this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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[โ€“] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Regardless which lossless compression algorithm you prefer, it makes most files bigger.

*where "files" includes all bitstrings of a given length, whether or not they've ever existed

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's pretty disingenuous, since most files aren't just random data.

Most real files actually have rather low entropy, even if they look like random junk (e.g., executables), chiefly due to repetition of similar data and sparse values.