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Base2048. An encoding optimized for packing maximum data into a Tweet (which supports 280 characters, but with Unicode support).
by spoonjim 6y ago
Base2048. An encoding optimized for packing maximum data into a Tweet (which supports 280 characters, but with Unicode support).
- uhl 6y agoThat is fascinating! In particular, base2048 was designed after twitter adjusted the tweet limit to 280 characters, but started counting “heavy” codepoints as double, making the previously used base65536 less efficient in the context of a tweet. See https://github.com/qntm/base2048#readme https://github.com/qntm/base2048#readme
- azhenley 6y agoI'd never heard of this either. It really is interesting! I can't other articles on it other than that readme. Does anyone else know where I can learn more about it? Someone needs to make a Wikipedia page!
- uhl 6y agoI think the reason is just that it isn't widely used. It's a very niche use-case, anyway. Even link-shorteners don't particularly benefit from something like this, and for all cases where the actual amount of data is concerned, simple base64 is more efficient. But yeah, making a wikipedia entry and adding it to this list (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-to-text_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary-to-text_encoding) could spread it a little further.
- amelius 6y agoI remember downloading binaries from Usenet using uudecode. Looks like Twitter is the new Usenet.