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ultimate storage hack (sh.itjust.works)
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[-] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 52 points 5 days ago

I had a manager once tell me during a casual conversation with complete sincerity that one day with advancements in compression algorithms we could get any file down to a single bit. I really didn't know what to say to that level of absurdity. I just nodded.

[-] VineGram@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

Maybe they also believe themselves to be father of computing

[-] friendlymessage@feddit.org 25 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That's the kind of manager that also tells you that you just lack creativity and vision if you tell them that it's not possible. They also post regularly on LinkedIn

[-] pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Well he's not wrong. The decompression would be a problem though.

[-] groet@feddit.org 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah with lossy compression the future is today!

[-] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

You can give me any file, and I can create a compression algorithm that reduces it to 1 bit. (*)

spoiler(*) No guarantees about the size of the decompression algorithm or its efficacy on other files

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 1 points 2 days ago

Here's a simple command to turn any file into a single b!

echo a > $file_name

u can have everthing in a single bit, if the decompressor includes the whole universe

[-] Valmond@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Send him your work: 1 (or 0 ofc)

[-] bluemellophone@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

That’s precisely when you bet on it.

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[-] JamonBear@sh.itjust.works 45 points 5 days ago

You want real infinite storage space? Here you go: https://github.com/philipl/pifs

[-] nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

that's awesome! I'm just migrating all my data to πfs. finally mathematics is put to a proper use!

[-] needanke@feddit.org 4 points 4 days ago

Finally someone uses the fact that compute time is so much cheaper than storage!

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[-] Honytawk@feddit.nl 28 points 4 days ago

Good luck with your 256 characters.

[-] SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 28 points 4 days ago

When you run out of characters, you simply create another 0 byte file to encode the rest.

Check mate, storage manufacturers.

[-] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

File name file system! Looks like we broke the universe! Wait, why is my MFT so large?!

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

255, generally, because null termination. ZFS does 1023, the argument not being "people should have long filenames" but "unicode exists", ReiserFS 4032, Reiser4 3976. Not that anyone uses Reiser, any more. Also Linux' PATH_MAX of 4096 still applies. Though that's in the end just a POSIX define, I'm not sure whether that limit is actually enforced by open(2)... man page speaks of ENAMETOOLONG but doesn't give a maximum.

It's not like filesystems couldn't support it it's that FS people consider it pointless. ZFS does, in principle, support gigantic file metadata but using it would break use cases like having a separate vdev for your volume's metadata. What's the point of having (effectively) separate index drives when your data drives are empty.

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[-] wizzim@infosec.pub 110 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Awesome idea. In base 64 to deal with all the funky characters.

It will be really nice to browse this filesystem...

[-] Thorry84@feddit.nl 79 points 5 days ago

It's all fun and games until your computer turns into a black hole because there is too much information in too little of a volume.

[-] proti@lemmy.world 39 points 5 days ago

Even better! According to no hiding theorem, you can't destroy information. With black holes you maybe possibly could be able to recover the data as it leaks through the Hawking radiation.
Perfect for long term storage

[-] Klear@lemmy.world 32 points 5 days ago

Can't wait to hear news about a major site leaking user passwords through hawking radiation.

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[-] mmddmm@lemm.ee 9 points 5 days ago

Really-long term storage :)

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[-] lemon@sh.itjust.works 92 points 6 days ago

Broke: file names have a max character length.

Woke: split b64-encoded data into numbered parts and add .part-1..n suffix to each file name.

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 16 points 5 days ago

each file is minimum 4kb

(base64.length/max_character) * min_filesize < actual_file_size

For this to pay off

[-] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 2 points 2 days ago

each file is minimum 4kb

$ touch empty_file
$ ls -l
total 8
-rw-rw-r-- 1 user group 0 may 14 20:13 empty_file
$ wc -c empty_file 
0 empty_file

Huh?

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Oh, I'm thinking folders aren't I. Doy....

[-] Venator@lemmy.nz 2 points 2 days ago

Just use folders instead 😏

[-] mmddmm@lemm.ee 10 points 5 days ago

I'd go with a prefix, so it's ls-friendly.

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[-] hades@lemm.ee 15 points 5 days ago

I remember the first time I ran out of inodes: it was very confusing. You just start getting ENOSPC, but du still says you have half the disk space available.

[-] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 4 points 4 days ago

Ah memories. That was an interesting lesson.

[-] bstix@feddit.dk 20 points 5 days ago

It's like that chip tune webpage where the entire track is encoded in the url.

[-] LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 days ago
[-] skisnow@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago

Are you trying to get rickrolled?

[-] Little8Lost@lemmy.world 29 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Stupid BUT: making the font in LibreOffice bigger saves space. so having 11 is readible but by changing the font size to like 500 it can save some mb per page
I dont know how it works, i just noticed it at some point

Edit: i think it was kb, not mb

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 5 days ago

per page

I mean, yes. obviously.

If you had 1000 bytes of text on 1 page before, you now have 1byte per page on 1000 pages afterwards

[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

Have a macro that decreases all font size on opening and then increases all again before closing.

Follow me irl for more compression techniques.

[-] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 days ago

You could always diff the XML before and after to see what's causing it.

[-] Typewar@infosec.pub 37 points 6 days ago

Reminds me of a project i stumbled upon the other day using various services like Google drive, Dropbox, cloudflare, discord for simultaneous remote storage. The goal was to use whatever service that has data to upload to, to store content there as a Filesystem.

I only remember discord being one of the weird ones where they would use base512 (or higher, I couldn't find the library) to encode the data. The thing with discord, is that you're limited by characters, and so the best way to store data in a compact way is to take advantage of whatever characters that are supported

[-] astrsk@fedia.io 41 points 5 days ago

What about a hard drive made of network pings?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJSW7Rprio

[-] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 29 points 5 days ago

I remember a project where someone booted Linux off of Google Drive. Cursed on many levels.

[-] jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

"Harder Drive"

Store the data in pings that constantly get resent to keep the data in the internet

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[-] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 5 points 4 days ago
[-] anhkagi@jlai.lu 28 points 6 days ago

this is actually a joke compression algorithm that compresses your data by one byte by appending it to the filename. (and you can execute it as many time as you want)

Too bad I can't remember the name.

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this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
849 points (100.0% liked)

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