41–50 of 224 posts
At what point is the metadata larger than the actual file?
> Now, we all know that it can take a while to find a long sequence of digits in π, so for practical reasons, we should break the files up into smaller chunks that can be more readily found.
> In this implementation, to maximise performance, we consider each individual byte of the file separately, and look it up in π.
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.
That seems easy enough to solve. Simply record the index and length in pi of the index and length in pi.
This is disturbing to realize that pi then contains all the past and future knowledge, including when I'll pass away.
So does every other random infinite sequence of bits. The unintuitive part comes from infinity, not pi. It also doesn't contain all past and future knowledge because it also contains all possible falsehoods about the past and future in a way that's indiscernible from the truth. Encoding information as an offset into a pseudorandom sequence is no more storage efficient than storing the information directly.
πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36357466 - June 2023 (107 comments)
πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699499 - Sept 2021 (30 comments)
PiFS – The Data-Free Filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26208704 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)
Πfs: Never worry about data again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21359338 - Oct 2019 (1 comment)
The π Filesystem for FUSE: Store Your Data in π - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19223032 - Feb 2019 (1 comment)
pifs - Avoid disk space usage by saving your files in the digits of Pi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18687275 - Dec 2018 (1 comment)
πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13869691 - March 2017 (105 comments)
Πfs: Stores your data in π - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10856108 - Jan 2016 (1 comment)
Πfs: Never worry about data again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10847693 - Jan 2016 (1 comment)
File system that stores location of file in Pi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018818 - July 2014 (98 comments)
100% Compression Using Pi - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6698852 - Nov 2013 (32 comments)
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
I'm intrigued that π was capitalized to Π presumably automatically in the HN headline.
jshell> "πfs".toUpperCase() $1 ==> "ΠFS" Welcome to Node.js v26.3.0. Type ".help" for more information. > "πfs".toUpperCase() 'ΠFS' Python 3.14.5 (main, May 10 2026, 10:21:34) [Clang 21.0.0 (clang-2100.0.123.102)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> "πfs".upper() 'ΠFS' echo 'πfs' | awk '{print toupper($0)}' ΠFS
Related. Others? πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36357466 - June 2023 (107 comments) πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699499 - Sept 2021 (30 comments) PiFS – The Data-Free Filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26208704 - Feb 2021 (1 comment) Πfs: Never worry about data again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21359338 - Oct 2019…
Related. Others? πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36357466 - June 2023 (107 comments) πfs – A data-free filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699499 - Sept 2021 (30 comments) PiFS – The Data-Free Filesystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26208704 - Feb 2021 (1 comment) Πfs: Never worry about data again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21359338 - Oct 2019…
How are you generating these lists