The specifications described in Borges' original short story implies there are 25^1312000 books, which is unfathomably large but technically still finite.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If it's stored on a server somewhere, it can't be infinite.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Its generated dynamically based on a seed string.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Huh, if it's dynamically generated, would the storage required to host website grow as visitors search for more strings?

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It doesn't generate and save it, it generates it again at the same position.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago (3 children)

In that case, wouldn't the "address" for the position of the string in the library be as long as the string itself?

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Yes, it's a fancy way to turn a link containing encoded text into that text.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 2 points 3 days ago

https://libraryofbabel.info/book.cgi?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-w3-s1-v11:1

This is a link to a book. Its much larger than the url, thats just the seed to generate it.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Address is the seed. It's not stored. Try visiting it to see how it works.

[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 4 days ago (1 children)

God damn it now my uuids aren't universally unique!!!

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago

Universally Used once IDentifier

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 4 days ago

Every v4 UUID 🤭 /snark

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 15 points 4 days ago

Thank God, found mine.

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 4 days ago

Finally, a useful website

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

my Minecraft uuid isn't in here :(

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

is it a v4? The search thing is a bit wonky.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My son is also named Bort.

[–] nightwatch_admin@feddit.nl 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Bort..as? Orville vibes, sorry.

[–] L3G1T1SM3@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

A-bortion

[–] Hairyfishnuts@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Splain Lucy. What's the use case for these, please? Tried looking it up myself but still not sure. Thanks in advance.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A uuid is something that can be used as an id (identifier). It stands for Univerally Unique Identifier. This has a list of all of them, because it generates every valid one.

[–] Hairyfishnuts@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I did learn what it stood for in my travels. I wish to know the use cases for such things. Eli5 if posssible, please.

[–] StaticFlow@feddit.uk 5 points 3 days ago

In applications it was very common to use an auto incrementing number for id's. So one account would have id of one, then the next two, etc... This can cause problems if there is an unautheticated api endpoint which returns user info given an ID value, someone could just put in all the Id's counting up from one to find out all the records in the database. UUID's are a way of obscuring that, making it pretty hard to enumerate all records if they cant count up in an orderly fashion. It's also useful in distributed systems, the many instances of a running service could generate an ID value on each server instance before recording the value in the the database, there is a low chance of ID collisions.

[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

One use is in URL identifiers. If my account number is 47, for example, I could reasonably guess that accounts 1-46 exist and potentially look at other customers' data.

But if it uses a UUID instead then it's a lot harder to do that.

[–] Irelephant@lemm.ee 3 points 3 days ago

They are used as ids, like a post id or a user id in technology.

[–] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

It would be nice if they were sorted.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago

The video the guy did about making this was great