The $5000 Compression Challenge (2001)

I though he would try to net profit through probability by requesting to regenerate the file and hope to get a compressible one in at least 5000/100=50 times. (Though I don't think that would work.)

> It's not my fault that a file system uses up more space storing the same amount of data in two files rather than a single file.

It's not interesting to see people play word games with each other in the HN comments, so why is it interesting to see this kind of disingenuous behavior? Trolls have always existed. I don't get what's interesting about it.

This is hilarious, but Mike’s behavior boils my blood. To switch the rules when fairly beaten is just so scummy!

Of course Patrick’s solution occurred to me immediately once he started talking about splitting up the file. :)

Then I got to wondering if it would be possible to compress a large enough file and save a few bytes, in the spirit of what Mike actually wanted. For instance, if you tried encrypting with a bunch of random keys, you’ll find some such that the result ends with n 0s (say), so then your result could be something like encrypted + key + n. Typically you’d expect to find that the length of the encryption key would be roughly the length of the number of 0s, so you wouldn’t actually net any savings. But I think if you searched long enough, you might “get lucky” and find a key that generated more 0s then the length of the key, so you could theoretically win the challenge. Of course you’d have to somehow embed a program which could decrypt and reassemble everything in a tiny amount of space, but it still doesn’t seem impossible like Mike seems to suggest. Perhaps just requires an intractable amount of computing power. :)

I’m not sure if any of that made sense. I think I’m using the wrong terms for things.

It’s amazing that this commentary on the value of prediction markets was written in 2001.