πFS • Hacker News Board

Re: πFS

#171

Post by esquivalience » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:27 AM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #167

ainch wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense, science is the most extreme form of compression - Newtonian mechanics explains an incredible number of phenomena in a few lines of text.

Yes. But /lossful/ compression: (scientific, philosophical etc.) laws compress an abstract narration of events into that tiny, hard, fundamental, predictive detail. (Then it depends on your concern: "Aagh, the aunt fell!" // "Oh yes, that'd be Newton")

> "Aagh, the aunt fell!" // "Oh yes, that'd be Newton"

This is totally lost on me.

Re: πFS

#172

Post by markcollins05 » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:29 AM UTC

Technically π being normal is still unproven. So if the conjecture is false this whole thing falls apart. But that's what makes it a perfect nerd joke.

Re: πFS

#173

Post by bandrami » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:31 AM 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.

At least as of 15 years ago when I was in grad school that remained an open conjecture.

Re: πFS

#174

Post by adamwright326 » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:32 AM UTC

The metadata storage problem is the real punchline here. You end up needing more space for the metadata than the original data, so it's a zero-sum joke.

Re: πFS

#175

Post by mkesper » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

Outdated! Should have linked directly to https://github.com/philipl/inferencefs/ obviously.

Re: πFS

#176

Post by outadoc » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:59 AM UTC

Reminded me of PortalRunner's latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6rkhvdAqHU

Re: πFS

#177

Post by amelius » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 7:59 AM UTC

philihp wrote: post #85

dietr1ch wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: Recursion

[flagged]

You can stop the recursion when you've found an index that is smaller than what you wanted to store.

Re: πFS

#178

Post by amelius » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 8:01 AM UTC

I am curious what this means for copyright. I.e. if all music/songs were already encoded in Pi even before the universe started existing.

Re: πFS

#179

Post by amelius » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 8:03 AM UTC

Instead of using Pi wouldn't it be better to choose a number for which the conjecture is true?

And for which the index is easy to compute?

Re: πFS

#180

Post by vbarrielle » Thu, Jun 11, 2026, 8:04 AM UTC

This would be easier using the Champernowne constant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champernowne_constant) which is guaranteed to be normal, not just conjectured.