Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

quaxio.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 150 posts

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#141

Post by utopcell »

jtrip wrote: post #136
utopcell wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 'x' marks the notch of a rod of length "1", [0---------x------------1], then the implied ratio is not x/(1-x), but x/1 (so the ratio is always But that is not the direction we are interested in. We would like, given a message, such as "l-o-v-e", or 12-15-22-05, or 0.12152205, to figure out what is the ratio that uniquely specifies it. As we can only mark one notch, we can create "only" h ~= 10^35 ratios, or repres…

Let's assume that the rod is 1 m in length, and say I wrote a book that is perfectly represented by the number 0.abcdefg...yz. If that number is perfectly represented by one of the ratios in set 'h', then have I not stored more infromation than 15 bytes? As for x/(1-x), why not? And why limit ourselves to a 1 m rod? Why not a 22 m rod with a 7 m notch? I could then define the method of decoding the information via (R…

A 22m rod with a 7m notch is perfectly ok. You'd then be encoding 7/22. As others have pointed out, the rod could span the known universe and it would still not matter.

Say you found a great message in the representation of 1/7. Weird, since it is a rational so if its representation is infinite, its periodic (you can't write down 1/π or 1/e for example, as these are irrationals.)

Excited you found that message, you want to put your notch exactly at 1/7 on the rod to celebrate it.

But you can't. Your desired notch position will fall between two possible notches, spaced one planck distance apart, and you'll have to pick one of the two.

And when you do, you truncate your message to 15 bytes worth of information.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#143

Post by perl4ever »

jtrip wrote: post #140
rcxdude wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. You have stored something which has a representation of more than 15 bytes, but you will struggle to find a way to store most things longer than 15 bytes in this way. (everything can be transformed into a representation which is infinite in size anyway, for example by using an irrational base). Information really comes down to the number of possible values you can distinguish. If you do the ratio thing yo…

Total Human knowledge ~ 250 EB Assuming all of it can be described as ascii characters, (ratio of.12152205 could be read as 12-15-22-05, or “l-o-v-e.”) then let's assume 4 numbers will be required to encode one letter. That gives us, in our limited system, 4 decimal bits to a byte (we really can't limit ourselves to just ratios that are sufficiently large and only made of 1s & 0s). So, all human knowledge is, in our…

Are you just saying the length of the rod can be variable along with the position of the notch? If so, it seems like that means you approximately square the number of possibilities, so if there was a maximum of 25 bytes, then there is an maximum of 50 bytes available in something the width of the universe. Still not large.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#144

Post by maxerickson »

feintruled wrote: post #123
maxerickson wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a great 1 person-audience magic trick to call up all 3000 of those people and say, "Hi sjcsjc, I found your phone number in Pi".

Derren Brown did a great series of tricks based on probability.. your comment reminded me on the one that showed a video of him flipping 10 heads in a row on an unbiased coin. He revealed them that he had done it by flipping a coin for hours until he got that sequence.

Teller has made a similar statement, about practicing something more than anyone would find reasonable, so the trick is just in being able to do it.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#145

Post by jtrip »

perl4ever wrote: post #143
jtrip wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total Human knowledge ~ 250 EB Assuming all of it can be described as ascii characters, (ratio of.12152205 could be read as 12-15-22-05, or “l-o-v-e.”) then let's assume 4 numbers will be required to encode one letter. That gives us, in our limited system, 4 decimal bits to a byte (we really can't limit ourselves to just ratios that are sufficiently large and only made of 1s & 0s). So, all human knowledge is, in our…

Are you just saying the length of the rod can be variable along with the position of the notch? If so, it seems like that means you approximately square the number of possibilities, so if there was a maximum of 25 bytes, then there is an maximum of 50 bytes available in something the width of the universe. Still not large.

How did you not get that the term '25 bytes' is merely the size necessary to store the number of possible ratios instead of any actual information?

Did no one read the discussion below about encoding information into pi? This is the same concept. Yes, there are only 25 bytes worth of ratios to chose from, but those ratios themselves can, possibly, POSSIBLY, store all the information.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#146

Post by perl4ever »

jtrip wrote: post #145
perl4ever wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you just saying the length of the rod can be variable along with the position of the notch? If so, it seems like that means you approximately square the number of possibilities, so if there was a maximum of 25 bytes, then there is an maximum of 50 bytes available in something the width of the universe. Still not large.

How did you not get that the term '25 bytes' is merely the size necessary to store the number of possible ratios instead of any actual information? Did no one read the discussion below about encoding information into pi? This is the same concept. Yes, there are only 25 bytes worth of ratios to chose from, but those ratios themselves can, possibly, POSSIBLY, store all the information.

There is no ratio equal to pi, so I don't understand how pi can be relevant to a method of storing information using ratios.

Show me an irrational number in real life.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#147

Post by stevenhuang »

perl4ever wrote: post #143
jtrip wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total Human knowledge ~ 250 EB Assuming all of it can be described as ascii characters, (ratio of.12152205 could be read as 12-15-22-05, or “l-o-v-e.”) then let's assume 4 numbers will be required to encode one letter. That gives us, in our limited system, 4 decimal bits to a byte (we really can't limit ourselves to just ratios that are sufficiently large and only made of 1s & 0s). So, all human knowledge is, in our…

Are you just saying the length of the rod can be variable along with the position of the notch? If so, it seems like that means you approximately square the number of possibilities, so if there was a maximum of 25 bytes, then there is an maximum of 50 bytes available in something the width of the universe. Still not large.

Your comment is a non-sequitor; reread what he said.

He's saying that there exists a certain ratio in the set of ratios whose decimal representation represents a corpus of knowledge, in this case the entirety of human knowledge.

It's the same idea as this example: http://www.angio.net/pi/

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#148

Post by stevenhuang »

perl4ever wrote: post #146
jtrip wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you not get that the term '25 bytes' is merely the size necessary to store the number of possible ratios instead of any actual information? Did no one read the discussion below about encoding information into pi? This is the same concept. Yes, there are only 25 bytes worth of ratios to chose from, but those ratios themselves can, possibly, POSSIBLY, store all the information.

There is no ratio equal to pi, so I don't understand how pi can be relevant to a method of storing information using ratios. Show me an irrational number in real life.

Hmm, try reading some other comments in this thread, should make things more clear.

Re: A bootable CD image with a retro game in a single tweet

#149

Post by stevenhuang »

rcxdude wrote: post #138
jtrip wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you say a rod to notch ratio of 22/7 compares? How much information would you say that has?

Meaningless on its own. What matters is how many distinct ratios are possible.

> Meaningless on its own.

That's the crux. What we're saying is that, of these set of ratios, there exists one whose infinite decimal representation contains our intended data. Yes we'd be limited to Planck length resolution, but the idea is that we would determine such a ratio and construct the notch and bar in such a way that it yields the decimal sequence desired; the # of particular ratios is not relevant.

I wouldn't be surprised if it can be proven this can't be done, but then that would be proper question to ask.

Post reply on HN