater than 100% speed? If so, it would allow us to build a type of space-time machine where we could visit any location at any time. I don't think it is totally inconceivable. It is definitely possible that there are hacks such as compression that would allow a simulator to run…

> I don't think it is totally inconceivable You could create a kind of "reverse" grandfather paradox by preventing future events predicted by the simulation from happening. Perhaps it could run fine up to the point that it has to simulate itself, then it would slow down to the point of becoming useless.

Basically the plot of the wonderful TV series "Devs". Well worth the time investment.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#34

Post by oxfordmale »

qingcharles wrote: post #21
bsza wrote: post #20

If the laws and initial state of the universe can be expressed in few enough bits, then all you need to store is a title and a date. Run a simulation of the universe, fast forward to the date the movie was released, use an AI to find a theater playing it, and digitize the tape. It may take longer to run than the current age of the universe, but eventually you’ll get it.

I've thought about this a lot over the years. What you're asking is, can we accurately emulate our own universe inside our own universe at greater than 100% speed? If so, it would allow us to build a type of space-time machine where we could visit any location at any time. I don't think it is totally inconceivable. It is definitely possible that there are hacks such as compression that would allow a simulator to run…

Quantum mechanics makes this impossible. This would require to know the position and speed of each particle precisely and that is in violation of the Heisenberg principle.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#35

Post by felixhandte »

sdfsdfsfds wrote: post #30
granularity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read “attaches all these numbers to each other” to mean concatenation, not addition. Presumably you’d want to encode a “next book” token too. This kind of compression is known as arithmetic coding. It does work.

The standard theoretical technique for encoding a list of numbers as a single number is Gödel encoding. It can be applied as many times as you like—e.g. to encode a list of lists of numbers, or a list of lists of lists of numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_numbering

Sure, but Gödel encoding is pretty much purely a theoretical exercise. I'm not sure anyone anywhere has ever practically manipulated Gödel-encoded expressions in a useful way. His original scheme also has the problem that prime factorization is rather computationally challenging--it is after all the basis of the RSA cryptosystem.

Whereas Arithmetic encoding is actually practical, extensively used, and a direct analogue to the stick.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#36

Post by amelius »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #11

I once had an idea for a file transfer system based on digits of pi that sounds the same as this idea. You'd give everybody DVDs of digits of pi (or they could calculate them themselves) , and then transfer files faster by just sending them the offset into pi. At the time I thought it could work with a big enough bank of digits of PI on both sides. If transfer was expensive, and calculating digits was cheap then you…

You first have to prove that pi contains all possible finite substrings, which I believe is still an open problem.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#37

Post by sdfsdfsfds »

felixhandte wrote: post #35
sdfsdfsfds wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard theoretical technique for encoding a list of numbers as a single number is Gödel encoding. It can be applied as many times as you like—e.g. to encode a list of lists of numbers, or a list of lists of lists of numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_numbering

Sure, but Gödel encoding is pretty much purely a theoretical exercise. I'm not sure anyone anywhere has ever practically manipulated Gödel-encoded expressions in a useful way. His original scheme also has the problem that prime factorization is rather computationally challenging--it is after all the basis of the RSA cryptosystem. Whereas Arithmetic encoding is actually practical, extensively used, and a direct analog…

I'm aware of arithmetic encoding and it is definitely the most compelling example of encoding arbitrary data with a single number. On the other hand, there is a lot more to arithmetic coding than the ability to encode lists of numbers—all the considerations involving the context of each symbol, which are essential to the process of compression. I just felt that it might be helpful to give an example which didn't implicate all that complex compression apparatus.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#38

Post by amelius »

bsza wrote: post #20

If the laws and initial state of the universe can be expressed in few enough bits, then all you need to store is a title and a date. Run a simulation of the universe, fast forward to the date the movie was released, use an AI to find a theater playing it, and digitize the tape. It may take longer to run than the current age of the universe, but eventually you’ll get it.

Yeah, but perhaps we're living in a multiverse and you'd have to encode which universe the movie was released in, which may require more bits than the entire movie :)

However, interestingly, by scanning other universes you may find similar movies with slightly different plot turns.

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#39

Post by dang »

Related. Others?

Was This Lost Computer Code Worth Billions? (Jan Sloot Digital Coding) (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36499676 - June 2023 (2 comments)

The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29623524 - Dec 2021 (22 comments)

Ask HN: What was the secret that Jan Sloot took with him to the grave? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13443135 - Jan 2017 (4 comments)

The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8699058 - Dec 2014 (18 comments)

Re: The Stick of Jan Sloot (2004)

#40

Post by lowdest »

daveguy wrote: post #10
karmakaze wrote: post #8

> The whole problem of Pieper's way of thinking (and of every other person who believes that Sloot actually could compress movies with a factor of two million) is that he believes that the key does not need to contain every detail of a movie. Unfortunately, it does. I wonder if one was scammed and bought a Blu-ray with everything, only to find out they got novels rather than movies. After the initial disappointment t…

> How about we get GPT to turn good movies into great books? Like a large inverse prompt engineering problem. GPT has trouble making great sentences, much less great books from a data type completely different from its training. GPT, at the core, is a "likely next word" generator. No great literature came as a process of "likely next word" in a vacuum. Likely next word from complex experiences of a decade and plot de…

GPT can make great sentences, it's just not the default operating mode. LLMs are capable of amazing things if you can get them into the right section of the latent space.
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