xor: how come so slow?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

In message <Jlj*lmIps at news.chiark.greenend.org.uk>, Sion Arrowsmith wrote:

> Maybe it should be "fewer random data".

Except these days we tend to think of "data" being, say, more like "flour"
than "bees", so it's "less data", like "less flour", rather than
like "fewer bees". :)

> After all, each byte in the block is discrete.

Data can come in fractional bits. That's how compression works.