πFS • Hacker News Board

Re: πFS

#31

Post by jamwise » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:40 PM UTC

Reminds me of when I tried to use the library of babel as a data compression tool. It led me down a fun rabbit hole and was my first introduction to information theory.

The conclusion being that you basically need the same amount of data to represent the address of your data as the data itself, so it's not really effective at compression, just a fun thought experiment.

The cool part of this in modern times is that LLMs are basically a form of lossy compression that actually achieves the gist of what these tools fail at. Although it is lossy, and requires a massive substrate. This is related to the idea of AI/LLMs being a form of language compression.

Re: πFS

#32

Post by mike_hock » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:40 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #15

At what point is the metadata larger than the actual file?

Half the time it should be larger, right?

Re: πFS

#33

Post by koolala » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

bobim wrote: post #6

This is disturbing to realize that pi then contains all the past and future knowledge, including when I'll pass away.

It isn't actually proven true.

Re: πFS

#34

Post by 12_throw_away » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

adzm wrote: post #12

It is worth noting that as the length of data increases it becomes extremely unlikely that the index and length of the sequence within pi would actually be smaller than the data.

yes I believe that's the joke

Re: πFS

#35

Post by OkayPhysicist » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

bobim wrote: post #6

This is disturbing to realize that pi then contains all the past and future knowledge, including when I'll pass away.

So does a calendar, if you you buy them enough years in advance.

Re: πFS

#36

Post by nighthawk454 » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:46 PM UTC

bobim wrote: post #6

This is disturbing to realize that pi then contains all the past and future knowledge, including when I'll pass away.

And also all the days you don’t, so, by itself not very meaningful. Especially since you can’t tell which one is right in advance. In some sense, so does a calendar

Re: πFS

#37

Post by pokstad » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #7

I... I can't tell if this is an elaborate troll or pure genius. I love it.

Both.

Re: πFS

#38

Post by charles_f » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

Posted many times before: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com/philipl

My favourite issue being about GDPR compliance https://github.com/philipl/pifs/issues/56

Re: πFS

#39

Post by liglam » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:53 PM UTC

stackghost wrote: post #23

hasteg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a one page proof that pi is irrational - https://heuklyd.github.io/papers/pdf/Niven-1947.pdf

It's amazing how inscrutable calculus can be when you return to reading it after not doing so for a period of time, much like lisp or forth. I don't think I've actually done an integral or taken a derivative in years. I can see the elegance of that proof but I'll be damned if I can actually follow the mathematics from one step to the next.

[dead]

Re: πFS

#40

Post by anthonj » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

bobim wrote: post #6

This is disturbing to realize that pi then contains all the past and future knowledge, including when I'll pass away.

So does a random number generator