this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Good luck with your 256 characters.
When you run out of characters, you simply create another 0 byte file to encode the rest.
Check mate, storage manufacturers.
File name file system! Looks like we broke the universe! Wait, why is my MFT so large?!
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.
...Just asking, just asking: Why is the default FILENAME_MAX on Linux/glibc 4096?
Because PATH_MAX is? Also because it's a 4k page.
FILENAME_MAX is not safe to use for buffer allocations btw it could be INT_MAX.
Name all your files *.
You want real infinite storage space? Here you go: https://github.com/philipl/pifs
Easy, just replace each byte of data with multiple bytes of metadata. I see no problem here
Finally someone uses the fact that compute time is so much cheaper than storage!
that's awesome! I'm just migrating all my data to πfs. finally mathematics is put to a proper use!
Breakthrough vibes
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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.
Well he's not wrong. The decompression would be a problem though.
Yeah with lossy compression the future is today!
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
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
u can have everthing in a single bit, if the decompressor includes the whole universe
Send him your work: 1 (or 0 ofc)
That’s precisely when you bet on it.
Just make a file system that maps each file name to 2 files. The 0 file and the 1 file.
Now with just a filename and 1 bit, you can have any file! The file is just 1 bit. It's the filesystems that needs more than that.
It's an interesting question, though. How far CAN you compress? At some point you've extracted every information contained and increased the density to a maximum amount - but what is that density?
This is a really good question!
I believe the general answer is, until the compressed file is indistinguishable from randomness. At that point there is no more redundant information left to compress. Like you said, the 'information content' of a message can be measured.
(Note that there are ways to get a file to look like randomness that don't compress it)
I think by the time we reach some future extreme of data density, it will be in a method of storage beyond our current understanding. It will be measured in coordinates or atoms or fractions of a dimension that we nullify.
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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.
Ah memories. That was an interesting lesson.
If you have a tub full of water and a take a sip, you still have a tub full of water. Therefore only drink in small sips and you will have infinite water.
Water shortage is a scam.
If you have a water bottle and only drink half of it each time, you will also have infinite 💦
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It's like that chip tune webpage where the entire track is encoded in the url.
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.
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
Can't wait to hear news about a major site leaking user passwords through hawking radiation.
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Awesome idea. In base 64 to deal with all the funky characters.
It will be really nice to browse this filesystem...
The design is very human
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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.
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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
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
Have a macro that decreases all font size on opening and then increases all again before closing.
Follow me irl for more compression techniques.
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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
I remember a project where someone booted Linux off of Google Drive. Cursed on many levels.
Store the data in pings that constantly get resent to keep the data in the internet
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