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The idea of lossless compression in a smaller file size than anything else on the market spoiled the entire show for me. Call me picky, but...

by dodders 13y ago

taternuts 13y ago
I gotta admit, as soon as they said "and it's lossless!" I was a little disappointed
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
Don't compare it to reality, compare it to The Big Bang Theory.
gkop 13y ago
On the contrary, I appreciated this detail. It's difficult to come up with a plausible-sounding start up idea that doesn't sound like a joke. The lossless compression idea sounds plausible to the mainstream audience. For the hacker audience, it plays on a different level - it's a cue for us to get.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Lossless compression of non-random data is very possible, though. Video and audio files are far from random, and I don't believe that lossless compression is "a solved problem" (even by the business standard) for those. (However, it is a bit far-fetched that someone would invent a groundbreaking new algorithm in the space for a silly website.) General lossless compression may not exist, but we're talking about highly patterned (low entropy) subspace of all possible files/bit-strings. Lossless compression requires assumptions about the data, of course, because making some patterns shorter requires making others come out longer. Random data will, in general, get larger under a lossless compression algorithm.
- foobarian 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity
brucehart 13y ago
I thought that at first too, but it would actually be a funny plot development if someone later points out that information theory dictates that the claims are impossible. Then the main character would receive more VC funding to pivot into a completely different but even more ridiculous idea.
tedsanders 13y ago
To be fair, perhaps it is lossless, but only for a subset of all possible data files. Like compressive sensing, which beats the Nyquist-Shannon limit, but only if conditions about sparsity are met. In fact, the Nyquist-Shannon theorem itself is a kind of lossless compression. It says you can potentially throw away data without losing information.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
datapolitical 13y ago
That bothered me at first, but remember that it's not the tech that's the point of the show, it's the culture. Who's on First isn't about baseball.
nobodysfool 13y ago
I haven't watched the show, but wasn't BWT a lossless compression with a smaller file size than anything else on the market? Or are they talking about comparing lossless to lossy?
shalmanese 13y ago
It was deliberately ambiguous what they were building since it's more or less a MacGuffin but there was some talk of it allowing faster search over compressed content which, to me, sounds like plausibly valuable technology.

The idea of lossless compression in a smaller file size than anything else on the market spoiled the entire show for me. Call me picky, but...

by dodders 13y ago

The idea of lossless compression in a smaller file size than anything else on the market spoiled the entire show for me. Call me picky, but...

taternuts 13y ago

I gotta admit, as soon as they said "and it's lossless!" I was a little disappointed

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

Don't compare it to reality, compare it to The Big Bang Theory.

gkop 13y ago

On the contrary, I appreciated this detail. It's difficult to come up with a plausible-sounding start up idea that doesn't sound like a joke. The lossless compression idea sounds plausible to the mainstream audience. For the hacker audience, it plays on a different level - it's a cue for us to get.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Lossless compression of non-random data is very possible, though. Video and audio files are far from random, and I don't believe that lossless compression is "a solved problem" (even by the business standard) for those. (However, it is a bit far-fetched that someone would invent a groundbreaking new algorithm in the space for a silly website.) General lossless compression may not exist, but we're talking about highly patterned (low entropy) subspace of all possible files/bit-strings. Lossless compression requires assumptions about the data, of course, because making some patterns shorter requires making others come out longer. Random data will, in general, get larger under a lossless compression algorithm.

foobarian 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity

brucehart 13y ago

I thought that at first too, but it would actually be a funny plot development if someone later points out that information theory dictates that the claims are impossible. Then the main character would receive more VC funding to pivot into a completely different but even more ridiculous idea.

tedsanders 13y ago

To be fair, perhaps it is lossless, but only for a subset of all possible data files. Like compressive sensing, which beats the Nyquist-Shannon limit, but only if conditions about sparsity are met. In fact, the Nyquist-Shannon theorem itself is a kind of lossless compression. It says you can potentially throw away data without losing information.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

datapolitical 13y ago

That bothered me at first, but remember that it's not the tech that's the point of the show, it's the culture. Who's on First isn't about baseball.

nobodysfool 13y ago

I haven't watched the show, but wasn't BWT a lossless compression with a smaller file size than anything else on the market? Or are they talking about comparing lossless to lossy?

shalmanese 13y ago

It was deliberately ambiguous what they were building since it's more or less a MacGuffin but there was some talk of it allowing faster search over compressed content which, to me, sounds like plausibly valuable technology.